Springboard

It was a good metaphor, Jay thought. There were people who lived in fortresses, massive, well-protected constructs that were so solidly built that getting into them took great skill. There were few such places that Jay couldn’t eventually crack, one way or another — stealth, bribery, even direct assault — though some would take a lot longer than others. If his quarry was inside one of those, that was the disadvantage. The advantage was, such forts were usually not that hard to find. The bigger and more elaborate they were, the easier they were to spot. You had to give up one thing to have another.

Harder, in Jay’s mind, was the quarry who lived in a small shack amidst hundreds or thousands just like it, with nothing to set it apart from those around it. The only way to find the man you wanted was to open each door and look inside. While the doors were flimsy and opening them was no problem, doing it a hundred or a thousand times was no small job. And a clever enough prey might step outside just before you kicked in his door and found an empty room, then sneak back in after you were gone.

A ranked samurai swaggered down the street arrogantly for all to see, the two swords in his sash, able to chop off the head of a lesser man — a farmer, artisan, or merchant— with impunity, if he so desired. Easy to see such samurai and mark them.

A ninja, on the other hand, never wore his black suit in public — the ninja’s stock in trade was stealth. He would be disguised — as a samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant — and the best of them would offer no clue as to their real identity. The ninja suit was worn for night assassinations or spying, and designed to blend into the darkness unseen. If you saw a ninja in this mode, he wasn’t very good at it.

If you could penetrate the disguise, however, you were halfway to defeating a ninja. Yes, they had weapons and dirty tricks, but if you knew that, you had the advantage. A man pretending to be a sake merchant on a rainy Edo street would have to go for a hidden weapon, and Jay could pull out his katana and lop off the man’s head before the ninja could come up with a shuriken to fling at him.

First man to move had the advantage.

Somewhere in this collection of warriors was a fake, and as soon as Jay figured out which one it was, he would have the Chinese hacker. A mistake would give Jay away as well, however, and so he had to be very careful before he moved.

He had managed to sneak onto the Chinese junk on the Yellow River, but the boat had been empty. Somebody had been there recently, there were signs of occupation, but Jay had just missed him. And because the boat had been easy to clamber up and into, he did not figure that the man who’d been there would be coming back. He was more certain than ever it was the hacker he sought.

It was easier to find Leigh, and once he found him, he knew his real target couldn’t be far away. He was right. Leigh had led him to this place, and the hunt was back on.

Jay had asked Chang to hold off having Leigh arrested and sweated, for two reasons. First, Jay wanted a shot at finding the hacker on his own. Second, if the Chinese got the guy, they would pry things out of him that the U.S. military surely would not want them to have.

If this didn’t work, he’d have to give Chang the go-ahead — if he hadn’t already decided to do it anyhow — and they’d get the ID from Leigh, who surely must know who it was he had been watching.

But Jay wanted his chance first. It wouldn’t take long — he’d either pass or fail in a hurry. Pass — and it would go a long way to making him feel as if he’d done his job; fail — and they could always take the other road. But they’d have to give up some things to do it. If Jay could catch him, it would be better.

Jay didn’t intend to fail. He sipped at his sake, and watched the men in the room. Which one?

The front door opened, revealing the gloomy outside. Rain began to splatter against the tile roof at that same moment. A samurai on the porch stepped into the building, and as he did, a fierce gust of wind blew in as a nearby lightning strike strobed and a loud boom of thunder vibrated the room. The wind blew the lamps out, and for a couple of seconds, the room was dim. The patrons laughed and cracked jokes as one of the serving girls relit a lamp.

When the lights came back up, it took Jay a moment to realize that one of the samurai, a short and somewhat swarthy fellow sitting to his right, near the door, was gone.

Jay scrambled to his feet and hurried for the door. The guy was onto him!

Outside, the storm raged; hard winds drove rain almost horizontally at Jay, blinding him. Where was the guy?

Jay caught a peripheral movement. He turned and saw the samurai running, splashing through puddles already ankle-deep, one hand holding his swords steady as he sprinted away.

No doubt about it, that was him!

Jay took off after the fleeing man.

He started gaining immediately. The guy was slow compared to Jay — of course, so were most people — and already Jay was grinning. Guy might look like a samurai, but he was a fake, and in this scenario, Jay was on a par with Miyamoto Musashi. He’d slice the guy into hamburger, figuratively, anyway—

The rainy air ahead of the ninja rippled and it was as if the man had stepped through time and space — he just… vanished, as if running behind a curtain—

What ninja trick was this?!

Jay skidded to a stop just short of the rent in the air, which, even as he watched, faded back into the rainy night.

Jay looked around, wiping the water from his eyes, hoping to spot some clue—

And there one was: a scrap of what looked like blue silk, flattened and soaked by the downpour. Jay moved to it, bent, and picked it up. A scarf of some kind. There was a tag in one corner, tiny, with writing on it, so small he could barely read it.

It said, “CyberNation.”

Jay shook his head. Somehow, the guy had slipped away from him by using CyberNation protocols. Shouldn’t be able to do that, but there it was.

Bag that. “End scenario!” Jay said.

He wasn’t out of moves yet.

Washington, D.C.

Jay grabbed his virgil from the desk — he was still fully suited — and said, “Call Charles Seurat. Priority One.”

32

Rue de Soie

Marne-la-Vallee France

Seurat was most unhappy about the insistent demand of his cell phone. There was a naked woman in his shower, a woman that he was, he was sure, in love with, and he was about to join her — when the phone started playing “Love Is Blue,” the Paul Mauriat instrumental version. Since that was his Priority One ring, he couldn’t just let it go. Merde!

The caller ID was blocked, but since anybody who knew his private number was somebody he would usually — usually — want to speak with, he answered it. Not all that graciously:

“What?”

“I need full access to your system, no playing around with pitfalls and hidden stuff, I need your security code and I need it now.”

Gridley. Seurat recognized the voice — who could forget that arrogant tone? Not a hello-how-are-you? Just a demand for something he should not have.

“Va te faire foutre! Why should I do that?”

“You want me to get stuffed? I have the guy who screwed your network in my sights! He ran into your system to hide and the longer it takes me to get after him, the more likely it is he might get away!”

“My people can—”