Night Moves

The fat man was hit in the chest, high and slightly off center, and the camo was already soaked with blood, a dark and wet splotch in the night. The fat man looked up at Singh. 'I'm done,' he said. 'Help me out here, Sikh.'

Singh nodded. 'Yes.' He pointed the assault rifle at Bhattacharya's forehead, squeezed the trigger fast, got off one round. The man's body spasmed and went limp.

No time to stand around and offer prayers. Singh ran.

A few seconds later, light and noise shattered what was left of the hot and clammy night. The exploding train could easily be seen for miles by any who happened to look.

And it was felt, in a different way, around the entire world.

PART ONE The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire

Chapter 1

Friday, April 1st

Hampton Court, England

The palace, whose first royal occupant had been Henry VIII, back in the 1500s, was huge. The stone buildings themselves covered more than six acres, with ten times that much walled-in lawn and gardens around the structures. The chambers were mostly big, with high ceilings, tall windows, and a couple had stone fireplaces large enough to walk into without bumping your head. Most of the rooms were empty, save for giant wall hangings and baroque chandeliers. A few chambers had monstrous canopied beds or chairs and desks in them. There were art galleries, with age-muddied paintings hung. Much of the section they were in at the moment, called the King's Apartments, had burned in a sudden fire in the mid- 1980s and had been since restored to what it supposedly looked like in the 1700s.

Alex Michaels glanced around in awe. It was hard to imagine that anybody had ever actually lived in such a place.

It had cost them fifteen euros each to be admitted to the palace, after the ride on the tube from London. They'd strolled across the Thames on the Hampton Court Bridge, to the main entrance. Michaels had traveled over the years, more since he had become commander of the FBI stand-alone unit, Net Force, but he had somehow never made it to England until now. He and Toni had decided to add some vacation time to the week they had been allotted for the International Computer Crime Conference. They needed some time off; things had gotten a little rocky on a personal level the last few weeks.

So here they were, in the huge house of kings and queens, but, vast as it was, Hampton Court Palace was not big enough to contain Toni Fiorella's simmering anger. Michaels expected it to burst out any second, to blast him and whatever room they were in to a blackened crisp. They weren't married, but it seemed the honeymoon period was coming to an end, as much as he did not want it to happen.

Fifteen euros: that was a lot to be allowed to walk around inside a musty castle for a couple of hours. If it hadn't been for the calculator built into the electronic virgil on his belt, Michaels would never have been able to figure out what that was in real money. Multiplying fractions was not his favorite pastime.

He pointed out the security beam generator to Toni, inset into the support that held the drooping velvet ropes that were supposed to keep the tourists from sitting in the antique chairs. 'Step over that, I bet we'll hear an alarm scream.'

Toni said nothing.

Oh, Lord, what have I done now? 'You okay?'

'I'm fine.'

Michaels drew in a long, slow breath and let it escape silently as they walked along. A costumed man who looked as if he might be from Henry's court stood under a painting of an ugly couple and two much better-looking dogs, explaining to a tour group the significance of the painting. The costumed man had what Michaels had been told was a posh accent, nary a dropped aitch, very upper class.

Before he and Toni had become lovers, Michaels had been married and divorced. There was a way that a woman said, 'I'm fine,' the tone clipped and brusque, that meant she was anything but fine. He had learned not to go any farther down that road unless he was really ready to hear what was wrong, sometimes at a decibel level equal to standing in front of the speakers at a This Is Your Brain on Drugs rock concert. Would Toni yell at him in the Great Hall? Or would she wait until they were in the smaller Tudor rooms where Cardinal Wolsey once pursued his studies? Right at the moment, if Michaels dared to touch her, he was almost sure his fingers would get burned. She was pissed, and he was pretty sure it was at him.

Why wasn't life simple? Two people love each other, they get together, and live happily ever after?

Probably what Anne Boleyn thought when she hooked up with the fat man, you reckon? said his inner voice.

He told his inner voice to shut up.

She waited until they were outside, strolling across a damp and chilly lawn toward the North Gardens and the carefully tended hedge maze before she said anything. He was watching her peripherally, admiring her athletic walk, her beautiful face and figure. She had been his assistant since he'd been at Net Force, and she was very good at her job. She was also almost a dozen years younger than he was, a bright, tough, nice Italian girl from the Bronx who was an adept at an Indonesian martial art called pentjak silat. She had been teaching it to him, and he was getting better at it, but if push came to shove and she was really angry, she could wipe the floor with him and never break a sweat. That was an odd sensation, knowing the woman you loved could kick your ass if she felt like it.

When she spoke, her voice was quiet, even, no anger apparent in it. 'Why did you send Marshall to the OCIC meeting in Kabul?'

Michaels took another deep breath. Why hadn't he sent her? Because Afghanistan was not a place he wanted Toni to be. It was backward, women were fourth-class citizens, after men, boys, and horses, and there were frequent terrorist attacks on foreigners, particularly Americans. He did not want to put her at risk. But he couldn't say that straight out. Instead, he said, 'Marshall wanted to go. I didn't think you did.'

'I didn't, particularly,' she said.

'Well, so there it is. You didn't have to. No problem, right?'

He should be so lucky. She said, 'I was up. I should have gone.'

'But you just said you didn't want to go.'

She stopped walking and stared at him. God, she was beautiful, even when she was mad at him. Maybe even more so when she was mad at him.

'That's not the point. I was up; you should have sent me, whether I wanted to or not. Why didn't you?'

He had a pretty good memory, a necessary requisite for prevarication, but even so, when it got right down to it, Michaels was not a very good liar. Oh, sure, he could tell somebody their hair looked nice when it didn't, or smile and nod at a superior's bad taste in clothes without blurting it out, but beyond simple and harmless white lies designed to spare feelings, he had no real interest in games of deceit. She had caught him, he had tried to slip past and couldn't, so he wasn't going to try to lie his way out of it. He shook his head and went for the truth: 'Because I didn't want to send you into a place where you might be at risk.'

'That's what I thought.' She started walking again.

He went after her. 'Look, Toni, I love you. Is it so wrong to want to keep you out of harm's way?'

'For a lover, no. I'd be unhappy if you didn't want that. But for a colleague in the intelligence community, yes, it's wrong. You know I can take care of myself.'

'Yes,' he said. He knew, he'd seen that demonstrated a few times. She was better able to take care of herself when things got physical than he was, but even so, she wasn't Superwoman.

'I want you to treat me like one of the boys.'