Changing of the Guard

  21

  New York City

  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.”

  Washington, D.C.

  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.

  22

  Bridgeport, Connecticut

  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.

  He walked carefully, feet close to the walls to be sure he didn’t cause the floor to squeak.

  The bathroom door was just ahead, the sound of the shower louder now.

  The door was open slightly, and Natadze used a tiny fiber-optic lens to peer around the gap. Should the target be looking, he would see only the tiny end of a glass fiber, almost invisible. The shower door was frosted glass, inside a tiled enclosure. There was no sign of anything else, anything to worry about. Clouds of vapor rose and flowed along the ceiling.

  Still in there.

  Was the man singing?

  No matter. There would never be a better time.

  He crept into the bathroom, quiet and smooth. Before the target could sense the change in air pressure in the room, he leveled his Korth at the shower and yanked the glass door open.

  The man was old, very pale, covered in soap suds, liver spots and saggy flesh making for a most uninspiring picture.

  I hope I go out better than this.

  The Russian jumped. To give him credit, though, the man didn’t scream, faint, or attempt to run. He merely sighed slightly and wiped some soap from his face.

  He muttered something in Russian. Eduard lost most of it in the noise of the running water but it didn’t sound much like a warm greeting.

  Natadze nodded. He pulled the towel from the rack with one hand, keeping his gun rock-steady with the other.

  “Dry yourself,” he said. “We need to talk, you and I.”

  Washington, D.C.

  John Howard talked to the Net Force guard outside Jay’s hospital room. One of four who were on duty at all times guarding Jay, he was the one people were supposed to see, perched on a chair in his uniform. Another guard, in a hospital gown and bathrobe and pushing an IV roller stand up and down the hall, was considerably less conspicuous, if no less well-trained and armed. There were two more guards in strategic locations on the floor who were, for all intents and purposes, invisible, using electronics for their surveillance. Anybody who wanted to pay a visit to Gridley and who wasn’t cleared wasn’t going to make it.

  So far, no one who wasn’t supposed to be there had made any attempt to get into Jay’s room, but none of the Net Force personnel had relaxed their guard in the slightest.

  Behind Howard, Alex Michaels waited. When Howard had finished talking to the guard, he turned back to his ex-boss.

  “All quiet on the Gridley front?” Michaels asked.

  “Actually, he’s talking up a storm. And even if somebody got past our people, Toni is still in there, right?”

  Michaels smiled. “Oh, yeah.”

  Howard said, “You and she heading off soon?”

  “We’ll stick around until they let Jay go home. Doctor said a couple days.”

  “It was good of you to stay.”

  Michaels shrugged.

  Howard said, “I talked to Thorn while you were in visiting. He’s on his way over. He’s also got a theory about why Jay got hit. He thinks it was the file the Turks gave us.”

  “The Soviet spy list?”

  “Yes. The revelations were moving toward the U.S. He thinks maybe one of the moles might have gotten wind of it somehow.”

  “That would be a trick in itself.”

  It was Howard’s turn to shrug. “Turkish security might not be as good as Net Force’s, and the Russians are still selling everything that isn’t nailed down—and some stuff that is. Maybe that information was valuable to somebody here.”

  “A Soviet mole who didn’t want to be outed?”

  Howard nodded. “Makes as much sense as anything else. We ran checks on the violent bad guys we’ve put away in the last couple of years. Anybody Jay took down who would likely be ticked off enough to want to shoot him is still in prison, as near as I can tell.”

  “We didn’t get them all,” Alex said. “Remember CyberNation?”

  Howard frowned. “I remember. The scar still itches when it gets hot and sunny. But they would probably try to hit you or me; we were a lot higher on that list.”

  “Yeah. So what is Thorn doing about it?”

  Howard shook his head. “Computer things. Digging in Jay’s files, looking for clues. He’ll probably be happy to have Gridley back in harness to help out—Jay will know more about his own stuff.”

  “You’ll be keeping him guarded?”

  “Of course. In addition to these guys, we’ve already got sub rosa people on Jay’s place. He won’t go anywhere without an armed Net Force shadow until we get this cleared. That goes for his wife, too.”

  “Interesting that Saji is pregnant.”

  Howard smiled. “That it is.”

  “From what Toni said, those were the first words out of Jay’s mouth when he woke up.”

  “Good for him. Hard to think of Jay Gridley as a father, though.”

  “It ought to settle him down some. Teach him some patience.”

  Howard and Michaels both grinned. Kids did that, no question.

  23

  Net Force HQ

  Quantico, Virginia

  Still in his office, Thorn read the FBI report again. He had heard that Jay was out of his coma, and had, in fact, been on the way out the door to go and see him, when his computer priority-one notice had chimed. He went back to check it.

  It seemed that a man the Bureau strongly suspected was a Russian spy—a control—had been found dead in his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, only a few minutes before. The local
s were working the incident, but the Russian connection had the Bureau involved. It looked like an accident, according to the very sketchy on-line preliminary report by the Special Agent in Charge of the case, but he was suspicious. There was nothing specific, but the AIC was not convinced that the man, a doctor, had slipped in the bathtub and cracked his skull.

  Even if the Agent in Charge was correct and this was more than a simple accident, there was nothing to connect it to the attack on Jay. Still, considering Thorn’s theories about Jay’s shooter, the report bothered him.

  Jay had been working on a coded file that exposed hidden Russian spies around the world, and would likely have revealed more, right here in the U.S.

  A man known to the FBI as a Russian agent, and more, one suspected of being a control—one who ran other spies—had died in a freak accident? Or maybe been killed in such a way as to make it look like an accident? That was . . . odd, to say the least. Enough to stick in Thorn’s mind.

  The common term was “Russian spies,” which is what Thorn had set his tripbot to note when new law enforcement reports came in.

  This was Thorn’s gift—that he could sometimes take two things that did not seem directly related and he could see a correlation. It had helped him come up with new ideas about software, it had even helped in his fencing bouts, and he had learned to trust it over the years.

  These two events were connected. He knew it—in his gut, if not his mind.

  But how?

  The obvious thing was, somebody had killed one man, made it look like an accident, and tried to kill the other. How many assassins or would-be assassins could there be in this area?

  Who could say for sure? Maybe there were dozens of them running around looking for victims. But he didn’t believe that, and—

  What if there was just the one?

  Forget for a minute the why of it. Just run with the idea that the guy who shot Jay also killed the Russian. What would that mean?