by Tom Clancy
“A theory.”
“Want to bounce it off me?”
Jay looked at the swatch of destruction that ran through the VR jungle. He had to catch up with Godzilla’s nasty brother, but the more he knew about him, the better. Anything to clarify his thoughts was good. “Sure,” he said.
Wednesday, April 13th
The Yews, Sussex, England
His lordship had gone off to his club, escorts fore and aft, and Peel was in the little church, on the telephone, currently on hold. Outside, along with Peel’s regular crew, the man from Chetsnya waited in a rental car, watching for potential enemies. He should be safe here, Peel figured, but he couldn’t bet his life on that.
What was he going to do about the bloody scientist? Should he kill him now?
Naturally, the first thing Peel had tried to do when he started worrying that maybe Bascomb-Coombs wasn’t on the level with him was to try to withdraw the million from the Indonesian bank. Had he been able to transfer the money into England, he would have felt a lot better, and that would also have gone a long way toward assuaging his fears. Unfortunately, all kinds of electronic transactions had been disrupted, courtesy of Bascomb-Coombs’s infernal computer. All Peel had been able to get from his computer log-in was a “transfer pending” notation, awaiting some final clearance that never happened.
Given the computer problems worldwide, this could have been a legitimate response. It was possible.
But it was also possible that this might be a clever ruse by Bascomb-Coombs, one easily hidden by the chaos he had himself caused. By the time things cleared up, Peel might be dead.
“This is Vice-President Imandihardjo,” came a man’s voice. “How may I help you?”
Peel turned his attention back to the phone. At last, the bloody Indonesian banker. “Right. I need to check the status of my account.”
He could almost hear the man frown. Check an account? For this you needed a vice-president? “Your name and password, please?”
Peel gave it to him.
There was a long pause. “Ah, Mr. Bellsong, yes, I see it.”
Peel shook his head. Bellsong. The song of a bell, and thus Bascomb-Coombs’s little joke: peal. Same sound, different spelling as Peel.
“You have my account information?”
“Yes, sir, I certainly do.” The VP’s voice shifted; it now had that obsequious tone that big chunks of money sometimes brought from those who weren’t rich. This was good.
“I should like to transfer part of the account into another bank.”
“Certainly, certainly. If you will give me the particulars?”
Peel rattled off his English account number and password. He would move it, and once he was sure it had cleared, he would breathe a lot easier.
A moment later, the banker said, “Ah, Mr. Bellsong, there appears to be a problem with our system.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure it’s nothing major, but I’m afraid I can’t access anything but the balance. The computer won’t let me make a transfer.”
Peel nodded to himself. Well, well.
“Hmm. It seems that there are several dozen accounts affected. I’m sure it’s only a temporary aberration.”
“You mean I can’t get my money out until it’s fixed?”
“Ah, well, I’m afraid so, yes.”
“I see.” That was all Peel needed to hear. His bowels clenched and went cold. He had a sudden, deep suspicion that what the Indonesian bank would find on closer examination would be electron money: demon dollars that glittered brightly if you looked at them peripherally, but that would turn to smoke and vanish if you tried to lay your hands on them. Bascomb-Coombs was having him on.
“I’m sure this will be cleared up very soon. If you will give me a number where I can reach you, I shall call as soon as we’ve resolved the problem.”
Right.
He gave them his number, but Peel wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for that money to clear. He’d been skewered, and he knew who was holding the shaft, too.
Time to go and have a chat with Mr. Bascomb-Coombs. Yes, indeed.
But almost as he thought this, his phone buzzed. The private line.
“Yes?”
“Hello, Terrance.” Well, well. Speak of the devil.
“Hello.”
“I’m afraid we have something of problem. It seems his lordship has given orders cutting my access to my—ah—toy. He has shut down all the apparent external lines and posted a guard to keep me from physically entering the building.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“I suspect the old boy doesn’t trust me.”
Good bloody reason for that, Peel thought. Then another thought popped up. “‘Apparent external lines,’ you said?”
Bascomb-Coombs had his visual mode off, but Peel could almost see him smile. “Very good, Terrance. Naturally, I have a few digital and microwave transceiver links carefully hidden around the hardware. Even a landline wired into the power supply, if anybody thinks to use jammers. They’d have to take it down to the floorboards to cut off my connection, and since they don’t know it’s there, they won’t. If they shut it off, they know they might not ever be able to get it up and running again.”
“I see. And what does this mean?”
“I believe we shall have to deal with the old boy. Using your area of expertise.”
“You think so?”
“I’m afraid I do. I must ring off now, but I’ll call you back shortly. Give it some thought, would you?”
The scientist broke the connection. Peel stared at the wall of his office.
God, the man had brass balls. Here he was, trying to have Peel himself iced and pretending as if nothing had happened as he ordered him to kill their mutual employer. Bloody nerve, all right.
He would, Peel realized, be better off with both of them gone. Bascomb-Coombs had to depart this mortal coil, of course; a man who tried to have you assassinated could hardly be allowed to live. And Goswell might be in his dotage, but he wasn’t completely senile. Sooner or later, he might tumble to the fact that his security chief had sold him out to the mad scientist, and that would be extremely bad. He doubted the old man would reach for his black powder shotgun to blast him, but certainly he would be able to see to it that Peel never worked in the U.K. again. With a million in the bank, such a thing hadn’t worried him, but if the money was no more than a ruse by Bascomb-Coombs, then Peel would be, in a word, screwed.
If Bascomb-Coombs went missing and his lordship fell over with a stroke or heart attack, then Peel would be in the clear, nobody to tell tales. He might not be rich, but he would still be marketable. With a spotless record under his lordship, some other rich fool would find him worthy.
Victory was better than defeat, but there were times when you had to cut your losses and retreat, to survive long enough to try another tack. He had pulled in Ruzhyó because he needed a goat for taking out the old man; but now, given the change of situation, it was better that Goswell die of natural causes, so his security chief wouldn’t look bad.
Bascomb-Coombs would simply disappear in such a way that nobody would ever find him.
Peel smiled. Yes, this was all unfortunate but not beyond repair. Time to fix things and get on with it. Kill them all—God will know his own. One of the early Popes had said that, hadn’t he? Better them than me.
34
Wednesday, April 13th
London, England
During a lull in the increasingly frantic activity at MI-6, Toni got on the com to call Carl Stewart.
“Hello?”
“Carl?”
“Ah, Toni. How are you?”
“Fine. Look, I’m up to my eyebrows in work, and I can’t see any way to get out of it for class tonight. Sorry.”
“Not a problem. We’ll miss you, but I understand.”
“Thanks.”
After a short pause, he said, “Well, you do have to eat, though, don’t you? Per
haps we can have lunch or dinner later this week?”
Toni’s stomach did a small lurch. It wasn’t the words but the tone of them that raised the alarm. Was he asking her out on a date? That would have been her most direct question, but Toni wasn’t quite ready to ask it. Should she follow that up? Or brush it off? It was moot if she said she was too busy. But, no. She had been doing more waffling lately than she liked. It was time to start facing these things head-on.
“Are we talking about two silat students getting together for a bite, Carl? Or are we talking about something else?”
“Well, I was thinking along the lines of two people who found each other’s company interesting and who had a deep interest—pentjak silat—in common.”
A date.
Toni’s knee-jerk response was to tell him she was involved with somebody and decline politely. The window for her comment opened . . . and stayed open. He was a vital man, attractive, and he had a skill she much admired. If she and Stewart went to the gelanggang—the fighting floor—for a serious match, he would win; she did not doubt it. She couldn’t say that about many people she knew. She was sure that even her own guru, now in her eighties, was no longer up to her level, and she was pretty confident she could keep up with most martial artists, men or women, when it came to one-onone, however egotistical that might be. But she knew she couldn’t defeat Carl. And that was, in its way, a large part of the attraction. She had a momentary vision of what it might be like to lie naked on a bed with this powerful and skilled man, and it was not an unattractive daydream. Not at all unattractive.
She felt a shard of guilt stab her. “I’m pretty much involved with Alex, Carl, and I appreciate it, but I think maybe we ought to keep things strictly professional.”
“Ah, too bad. But certainly I understand. I appreciate your candor. Do let me know when you can come back to class.”
“I will. Thanks.”
After she hung up, Toni had a sick feeling, a cold stirring in her gut. It had, for a moment, been tempting. More so than she wanted to admit. She could have gone down that path, and it bothered her that she had even considered it. She admired Carl, maybe even had a bit of lust for him, but she loved Alex, and there was a world of difference between those two things. For just a moment there, however, she had wondered, had felt indecision, had considered it.
“Can’t hang you for thinking” was an old saying that was true because nobody could know what was in your mind, but you couldn’t fool yourself for very long. How could it have even crossed her mind? This was bad. Bad.
Wednesday, April 13th
The Yews, Sussex, England
Ruzhyó adjusted the 9mm Firestar pistol in the clip-on holster on his hip under his windbreaker, canting the butt forward slightly to make it more comfortable. The previous handgun Peel had furnished him, the American-made Italian .22, was at the bottom of the Thames, wiped clean and broken into pieces, the frame and the barrel of which were separated by more than two miles. If anybody happened to dredge the parts up before they rusted out, assembled them, and if they ran ballistic tests and determined that the bullet in the dead man in the bookstore had come from the pistol, it wouldn’t matter, since there was nothing to connect Ruzhyó to it. But if you left nothing to chance, then chance would not be so likely to sneak up behind you and fasten its teeth in your back.
He did not much care for the new weapon, but he could use it. It was solid, well-made, a single-action, chrome-plated steel semiautomatic that operated much like the old Colt .45 military models, a reliable, small, if somewhat heavy, piece. The gun carried seven jacketed hollowpoints in the magazine and one more in the chamber with special, scored noses that would expand in a human, causing much damage. The thing had not been designed to punch paper at a range or to plink old cans in the woods but to shoot soft targets and seriously damage or kill them.
Ruzhyó smiled. For the last several years, especially in the U.S., gun makers had been under legal attacks by antigun forces. The more recent tactic had been to sue the manufacturers for not providing adequate safety devices or warnings of danger. He could not believe how foolish this was. Carried to its extreme, there would be similar warnings necessary for automobiles, knives, even matches: Caution! You might be killed if you collide with a big truck while driving this small car! Warning! This knife has a sharp edge. Do not press it against your throat! Danger! Matches can create fire that can burn you!
This gun labeling scheme seemed to him monumentally stupid to anyone with half a working brain. It was one thing to require a lock that children could not easily open, another thing to stamp on the barrel of a gun: Caution! Do not point at someone and pull the trigger! Anybody who did not understand what a gun was and what it did would not be able to read such a warning anyhow. It reminded him of the old advertisement that used to be on the electric buses in Chetsnya when he’d been young: “Are you illiterate? If so, please contact . . .”
The 9mm would do the job for Ruzhyó, and there was the umbrella to back it up. In addition, he had bought a Benchmade tactical folder, a knife that could be flicked open with a thumb, to lock its four-inch tanto-point blade rigidly into place. Given the local laws, with two guns and a knife, he was probably armed better than almost anybody walking around in this country, including most police officers. As he had in the Nevada desert, Ruzhyó felt the need to have the weapons. Things were about to go bad here; he could feel it.
He considered leaving. Simply catching a boat or train or plane for a short hop out of the country, then heading home, staying on the round to avoid directional tracking. He could do it, and Peel wouldn’t miss him in time to stop him, even if he wanted to.
Ruzhyó, however, was tired. And looking over his shoulder made him more tired. He had the Americans back there somewhere, and eventually they might figure out how to track him. He did not need another enemy dogging his trail. No, he would finish this business with Peel first, and when he left, it would be on his own terms. One way or another, he would resolve things. Once he was home, then what came, came, and he would deal with it.
Peel came out of the converted church and nodded in his direction before setting off for his own car. Ruzhyó nodded in return and started his car’s engine. They were going back to see the computer scientist where Ruzhyó had spotted the surveillance that had ended with a dead man in a bookstore. Apparently, Major Peel had plans for the man in that building that Mr. Bascomb-Coombs would not in the least enjoy.
Ruzhyó didn’t care about the scientist. He would stay with Peel until the right opportunity came up, and then he would take his leave. And it would be soon, he reflected as they pulled out of the estate. Soon.
Wednesday, April 13th
Washington, D.C.
There had been an all-hours assembly at school, and when it was done, Tyrone drifted down the hall, waving at Jimmy Joe in passing. The hall-monster, Essay, had indeed been expelled, for at least two weeks, and while there were other denizens to be avoided in the corridors, they weren’t in the big idiot’s league.
As he headed for the bus queue, he saw Bella, book reader in hand, walking and laughing with three girlfriends. She spotted him and smiled. “Ty, hey, over here.”
He felt that rush of belly-clenching cold energy that radiated excitement all the way to his groin. He started toward her, holding his steps slow so as not to seem in a hurry. He tried to look sparse, matter-of-fact, and AF—almost frozen, he was so cool. Bella wanted to see him? That was DFF and all, but no huge kluge, hey? Amble. That was the look he wanted; he wanted to amble her way. But he moved maybe a little too fast to pull it off. Kind of a twelve-frames-per-second amble that would look a lot better at twenty-four.
“Hey, Bella.”
“We’re going to the mall. You want to come along?” He smiled. And at that second, just when he was about to deliver a liquid-oxy AF “Sure, why not?” he glanced past Bella and saw Nadine walking down the hall.
Nadine saw him, then looked away.
Bella caug
ht his look and flicked her own gaze in that direction. It was quick, her peek, and she pretended not to notice, but Tyrone got it. Nadine had been inspected, stamped failed, and dismissed, all in a half-second glance, and thank you very much.
And all of a sudden, Tyrone Howard, pushing fourteen, found himself at the crossroads of the rest of his life. Looming here were two paths at right angles to each other, and not likely he would be able to switch from one to the other once he made his choice.
You got the com in your hand, Tyrone. Who are you gonna call?
Maybe he could still do both. He said, “Why don’t I meet you at the bus? I got something I have to take care of first.”
Bella might not be the brightest diode on the board, but she wasn’t so dim she couldn’t see immediately what he was doing. She let him know she knew, too: “We’re going to the mall now, Ty.” What was left unsaid, was Now or never, Tyrone. Your call.
Well . . . shit. It would be great to be able to have his cake and eat it, too, but that wasn’t gonna happen, no way, no how, DSS—data scrambled, stupid.
The moment stretched for a couple million years. He felt like he was going to explode. Damn, damn, damn!
You could skulk one or you could skulk the other, but you didn’t get both.
Hell with it. He made his decision. “Nadine! Hey, Nadine! Hold up a second!”
Nadine turned, surprised, he could see. He didn’t dare look back at Bella, though he wanted to see her face. He’d been given a second chance to get into paradise, and he’d just put it in the trash and emptied that sucker. He wanted to run and hide.
Nadine smiled, and her face didn’t seem so plain. When he got there, she said, “Your girlfriend just left without you. Didn’t look real happy, either.”
He shrugged. “So what?” He felt bad, but he also felt good at the same time. “How’s the arm? You want to go throw some?”
