Changing of the Guard (33 page)

Thorn watched her for a moment, then said, “Mr. Cox. This is Marissa Lowe.”

“Please, call me Sam.” Cox took Marissa’s hand, flashed his high-wattage smile at her. “My deep pleasure, Ms. Lowe.”

Marissa gave him a half smile and nod.

Cox released her hand and looked around. A waiter appeared as if by magic, bearing a tray with champagne flutes, still cold enough that the glasses were frosted. Cox took two stems, gave one each to Thorn and Marissa, took a third for himself. The waiter vanished.

“Nice trick,” Marissa said, nodding at the glass.

He smiled at her. “One of the small perks.”

He raised his glass slightly, and offered a toast: “To success,” he said.

They clinked glasses. “Success,” Thorn and Marissa echoed.

They sipped the wine. Thorn didn’t think this was the same vintage everybody else was drinking—it was crisper, cleaner, with a hint of apple. Private stock? Probably.

“So, you are the Commander of Net Force,” Cox said.

“Afraid so.”

“Must be interesting, working for the government, after being in the private sector. It is just amazing what they can do with computers these days. I have no head for such things myself. Never quite trust them to give me what I need.”

“It is a challenge at times.”

“And you, Ms. Lowe, you are a federal employee, as well?”

“I am.”

Cox grinned, and it was a sly look. “But not with Net Force. Let me guess: I’d say . . . the CIA?”

Her smile didn’t falter a bit. “A good guess, Mr. Cox.”

And Thorn thought,
“Guess”—yeah, right.

“Please, Sam. We’re past the formal stage, wouldn’t you say? I feel as if I have known you two for a long time. Almost as if we have been doing business with one another.”

It wasn’t so much the words, but the look that attended them that struck Thorn. The comment about the CIA, coupled with a glint in the eyes and just a hint of a grin.

No question in Thorn’s mind that the man knew he was being stalked, and exactly who it was on his tail.

Not that it would be hard to guess—after Natadze had snuck out of the estate, it would have been easy enough to put two and two together. Somebody stops his limo at the gate, and a couple days later, here is Thomas Thorn, Commander of Net Force, asking for an introduction?

No, it wouldn’t take a bright bulb to illuminate that one, and Cox was certainly not dim. Thorn had known that going in. He was here to size up his opponent, see his moves, and it didn’t matter if the man knew who he was and why he’d come.

Cox glanced at his watch. It was a plain-looking instrument, nothing the least bit ostentatious, but Thorn knew it was one of those handmade Swiss things that cost as much as a new Mercedes. Probably sat in a motorized box at home that would rotate every now and then to keep it wound when Cox wasn’t wearing it.

“Oh, my, look at the time. I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m afraid I have to run—we have another of these things on tonight’s schedule. Noblesse oblige and all that. A great pleasure to finally meet you both. I wish you good fortune in your endeavors, Tom and Marissa. And a parting piece of wisdom I learned from my track coach when I was in high school: Some days you get the bear and some days, the bear gets you.” He gave them a slow, military bow, and left.

After he was gone, Marissa looked up at Thorn and said, “He’s playing with us, Tommy.”

He nodded. “Yeah. That last bit about the bear pretty much nailed it shut. He was
gloating
. He knows we know, but doesn’t think we can touch him.”

“I guess that much money and power buys a lot of confidence,” she said.

“Even Achilles had his heel,” he said.

“And if he’d worn a metal boot, he would have been invulnerable,” she said.

“Whose side are you on?”

“Why, yours, Tommy. Your left side, as I make it.” She batted her eyelids at him theatrically.

He grinned, despite his irritation at Cox. The die was cast. The man knew who they were, knew they were after him, and had the gall to stand there and spar with them about it.

We’ll see who gets whom, Mr. Bear.

In the back of the limo on the way home from the charity dinner, Cox fixed himself a drink, bourbon over ice. He was not pleased. As soon as the Theiron woman had approached him, asking to introduce Thomas Thorn and his dark-skinned date, Cox had known. Net Force must have broken the coded file, despite what Eduard had done to prevent it. They knew he was a spy. They had come to take his measure for the coffin they hoped to build.

A quick phone call had given him some background information on Thorn, and on his paramour, who worked for the CIA. He had been armed a little better when finally they had spoken.

Cox sipped his drink. He had tweaked Thorn and the woman a bit, knowing a good offense was the best defense. Let them know he knew what they were about to keep them off balance, that was how he had fought his way to the top. Give back more than you receive, that was how you won.

Even so, he had to resist the urge to panic. Them
knowing
was not the same as them
proving
. He knew that. Unless they had ironclad evidence, something absolutely certain and incontrovertible, the feds would not move against him. The Russian was dead, the other copies of the file were either gone or about to be, and his name written in an old Soviet document? Any lawyer worth his salt could argue that such a listing could be nothing more than disinformation, designed to impeach a man’s character, to sow distrust. It proved nothing in itself. Anybody could put a name into a file. For that matter, how do we know that the file in question wasn’t simply fabricated altogether?

Yes, if they knew how much he did not wish such information to become public, they could hold that over him, but they did not know that. And any threats to smear him would result in legal and political troubles that would give a strong man pause. A politician would have to be very brave indeed to venture onto such a tricky path where a misstep could result in the end of a career. The most fiery federal prosecutor had bosses to whom he must answer, and his bosses had their bosses. The higher you went, the more political things got. Attorneys-General and Presidents did not blindly sail into uncharted waters.

A crafty politician knew that when you fought a giant, you had best be careful with your sling. If your first shot was wide, you might be crushed before you had a chance to reload.

And if you had but one stone? Then the risk was extreme indeed, and the payoff had better be worth it—and guaranteed.

Cox did not wish to come to blows with the feds, but at this juncture he felt certain that they would not be eager to start that war, either. They didn’t have a walkover victory lined up. They couldn’t.

He should have thought of this much sooner, of course, long before tonight, even. His first reaction to the threat of being unearthed after all these years, sending Eduard after Jay Gridley, had been . . . less considered than it should have been. He had, in retrospect, acted in more haste than was wise. Then, even the hint of scandal about such things had seemed insupportable. And there had been several additional factors other than the Net Force file.

Now? Now, an accusation based on a single document, without any supporting evidence? That could be laughed off:
Me? A Communist spy? My God man, look at me! I’m Samuel Walker Cox, I’m a billionaire! Are you out of your mind?

Even his enemies would smile at that one—unless there was hefty proof to back it up.

If there had been a handler willing to testify, and supporting papers from official sources, that would have been weightier, but a file allegedly given to Net Force by our sometimes-friends, sometimes-not-friends, the Turks? Where is their copy backing this? Lost, you say? What about the Russians, surely they had supporting evidence? Oops, can’t find it?

My, my.

He was in a better position than before. Still not ideal, but even so, if it got to that, he could afford the best spin docs in the world.

If it got to that.

And, unless they came up with something else, Cox was pretty sure it would never
get
to that. You didn’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blew. All was not lost.

He sipped the drink, finishing it. He needed to rein Eduard in, he saw. If Net Force had broken the code, as surely they had, or else they wouldn’t have come to have a look at him, then any further attempts against their people would be useless
and
dangerous. Eduard was loyal, but suppose he was captured or killed? There might be some way to link him to Cox, and that would give them another bit of circumstantial evidence, however tenuous. If they couldn’t come up with anything else, he was safe. Best not to give them a chance at anything else, no matter how remote it might be.

If your enemy’s fire was burning low, giving him more fuel was unwise.

He dug into the seat pocket and came up with one of the throwaway phones. He thumbed in Eduard’s number for the day.

Net Force might be a squall headed his way, but if he sat tight, hunkered down, and waited, it would pass. No point in risking the lightning by standing alone in a field.

“Yes?”

“Cancel the current contract,” Cox said. “Clean up everything, neat and tidy, and don’t leave any trash lying about. Nothing.”

“Yes, sir,” Eduard said.

And that was that.

A week after his meeting with Cox, nothing new had developed on that front. The constant surveillance—which was costing a considerable amount of his budget—had not produced so much as a glimpse of Natadze and Cox together.

Thorn invited Marissa to dinner. He chose a small but sophisticated place where they could talk. He wanted to get to know her better, but he also wanted her take on some things that were bothering him, and he wanted them both without interruption.

After they had eaten and were lingering over coffee, he turned the conversation back to the party they’d attended. “You stood and listened to him taunt us,” he said. “We know he is guilty, but we don’t have the proof.”

“What do we know that he’s guilty of?” she said.

“He had at least one person we know of killed, albeit that one was a Russian agent and not a great loss to the world. And he had somebody shoot Jay Gridley—though he survived. The only thing that makes sense is that he was afraid of something Jay was working on, and my guess is that he’s listed on that file of Soviet agents—that would explain him having the Russian taken out. It doesn’t make
much
sense, a rich man spying for the Communists, but nothing else computes. The man was a spy. Maybe he still is.”

He sighed. “I’m sure he did other things at least that bad along the way, but we don’t have what we need to get him.”

“That’s how it works sometimes,” Marissa said. She paused. “Let me tell you a story.”

“Another story? You ought to have your own show on PBS,” he said. “ ‘Marissa the Wise Woman Speaks.’ ”

“That’s true, I should. Good of you to acknowledge it.”

He laughed.

She said, “Where there’s a will, there’s usually a way. We’re tropical creatures, our bodies are designed for warm climates, grasslands, trees. But we’ve come up with clothes that let us walk around at the South Pole, created machines that let us cover great distances at speed, allow us to cross land, the oceans—or to go deep under water, if we want. We’ve even been to the moon, through a cold vacuum where you’d die in seconds unprotected.”

“Yeah, we’re adaptable. So?”

“So, we don’t always come up with the ultimate answer, but for every question, we usually come up with something. Consider the mata-you.”

“What’s a mata-you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me. What’s a matter you?”

He laughed again.

“One born every minute. Okay, let’s talk about snow runners.”

He took a sip of his coffee. “Okay, I’ll bite, what is a snow runner? Some kind of extreme sport?”

“Back in the hot summer days before refrigeration you usually drank your beer warm. If you wanted something to plop into your drink to cool it, you had three choices: Wait for winter; collect and store a whole lot of ice in a cool dark place during the winter, like a cave or an ice house; or go to where there was natural ice and fetch it. In temperate or even tropical countries, you can usually find such places.”

Thorn considered it for a moment. “Mountains,” he said.

“Right,” she said. “So while it might be ninety in the shade down in the flats, five or ten thousand feet up the local hills, there could be snow on the ground, frozen ponds, like that.”

“Uh huh.”

“The Romans, the Europeans, and even the South Americans had snow runners. Say you were the local king of the Incas down in Peru about the time Pizarro came to call, and you had a fondness for cold chocolate in the hot summer. What you did was, you sent your snow runners up to collect it for you. These were fleet-footed fellows who could run for marathon distances at a goodly clip—at least for the part where they got to the base of the mountain. They had to slow down some on the uphill leg, and coming down, they had these big, watertight baskets lined with leaves and wrapped in some kind of insulation, holding forty or fifty pounds of densely packed snow or ice chipped from a frozen stream, depending on the boss’s tastes. The stuff would start to melt pretty quick once you were below the freezing level, of course, so you had to be fairly swift. By the time you got back to the temple, or wherever the king liked to hang out, much of it would be melted, so you’d be heading back up the mountain soon, and if the king was having a party, well, you’d be hustling.”

“A busy life.”

“Kind of like being a mail carrier,” she said. “Lots of exercise outdoors, and the pay was relatively good. The snow runners would have eaten well, they needed to be in shape. But my point, Tommy, is that you might not be able to get at him directly, but it’s like ice in your drink in the summer. You can find a way if you want it bad enough.”