“You need to come back now,” Takara said. Her dark eyes flickered for an instant to take in the few other commuters waiting for the train. They were a fair distance away at the opposite end of the platform near the ticket booths. No one was even glancing at the two people having a casual conversation in the far corner of the station.
“How did you find me?” he asked, less out of curiosity than as a delaying tactic. He needed to give himself a moment to put a plan together.
“Your…reluctance…to deal with the project in Antarctica made us take a second look.”
Jonathan nodded. “Ah,” he said.
His hands were already in the pockets of his raincoat. Now he shoved them in even deeper and stepped away from the wall. He let his shoulders droop. He lowered his head and sighed deeply, the very picture of a weary, guilty man.
“I’m sorry, Takara.” He took one step to the side, away from the wall. Takara side-stepped in the opposite direction, careful to keep facing her renegade employee full-on. He was tense, ready for a fight.
A careful woman, Jonathan thought. Which was absolutely no surprise.
“It doesn’t matter,” Takara said, clearly uninterested in making a scene. “We’ll just go back to the office and sort this out.”
Sort this out was his unit’s special code for severe interrogation, followed by imprisonment until he was no longer of value, followed by death. They both knew it. His scheme was exposed. His lies were laid bare. The game was over.
Jonathan took one more step to the side, as if he was simply shuffling his feet in embarrassment. Once again, Takara automatically compensated, putting her long, lithe body directly in front of the corrugated concrete wall. Jonathan couldn’t help but admire the lightweight camelhair coat she wore. Beautifully tailored. “All right,” he said. “You-”
Without an intake of breath, without drawing back, and with his hands still deep in his pockets, Jonathan launched himself forward, straight into Takara. He hit her hard, butting her squarely in the throat with his upper body. It took the woman completely by surprise-I’m not the only one feeling overconfident, Jonathan thought distantly as he rammed her back into the solid wall and drove the air out of her lungs. He heard Takara’s skull bonk against the concrete like a bell made out of bone.
It gave Jonathan only a moment, a bare instant while Takara recovered, but he used it well. He reversed direction, pulled himself straight back, and dragged his hands out of his pockets.
In his left was a telescoping baton, a brutal variation of an old-fashioned car antenna, as thick as an index finger at its base. In his right was a man’s sock filled with nickels-a cosh and a bludgeon. They were crude, yes, but Jonathan’s experience had taught him he could never be too careful. Both weapons cleared their pockets with a single, swift snap of each wrist, out and up before Takara had fully regained her balance.
Jonathan attacked quickly and in absolute silence. He swung the baton and connected to the side of the woman’s unprotected head with a meaty thwack. As Takara’s head bobbled to one side, he followed through with the stroke, cocked his arm, and swept it back, using his elbow as a club and ramming it into her throat with all his considerable strength. He felt something pop in the flesh and muscle inside the woman’s neck. Then he used the momentum of his backhanded swing to continue turning his body, bringing up the cosh in his right and driving it deep, deep into Takara’s belly, doubling her over, driving her to the concrete, onto her stomach.
It happened in less than five seconds.
Takara’s mouth opened, but no words came out.
Jonathan stepped in even closer, partly to hide the weapons, partly to take the full dead weight of the woman on his clenched fist. He turned and shoved with his hip, then turned and shoved again, literally guiding the upright body to the edge of the platform. Then all it took was a push, a step back, a leg up, a foot flat on Takara’s belt buckle and a kick. Takara’s body flew back and twisted to the left as it teetered off the edge of the platform and disappeared into the sooty shadows below.
Jonathan stepped back from the edge of the platform-two steps, three-and pocketed the weapons. He took a deep breath and turned to see three passengers nearby. One was staring at him with open, wide-eyed horror. That didn’t concern him; the man was too terrified to ever give an accurate description. The other two, like most good DC residents, didn’t want to see a thing. One was in the process of turning away, hurrying down the platform to get as far from whatever was happening as she could get. The third had his back to them already. Nothing was happening as far as he was concerned. Nothing would happen.
Jonathan moved swiftly but calmly toward the stairs that led up to C Street. He would have to switch to Plan B, that was all. He always had a Plan B. And a Plan C. That was how he stayed alive doing what he’d been doing since a nice matronly woman came to his door at Cornell and invited him to join the CIA. Plan A was just the easiest and fastest option. He would still get where he was going; it would just be a little more trouble and take a little more time. That was-
“Jonathan!”
He stopped short at the base of the staircase. He turned toward the sound of the voice-a shout, sharp as the call of a bird of prey.
Takara was standing on the far side of the platform. There was a wide, black smear of oil across her immaculate coat. Her perfect, long, sharp hair was disheveled, and he saw a patch of blood coloring one cheek.
She was too far away to capture him. In the next instant there was the horn of an oncoming train, and as it surged into the station, it hid her from view.
Jonathan didn’t hesitate. He was out of the station and back in the bright sunshine of a spring afternoon before The B line to Pentagon City departed from Track 3 and gave her a chance to follow him.
He didn’t see her again, but he knew she would return.
NORTH OXFORD, ENGLAND
Spector Safe House
Hayden sat in his own personal cavern and drank. And thought. And then drank some more.
He never felt dwarfed by the size of the place, even now, when he huddled in one corner of the secret, massive, four-story hangar. This was so much larger-grander-than the Oxford installation: the huge buttresses of the dome soaring over him, the vast concrete floor scattered with electronic gadgets of multiple sizes and shapes, some as large as cars. Somehow it still felt normal to him-manageable-even when the sound of his own voice echoed through the cavernous, deserted space like the sound effect from a bad horror movie.
“Check,” he said to Teah, who leaned and bobbled in the space across from him.
“I think not,” Teah trilled, her visual sensors focused tightly on the holographic chessboard that floated between them.
Hayden knew that. He knew her next move, and his next move, and her response three moves ahead. He just didn’t know why he continued to automatically, unalterably, refer to the ever-shifting concentration of metal and digital technology that ‘sat’ across from him as a female.
Teah was many things, but female was not one of them. Hayden was constantly upgrading Teah, so he barely gave her the proper outward appearance that more conventional robots were fashioned with. No silicone outer layer nor a proper adjustment of the wiring modules. In Teah’s mind she was female, and that was all that mattered.
“Andrew is calling again,” Teah said. “Something about a dinner you’re invited to?”
“I had no recollection. Ignore it,” he instructed. “You can’t get hold of me.”
Teah gave him the robotic equivalent of a non-committal shrug. “As you wish.”
He swept up his chipped ceramic mug from its precarious perch on a stack of broken modules and drained the last of the scotch from it in one long, grateful pull. He often wondered why he bothered with the intermediate receptacle; when he got in moods like this, he should just grab the bottle of Glennfiddich and suck it down straightaway. But no, he told himself as he filled the mug to the rim again. That’s what drunks do. Not me. I’m just a certified genius with a bit of a drinking issue. That’s what everyone says, anyway.