by Tom Clancy
The drive from the airport took a while, but she was in no hurry, and when she finally found a parking place and alighted, it was mid-afternoon. The cold wind blew off the river, which was passing wide at this point.
She carried the wrapped Walther in her gloved left hand, and kept her right hand in her Windbreaker’s pocket, fingers curled around the butt of the Smith & Wesson. The fastest draw, she’d been taught, was to have the gun in your hand when trouble began. If it came to that, she’d be ready.
She spotted the white van as she headed down the path toward the river to the appointed meeting place. A man in that van with a scoped rifle would have a clear field of fire, which was what she wanted.
There was some kind of weedy smell in the air, maybe some dead fish mixed in. Not the same as you’d get at the seashore, no salt in it, but definitely not a pleasant odor. She had her hair tucked under a baseball cap, and her clothes were baggy. From a distance, she might pass for a slightly built man or maybe a teenaged boy.
Aziz was already waiting for her. He was dressed for the weather, wearing a long jacket over wool trousers, a hat with earmuffs, and leather gloves. He still looked cold.
He saw her approaching, and couldn’t stop himself from glancing to his right quickly.
Might as well point that way and announce it: Hey, my backup man is hiding right there. . . .
She didn’t bother to look. Carruth should have that covered.
Aziz glared at her, that male disdain obvious in his stare. “What have you brought?”
“See for yourself.”
She handed him the package.
There was nobody else close to them. Aziz tore open the wrapping until he could see the gun.
“Ah!” he said. He smiled. Nice teeth. Even, straight, white.
He knew what it was, of course, but she pushed it a little. “You recognize this?”
“Of course. It belonged to the freedom fighter and martyr Abu Hassan. I read about the theft only yesterday.” He stroked the pistol as if touching a religious icon.
“Are we to a point where you now believe we can deliver the items about which we have spoken?”
“Yes, we believe it.”
Finally. How sweet to hear it, at last.
But his next words turned it all sour: “The gun, it is loaded?”
She felt her belly clench. “No.”
Did he really think she was that stupid? To give a loaded gun to a fanatic who wanted something she had in the worst way? Probably he did think so.
“Ah, well, no matter.” He stuck his free hand into his jacket pocket. He hadn’t quite cleared his pistol when she shot him, two rounds, through her Windbreaker’s pocket. He was almost close enough to touch, she didn’t need to aim. Both bullets struck him in the center of the chest, and he was not wearing a vest. His eyes went wide in pain and fear, and he tried to speak, but managed only a gurgle as he felt to his knees.
She heard the sharper crack! of a rifle shot behind her, and looked up to see one of Aziz’s ops crumple as he stepped out of the cover of the trees twenty yards away, right where Aziz had glanced earlier.
There was another rifle report a second later, but she didn’t see what, if anything, that bullet had hit—she was already moving.
Crap!
Even though there wasn’t anybody else close, somebody would have heard the shots, and two or three dead men sprawled in the park would draw attention soon enough, even in New Orleans.
She grabbed the Walther from where Aziz had dropped it, slipped it into her left-hand jacket pocket, and began walking quickly toward the river. The hole in her right pocket smoked a little where the muzzle blast had scorched it. Great. She’d have to lose the jacket.
She had, two days before, arranged for a small boat to be tied up, not more than a hundred meters away. It took only a minute to get to it, step in, and crank the engine. She cast off the shoreline and headed up river.
She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but she was glad she had considered the possibility and had been prepared to deal with it.
She had never shot anybody before, and she expected to feel something other than she did—fear, regret, horror, even. What she felt was anger. The stupid, greedy son of a bitch had brought it upon himself. He would have kidnapped her and tried to use her to get the information he wanted without having to pay for it. Well, he had paid, and more than he’d planned, that was for damn sure.
Explain that to Allah, when you see him—killed by a woman?
For shame . . .
A few blocks away in a long-term lot was the other rental car she’d parked, just in case something like this happened.
She put the boat ashore—no prints because of the gloves—and walked briskly to the car. She drove away. The local cops would probably identify Aziz as a terrorist pretty quick, and figure out this was some kind of deal gone bad, but there was nothing to tie her to it. Her rental car would eventually be towed, but the ID she’d used to get it was fake, and what she looked like when she collected it was somebody in a baseball cap with dark glasses, supposedly from New Mexico.
Crap! She’d have to start over again, to find a new buyer. Doing so required caution, and would take time.
She frowned, but after a moment her frown faded. Maybe this would be to her advantage. Word might get out that she wasn’t somebody you should screw around with. Sometimes these people talked to each other.
You hear what happened to Aziz? Did you hear that it was a woman who did it?
Carruth should be long gone by now—he had an escape route figured out—and she’d talk to him once they got back to Washington.
Damn.
There was an empty FedEx box under the seat, and she put her .38 Special into that, along with the Walther, packed it tight with bubble wrap, and sealed it. She’d drop the package off at the airport and have one of Carruth’s men pick it up in D.C. The Smith would have to go away, being ballistically linked to a dead man, but she had another one like it at home. The Walther? That would be tucked away safely somewhere to maybe impress the next potential buyer.
It could have gone worse. Aziz was dead, but there were more where he’d come from, and potential buyers from all kinds of places around the world. And she was still alive and kicking.
She looked at her watch. She had tickets booked on three flights leaving over the next six hours, under different names, and she had a picture ID for each. Her basic plan had been to be on the last morning flight to Atlanta, with a second leg booked from there to the D of C, and it looked as if that was going to work fine.
She had scheduled a meeting with Jay Gridley around four P.M. at her office, and that shouldn’t be a problem.
Okay, so Aziz had been a setback, but it wasn’t a disaster. The train was still on the tracks.
Now she needed to go and make sure Jay Gridley was in his sleeping car. . . .
14
Club Young
Chicago, Illinois
April 1943 C.E.
The Club Young was dark, smoky, and packed, every table in the place occupied. Half the patrons were soldiers or sailors in uniform. A tall and willowy brunette torch singer in a black silk sheath dress stood in a spotlight on the stage, backed by a small swing band. The singer’s voice was as dark and smoky as the atmosphere in the room as she sang “Mean to Me.”
Her facial features bore a passing resemblance to Rachel, Jay thought. Maybe that was just him.
Save for an occasional clink from a highball glass, the place was quiet as the patrons listened to the singer.
A voluptuous blond cigarette girl in a skimpy costume, complete with black silk fishnet stockings and six-inch stiletto heels, came by and smiled at Jay. She leaned over, showing a good amount of breast cleavage, offering her tray. “See anything you want, sir?”
Jay shook his head. “No, I’m good. Thank you.”
After a couple of verses, the trumpet player took a short solo with his muted horn, adding a little wah-wah effect by
moving the mute in and out of the bell with one hand.
Seated next to Jay, Rachel Lewis said, “Like it?”
It was another of her scenarios, and a well-built one. You could smell the smoke, taste the liquor. “Very nice,” he said.
In this milieu, Rachel had altered her appearance just a little. She had long hair, done up in what Jay had always thought of as the WWII look—smooth, flowing, the ends somehow rolled under, like a teardrop. She wore a pale brown dress with padded shoulders, and had a cigarette in an ivory holder. As far as Jay could tell, everybody in the place was smoking, save for him, and not a filter in the bunch. There was a package of CareFree cigarettes by Rachel’s elbow, featuring a picture of a blonde seated on a beach in a bathing suit, looking at the crotch of a rugged fellow standing in front of her in his boxer swimsuit. There was a small box of matches on the table. The logo on the matchbox showed a hot-pink, stylized, fat letter Y, presumably from the club’s name, though the logo looked somehow mildly obscene.
“So, what have you come up with?” he asked.
She took a drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke into the air. “I think I’ve got a line on the backbone server he hacked into for distribution.”
“Really? How did you manage that? I couldn’t get a fix on it.”
The singer finished her song. The audience applauded, the sound of that coming in a rhythmic wave that swelled, then receded. The lights came up—still not bright, but brighter—and the band segued into Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”
A woman laughed behind Jay, a deep and almost sexual sound.
Most of crowd got up and headed for the dance floor. The walla of their voices was happy, excited, full of fun. That kind of music.
Rachel stood and held out her hand. “Come on, Jay, let’s cut a rug.”
He shook his head. “I’m not a dancer.”
“You are in my scenario. Just let yourself go, I guarantee you’ll be king of the jitterbug.”
“Rachel . . .”
“Up, Jay. It don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.”
Reluctantly, Jay got to his feet. Rachel grabbed his hand.
On the polished wood floor, Jay found that if he relaxed, he had the moves Rachel had promised—the steps, twirls, even grabbing her and shooting her between his legs, then up into the air. Her skirt flared, revealing silk stockings held up by a black garter belt.
She definitely had an eye for the little details.
A very athletic dance, this.
The tune wound up to its frenetic crescendo, then ended.
Jay smiled at Rachel, who smiled back.
The band started to play again, this time a slow one—“Stormy Weather.”
Rachel smiled and raised an eyebrow at him. “One more?”
Jay shrugged. He caught her right hand in his left, and put his right hand in the small of her back, leaving about three inches of space between them.
She pressed herself against him, chest and hips, and put her head on his shoulder.
They swayed to the music.
Very nice was his first thought.
Bad idea quickly followed.
“Rachel,” he began.
“Let’s finish the dance, Jay, then we can get back to business.”
“Okay.” It was just VR, after all, right?
But it didn’t feel okay. Or rather, it felt a lot more okay than it should. As he danced, he tried to think about Saji and his little boy, but that was hard, and Lewis wasn’t making it any easier.
He thought about disabling the feedback again, to keep his VR body from mirroring his RW reaction, but his arms were around her, and he couldn’t lift his hand just yet without breaking character.
She knew that, of course, which was undoubtedly why she had brought him out onto this dance floor.
What was she up to?
He gritted his teeth and tried to conjure up images of Saji and their son.
As they danced, Lewis allowed herself to feel Jay’s body against hers. Yes, it was an illusion, courtesy of top-grade electronics and biofeedback gear; still, it was easy enough to suspend your disbelief. They could be in a nightclub in Chicago during the war years, moving now to the music made famous by Billie Holliday, who had died long before Rachel had been born. Jay here wasn’t a bad-looking guy, and he was smart and as sharp as a box of fresh sewing needles. She’d always been a sucker for a bright man. Of course, she had to keep him off balance because he was dangerous to her. But it didn’t have to be an unpleasant chore. What could be done in VR could eventually be done in the real world, too. . . .
She wasn’t exactly dull herself. She had filled her scenario with priming elements—little devices designed to evoke a subconscious response in anybody who played it. It was an old psychological trick—give somebody a word test, making short sentences out of a jumble of five or six words, and put a theme into it by carefully choosing words in each sentence to point in a particular direction. The unconscious brain’s autopilot, used to making snap choices, would fasten upon those words: bury terms like “confident,” “reliant,” “smart,” “clever,” “capable” in a session, then send the person to take a short exam? He would do better than normal.
Put the terms “dull,” “stupid,” “inept,” “confused,” and “slow” in that same kind of little quiz and send him to the test, he would do worse than normal.
Attitude, it turned out, was more important than most people knew. Affecting that attitude via the subconscious was much easier to manipulate than most people would believe. The autopilot took certain things for granted; it tended to mirror societal beliefs. Tall, good-looking, smiling people were generally viewed as more intelligent, somehow superior. Short, ugly, frowning people came across as inferior—at least subconsciously, regardless of whether people would ever admit to it if asked. Way more company CEOs were tall than short. That said a lot.
Rachel’s scenario practically reeked with hints for Jay Gridley to let himself go and indulge in sensual pleasure, with Rachel as the prime focus of that pleasure. The songs being played by the band would invoke sympathy for the women singers—“Mean to Me” and “Stormy Weather.” The instrumental “In the Mood”? That one was pretty obvious. The cigarette girl’s hooters and offer, the package of cigarettes on the table, the overt control of the jitterbug, wherein Jay moved her as he wished, the close contact of the slow number, even the horn player moving his mute in and out of the trumpet, those were all aimed at pointing Jay down the garden path—to her bedroom door.
She smiled into his shoulder at the thought. VR sex wasn’t illegal, nor grounds for divorce, unless unfaithfulness in your mind counted, and it didn’t. Not legally, anyway. Of course, her intent was to befuddle Jay, and when it came down to the real world—which it would, eventually—certainly his sense of guilt would help. Happily married man with a child suddenly finds himself in an affair with a colleague? That would give him plenty more to think about so he wouldn’t have a clue that Captain Rachel Lewis was the bad guy he was chasing. . . .
Jay was good at what he did, but so was she. And a man facing a bright and not-unattractive woman who was intent on having him? He was at a definite disadvantage. . . .
The music ended, and the dance stopped. She saw that her plan was working, to judge from the uncomfortable expression on Jay’s face. She smiled. “Well, that was nice. So, let’s get back to work, shall we?”
As they headed for their table, the swing band began playing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
Indeed, it did.
Pinehurst, Georgia
Amos Jefferson Lowe invited Thorn to take a walk so the dog could stretch a little. Thorn agreed.
Amos was a big man, half a head taller and probably thirty pounds heavier than Thorn, and while there was white in his closely cropped hair, he moved like a man much younger than one in his late seventies or early eighties, which he had to be. He wore a work shirt and overalls over lace-up work boots, and there was no fat on him T
horn could see.
They started up the graveled driveway. The nearest house was probably a quarter of a mile away. The wind was cold and blowing pretty good, and Thorn felt it even through his jacket. If the cold bothered the other man, there was no sign of it.
The dog ranged back and forth, snuffling the ground, as if tracking some critter, limping a bit, but not looking unhappy about it.
Neither man said anything for a few moments. Thorn remembered walks like this with his grandfather when he’d been a boy. Sometimes they’d walk for an hour without saying anything; then the old man would stop and point at some sign on the ground: “See that? Deer tracks—doe and a fawn, see the little prints, here and there?”
The old man could spot things invisible to Thorn’s eyes—and, he suspected, to most anybody else’s eyes. He was tuned to the earth in ways most people never were.
Thorn smiled at the memory.
Amos raised an eyebrow.
“Just remembering my grandfather,” Thorn said. “We used to do a lot of walking when I was a boy.”
“He passed?”
“Yes, sir, some time back.”
“You miss him.”
“I do.”
The older man nodded. He bent, picked up a stick. “Sheila!”
The dog turned, saw the stick. Amos tossed it—not very far—and the dog gimped off to fetch it. The old man smiled.
“So, is this my premarriage interview?”
Amos chuckled. “Marissa made her choice, and you’re it. If she doesn’t have enough on the ball to get something this important right by now, nothing we can say now’s gonna make much difference.”
Thorn nodded. “But . . . ?”
“Nope, no ‘buts.’ Grandma and I, we want to be able to see in you what Marissa sees. Ruth liked you the minute you stepped into the house. She feels things quickly; me, I’m a little slower—I usually have to think on it some.”
The dog brought the stick back and dropped it in front of Thorn. He bent and picked it up, threw it a few feet. Sheila trotted off to fetch it again.
