Winters laughed, took a final slug of the drink, then put the glass of ice cubes on the floor next to his feet. "A system? Hell, you got money and a system, the casino will send a plane to pick you up. They'll give you your room and food and drinks for free. Only thing that works besides cheating at twenty-one is card-counting, and if they spot you doing that, they throw you out. And our boy Griggy ain't got the smarts to count cards past the three or four in his hand, much less the multiple decks in the shoe. I grew up over a bar with poker tables and slot machines in it. Trust me, you stay at the tables, the house always wins."
Ruzhyo looked at Winters, then back at the Snake. "I am going back to my room," he said.
"I'll watch Griggy here for a while. Maybe keep him out of trouble."
Outside, it was cool, even after a day when the afternoon temperature had been near body heat. A gusty desert wind stirred the dry, dusty air. The fronds of the palm trees planted around the parking lots of the giant black pyramid streamed like organic flags. A bright beam of light erupted from the top of the structure, right at the apex. So brilliant and hot was the beam that it sucked dust into itself and hurled it upward and into the night sky. A searchlight would be pale and anemic by comparison with this laser-like ray shooting from the pyramid.
Disneyland for adults. Yes. Decadent in the extreme.
And what was he going to do when this assignment was over? Where would he go? Not home, to the suffocating memories he could not help but have every time he looked around. Perhaps he would move into a desert like the one surrounding this artificial green spot. Away from everybody, to become a recluse, kept company only by spiders and scorpions and real snakes. To be parched dry during the day and to lie on a cot in the chilly nights and listen to the wind scouring the sand, with perhaps the distant howl of a coyote . . . ?
He smiled at his fantasy. No, he would not move to the desert. He would accept another assignment from Plekhanov--for there would always be more assignments from a man like Plekhanov--and he would do it. And he would keep on doing them until one day he came up against a younger, faster, hungrier opponent. And then it would be over.
He would not leap from a bridge, nor swallow his pistol barrel, nor would he run away and hide. He would continue to do the only thing he had ever really known how to do, and he would do it as well as he could. It was what he had. Aside from Anna, it was all he had ever had. It was his path, and he would follow it until it ended.
The dry wind followed him as he walked toward his hotel.
Saturday, October 2nd, noon Quantico
Toni bent over, touched her toes, then dropped into a deep squat. Her knees popped. She stood, and shook out her legs. She was one of only three people in the Net Force gym. Most people didn't work Saturdays, and normally she wouldn't have worked, either, but until they had something on Day's death, plus the new business about Alex, she wasn't going to be taking any days off. Hardly anybody would.
She looked up, and saw Rusty come out of the men's locker room. She hadn't expected to see him here today. The FBI trainees usually got weekends off at this stage of their schooling.
"Guru," he said, offering her a short bow.
"Rusty. I didn't think you'd be here today."
"Well, I knew you'd be working and I didn't have anything else on my schedule. I mean, if it's okay?"
"Sure."
Toni found she enjoyed teaching. It did force her to think about her own form, to make certain it was right before she tried to pass it along. Guru had been right; the teacher learned as much as the student.
They loosened up for another five minutes, stretching and rotating joints. "Okay, let's begin," she said.
He faced her. They bowed in and she started him on the first djuru.
As Rusty went back and forth, repeating the simple block-elbow-punch combination, Toni corrected his form, demonstrated the footwork, adjusted slightly the positions of his hands. She had always had to do a motion dozens or hundreds of times before it sank in, but Rusty was a quick student. He picked up the lessons pretty fast.
After ten minutes of djuru practice, Toni stopped him. "Okay, today we're going to work on sapu and beset moves."
He nodded, but looked puzzled. "Uh-huh."
She smiled. "Sapu is a sweep, uses the inside of the foot or leg. It means, literally, 'broom.' Beset is a drag, using the heel or back of the leg. Step in right side and throw a right punch."
Rusty nodded, and obeyed. He threw his fist hard, because to do less was to have to do it over again. She double-blocked with her open hands and then stepped in with her right foot just to the outside of his. "Okay, you see where our feet are? I am outside your attacking foot. We call this luar. Okay, back up and punch again, same way."
He complied.
This time, she blocked and stepped inside. "This position is to the inside, or dalam."
He looked down. "Luar is outside, dalam is inside. Okay."
"Right. In silat, there are basically four positions you can assume in relation to an attacker's feet. So I could have either of my feet forward in relation to yours--left or right on the outside, left or right on the inside. If you came in with a left lead, I'd have the same positions available for that foot, too. So, I've got four basic responses no matter which foot you put forward."
"Okay."
"Punch again, slow this time. The first technique I'll show you is called beset luar."
"Which hand?"
"Doesn't matter. What you can do right, you can do left. What you can do inside, you can do outside. What you can do high, you can do low."
"Sounds like something I should be writing down."
"Don't worry about it. You'll hear it again. And again. And again. Silat is not about hard and fast techniques. It is about laws and principles. It takes a little longer to learn it this way, but once you do, you'll have something you can use anytime. Obviously I have to show you specifics, but the goal is become a generalist. Punch again, slow."
He stepped in and threw a lazy straight right fist at her nose.
"Okay, here's the block, from the outside. Then I shove your arm out of the way and around, like so." She rolled his arm down and across his body to the outside, held onto it just above the elbow with her left hand. "Now, I step in, right foot, and put it right behind your foot. Straight step, not around, like this." She showed him the wrong way, then the right way. She exaggerated the step, turning it into a stamp. "I put my hip against yours, and I cork it inward, just like the djuru stance, do you see? Shoulders and hips square?"
"Yeah."
"This is my base. Then with my left hand, I pull your arm down and slightly behind me. This is the angle. Humans only have two feet, so no matter how they stand, they are always weak in at least two directions. You're strong right now forward or backward, but if I make a diamond pattern using your feet as the center line, you have no power at ninety degrees."
"Geometry," he said, grinning.
"Absolutely. So then I use my right hand up here on your neck. I could have punched or poked, but for now, I just put it there. Elbow down. This is my leverage. So now I've got all three--base, angle and leverage. What happens?"
"I go down?"
"Right. And if I add just a hair of drag with my right foot against your foot, the beset, then you go down a little faster."
She applied a little pressure, tugged with her foot, and Rusty dropped flat onto his back. He slapped the mat hard. He came up.
"One more time," she said. "Slow, so you can see it."
He punched. She blocked, stepped in, corked her hip against his thigh. "It's important to get in close, so you can feel your attacker move," she said. "In silat, you stick to your attacker. It feels dangerous, especially if you are used to outfighting, but if you know what you're doing, inside is the place to be. Use your eyes for distance, your body in close, so you can sense motion without having to see it. You feel my hip, how it's pressed in there?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am, I surely do feel that."
She dropped him again. She'd caught the not-so-veiled sexual tone in his voice. She grinned. If he liked that, wait until she stepped inside and showed him the dalam.
Saturday, October 2nd, 12:18 p.m. Quantico
Alex Michaels prowled the hall, too wired to eat. Gridley was working the background on the cane the hitwoman had tried to use against him, and he had people doing seines on the net, following up on the New Orleans VR bank robbery. All the information they could gather was flowing into Net Force, and there wasn't anything he could do to hurry it up. He had a meeting with his top people scheduled for 1:30 p.m., and until then, nothing new to pick at.
He knew Toni usually worked out at noon, and it gave him a place to go, so Michaels headed toward the gym.
When he got there, he saw Toni and the big FBI trainee she had taken on as her student in her martial art. They were standing face-to-face, legs entwined, her waist pressed against his crotch. As Michaels watched, the man reached across Toni's chest, appeared to cup her right breast, then twisted awkwardly and threw her to the practice mat.
Michaels stopped and frowned. For some reason, he felt a stab of irritation.
Toni laughed, rolled up and faced her student again. They moved, he punched, she ducked under his arm and upended him with a move Michaels couldn't quite follow. They both laughed as the feeb trainee came up again. She said something to him, moved in close, pressed her hip against the inside of his thigh.
At this point, the man saw Michaels and said something to Toni. She turned and spotted him standing by the door.
"Hey, Alex."
Again, that surge of anger filled him. What was this? Toni had the right to teach this yahoo anything she wanted to teach him, it wasn't his business. He knew that. But still, that nagging irritation in Michaels resolved itself all of a second into something he could identify:
He felt jealous.
Bullshit. Come on. Toni was his second in command, that was all. They didn't have any romantic notions about each other. And even if they had, it would be stupid to act on them. He was her boss, and office romances were dangerous.
Certainly if she wanted to spend her lunch hour rubbing up against this feeb bodybuilder, that was her affair.
He shook his head, tried to rid himself of the thought as if it would sling away like water after a shower.
"Alex?"
"Hmm? Oh, sorry, I was just passing by, on my way to the cafeteria. I'll see you at the meeting."
He turned and walked away. Toni's personal life was her own. Period. End of story. He had enough to worry about on his own, thank you.
Saturday, October 2nd, 1 p.m. Miami Beach
In the Miami identity, she had established that she was a recreational runner. Even though this was not something she particularly enjoyed, it was part of her cover, so she did it. Here, it was as much a part of her as the fake name and background. Oh, she'd never run a marathon, she'd say if anybody asked, but maybe a 20K someday, when she got into shape. . . .
Today, when Mora Sullivan came in from her noon run--six miles, the last two in a pouring subtropical thunder-storm--she found her computer flashing its warning-light signal.
The house alarm diodes were all green; nobody had come into the building itself. The computer warning was due to an electronic break-in--or somebody trying to.
She blotted her face and hair with the thick towel she had left by the door. It rained almost every other day here in the summer, and while hurricane season was pretty much over, early October had its share of storms. She stripped off her wet shoes and socks, dropped the fanny pack with the plastic and pretty much waterproof Glock nine in it; she peeled the spandex bra and pants off, and finished toweling herself mostly dry before she started for the computer.
She put the towel on the office chair, sat naked upon the damp terrycloth and said, "Security program, log on."
The voxax brought the log up on-screen. Given her choice, Sullivan preferred real-time computer work; she didn't much care for VR, since it meant she had to effectively blind and deafen herself to ride the net.
She scanned the program. Somebody had probed at the Selkie's com circuit. They had only gotten a couple of bounces into the maze she'd constructed before they'd lost the signal, but even that was something of a surprise. Whoever had tried it was pretty good, professional-class.
She hoped they weren't good enough to spot the leeches she'd left for potential invaders.
"Security, backtrack the intruder."
A series of numbers and letters flashed on the screen, followed by a map. Arcing, bright blue lines lit as the leech program fed the intruder's initial signal back to her computer through the series of firewalls and shunts. When it reached New York City, the dot representing the intruder pulsed a bright light, and an electronic address lit and also pulsed red underneath the dot.
So the invader was good, but not great. The leech had been undetected. Given what she had paid for the leeches, that was not a big surprise.
"Security, reverse directory, e-mail unabridged, cross-check this address."
More letter-and-number crawl sped up the screen.
A name flashed: Ruark Electronic Services, Inc.
"Security, give me the names of the corporation officers and any holding companies for Ruark Electronic Services, Inc."
A moment passed. A list of names appeared. Heloise Camden Ruark, President and Chief Executive Officer; Richard Ruark, Vice-President; Mary Beth Campbell, Treasurer. A public company, incorporated in the state of Delaware, June 2005, blah, blah, blah--
Well, well, well. And look here, the owner of seventy-five percent of the outstanding shares was something called "Electronic Enterprises Group," which itself just happened to be--
--a wholly owned subsidiary of Genaloni Industries.
Sullivan leaned back and stared at the screen. So. Genaloni was trying to find her. She nodded. To be expected. The man wore a thin veneer of respectability, but under it, he was a thug. To a man like Genaloni, the response to a threat, whether real or imagined, was to burn all the bridges on any road leading to his castle, and then stand by the pots of boiling lead to cook anybody who might get past the rivers. Never use a needle when there was a boulder available. Genaloni would have heard about the attempt on her target's life. And since the target had seen her as a woman, and doubtless reported it so, the thug would be doubly worried. He did not trust women, and he could not abide failure. In Genaloni's league, strike one and you were out--strike two was a guarantee of bad things to come.
This was not altogether unexpected--she had halfway thought Genaloni might attempt to trace her before now--other clients had tried to get a handle on the Selkie. So far, her safeguards had been sufficient; nobody had ever gotten close.
As of now, the address and identity she had used when she'd taken the assignment from Sampson were history. Even if they found the place, there was nothing to tie it to Mora Sullivan, or any of the other aliases she used. But this was a bad sign. Genaloni was a thug, to be sure, but he was a smart thug, and a persistent one. If he was worried that the Selkie might be linked to him, he would do everything he could to remove the link. If that included having her found and killed, well, there it was. In Genaloni's jungle, self-preservation ruled. If he saw an aged, crippled lion half a mile away, going in another direction, he'd shoot it anyhow--because it might turn around someday. Who knew?
She scratched an itch on her bare left shoulder. She wouldn't be collecting anymore money for the target she had missed, but that was not really important. For her own pride, she would finish that job, payment or not. That was a given. And while she didn't think Genaloni's hackers could find her, even the smallest possibility that they might was too much to ignore. She would not spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. She would finish the job on the target in D.C., but she would also have to do something about Genaloni.
And after that? Well, maybe it was time for the Selkie to retire. When the winds of change blew
up a line of tornadoes, a smart woman took cover--or moved elsewhere.
Saturday, October 2nd, 1:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.
"Tyrone?"
Tyrone instantly recognized the Voice of Doom, even though the phone's visual was off. "Uh, yeah."
"This is Bella. Did you lose my number?"
"Uh, no, I was just about to call you."
That's good, said the voice of self-preservation, hiding behind its rock. Lie. First a little one, then a big one. Tell her you have a fatal disease and you can't leave the house!
"Standout. So, can you come over this afternoon?"
No! No! A million quadrillion times no!
"Uh, sure. I can do that. Come over. I mean, to your house."
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