Highlander: The Measure of a Man

by Nancy Holder

  “Do you know why I allied myself with you, Ken?”

  Iwasawa savored his cognac. “Because my kaisha, my company, makes most of the routers used in the computer communications systems in place today. If you compromise our routers so that you have access to any system you choose, you can override the few routers we did not manufacture. Essentially, you can make any network your own.”

  “Wrong.” Machiavelli chuckled. “It was because you play good chess.” He indicated the board and material to their right. He had made three moves, P-K4 for himself; P-K4, MacLeod’s faxed answer; and P-KB4, his own next move.

  Seeing Iwasawa’s confusion, he smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Va bene. The fact that you were useful had its attractions.”

  “And the fact that my partners want Beauchard to be president made you attractive to me.”

  “Your yakuza friends. And why is that? How is he in their pocket? Has he promised favorable trade regulations? Offered to sell them nuclear weapons?”

  Iwasawa shrugged, obviously enjoying his secret. Machiavelli truly didn’t yet know why the mob of Japan was interested in the politician. But it was useful to know that Iwasawa’s good fortune was tied to the election of Beauchard.

  The phone rang. He picked up. It was his driver, sent to escort Samantha from the airport. “Grazie,” he said, and hung up.

  “The signorina was not on the plane,” he told Iwasawa.

  Iwasawa stared at him. “She has openly defied you?”

  “No matter. I’ll kill her when I catch up to her. I’ve gotten what I wanted.”

  “I would like to know what that is,” Iwasawa said. “What you wanted.”

  “Why do you fight for your company?” Machiavelli asked.

  Without hesitation, Iwasawa replied, “I owe NKS my loyalty. It is my duty to do whatever I can to make the largest and strongest corporation in the world.”

  “I feel that way about myself,” Machiavelli replied, pleased. “I owe myself that kind of loyalty. I fight to advance myself. I know that’s contrary to your Japanese concept of the group.” Iwasawa nodded. “But I’m a Westerner. We’re individuals.”

  “It’s a concept that eludes me, I agree,” Iwasawa observed. “A Japanese would find your individualism isolating. It would make him feel lonely.”

  “I never do.” Once more he pulled out the fax from MacLeod and admired it as one might a fine Tintoretto. P-K4. How easily he moved them all. He guessed that MacLeod would be on a plane to Japan within twenty-four hours. After he had made love to little Sammi Jo, the damsel in distress. MacLeod was weak for weak women. He thought of Maria Angelina and smiled cruelly. He had been told that she had lasted far longer than anyone had expected, despite the vigorous application of all the latest tortures. She had died begging to die. He was sorry he had missed seeing that.

  Pawns were promoted to queens by the player; it was not a rank they attained simply because they thought they deserved it. When she neglected to make the signal that she and MacLeod were leaving the island—a white handkerchief hanging over the second-story balcony—he knew she had fallen in love with the Highlander and would do whatever she could to protect him. That was not acceptable.

  Not then, and not now.

  The searing, white-hot sands baking him.

  Screaming as the heat sizzled away his flesh.

  Hating with everything in him. Hating, and vowing that he would take the Highlander’s head. If not in this century, then in the next, or the next. At the perfect right moment, he would do it. This was his blood oath.

  The only one he would never break.

  No, he had never begged to die in the burning sands. He had only dreamed of avenging himself. And of never being at anyone’s mercy again.

  “What move would you make at this point, Ken?” Machiavelli asked, gesturing to the board. He imagined MacLeod in his fine Venetian black velvet studying the pieces, that craggy face set in thought. He wondered how Duncan dressed now.

  Machiavelli sighed. He missed the Scot. He was almost sorry that he was going to kill him.

  “Ken?” he prompted.

  “PxP. It’s the King’s Gambit.”

  “Even so.” Machiavelli captured the sacrificed white pawn. Finally, caro Duncan, he thought. Take that pawn, and we will play the game we were meant to play.

  On the plane home:

  “MacLeod.”

  MacLeod’s old friend, Hamza el Kahir, floated headless in a shimmering cloud of energy. From his neck poured his life essence, the Quickening that Xavier St. Cloud had won from him in 1653. The culmination of final death, all that Hamza had known, and been, and suffered, and enjoyed. Futile and fragile dreams and hopes; what was he now? Dust, only, and memories.

  “I died for the sake of your honor, not mine. You dared speak to me of honor, you infidel dog, I, who was ten times the man you can ever hope to be. You paraded your pride before me like a swaggering youth. You humiliated me before my blood enemy, Xavier St. Cloud. Know that I spit on you in the dust I have become. I deny your belief in honor. It is for you but a convenient thing, and you will forswear it as well someday, as you foreswore our friendship….”

  “No,” MacLeod said aloud, waking.

  The flight attendant said, “Sir? Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he lied. It was only a dream. His waking mind knew that Hamza was at peace; that his friend had forgiven him, even before he died.

  Yet there was truth in the words of the Dream-Hamza, he feared. Was his honor a thing of convenience only?

  MacLeod was bone-tired by the time the freight elevator descended to carry him home to his loft. He had not been able to locate that idiot, Woodrich, though he had looked all night. Someone had stolen MacLeod’s things from his hotel room at the Capitol Hilton and checked him out. Had it been Woodrich? Was he even now handing MacLeod’s computer over to Machiavelli? To what purpose?

  There was a telegram taped to one of the slats. A dramatic, archaic gesture in this age of e-mail and answering machines.

  He ripped open the envelope.

  PxP.

  An answer to his faxed chess opening to the number on “Umeko Takahashi’s” business card. So she had been Machiavelli’s way of giving him an address. The attack on Woodrich had been the way of finally capturing his attention. To what end?

  He put down the telegram and opened his front door. With the thoroughness of a police detective, he inspected the premises. Everything appeared secure. No one had broken in. Or else they were so good at it, they had completely hidden their efforts.

  He checked the phone messages; there were a dozen but none important for the moment. He put the kettle on and went to the desktop computer on the nice walnut rolltop desk he had purchased years ago in Paris.

  There were some business messages. As he read them, his computer signaled that he had new mail. It was GRAND MASTER in Tokyo again, and it read:

  Buon giorno, caro Highlander.

  Come to Tokyo, where we may play the Game in earnest.

  I await you.

  I’ll take you on anytime, he wrote back, but stopped himself from sending the message. In 1655 he had sworn never to take Machiavelli’s head. Seething, he deleted the message and sat for a full minute. The tea kettle screamed.

  Must he still honor his oath? Or did the circumstances warrant breaking it?

  And if oaths are broken by circumstances, then what good are oaths? Honor was not a transitory thing.

  Honor was what a man was, Immortal or no.

  There must be plenty of ways to stop Machiavelli without killing him.

  “Bloody hell.” He turned off the computer.

  The kettle shrieked for all it was worth. He walked into the kitchen, lifted the kettle off the burner with a hot pad, and slammed out of his apartment.

  Outside, the world was a slab of slate miserable with the foreshadowing of a storm. His duster flapped around his shins as he bent his head into the wind. The stakes had been raised, the field of p
lay expanded to include the whole world, and not a dying Republic in a century when the world was small. How Machiavelli must be reveling in the power of the modern age.

  Feeling powerless, hating the feeling, MacLeod turned a corner and strode past an abandoned commercial bakery that was on his jogging route. The wind whipped up, slapping him. His eyes stung but he walked on, oblivious. He’d been far colder than this.

  He was not alone.

  The sense of an Immortal presence was thrown over him like a net. He pivoted in a slow circle, inspecting the handful of pedestrians who, like him, had braved the bitter weather.

  Down the street on the other side, dressed in a long black coat and black cowboy boots, red hair flying, a figure faced him.

  MacLeod put his hand meaningfully inside his coat, on the hilt of his katana, and approached. It was a tall woman, not a man as he had at first surmised. She was incredibly striking, with deep blue eyes and fragile features strengthened by full, wide lips.

  Unsmiling, she watched him come closer. She, too, put her hand on the hilt of a sword, the outline of which made a jet silhouette inside her coat.

  “Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod,” she said. He made no answer, only waited. With a sharp movement, she defiantly raised her chin. She was afraid. “I’m not here to fight.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Samantha August,” she told him. She took a deep breath. “I’m freezing to death.”

  “It’s not a bad way to go,” he replied evenly.

  The wind flew at them, billowing out his duster and her coat. To a passerby, they might appear as two Western lawmen, or two temple guardians with large, obsidian wings. By their stances, their energy, they were set apart in some way, epic, heroic.

  Immortal.

  Her eyes dropped to the outline of his sword, back to his face. She said again, “I’m not here to fight.”

  “If we have no business to discuss, I’ll be on my way.” He waited, knowing full well they did have business.

  Samantha didn’t know what to do. Despite reading Mari’s Watcher files on MacLeod, she hadn’t expected him to be so gruff and imposing. Such was a warrior, she guessed. He’d been born in a time when men were like this.

  The only reason she’d known he was coming here was pure luck. On the airport escalator, she had seen MacLeod heading for a gate. From her vantage point, neither she nor he had felt each other’s presence. She had noted the gate number and estimated his departure time; then worked her way backward to figure out where he was going. Not to Japan after all, unless he was going home first. That had given her the courage to follow him.

  Now she was here, and she had no idea what to say to him. Seeing him with Woodrich had changed everything. If MacLeod wasn’t working with Machiavelli, he might be working with Woodrich, or the NSA. Maybe they were after her. As far as she knew, Woodrich had no idea Machiavelli was the one who periodically sent her to meet with him. Whom could she trust? She had no idea.

  She had managed to reach Aaron on the Sky Phone during her flight, and he had assured her that all was well. He couldn’t account for the fact that so many calls to so many of the conspirators had gone unanswered during the previous night. Machiavelli had said nothing about her absence, he went on to report, although several people had asked after her.

  Now, to MacLeod, she said truthfully, “I’m on the run.” He was impassive, his face brooding, eyes hooded. “I’m, ah, I have a friend.”

  Still he waited.

  “He’s trying to track me down.”

  The strangest smile crossed his features. He asked softly, “Is he your husband?”

  She knew he was getting at something, but she wasn’t sure what it was. That made her even more nervous. Shaking her head, she said boldly, “Lover.”

  “Immortal?”

  “I don’t want to say.”

  He turned to go.

  “Wait!” She lowered her head so he couldn’t read the confusion on her face. Just tell him, she told herself, but she couldn’t. Not until she knew more about his current dealings with Machiavelli. One misstep and she and the others could be dead. “Yes. Yes, he’s an Immortal. You haven’t heard of him. We’re both pretty new.”

  He cocked his head. Was he buying it?

  “We got together and now he wants to go off with this teacher. And I don’t. I don’t think the teacher’s very good.” She thought for a moment. “Someone named…” Machiavelli. Say it. “Urn, Janine or something.”

  He frowned. “That’s someone new to me. Where does she live?”

  “I, ah, I don’t know. I don’t know who she is. I don’t really want to be with him anymore. He’s, ah, too out of control. He wants to challenge people. We aren’t ready.” Perhaps he would be more charitable toward her if he figured she was defenseless. Machiavelli used to tell her that women were the stronger sex because they could exercise their feminine wiles. Umeko had hated that. She had insisted that there were several, if not many, newer Immortals whom Samantha could defeat in battle. Samantha’s need to hide her increasing body strength from Machiavelli could work to her advantage with others, Umeko had pointed out.

  “They will expect a cherry blossom,” she had told Samantha one day on a stroll through the Empress’s Iris Garden at the Meiji Shrine. Umeko claimed you could see the ghosts of emperors and empresses past in the garden, but Samantha never had. “Impermanent and fragile. But you are a willow. You appear to bend but cannot be broken.”

  However, MacLeod looked as if he could break her with one blow. Though he wore a heavy coat, she could delineate the muscles of his shoulders and chest, his thighs as the wind blew the fabric from around his legs. Umeko had bested strong men much larger than herself. But she had never faced Duncan MacLeod.

  “What has this to do with me?” he asked crisply. Ah, yes, what indeed? Where was she going with this half-baked story? “Why don’t you want to go to this Janine?”

  “I told you. I don’t want to be with, ah, Nathan anymore. I was kind of hoping you might take me on.”

  He kept staring at her. She smoothed her hair, caught herself fidgeting, and stood with her legs wide apart in a warrior’s stance.

  He said, “I’m not taking any students at the moment.” There was a gentleness in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

  “Oh, but you’re the best,” she breathed. “So I’ve heard.”

  “So you’ve heard.” His craggy jaw softened. God, he was handsome.

  “You have an annoying habit of repeating things.” She did smile at him, daring him to remain so distant.

  His answering smile was brief, but it was a smile. It was the sun warming her frozen bones; it was a small flame of hope.

  “So I’ve heard.” He gestured with his head in the direction he had come. “I assume you know where I live.” She nodded. He began to walk, then slowed to allow her to catch up with him.

  He looked down at her, the smile still faint on his features. “Who gave you the Shinto-o-dachi you’re carrying?”

  “How did you see…?” She closed her hand protectively over the hilt. “Someone else,” she said. He raised his brows questioningly. She searched for a plausible answer. “A man who owned an antique store.” Uh-oh, she’d unthinkingly lifted that out from MacLeod’s Chronicle. It was he who had owned an antique store, with his mortal lover, Tessa. According to his Watcher, Joe Dawson, Tessa had been the one true love of his life.

  “This man had a name? I’m in the trade.”

  There had been an exhibition of swords in Washington. She remembered seeing a write-up of it in the paper at the farmhouse. Surely he’d seen it, too. What were some of the names of the people involved in it? A couple of men had been extensively quoted in the article.

  “Mr. Meyer,” she supplied, forcing herself not to wince, hoping she was even close. “At the museum?”

  “Andreas Meyer-Dinkmann?” There was a tinge of surprise in his voice. “Does he know you’re an Immortal?”

 
She shook her head. “Just a fan of old swords.” Great. He knew the man. One or two casual questions directed at him and her story would go down in flames.

  “He thinks the same of me.”

  “Ah.” Her throat was dry.

  They reached his building. He took her up in a freight elevator. Though it was large for an elevator, she was acutely aware they were in an enclosed space. She smelled spice and soap, wondered if he could smell the last traces of her perfume. He rolled his shoulders back and bent his head forward, stretching. She stared at the nape of his neck, considered in Japan to be a very erotic part of the body. And the headsman’s target at an execution.

  “I’ve been traveling,” he offered. “But you probably knew that, too.”

  “Actually, I’ve been here for some time,” she fabricated. “I was just about to give up and leave.”

  “And go where?”

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Will Nathan try to force you to go with him? Try to take your head?”

  “I hope not.”

  The elevator stopped, and he bent down and rolled up the door. His movements were catlike, filled with grace, but laced with the alertness of a predator.

  “I’ll take your coat,” he said, shedding his duster. He held out his hand. She wasn’t sure what to do. She wasn’t used to carrying a sword. She didn’t know the etiquette among Immortals in a situation such as theirs.

  And what was their situation?

  Awkwardly she got out of her coat and handed over her sword, which he barely even glanced at. Maybe that was some form of politeness. She didn’t know. Machiavelli didn’t permit his Beauties to wear their swords around him. They armed themselves only when they went out alone. She bristled, thinking how often he had sent her to Washington defenseless. How could she ever have thought he really cared about her?

  “What’s wrong?” he asked her. His tone was brusque. He was back to business.

  She shook herself. “Nothing.”

  He said, “I’ll make tea.”

  She looked like Tessa.

  She looked like Debra.