Highlander: The Measure of a Man

by Nancy Holder

  Woodrich punched in a few character strings and began answering protocol prompts. MacLeod observed, eyes narrowing as he tried to memorize each string as Woodrich typed it in. He made no effort to hide what he was doing, although Woodrich was clearly uneasy at the way he hovered over him.

  “I’m not getting anything on Umeko Takahashi,” he said.

  “What about Niccolo Machiavelli?”

  Woodrich guffawed. “You’re not serious.”

  On the couch, Joe raised himself up on one elbow. “Mac,” he said.

  MacLeod gestured at him without looking at him. “Lie still, Joe.”

  “Mac.”

  MacLeod turned to Dawson. Dawson mouthed, “Watcher.” Of course. Dawson could find out all kinds of things about Machiavelli from his Watcher’s reports. If he was involved in the attack, there was no sense MacLeod’s revealing his hand to him via a computer trail he might possibly be able to capture.

  “Stop.” MacLeod sat on the edge of Woodrich’s desk. “Tell me. How do you communicate with your contact? Via e-mail?”

  “Oh, no. In person.”

  MacLeod’s eyes widened. “What?” Perhaps the presence in the lobby had been Machiavelli after all.

  “Well, through a go-between. A woman.”

  “What does she look like?”

  He blushed. “She’s beautiful, actually. A redhead.”

  MacLeod decided to press for details later. “She tells you what he wants.”

  “She gives me letters.”

  MacLeod crossed his arms. “That was the nature of your unexpected business, wasn’t it. You had to meet her.”

  Woodrich flushed again. “Yes.”

  “Where’s the letter?”

  Woodrich moaned softly. “Please, don’t. I’m in so deep as it is.”

  The man had no idea. MacLeod held out his hand. “I want to see it.”

  “It won’t make any sense. It didn’t to me.” He lifted the computer up and slid out an envelope. He handed it to MacLeod.

  MacLeod extracted a note and unfolded it.

  P-K4.

  Why was he not surprised? But he was. Machiavelli knew he was in Washington. How? What did he want? He was making himself very difficult to ignore. “Where are the other letters?”

  “In a safe deposit box. I’m not completely stupid. None of the others are like that, though they are usually coded. But in a different code. Warning me not to hold back. Threatening me with bodily harm if I don’t hurry. That sort of thing.”

  “Pack,” MacLeod said. “You’re leaving town.”

  “What? I have to report to work tomorrow.”

  “Do and you’re dead. You’re coming back with us.” He held up a hand to quell Woodrich’s protests. “Your life here is over.”

  Woodrich stared at him. “Why the hell should I do what you say?” He looked to Dawson. “Who is this guy?”

  “The good guy,” Joe replied. “Come on, Al. I’ll help you pack.”

  * * *

  “Not in?” Samantha echoed as the Capitol Hilton desk clerk politely smiled.

  “No, miss. I’m sorry. Mr. MacLeod doesn’t answer. Would you like to leave him a message?”

  “No. I’ll wait for him.”

  “We have a nice lobby bar.”

  “Yes,” she said faintly. Resolutely she made her way to one of two burgundy leather chairs grouped on either side of a low table. She sat and drummed her fingers, and wondered if Machiavelli had a spy in the lobby. If her Watcher was here, too.

  “Coffee, please,” she said to the waitress. “And keep it coming.”

  MacLeod drove to Alexandria and checked the three of them into the Embassy Suites by the station. “Tomorrow we’ll retrieve the letters from the safe deposit box,” he said. “And I’ll check out of my hotel and get my luggage.” He wondered if any more notes or other surprises would be waiting for him. He had to see.

  The night clerk looked askance at Joe’s bruises and cuts, but said nothing.

  “Miss? Excuse me. We’re closing the bar,” the voice said.

  Samantha jerked awake. The lobby of the Capitol Hilton was deserted. The carved wooden clock on the wall read three.

  They were kicking her out.

  “Thanks,” she said, covering her yawn with her hand. She picked up her bag, glad she had brought it. “Do you have any rooms?”

  A cold chill went down MacLeod’s spine as he watched the single sheet of paper zip through the Embassy Suites fax machine. His answer to Machiavelli had been sent.

  The Game had begun.

  He went upstairs to shower. Droplets of water glittered in his hair. When he’d been born, a man seldom bathed; he supposed he’d had more baths and showers than all the men in his clan for their entire lives, combined.

  He toweled off and put on his jeans, alert to the soft rap on his suite’s entry door. He picked up the sword and checked the peep hole.

  It was Joe; MacLeod pushed back the dead bolt and stood aside to let him in.

  “I thought you’d be asleep by now,” MacLeod said.

  “Al is. But I’m on the rollout, and how the hell you going to sleep on that? I knew you’d still be up.” Joe sat on the couch. “Listen, Mac. If you clue me in, I can help. You know I know Machiavelli is an Immortal.” Dawson would have read about him in the Chronicles of MacLeod’s seventeenth-century Watchers.

  MacLeod considered. He had known Joe would offer to help, but he thought he’d have a few more hours to decide what to ask of him.

  “I want the name of his current Watcher, and I want his Chronicle.”

  “Mmm.” Dawson drummed his fingers on the armrest. “I know it’s important or you wouldn’t ask.”

  “And I know you aren’t supposed to give it to me.”

  “As I recall, he’s got a female Watcher. She’s related to some big shot Japanese industrialist.”

  “Japanese?” That was interesting. He thought of the Japanese address, the Japanese woman with the escort service. She had to be part of Machiavelli’s organization. To escort him, MacLeod, to Japan?

  “I’ll have to look it up.”

  MacLeod thought for a moment. “Don’t use your computer or my laptop. Or a phone.”

  Dawson frowned. “Mac, what the hell are you on to?”

  “You must have some kind of code you use,” MacLeod continued, half-thinking to himself. “You’ve probably got secret names for all of us.”

  “Yeah. We call you Errol Flynn.” Dawson laughed uncomfortably, which fueled MacLeod’s suspicions that it might actually be true.

  “Has the code list been compromised?”

  “Compromised how?”

  “Is it on a computer?” MacLeod asked.

  “What’s all this about computers? What’s going on?”

  MacLeod shook his head. “I’m not sure. But if any part of it is computerized, you’re going to have to go to Watcher headquarters in person to retrieve the information physically. Don’t tell the others about this, Dawson. Don’t write it down in your Chronicle about me.”

  “Mac…”

  “Don’t do it,” he insisted. “Later, maybe. But hold off.”

  “All right.” Dawson scratched his cheek. “Looks like I’m going to Geneva. How about you?”

  “I’ll go home. See if he’s sent me anything else. Woodrich will go with me.”

  “All right.”

  “Thanks.” MacLeod shook hands with him.

  “I want to know what this is about when I get back. That’s my price.”

  “You’ll know,” MacLeod promised. “If I can figure it out.”

  Dawson clapped his hands on his thighs as he rose. “That’s all I can ask. Thanks, buddy.”

  He left the room. MacLeod relocked the front door and began walking into the bedroom when Dawson shouted to him from outside, “Mac! He’s gone!”

  MacLeod slammed the door open and burst past Joe into Joe’s suite. Sure enough, Woodrich was not there.

  “That bastard.�
�� Dawson pounded the jamb. “Mac, I’m sorry. I should have stayed with him.”

  MacLeod shook his head. “I should have insisted they unlock that door.” MacLeod had asked for adjoining rooms, but the clerk had explained that the door that would have created a larger suite for them was broken and had been secured for safety reasons, and the rest of the hotel was full.

  “Stay here in case he comes back,” MacLeod told him.

  Then he took off. He searched the entire hotel, the grounds, the Metro station. A light snow fell, covering any footprints that might have led him to his quarry. A single observer, a drunk seeking shelter, stared at the half-naked man in trousers and bare feet, carrying a sword.

  “Hey, man, yougottadime,” he slurred. MacLeod ignored him, hoping tomorrow the man would remember nothing.

  He returned to the hotel and gave Dawson the bad news. “Damn.” Dawson again pounded the jamb. “Now what?”

  “You get your flight to Geneva arranged. I’ll search for him. Tell me all the places he might go.”

  “We haven’t stayed in very close touch,” Dawson said. “I don’t know his routine anymore. Maybe he went to his office.”

  “Give me the address,” MacLeod said.

  “Or he might show up at his bank tomorrow to get the letters out of his safe deposit box,” Dawson went on. They both shook their heads. “No, that’s not likely.”

  “Does he have a favorite bar?”

  “I think they’re all on his list, from the way he drinks.” Dawson snapped his fingers. “Maybe he went to the Memorial.”

  “I’ll check,” MacLeod said.

  He finished dressing with chilled, stiff fingers, and went out into the night.

  At the Memorial:

  A man stood with a bowed head.

  MacLeod walked gingerly toward him, put a hand on his shoulder. The man jumped and turned around.

  It was not Woodrich. Tears streamed down the man’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” MacLeod said, apologizing for startling the man.

  “How many you lose, man?” the man asked. “Me, I lost my whole company. I was the only one left. You know how that feels, man?”

  MacLeod felt the chill of the night, the thick dew like tears on the grass, on his face. He said, “Yes, I do.”

  The man burst into tears and turned back to the Memorial. He put his hands on the lists of names and leaned against it with his forehead. “I come every night and ask forgiveness,” he whispered.

  “They do forgive you,” MacLeod said softly.

  “I know.” The man wept. “But I can’t forgive myself.”

  His keening echoed through the trees as MacLeod left him.

  In her room at the Capitol Hilton, Samantha grumped at the six-thirty wake-up call. It had been just three hours after she had secured her room. She asked to be put through to the room of hotel guest Duncan MacLeod.

  “Hold, miss. I’m sorry. He’s checked out,” the operator informed her.

  “What?” Samantha bolted out of bed. She threw on her clothes, splashed water on her face, combed her hair, and ran to the elevator.

  At the front desk, she said to the sleepy-looking, blond clerk, “I missed my friend again. Mr. MacLeod? What time did he leave?”

  “Let’s see. Oh, yes. What a coincidence. Just minutes after you booked your room. You were very lucky. We have a convention coming in and we usually don’t have any extra—here it is. Yes. There was some confusion.”

  The man typed rapidly into the computer. “He had indicated he wanted express checkout when he arrived, but then a gentleman came and paid his bill with cash. He had a note requesting Mr. MacLeod’s things. We had to verify all that.”

  The clerk pointed to his screen, although Samantha couldn’t see it. “I called a cab for the gentleman. For the airport.”

  “The airport?” She was on a classic wild-goose chase. “What airline?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t recall. He did say something about Tokyo.”

  “What?”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “Please check me out, too. And call me a cab. For the airport,” she croaked. She would check out of her other hotel via her cell phone and ask to have her things sent on.

  Sent on to where? Her own flight to Tokyo was in four hours. Had MacLeod gone to Tokyo? As she had discussed with the others, she had planned to approach him on his own turf during a layover on her way home. How was he involved with Woodrich?

  What the hell was going on?

  “Which airline will you be using, miss?” the desk clerk asked as he picked up the phone.

  “I don’t know,” she muttered. “Just get me there, okay? I’ll figure it out.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability is in the opponent.”

  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  I am the God of kingdom come.

  Soon I will change the past, the present, and the future:

  I will alter wire service reports about Senate hearings, stockmarket fluctuations, whatever I please.

  I will send false reports to the air-traffic controllers at Dulles and slam Duncan MacLeod’s return flight into the Potomac.

  I will retrieve the specs on every military weapon built anywhere in the world, including launch codes. I will order spy satellites to announce that nuclear weapons are headed toward Washington, Beijing, Tokyo, and Toronto, and I will not permit the tracking systems to verify that information, nor will I permit retaliatory strikes to be launched. I will sit back and laugh and watch while the world cowers at the thought of destruction.

  They will all be my toys.

  I will track the movements of every Immortal on earth if they so much as charge a meal in a restaurant or pick up a telephone.

  I will take their heads.

  I will be the one.

  Sometimes it frightened Machiavelli that it was so easy. If he could do it, why hadn’t someone else at least attempted it? Were they all truly so shortsighted?

  Or did no one else wish to be as powerful as he wished to be? What was it that made Machiavelli… Machiavellian? He loved it that his name was in the dictionary now. He loved it that his cleverness and clearheaded quest for power was now legendary.

  “Niccolo?” Ruffio said on the phone. He spoke in seventeenth-century Venetian dialect. “MacLeod was furious when he went back to the hotel and discovered that we had checked him out. We got all his luggage, including his computer. He went to Woodrich’s apartment, but the man was not there. We couldn’t find anything, either. Now they’ve scattered. The Watcher’s going to Europe. I assume that woman is on her return flight to Tokyo.”

  Debatable. Machiavelli thought. “Good work, Ruffio.”

  “Friend Duncan would collapse into hysteria if he knew I was still around, don’t you think?”

  “Si, caro mio. He would be enraged.” Machiavelli stifled a yawn. In this day and age, a person such as Ruffio was referred to as “high maintenance.” He had enough to do besides constantly stroke this idiot’s ego.

  “One assumes MacLeod set Woodrich behind himself on his white charger.” Machiavelli checked his Rolex. “I estimate they’re riding into the sunset just about now.” On their return flight home to the American West Coast, Woodrich on Dawson’s ticket. He had known MacLeod was on his way to Washington in the first place because one of the routers had captured activity containing his name—his plane reservation—and sent it to Machiavelli’s home machine. He chuckled.

  “Shall we come home now?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “It’s my fault that that Watcher surprised us. Mi scusi, maestro?”

  “Of course I excuse you, Ruffio. After all these years together” (and all the stupid mistakes you have made), “do you doubt my affection for you? My heart remains yours.” Until I carve it out of your headless body and force MacLeod to eat it.

  “She was acting strange with Woodrich when she met him at the farmhouse.”

  �
��Si, it’s all right.” Ruffio never tired of undermining Machiavelli’s faith in Sammi. Not that he had any left.

  And it was not a farmhouse at all, but the code word for a Georgian apartment in Maryland rented under the name of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The overdressed, bored wife of a local politician had not even blinked at his choice of false name. Ignorant barbarian.

  “We wanted to follow her, but we went straight to Woodrich’s apartment, as you told us to. Ah, you know the rest.”

  “Si.” How they’d been surprised by Joe Dawson, and had left without getting the updated software. Now it was gone. Woodrich had to have it on him.

  “I must go now,” Machiavelli said, grinding his teeth. A quick death was too good for this worthless man. He had not kept up with the times. Primitive brutishness was no match for cleverness, and he had far cleverer Immortals on his chessboard now. A duplicitous, treacherous knight, and any number of pawns…

  “I have a business meeting. Ciao.”

  “Cia—”

  Machiavelli hung up. He made a steeple of his fingers and circled his chair until it pointed toward Ken Iwasawa, then barked, “Report.”

  Iwasawa deferentially inclined his head. “We’ve been able to make the software you provided compatible with our router configuration with 80 percent success.”

  Machiavelli frowned. “You promised me 85 percent by now.”

  Iwasawa bowed his head. “I am desolate. But as your contact told you, there are still many bugs in the software. We need the update.”

  That son of a bitch Woodrich; he had been dancing a jig last time he’d spoken to his friend, Tony Beauchard. Bragging about the new update and how much more it would help Beauchard with the election. Machiavelli had the whole thing on tape.

  As soon as he found Woodrich, he was going to put the fear of God into him. The spineless little man would spill his guts to save himself. Machiavelli grimaced in distaste. Men like Woodrich, men easily bought, physically revolted him.

  He circled his chair in the opposite direction and picked up a decanter of cognac. Iwasawa darted forward to do it for him, but Machiavelli waved him off. He poured Iwasawa a drink, who gracefully accepted the burden of such a courtesy from his feudal lord.