Natadze was on the run, and it would be stupid of him to show up at Bergman’s virtual or real door with cash in hand asking for the guitar made for his pseudonym — he’d have to assume that Net Force had made that connection, he was too smart not to figure that.
But Bergman still had that guitar, because Net Force had paid him the five thousand dollars Natadze still owed on it, and told him to hang on to it. Kent assumed that Natadze knew Bergman still had the guitar, but not that Net Force had paid the tab on it — though he would not be surprised if Natadze had figured that out, too. Nobody had ever called for it, and Kent hadn’t really expected that anybody would, but it had been the only bait they’d had for a trap, weak as it was.
Kent stared at the guitar competition notice. Natadze couldn’t buy the guitar he’d wanted, not under his name, nor the phony handle he’d used, but if old Otto was showing his wares at a public place for the first time in years, there was no reason Natadze couldn’t just walk up and try to buy one on the spot. He liked the man’s work enough to have put up three thousand bucks against eight, and he hadn’t gotten anything for it.
A man strolls up to your display, nods at the guitars.
Nice work. You have any instruments in stock that aren’t spoken for?
Well, yes, this one is for sale.
Put it in the case, sir, I’ll take it…
Order anything by mail or the web, there were ways to track you and find out where you were — credit cards, phone numbers, delivery services. Walk up in person, give the salesman a phony name and a sheaf of clean bills, and there was no trail, no way to trace you, or even know you’d been there, unless you happened to walk in front of a surveillance cam and somebody bothered to look at the image.
Given the tens of thousands of cams available to Homeland Security, and the millions of images that they provided, the chances of coming across somebody like Natadze again without real specific places to look were slim and snowball.
It would be a smart move, cash and carry, and low-risk, especially if you had any idea the search for you had been effectively shut down months ago.
Kent leaned back his chair. Natadze apparently had enough money so that a few thousand dollars wasn’t worth risking his freedom over. But more than the money itself, the passion Natadze felt for his music might make a guitar like this something to take a chance on. And besides, from what Kent had learned about the man, he might be the kind of guy who, once he set his mind on something, kept going until he got it. And it wasn’t as if they had anything else that would lead to him…
Kent considered it. It was a reach, a very long shot, but not a costly one. The competition was a few days away, and things were quiet here. It would be on a weekend, too, so he’d be on his own time. And there were a lot of military aircraft in the air on any given day. More than one branch of the service owed him a favor or two, not to mention that he was back in the Corps now. He could snag a flight heading that way, take in a classical guitar competition, and browse the luthier’s display afterward, couldn’t he? It wasn’t like he had a hot date this Saturday, or anything else on his plate he needed to worry about.
And if Eduard Natadze showed up looking for a new guitar?
Boy, wouldn’t that be worth the trip?
15
Locke had spent four days in and out of a motel not far from Net Force Headquarters at Quantico. It had been a productive time. Seurat had stayed another day in D.C., then gone home, and Locke had stuck around and done research, a bit of social engineering, and had learned some disturbing information.
None of which was nearly as disturbing as what was happening in his room right at the moment…
In his late twenties, Locke had had a paramour whose family had inherited a membership in Hong Kong’s Empire Gun Club. The club was made up of well-to-do Brits, ex-pats, and wealthy Chinese who could afford the five-thousand-pound-a-year membership fee. You didn’t even have to own a gun to use the place — there was an incredible variety of weapons locked away at the main range that they would allow members to shoot.
The woman with whom Locke had been having a professional liaison, Rowena, was fifty-something, well-made, and enjoyed firing off various handguns three or four times a month. She also took it upon herself to teach Locke all about the things: not only how to aim and shoot them, but how to take them apart, the differences between pistols and revolvers, the strengths and weaknesses of the different calibers, and a wide range of ballistic and other information. Locke had shown a professional interest — Rowena got very passionate after a session at the range, and she liked to slake her excitement in bed — but he hadn’t thought he would ever have much use for the ability to fire a pistol accurately.
Back in his days in the street gangs, it would have been useful, for those rare times when guns came out. Even in Hong Kong twenty-five years ago, handguns had been easy enough to come by, if you had enough money. But they were bad for business. Most of the boys who ran with Locke used their fists, sometimes augmented with clubs, knives, or even hatchets, but rarely firearms.
In the days before the English pulled out, the police, who might not raise an eyebrow if two rival gangs thumped each other bloody and filled up a local hospital, took a dim view of anything that might threaten tourists. A stray bullet that wounded a rich visitor from Japan would mean a lot of street criminals would be spending time in jail until the police sorted it out.
Many of the gang members had picked up odd bits of Chinese martial arts — kung fu, wushu—along the way. The town was thick with old Chinese men who danced those dances, and the techniques that worked on the street were passed along to fellow members. Locke was no Bruce Lee, but he could handle himself, and he’d never played with guns until he’d met Rowena.
It had been a waste of time, insofar as Locke never expected to use the knowledge again. But he’d been wrong.
At this moment, he was glad his former lover had spent all that time showing him what she had—
— because the man sitting in the chair across from him in the hotel room had a pistol in his hand, and it was loosely pointed in Locke’s direction.
The gun was a Colt 1911, a semiautomatic that had once been U.S. military issue, long ago. The man holding it, one T.A. Collins, aged sixty-four, was a former security guard who had worked briefly for Net Force. Collins had been fired for drinking on the job. Locke had poked around and found him, guessing that he would be amenable to selling information. Collins had been open to the idea. The day before yesterday, he had been an asset.
Now, he had become an annoying problem.
“Pointing a gun at me isn’t really a good way to cement a good business relationship,” Locke said.
Collins was fifteen feet away. Too far to jump, even knowing what Locke knew — which was that Collins apparently hadn’t spent much time practicing with his weapon — the thumb-safety was still on. While it would take only a half second to wipe the safety off, it shouldn’t be employed in such a situation as this — Collins couldn’t know if Locke had a weapon himself, and a half second might be enough for him to seize the advantage.
Collins said, “Yeah, well, let’s just think of this”—he waggled the gun—“as insurance.”
Locke nodded. “All right. How much?”
“Ten thousand. I go away, nobody hears any stories.”
Locke nodded, considering the proposal. He had paid Collins a thousand dollars U.S. and had found out about Net Force’s recent transfer to military control, a most useful bit of information. Now the man was blackmailing him, threatening to point him out to the authorities for asking his questions.