Hidden Agendas

critical-mass chunks. The NRC and NSA would have kittens if somebody did something that stupid. But he had to check.

'This is domestic movement?'

'Of course not. Two are, two are foreign. Six pounds, seven pounds, four, and two.'

'When?'

'In two days. You want the particulars or not?'

'Fifty thousand, you said.'

'Yes. In cash. Nothing bigger than a hundred.'

'All right. I'll have somebody meet you at the place, tonight, nine p.m. Bring the information.'

Hughes broke the connection. He hadn't planned to escalate things quite this much, this fast, but when something like this fell into your lap, you grabbed it and ran with it.

He tapped his com. Platt answered right away.

'Yeah?'

'Swing by here.'

Platt said, 'When?'

'Now.'

He would give Platt the money and send him to fetch the information. Anybody with access to some explosives, a good metal shop, and some electronics from Radio Shack could build an atomic bomb, but without the right fissionable material it was nothing more than a mildly dangerous science project. There were a lot of groups out there who would pay millions to get their hands on nineteen pounds of weapons-grade plutonium. You didn't need that much to build yourself a nice and dirty little nuclear bomb. It would make a helluva bang when you set it off.

Now he could really give Net Force something to think about.

Chapter Twelve

Friday, December 24th, 11:00 a.m. The Bronx, New York

Toni climbed the familiar brownstone steps, steps that she had swept clean daily when she had been studying with Guru DeBeers. Somebody else must be doing the job now, for there was no snow or ice or dirt on them. The chicken-wire glass doors were closed and locked, but Toni still carried her well-worn key. She opened the door and stepped into the building. The hall was marginally warmer than it was outside.

Guru's apartment was the third one on the left. As she reached up to knock, the old woman's gravel-and- smoke voice came from within:

'Not locked, come in.'

Toni grinned. Before she even knocked, Guru knew she was there. She was sure the woman was psychic.

Inside, the place looked as she remembered it from last year, and from her childhood. The old green couch with the needlepoint doily here, the overstuffed red plush chair with its needlepoint there, the short coffee table with one leg propped on an old Stephen King novel, all were in their usual places.

Guru was in the kitchen, crushing coffee beans in the little hand-powered grinder she had brought with her sixty years ago from Jakarta. She cranked the handle slowly and the smell of the beans, shipped to her by a distant relative who still lived in the highlands of Central Java, was sharp, rich, and earthy.

The two women faced each other. Toni pressed her hands together in front of her face and moved them down in front of her heart in a namaste bow, and Guru returned the greeting. Then they hugged.

At eighty-something years old, Guru was still brick-shaped and solidly built, but frailer and slower than she had been. As always, her clean and carefully set white hair smelled slightly of ginger, from the shampoo she used.

'Welcome home, Tunangannya,' Guru said.

Toni smiled. Best Girl, what Guru had called her almost since they'd met.

'Coffee in a minute.' Guru dumped the freshly ground coffee into a brown-paper cone and set it into the stainless-steel basket over the carafe, then poured hot water from a cast-iron kettle that had been heating on the tiny four-burner stove. The smell was delightful, almost overwhelming.

Guru waited until most of the water filtered through, then added a bit more. She repeated this until the kettle was empty. She took two plain white china mugs from the doorless wooden cabinet over the stove, then poured fresh coffee into them. There was no offer of cream or sugar. You could drink it any way you wanted at Guru's — as long as it was black. Adulterating coffee was, according to her way of thinking, very nearly a sin of some kind. Guru's religious beliefs were an amalgam of Hindu, Moslem, and Christian, and difficult to follow at best.

Wordlessly, the two women moved into the living room. Guru took the chair, Toni sat on the couch. Still without speaking, they took sips of the hot coffee.

Guru made the best coffee Toni had ever tasted. In fact, it spoiled her for drinking the stuff anywhere else. If Starbucks could get its hands on Guru, they would triple their business.

'So. How is life in Washington? Has your young man yet seen the light?'

'Not yet, Grandmother.'

Guru sipped her coffee and nodded. 'He will. All men are slow, some slower than others.'

'I wish I could be sure of that.'

'Not in this life, child. But if he fails to notice you properly, he does not deserve you.'

They drank more coffee. When they were almost done, Guru said, 'I think it is time to tell you a story. About my people.'

Toni nodded but didn't speak. Guru had taught her a lot using this method, telling her Javanese tales and legends.

'My father's father's father came from Holland on a sailing ship in 1835. He came to work as an overseer on a plantation that raised indigo and coffee and sugarcane. Back then, the country was not called Indonesia. The pale men called the islands as a whole the Dutch East Indies, or sometimes, the Spice Islands. To my people, our island was Java.'

Guru held up her empty cup. Toni stood, took both cups, went to the kitchen, and refilled them. Guru kept talking.

'My great-grandfather went to work on the farm, just outside of Jakarta, which had not nearly so many people then as it does now. He was married, with his wife and two children left behind in the country of his birth, but as was often the custom with white men in a foreign country in those days, he took himself a native wife. My great-grandmother.'

Toni brought Guru's coffee back to her, reseated herself on the couch, and sipped at her own brew.

'In due course, my grandfather was born, first among six brothers and two sisters. When my grandfather had eleven summers, my great-grandfather sailed back to Holland, to rejoin his wife and children there, now a wealthy man. He left his Javanese family well-provided for, not always the custom with white men. He never saw or contacted them again.

'My great-grandmother's family took her and her children in, and life went on.'

Toni nodded, to keep the flow going. Guru had told many tales, but never one about her family that was so personal.

'My grandfather's mother's brother, Ba Pa — The Wise — took it upon himself to teach my grandfather, whose Dutch name was Willem, how to be a man. My grandfather grew up strong, adept, and eventually became a soldier, part of the native army.' She sipped at her coffee. Then she said, 'Go into my bedroom and look at the nightstand. There is a thing upon a small silk pillow there. Bring it to me.'

Toni nearly choked on her coffee. In all the years she had trained and known Guru, she had never been past the closed door into her bedroom. She had conjured all kinds of fantasies as to what it must look like in there. Maybe shrunken heads dangling from the ceiling, or walls covered with Indonesian art.