an increased chance of winning, they could shuffle up and kill that advantage.
And then there were ways to cheat outright.
A pair of glasses with small television cameras built into them, to send images via radio or cell phone to a partner who had a computer figuring the odds with each hand. Most casinos now ran wideband jammers in their gambling rooms, killing transmitters or receivers, and they had infrared detectors to catch those using line-of-sight IR devices.
Wu knew there were small personal computers you could hide in a pocket that would keep track of the cards and offer advice on amounts to bet. For four or five thousand dollars U.S., you could get one of these, and increase your odds from winning six out of ten sessions to maybe seven or eight. The casinos knew about these devices, of course, and some of them had scanners that would spot them, even in this day of so many personal electronics — phones, personal assistants, and the like.
If you got caught bringing a card computer or spyware into a casino, they’d just ask you to leave. If you got caught using these at the tables? That could get you beaten and left in an alley, and the local police would not be the least bit sympathetic.
Any way a man could think of cheating, the casinos had already seen it and twenty variations. And if you had a system and real money? They would send a chartered jet to pick you up and bring you.
His machine chortled and paid out fifty dollars in credit, and lights flashed and bells rang, to tell other patrons that winning was possible.
Wu smiled. He was slightly ahead and playing on the house’s money, not that it mattered. He was more interested in watching Shing and Mayli. He had no worry that the boy would spot him. Shing had never seen him out of uniform, and Wu would bet that the computer expert would walk right past him without noticing who he was. Too full of himself to pay attention to old men on stools playing slot machines.
Mayli would know him, of course. She had seen him out of uniform — out of clothes altogether — but if she did see him, nobody looking at her would mark it. She was a professional. She would know he wasn’t here just to play the slots, and she’d probably guess he was watching Shing. Or her. But she would not let on, not even a hint. She knew better.
Wu’s machine went crazy. The buzzer buzzed, bells rang, a bank of red and blue lights on top flashed in a rapid sequence.
What—?
He glanced at the screen, and saw that he had just won a five-thousand-dollar jackpot.
Around him, people looked at him, they smiled or frowned, some offering congratulations. Casino personnel headed toward him.
Wu frowned. He didn’t need this attention. He turned away from the blackjack tables to make sure his face wasn’t visible. Yes, Shing was full of his own ego, but walking past a loser and turning to notice a big winner were different things. Wu had no desire to explain anything to Shing he did not want the man to know.
Getting from Washington to Nebraska had been easy. Colonel Abe Kent had found a military flight headed that way and got himself invited on board. Getting back, however, was proving more of a challenge.
It turned out there wasn’t a military flight from Nebraska heading toward Washington/Quantico until Sunday around noon. On top of that, to catch the first available flight he would have to drive to Offutt AFB. Though fairly close, it certainly wasn’t walking distance, so he rented a motel room on the highway to Omaha, and went there after the classical guitar competition was done.
Just after midnight, he was lying on the bed staring at the open closet. In the alcove, next to his git’n’go travel bag, was another case — one he hadn’t brought with him from Quantico.
He recalled the evening as he lay there. Any of the four finalists had been professional enough to make a living at it, from what Kent could tell — and the guy who had won was maybe not quite as technically perfect as the one who came in second, but he had a more intense connection with his instrument and the audience. Kept his eyes closed most of the time, and given the complex pieces and fingerings, that impressed Kent. Plus, he just seemed to get into the music more than the others.
It was also interesting in that the contestants had played without any kind of amplification, at a university theater with maybe three hundred people watching. They simply came out onto the stage, sat on a piano bench, and propped one foot up on a little footstool. One guy had used a plain wooden chair, and had some kind of prop stuck to his guitar that kept the neck angled up.
You could have heard a pin drop just before the players got started, the quietest theater Kent could remember being in, and despite the size of the theater, which could probably hold twice as many people as were there, the nylon-stringed guitars had enough volume to carry all the way to the rear seats, which is where he’d sat, looking for Natadze.
Kent hadn’t seen him, but he had heard the music just fine.
The luthier displays afterward were also impressive. Objects of art, most of them, guitars that looked great and made sweet music — when somebody else picked them up and played them. Kent’s musical talent was zero, except that he liked to listen to all kinds — from classical to jazz to rock to country, whatever — if it was done well.
The hunt for Natadze had come up empty. The former hit man for Cox hadn’t shown up looking for a new guitar. Kent would have spotted him, even if he’d changed his appearance, he was sure of that.
Well. It had been a remote possibility at best.
He had talked to Otto Bergman, once the makers had started packing their stuff away to leave. He’d identified himself, and told the man why he was there. Bergman, who was sixty-something, white-haired, wrinkled, and tanned more than Kent would have thought a guitar-builder would be, had pointed out the very instrument that Natadze had ordered.
“I don’t have that many at any given time,” the man had said. “And since that one seemed destined to stay at my shop forever, I figured I might as well get some use out of it. It belongs to Net Force — you could take it with you, if you wish. It’s just taking up space at my place, and if your man was going to try and get it, he would have done so by now.”
The idea of hauling an eight-thousand-dollar guitar across country rattling around in the back of a C-130 didn’t appeal to Kent. He might hitch a ride on something a little more upscale, a C-40 or maybe even a C-12 or C- 21, and that would be more like flying commercial, but still.
As if the man could read his thoughts, Bergman had said, “I outfit my guitars with Josey Herumin cases, Colonel. They are made of carbon fiber and Kevlar, custom-fitted. Josey gives me a deal on them because I buy five or six a year, and they add eight hundred dollars to the price of the guitar. You could drive a truck over one of them and it wouldn’t hurt the guitar inside. I have a picture of a Toyota pickup with one of the front wheels resting on a Herumin case, and tire doesn’t even dent it.”
“How do you know I’m really from Net Force and not some con man trying to steal one of your instruments?”
“How would you know I have one belonging to Net Force? I didn’t tell anybody, and I’m assuming they didn’t, so if you know, either you are with them or a very clever thief.” He paused, and looked at Kent intently. “You aren’t a crook, are you?”
“No.”
“Good enough for me. Anyway, I’ve been paid for it. Wouldn’t cost me a thing if you swiped it.” He grinned, then, his face softening. “Besides,
Which was how Kent came to have a very expensive classical guitar in the closet of his motel room, inside a black case you could use for stopping bullets.
He had a paperback book he’d picked up at the airport, one of those military history things done by some big-name writer and a former general, and he read for thirty or forty minutes before he turned off the light and went to sleep.
Kent came awake in an instant. He’d heard something, some noise in the room with him that ought not to be there.
His side arm was on the floor next to the bed and he reached down and pulled it from the holster. He
