driver's licenses. Anybody who shows up to sneak in using a friend's
card had better not sneeze at the wrong time.'
'You aren't worried at all? Wouldn't a hidden metal detector or X ray
be wise?'
'No point. They know we chose this place for a reason, and they know
we're here several hours early. I figure they'll try to slip a minimum
of eight men in with Wu, a maximum of twelve. I am assuming they will
all be armed. I have twenty men on call, but I probably won't use all
of them. Remember, the idea here is not to get into a shooting match,
but to keep the balance of power even. It's our place and Wu knows
that. If he gets his people in, he'll be a lot more comfortable. If
he couldn't get them in, then it might make him twitchy; and that's not
what we want.'
'No?'
'No. A nervous man might do something rash. They'll take what you
have for free if they can get it that way, but if they realize they
can't, they'll pay for it. What we want is a nice smooth negotiation
in which the Chinese get what they want, and you walk away a rich man,
everybody's happy, a nice win-win situation.'
'But if they try something--' '--they won't live to regret it. Doctor.
Then we have to start all over again with a new negotiating team.
Nobody wants that.'
But secretly, a small part of Ventura wanted exactly that.
C'mon, Wu. Show me what you got. Reach for your pocket--and let's see
who goes home.
Wednesday, June 15th Quantico, Virginia
Michaels stopped at Jay's office, but didn't see him. He saw instead
one of the techs. Ray DeCamp, carrying a stack of hardcopy printouts.
The man always wore thick, round computer glasses while at work, so of
course he had a nickname appropriate to that:
'Hey, Owl. Jay around?'
'Commander. Nah, he said he hadda go into town, said he'd be back inna
couple hours.' Owl had a strong Boston accent, so the last word came
out 'ow-wuz.'
That surprised Michaels. Jay seldom left during the day for any
reason. A lot of times, before he'd hooked up with the Buddhist girl
Soji, Gridley would stay in his office for days, sleeping on the couch
and showering in the gym dressing room. There were jokes that he was a
vampire, that exposure to sunlight would cause him to burst into
flames. And coming from other ghost-white computer gee ks who spent a
considerable amount of their own time in semidark rooms, that was
saying something.
Oh, well. Given everything else going on around here lately, Jay
leaving the building during the day was no weirder than the rest of
it.
'Hey, Alex.'
He looked up and refocused on Toni.
'Hey,' he said.
He repressed a sigh. He'd flown off the handle this morning. Sure,
she had provoked him, but he expected better of himself. A man who
