by Tom Clancy
“Ah.”>
Thorn nodded, grinned. “Bruce said there was always a ‘Larry’ somewhere—down the hall, up the stairs, on vacation in Mexico. It was one of the ways studio guys avoided having to ever say ‘No.’ They could look like they were on the side of the angels, because they never rejected anything, never had an unkind word for anybody. It was always Larry’s fault.”
She shook her head.
“All they serve is chiliburgers and soda. You get to the counter, you say how many of each you want, that’s it. Nine dollars for the burger, a buck for the soft drink. They don’t take checks, Visa, Mastercard, or American Express, cash only. They also don’t make change—you give ’em a ten, you break even. A twenty, you either want two burgers and drinks, or you tip them ten dollars.”
He paused, but she didn’t say anything, just waited for him to continue.
“On an average night,” he said, “there will be ten or fifteen thousand dollars in small bills in the cash drawer. And, in case you are wondering, no, nobody has ever robbed them. If anybody ever tried, most of the cops in this line would happily shoot them and step over the body to get their order.”
Mickey nodded at that, and threw in a wink.
“You want it your way,” Thorn went on, “you go to Burger King—you don’t alter anything here. What you get is half a pound of ground sirloin on an oversize burger bun, slathered in the special Greek chili, wrapped in a piece of aluminum foil, and a wad of napkins, which you’ll need, and whatever soft drink they got the best deal on this week. You don’t want to know how many calories and fat and cholesterol is in Bruce’s burger.”
“Right,” Marissa said.
“Forty years ago, there used to be a place in L.A. with a similar setup, it’s where Bruce got the idea, but they franchised it, and it wasn’t the same after that. Tials is one of a kind. Open twenty-four/seven. Come by here at two A.M. on a weekday, it’s this crowded. People bring their families here for Christmas dinner. Tials never closes. I think Bruce must live in the refrigerator—which occupies a good section of that building behind the stand.”
“Wow. It’s that good?”
“It’s better than that. Just wait. After Tials, you’ll never be able to eat a burger anywhere else without frowning at it.”
“Two surprises in one evening. What else have you got up your sleeve, Mr. Thorn?”
He smiled and winked at her, but didn’t say anything else.
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting at a stained picnic table, each with a chiliburger and a Coke. Thorn watched her take her first bite, and smiled at the look on her face as she chewed and swallowed it.
“Lord. This is great!” she managed.
“You’re a cheap date,” he said, waving his burger. “Well, except for the ride.”
“Shut up and eat,” she said.
They did, chili dripping. Thorn watched her as he ate, and at that moment, figured this might be as good as dinner ever got, in which case, he’d have no complaints.
Rue de Soie
Marne-la-Vallée France
Seurat admired the woman’s sleeping body, taking great pleasure in looking at every exposed millimeter without having to pretend he wasn’t staring, without the need for a social pretext that what he saw didn’t attract him and draw him in completely.
Ah . . .
She lay on her side, her rich, long hair dark against his ivory silk sheets, her tanned skin lightly dotted with freckles, each of which seemed utterly fascinating. Her head was turned toward her chest, her chin tucked in, and the rise and fall of her chest seemed to raise her breasts to almost touch her face, sheltering it with every breath.
Her hip rose from the bed, a graceful arc that beckoned him to put his hand on it, a call that he had answered many times already this night. One long leg was hooked over his duvet, and he admired its utter smoothness, its grace.
He realized he was looking at her with the intensity he usually reserved for paintings, and grinned. She was a beautiful artwork that was all the more amazing for being real, and all the more exciting for being in his bed. He grinned again when he realized how much the comparison would amuse her.
And an American. Who would have thought?
The last day had been full of surprises. To think that he’d very nearly missed this one!
He had been outrageously irritable since the most recent attack, which had crashed the local CyberNation node, lashing out at his staff, wanting answers, pushing them to work harder, when they all wanted the same thing he did, and very nearly as much as he wanted it. Le boss was being the ass, and everybody knew it, no one more so than the boss himself. . . .
In his last communication with Gridley, the man had obliquely hinted at a brute-force approach that was being tried on the attack, designed to find the mechanism by which their network had been compromised. Seurat had not been surprised, since it was the approach he would have expected from the Americans anyway. Never use a scalpel when a chain saw will serve. . . .
But his own team had not been able to suggest a better approach.
He liked to think of himself and of CyberNation as smarter, more able to figure out the linchpin, the keystone of a problem, and to use that knowledge rather than force to achieve victory. A dagger rather than a blunt instrument.
And when they had failed him, and he, himself, had not been able to solve the problem either, he had left work in a foul mood.
On the way home, as he looped around the Boulevard Périphérique, his calendar had chimed to remind him of a showing at his aunt’s house, just out of the city. His family had for years managed to use the influence of their name and of their various connections in the art world to arrange for private showings of his ancestor’s works whenever one was on tour and passed through Europe. The events reinforced the bond of blood, and had helped reconcile the disparate branches of his family line, legitimate and not. Plus, they were usually a good time, a respite from the work world, and indeed a reason to take one.
But he’d been angry and had slapped his PDA, silencing the reminder, and accelerating toward his home. Art could not help him now, he needed science.
It had taken a few more kilometers of driving for him to laugh at himself, and to acknowledge that art was what he needed. Even if it did not inspire a solution, it would provide a different focus for the rest of the evening. Besides, the painting coming was a study for La Grande Jatte, one that had been out of the country for decades. Surely it was not going to be back soon.
So he had kept driving past his exit, heading toward his aunt’s, another thirty kilometers outside the city. By the time he had arrived, it had grown dark. The gathering was in full swing, the old chateau lit brightly from within, the color of the electric light the only difference from what might have been seen several hundred years before.
His uncles and aunts had greeted him warmly, and he’d grabbed a glass of wine from one of the family vineyards, a delightful ’08 that had sweetened his disposition considerably.
He had enjoyed the interaction, and had gradually worked his way toward the back of the house, to the old parlor where Aunt Sophia displayed paintings for events such as this. The rococo stylings of the house had soothed him, taking away the pain of the difficult day through their familiarity and sense of continuity.
Things have been worse and gotten better before, they seemed to say.
And there, in the back of the room, several of his older cousins staring at it, was the painting.
It was large, and Seurat recognized it immediately as one of the last studies for La Grande Jatte, nearly full-size, with the majority of the pantheon from the final painting laid out on it, albeit somewhat differently.
He stepped closer, feeling the warmth of that distant day, enjoying the serenity of the figures in the painting as they did also, taking pleasure in the consummate skill of his ancestor, acknowledging the careful planning.
And this was not even the final painting.
He felt a to
uch at his sleeve and returned to the world, the noise from the party washing back over him like an ocean tide, not realizing he’d completely tuned it out until it returned.
Standing there was good old Aunt Sophia, wearing one of her opera gowns, dressed, as usual, to deny detractors the pleasure of disparaging comments.
“Ahhh, Charles, mon cheri, there you are! I wanted to introduce you to Mademoiselle Millard, who is here with the painting. She travels with it on the tour, and was good enough to grace us with her presence.”
He thought he’d heard his aunt emphasize the woman’s status as single, and made a note to tease her about it later, which he promptly forgot as he turned and saw Millard.
She was tall, and wore a low-cut dress that covered enough to satisfy propriety, but which revealed enough to encourage imagination. She smiled, a graceful movement of her lips. Surely anyone could do such a thing—but if that were so, how come he’d never seen them poised just—so?
Sophia had completed the introduction.
“Michelle Millard, this is my nephew, Charles—also a Seurat.”
He remembered feeling a sudden thrill rush through him as he heard her name.
Michelle. How beautiful.
“Mademoiselle, it is a pleasure to meet you,” he said, thinking how inadequate it was. But somehow she brightened, and when she spoke her words seemed to tell him something deeper, something more.
“The pleasure is mine,” she’d said, and then, “I understand you have some of your ancestor’s works that are not publicly shown?”
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d heard Sophia chuckle before she walked off.
Seurat was no schoolboy. He’d been with women—many women. But he had had such chemistry with only a handful.
They had talked until late in the evening, about surface things—paintings, favorite artists, and even the weather. But beneath their words an understanding simmered, cascades of meaning that spoke of a deeper interest, deeper meanings to the nods and smiles.
He had offered to drive her back to Paris, of course.
And when she had asked if they could perhaps stop by his house to see his paintings, he had said, “Of course.”
Truly she was beautiful—and more.
Seurat couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent so much time with anyone without talking about CyberNation. Had he even told her what he did?
“Do you like what you see, Monsieur?”
He started. Had she been awake the whole time?
“If I had any clothes on, your eyes would have burned through them the way you were looking at me!”
He chuckled. “If I had any clothes on, they would have been burned off just by looking at you. Does that answer your question, Mademoiselle?”
“Oui.”
She reached over and slid her hand down his body, stopping at just the right place.
“As does this.”
He put his hands on her as well, and her breathing increased to match his.
An American, he thought, as they started to move together, and then, She is wonderful beyond belief.
It could be that he was going to have to reevaluate his feelings about the United States. Surely a place from which she had come from couldn’t be quite as bad as he had thought. . . .
24
San Francisco, California
Colonel Abe Kent glanced at his watch. It was pushing midnight, and Natadze was buttoned up tight. The motel room he was in had no rear exit, and there was no reason for him to be crawling out through a window—assuming he hadn’t spotted Kent tailing him.
From his rented van, thirty yards away and parked facing Natadze’s door, Kent considered his strategy and tactics. Natadze wasn’t going to step out into the parking lot with his eyes closed—he’d be wary, looking for anything unusual. He knew Kent by sight, so there was no way he could just stroll in the killer’s direction and make it close enough to get the drop on him. He could park his vehicle a bit nearer, but even so, opening a car door would draw Natadze’s attention in a hurry.
Yes, Kent had the advantage, but it wasn’t so great as all that. Taking down an alert and cautious enemy wasn’t as easy as they made it look in the movies.
A smart man would have called in the experts—SWAT, SERT, FBI Tactical—and let them deal with the situation. Kent was a man of war; he knew battlefield tactics, he could shoot and hit his target, and you could call this war on a small scale. Still, there were people better equipped for this particular scenario. He knew it.
He also knew that, smart or not, this was a personal thing. Him against Natadze, however wise that might be. There were some things a man took care of on his own, if he wanted to keep looking at his face in the mirror when he shaved.
Kent was adept at what he did, and his luck was better than average—at least it had been so far—but even so, a plan of action would be a good idea.
Of course, everybody knew it was better to be lucky than good.
Kent smiled. That brought another old memory up. That seemed to be happening to him more and more these days. Maybe it was a product of age. The older you got, the more you had to look at behind you than ahead of you.
This particular echo involved a conversation he’d had with John Howard, as they’d sat in a camper waiting for Natadze at Cox’s estate—when they’d lost him. They’d been yakking about growing up, and about luck, the kind of thing you did when you had time on your hands and nothing pressing to fill it.
Howard had told a story about his first serious girlfriend, and how they had missed by seconds being caught by her father in a compromising position, and how a stuck hook or zipper would have made the difference. Could have short-stopped his entire career.
Kent had laughed, then told his story: He had an older brother he’d spent a summer with when he was twelve. Martin was married, going to school at LSU, down in Baton Rouge, where it was hot, damp, and rained a lot. Must have been around 1965 or ’66. Martin had lived just off campus in an apartment with his wife, a gorgeous redhead with whom Kent had fallen in love at first sight.
Howard had smiled, one old soldier to another. The joy of older women.
“Anyway,” Kent had continued, “my brother gave me the full campus tour. The school’s mascot was a Royal Bengal tiger, traditionally named Mike. The first tiger arrived in the forties, and there have been five or six since. When I visited my brother, they were up to Mike III, I think. The cat lived in a cage just outside the football stadium, next to the parade grounds where the ROTC marched. You could walk right up to it.”
Kent smiled again, picturing the scene. “LSU was a land-grant college, so all male students who were physically able had to do two years of Army or Air Force ROTC. They had classes, even in the summer, and they marched early, before the heat got too oppressive. Bright and early, there would be hundreds, sometimes thousands of male students in their ROTC summer khaki uniforms at attention out there, yelling ‘Good morning, Mike the Tiger, sir!’ ”
Howard smiled, too, and Kent continued. “The tiger used to be pulled in a cage around the stadium before football games. The story was, every time he roared, that meant the team would score one touchdown. They called the stadium Death Valley. Loudest place in the city on a Saturday night during football season. The police would one-way streets heading toward the campus before the game, one-way them in the other direction afterward.”
“A tiger’s hard to keep in a cage,” Howard said.
Kent nodded. “Every now and then, Mike would somehow get out of his cage. Pranksters broke the locks off once, or somebody forgot to shut the cage. Mike got out, and naturally, he went exploring. Imagine how you’d feel if you were walking to the local market for a carton of milk and you looked up to see a four-hundred-pound Bengal tiger padding down the sidewalk toward you.”
Howard laughed. “I’d need new underwear.”
“Me, too. Luckily, nobody ever got eaten when the various Mikes took their strolls. Good thing, because if the cops
or animal control people had ever had to shoot the big cat, the city would probably have lynched whoever pulled the trigger. Everybody loved Mike. The first one? After he died of old age, twenty-something, they stuffed and mounted him in the school museum, and you could listen to a tape recording of his roar. My brother took me to see him. Kind of spooky, that old stuffed tiger standing there.”
He paused for a moment, remembering. “The point is, when you have a wild animal, he’s only safe to be around as long as he’s under control. And it’s real easy to lose control of such a creature. One small slip, he gets you. Remember that magician who got attacked onstage in Las Vegas ten or twelve years ago? By a cat he had raised and trained?”
“Yes.”
“So, you always have to be careful.”
Howard said, “I hear that.”
And yet, here was Kent, three thousand miles away from that camper and conversation, being reckless. Waiting for a wild animal—one that could shoot back, no less—to emerge from his lair.
Killing Natadze would be easy: He steps out the door, you line your sights up, don’t say squat, and cook off two .45 auto rounds into the man’s heart, bam, bam, end of story. But that wasn’t how he wanted it to go down. He wanted the man alive and talking. It wasn’t about killing him, it was about defeating him—
Natadze’s door opened. There was no light behind him to silhouette him, but enough illumination from the parking lot and outside lamps to get a good view. He had the guitar case in one hand—his left—with his other hand free.
Kent frowned, liking this less and less. He couldn’t let the man get into his car, not and risk losing him. Where was he going at this hour?
Never mind that, Abe. Go!
He pulled his Colt and thumbed the safety off—he was already cocked and locked—put his trigger finger outside the guard, took a deep breath, and opened the van’s door.
Natadze spotted the motion immediately. He had taken several steps toward his car, was almost there, although he hadn’t dug his keys out yet. Kent would have been happier if the man had both hands occupied.