Springboard

by Tom Clancy

  “Cal Tech, right?”

  “Class of ’03,” Chang said.

  “Come on in. Take a look at this.” He waved at his computer. “You’re not gonna believe these visuals!”

  13

  Net Force HQ

  Quantico, Virginia

  After they introduced themselves and sat back down, and before Thorn could say anything else, Charles Seurat nodded at the corner behind and to the right of Thorn’s desk. “You fence?”

  Thorn had his gear bags in the corner of his office, and the only way Seurat could have known what was in them was to recognize the logo on the épée bag. Most non-fencers would not have a clue what the name meant. And because he obviously did recognize it, then that meant Seurat, too, was a fencer or a serious watcher.

  “A little,” Thorn said with a small smile. “Don’t look for me in the next Olympics.”

  “Nor me,” Seurat said. “Would that I had brought my blades. We could have worked out.”

  That was a pretty obvious hint, Thorn thought. It was not what he would have expected, even if he had known that Seurat was a fencer as well. Even avid fencers didn’t normally throw down the gauntlet within moments of meeting another fencer—and certainly not under circumstances like this.

  On the other hand, he had known that Charles Seurat was anything but ordinary—something, Thorn acknowledged, that could be said for himself as well. And the Frenchman did have the right idea. After all, what better way to measure a man’s mettle than at the point of one’s sword?

  “I have extra,” Thorn said with another small smile. “Just down the hall. It wouldn’t hurt to stretch a little after sitting at this desk all day.”

  Seurat returned the smile. “Lead on,” he said.

  The two men went to the gym, which was empty at the moment. Thorn opened his locker, wherein he had an extra set of practice gear—blades, including foil, épée, and saber, along with gloves and a mask, and a variety of jackets. He kept hoping that some of the other Net Force personnel would decide to try their hand at fencing, and so had a small array of gear to fit a variety of sizes.

  “Excellent! I see you use first-rate gear.”

  “What is your pleasure, Charles?”

  “Foil, I think. I’m a bit sluggish and out of practice.”

  “Foil it is. Help yourself.”

  Thorn smiled again, but privately, when he noticed that the Frenchman chose a blade with a German Visconte grip rather than the traditional—and expected—French grip. This just might be fun, he thought.

  The two men changed clothes and donned fencing gear. They each went through a series of stretches and warm-ups. Thorn noticed that Seurat moved very well for a man who claimed to be sluggish and out of practice.

  Warmed up and looser, they took their places on the piste, or fencing strip, Thorn had taped out on the floor and regarded each other.

  It had been a long time since Thorn had fenced foil, and even longer since he’d fenced it for real. It was the weapon he’d first learned, back in high school, and as such it was his first love, but he’d pretty much abandoned it after he’d discovered the épée and the saber. And lately, of course, thanks to the promptings of Colonel Kent, he’d been focusing almost exclusively on iaido.

  Old habits die hard, however, and he was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable the blade felt in his grip.

  He sketched a quick salute, saw Seurat mirror the move, and they both slipped on their masks and came to guard.

  “Ready?” Thorn asked. As the host, it fell to him to start the opening touch. He used English, however, since it would feel more than a little awkward using the traditional French “Etes-vous prêt?” with a Frenchman.

  He could see the small smile that formed on Seurat’s lips, and knew that he understood.

  “Ready,” he said.

  Thorn smiled, too. “Begin.”

  The word had barely left his lips and the Frenchman was in motion. Two quick steps, a liquid smooth—and lightning-fast—lunge, and Seurat’s blade was slipping around Thorn’s guard.

  Except that Thorn wasn’t there. At Seurat’s first step, he had begun sliding backward, letting the Frenchman close distance, but not, perhaps, quite as quickly as Seurat had hoped.

  When the attack came, Thorn was just far enough away to bring his hand back along Seurat’s blade, press against it in opposition, and then, swiveling his left shoulder back to draw his belly out of line in case he’d failed in his attempted opposition, send his own point streaking toward Charles’s heart.

  Seurat countered with a parry four, Thorn pressed back with his bell guard, trying to maintain the opposition, and a moment later the Frenchman recovered backward out of his lunge, retreating out of distance and coming back to guard.

  No touch. Neither point had met the opponent, on target or off.

  Both fencers smiled and saluted each other.

  “Nice attack,” Thorn said. “Very quick.”

  “And an excellent move on your part,” Charles said. “I anticipated the opposition counterattack, of course, but I hadn’t expected that particular evasion from an épéeist.”

  Thorn smiled again. So Charles had done his home-work, had he?

  “Yes, well, I wasn’t always an épéeist,” he said.

  Seurat nodded and tossed Thorn another quick salute. “Prêt?” he asked.

  Thorn answered the salute. “Oui, je suis prêt,” he replied.

  “Allez!”

  And they were off once again, a ballet of blades and body, dancing the ancient dance of victory and of death.

  Thorn grinned, feeling the adrenaline rush through him once more, the exhilaration of competition, the incomparable thrill of testing oneself against another. Through the mask, he saw an answering smile on Charles’s face.

  Yes, the Frenchman had had a very good idea indeed.

  Jay was ready—as ready as he was going to be, anyway—for the meeting with Seurat. The one with Chang, that had been fine. The little guy from China was sharp and very appreciative, and they’d be getting together again in RW or VR to establish some Chinese connections. Chang was quiet, down-to-earth, had some moves, and deferred to Jay’s expertise, which he was smart enough to see, no problem.

  But CyberNation’s rep coming in? Jay didn’t have much faith he’d be so easy. First, he was with the organization that had given Net Force a royal pain in the posterior. Second, he was French, and there was a reason that “snotty Frenchman” had become a cliché.

  Jay didn’t want to do it, but he had told Thorn he would try to behave in a civilized fashion, and he’d give it a shot. That CyberNation had been responsible for nearly killing John Howard, and had done a bunch of other dangerous and illegal stuff, didn’t make it easy. This was going to be like sitting down with a terrorist, as far as Jay was concerned.

  Sure, CyberNation had claimed no responsibility for the two incidents—“rogue elements out of our control,” and so on. But, hey, the Secretary always disavowed all knowledge of the Mission Impossible team, too, didn’t he?

  No need to disavow anything that was successful, was there?

  The door opened and in walked Seurat. Jay recognized him from some of the background VR he’d run. Tall, aristocratic-looking, with dark hair, well-cut and short. Nice suit. He looked flushed, and Jay understood why—word had come past Jay’s door that Seurat and Thorn had gone to the gym and danced with those whippy blades the boss liked to play with, and wasn’t that just swell? Fencing buddies.

  Really nice suit, though. Give them that. The French sure know how to dress.

  The CyberNation leader eyed Jay like a man might look at a trained chimpanzee, his expression a sort of a wonder-if-it-can-understand-me look.

  Oh, boy.

  Could be that Mr. Seurat had what some of Jay’s buddies at MIT had called Euro-Q. Back in his school days there had been a good number of best-of-the-brightest imports from Europe, who had thought that because they were in the land of the tasteless American, t
hat it meant they were naturally smarter as well.

  But Jay also remembered one of his old college buddies, a guy named Bernard from Tennessee. Bernard had been invited to play chess by an Englishman named Sykes. Bernard, who spoke slowly with a thick Southern twang, had looked mildly bemused.

  “Well, ah’m afraid I barely know the rules of that game, sir,” his friend had said. “But ah’ll give it a try, if’n you want.”

  Sykes had, according to the story, looked positively gleeful. He’d been ready for a fine round of pummel-the-Colonial, but instead had been destroyed by Bernard, who in fact was a ranked chess player and had competed nationally. The lesson hadn’t been lost on Jay: Never judge a book by its cover.

  Maybe he’s not just an arrogant, well-dressed jerk.

  “Allo? You must be Monsieur Greedlee?”

  Because he didn’t want to be at the meeting, Jay was primed to be irritated, and this was enough to start the ball rolling. “Mr. Seurat,” he said, taking care to pronounce the second syllable “rat” instead of “rah.”

  Seurat’s frown was paper-thin and gone in a second, but Jay had seen it.

  Jay had played this game before. Guy was gonna have to get up earlier than that to stay ahead of him. He smiled and waved at the chairs.

  They sat down at the glossy-finished wood table. The fluorescent lights overhead gleamed upon the thick finish, and Jay could see their distorted reflections as he sat down. Seurat’s body language was relaxed, but Jay could tell it was a front. The man’s eyes did not match his poise, and while there were no overt signs, Jay thought he could feel the man’s annoyance.

  He stifled an inward sigh. Better get it started so he could get it over.

  “I understand you’ve had some problems at CyberNation with your networks?” Jay asked.

  Seurat’s lips compressed slightly before he replied. “Indeed, we have been attacked by a major VR talent, on several occasions. By that, I mean someone very good was involved. World-class, Mr. Gridley.”

  The stupid-Frenchman accent had vanished. His English was now as crisp as an icicle at thirty degrees below zero, with barely a trace of any accent.

  Aha! Shades of the Tennessee chess champion!

  Seurat said, “I understand you have some familiarity with VR?”

  Some familiarity? Jay wanted to stand and spit on the man. Which was, of course, exactly why the man had said it. Don’t let him get your goat, Jay.

  “Yes, I have some small knowledge of it,” said Jay, thinking, More in my little finger than in your entire programming team. “Perhaps we can help train your people to discover what went wrong. After all, the U.S. did invent VR, and not everyone has the same understanding.”

  “Or perhaps we might show you a way to keep your military’s very expensive war scenarios from going into the toilet?”

  Seurat smiled, his expression as bland as Jay’s.

  Oh, he wanted to play?

  “I don’t expect we need any help there. I’m on the trail of the perpetrator. Only a matter of time until I get him.”

  “Time is money, is it not?”

  Jay smiled. The man was smooth. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

  Seurat shook his head, and the smile, this time, seemed genuine. “Mr. Gridley, I will acknowledge that you are better than I, better than any of our people when it comes to chasing VR criminals and terrorists. And that I am an arrogant Frenchman and you have put me in my place. Now that we have both waved our weenies at each other, perhaps we can get past the posturing merde and down to business?”

  Despite himself, Jay had to laugh. The guy had it nailed. Score a point for him.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Seurat.” He pronounced the name correctly this time. “I’m listening.”

  Seurat continued. “Our most recent incursion was just a few hours ago, when a VR dragon entered one of our shared-space utopias and began attacking our citizens.”

  “A dragon?”

  “Oui. I was sent a copy of the attack from one of our VR security monitors on my way to Washington. Here is a link to a secure CyberNation storehouse where a copy has been set aside for you.”

  He handed Jay a slip of paper with a VR address on it.

  Dragon. Western or Chinese?

  The form of the dragon might add weight to the clue he’d uncovered at the VR saloon. Jay looked at the address and nodded.

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” he said, then added, “but I may need unrestricted access to your network.”

  The unasked question hung in the air.

  The Frenchman seemed to reach a decision, and nodded to himself.

  “I shall see that you are allowed whatever access you need, Mr. Gridley.”

  Jay nodded. That was true, the guy had just made a big decision.

  Jay made a decision of his own. “Call me Jay,” he said.

  Seurat nodded. “And I am Charles. I will be at the Watergate until tomorrow morning. Please contact me if you have any trouble with network access.”

  “The Watergate,” said Jay. “Of course.” He smiled. This time Seurat smiled back at him.

  Of course. What better place for a rival nation’s leader to stay than the site of one of our worst scandals?

  Jay didn’t like CyberNation, but he had to give Seurat points for style. And balls.

  But I get more points for getting full network access.

  He wasn’t sure he’d be able to help the virtual nation, nor even if he wanted to help it, but he was certainly going to enjoy walking through their systems while he tried.

  Jay Gridley wins again.

  14

  Net Force HQ

  Quantico, Virginia

  Kent attended to his paper- and e-work, always a bigger part of his job than he liked. When he couldn’t put it off any longer, he would just plow into the requisition forms, assorted order-postings, and such, and make an attempt to catch up on his perpetual backlog. Much as he hated it, there were times when he had to get into the grind.

  While deep in the minutiae of a report on uniform grades and current in-house stocks of same, his computer pinged. For a moment, he didn’t recall what that meant; then it came to him: It was a searchbot attention-sig.

  He had the system set up for voxax, so he said, “Searchbot report.”

  The file on uniforms collapsed and shrank as if being sucked down a drain, leaving a small icon in the bottom of the computer screen. The bot’s report appeared in its place, and the bot started to read it aloud in a voice that reminded Kent of a particularly boring professor whose course Kent had once taken at the War College. “Stop vocal,” he said. He could still read.

  The report, which on the face of it seemed innocuous enough, was about a classical guitar competition in, of all places, Lincoln, Nebraska. The solo finals were being held this coming Saturday at seven in the evening, and would consist of four contestants. Their names were Emile Domenicio, Sarah Pen Jackson, Richard Justice, and Phillip Link.

  None of these names meant anything to Kent.

  The listed programs included works by Bach, Rivera, Barrios, Sor, Scarlatti, Berkeley, and Pujol, also names that, until recently, would mostly have meant little to him. But, since the operation in which the Georgian hired killer, one Eduard Natadze, had managed to screw up Kent’s initial fieldwork for Net Force, the colonel had made it his business to learn about classical guitars and the music associated with them. That was because Natadze had been, by all reports, a talented amateur classical guitarist. That was in addition to his day job: strong-arm and hit man for the late Samuel Walker Cox, a rich man who’d once been a Soviet spy.

  Natadze was a man who had beaten Kent at every turn, always a half step ahead, and who had escaped. Oh, how that had rankled.

  It was still impossible for Kent to think about it without building a head of steam that threatened to blow his head off. Abe Kent flat did not like to lose.

  The case was officially closed—there had been some high-level sweeping under the rug, for pol
itical and financial reasons—but Kent hadn’t just smiled and let it go. He might not be able to spend any official energy on it, but he hadn’t quit looking.

  A few seachbots that kept eyes open for material concerning classical guitar music and instruments didn’t cost anything, and there was always the hope something might pop up that would be useful.

  Offhand, he couldn’t see what it was here, other than the most general anything-classical connection.

  But, at the bottom of the scroll, there was a notation that several luthiers would be on hand for a showing of their classical instruments. One of these guitar-builders was Otto Bergman, who, according to the article, hadn’t shown his works in public for more than three years.

  Bergman. Kent nodded at the name, remembering it.

  When they had been searching for Natadze and had a general idea about him, before they had known specifically who he was, they’d been cross-checking guitar-makers who specialized in concert-quality instruments. They’d eventually run the hit man’s home address to ground this way, by backtracking an instrument he’d bought from a world-class maker in California, a guy named Bogdanovich.

  There had been a mysterious explosion at Natadze’s house shortly thereafter, and that instrument, along with several others, had been destroyed. A shame, that. The official line was that Natadze had done it, but Kent had never quite accepted that—a guy who spent that much on guitars and who loved to play them would have pulled them out before he blew the house up.

  Later, after the investigation had been pretty much shut down, Jay Gridley had found that Natadze had another guitar on order, which, at the time, had been several months away from completion. This particular one was being built by Otto Bergman, who lived in Colorado, Kent recalled.

  Naturally, Natadze hadn’t been stupid enough to send in a new address to take delivery of his guitar, even though it had set him back about eight grand, if Kent’s memory was accurate. That would be a dead end, except that Kent had an idea that if somebody wanted a handmade instrument bad enough to pay eight thousand dollars for it, he might try to find a way to collect it.