Jay spiraled out from the grass, moving slowly, looking for tracks. He couldn't spot any for fifty feet in a circle around it. He shook his head. "No tracks."
"You sure?"
"Hell, yes, I'm sure!"
Saji waited for a few seconds.
"Sorry. I'm on edge."
"No problem. Look over here." Saji led Jay to a patch of dust, pointed at it. "There."
"Come on. That dirt is perfectly smooth, not a mark on it, you can't tell me you see a track there!"
"Carpet People," Saji said.
"Come again?"
"They wear pieces of cut carpet on their feet, booties over their shoes, that don't leave tracks. You see a perfectly smooth spot in the desert, it's wrong. Look there, next to it. See the wind riffles? The rain pocks? The way the dust is uneven, here and here? Now look back at that spot, there."
Jay looked. Yes. The dust was perfectly smooth.
"Get down to ground level, get the sun to the side."
Jay did. Yes, he could see a slight edge around the smooth spot, a rough oval shape. "I see it!"
"Sometimes, what you have to look for is the absence of something that should be there. Sometimes it will be very subtle, like this no-print footprint. Our quarry passed this way, heading north, staying close to the cliff edge. A man tracking him on horseback wouldn't get too close to the drop-off, even if the horse would let him. That big cactus you mentioned, way the hell over there?"
"Yeah."
"I bet he stopped there to rest in the shade."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"It's to the north. There's no shade behind us for miles. After walking out here in the hot sun for a couple of hours, your half-cooked feet wrapped in carpet booties over shoes, moving slow so as not to disturb the dust, wouldn't you stop in the shade to take a drink?"
Saji started walking briskly toward the barrel cactus.
"Uh, Saji? Don't we need to be careful of stepping on sign?"
"Nope. If he went to the cactus, we don't need to know how he got there. He didn't go over the edge, or we'd see the buzzards circling his body. He didn't come back our way. He went to the cactus. We'll pick up his trail there."
"Right," Jay said. "You're the boss."
"No, Jay, you are the boss. I'm just a guide."
He moved off. Jay followed him.
John Howard stood staring in the Holiday Inn room where Mikhayl Ruzhyo had spent the night before. The maid hadn't cleaned the room yet; Ruzhyo had paid for two nights and put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door before he left. Even so, the room hardly seemed to have been occupied. The bed was made, the single used towel had been refolded and put on top of the unused ones. A paper-wrapped glass in the bathroom had been rinsed clean, dried, and put back where it came from. And if he had used the crapper, the man had even folded a new point on the remainder of the toilet paper roll when he was done.
"No-impact camper," Fernandez said. "Wish my bride was so tidy."
Howard chewed at his lip. "I suppose it was too much to hope he'd leave a map with a destination circled, along with his airline reservation number and flight times."
"We'll get him, Colonel. We traced him this far, we'll pick up his trail from here, too. Looks as if he is heading east."
"Maybe."
"Maybe he is heading east, or maybe we'll get him?"
"Both."
Peel stood outside the old church that was now his office, staring at Lord Goswell, who was still traipsing around carrying that ancient shotgun, trying to find one of the rabbits that had been raiding his garden.
The old boy considered himself quite the hunter. Peel had heard his old hunting stories a dozen times. Back in the early sixties, when such things were still routinely done, Goswell had gone on safari to Africa. There, he had taken an elephant, a lion, and a leopard, along with assorted wildebeests and springbok and other smaller game animals. Of course, his lordship's eyes and ears had been a lot sharper and younger fifty years ago, and he'd had an army of bearers to carry his gear, not to mention a local white hunter to find his targets. With that kind of stalk, one just showed up and pulled the trigger when told, and if one missed the shot, the white hunter would save one's arse. Hardly the same as tracking a wounded cape buffalo into a bamboo thicket alone, was it?
Just at the moment, the old boy, who was half deaf and blind, was probably as much threat to his own feet as he was to any lurking rabbits. He had been hunting bunnies on and off for months, and while he had fouled the air numerous times with that black-powder cannon of his, he had yet to hit anything other than the ground — or once, the side of the tool shed.
Goswell wasn't an awful man, merely a prime example of his class. Born rich, educated at the best schools, with all the right connections, the man had never had to want for anything. He'd married well, had the usual half-witted, inbred children, who'd also married well. One or the other of them would come to call now and then, more often since their mother had died a few years back. Even a couple of the grandchildren came round to see the old boy, and he doted on them, of course. It was true what they said; the rich were different, especially the old-money rich. They expected certain things as their due, never considered otherwise.
The old man whipped the shotgun up, aimed — but held his fire. Lowered the weapon and muttered to himself.
Peel grinned. Well, he could find out how it felt to be rich. He had a million in the bank. He could quit right now, invest the money conservatively, and live very comfortably off the interest for the rest of his life without ever touching the principal. There was security, especially for a man who had always expected to die with his boots on. But he could do even better by simply continuing on, working for Goswell. Everything the same, except that his reports about Bascomb-Coombs would change somewhat. His men would continue to follow the computer expert, save at certain specified times. One watcher would be taken off, thinking another would replace him, only that wouldn't happen. There would be a gap, as long as Bascomb-Coombs needed, and Peel would fill it in when he wrote up the reports. Not bad work for a million, altering a few schedules.
The old man wandered around the corner out of sight and, as he did, Peel reflected that the big sound-suppressor headphones made Goswell look rather like some kind of geriatric alien.
Peel glanced at his watch. About time for his men to check in.
Of course, the deal with the Jew scientist would eventually involve more than just keeping his lordship in the dark; he knew that. The other shoe would drop, and it would certainly involve work somewhat more strenuous than altering a computer log. And while Bascomb-Coombs seemed convinced of his invincibility when it came to his Qubits and all this quantum nonsense, if somebody kicked in the door and started shooting, it would take a man who knew how to shoot back to save his brilliant arse.
Well, Peel had done that for a long time, first for the queen, then her duffer son the king, and for a lot less money than he was getting now—
A bomb went off. Half a second later, another blast followed.
Peel dropped into a gunfighter's crouch, looking for danger, his hand automatically darting to his pistol. He relaxed when he saw the greasy white cloud of smoke swirl past, and heard the old man cursing. "Bastard! You filthy, thieving bastard!"
Peel grinned. Missed another one. He straightened, shot his cuffs, and went to make sure the old man was all right. Just because he was betraying Goswell's trust didn't mean he shouldn't be civilized.