another sixty or eighty years, given the state of medicine, maybe more. Yes, it was true, she was at her peak — mentally, physically, her skills as good as they were likely to get. After all the years of dancing on the edge, she had developed a feeling about things, almost an instinct. She had learned to trust those feelings. Right now, on some level, she knew: It was time to leave the party. Hanging around like an over-the-hill boxer to get decked by some big kid with an iron jaw was not a good idea. So. As soon as the missed target was deleted, the Selkie was going into early retirement. She would shut down all the Selkie's lines. If wasn't as if she was poor. She had eight million dollars tucked away. With careful investments, the money would generate all the income she'd ever need. Ten million had been a goal, but never more than a hypothetical number. And there were a couple of high-risk, but very-high-return, ventures she could invest in that were likely to pay off. She wouldn't starve.
But the one big dangling problem was Genaloni.
Probably her employer would wind up like most of the wise guys, dead or in stir. But 'probably' wasn't good enough to risk sixty or eighty years on. She did not want to be spending any big part of those years sneaking looks over her shoulder, worrying that Genaloni might lurk behind her in the shadows.
No, Genaloni had to become part of her past. Her dead past.
It wouldn't even be that hard. The criminal types surrounded themselves with muscle and guns to protect themselves from each other. They had lawyers to take of the cops, and they figured they were immune from anybody else. Genaloni was maybe the brightest of the bunch, but he had weaknesses. The Selkie made it her business to know all about her clients before she ever took a job from them. Genaloni had a small army of thugs and lawyers, but he also had a mistress. Her name was Brigette, and while she was well off from Genaloni's care, she had neither lawyers nor bodyguards between her and the world.
So. First Genaloni, then the bureaucrat in Washington. Then off for a month in beautiful Hawaii, maybe. Or perhaps Tahiti. Someplace warm and sunny and without clocks or work to order her day.
The Selkie smiled. It was good to have a new goal.
29
He had, Plekhanov realized, a tail.
He cursed briefly in Russian, vented his anger, then put it away. Done was done, the past but prologue. He had to make adjustments.
The car shadowing him was one of those ubiquitous little sedan things, like millions of others on the net and in the Real World, and he wouldn't have noticed it, save that he was doing a standard side-road loop-the-loop to check for just such problems. This was the third of his evasive maneuvers, and while he had not spotted the tail before, he had to assume it had been with him for some time. How long had he been under surveillance? That was merely the first of several questions, wasn't it? Who was it? How had they found him? What was the best way to rid himself of them?
He swung the Corvette back onto the main road. Best to pretend he did not see them. Better the devil one knew than the devil one did not.
The gray car followed, maintaining a fairly long distance, but assuring him he was right. They would be gathering information generated from his vehicle — vectors, construction, code modules, all things that, in the hands of an expert, could eventually point to him. VR was a metaphorical place, but the images had real underpinnings. They could be recorded and perhaps traced — especially since if it was Net Force, they had enough computer power to brute-force their way through programmer profiles. The longer they stayed with him, the fewer possibilities they would have to sift. Before, he could have been one of tens or hundreds of thousands; now, every minute they stayed with him, that number fell. Every programmer had a style — and the best of them had styles that were as nearly as individual as fingerprints or DNA profiles. If they stayed with him long enough, they would suck his true identity out — or get so close they'd find him on a first or second pass through their strainers. It was a matter of knowing what to look for, of which questions to ask the search system.
Damn!
He was on the North EuroAsian Highway now, already through the Baltics and almost home. He couldn't go there, of course, but a sudden course change would engender suspicion in his pursuers. Too, he had to assume they weren't alone. There could be cars rolling ahead of him, others waiting at intersections for him to pass. If the little gray car was that of a Net Force or affiliated agent, then there almost certainly would be others around.
All right. He could turn off on the India Highway a hundred kilometers ahead, lead them south and away from home. He could park the car, go into a restaurant, bail from the scenario—
No, what was he thinking? That kind of panicky reflex would leave them the car and a possible way to trace it.
Something else…
It had worked once. Maybe it would work again. Maybe he could lose the chase car, take a side road, maybe duck other pursuit. Get away from this scenario and dump it.
Certainly worth a try.
He slowed, allowed the following car to draw a bit nearer. When he was ready, he drew the spikes from the pouch he carried, and with a quick and practiced hand, scattered them across all four lanes behind him, a sharp- pointed shower—
The pursuer swerved, missed most of the caltrops, but still ran over a few.
Aha!
His bright flare of triumph went dark quickly. The gray car's tires did not deflate, nor did it slow. If anything, it speeded up.
Damn, damn! They must suspect who he was, at least in this persona and vehicle. They knew what to expect, had hardened their program against his defense. Unfortunately, he didn't have much else in the way of armament — at least nothing that would stop people as good as these had to be. He had plenty of smoke-and- mirror programs, but they wouldn't do the trick here.
If he couldn't shake them, he couldn't lead them very far, either. They already knew too much. He could not take the risk they'd pull enough more information by osmosis to further narrow down their search. He wouldn't be able to make the India Road.
He had to get out of VR now!
The damage-to-system warning light flashed on his computer, along with the vox: 'Warning! System Failure! Warning! System Failure!'
Plekhanov degeared and slapped at the power switch, killed the juice to his computer, not bothering with the emergency shut-down procedures. Data would be corrupted, the OS would be mangled and the VR was probably a total loss. None of that mattered when seconds counted for escape or capture.
Damn, damn,
How much did they know?
Ahead of them, the Corvette exploded into a bright flash of light, then vanished.
'Shit!' Jay said.
'There he goes,' Tyrone said to Bella. 'He spotted us and crashed out.' To Jay, he said, 'You get anything useful?'
'Yeah, yeah, I think so. He was on the road to Central Asia — Russia, one of the CIS, maybe. He might have turned off at the India Road up ahead, or been going on through to the Orient, but if he was planning to head south, he should have cut that way a hundred klicks back. Besides, he doesn't drive like any Japanese or Korean I've ever seen. I think he was going home, and I think he drives like a Russian.'
'What is he talking about?' Bella said.
Tyrone explained it to her, about programmers' styles.
'We're gonna have to take what we've got home and study it,' Jay said. 'Maybe we got enough to nail this sucker.'
