“You didn’t lose anybody here today. The guy was tipped off before we ever rolled, before we even heard about it. There was nothing you could have done to make it work, Abe. He knew we were coming before we did, and he took off. It’s just the breaks.”
Kent nodded. “Point taken.” After a moment, he said, “Knowing you, General, you wouldn’t have been real happy about your Russian. That the end of the story?”
“No. We ran into him again, in England. He hooked up with another bad guy we had reason to talk to, and our second meeting ended with Mr. Ruzhyó pushing up the daisies.”
“That name means ‘rifle,’ doesn’t it? My Russian is very rusty.”
“Yes. And he had one when we came across him — a little twenty-two built into a cane. If we hadn’t been wearing body armor, he would have taken three of us out with that sucker — five shots, five hits. He got one round through a glove, and knocked out another shooter’s weapon. He could have escaped, but for whatever reason, he didn’t, he stood and fought. Hell of a gunslinger. I wished he’d been one of ours.” He paused, then looked at Kent.
“Bad pennies keep turning up. You did everything right, but this guy got a pass. Not your fault. You’ll do better next time.”
“Damn straight I will,” Kent said.
Both Howard and Julio smiled. They knew exactly how he felt.
28
Thorn jacked out of VR and sighed. Much of yesterday and this morning, he had hunted for traces of the man called Eduard Natadze, and had found nothing more useful than what they already knew. Using the new parameters and expanding the time limits, he had searched all manner of things connected to classical guitars, and found that Natadze had bought other instruments. An examination of his house already gave them that — a locked room in the basement had a collection of them, neatly cased, and a gun safe that held others, according to the portable X-ray scanner the FBI had used to check it. They left the house as they found it and set up surveillance, but nobody expected the man to return — he’d been burned, and he had to know they’d watch the place. Still, according to what they knew, the killer loved his guitars. Maybe he would risk it to recover them.
That he showed up on a couple of security cams at shops or concerts did them no good.
There were no records of him anywhere officially. If he was here on a visa, it was not under the name of Eduard Natadze or anything even remotely similar to that. Nor was his photo registered anywhere in the INS. Neither the car in his driveway nor the house itself were listed in his name; they were officially owned by corporations, holding companies, and dead ends. Nor were there any driver’s licenses issued in that name or carrying that photo in any of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, or Puerto Rico.
The man was off the radar — at least as far as Thorn had been able to determine.
It did not seem possible in the information age that somebody could walk in civilized society and not leave any more tracks than this man did, but there it was. And when the Invisible Man goes to ground, how do you find him?
Maybe Jay Gridley was doing better.
Jay crept slowly along the strip, the murmur of the Viper’s exhaust a deep, throaty rumble loud in the summer night. The cruisers were out, low-riders and candy-apple-red or green metal flake paint jobs twenty coats deep; custom rods showing their brilliant feathers, a fine display of rolling automobile iron, mostly Detroit, but a few foreign cars sprinkled in among the big machines. The Beach Boys’ classic hit, “I Get Around,” blared from somebody’s radio — bad guys and hip chicks and driving around on a Saturday night. Easier back in the days when gasoline was leaded and thirty cents a gallon for ethyl.
His fire-engine-yellow Dodge was tiny compared to the full-sized cars, an open cockpit two-seater, but the engine was more than respectable. The Viper could scream with the biggest dinosaurs, and once you pressed the pedal to the metal, the speedometer needle went one way and the gas gauge needle went the other. A rocket on wheels, Jay liked to think, and while expensive to drive in RW, it was considerably cheaper here in VR.
Despite the admiring gazes of the girls dressed in tight shorts watching the cars grumble past in the warm summer night, Jay was frustrated.
Natadze was nowhere to be found. The scenario was entertaining, but that was all — the guy Jay wanted wasn’t in it, and no matter which block he circled, he could not find the man.
Either Jay had lost a few steps, or the guy was a ghost.
And that wasn’t all that was wrong. Yeah, he’d overcome his fear of VR, jumped back in the pool, and was in control again, but being shot, that feeling he’d had of utter terror and helplessness in the moment before the gun went off, that was still nagging at him like a bad back. The memory kept replaying in his mind, popping up at odd times and places. Taking a bath and avoiding getting the bandage on his head wet, he saw it: The man stalking toward his car, the gun in his hand, the flash — he didn’t remember the sound of the shot, but he did remember the muzzle blast — and then nothingness.
He couldn’t really recall the man’s face. He had mentally filled it in, since they had the holographs of Natadze, but in the doing of the event, his features would not resolve. A faceless man with a gun. Death come to call.
In the middle of eating a sandwich at noon, the memory of being unable to run, to get away, had suddenly turned the bread and cheese into something he couldn’t stomach.
Lying in bed next to Saji, the shooter got him yet again.
Since he had awakened from the coma, it had been there, sometimes just outside his perception, ready to jump in and rattle him again and again.
He had been helpless. Paralyzed with fear. He hadn’t been able to run, to fight, to do anything. It was horrible. He felt guilty. He should have been able to do something, but he hadn’t. He had just sat there in a panic, a sparrow hypnotized by a cobra.
Buck up, Jay. This isn’t helping anything.
Maybe Thorn was having better luck looking.
“End scenario,” Jay said.
Jay shucked the VR gear and sat staring at the wall.
Saji drifted past. “And are we having fun yet?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, no. It’s not like the earth swallowed this guy up, it’s like he never existed except for going to classical guitar concerts and music stores. If we hadn’t gotten those two accidental pictures, we’d never even have known that much.”
“So you just have the FBI watch all the music stores and stake out every classical guitar concert from now on,” she said, smiling to show it was a joke.
“You know, even if that was possible, it wouldn’t work. He knows we know about that. I’d bet a billion against a brick bat he won’t be hanging out at those places anytime soon, and if he wants to pick up a new axe, it won’t be under his name, or some place that has a security cam. The man is a phantom.”
“You found him once and you didn’t have anything. You’ll find him again. It just might take a while.”
“But I want him now,” Jay said. And as he did, he realized what that sounded like — a whine. But he had to get this guy. He had to.
“You will, Jay.”
Then he said, “I think maybe I need to go into work. Maybe something there that will help.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t already gone,” she said.
“It’s okay with you?”