"c.o.ke?" he said.

"Yes, sir." The flight attendant handed him a plastic cup of ice and one of the new biodegradable plastic cans of c.o.ke. The can would keep for ten years, as long as it wasn't opened, but once fresh air hit the inside, the plastic would start to degrade. In nine months, it would be a powdery, non-toxic residue that would completely dissolve under the first rain that hit it. Throw the can on the ground, and in a year it would be gone.

The flight attendant moved to the next row of seats. Michaels poured the soft drink into his cup, then sat and watched it fizz and foam. He was in business cla.s.s, the equipment was one of the big Boeing 777's, and he sat next to the wing door on the starboard side. He liked to get that seat when he could, next to the exit door. It always seemed that there was a little more room in the exit row, although that might have been his imagination. The main thing was, if there was trouble on the plane, he wanted to be in a position to do do something. something.

He'd started asking for the exit row after a flight to Los Angeles when he'd seen an elderly man who might have weighed a hundred pounds sitting next to an emergency door. Yeah, the guy might get a burst of adrenaline under stress, so he could pop that door right open if the wheels collapsed on landing or some such, but Michaels didn't want to risk his life and the lives of the other pa.s.sengers on that. Maybe the old guy would get a burst blood vessel instead. Then again, maybe the old guy was like Toni's silat silat teacher, and there were hidden strengths there. Michaels knew he shouldn't be so judgmental. But still, better a fairly strong forty-year-old GS employee in front of that door than a seventy-year-old lightweight. Better odds for all concerned. teacher, and there were hidden strengths there. Michaels knew he shouldn't be so judgmental. But still, better a fairly strong forty-year-old GS employee in front of that door than a seventy-year-old lightweight. Better odds for all concerned.

Of course, he'd rather fly first cla.s.s too. A couple of times, he had gotten agency upgrades on official business, and it was more comfortable, but he could never justify the expense when it came to personal flights. The way he figured it, the back of the plane got there at the same time as the front did, all things going as planned, and to cough up several hundred dollars extra for cloth napkins and complimentary champagne seemed excessive.

There was enough time for an in-flight movie before they got to Denver, where Michaels had to switch planes for Boise. The airlines had gotten a lot better about not losing luggage, but he wasn't taking any chances. He had his single soft-side roller tucked into the overhead compartment, along with Susie's main Christmas gift, a band/vox synthesizer. Apparently she had discovered a kind of music called technometo-funk, which was all the rage among the kids. Michaels tastes ran to jazz fusion, cla.s.sic rock, 40's big band, or even long-haired cla.s.sical. He hadn't followed new-wave pop stuff for years. He knew he was getting old when he read the news, saw the Billboard Top Ten list, and realized he didn't recognize the names of any of the songs, or the artists who performed them. Who could take seriously a song called "Mama Moustache Mama Sister," by somebody who called himself "HeeBee-JeeBeeDeeBeeDoo?" Or "Bunk Bunk!" by "DogDurt"?

With the synthesizer, Susie could supposedly program herself into any group, then hear and see herself performing on stage with them. It seemed like an advanced toy for somebody her age, but it was what she wanted. It had been a b.i.t.c.h to find one too. Apparently every other kid in the country had to have one of the things. Fortunately, Toni had found one, so he could be a hero to his daughter.

Toni did that a lot, made him look good.

He looked at the screen built into the back of the seat in front of him, a screen that could be angled for viewing so that even if the person sitting in that row decided to lean back all the way, you could still see it. No. He didn't feel like watching a movie, playing video VR, or monitoring the progress of his flight via a little animation of a jet flying along over a map. It was nice just to sit with a magazine in his lap and gaze out at the cold ground below. Fortunately, the weather was clear, and the Ohio landscape below, much of it covered with snow, sparkled white in the setting sun.

It was going to be midnight, East Coast time, when he landed in Boise, a.s.suming he made his connection and the flight went as scheduled. Ten p.m. in that part of Idaho. He had a rental car reserved at the airport, and a room booked at the Holiday Inn, not far from the house where his daughter and ex-wife lived. Where they had once all lived together. There was a spare bedroom in the big old clunky two-story house, two if you counted the sewing room, but Megan hadn't offered and he hadn't asked. The armistice between Alex and his ex was uneasy. She was a sniper, quick to shoot and too accurate for his comfort. Better to have a safe house where he could hole up and gather his forces for the battle. There was a lot to be said for a nice quiet Holiday Inn, with room service and a double lock on the door.

He wondered how many other people thought about holidays in such a fashion? As an ugly guerrilla war to be waged quick and dirty and retreated from as soon as possible? Why did unhappy families gather, if it made them so miserable? A lot of people he knew would just as soon cancel the big holidays and keep their families at a safe distance...

In his case, however, the answer was easy: Susie. Whatever else, she needed to know she had a mother and father who both loved her and wanted her to be happy, even if they couldn't be happy with each other.

Certainly this wasn't something he had ever foreseen for himself when he'd been courting Megan, when they'd been young, in love, with the world by the tail, so full of themselves they could never envision failing at anything, much less their marriage. Ah, the arrogance of youth, when you knew everything, and didn't care who knew you knew everything, since you were willing to tell them all about it at great length if they blinked at you.

Boy, that had been a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Maybe he could get some sleep. Just lean over against that cool plastic window with one of the little puffy pillows, and turn it all off.

There was an idea that had much appeal.

Thursday, December 23rd, 5:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.

The car was small, black, and looked like an old Fiat. The driver heard the siren behind him and pulled over, next to a row of small shops that appeared to be closed. There was a shoe store with a Nike swoosh on the gla.s.s, and an electronics store with small television sets in the window. The words on the storefronts looked to be German or Austrian, maybe Croat.

The Fiat's door opened and a smallish man in a long, dark coat stepped out of the car. He had his hands up next to his shoulders, to show he was unarmed. The sun was bright, but the street seemed deserted save for him.

A pair of policemen approached the Fiat, pistols drawn. The uniforms they wore had that Middle European look, odd-shaped billed caps with checkering on the front, leather jackets over dark blue shirts and ties, and dark blue trousers with a yellow seam-stripe on the outside of the legs. One of the cops moved to stand in front of the small man in the long coat; the other cop checked out the car.

The first cop gestured with the gun and said something. The small man turned around and put his hands on top of the Fiat, and the cop patted him down. No weapons.

The second cop talked into a small com, but kept his pistol pointed in the Fiat driver's direction. Second cop listened to the com for a moment. He nodded at the first cop, and said something.

The small man leaning against the car shoved away from it, swung his elbow up, hitting the cop behind him in the face, and knocking him down. The small man ran. The second cop darted around the front of the Fiat, raised his pistol, and fired-four, five, six times. The gun belched orange fire and white smoke, and the empty sh.e.l.ls showered the car. The bra.s.s hulls glinted in the bright sunshine like gold coins as they bounced and dropped to the sidewalk.

The small running man fell, face-down on the street. He moved his arms and legs, as if spastically trying to swim on the concrete.

The cop who had been elbowed in the nose recovered. He moved to where the small man lay on the street. He pointed his pistol at the back of the downed man's head. He fired. The little man spasmed one more time, then went limp.

Thomas Hughes blew out a big sigh, then froze the recording's image. The two cops stood over the dead man-and there was no doubt he was dead, a bullet to the back of the head from three feet away sure as h.e.l.l did that.

Man. They just executed executed that poor sucker. And all of it caught on the surveillance cam mounted on the dashboard of the police car. that poor sucker. And all of it caught on the surveillance cam mounted on the dashboard of the police car.

Hughes leaned back in his chair and looked at the frozen holoprojection. He felt a flash of regret, but he buried it. The man was a spy, he had known there were risks. He'd had to know what might happen to him if he got caught.

Of course, he probably hadn't thought his name would be stolen from a top-secret list n.o.body was supposed to have access to and posted to the net so anybody who bothered to look would know who he was.

Hughes had gotten the recording from one of his his spies-actually one working for Platt. And it was brutal to watch, a man getting murdered like that. It turned your stomach, made you queasy. spies-actually one working for Platt. And it was brutal to watch, a man getting murdered like that. It turned your stomach, made you queasy.

But there it was. You couldn't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. It was necessary. What were a few spies, easily replaced, compared to the long-range goals Hughes had in mind? Not much, not really. The end in this case surely justified the means. People died every day. A handful more wouldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

The new Quayle addition to the Senate office building where White had his offices was nearly empty. Not a lot of people were working at this hour on the day before Christmas Eve. Hughes a.s.sumed that the other Senate office buildings-the Russell, the Dirkson, the Hart-were also, mostly deserted, save for security and cleaning personnel, with maybe a few young staff members trying to make points while everybody else was off for the holidays. Not much official work got done from early December on into the new year, but a lot of groundwork did get laid.

White had once had offices in the Hart Building, back when they'd still had that ugly modern-art sculpture of cut-out metal, Mountains and Clouds or some such, in the atrium. The staff on the upper floors had spent a lot of time sailing paper airplanes down to land on top of the sculpture. They'd had contests to see who could get the most to hit and stay.

He sighed again. The stakes were high, and the cards had to be played correctly or the game would be lost. It was a pity about this agent, and about the others who would be imprisoned or maybe killed, but there was no way around it. There was a lot of inertia to overcome to get something as big as he had in mind to move-a lot. This spy was the first, but he wouldn't be the last who had to die for Hughes's plan to go forward. It was too bad, but that was how it was. In this world, you could be a hunter or the hunted, and sheep were prey for wolves, plain and simple. It was the first law of the jungle-the strong survive at the expense of the weak.

And Thomas Hughes was a survivor.

He saved the recording into a file for White to look at later, then started to wave the computer off. He'd done enough here for the day. Time to go home, order in some takeout, and have a gla.s.s of wine and a nice hot bath. Maybe he'd lift a gla.s.s to the poor operatives who had to suffer for his scheme. Why not? It wouldn't cost him anything.

His com cheeped. It was the secret number, rerouted though something like sixteen satellite bounces so it couldn't be traced to him.

He checked the scrambler to be sure it was on, even though it was automatic on this number, and clicked on the vox-altering circuit, picking Old Lady for the latter. Whoever was on the other end would hear what sounded like a ninety-year-old woman talking.

"h.e.l.lo?" he said.

There was silence for a moment.

"Who's there?" Hughes said.

"I have some information concerning certain... shipments."

Hughes knew who it was. A mid-level manager at the National Security Agency, a man with top secret clearance, but a man who had a secret gambling problem and was deep in the hole to his bookies. His voice was altered too. Hughes had been waiting for the man to come up with something for him. The gambler didn't know who he was speaking to. "Go on."

"It concerns some volatile... minerals."

"I'm still listening."

"I need fifty thousand."

Hughes could almost hear the man sweating. "How much of the... volatile substance are we talking about?"

"Nineteen pounds. In four packages. On the same day."

Hughes considered that in amazement for a moment. Nineteen pounds of weapons-grade plutonium was being moved at the same time? Certainly not by the same agency inside the U.S., even broken into that many sub-critical-ma.s.s chunks. The NRC and NSA would have kittens if somebody did something that stupid. But he had to check.

"This is domestic movement?"

"Of course not. Two are, two are foreign. Six pounds, seven pounds, four, and two."

"When?"

"In two days. You want the particulars or not?"

"Fifty thousand, you said."

"Yes. In cash. Nothing bigger than a hundred."

"All right. I'll have somebody meet you at the place, tonight, nine p.m. Bring the information."

Hughes broke the connection. He hadn't planned to escalate things quite this much, this fast, but when something like this fell into your lap, you grabbed it and ran with it.

He tapped his com. Platt answered right away.

"Yeah?"

"Swing by here."

Platt said, "When?"

"Now."

He would give Platt the money and send him to fetch the information. Anybody with access to some explosives, a good metal shop, and some electronics from Radio Shack could build an atomic bomb, but without the right fissionable material it was nothing more than a mildly dangerous science project. There were a lot of groups out there who would pay millions to get their hands on nineteen pounds of weapons-grade plutonium. You didn't need that much to build yourself a nice and dirty little nuclear bomb. It would make a h.e.l.luva bang when you set it off.

Now he could really give Net Force something to think about.

Chapter Twelve.

Friday, December 24th, 11:00 a.m. The Bronx, New York Toni climbed the familiar brownstone steps, steps that she had swept clean daily when she had been studying with Guru DeBeers. Somebody else must be doing the job now, for there was no snow or ice or dirt on them. The chicken-wire gla.s.s doors were closed and locked, but Toni still carried her well-worn key. She opened the door and stepped into the building. The hall was marginally warmer than it was outside.

Guru's apartment was the third one on the left. As she reached up to knock, the old woman's gravel-and-smoke voice came from within: "Not locked, come in."

Toni grinned. Before she even knocked, Guru knew she was there. She was sure the woman was psychic.

Inside, the place looked as she remembered it from last year, and from her childhood. The old green couch with the needlepoint doily here, the overstuffed red plush chair with its needlepoint there, the short coffee table with one leg propped on an old Stephen King novel, all were in their usual places.

Guru was in the kitchen, crushing coffee beans in the little hand-powered grinder she had brought with her sixty years ago from Jakarta. She cranked the handle slowly and the smell of the beans, shipped to her by a distant relative who still lived in the highlands of Central Java, was sharp, rich, and earthy.

The two women faced each other. Toni pressed her hands together in front of her face and moved them down in front of her heart in a namaste namaste bow, and Guru returned the greeting. Then they hugged. bow, and Guru returned the greeting. Then they hugged.

At eighty-something years old, Guru was still brick-shaped and solidly built, but frailer and slower than she had been. As always, her clean and carefully set white hair smelled slightly of ginger, from the shampoo she used.

"Welcome home, Tunangannya Tunangannya," Guru said.

Toni smiled. Best Girl Best Girl, what Guru had called her almost since they'd met.

"Coffee in a minute." Guru dumped the freshly ground coffee into a brown-paper cone and set it into the stainless-steel basket over the carafe, then poured hot water from a cast-iron kettle that had been heating on the tiny four-burner stove. The smell was delightful, almost overwhelming.

Guru waited until most of the water filtered through, then added a bit more. She repeated this until the kettle was empty. She took two plain white china mugs from the doorless wooden cabinet over the stove, then poured fresh coffee into them. There was no offer of cream or sugar. You could drink it any way you wanted at Guru's-as long as it was black. Adulterating coffee was, according to her way of thinking, very nearly a sin of some kind. Guru's religious beliefs were an amalgam of Hindu, Moslem, and Christian, and difficult to follow at best.

Wordlessly, the two women moved into the living room. Guru took the chair, Toni sat on the couch. Still without speaking, they took sips of the hot coffee.

Guru made the best coffee Toni had ever tasted. In fact, it spoiled her for drinking the stuff anywhere else. If Starbucks could get its hands on Guru, they would triple their business.

"So. How is life in Washington? Has your young man yet seen the light?"

"Not yet, Grandmother."

Guru sipped her coffee and nodded. "He will. All men are slow, some slower than others."

"I wish I could be sure of that."

"Not in this life, child. But if he fails to notice you properly, he does not deserve you."

They drank more coffee. When they were almost done, Guru said, "I think it is time to tell you a story. About my people."

Toni nodded but didn't speak. Guru had taught her a lot using this method, telling her Javanese tales and legends.

"My father's father's father came from Holland on a sailing ship in 1835. He came to work as an overseer on a plantation that raised indigo and coffee and sugarcane. Back then, the country was not called Indonesia. The pale men called the islands as a whole the Dutch East Indies, or sometimes, the Spice Islands. To my people, our island was Java."

Guru held up her empty cup. Toni stood, took both cups, went to the kitchen, and refilled them. Guru kept talking.

"My great-grandfather went to work on the farm, just outside of Jakarta, which had not nearly so many people then as it does now. He was married, with his wife and two children left behind in the country of his birth, but as was often the custom with white men in a foreign country in those days, he took himself himself a native wife. My great-grandmother." a native wife. My great-grandmother."

Toni brought Guru's coffee back to her, reseated herself on the couch, and sipped at her own brew.

"In due course, my grandfather was born, first among six brothers and two sisters. When my grandfather had eleven summers, my great-grandfather sailed back to Holland, to rejoin his wife and children there, now a wealthy man. He left his Javanese family well-provided for, not always the custom with white men. He never saw or contacted them again.

"My great-grandmother's family took her and her children in, and life went on."

Toni nodded, to keep the flow going. Guru had told many tales, but never one about her family that was so personal.

"My grandfather's mother's brother, Ba Pa-The Wise-took it upon himself to teach my grandfather, whose Dutch name was Willem, how to be a man. My grandfather grew up strong, adept, and eventually became a soldier, part of the native army." She sipped at her coffee. Then she said, "Go into my bedroom and look at the nightstand. There is a thing upon a small silk pillow there. Bring it to me."

Toni nearly choked on her coffee. In all the years she had trained and known Guru, she had never been past the closed door into her bedroom. She had conjured all kinds of fantasies as to what it must look like in there. Maybe shrunken heads dangling from the ceiling, or walls covered with Indonesian art.

It was nothing so weird. It could have been any bedroom, belonging to any old woman. There was a bed, a carved, dark wooden chest at the foot of the bed, teak or mahogany, and a tall and dark wardrobe, also of wood, with a mirror that had lost part of its silvery backing. On one wall was a painting of a nude girl standing in a pool under a waterfall. The room smelled of incense, patchouli or maybe musk.