Net Force

'I think so.'

'Oh. I remember her from the third-grade play. She's a cute little thing.'

'She's not nine years old anymore, Mom.'

'I would hope not. Well. Do you need a ride?'

'I'll take the Trans,' he said. 'It's not far.'

'All right. Leave a number, and be back for dinner at seven.'

'Yes, Mom.'

'Lighten up, Ty. I know I used to ride dinosaurs to school, but my memory hasn't all gone. It's not as dangerous as you think, talking to a gurrul…' She laughed.

So much for what you know, said the voice from behind its rock.

Saturday, October 2nd, 1:33 p.m. Quantico

For once, a meeting actually got started on schedule. Michaels looked around the conference room at his people. 'Okay, let's not waste any time. Jay?'

Jay Gridley waved the presentation projector on. 'Good news and bad news,' he said. 'The cane came from this store, made by a company that mostly supplies serious martial artists.'

An image appeared.

'This is the model…'

Another image, this one of the cane, flashed on-screen.

'After eliminating a whole bunch of customers — legitimate teachers, people who really need to use canes, collectors, and the usual number of loose nuts and bolts who buy things out of paranoia, all of whom could account for their purchases — we are left with eight possibilities.'

Names flashed on-screen.

'Of the eight, our agents have so far interviewed five. Four of these produced the canes they are recorded as having purchased. One gave the item as a gift to a friend, and we have found that one.'

Five of the names faded away.

'Of the three remaining subjects, one is a survivalist in Grant's Pass, Oregon, who refuses to allow local, state or federal agents on his property. The gentleman in question is seventy years old and according to his medical records, has had a surgical hip-replacement. We have a judge signing a search warrant as we speak, to look for the cane on his property. I'd guess they'll find him leaning on it when they get there.'

The name on-screen began to blink, alternating red and blue.

'So that's pending. The remaining two names…' He shook his head. 'Well, they are… interesting.'

Michaels said, 'Interesting?'

Jay waved at the screen. One of the names began to pulse in yellow. 'Wilson A. Jefferson, of Erie, Pennsylvania. Mr. Jefferson, in the last three years, has bought a cane, two sets of escrima sticks and a set of custom-designed yawara sticks. These were delivered to a post office box. The cane is the right model. The escrima sticks are used in a Filipino fighting art called, oddly enough, escrima; the last items are used in several different fighting styles, but the name is Japanese. According to the post office box rental agreement and state driver's license records, Mr. Jefferson is a white male, forty-one years old, and he resides at this address.'

A street number and name blossomed.

'However, a check at this address came up negative. Nobody by that name has ever lived there. On the surface, Jefferson's credit records seem fine, but below the surface, they vanish. What we have here is an electronic man.'

'So this is our assassin,' Toni put in.

'Sort of,' Jay said. 'Then there is Mr. Richard Orlando.'

More screen action.

'Mr. Orlando has bought, over a period of four years, five canes, including two of the models we have in hand. All were delivered to a post office box in Austin, Texas. And a check of his background says he is an Hispanic male, twenty-seven years old, and as far as we can tell, also exists only in a few record computers and apparently nowhere else. The photographic image on his driver's license is blurred so badly he could look like anybody in this room. Oddly enough, so are the photographic records of Mr. Jefferson.'

'Same person, using two fake IDs,' Michaels said.

'That would be my opinion,' Jay said. 'Very dissimilar and a thousand miles apart. Fakes, and unless you were looking for them, you'd never accidentally spot them.'

'Great,' Toni said. 'So, what's the good news?'

'That is the good news,' Jay continued. 'Nobody remembers either Mr. Jefferson or Mr. Orlando. We've interviewed postal workers, and come up blank. There are no trails leading away. As far as we can tell, the only reason these two E-men ever existed was to take delivery of some fancy but perfectly legal sticks half a country apart. And I'd give you good odds that the real person who has these things — if he or she still has them, knowing we'll be trying to trace him or her through them — isn't in Pennsylvania or Texas.'

'Dead end,' Toni said.

'Deader than black plastic in the noonday sun,' Jay said. 'We'll keep on it, but whoever this is, he or she, they are real good. They went to a lot of effort for such a small thing.'

'Seems to be paying off, too, isn't it?' Michaels nodded. 'I'm still betting on a she,' he said. 'It didn't feel like a man under that old-lady disguise. Okay, thanks, Jay. Toni?'

'We're running checks on all known professional assassins. So far, nothing substantial on anybody as good as this one seems to be.'

'What about insubstantial?'

'Rumors about this shadowy figure or that. Usual stuff — the Iceman, who can kill you with a hard look. The Specter, who walks through walls. The Selkie, who can change shape. Urban legends. Problem with the really good hired killers is that they keep very low profiles. Pretty much the only time anybody bags one of them is when a client gives them up.'

Michaels nodded. He knew this. He'd been thinking about it since Steve Day's murder.

'Anybody got anything else?'

Brent Adams, the FBI head of Organized Crime, said, 'Something is going on inside the Genaloni organization.'

Michaels looked at Adams. Raised his eyebrows.

The OC man said, 'Our people went back and strained out a year's worth of everything with a Genaloni tag. A couple of weeks ago, the FBI regional office in New York City got an inquiry from one of Genaloni's lawyers regarding the detention of Luigi Sampson. Sampson is Ray Genaloni's enforcer — the head of his legal and illegal security operations.'

'Yes?'

'Well, our agents in New York didn't detain Sampson. Genaloni's people didn't follow up on it, so nobody thought anything else about it. A mistake of some kind.'

'Which means…?'

Adams shook his head. 'We don't know. But since then, our wiretaps and surveillance cams haven't heard or seen anything of Sampson.'

'Maybe he went on vacation,' Jay said.

Adams shrugged. 'Maybe. Or maybe he pissed off Ray Genaloni and he's in a field outside Dead Toe, South Dakota, pushing up the daisies.'

'I don't think they grow daisies up there. Too cold,' Jay said.

'You'd be surprised,' Toni put in.

Michaels said, 'So, why would Genaloni's people be calling the FBI, supposedly looking for Sampson, if they deleted him?'

Adams shook his head again. 'Establish an alibi, maybe. With these guys, you never know what they're going to do. They make some smart moves now and then; then they turn around and make a stupid one.'