by Tom Clancy
So much for childhood heroes.
Jay had killed the tiger, but compared to what he still had to do, that was the easy part. Now he was hunting tyrannosaur, he was stalking a dragon, and he was gonna need a bigger gun. And more nerve. Saji was going to make him spill his guts about it, about how he felt, and that wasn’t gonna be fun, either. In some ways, that was scarier than the thunder lizard. Who was it said the unexamined life wasn’t worth living? Plato? Aristotle? Yeah, maybe so, but if you spent too much time digging into your own psyche, it got spooky. Maybe the overexamined life wasn’t worth living, either.
In Betty Bacall’s throaty, sexy tone, the house computer said, “Jay, you have a visitor.”
Saji was here.
He was ready for anything. Jay took a deep breath and went to the door. Opened it.
A petite, short-haired brunette woman in blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and cowboy boots stood there. She looked to be about twenty-five, maybe five feet tall even in the boots, and had big dimples around a beautiful smile. She could have been Tibetan, he supposed, but there didn’t seem to be any Oriental cast to her features.
“Hello, Jay,” she said.
Well . . . shit. He realized he wasn’t ready for anything after all.
“Saji,” he said. It was not a question. Son of a bitch. Not only was Saji a woman, she was young and beautiful. This was not fair!
Son of a bitch.
Tuesday, April 12th
The Yews, Sussex, England
“Telephone call for you, sir,” Applewhite said. He came into the room carrying the instrument. “A gentleman by the name of . . . Pound-Sand, milord. He says you were expecting his call.”
Goswell paused and looked through the tubes of the shotgun he had been cleaning. Pound-Sand? He didn’t know anybody named that, did he? Did anyone? Someone was pulling Applewhite’s leg, surely? He blew hard through one of the barrels, causing a hollow, hooting sound, and lint from the cotton cleaning patch to float out into the room and drift downward in the rays of the afternoon sun.
“He says he was told to call by an old gentleman fond of Cuban cigars.”
Ah. That’s who it was. He reached for the phone and waved Applewhite out.
“Hello?”
“Lord Goswell?”
“Yes, it is I.”
“A moment, please, sir.” The voice seemed cultured enough, some education and decent background in it. There came an electronic tone from the other end of the connection. “Excuse the delay,” the man said. “One cannot be too careful, can one?”
“You just did a voice analysis?”
“Yes, my lord. And the line is secure, our conversation is quite scrambled. I trust no one is listening in on an extension on your end?”
Goswell nodded to himself. Good show. He said, “No, we’re alone, Mr.—ah, Pound-Sand.”
The man chuckled. “I hope you’ll forgive me the little joke, my lord. Sir Harold has indicated that you have something of a delicate problem?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Would you like this problem resolved temporarily or permanently?”
“Permanently, I’m unhappy to say.”
“I shall attend to it immediately.”
“You’ll need particulars.”
“Just the name will be sufficient, my lord. I can determine the rest.”
Goswell grinned. Capital!
He gave the killer Peel’s name.
“Thank you, my lord, I’ll take care of it. Good-bye, then.”
Goswell hung up the phone. No discussion of money or tawdry details. How wonderful. He felt better. At least there were still a few good men out there.
Tuesday, April 12th
London, England
Alex Michaels walked along the bank of the Thames near the Jubilee Gardens, watching tourist boats cruise by and wishing he could turn back time. His life had become a fucking soap opera. His investigation was stalled. His ex-wife wanted sole custody of their daughter. He was having a relationship with his second-incommand. Worse, he had damned near slept with someone else, which would have been only the third woman he had been with in a dozen years. How could he tell Toni that? What could he say? Oh, yes, while you were out of town? I came that close to rolling around and breaking furniture all night with the gorgeous British secret agent Angela Cooper. Sorry about that.
Yeah. Now, he had a monkey riding his back, clawed fingers dug into his neck and shoulders, legs wrapped around his torso like a vise, and it was so heavy he could barely stand. He had never felt so guilty in his life. He had never done anything like this before, ever. How could he have been so stupid? How the hell was he going to make this right?
Was it even possible to make it right?
He couldn’t stand the idea that he might lose Toni. But if he told her—no, when he told her—that could happen. She could slap his face and stalk out. She could also break his bones and stalk out, though that didn’t scare him as much as the hurt he’d see in her face.
What the hell had he been thinking about?
Sure, he could try to blame it all on Angela, she had worked pretty hard to get him to her place, had set it up with the massage and all, but he wasn’t fooling himself with that rationalization. She hadn’t held a gun to his head. It took two to tango. He could have politely declined the offer and gone home.
You can’t spike paper without a paper spike.
Okay, fine, so you didn’t actually spike anything, but like horseshoes and hand grenades, close counts here. Ah, Jesus.
Some Japanese tourists on a bargelike boat with a brightly colored canopy over it smiled and waved at him. Probably thought he was a local; not much difference between an Englishman and an American to look at, was there?
The tourists didn’t have a clue that the idea of throwing himself into the Thames and diving to the bottom and staying there held a certain morbid appeal just at the moment.
He waved back. “Eat shit and die,” he said, smiling falsely.
How could men do such things, cheat on their wives or significant others as he had done? Almost done. Once, he’d had drinks with a lawyer he’d met on the job, a tall, handsome, rich guy who was married to a beautiful woman. They had three children, a great home in Virginia, money, dogs, cats, every measure of happiness you could want. They started talking. The lawyer had a couple of drinks, then confided in Michaels. Once, not long ago, the lawyer said, he’d been to a fund-raising breakfast in D.C. Aside from his wife, there were four very attractive women at the table, some married, some not, ranging in age from twenty-two to forty. He had, the lawyer said, slept with all of them during the past year and looked forward to doing it again with each of them. None of them knew about the others. It was a peak moment for him, he’d said.
Michaels had nearly choked on his drink. The man must be mad. The idea of sitting at table with five women, all of whom he had been to bed with, filled him with terror. In such a situation, he would have dropped dead of fright, no doubt about it. The tension would have been unbearable. He could see his head just . . . exploding, like a cherry bomb on New Year’s Eve.
His experience was small, but he believed that women could tell these things somehow. A wrong look or word from Angela, and Toni would know. That was the last thing he wanted to happen, that she find out from somebody other than him.
The second to last thing he wanted to happen was that she find out from him.
Oh, man! What was he going to do now? No matter how he looked at it, this was a no-win situation.
Should have thought about that when you shucked your clothes and rolled over on that massage table, pal. Should have put your brain in gear before you put your hydraulics in motion . . .
Ruzhyó followed Peel, keeping his rented car one or two vehicles back in the traffic. He did not consider himself an expert in surveillance—he had known men who could follow a damned soul through Hell’s Main Gate without the Devil knowing it—but it was much easier when the subject knew you were tai
ling him and wanted you to be there. It was true he had shadowed people before, usually just before he killed them. And it was true he knew the basics of moving surveillance, how to use cover, how to blend into the background, when to back off and let somebody go to keep from burning them. Such skills were part of his trade, and he was adept, if not a master.
Ruzhyó glanced at a street sign as they drove past. Old Kent Road. And there, off to one side, was something called the South East Gas Works. He made a mental note of these.
One of the tricks that beginning operatives learning how to tail somebody often missed was to pay attention to where you were. There was a tendency to concentrate on your subject to the exclusion of all else. You might not see his friend, laying and watching for just such as you. Or you could stay with a subject through various twists and turns, sometimes even when he got cute and tried to see if he was being followed, but if you were not paying proper attention when the subject stopped, you looked up and did not have any idea as to where you were. In a familiar city, this was not a problem, perhaps, but in a strange town, it could cause difficulty. If you did not have a good local map or a GPS, finding your way back to your base might be a chore. And there were worse things. There were areas in every city where you simply could not park a vehicle and sit in it for several hours waiting for a subject to return to his vehicle and depart. A residential street in a well-to-do neighborhood was a bad place to stay. Rich people had things they wanted protected, and they also felt that the law and its officers should offer them priority. It might be a public street, and you might have the right to park there legally, but if the local captain of industry glanced out his mansion window and saw you sitting in your automobile in front of his property, he would call the police and they would come and check you out. If the private security patrol didn’t get to you first.
Parking and sitting for long periods in front of a bank was also an unwise action.
If you drove into a strange area and found yourself near a primary school, close enough to view the children playing, you could safely bet everything you owned against a plugged ruble that police would be arriving shortly to see if you were some kind of molester waiting for a chance to expose yourself—or do worse—to the children. If you did not have an excellent reason for being there—and there were no reasons excellent enough to convince the police that a man should be perched and watching children, except possibly that you were one of them laying in wait for someone like they thought you were—you would be directed to move along.
In such a situation, it would be to your advantage to have some knowledge of where else you might go to watch for your man leaving.
Peel turned into a parking lot in front of a small, gray, two-story building.
Ruzhyó drove past the lot and spotted a parking place on the street only a few meters ahead, and under the overhang of a smallish oaklike tree. He grinned. The first rule of automobile surveillance, as taught to him by Serge, the old Russian Spetsnaz operative who had trained him in the basics, was: Always park in the shade. The warmer the day, the more important this becomes.
Ruzhyó pulled the car into the slot, killed the engine, and looked to make certain nobody followed Peel into the parking lot. Nobody did.
Peel alighted from his car and headed for the building, giving no sign that he saw Ruzhyó. Peel had already told him the building to which he was going was secure, there was no need to follow him inside.
Ruzhyó shifted in the seat and looked for signs of anybody who might either be there already or arriving to position himself so as to watch Peel’s departure. Should he see anything he considered threatening, he would call Peel, using his mobile telephone, and they would decide how to proceed from there.
Seated in the car with nothing to do but watch, Ruzhyó thought again about going home. The travel problems had mostly resolved, and he could easily figure out a way onto the European mainland. There had been another case in the newspaper just yesterday of some fool who had managed to bypass the fences and security cameras and guards to get into the Chunnel on foot. It had taken him all day to walk from England to France, and it was a wonder the slipstream of the trains, barreling along at 160 kilometers per hour, hadn’t sucked him off the narrow ledge to his death. Several others had died thus in the last few years.
Such a thing just proved that if a man wanted to get somewhere bad enough, he could find a way.
He owed no allegiance to Peel, and the money he was being paid meant nothing; he had plenty of money. But he would give this a few more days. It was mildly interesting, and Peel had managed to spot and surprise him. That meant something in his business. A few more days wouldn’t hurt.
30
Tuesday, April 12th
Washington, D.C.
Tyrone stood more or less hidden inside the sporting goods store, looking out at the food court. He’d cut classes to come to the mall. Bella was there, seated at a table in front of the Tor-tee-ah Mah-ree-aa, surrounded by half a dozen girlfriends and a couple of boys. The males weren’t anybody Tyrone recognized as belonging to Bella, just some small moons orbiting her bright star. Bella laughed and they all laughed. When she talked, they listened. She was something.
He had mixed feelings about her. On the one hand, he hated her guts for how she had dropped him. No warning, blam! Right between the eyes, and hasta la vista Ty-rone-ee! She wasn’t used to having guys tell her they didn’t like how she was behaving, and he had sure done that. Just like that, it was end game, and don’t bother to put another coin in, because you don’t get a replay.
On the other hand, just look at her. She was so beautiful, the center of every room she entered, guys would line up just to kiss the ground she walked on. And, once upon a time, she had bestowed her favors on him. Kissed him, touched him, let him touch her, and the thought of being able to do that again, to walk around knowing he had her attention, well, that was something magic, no question, no Q. He’d once had his hand on that perfect breast, tangled tongues inside that perfect mouth. It was exciting to think about it, and lucky he was between two racks of ski clothes so nobody could see just how exciting it was.
She had practically invited him to the mall. He could walk out of this store, kinda amble over to where she sat, and see what was what. Would she smile and welcome him into the fold, have him sit next to her? Because, in the end, she respected him for telling her how it was? Or was it some kind of sicko-sticko where she’d dry ice him in front of her friends, embarrass the hell out of him, make him look like a total fool? He didn’t think she’d do that. She could have done it a lot of times before now and why wait so long? But he wasn’t sure.
Once upon a time not too long ago, he’d have run as fast as he could move and never worry about it for a nanosec. He had loved her. He thought she loved him, too. But that was then. Life changes a lot in a few months, no feek.
When he thought about Bella, he felt like he was a washcloth, twisted, wrung out, tossed onto the edge of the tub still in a knot without even being hung out to dry. This could be the time to find out where he stood, to know for sure.
Thing was, did he really want to know? Being dumped once was awful. Being humiliated in public on top of that would be zero cubed. He could hear Jimmy Joe and the rest of the geek patrol now: “Whoa, slip, I hear you got driced by The Belladonna (donna-donnadonna-wah-wah-wah-whaah) right in the middle of the mall! Count Zero, cold cut, got your card maxed. How you feel about that?”
Tyrone shook his head. He didn’t want to play that scenario in RW or VR, thank you very fucking much.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But nothing lost, either, right?
But if it got Bella back, got you to her house on the couch, got you another chance at putting your hands on that perfect body, those lips against yours, wouldn’t that be worth the risk?
Oh, yeah.
He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Took another. Worst-case scenario, he’d look like a big fool. Best case?
He had an imaginary
flash of Bella, naked, hair spread out on a pillow. It was vivid enough that he forgot to breathe. He was fourteen, and that was an image to die for—never mind that it was also to go to jail for, even if she was older than he was. Bella. Naked . . .
Jesus Christ!
When he remembered how to breathe again, Tyrone headed for the door. Do or die, slip. Do or die.
Tuesday, April 12th
London, England
John Howard stood outside the MI-6 building, watching his boss walk across the street and head toward him. He waved and saw Michaels see him and wave back.
“Colonel. How are you?”
“Pretty good, sir. All things considered.”
“Anything new on the search for the assassin?”
“Yes and no,” Howard said. “We know he was on a flight out of Seattle on Wednesday. We know he came here. We have confirmation via a scan of passengers going through customs. Fiorella pulled up arrivals from the U.S. early Thursday morning. We got a photographic match.”
He tendered a hardcopy color print of a man strolling through the airport. A grid of fine lines had been superimposed over the photograph.
“You sure this is him?”
“It looks like him. Right place at the right time. Computer says the ears and hands match our reference. Unless he has a twin brother, it’s him, all right.”
Michaels nodded at the building. “Shall we go inside?”
As they passed the guards and headed along the hallway, Michaels said, “It’s been almost a week. He could be anywhere by now.”