“It should not take long to determine what we need. A day or two at most to set it up and we will have him.”
Cox nodded. “Do it.”
“Yes, sir,” Natadze said. “I will.”
Natadze left first; Cox waited for a few minutes. Could it be this simple? God, he hoped so. If they could wipe this threat away, he would sleep a lot sounder than he had in a long time. Yes, indeed. There would still be the Russians, of course, but the status quo was something with which he could live. He was still more valuable to them free and untarnished, and while they might not go to the mat to protect him, they wouldn’t toss him away as long as he was useful. The Russians were nothing if not pragmatic.
And if this worked? Maybe it would be time to send Eduard to find the Doctor and have a little talk with him, as well. If they could determine who knew what over there and eliminate them? That would make his life just about perfect.
He grinned. He would have to give Eduard a nice bonus. A man like him was worth his weight in diamonds.
He raised his glass in a toast. “Go get ’em, Eduard.”
6
The house Thorn had bought was in University Park, just south of the University of Maryland, in Prince George’s County. The homes were more stately than spectacular, many of them built in the 1920s and ’30s, and most of his neighbors were either professors at the U, well-off business types, or political staff. The streets bore large pin oak and pear trees, and an occasional elm that had somehow managed to survive all the years of blight that seemed to seek out that species. There had been people living here since before the Revolutionary War, though the town itself was much younger. According to the realtor, crime was low, tiger mosquitoes sometimes got bad in the summer despite efforts to eradicate them, and just about all of the single-family homes were occupied by their owners. Upscale, but not ostentatious.
From the outside, Thorn’s house was a two-story home, solid, and there was nothing to distinguish it from most of the others on his street, which was exactly what he had wanted when he set the real estate agent to looking.
Inside, there was still work being done. The four-bedroom house was much larger than a man alone needed, and he was having the living room and parlor converted into a fencing salon. One of the joys of being rich was, if you couldn’t find exactly what you wanted for a home, you could have it built.
Eventually, he would have fencing masters come to his house to teach him. He had been looking into the Japanese arts kendo and even iaido, with the live blade.
Not that he wanted much other than that. Coming from a poor family had taught him early on to value people and small things. Yes, when he’d sold his first major piece of software and been handed a huge check, he had run out and gotten himself a bunch of new toys, ranging from top-of-the-line computer systems to fast cars to five-thousand-dollar suits. He had even bought his parents a house in Spokane.
But that was long ago and money no longer burned a hole in his pocket. These days, he had a driver, so he didn’t need a car. He ate well enough, though he wasn’t a gourmet, and he didn’t buy his clothes at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. His one expensive hobby was collecting swords. Aside from working foils, épées, and sabers by such makers as Vniti, Leon Paul, Prieur, and Blaise, he had a collection of antique weapons ranging from Japanese katanas to Chinese broadswords to Civil War sabers. He would have these hung on the walls of the salle when it was done, and a monitored alarm service installed to keep sticky-fingered thieves from helping themselves to the weapons. Other than that, his fortune was not something he used all that much. He did like to fly first class, for the leg room, but he could have easily afforded a private jet, and first-class was a lot cheaper than that…
He smiled at himself as the driver opened the car’s door and he alighted at the new house.
“Good night, Mr. Thorn.”
“Good night, Carl. See you in the morning.”
Thorn ambled to the door, carrying his equipment bag. He thumbed the door’s lock and pushed the front door open.
Inside, the smells of sawdust and fresh paint greeted him. He put the sword bag down and went into the kitchen. He didn’t feel like cooking, it was late, and a heavy meal before bedtime was an invitation to night-mares, but he was hungry, so he grabbed an Aussie pie from the freezer and stuck it into the microwave, opened a bottle of beer, a Samuel Adams, and went to watch the late news on the television. So far, the new job had been easy enough. He had good people, there were a few more he would eventually bring in, and he hadn’t run into anything he couldn’t handle. Of course, he didn’t expect he would run into anything he couldn’t handle.
He sipped from the bottle as the TV lit. It was a little disappointing, really. Sure, there was always a newness factor in any kind of job. Big projects brought their challenges, but it never took him long to get up to speed, and once he did, well, then it was just a matter of time before it got boring. Most of the time, he had to invent his own challenges, and now and then he would have liked to be in a position where he had to stretch a little to keep up. Mostly, that just didn’t happen.
The news flared on, the end of a story about another crisis in the Middle East.
When he’d been a kid, Thorn hadn’t realized that everybody wasn’t as smart as he was. A problem would come up, he’d see the answer, and he’d assumed that everybody else had seen the answer, but for some reason he couldn’t understand, they’d pretend they hadn’t. Eventually, he realized that wasn’t the case — that in virtually every mental race he ran, he was way out in front when he crossed the finish line.
He took another swig of the beer. The weather was up next, and it was going to be cool and rainy in the District tomorrow.
A big part of his life had been a search for equals, people he could run with, but those were few and far between. Oh, they were out there, and it was a delight when he found one, but he no longer expected to simply run into them the way he once had. Once upon a time, he had lived with a woman who was actually smarter than he was. Sharp, funny, sexy, they liked the same music, the same literature and movies, mostly, but it hadn’t worked out. She’d had her career — she was a physicist — and he’d had his, tinkering with computerware, and one day they’d looked up and realized they weren’t connected anymore. They couldn’t point to any major break. They still exchanged Christmas cards, smiled and hugged each other if they met, but their paths had diverged and neither of them could see a way back. Sad.
In sports, the NBA basketball season was in full swing. Looked as if one of the new expansion teams he hadn’t realized even existed was on a roll, ten straight victories.
The microwave pinged. He flicked off the television and headed back to the kitchen. He’d do an hour or so on the web, check his personal e-mail and the fencing newsgroup, and then go to bed.
Another exciting evening in the life of Thomas Thorn.
Natadze watched from inside the rental car as the target turned into his driveway and stopped his own car, a three-year-old Volvo.
Following the man had been easy enough, and even if he had lost him, he had known where he was going. He had committed all the statistics to memory. He knew things about Jay Gridley that the man probably did not know himself — his driver’s license and credit card numbers, his medical ID number, along with his phone number, address, birthday, and his wife’s maiden name.