He had no idea what it cost — probably a couple of thousand dollars. His assistant had bought it and had it installed in his office on the fortieth floor of the TPC building. Every workday, for twenty-six minutes, he used the device. Coupled with a quick shower and fresh clothes, it worked out to thirty-five minutes exactly that he spent on his conditioning, which was sufficient. He was not a threat to any Olympic athlete, but neither was he going to run out of steam if he needed to take the stairs to the lobby in the event of a fire or terrorist attack on his building. He had talked to personal trainers and sports doctors and determined that twenty-six minutes was the amount of time he needed to maintain optimum health at his age, and that was what he gave it, no more, no less.
During his workout, no phones rang, no computer voices announced incoming mail, and nobody came through the Chinese carved-cherry double doors into his office. He did go so far as to opaque the de-stressed triple-layered Lexan windows, which formed an L-shaped floor-to-ceiling panorama looking out over Manhattan. The windows were three inches thick and bulletproof, and would stop anything short of an armor-piercing rocket. A special service came and cleaned the windows’ exterior once a week, and once every three months they polished the surfaces to remove any scratches from dust or nearsighted birds.
Cox didn’t know how much that cost, either, nor did he care. When your worth was measured in the billions, you didn’t worry about the small stuff.
Two minutes remaining. He kept his pace even. There were all kinds of monitors he could have hooked to himself — pulse rate, blood pressure, temperature, and the like — but he didn’t bother. He was sweating, his muscles were working hard and he knew it, and he wasn’t going to cheat himself out of a full effort. A man who wasn’t disciplined enough to exercise without somebody standing over him counting cadence didn’t have any fire in his belly.
Usually, he managed to avoid going off on mental voyages while he trod upon the never-ending stairway — concentration was supposed to help the body benefit fully — but now and then, something would be pressing enough so that he could not help but think about it.
Now was one of those times. He had gotten a coded message from Vrach—“the Doctor”—and as usual, the Russian wanted something from him: a small matter of some pressure against a reluctant oil executive in one of the Middle Eastern countries. It was nothing Cox couldn’t do with a come-hither of one finger and a few words in the right ear. Still, it was annoying, even after all these years.
He shook his head. Of all his regrets, this one was the biggie. While still in college, he had made the dumbest mistake of his life. He had been young, idealistic — another word for stupid — and full of himself. He had drifted into a crowd of socialistic types, and the next thing he knew, he was a spy. For the Soviets.
It was the sixties, times were turbulent, nobody trusted the government, and maybe he could be excused. At least he hadn’t been out in some hippie commune smoking dope and talking to the trees. He had, however briefly, believed that what he was doing might be part of the solution instead of the problem. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the idea of a nuclear war felt way too real, and the U.S. was way too aggressive. Or so he had believed at the time.
Young, ignorant, and stupid — that had been him.
Of course, he had never really done much spying. His control had explained he would be more useful as a mole, and they would wait to activate him. They gave him a little money. It had seemed like a fortune at the time. Now, if that much fell out of his pocket, it wouldn’t be worth the time and energy to stoop and pick it up. But still, he had been on the payroll.
As the years passed, the Soviet Union eventually went belly-up, as did his idealistic and foolish notions, and eventually he found himself running a major corporation and richer than a small country. Unfortunately, he didn’t get lost in the shuffle when the Soviet Union fell apart. The Russians had long memories, and one day, after he hadn’t thought about them in a decade, they gave him a little heads-up:
At first, Cox had been amused. Cause? What cause? Communism is dead, pal. The war is over. You lost. Get over it.
I’m happy for you, he had said. Go away.
But of course, they had not. They were capitalists now, and they laid it out flat and straight:
Blackmail! Son of a bitch, he couldn’t believe it—!
The timer chimed, interrupting his bad memory. He stopped climbing the stairs, grabbed a towel, and headed for the shower. The phones would start ringing again in nine minutes, and he needed to clean up and put on fresh clothes.
Done was done. Maybe someday he could figure out a way to get clear of them. Isolate the few who knew about him, have Eduard pay them a visit and shut down their memories, permanently.
Yes, he was rich, he was powerful, but the scandal would ruin his name, wreck his family, and he couldn’t live with the looks he’d see in all those faces. Sam Cox, a commie spy?
No. He couldn’t have that. No matter what it cost. He didn’t like having to dance to their tune, but it was better than the alternative. For now, at least.
John Howard stood in the underground firing range looking down the lane as Julio Fernandez approached. The smell of burned gunpowder was an old and familiar one. He was going to miss it. Not that he’d have to stop coming, but, working in the city, he knew he wouldn’t get out here nearly as often.
“Lieutenant,” Howard said. “You’re running late.”
“Sorry, General. I had to have Gunny update my ring.” He held his hand up and waggled his fingers. What looked like an ordinary gold band gleamed on his right middle finger. All Net Force personnel who carried weapons had them, and each gun coded to a broadcast ring that had to be reset every thirty days. If somebody picked up a Net Force weapon without the correct ring on his hand, the gun simply wouldn’t fire.
“How are Joanna and little Hoo?”
“Pretty good, both of them. He’s completely potty-trained now, goes all night without an accident.” He paused. “Lord, I can’t believe I’m talking about such things!”
Howard chuckled. “I understand.”
“How about yours? Tyrone coming back to the pistol team?”
“I think so. I think he’s finally accepted he didn’t have any choice in what he had to do.”
“He’s a good man.”
“Yes, he is.” Still a teenager, Tyrone was not really old enough to be a man, but he had gotten a big push in that direction when he’d had to step up to do something a boy ought not have to do.
Howard pushed the unpleasant thought out of his mind.
“You want to warm up before we get serious?” he said.
Fernandez laughed. “Get serious? I do believe I outshot you the last three times we were here. How serious do I need to be to beat one old armchair soldier and his ancient wheelgun?”
Howard smiled. The sidearm he carried, a P&R Medusa, was about as high-tech as revolvers got — it could fire twenty different calibers — but the basic technology was a hundred and fifty years old. Indeed, his “modern” weapon was not so far from Sam Colt’s original design that, were the old boy still alive, he would have any trouble recognizing it. Still, the K-frame black-Teflon-coated Medusa was smooth, accurate, made of hardened steel, and when loaded with RBCD.357 Magnum rounds as it usually was, would knock ninety-six of a hundred men down and out of the fight with a single shot, as good as you could do with a handgun. Howard felt very comfortable with it in his holster.
“So, in that case, you want to up the usual wager?”
Fernandez raised an eyebrow. “What’d you have in mind?”
“You win, you activate your retirement status now and come to work for me at the think tank next month — but with a week of paid vacation before you have to show up and put on a suit. You lose, you stay here for eight weeks and make sure Colonel Kent has a smooth transition before you bail.”
“Good Lord, John, you want me to stay and work two whole
“When he takes over, he’ll be reactived as National Guard, just like us.”
