by Tom Clancy
That would piss them off, but — so what? They didn’t have the cards, and if somebody called your bluff, you lost the pot.
The private scrambled line lit, and Cox picked it up. “Hello?”
“My house has been blown up,” Eduard said.
“That’s terrible.” A beat: “We shouldn’t speak of such things, even on a secure line.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“Why ask me? I don’t know. An old enemy?”
“My old enemies are no longer among the living.”
“It is just a house, my friend. We’ll get you a new one.”
There was silence. Then, “Yes, you are right. Forgive me for bothering you with this.”
Somebody had destroyed Eduard’s house? Who? Why? Perhaps it had been an accident?
He looked at the timer. Only a minute left. A house was nothing. He could buy Eduard fifty houses, he could sleep in a different one each week for a year, if he wanted.
Cox hit the stop button on the timer, letting his feet slow to a stop. Someone had blown up Eduard’s house? Who? Why? And more importantly, how?
Cox hadn’t done it himself. He knew that. And he knew that Net Force would never be able to do such a thing. Which meant someone else knew about Eduard, and that just shouldn’t be possible.
“This is serious,” he said. “Go to ground. Give me time to look into this. Then we’ll talk.”
“Yes,” Eduard said, and disconnected.
Cox resumed his exercise. There was only a minute left on the timer, but his thoughts were no longer on the stair-stepper, nor his total victory over Net Force. This was unexpected, and unexpected was always bad.
Natadze sat in the clean car, staring though the windshield at a bus that had stopped to disgorge passengers. Cox had reacted as though he knew nothing about the explosion, but Natadze was no longer fooled. There had been nothing in Natadze’s house to link him to Cox, nothing. But a man that rich had different ideas about property, about the value of things. His only passion was in playing his business games. It was all about the deal for him. Money, possessions, they were just ways to keep score, to show that he was winning. Had Natadze mentioned his destroyed instrument collection, Cox would undoubtedly have offered to buy him news ones. A man like Cox would never understand that there were some things money couldn’t buy. Perhaps it was time for him to learn that.
Natadze felt a great sadness underlying his anger. He remembered a fortune cookie he’d gotten at a Chinese restaurant, in England, of all places, years before. The fortune had said, “Minimize expectations to avoid being disappointed.” That had been in line with his beliefs, and he had kept the slip of paper as a reminder. It was even now in his wallet. But he had come to trust Cox, to expect certain things from him. That had been his mistake. You could depend on no one in the world except for yourself. Sad, but true.
The bus pulled away from the curb, and Natadze followed it. There were things he had to do. Best he get to them.
39
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
Thorn sat at his desk, wondering if his decision to leave business and get into government service had been wise. His first major case had turned into a convoluted knot that Alexander the Great couldn’t cut. Things were easier in the corporate world. Yes, there were political problems, but the bottom line was more important, and when you were the boss, you could solve a lot of situations by simply willing it so.
He sighed. He had known it would be a challenge, but not that it would be so frustrating.
His phone chirped. He picked it up. He would have to watch himself, he might take somebody’s head off, the way he felt.
“Thorn,” he said.
“Commander? This is Watkins, Main Gate Security.”
Thorn looked at the guard’s image on the intercom screen. “Yes?”
“We have a man out here asking for you, says it’s a personal matter. His name is, ah, Dennis McManus.”
It took a second for the name to register. McManus? Here?
“The thing is, sir, he’s carrying a big case full of weird stuff, and part of it is—”
“—a sword,” Thorn finished.
“Yes, sir. Are you expecting him? He’s not on the call list.”
How silly was this? The guy just shows up at the gate? Carrying his fencing gear? Expecting Thorn to let him in and square off in some sort of duel of honor?
Thorn thought about it for a moment. Another day, a different time, he would have had the guard shoo the guy away. But the man had picked the wrong time to call. “Yes, I forgot to add him. Give him a visitor’s tag, have somebody escort him to the waiting room outside my office.”
After he shut the com off, Thorn realized that his heart was beating pretty fast. He knew why McManus was here: More than two decades, and he had come for a rematch! The guy must be missing a couple of screws.
Or maybe not. This business with the Russians and the rich man and even Marissa had shown Thorn he wasn’t nearly as in control as he liked to be. That there were all kinds of things beyond his ability to make dance as he wanted them to dance. But, by God, he still knew how to wield a sword.
Maybe it wasn’t crazy. Maybe this was exactly what he needed, too.
Thorn stood, and rolled his shoulders, loosening them. His own practice gear was in the gym down the hall. This guy wanted to play? Fine. Win, lose, or draw, this was something Thorn felt comfortable doing, and it would be one-on-one, nobody else to blame if he couldn’t deal with it. And that was exactly how he liked it.
“Bring it on, buddy,” he said softly, as he headed for the office door.
Thorn didn’t smile as he met McManus. He dismissed the escort.
“Gym is this way,” he said.
McManus didn’t smile, either. Then again, he didn’t seem surprised that Thorn would have his own gear here at work. A man might stop practicing, but once you were a serious fencer, you never completely put it away. On some level, it colored your thoughts forever. All the fencing buddies Thorn had kept in touch with who had competed in college still kept their blades, and while most of them didn’t fence in tournaments anymore, all of them still trained. That Thorn still checked into the newsgroups on-line would be enough to tell McManus that he had kept up at least that much interest.
Once a swordsman, always a swordsman.
McManus followed him down the hall to the gym, and neither of them spoke. This time of the afternoon, the place was empty, which was fine by Thorn. Without a word, he went to get his gear, as McManus began unpacking his own.
When Thorn returned, he found McManus whipping his épée back and forth to loosen his arm and wrist. He had laid out his mask, plastron, and jacket, but had not put any of them on.
The button on the blade’s tip was in place. At least the guy hadn’t filed it sharp or anything, so he wasn’t planning on it being a death match.
McManus caught the look. He extended the blade at chest-level toward Thorn. “You can check it, if you want. I don’t want to hurt you, Thorn, just beat you. That director gave you the match I should have won. I could have been champion except for that.”
Thorn shook his head. A true champion would have eaten the loss and worked harder to maintain his composure. A champion would have attacked his weakness and made them strengths. A champion would have kept training and practicing until he won. McManus wasn’t in that class.
“You’ll see,” McManus said. He reached for his mask.
But that wasn’t what Thorn wanted. More importantly, right at this moment, that wasn’t what Thorn needed.
“Here’s an idea,” Thorn said. “Leave the jacket and mask on the bench. We fence as though this were a real duel — not to first blood, but to the death. The first real touch, one that would have been a serious or fatal injury if the swords were sharp, wins. No flicks, no whip-overs, no gamesmanship taps on the arm. We use the blades as if they were real.”
McManus hesitated. He frowned.
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“What’s the matter, Rapier? Leave your guts at home?”
McManus gritted his teeth. His jaw muscles flexed and bulged.
“You challenged me, pal,” Thorn said. “Would you rather just pack it up and leave?”
“No!”
Thorn offered the tip of his épée, to show the button was firmly affixed. McManus touched it, tested the tightness.
“You could cheat,” the man said. “Pretend that a touch wasn’t valid.”
Thorn waved. “And so could you. But what’s the point? There’s no one else here. There are no hidden cameras watching us, no audience to cheer, and no director to fool. It’s just you and me. One of us scores, we’ll both know, and that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
Thorn stripped off his shirt, glad that he had kept in good enough shape so that wouldn’t be embarrassing. He tossed the shirt onto the bench, turned his back, and walked to the middle of the mat. He turned around, his weapon pointed down.
“Fish or cut bait, Rapier. Your choice.”
McManus practically tore his shirt off, and he hadn’t gotten fat in his middle age, either. He strode onto the mat toward Thorn. They faced each other from six feet away. Thorn raised his blade in salute. McManus mirrored him.
“En garde!” Thorn said.
He expected McManus to be tentative. This was unfamiliar territory for both of them, fencing without protection, and while there was little chance of a fatal injury, it would be all too easy to lose an eye. McManus knew that as well as he did, and so he assumed they would both start slowly, each one trying to measure his opponent before the action got hot and heavy.
He was wrong.
McManus stomped his front foot, hard, trying to distract him, then threw himself into a lunge. His point started high, flicking toward Thorn’s face, then dropping down into an attempt at binding Thorn’s blade.
McManus had been practicing. Or at least he’d stayed in shape. He’d thrown that move tightly, and at speed. Good.
Thorn smiled and stepped back, out of range, declining the opportunity to go toe-to-toe with his opponent. As McManus came back to guard, Thorn threw him a brief salute.
“Nice try,” he said.
McManus didn’t reply. He merely dipped his point and advanced once more.
McManus liked to infight. Thorn knew that. He also liked to control his opponent’s blade, beating and binding at every opportunity. Thorn knew that, too. The question was, what could he do with that knowledge?
As his opponent came forward, Thorn let his own point drift high, raising his guard as though he were going to press at McManus’s face.
As he’d expected, McManus threw a quick beat at Thorn’s blade, gauging, testing, probing. Thorn disengaged, dropping below the blade and taking a small step back, still pressing high.
McManus beat again, and again Thorn disengaged, setting up a rhythm, setting up an expectation, setting up his opponent.
Beat, disengage, advance, retreat.
Again.
Thorn knew this wasn’t VR. He didn’t have an infinite amount of room behind him, and couldn’t keep retreating forever. But then, he didn’t think he’d have to. McManus had never been patient.
He saw McManus’s eyes narrow ever so slightly, something that would never have been visible had they been wearing masks, and thought, This is it.
Beat.
Disengage.
Only this time, McManus anticipated his movement, stepping forward more quickly to close the distance, his own blade following Thorn’s and trying to bind it. His point came out of line, his hand lifting away from the guard position as he tried to take Thorn’s blade.
Anticipation, Thorn thought, will get you killed.
As McManus stepped forward, Thorn did, too, his own point circling away from any contact with his opponent’s épée.
As they closed, their hips touched. In a tournament, the director would have called halt, but this was not a tournament, and there was no director.
McManus reacted well, using the momentum of his attempted bind to try and bring his point around, lifting his hand, his arm, his shoulder even to try and strike at Thorn, but Thorn was ahead of him.
Thorn’s point had passed above McManus’s shoulder. He raised his own hand now, using his right elbow to keep McManus’s point away from him, and drove his point solidly downward, striking McManus hard right at the base of his spine.
Touch.
A killing blow.
Touché.
Both fencers froze, Thorn in victory, McManus in shock.
“E la,” Thorn whispered, the traditional French phrase that literaly meant, “And there,” but in reality meant, “In your face.”
Then, still smiling, he turned his back and started to walk away.
Behind him, belatedly, McManus came back to life. There was a pause, then a gasp, and then Thorn heard him shout, “No!”
A moment later he heard another sound, one he had not expected. He heard a thud as McManus drove his own point into the floor, hard. He heard the stress of the metal as McManus continued to press. And then he heard the sudden snap as the tip broke off.
All that in an instant.
And then he heard the sound of McManus rushing toward him, broken blade in hand.
Thorn spun, his own blade flashing in front of him as he tried to come back to guard, but McManus was on top of him and there was no time for anything but pure reaction.
Thorn’s blade was still pointed downward. He drew it sideways, intercepting McManus’s broken tip, and executed a perfect clockwise bind, taking McManus’s blade to the side. This took Thorn’s own point away from the other man, but Thorn was no longer interested in scoring touches. He’d won. Now it was time to end this.
McManus stood before him, a look of unthinking rage on his face. His blade was off to Thorn’s left, trapped — for the moment. Thorn’s tip was pointed toward the floor, his blade locked tightly against McManus, his bell guard beside his own left ear.
Without thinking, Thorn drove his bell guard into McManus’s face, striking him hard at the bridge of his nose.
McManus cried out and fell down, blood flowing.
Thorn stepped forward one last time, standing over his fallen opponent, his left foot on McManus’s broken blade, right foot resting lightly on his chest. He pressed the tip of his épée into McManus’s throat.
“You’re beaten,” he said. “It’s over.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He didn’t need to. He simply spun once more and walked away without looking back.
40
Long Island, New York
Natadze drove, Cox seated in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac. It was one of the sporty models, smaller and less conspicuous than a limo. They were on a long stretch of relatively empty road on the way to the city; not much traffic at this hour — mostly soccer moms and delivery trucks, and none of them close.
Which was the very reason he had chosen this road.
“We’ve won, Eduard. The government’s offer makes that clear. They don’t have enough to proceed, or they are afraid of upsetting the apple cart, whichever. It doesn’t matter. They can bluster and threaten, but in the end, the victory is ours. They have nothing they can use to trace us.”
Natadze nodded. He was remembering what was left of his guitar collection in the blasted-out basement of his house in Washington. All that carefully aged and worked spruce and cedar and rosewood, gone. He recalled the Spross with the unique pattern in its flame-maple back; the Hauser copy by Schramm, one of the early prototypes; the new Bogdanovich with the natural-wood rosette — all of them and half a dozen others, completely destroyed. Yes, he had recovered the ones in the safe, but he had lost ten concert-quality instruments. For Natadze, it was as if somebody had destroyed a famous painting — even if you owned the picture, it would be a crime against humanity to desecrate it.
He saw the pothole in the road just ahead. Hidden in the trees and bushes a few hundred me
ters short of that was the little SUV wagon, chosen for its dark green color so as to blend in.
Cox said, “So we go on about our business as usual. Now that all traces of the file are gone except for the one Net Force has, there won’t be any way they can corroborate it. We’re home free, Eduard — whoa!”
Natadze hit the pothole with the right front tire, and the car jounced hard.
The hubcap he had loosened on the front wheel came off, exactly as he’d hoped. It rolled alongside the car for a moment, bounced, then fell over. He tracked it in the rearview mirror.
“Sorry,” Natadze said. He made a show of looking into the rearview mirror. “Uh oh.”
“What?”
“The wheel cover came off. It’s lying in the road behind us.”
He slowed the car, pulled onto the shoulder.
“What are you doing? It’s just a hubcap. Leave it.”
“It will only take a few seconds. Remember the milk truck?”
This had been key in Natadze’s plan, a thing about which he and Cox had spoken recently. Apparently a milk truck had somehow dropped an empty plastic carrier that had not been properly stowed. The driver had noticed it at the time, but he had been in a hurry, and had left it in the road where it fell. It was just an empty crate, not worth stopping for. A motorist traveling the road shortly thereafter had either hit the crate, or swerved to avoid hitting it. The car’s driver had lost control, slammed into a building, and had died. Cox had mentioned the incident to Natadze, railing at how the milk company’s liability insurance would go up because of the lawsuit that was sure to follow, and how hard would it have been for the moronic driver to have pulled over and collected the fallen crate?
Cox remembered. “Ah, good point.”
Natadze exited the car. He smiled at Cox and headed for the hubcap. When he was fifty meters away, he left the road and hurried to a large oak tree. Once he was behind it, he pulled the small radio transmitter from his pocket and flipped the switch covers up — there were two of them, for safety.