Changing of the Guard (23 page)

He had wondered why the man who called himself Rapier felt such anger at him, and for the life of him, Thorn hadn’t been able to come up with a reason. Yes, Thorn had made a lot of money in the computer software field, and that alone engendered a certain amount of resentment, but Rapier—whose name was Dennis James McManus, he had discovered—seemed personally irritated, and Thorn didn’t know him from a hole in the wall.

What Thorn had on the holoproj in front of him were the results of fencing matches from his days in college, specifically the matches at the University of Chicago all those years ago.

It didn’t take long to find the match, one he had forgotten until this very moment. He didn’t have a great memory for names, and recalling the faces of the people he’d competed against was worse. But he remembered tourneys, and individual matches, the good ones, and when he saw that he had fought McManus in the quarterfinal match, before he had lost to the great Parker King in the semifinals, he recalled the bout.

The guy had been pretty good. They had fenced to “la belle”—a tie score one point away from victory. McManus’s style was odd—he had a great lunge, fast and strong, but his tip control was so-so, and his riposte slow. And he liked throwing flicks, too, which were legal, but irritating. Even so, he might have won the match had he not been penalized.

McManus liked to infight—and was good at it, if a bit sloppy. Early in the match he had stepped in too close and bumped Thorn with his hip, getting his touch disallowed and earning himself a warning for corps-a-corps. At la belle, when Thorn threw a feint, McManus bound his blade and stepped in close, his bell guard high, tip landing solidly on Thorn’s side, but again he came in too fast and too far. He had run into Thorn again, harder this time, and the director again disallowed the touch.

McManus had ripped off his mask to argue with the director, without asking or receiving permission. A stupid error, and inexcusable at that level of competition. When the director called him on it, he popped off and actually shook his blade at the official. McManus had been disqualified on the spot. That had cost him and his team, the match had been awarded to Thorn.

Maybe McManus could have won on points, maybe not, but the rules were the rules.

Thorn could find nothing else to explain it, but it seemed so . . . petty. How would it be to live your life like that? Hanging on to something that small for so long?

He considered how he was going to handle it, and decided that a simple and direct response was best. He flipped on the voxax circuit and said into the microphone:

“You lost the match. Knock it off.”

He sent that to McManus’s e-mail address. It wasn’t necessary for him to say he knew who McManus was—that he was able to send him a message told the guy that. And that he referred to the long-ago match was enough to show the man that he knew why McManus was dogging him. A smart man would back away. Even a fairly thick one would see the writing on the wall.

If McManus kept sending his crap, he couldn’t say he hadn’t been given a chance. He didn’t want to use his position as a personal hammer, but Thorn had the right of every other citizen when it came to harassment, and while he would undoubtedly get a faster response because of who he was, he had the right to see that McManus didn’t keep bothering him. What the man was doing
was
illegal, at least technically, and a call to his server would stop it. If McManus switched servers and tried under another name, Thorn would still know who he was, and he could do worse to him if he felt like it.

Given the situation with Jay, this was a minor irritant, but at least it was one about which he could do something. Now, back to the problem at hand.

Natadze had taken an early morning commuter jet from the District to New York, picked up a rental car at the airport, then driven to Cox’s estate. Even though his employer’s private phones were fitted with the latest in scrambling devices, there were some things they simply did not discuss except when they were alone, and in a room that had been swept for bugs.

Who was to say that the company who made the scrambler had not made a way to unscramble it at their desire? And that they had not provided that way to somebody with an interest in such cloaked conversations? One knew that the government lied to its citizens on a daily basis about so many things, and, under the guise of national security, would snoop anywhere it wished. It had been more than a decade since the United States lost its innocence and joined the rest of the world’s harsher reality.

Cox’s study at his home was a safe room—shielded against stray radio or microwaves, checked daily for listening devices, with triple-paned windows polarized and vibratored to thwart lasers or directional microphones that might possibly be aimed at them from miles away, however unlikely that was.

What could not be seen or heard could not come back to haunt you.

Natadze sat on the brown leather couch, Cox in one of his form-chairs.

“Do you have any questions?”

Natadze shook his head. “No, sir. I understand my mission. I am to find out what the Russians have, to the limits of the Doctor’s knowledge—where that information might be found, who has it, how it might be accessed—and then I am to find and delete everything.”

“Including the Doctor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t want any mistakes this time, Eduard.”

“There will be none.”

Cox nodded. “Good. Have you given the matter of Net Force any further thought?”

“I have. I am considering ways to make certain no problems arise from that end again.”

“Good. I leave it in your hands, Eduard.”

When he opened his eyes, Jay saw Saji sitting in a chair three feet away. She smiled at him. He could smell her, a rich, warm, musky scent. And his vision and hearing both seemed much sharper, too—the light was actinic and bright, the hum and click of the systems monitor next to his bed seemed unusually loud.

Standing behind his wife’s chair was Toni Michaels.

“Hey, Jay,” Saji said.

“Hey, Little Momma,” he said. “Are we having fun yet?”

Her smile grew, and Toni’s grin lit at the same time.

“Finally. What do you need to know?” Saji said.

“Did they get the guy who shot me?”

“Not yet.”

“How long was I out?”

“A few days. More than a couple, less than thirty.”

He nodded. “Hey, Toni. I thought you were gone.”

“We forgot something, had to come back.” To Saji, she said, “I’m going to go call Alex and John.”

Saji nodded. “Good.”

The door to the hospital room opened and a nurse hurried in as Toni departed.

The nurse, a short, dark-skinned woman of maybe fifty, said, “Mr. Gridley. Awake at last.”

“That would be me, yes.”

The nurse came over, checked the monitor next to the bed, and smiled. “Dr. Grayson will want to have a word with you. Stay right there, would you?”

“That would be me, staying right here.”

The nurse took off, and Saji reached over the bed’s railing and took his hand. “I knew you’d be back.”

“Good that you did. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to make it. I’ve been trying for what seems like forever.”

“You knew you were in a coma?”

“Yeah. I figured it out after a while. Anything else broke but my brain?” He put his hand on his head, felt a bandage patch.

“Nope. And the head injury wasn’t all that bad. All that solid bone.”

Jay grinned. “How are you doing?”

“Me? I’m fine.”

“But you’re pregnant. We haven’t had a chance to talk about that.”

Saji smiled. “We will have plenty of time to talk about it,” she said.

“It’s weird, thinking about having a baby. A new person.”

“Yes.”

“But I’m happy about it,” he said. “Really.”

“Me, too.”

They sat there for a few seconds, just beaming at each other. The door opened and Toni slipped back into the room. Saji turned to look at her.

“I called Alex. He and John are on the way. Alex said he would call work and let everybody know.” She smiled at Jay. “You’ve had a parade of visitors in here the last week.”

“All come to look at Vegetable Boy?” he said.

“Yep. Some of them wanted to cover you with fertilizer, help you grow and all.”

“So, not that I’m feeling vengeful or anything, but why haven’t they caught the crazed road-rage guy who shot me?”

Toni said, “Well, it turns out that it wasn’t road rage. There was a bug on your car, and current thinking is that the guy was following you.”

Jay paused. “Why?”

“Don’t have that part yet. Maybe you angered somebody with your sparkling personality.”

Jay started to shake his head, but found that hurt. “I don’t believe I have any enemies who’d want to shoot me. Certainly nobody comes to mind.”

“If it’s not personal then it’s business. Something you worked on, something you are currently working on.”

Jay thought about that for a few seconds, but he was too muzzy to concentrate. And he felt tired all of a sudden.

Saji caught it. “Just rest, Jay. We’ll get all the other stuff sorted out later.”

“Yeah.”

He breathed slowly, and tried not to think about it.

Fat chance.

The doctor arrived. She was a tall, thin woman, with pale skin and lots of freckles that likely meant her cut-short, carrot-top hair was natural.

“Mr. Gridley. How are you feeling?”

“Feeling good, but you’re the expert. You tell me, how am I doing?”

“Except for being in a coma, you are in good shape. And since you are no longer in a coma, I would say you are doing very well indeed.”

“Why was I down so long?”

She shrugged. “We don’t know. We believe that it was something of a carryover from your earlier incident. To be honest, though, there is still much about the brain that we don’t understand.”

Jay nodded slowly. “Can I go home?”

Dr. Grayson shook her head. “No, not just yet. We’d like to make sure you don’t nod off again. We’ll run a few more tests, keep an eye on you for a day or two. If everything checks out—and I expect that it will—you will be able to go home in a few days.”

“Thanks.”

She nodded. “Welcome back, Mr. Gridley.”

After the doctor left, Jay looked at Saji. “Hey.”

Toni said, “I think I need to go to the powder room. I’ll come back when Alex and John get here. We’ll knock.”

Jay laughed, but that hurt his head.

Natadze waited until the target was in the shower before disabling the magnetic alarm sensor at the back door. He used a powerful rare-earth magnet he’d taken from the head of an electric toothbrush, sliding it between the top of the door and the inset switch mounted in the top of the jamb. The magnet would prevent the switch in the sensor from triggering when he opened the door. The setup was standard, easily defeatable with the right equipment. The PDA he carried was more than it seemed; it had a magnetometer and both an ultrasonic and an infrared sensor. Between the three he could ID most alarm triggers.

When going after a bear in his own den, one of the most important factors was the timing: It was best to catch them in a vulnerable state. Sleeping was good. In the shower was good. A tiny microphone near the water meter had alerted him about the shower.

Of course the target didn’t
know
he was being watched. He probably felt he’d done enough to stay out of Cox’s grasp. With an alarm system, he probably believed that he would be safe in his own house. Well, if he thought so, he was wrong, as those who thought the world was a safe place usually were.

Especially those who should know better.

The lock was simple, a standard Yale model, an easy pick. He used a torsion tool and a vibrating pick gun, and it was but a matter of fifteen seconds before he opened the door, scanning in front of him with the PDA.

The room was clean, no sensors waiting for him. He was in.

Spycraft had appartenly fallen on hard times. It should not be this easy.

Then again, Natadze told himself, maybe it
wasn’t
this easy. Maybe the target had tricks yet to play. The most diabolical man Natadze had ever known had been a Russian. It did not pay to generalize about such things, of course, either way, but it did pay to move with caution. Overconfidence was a killer. A simple alarm and lock might be ways to gull someone like Natadze, who, feeling cocky, would pay for it with his life.

He needed this, especially after his failure with Gridley. He needed a challenge. Most of all, though, he needed to succeed.

He was sure the target knew where the data were. In the information age, erasing backups could make that-which-had-been into that-which-never-was. He would not fail Cox again. If he was to succeed, he would have to move with care.

Now was the time to be the most precise. Like the intricate fingerwork of a long solo, every motion, every step needed to be just
so
. Even though he could still hear the shower, it didn’t mean the target couldn’t be alerted very quickly, or arm himself. The other half of knowing when to strike was understanding your own weakness: Realizing his vulnerability in the shower, the man might well have put some kind of weapon or warning system in place. Or both. Natadze did. He set both an IR and a motion sensor alarm when he was occupied at home to the extent he might not see or hear a prowler enter. He kept a Glock in a plastic bag in his own shower, kept another pistol at hand when he was on the toilet, and slept with a gun under his pillow. Once, during an electrical storm, a nearby lightning strike and blast of thunder had caused a window to shatter in his bedroom. He had very nearly put a bullet through the broken pane before he came fully awake. Only years of making certain of a target before pulling the trigger saved his neighbor’s house from an errant round.