by Tom Clancy
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.
Goswell shook his head. Damned bad show, this. Was he to believe that Peel’s formerly faultless memory had begun to malfunction? And only in instances concerning Bascomb-Coombs? What a terrible world it had become when one had to have a trusted watcher himself being watched.
The question was, of course, what were these two about? That they were in league together certainly meant something.
Well. He had not gotten to be a general of industry without learning how to figure such things out.
He rattled the cubes in his nearly empty glass rather loudly.
“Milord? Another drink?”
“Yes, please. Oh, and Applewhite? See if you can find Major Peel, would you, and have him drop round after dinner?”
“Certainly, milord.”
Goswell stared into the depths of the melting ice in his glass as Applewhite went to fetch more gin. He would take the quisling Peel’s measure, one way or another. A damned shame, really. Good thing the boy’s father was gone. It would break his heart to know his son had betrayed a trust.
Sunday, April 10th
London, England
A light rain had begun falling, and Ruzhyó figured this would be a perfect excuse.
It was Sunday, and in some cities that meant much of the commerce would be shut down, but not here in London. He caught a cab near the British Museum and gave the driver the address he wanted. It was not far from a shop on a side street near Regent’s Park, a tiny slot of a storefront, long and narrow, that specialized in handcrafted umbrellas and canes. You could easily drop a couple of hundred in such a place on a handmade walking stick or bumbershoot, considerably more if you so wished. They were big on such things here, the accoutrements of a gentleman, and likely the shop could make ends meet just with such sales alone; however, there were other items to be had by a knowledgeable buyer.
The cab arrived a block from the destination. Ruzhyó paid the fare, reflexively gave enough of a tip so the hack wouldn’t remember him as being either cheap or extravagant, and alighted from the taxi. The rain was coming down a little harder, and Ruzhyó made certain he didn’t appear to notice the man following him as he walked. Not that his shadow was totally inept, but it would take somebody far better to tail him unnoticed once he was looking for such a thing.
When he arrived at the shop he wanted, he made a show of looking irritated at the weather, shook the water from his windbreaker, and offered what he hoped would seem a spur-of-the-moment decision to duck into the place.
It would all be for nothing if Peel knew what the shop’s merchandise included, but unless things had changed recently, the Brits did not have a clue about the umbrella store.
The meeting with Peel had been interesting. His claim that he had spotted Ruzhyó by having every passport picture of every foreigner entering the country compared to a list of known agents seemed far-fetched, but Peel had managed to spot him somehow. And he had managed to put a watcher on him. Perhaps it was just luck. Or perhaps Peel’s claim was true. Either way, the offer of employment had been forthcoming. Ruzhyó hadn’t been all that interested in work, but then again, it wasn’t as if he was in a hurry, and Peel could make it easier for him to travel, especially given all the computer problems of late. A short stopover might be to his benefit. The assignment, to stand by for a possible elimination of an English lord who just happened to be Peel’s employer was intriguing, although Ruzhyó doubted he would actually attempt the deletion.
Peel’s flimsy explanation as to why he couldn’t do the job himself or have one of his men do it wasn’t fooling anybody. It was obvious that he needed a scapegoat, a foreign agent who could be blamed for the assassination, and who better than a sneaky CIS former Spetsnaz killer? One who might well be shot full of holes himself in the aftermath of the killing while trying to escape, thus tying up all loose ends?
Ruzhyó allowed himself a small smile as the umbrella shop clerk took notice of him and nodded. Were he Peel, that’s how he might set it up. Hire an expendable shooter, then delete him once the job was done; all very neat, if not terribly smart. Sooner or later, somebody would get around to asking why a man on the run from U.S. authorities would bother to stop off for a bit of murder in the U.K., motive being a necessary part of such a thing. And even the plodding British authorities would turn over every rock in sight investigating the murder of such a highly regarded man. They were still very class-conscious here. But the Brits were shortsighted about some things, always had been. Had they been paying attention, they’d probably still rule most of the world. Hubris did awful things to an empire. Likely it was that Peel had a touch of that himself.
“May I help you, sir?”
“I need a special umbrella. One with more . . . heft than the ordinary.”
The clerk’s smile never wavered. “Ah, yes. I’ll have the manager, Mr. O’Donnell, right out.”
The clerk disappeared into a door behind the counter. Ruzhyó pretended to browse. There were fantastic handles on some of the canes and umbrellas, made of ivory or exotic woods, carved in fanciful shapes. Here was a tiger, there a snake, over here, a nude woman arched backward in a graceful half circle.
“Good afternoon, sir. I’m Mr. O’Donnell. I understand you need a special umbrella?”
Ruzhyó nodded at the tall, sandy-haired man in the dark suit. “Yes.”
“Might I ask who recommended our shop to you?”
“That would be Colonel Webley-Scott.”
“Ah, I see. And how is the colonel these days?”
The identity code was the same. Ruzhyó said, “Still dead, last I heard.”
The manager smiled and nodded. “If you will step this way, sir?”
“I have a tail. No connection to you.”
“Not to worry. He won’t see through the window unless he has X-ray vision. Is he likely to come in?”
“I doubt that he is that stupid.”
“Well, if he does, he’ll see you come out of the door to the WC.”
Ruzhyó followed O’Donnell through the water closet and through a hidden door to a small private room. There was a tall, green, antique safe on claw feet in one corner. As the manager opened the safe, he said, “Would you be wanting something edged or projectile, sir?”
“Do you have a multiple-projectile model?”
“We have. A five-shooter. Small-caliber, I’m afraid, only .22.”
“That will do.”
“Here we are, then.”
He offered what appeared to be a standard umbrella to Ruzhyó, with the J-shaped wooden handle perhaps a hair thicker and heavier than normal.
“Handle unscrews here. . . . Inside, you’ll notice the back of the cylinder. It’s a revolver, you see.”
Ruzhyó looked at the five small holes in the tiny cylinder inside the umbrella shaft. The firing pin and rest of the action was in the removed J-section. Ingenious.
“One puts the shells in like so, threads the handle back on until
it locks, thus. Trigger unfolds from the handle, thus, use this little notch, much like a penknife blade.”
He used his thumbnail to bring the flush-mounted lever out.
“It is double-action only, of course, and there aren’t any sights, but a man proficient with firearms can point-shoot it rather well. Barrel is rifled steel, as good as most commercial long arms. The end cap is a soft, rubbery material, no impediment to the bullet if you don’t have time to remove it, and actually offers a bit of sounddamping, though it must be replaced after several shots. The weapon comes with spare end caps, of course.”
Ruzhyó took the disguised carbine, hefted it. Normally, he did not like to go about armed if he did not specifically need a weapon. This was not a normal time.
“You have fired it?”
“I have.”
“And is there a place where I can test it?”
O’Donnell nodded, approving. “That box over there. It’s full of baffles and has a steel backstop.” He wasn’t offended. Only a fool would trust his life to a weapon he had not personally tested to see if it would work.
“Ammunition?”
“I have some Stingers, solids and hollow-points.”
“Excellent,” he said. “How much?”
“Two thousand.”
“Done.”
O’Donnell smiled.
The tail was across the street in a sandwich shop, watching through the somewhat foggy window. A young man, hair cut short, who could have been Huard’s brother from his general look. The rain was still coming down, so Ruzhyó held his newly acquired and fully loaded short carbine up and utilized the secondary function. The black silk canopy expanded crisply on its titanium struts and locked into place. The thing had fired five rounds without any problem. It worked fine as an umbrella, too. A wonderful and deadly toy. Most people did not realize that an ultra-high-velocity .22 solid bullet fired from a long barrel would punch right through standard policeissue class II Kevlar body armor. Police agencies understandably did not like to talk about such things.
Ruzhyó smiled to himself as he walked away from the shop.
Peel would get him weapons, of course, but it was much better to have a hidden trump, just in case.
Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
26
Sunday, April 10th
Somewhere in the British Raj, India
The heat and dampness were oppressive, and the sour odor of the tiger’s spoor permeated the leaden air. He was close; the tiger and the scent of his scat were mixed in with the stink of Jay’s own fear.
Jay and his native guide followed the footprints across an open stretch of ground, easily seen now in the soft dirt. No doubt of it, no way to mistake the trail. It led across the open stretch into a dense patch of brush: fatboled trees, short, thick bushes, a bordering stand of big bamboo.
Jay shifted his sweaty grip on the Streetsweeper, took a long and ragged deep breath, and exhaled slowly. The tiger had gone into that thicket, and if Jay wanted it, he was going to have to go in after it. The prospect filled him with a dread as cold as a bucket of liquid nitrogen, a fright bordering on the edge of stark, gibbering terror.
Jay stopped walking. What he wanted to do was bail from this scenario, pull off his gear, and shut down his computer. He wanted to find a South Sea island somewhere in Real Time, to go there and lie in the sunshine on an empty beach for a month, to do nothing but bake and drink something cold with rum and coconut in it. The last thing on earth he wanted to do was traipse into that fecund wall of jungle ahead, stalking the thing that had crashed his wetware and put the fear of death into his mind. And if he did it, it might well be the last thing he ever did.
But he had to go. If he didn’t, he might as well hang it up as a player; if he didn’t find and destroy this beast, he was as good as brain-dead.
He took another deep breath and let it out. “Let’s go,” he said.
They were almost to the wood when his native guide said, “Sahib! Behind us!”
Jay spun and saw the tiger charging them, impossibly fast.
He had maybe half a second, and he knew it wouldn’t be enough. “Bail!” he screamed.
Sunday, April 10th
Washington, D.C.
Jay fell out of VR into his apartment, heart pounding, the panic filling him. The tiger! The tiger! He couldn’t even breathe.
At his core, he knew he had to go back before it got away. He had to go back. He wanted to scream, to cry, to run, anything but what he had to do.
Instead, he said, “Resume!”
Sunday, April 10th
Somewhere in the British Raj, India
Jay arrived in time to see the huge tiger sinking its terrible fangs into his detection program—the native guide—mangling it into a bloody ruin.
Poor Mowgli.
Jay snapped the shotgun up as the tiger realized he had returned. The great beast coughed, roared, and spun to face him. No hesitation, it charged—
—Jay stood his ground, aimed—
—fifty feet away, forty feet, thirty—
—he squeezed the trigger. The shotgun bucked against his shoulder, lifted from the recoil. He fired again, too fast, too high—
—but the first blast hit the charging monster. It screamed in surprise and pain, sheared off, and ran for the forest. Jay saw blood on one of the tiger’s shoulders as it wheeled around and ran.
He had hit it! It was fleeing! It wasn’t invincible!
A surge of triumph washed his fear away. Jay had faced it down, shot it, driven it off!
The victory was short-lived, though.
Now what he had was a wounded man-eater hiding in the bush. That wasn’t going to make things any easier.
That didn’t matter. He had to go after it, and he didn’t have time to call up another warning program. He had to go now!
Jay ran for the jungle.
Sunday, April 10th
The Yews, Sussex, England
Peel stood by the greenhouse, wishing he had a cigarette. He had quit smoking years ago, a matter of discipline more than anything, a test of his will. Everybody knew it was bad for you, but as a soldier, he had always expected he would die in the field somewhere; he didn’t expect to live long enough for the fags to get him. Besides, his grandfather on his mother’s side had smoked two packs a day for almost seventy years, and had died at ninety-four from injuries sustained in a fall, so a lot of it was genetics. Drank whiskey every day right until the end, too. No, Peel had stopped because he wanted to prove to himself that he could. What was the old joke? Quitting smoking is easy, hell, I’ve done it a dozen times.
The rain had stopped; there was a patch of clear sky directly overhead, and the gathering darkness sported a few stars. It was quiet, calm, with no signs of any problems from his troops around the estate. Goswell had called him in for a visit; they’d had a pleasant drink. There was all that money sitting in a bank. Bascomb-Coombs was about his business, and if it went as well as it had gone thus far, Peel would be rich and powerful beyond belief in the not-too-distant future. Especially since, once the scientist’s plans came to fruition, Peel planned to take him out and take over himself.
On the face of it, Peel didn’t see how things could be much better. However . . .
Something was wrong.
There was nothing to point a finger at, no focus for his unease, but on some instinctual level, he felt it. There was a danger lurking here somewhere. Perhaps a cigarette wouldn’t help him figure out what it was, but smoking had always settled his thoughts, had given him time to ponder problems. Like Sherlock Holmes with his pipe, perhaps.
Well. He wasn’t about to fire up again because of some vague disquiet. A walk around the grounds might serve as well, and he was trying that, but so far, nothing concrete had loomed. It would present itself, if indeed it existed, in due time. It always did. The only question about that was, would he figure it out in time to marshal his defenses against it?
> Whatever it was. There was the question.
Monday, April 11th
Washington, D.C.
Tyrone walked down the hall toward his first class, threading his way through the other students, each hurrying toward his or her own rendezvous with education.
“Hey, Ty.”
He stopped and turned, recognizing the voice from those two words.
Belladonna Wright.
“Hey, Bella.”
She wore a tightly wrapped blue dress that fit like spray paint and stopped a foot above her knees, matching thick-soled sandals that added four inches to her height, and she had her long hair up in some kind of curly do that made her look taller still. Two steps and he could touch her.
“How you doin’?”
He shrugged. “Okay. How about you?”
“Okay. I saw you out with your boomerang the other day.”
“Yeah.” Why was she talking to him? After he had seen her kissing that slackbrain at the mall and called her on it, she had dumped him flatter than two-dee. They hadn’t spoken since. And here she was, passing the time of day like nothing had happened.
“Haven’t seen you at the mall lately,” she said. She smiled.
“Haven’t been there much.”
“You should check out the new food court. It’s terrifaboo.”
“Yeah, maybe I will.”
She flashed another of her perfect smiles at him. Took a breath deep enough to push her chest out a little. A wonderful, beautiful, fabulous chest. He swallowed dryly.
