by Tom Clancy
Some of the paintings, collages, assemblages, and sculptures were, in Jay’s view, flat-out, turn-away-and-make-a-face ugly.
What was amazing about many of these awful artworks was the bid-lists under them, with ten or twelve names and escalating offers.
Rachel did notice this and remarked on it: “Somebody would pay two thousand dollars in real money for that?”
Jay laughed. Apparently, it was true: Beauty was in the eye of the beholder. If he’d had time, Jay would have checked out the faces that matched the names of the bidders on some of the more hideous pictures. . . .
But not now. Now, he had spotted his quarry—at least he thought so. A tall man with red makeup, but dressed in neo-cowboy clothes—kind of a futuristic version—and with a big, low-slung holstered gun strapped to his hip. The gun had a multicolored ribbon tied around it and the holster—a “peace bond,” Jay had been told. The convention runners frowned on the idea of fans waving guns, knives, or swords around—and the hotel staff really didn’t like it. What better setup for a robbery? A bunch of armed people wearing disguises? You could just walk up to the front desk, point a gun at the clerk, and rob the place, and nobody’d have a clue who you were. Jay could imagine the interview with the local police:
“Yes, sir, it was a Wookiee, all right. Yeah, he just harned and growled and said, ‘Give me the credits or die, Earthman!’ What was I gonna do? How would that look in the paper, if I got shot and killed by Chewbacca?”
“That’s him, I think,” he told Rachel.
“He’s wearing a gun in here?”
Jay explain the convention policy about such things. “Yeah, if you wear a costume featuring a weapon, you have to keep it holstered or sheathed, or whatever, and the ribbon is attached to do that.”
“Like that will keep it safe?”
Jay shrugged. “If you get spotted in the halls or elevators twirling your blaster or carving the air with your enchanted sword, Security will kick your ass out, and good luck catching a cab dressed like the Crab Man from Mars. . . .”
She nodded, but didn’t smile.
Right now, convention security and social mores weren’t Jay’s worry. The Red Rider was just ahead, and he needed to stay with him until he found out where he was staying and under what name.
“Stay loose,” he said. “Let’s see where he goes.”
They were doing fine. The guy was heading for the door, when all of a sudden the scenario crashed, a full whiteout.
What the hell—?
The Pentagon
Washington, D.C.
They came out of VR, and Lewis said, “What happened?”
“Damned if I know. Software glitch, maybe.”
“You want to go back in?”
Jay shook his head. “No. I have a meeting with my boss at HQ this afternoon, I need to get back.” He started to strip off his gear. His neck was tight. He did a head-roll to loosen it, rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Too much chair time.”
“Here.” She stood, walked over behind him. “I know just the thing. Lean forward a little.”
Jay blinked, but did what she said.
She stood behind his chair and dug her thumbs into the base of his skull, started kneading. It felt great.
“Wow,” he said, “that’s good.”
“Had a friend once who was a masseuse. She showed me how to work the trigger points.” She put her left hand on his forehead and supported the weight of his head while she continued to work the back of his neck, using her thumb and fingertips.
Oh, man, that felt good. . . . If she moved her left hand, his head was gonna fall right off. . . .
“Better?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Okay, turn a little to your right and lean back.”
He did—and found his head pillowed against her firm breasts. She must be in a squat behind him. She began to rub his forehead with both hands, pressing his head into her bosom harder.
He couldn’t help himself. He moaned.
“Like that, huh?”
Of a moment, Jay knew that if he were to turn his head around and put his face into her boobs, she wouldn’t mind in the least. That she would join him in the chair, and that the massage would turn into something else entirely. . . .
Jesus!
He leaned away. “Much as I’d like to spend the rest of the day doing this, I really do have to get back to HQ.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “We can finish another time.” She smiled.
No question about it. She was letting him know she was available.
How did he feel about that?
Thrilled. Scared. Excited.
And guilty . . .
27
Washington, D.C.
Kent toweled himself off as he stepped from the shower. He was about done when he heard the music coming from the bedroom. He smiled, wrapped the towel around his waist, and headed that way.
Sitting naked on the edge of her bed, Jen played a guitar he hadn’t seen before. She had some kind of leather-strap thing with suction cups on it stuck to the side of the instrument, propped on her bare left leg.
Nude with guitar. A beautiful sight.
She was playing Nelson Riddle’s theme for the television show Route 66.
The original music had been a full orchestral thing and a single guitar couldn’t address it that way, of course, but what she played was lovely. It brought back a lot of old memories. He remembered the show from when he’d been a little boy—it was about two young men, Tod and Buz, who knocked around the country in a red Corvette convertible, having adventures along the old Route 66. Today, much of that road was Interstate highway, but back in the late fifties and early sixties, when the show ran, it was mostly two-lane, undivided, untamed.
Kent leaned against the wall and listened as Jen played. It might not have been composed for a classical guitar, but it sounded great the way she did it.
When she was finished, she smiled at him.
“Wonderful. But you can’t possibly remember the old television series,” he said, “because I barely do and I’m ten years older than you.”
She shook her head. “Before my time, except in reruns on the Nostalgia Channel. I saw an episode once—it was silly, but I did like the music, so I transcribed it for this.”
“I watched the show when I was a boy, eight or nine, I think. Martin Milner, George Maharis, driving their ’Vette through the little towns, looking for a place where they could belong. The world was a simpler place, back then.”
“Better, you think?”
“Not necessarily, especially if you were black or a woman or had polio. Or if your father or uncle or brother was on the ground in Korea. But in some small ways, yeah. I can recall going on a couple of trips with my folks when I was little, along the old Route 66. Main Street, U.S.A., it went right through the heartland, mostly between Chicago and L.A. I remember gas stations and truck stops and ratty motels where my father would stop. Made the run in an old woody station wagon once. I drank Coke out of little bottles. I remember the hot sun beating down in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico. Eating bologna sandwiches with mustard on white bread my mother made. Most of the route was upgraded years ago, a lot of it is I-40 now, I think. Now, the only place you see that kind of stuff is in museums. . . .”
He allowed the memory to fade. He looked at her. “New guitar?”
“No, an old one. From Romania, called a Troubador. Spruce top, maple sides and back. I got it off the Internet a few years back for a knock-around. It was cheap, I didn’t have to worry about it if it got damaged or swiped. Put new tuners on it, and it turned out to have a really good sound for the couple hundred bucks I paid for it.”
“What’s the little leather doohickey on the side?”
“Called a Neck-Up. Some longtime players eventually develop nerve or muscle problems with one foot propped on a stool, so somebody came up with this. Keeps the nec
k at the right angle so you can sit without your leg being cocked up. I use it sometimes when I’m somewhere a foot-stool doesn’t work well.” She waved at the bed.
He didn’t say anything to that. He just stood there, smiling.
She was just full of surprises.
After a moment she looked up at him, saw the expression on his face, and her own grew serious. Gently, she laid the guitar aside, then turned back to him once more.
“Come on back to bed, Abe,” she said, her voice soft and throaty.
He dropped the towel and his memories and did so. Yesterday was great, he’d had a full life and a lot of wonderful times to look back on, but he would not trade this—this woman, this moment, this here and now—for any of them.
Pamela Robb Art Gallery
Washington, D.C.
After dinner, Marissa directed Thorn’s driver to take them to a street address a couple miles away from the restaurant.
Thorn said, “Where are we going again?”
She said, “We’re going to the Robb Art Gallery to see the Byers show.”
Thorn said, “Who?”
She smiled. “Do you ever read a paper, Tommy? Watch the news? Mike Byers, he works in glass. Stained, etched, fused—and the fused stuff is where he shines. After thirty years at it, he was ‘discovered’ a couple years ago and is now the hottest artist in the medium since Dale Chihuly.”
“Who?”
“You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”
Actually, he was—he’d seen Chihuly’s fantastic glass sculptures. Though, he recalled, those were collaborations, Chihuly had been the director and motivating force behind them.
He smiled at her. “A little.”
She shook her head, raising her eyes heavenward. “The man made a joke. Not a great joke, but nonetheless, it’s progress.”
The Pamela Robb Gallery was a place of tall, vaulted ceilings and lots of windows arranged and angled to offer sunlight to the pale walls. It being night and dark out, they had to make do with artificial light, but care had been taken in the selection and placing of that, too. There were a fair number of people milling about inside, but the place was laid out in such a way that it didn’t feel crowded when you went to view the art. Some of it was hung on the walls, some propped up on easels.
Thorn wasn’t an art expert by any means—but he found that the abstract glasswork was more emotionally evocative than he would have expected. A lot of it was black glass, geometric shapes with different-colored overlays. Some of them had pieces of copper or bronze mixed in with them. One in particular that caught his eye was called “Fuhoni-te,” three black squares set slightly apart, with a vein of red and one of blue running through them. There was another one called “Seeking a Lower Orbit,” of glass and copper. There was one named “Thebes,” another named “In the Dream Time,” a “Timebinder,” and one called “Death in Somalia.” Colorful names, for sure. His favorite title was “The Physiology of the Eleventh Dimensional Cloned Feline.”
Many of them were small—he remarked on this to Marissa.
“These things have to be fired in a kiln, between thirteen hundred and fifteen hundred degrees. Bigger is harder to work with, and needs a larger kiln. Most of his early stuff was small. Once he got the feel for it, he started stretching.”
“How do you know all this?”
“If you’d looked as we came in, you’d have seen it printed out on a card by the door.”
“Oh.”
They came to a larger panel, one that looked almost like slightly misshapen piano keys, with eighteen segments that were skinny, narrow not-quite-rectangles, all done in different iridescent hues, with black spaces between them and three thin lines of black across the bases. The second-to-last shape on the right had a small red dot of glass on the bottom. The whole thing looked to be sixteen, eighteen inches wide, two-and-a-half, three inches tall, framed and matted so that the entire piece was maybe a foot by two feet.
“I like this one a lot,” Thorn said. “Called ‘Chromatic Sequence.’ ”
Marissa looked at the price tag. “Six thousand dollars,” she said. “But it’s already sold.”
“Too bad. I could see that hanging over our fireplace.”
“We have a fireplace?”
“If you want one.”
She shook her head.
He reached into his jacket pocket and took out the velvet-covered box. “Oh, I almost forgot. Here.”
She knew it was jewelry—the size and shape of the box was a giveaway—and she almost certainly knew it was an engagement ring. But she didn’t know. . . .
She opened the box. “Oh, wow!”
The ring was simple, a fairly plain band of yellow gold, with a diamond-cut emerald inset into it. He’d had it made by a jeweler in Amsterdam and couriered to him when it was done.
“How did you know?”
“I asked your grandmother.”
She slipped the ring onto her finger. “Perfect fit. You never asked my size.”
“Grandma Ruth has your high school ring in a box at her house. She says you haven’t gotten any fatter since then.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Thank you, Tommy. It’s gorgeous.”
“Not as gorgeous as you.”
She hugged him.
Life felt pretty good at that moment.
Washington, D.C.
Carruth had a pretty good gun safe, a five-hundred-pound Liberty, that would hold a dozen long guns and twice that many handguns, though he didn’t have that many on hand. The safe would protect his hardware from bad guys, mostly, but if somebody kicked in the door with a search warrant, that would be the first place they’d want to look. They’d be able to get it open sooner or later, so putting the BMF there wouldn’t help. If he was going to keep it, it had to hide somewhere else.
The problem was, cops had seen just about every kind of hiding place there was in a house—toilet tanks, the freezer, under the fridge. Dope fiends apparently got very clever about their stashes—hung down inside walls behind light-switch plates or electrical outlets, inside fake cans of Ajax or hollowed-out books. Cops would move furniture, look behind drawers, under loose floorboards, inside stereo speakers or television cabinets. The only way to hide something as big as the BMF in a house would be to put it somewhere nobody would ever think to look, and that wasn’t likely with detectives who’d been on the job for ten or fifteen years. They had seen just about every place. He was still thinking about a spot they wouldn’t look—under the safe? outside, up in a tree?—when the latest throwaway cell phone chirped.
“Yeah?”
“We need to meet. At the new place. Tomorrow, six A.M.”
“Trouble?”
“Just be there.”
Well, wasn’t that just dandy? What this time? Another terrorist?
For now, he stuck the gun back into the safe. He’d figure out a hiding place later.
Jane’s Pottery Shop and Cafe
Washington, D.C.
“You outdid yourself this time,” Carruth said. “Coffee tastes like it was made out of old cigarette butts.”
She waved that off. She didn’t want to tell him that Jay was hot on his trail, but she allowed as how Gridley had something, only he hadn’t shared it with her, and it sounded big, to see what Carruth would say. Give him a chance to come clean. Not, at this point, that it would really matter, but just to see.
He didn’t bite. He said, “So if this clown is such a linchpin at Net Force and the whole place revolves around him, why don’t I just put one behind his ear and let’s get rid of the problem?”
Lewis shook her head. “Once upon a time that might have worked, but not anymore. Apparently, Mr. Gridley used to play his cards pretty close to his vest and something like that happened—a guy Net Force was chasing ran Gridley off the road and shot him. He was in the hospital unconscious for a time and there was some doubt he was going to make it. He had vital data locked up in his head nobody could get to. After that, he starte
d backing up his files and leaving them where his boss could get to them. Take him out, they don’t lose any of Gridley’s input—somebody else picks up the ball and runs with it. Maybe not quite as fast, but eliminating him doesn’t help us much.”
“And you don’t know what he’s got?”
“Only that he thinks it is going to break this open.”
“Can you get him to tell you?”
“I’m working on it.”
She was still hoping to maneuver Jay into her bed. And once she did, she’d make that knowledge public, and that would take Jay out of the action. He would be so busy running around trying to save his marriage that work would be the last thing on his mind.
That her last try hadn’t quite done the trick was irritating, but it was still an option. Real pheromones and a warm and willing body were still better than anything anybody had come up with in VR. He wanted her, she was sure of that, she could feel it, and she had primed his pump about as well as she could. She’d have to see if she could get it going soon.
She also didn’t bring it up that it was Carruth who was going to get killed. Stupid son of a bitch, she still couldn’t believe it. It was just a matter of setting it up and doing it, and soon. Next meeting, or the one after that, they’d meet somewhere nobody would be around. She’d come up with a good reason, and then Carruth here was going to become a major fall guy. They’d find him, and maybe that enormous gun he’d used, something to tie him to it. He was a dead man walking, he just didn’t know it yet.
Carruth nodded. “Okay. You’re the boss. But why tell me if you don’t want him erased? You’re the computer girl. You didn’t need a sit-down for that.”
“That’s not the reason. I’ve got another buyer interested,” she said. “A new player.” A lie, but how would he know? “He wants a demonstration, so we need one last raid.”
“What’s he want? A fucking tank?”