looking for two identical peas in a very large pod.
There were a lot of things that could mess it up. Maybe it wasn’t the same guy. Or his image hadn’t been captured on one or both cameras. Or maybe it had been, but the shot was the back of his head or too fuzzy to make a match.
Those images that did look similar enough would kick out and ask for a human interpretation. All Thorn could do until then was wait. It could take weeks, or even months, and it could always come up empty.
But at least it was a place to start.
Now, to go pay a hospital visit. Maybe Jay himself had something to add to this.
Thorn had only known Jay for a short time before the shooting, but the man sitting in the bed in front of him didn’t seem like the man he remembered.
He looked the same physically, but the Jay Gridley he’d first met had a brash cockiness that had grated, particularly before he’d walked Jay’s VR stuff and realized Jay really
This man seemed a lot less sure of himself.
“Jay. How are you doing?”
“Commander. Other than being shot in the head and in a coma? I’m fine.”
He didn’t sound fine at all.
Thorn had arranged to have an FBI expert with identikit software come to the hospital — having Jay go into VR this early wasn’t, his doctor said, a good idea.
Thorn was trying not to be too hopeful, but if he could match the face he’d yanked from the traffic cam in New York with any kind of ID that Gridley could provide, that would be good.
“Thanks for agreeing to do this so soon — I’m hoping we can get a handle on this guy.”
“Me, too.”
The door behind him opened. A thin man with a slightly dreamy expression entered and smiled.
“Commander. Mr. Gridley. I’m Adrian Heuser, the ID artist.”
The artist sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs and pulled a rolling tray over so that Gridley could see it. “I understand you had a little trauma after you saw your, ah, shooter?”
Jay indicated his bandage. “Yeah. You could say that.”
“Normally we do this in VR, but we’ve got a flatscreen for you.” He put a small flat panel on a stand in front of Jay on the tray, “and one for me.” The second panel must have had a digitizer, because Heuser pulled out a stylus and tapped it several times.
“As much as you can, I want you to relax, and focus. I want you to go back to just before you were hurt, back to when you were watching. What are you doing?”
“Sitting in the car wondering why this jerk had cut me off.”
Heuser took Jay through it, asking questions, getting Jay’s input. The man’s stylus danced over his tablet, tapping out menus and putting down textures and color. He asked what Jay’s attacker was doing, what he was holding, how he stood, how he walked.
Jay was vague. Understandable, if frustrating.
A picture began to take shape on the flatscreen, a face with a gun alongside it. But it wasn’t all that clear. It could have been any generic white man, wearing a Band-Aid on his chin and thick glasses.
Not much help.
Heuser came at it from different directions; he was very smooth, but it was obvious that Jay had given him all he had. He saved the file and said he’d pipe it over to Thorn.
“Sorry I didn’t do better,” Jay said.
“You did fine, Jay. Don’t worry about it.”
Gridley smiled and nodded. “No problem there,” he said. “I’m
24
Cox had breakfast with the Natural Resources Minister of one of those emerging African states that had gone under three or four different names in the last fifty years. It didn’t much matter what the locals called it, only that they would be willing to deal with his companies for oil reserves they couldn’t really afford to exploit themselves.
The Minister, a rotund man dressed in nicely cut Armani, had a big smile and a shaved head, and was so dark he seemed almost blue. He was willing to deal. Of course, there would be a kickback, and a little something to grease the wheels beforehand. Nothing really overt needed to be said about this, it was understood. Part of the cost of doing business.
If they got five years’ worth of oil before some new group came in, slaughtered the current government, and nationalized everything, Cox’s companies would make a healthy profit. And Cox had good instincts when it came to bailing. He could almost smell a coup. If he saw that coming, he would dump the refineries and drilling platforms, sell them to some second-tier petroleum company who thought they could either ride a regime change out or make a deal with the new rulers, and Cox would end up smelling like a rose.
He had morning meetings with half a dozen movers and shakers from industries associated with his. Among them was a ship-line owner eager to build a new fleet of Panama-canal-sized tankers, those that would draw forty feet or less and be able to reach secondary ports. Cox also saw the head of a drilling firm who was willing to low- bid a new contract and kick back a chunk to Cox besides. And he had a polite meeting with a bearded South American revolutionary who was willing to guarantee mineral rights to Cox when he took over the government — if Cox would front him funds for arms now.
An ordinary man might be overwhelmed by such constant wheeling and dealing, by the stress of running a multibillion-dollar concern, guiding it through treacherous seas with pirates in all directions. Not Cox. This was why he had been born. He had the power of a country’s president, but a lot more money to go with it.
Better the ruler than the ruled. Always.
His private line
It had gone well, Natadze thought, as well as could be hoped for. The Russian had given up everything he knew about Cox, Natadze was sure of that, he had held nothing back. He had not been a particularly brave man, the Russian. His lean and idealistic days were long behind him; he had grown soft living in the U.S., had allowed the luxuries and easy life here to let him think he was in no danger. He had lowered his guard.
A fatal mistake.
The Russian had rolled over quickly, and what had to be done to make sure he was telling the truth had been done. Nothing that would show on an autopsy, of course, but effective. Very.
Natadze was not a great fan of torture. He took no thrill from using it. When it was necessary, he applied it, but it was a tool, nothing more. He hadn’t needed to apply it. The threat had been enough. The Russian had known who he was, and of what he was capable. Eduard was as certain of the information the dead man had given him as he could be.
There were only four places, according to the Russian, where the intelligence regarding Samuel Walker Cox still existed: First was the old Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie — the GRU — and that piece was at the former HQ building at the Khodinka Airfield, near Moscow. They still called it “The Aquarium,” and Natadze knew it well enough. You could take the purple metro line to Polezhaevskaya Station, big as you please, and stroll a short ways to the place. Getting into such a building even now would be difficult, but that wasn’t necessary. They were all still broke in Moscow, despite the newest reforms, and if you had enough money, you could buy just about anything you wished.
Natadze knew hungry people in the GRU who would be more than happy to do him a favor for a suitcase full of rubles, much less American dollars. A computer crash, a small fire, and those files would be gone. And his
