by Tom Clancy
As an educated man raised in a society where emotions other than laughter or anger were now okay for men, Michaels knew he didn't need to hold himself so tight, that it was no sin to feel things, but those old tapes from his childhood were hard to get past. Knowing it was okay to let go intellectually was not the same as being able to actually do it.
It wasn't just his career that had killed his marriage. That don't-show-emotions lesson had been part of the problem with his ex-wife, he knew. And now it seemed to be part of the problem with Toni.
What to do about it?
He shook his head. He couldn't deal with this now. He had a job, a nut with some magical computer gear killing people, bringing the world more grief. He had to deal with his problems the way the samurai warrior Musashi had spoken of it: When faced with ten thousand, you fight them one at a time — the most dangerous ones first.
Of course you need to be pretty damned quick to beat ten thousand, and best he get back to it right now. His emotional life would just have to wait.
He left a note for Toni, then called for a cab to take him to MI-6.
Chapter 24
Sunday, April 10th
Washington, D.C.
It was a beautiful, sunny morning, no wind, a perfect day to throw. Tyrone glanced at his watch. Ten A.M. Where was Nadine? She was supposed to meet him at the soccer field at — wait, there she was, coming around the gym, a backpack slung over one shoulder. She saw him, grinned, and waved.
"Hey, Tyrone!"
He waved back.
There were a couple of guys practicing at the goal on the south end of the field, so they headed for the north goal, then unpacked their gear. Tyrone had brought four of his favorite 'rangs, along with pixie dust and his timer; Nadine had three 'rangs, some finger dip wind-check, and a stopwatch.
The watch was odd-looking. It was an analog, round, big, silvery.
"Wow, where'd you get that?"
"My dad bought it on a trip to Russia," she said. "You hit this button to start it, same button to stop, the big sweep hand gives you seconds, the little inner dial gives you minutes. Doesn't use batteries."
She handed it to him and he looked at it.
"Solar-powered?" He didn't see a cell.
"No, an internal wind-up spring. Good for, like, hours, then you wind it again."
"Exemplary. I got a radio like that, you crank it, it plays for an hour, never needs to be charged."
"My dad says we could save a lot of dump space for batteries if we used more springs and gravity-powered devices," she said.
"Yeah. It's the next surge."
They warmed up, rolled their shoulders and waved their arms back and forth, shook out their hands, something Tyrone had learned from watching the older throwers. There were special stretching exercises, too, to keep the muscles of the shoulders and back limber. He'd seen articles on the net about serious boomerangers who had torn ligaments and stuff by throwing too hard without warming up first, and he didn't want to put himself out of commission that way. Of course, most of the guys who hurt themselves were old — in their twenties and thirties.
Nadine went to take a few practice throws, and he watched her carefully. She was in good shape — you could see that vein in her upper arm — and she had excellent form when she threw, she used her whole body and not just her arm, what you were supposed to do. You could learn a lot watching somebody good work.
They'd been throwing for about half an hour, getting to the point where they could do some serious MTA stuff, when Tyrone saw three or four people watching them from across the field, standing in the shade of a sycamore tree by the fence. That happened a lot when he was throwing, and usually he didn't pay much attention, since if you took your gaze off your 'rang for a second, it might disappear. He knew too many guys who had lost a bright orange boomerang on a newly trimmed field, poof, just vanished. Sometimes they angled in and somehow managed to bury themselves in the grass just enough so you couldn't see them; sometimes they just… vanished. He had lost a red quad-blade once on a golf course where the grass was like half a centimeter high, no way, but there it was.
It took only one quick look to see that one of the watchers was Belladonna Wright.
He jerked his gaze back to his 'rang, found it floating toward him about thirty meters out, and stayed with it until it came close enough to catch. He managed to trap the 'rang without dropping it, but he was rattled.
Though he was trying hard not to look at Bella, Nadine picked up on it.
"Well, well. Looks like that old fire might not be out after all, hey, Ty?"
"What?"
"You and sweetie pie over there under the tree. You kinda acted like you didn't know her real well, but from what I hear, you and she spent some quality time together."
"So what if we did?"
"Nothing, nothing, not my business. I just hate to see you get cooked, is all."
"What do you mean?"
"Come on, Tyrone, gimme a bye here. Pretties like that go through guys like toilet paper. Use 'em, flush 'em, there's plenty more where the last one came from.
She's got a string of guys waiting to run around behind her and kiss the ground she walks on, just to enjoy the view from there."
"Yeah? How would you know that?"
Nadine stared at the ground. "You hear stuff."
"Anything else you hear?"
"I'm not trying to start a fight."
"Could have fooled me."
She looked up, hefted her MTA. "I came to practice. You interested in that? Or you want to wait for Miss America to crook her finger so you can go running?"
"I don't go running. For your information, it was my idea to break up with Bella." Well, that wasn't strictly true, but he had opened the conversation that led to it. And when given the choice of being one of her string, he had told her he wasn't interested. Sort of.
"Good for you. You gonna throw?"
Tyrone glanced at Bella, then back at Nadine. "Yeah, I'm gonna throw. Get ready to start your watch, I'm gonna hang you out to dry."
"In your dreams."
She flashed him a small grin, and he returned it, but even as he did, he wondered about what she had said. What if Bella crooked her finger? If she waved him over, told him she wanted him to drop by and sit on her couch and kiss him like she had kissed him before, would he go running?
No way. No. Fucking. Way.
Easy enough to say that when he was pretty sure it wasn't gonna happen. But if it actually did, would he drop everything and trot over?
That was a hard one. He didn't want to think too much about that one.
He gathered himself for the throw. Three steps: one, two, three!
The boomerang soared high into the air, an artificial bird climbing for the sun. And it was gonna be a long hang time, too. He could tell. That ought to shut Nadine up about whether he'd come to throw.
Sunday, April 10th
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean
Flying the big jet wasn't a problem for the Net Force pilot, and landing it manually wasn't, either, assuming the weather in England wasn't so foul they needed a ground beacon to locate the airport. The 747's self-contained instruments weren't affected by the international snafu that had ensnarled the major computer systems. But trying to land in heavy traffic at Heathrow or Gatwick without some help from the ATCs on the ground was not at the top of any pilot's list.
"No way in hell, sir," the pilot had put it to Howard.
Fortunately, there were military bases that were self-contained in the U.K., at least insofar as flight operations went, and they could put the big bird down at one of these, even though the wait would be fairly long. Most of the still-operational bases had been hauling in civilian planes affected by the snafu, or allowing takeoffs and landings by those nonmilitary aircraft that simply had to fly: hospital planes, those moving organs for transplants, or assorted heads of state. They might be stacked up a while, waiting to land.
Fine, he had been stacked up
before.
Fortunately, most military organizations were, by their nature, paranoid, and few of them put all their eggs in one basket. That half the planet's computer systems had been screwed up was bad, but not so bad that it totally paralyzed the world's armies and navies. Good soldiers always worried about such things, and good soldiers could usually convince the bad ones to have some kind of backup plan. Looked as if that chore might get easier after this, too.
They could have turned the 747 back and landed in the States, but Howard wasn't interested in letting his quarry get away again, not if they could help it. The good thing was, if they were having problems traveling, so would Ruzhyo. And he didn't think the assassin would get far on foot. Although tracking him without computers might be something of a problem itself, it would be easier if he sat still for a while.
Julio drifted down the aisle and stopped next to his seat.
"Colonel."
"Sergeant."
"You still think we can collect this boy?"
"Oh, we'll get him." Howard mentioned his reasoning.
Fernandez laughed. "Begging the colonel's pardon, but bullshit. If the guy's IQ didn't drop by fifty points when he landed, he's plenty smart enough to figure out how to rent a car or boat or even a plane from somebody and get out of England. He waves a handful of that funny Euro money at some college kid or poor fisherman or broke pilot with an ultralight, and he's got wheels or floats or wings. I'd guess the Frogs or the Spanish or anybody else across a body of water from Jolly Olde are gonna be busy trying to stop opportunistic crooks trying to smuggle trains or steamships past 'em while the computers are whacked out. His chances of getting nailed in all the hubbub are probably so close to zero as to practically be zero."
"You're assuming he wants to leave England that bad," Howard said. "Why should he? He doesn't know we're on his tail. He probably thinks he's gotten away clean."
"Would you assume that, were you in his shoes?"
Howard grinned. "Hell, no."
"Me, neither."
"Maybe he won't want to risk it," Howard said.
"I don't think this guy worries an awful lot about risk, given what we've seen out of him so far, John."
Howard nodded. That was true enough. And there was nothing to be done about it.
Julio said, "But, shoot, we could get lucky. He might step off a curb and get hit by a double-decker bus or something. Be waiting for us in a hospital somewhere, nothing but a tongue depressor to fight us with when we show up. Course, with our luck so far, he'd kill a couple of us with it, and wouldn't that look good on the obituary page? 'Assassin Kills Net Force Personnel! It was depressing, Sergeant Julio Fernandez said.' "
"I can always count on you to cheer me up, Sergeant."
"I do what I can, sir."
Sunday, April 10th
MI-6, London, England
Michaels sat hunched over a stack of hardcopy, reading that instead of using the computer. It was slow going. Toni had arrived, but left again to go collect some material from a satellite recon site that still had a viable uplink. They didn't want to risk sending the stuff from there to here, even with protected landlines. It was more reliable for somebody to collect it physically.
His neck and upper back were stiff and sore. Part of that was probably from being stuck in a chair reading for hours; part of it was tension from all the other crap going on in his head. Megan and the private eye, Toni, the whole ugly situation with this madman screwing with the world.
"Knock, knock?"
Angela Cooper came in, tapping at the door frame as she did so. She wore a dark blue blazer and a matching short skirt, with a paler blue blouse. She closed the door behind her. "How goes the war, Alex?"
"Our side is still losing."
"We've gotten a bunch of systems back on-line," she said. "We're recovering. So far, no permanent damage to sensitive material."
"That's something."
She moved to stand behind him and looked over his shoulder.
"Statistical analysis of transcontinental telephonic transmissions? My. This must be fascinating reading."
"Oh, yeah, right up there with freshman philosophy papers on German existentialists written in Chinese by Bantu bushmen."
She laid on hand on his shoulder. "Oh, dear. You're like a rock."
"I've been more relaxed," he admitted.
"You should let me work on you." She put her other hand on his other shoulder and started to knead the muscles. He had a moment of alarm. He should not allow this. But — mmm, it felt good. Her hands were much stronger than he would have thought.
"You don't have to do that." Weak. Not the same as telling her to quit.
"I don't mind. It's one of my few talents. My mother was a therapist for a time. She knew some of the more esoteric elements of massage: reiki, shiatsu, Aston-Patterning. I picked up some of it along the way."
God, but that felt good. He could feel the knots in his traps. It also felt as if his head might just nod forward and fall off his neck if she kept this up. It was not sexual, but it was certainly sensual.
"You really ought to lie down to get the full benefit," she said. She continued to work her fingers into his neck and upper back, digging in with her thumbs, working in elliptical spirals.
"However, the couch is too soft, the desk too short. But the carpet is clean. Lie on the floor, on your stomach, next to the desk there."
Like a man in a trance, Michaels obeyed. He hadn't realized just how tight he was. She was finding spots in his muscles so hard they felt like ball bearings.
Facedown, he felt her straddle him, and he opened his eyes enough to see her short skirt riding up as her knees pressed into his sides. Her butt was only lightly touching his, she wasn't putting very much weight onto him.
Oh, yes…
"It would be better with your shirt off, but perhaps we ought to wait on a more private setting for that. Wouldn't want tongues to wag."
The way Michaels felt with her working on his back, he didn't care if all the tongues in MI-6 wagged like a pack of starving dogs being offered liver treats. An involuntary moan escaped, pressed out of him when she dug the heel of one spiraling hand into the flesh over his right scapula.
It hurt, but it was a good hurt, he could feel himself loosening under the hard pressure.
She slid backward, hovered over his hamstrings, and leaned onto her hands against the small of his back. She pressed her thumbs into his buttocks, slid her fingers over his hips, circled to his back again.
Oh, man. He could get used to this.
Used to it? It could become an addiction.
It occurred to him after ten minutes or so that this would be the worst time in the world for Toni to come back. This would be difficult to explain. He should make her stop. Now.
But he didn't.
And Toni didn't come back, and after twenty minutes, Angela slid back up his body, did some stuff to his scalp, then climbed off him and stood.
He could barely move. He somehow managed to get to his feet.
She was flushed, had worked up a sweat, was glowing.
"Thank you. You just saved my life."
"It wasn't much, really. To do it right takes an hour, an hour and a half, and you have to work both sides, back and front. I have a massage table at home. Maybe you can drop by and let me give you the full treatment sometime."
A warning flash strobed his brain: Danger! Bad idea!
Then he thought about Toni and her silat workout. Stewart had put his hands all over Toni, hadn't he? What was the difference? It wasn't sex, it was harmless. It was… therapeutic.
"Yeah, maybe we could do that," he heard himself say.
She smiled at him and he smiled back.
"I must look awful, like an old sweaty cow," she said. "I must go and repair myself. See you later."
After she had gone, he found that a small bit of tension quickly returned, despite the skilled rubdown he had just gotten. It had nothing to do with work.
> What, he wondered, are you getting yourself into here, Alex?
Chapter 25
Sunday, April 10th
The Yews, Sussex, England
Goswell sat in his study, in the good leather chair, and sipped at his iced gin. He sighed, and looked at the photographs for perhaps the tenth time. In this age of computer miracles, it was certainly possible to fake such things, he knew. An expert could easily put one man's face on another's body, could erase or add elements that never existed. He recalled seeing a movie once of Sir Winston Churchill — a damned fine PM, according to his father — seated next to the American President Abraham Lincoln, chatting away, when, in truth, the latter had been assassinated eight or ten years before Churchill had been born.
He shuffled the pictures. Yes, certainly it could be done, but in this case, he was just as certain that it had not been done. These were genuine enough, for the man who had taken them had not had a reason to fake them. There sat Peel, talking to Bascomb-Coombs, right there in a public eatery. Of course, Goswell thought, Peel was his security chief and Bascomb-Coombs one of his employees, and a valuable one, as well, so one could easily argue that such a meeting was well within the normal scope of Peel's duties. It was his job, after all, to keep tabs on such people, and talking to them directly was not out of the question.
Goswell took another swallow of his drink and looked at the grandfather clock. Nearly seven; supper would be ready soon.
No, Peel could certainly justify speaking with Bascomb-Coombs easily enough. The damning thing was, he had not done so. Nowhere in his reports was there any mention of such a meeting. Nor of the subsequent meetings. While not all such instances had been edited from the tally of his observations and actions, some of them certainly had been. There were other photographs.