"From your info. One of the interviewees, a music store owner, said our man claimed to own some expensive handmade instruments. Said he was pa.s.sionate about them, prized them highly, and knew enough particulars so that the store owner was sure he was telling the truth. The guy loves fine guitars."

"And?"

"So, I did an on-line survey of American luthiers who produce cla.s.sical guitars costing more than a couple thousand dollars, and asked if any of them had shipped one to somebody with the first name 'Edward' in the New York or Washington, D.C., area in the last few months. I got three hits. On one of them, from a luthier in Portland, Oregon, the spelling was different-it was E-D-U-A-R-D. I checked with the carriers the guitar-makers used, ran down the three addresses. Two of them checked out to be people who couldn't be our man. The third one, the "u" spelling, that's our guy-I talked to the truck driver who delivers air freight to the house. He's trucked several guitars there in the past year. It's him."

"Cool," Jay said. "But I should have thought of that."

"You were just out of a coma from being shot in the head, Jay. Cut yourself a little slack getting back up to steam."

"Yeah, I guess." But it didn't sound as if he meant it.

"Anyway, we have a home address, and a last name to go with Eduard-Natadze."

" 'Not-see?' What kind of a name is that?"

"Na-tad-ze. He's from Georgia."

"A Russian from Georgia?"

"No, Georgia the country country. A web search shows the name is Georgian. They have their own language, but a lot of them speak Russian, given as how it used to be part of the Soviet Union."

"Well, I'll be," Jay said. "You sicced the feebs on him yet?"

"Not yet. I've run down ownership of the house, and it's a circle of holding companies and paper-only corporations, no way to connect to him. I was thinking maybe the fewer people who know about this, the better-that maybe we should check it out further to be sure we're not mistaken, before we call in the regular FBI."

There was a pause. "You're turning Howard and Kent loose." It wasn't a question.

"Technically, I'm not supposed to do that," Thorn said. "But maybe it wouldn't hurt if somebody from Net Force did a recon and checked the situation out. Kind of a . . . training exercise."

Another pause. "And if they happened to spot this guy walking out his front door, they might feel compelled to detain him and then call the FBI field guys."

"That would seem a reasonable decision. To make sure he didn't escape."

Jay grinned. "You are going to fit in just fine around here, boss." A pause, then: "Listen, I'm not a field guy myself, but do you suppose I might ride along, as an observer?"

"I'm sure General Howard and Colonel Kent wouldn't have any objection to that. If your doctors think you are up to it."

"They do, no question. Thanks, boss. Good work."

"You're welcome, Jay."

When he discommed, Thorn smiled again. It felt pretty good to be the guy who came up with the missing piece of the puzzle. And to be the boss, too? How much better did it get than that?

He reached for the VR headset again. He hadn't done more than a cursory look at this Natadze guy, enough to ascertain that he was their suspect. Now, he'd do a little more digging and see what else he could find.

Washington, D.C.

Natadze shook the delivery man's hand again, and this time, he pressed a wad of folded bills into the man's palm, ten hundreds. "Thank you, Esteban, I appreciate it."

The man accepted the money without looking at it. "Yeah, well, you always done right by me, Mr. Natadze. This guy asked about guitars, and I told him, without thinking, you know? Lo siento. Lo siento. Least I could do was tell you. I hope it's not nothing serious." Least I could do was tell you. I hope it's not nothing serious."

"Let me be honest with you, Esteban, it's a visa thing. Some papers I was supposed to fill out are . . . a little late."

The delivery man, Hispanic and probably still working off a green card himself, nodded, his face grim. "I hear you."

It was the perfect thing to say, as Natadze had known it would be. Now, in that moment, they were brothers brothers, dodging La Migra La Migra, or whatever they were calling it these days. Just honest, hard-working men being hounded by the uncaring bureaucratic machine over some niggling technical detail, some obscure letter of the law designed to keep a good man from getting ahead. Esteban knew all about that.

"What will you do?"

"I'll turn in the papers and pray for the best."

"I know a guy who knows a good lawyer," Esteban said.

"Thanks, my friend, I appreciate it. My uncle is an attorney; I'm sure he'll know how to handle it."

After the man left, the sense of panic Natadze felt threatened to roil up in his throat and choke him. Esteban felt bad, and that and the thousand dollars would probably keep the authorities from getting anything else out of him for a little while, but that was closing the gate after the horse had gotten out.

He forced himself to stand still and take three deep breaths, slowly, inhaling and exhaling through his nose. Blind panic would be fatal.

He felt only a little better as he headed for the back door. He would slip out, go over the fence into his neighbor's yard-the one without the dog-and leave the area on foot. It didn't seem likely they would have allowed the delivery man to pull right up to his door if they were out there now, watching, but he couldn't take the chance. They'd know his car.

His main regret at losing the house were the guitars in the bas.e.m.e.nt. They were beyond price, some of them, but even so, it was not worth spending the rest of his life on death row to stop and pack them. He had to go, now! Somehow, he would either send for them, or make it back here some day, but now was not the time.

Maybe he could take just one, the Friedrich . . . ?

No. A man on foot carrying a guitar case was memorable.

He paused only long enough to collect his good revolver and some spare ammunition. He tucked the holstered gun under his sport coat.

It was not possible possible that they could have found him, and yet they had. Why else would somebody who claimed to be from Net Force be asking the air freight delivery man about him? He had to a.s.sume the worst-they knew who he was and they would be coming to get him. that they could have found him, and yet they had. Why else would somebody who claimed to be from Net Force be asking the air freight delivery man about him? He had to a.s.sume the worst-they knew who he was and they would be coming to get him.

It didn't make any sense. He was sure sure he had not left anything behind in his operations of late, neither with Gridley nor the Russian, nothing that could tie him to them, much less to this he had not left anything behind in his operations of late, neither with Gridley nor the Russian, nothing that could tie him to them, much less to this house! house!

And yet they had questioned Esteban, and they knew about his hobby, and they knew where he lived knew where he lived. It was clear that they had only wanted to confirm confirm it. it.

There was no way they could have gotten that information, no connection to him.

Well, yes. There was one one way. way.

He dismissed the thought angrily, instantly ashamed that such a disloyal idea had crossed his mind.

And yet-who else could possibly know?

Another worry, but no time to distress about it now now. To stay here was to be trapped.

He looked through the sliding gla.s.s door into his fenced backyard. n.o.body there he could see. It had only been an hour or so since Esteban had talked to the agent, he'd said. Maybe they hadn't had time to get the proper clearances and roll. There were laws in this country that governed such things. You couldn't just kick in a door and arrest somebody without a judge permitting it.

But maybe they had a tame judge, and were on the way and closing fast.

Of course, they might be sitting in a helicopter a mile away watching through a telescope, or footprinting him with a satellite, or just on the other side of the tall wooden fence, guns drawn, ready to cook him on sight.

No, they'd want him alive. To find out who he was working for, and what else he knew of value. If they were out there.

He took a deep breath, and stepped out into the yard, his hand on his revolver's b.u.t.t under his jacket. He was not going to prison, no matter what else happened. And with any luck, he could take a couple of them with him.

But n.o.body yelled or leaped out waving guns. There were no helicopters in sight, and if they had a spysat watching him, there was no way to tell.

He made it to the fence, jumped up and caught the top, and pulled himself up to peer into his neighbor's yard.

n.o.body there.

He tugged himself up and over the seven-foot-tall fence and dropped to the soft, sweet-smelling and neatly mowed gra.s.s. He hurried across the yard to the gate. A few more blocks, he would steal a car, get farther away, change vehicles, and get farther still. He would avoid public transportation, use back roads when he could, and get out of the District. Into a neighboring state, maybe one past that.

If he got that far, then he'd figure out what to do from there.

27.

Washington, D.C.

Kent wanted this to go by the numbers, and he was being very careful not to do anything to screw it up. It was, after all, his first field op for Net Force.

At the moment, he was in that RV that Lieutenant Fernandez-who was about to become a Captain as General Howard's parting gift, though he didn't know it yet-had scored. It was a comfortable way to sit surveillance, that was for sure.

John Howard sat on the couch, looking through the one-way polarized gla.s.s at the subject's house. The man who lived there was one Eduard Natadze, a Georgian native. They didn't know much else about him, except for the guitar material, but that didn't matter-they knew what he looked like, they had his house in sight, and they knew if he showed up, they were going to grab him, which should be enough info to do the job.

Jay Gridley perched on one of the captain's chairs, also staring out at the surveillance scene. He didn't need to be here, but Kent understood why he wanted to be. He wouldn't get in the way.

It was Kent himself who was the problem. He simply wasn't as comfortable as he'd like to be. He knew he didn't have any problems at all when it came to a battlefield, but this kind of operation was not his forte. Sure, he had done enough intel gathering over the years to know you sometimes had to sneak instead of stomp, but this was the first time he'd ever mounted an operation on U.S. soil, other than in training or VR exercises, and he wanted a win.

So far, everything had gone like a Swiss watch.

They were parked within two hundred meters of the subject's residence. Fernandez had an eight-trooper team scattered around the place either disguised or in hiding. There was a "repairman" working on a street light, a "gardener" clipping bushes, and others hidden inside nondescript cars and trucks, ringing the house. When the guy came home, they'd have him.

His car was there, but he wasn't in the house, they knew that, not unless he could make himself invisible to their FLIR and sound sensors, which could pick up a man's body heat and the sound of his respiration. Unless he was hiding in a freezer and breathing real slow . . .

But as the day wore into night, and eventually into day again, there was no sign of the subject. Maybe he was out of town.

As Gridley crawled out of the overhead bed just after dawn, he said, "I just had a thought. Commander Thorn talked to the guy who delivers this guy's guitars, right?"

Kent said, "That's what he said."

"Let me check something."

Gridley sat on the couch, opened his flatscreen, and began tapping the keys. After a moment, he said, "Well, that's that."

"What?"

"I tapped into the carrier's delivery logs for this address."

"And . . . ?"

"There are four of them in the last six months. All of them at exactly the same time: 1:30 p.m."

General Howard came out of the head in the back of the coach, rubbing his face. "And this means what?"

"It seems unlikely that the driver would make four deliveries to the same address at exactly the same moment."

"Yes," Kent said, "it does. But I fail to see the significance. Why would the driver put down something that wasn't so?"

Howard said, "These guitars are valuable, right? So if you were a guy paying for them, you probably wouldn't want them sitting out on the front porch until you got home. Bad weather, a sticky-fingered pa.s.serby, that would be bad."

Jay nodded. "So maybe the delivery guy has a key? So he can leave them inside?"

"If you had a house full of expensive guitars, would you give a delivery guy a key?"

"I wouldn't," Kent said.

"So maybe Natadze has some other arrangement with the guy," Howard said. "Maybe the guy only comes round when he knows Natadze will be here."

"Exactly," Jay said. "I'm thinking our delivery guy probably just scanned the guitars as delivered at some point during the day-probably on his lunch hour, which would explain why the time was exactly the same for each delivery. But he didn't actually deliver them until later, probably after hours."

"Could be," Kent said, "But even so . . . ?"

Howard picked it up. "That would be service worth a nice tip."

Kent got it. "Ah. You're saying this guy is in Natadze's pocket."

"He told the Commander about the deliveries. Maybe he told Natadze about the Commander," Jay said.

"Oh," Kent and Howard said as one.

"Maybe we better have somebody have a little talk with this delivery guy," Jay said.

It took a couple of hours, but when the FBI agent called them, he confirmed it. The delivery driver had stalled, but in the end, had confessed to telling Natadze about the query from Net Force.

Jay was right. That was that. At least for now.

"So we missed him," Kent said. "Probably by minutes."