He collected the second flatscreen. He wouldn't feel good about leaving them in the room, even though both were password protected. Given some of the villains Net Force had gone up against, that didn't seem very much protection.
Angela walked to the door, opened it, and smiled at him again. It seemed a warm smile to him.
Just a sandwich, that was all. He had Toni, a woman he loved, and that was all he needed, thank you very much.
Chapter 12
Peel stopped into a sandwich shop on Oxford Street, a place open at odd hours, so that you could eat lunch at midnight, if that was your pleasure. After army field rations, anything on relatively fresh bread stood well in comparison, and he was fond of the egg salad they made here.
He took his sandwich, a packet of crisps, and a can of cola to one of the small, circular tables by the window. As he ate, he watched the passersby, mostly civilians scurrying about on their business. The birds were nice, and high platform shoes were apparently in vogue again. Some of the teenage girls who clopped past the sandwich shop wore shoes with soles a good six inches thick. Amazing what people would do to themselves in the name of fashion.
Peel liked sex well enough, though he didn't feel much like spending time with the women afterward. Or before, actually. There were always girls of the evening about where soldiers spent off-duty time, and if one took the proper precautions against disease, one could enjoy as much female contact as one could afford. With his current job, he could afford as much as he could stand, which translated into sessions of an hour or so once or twice a week. Different bird each time, from assorted out-call services, so as not to establish a pattern that an enemy might track. A man who thought too much with his small head might well lose the larger head.
As he started on the second half of his sandwich, entertaining some vaguely erotic thoughts, he got an ugly surprise. Peter Bascomb-Coombs appeared next to him. The man smiled and said, "You don't mind if I have a seat, do you, Major?"
Without waiting for an answer, the scientist slid onto one of the high-backed chrome and plastic stools. He waved at the sandwich. "Any good?"
Well, here was a nasty coincidence. How had Bascomb-Coombs come to be here? He'd not been to this place as long as he had been under surveillance, some weeks now. Well, all right, Peel could brush it off as happenstance—
As if reading his mind, the man said, "No, I didn't just happen by, old chap. I came to see you."
"Really? About what?" Peel managed. He put the remainder of his sandwich down, his appetite suddenly gone. He wiped at his lips with a napkin. His sense of danger was piqued. How could the man have known he was here?
"About mutual benefit," Bascomb-Coombs said.
"I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"Come, come, Peel. Were you really taken in by my absent-minded scientist act? I suspect not. Just as I have been aware of your surveillance of my person since the beginning."
"Professor, I'm afraid I don't know what you are—" "Let's dispense with the fencing, shall we? How much?"
"Excuse me?" Peel stalled, trying to make sense of this suddenly too-knowing apparition. This was definitely a bad show.
"To have you on my team, Major. You and I both know that Goswell is off his trolley with his mad scheme to bring back the glory days of the Empire. He really imagines that setting the third-world wogs at each other's throats and stirring up the Americans and Chinese and Russians will somehow cause Britain to rule the waves again. Surely you cannot believe this?"
Peel was not stupid. The foundations of his job had just shifted, an unforeseen and formidable earthquake had rattled them, and things were, of a moment, changed. He was a pragmatist; best to see where this was leading. He said, "No, of course not."
Bascomb-Coombs smiled widely. "I thought you were smarter than that. You see, his lordship has me in this neat little pigeonhole, the idiot savant, the boy genius who forgets to do up his fly when he leaves the loo, and he needs to go on believing that. Right now, he controls my project, though I will remedy that soon enough. Sooner or later, your watch team might have gotten in my way, so I decided that it would be best to deal directly with you. Your men are loyal, are they not?"
"They are," Peel said.
"Good, good. So the only question is, what will it take for you to continue to tell Goswell what a half-wit I am when I am away from my computer? I shan't require the deception much longer, but the timing is critical just now."
Peel was a military officer; he had seen action. There were times when you had the luxury to sit and meditate, to plan your attacks and defenses, and there were times when you quickly aimed and fired your weapon and thought about it afterward. He made his decision on the spot: "A piece of your action," he said.
The scientist flashed another of his high-voltage smiles. "Ah, you are smarter than I imagined. You don't even know what my action is."
In for a penny, in for a pound. He said, "That hardly matters, does it? Goswell pays me a good salary, but my kind of work has a limited time span. I can't say I look forward to a small retirement cottage in Farnham or Dorking in twenty years, to spend the rest of my days puttering in the garden and pruning the roses. That's what Goswell will provide me. I expect you can do better, if I work for you?"
"Oh, yes, Major Peel. I can do much, much better than that. I can give you enough money to build a city of cottages, a different one for every day of your life. And an army of servants to prune the roses for you."
"You have my interest," Peel said. "Please, go on."
Ruzhyo sat on a bed in a Holiday Inn, watching the news on the television. There was nothing on it about him nor about the deaths of the two soldiers in the Nevada desert. This was as he expected. The organization responsible for the attack on his trailer would take pains to keep the failure covered up, at least from the public. In this way, the Americans were much like the Russians. What the public did not know could not cause a problem. There would be a search, of course, and they would want him alive so that he could suffer for his deeds. They had come for him because they had known who he was. Perhaps it would have been better had he shot the Net Force commander when he'd had the chance?
No, that would have been unprofessional by the time it came up. Plekhanov was caught, and eliminating the man who caught him would have served no purpose. The dead man would have been replaced quickly in any event, and his organization would have had more reason to hunt for a killer of one of their own than for one of the Russian's henchmen — who might not have even stayed in the United States.
So, once again, he was on the move, one step ahead of his enemies, who were surely on his trail. He felt tired.
But he also felt a grim kind of satisfaction. The old skills had not atrophied completely. When called upon, he still had some of his abilities. He was not as good as he had been five or even two years ago, but at his best, there were few who could stay with him. Even diminished, he was better than most. This was not egotistical but plain fact.
He sighed. He had several identities left to him, and money hidden in various places, both real and electronic. What was he to do now?
Maybe he should go home. To Chetsnya. To see the old villa once more before he died.
He had thought about doing that but never acted upon it. The American desert seemed to suit him more. But the end was growing near, he could feel that. While one place was as good as another when Death came, maybe there was something appropriate about meeting it where Anna had been claimed. And if it didn't matter, then the farm was as good a place as any, yes?