Hidden Agendas nf-2 Read online

  Now he could really give Net Force something to think about.

  Chapter Twelve

  Friday, December 24th, 11:00 a.m. The Bronx, New York

  Toni climbed the familiar brownstone steps, steps that she had swept clean daily when she had been studying with Guru DeBeers. Somebody else must be doing the job now, for there was no snow or ice or dirt on them. The chicken-wire glass doors were closed and locked, but Toni still carried her well-worn key. She opened the door and stepped into the building. The hall was marginally warmer than it was outside.

  Guru's apartment was the third one on the left. As she reached up to knock, the old woman's gravel-and-smoke voice came from within:

  "Not locked, come in."

  Toni grinned. Before she even knocked, Guru knew she was there. She was sure the woman was psychic.

  Inside, the place looked as she remembered it from last year, and from her childhood. The old green couch with the needlepoint doily here, the overstuffed red plush chair with its needlepoint there, the short coffee table with one leg propped on an old Stephen King novel, all were in their usual places.

  Guru was in the kitchen, crushing coffee beans in the little hand-powered grinder she had brought with her sixty years ago from Jakarta. She cranked the handle slowly and the smell of the beans, shipped to her by a distant relative who still lived in the highlands of Central Java, was sharp, rich, and earthy.

  The two women faced each other. Toni pressed her hands together in front of her face and moved them down in front of her heart in a namaste bow, and Guru returned the greeting. Then they hugged.

  At eighty-something years old, Guru was still brick-shaped and solidly built, but frailer and slower than she had been. As always, her clean and carefully set white hair smelled slightly of ginger, from the shampoo she used.

  "Welcome home, Tunangannya," Guru said.

  Toni smiled. Best Girl, what Guru had called her almost since they'd met.

  "Coffee in a minute." Guru dumped the freshly ground coffee into a brown-paper cone and set it into the stainless-steel basket over the carafe, then poured hot water from a cast-iron kettle that had been heating on the tiny four-burner stove. The smell was delightful, almost overwhelming.

  Guru waited until most of the water filtered through, then added a bit more. She repeated this until the kettle was empty. She took two plain white china mugs from the doorless wooden cabinet over the stove, then poured fresh coffee into them. There was no offer of cream or sugar. You could drink it any way you wanted at Guru's — as long as it was black. Adulterating coffee was, according to her way of thinking, very nearly a sin of some kind. Guru's religious beliefs were an amalgam of Hindu, Moslem, and Christian, and difficult to follow at best.

  Wordlessly, the two women moved into the living room. Guru took the chair, Toni sat on the couch. Still without speaking, they took sips of the hot coffee.

  Guru made the best coffee Toni had ever tasted. In fact, it spoiled her for drinking the stuff anywhere else. If Starbucks could get its hands on Guru, they would triple their business.

  "So. How is life in Washington? Has your young man yet seen the light?"

  "Not yet, Grandmother."

  Guru sipped her coffee and nodded. "He will. All men are slow, some slower than others."

  "I wish I could be sure of that."

  "Not in this life, child. But if he fails to notice you properly, he does not deserve you."

  They drank more coffee. When they were almost done, Guru said, "I think it is time to tell you a story. About my people."

  Toni nodded but didn't speak. Guru had taught her a lot using this method, telling her Javanese tales and legends.

  "My father's father's father came from Holland on a sailing ship in 1835. He came to work as an overseer on a plantation that raised indigo and coffee and sugarcane. Back then, the country was not called Indonesia. The pale men called the islands as a whole the Dutch East Indies, or sometimes, the Spice Islands. To my people, our island was Java."

  Guru held up her empty cup. Toni stood, took both cups, went to the kitchen, and refilled them. Guru kept talking.

  "My great-grandfather went to work on the farm, just outside of Jakarta, which had not nearly so many people then as it does now. He was married, with his wife and two children left behind in the country of his birth, but as was often the custom with white men in a foreign country in those days, he took himself a native wife. My great-grandmother."

  Toni brought Guru's coffee back to her, reseated herself on the couch, and sipped at her own brew.

  "In due course, my grandfather was born, first among six brothers and two sisters. When my grandfather had eleven summers, my great-grandfather sailed back to Holland, to rejoin his wife and children there, now a wealthy man. He left his Javanese family well-provided for, not always the custom with white men. He never saw or contacted them again.

  "My great-grandmother's family took her and her children in, and life went on."

  Toni nodded, to keep the flow going. Guru had told many tales, but never one about her family that was so personal.

  "My grandfather's mother's brother, Ba Pa — The Wise — took it upon himself to teach my grandfather, whose Dutch name was Willem, how to be a man. My grandfather grew up strong, adept, and eventually became a soldier, part of the native army." She sipped at her coffee. Then she said, "Go into my bedroom and look at the nightstand. There is a thing upon a small silk pillow there. Bring it to me."

  Toni nearly choked on her coffee. In all the years she had trained and known Guru, she had never been past the closed door into her bedroom. She had conjured all kinds of fantasies as to what it must look like in there. Maybe shrunken heads dangling from the ceiling, or walls covered with Indonesian art.

  It was nothing so weird. It could have been any bedroom, belonging to any old woman. There was a bed, a carved, dark wooden chest at the foot of the bed, teak or mahogany, and a tall and dark wardrobe, also of wood, with a mirror that had lost part of its silvery backing. On one wall was a painting of a nude girl standing in a pool under a waterfall. The room smelled of incense, patchouli or maybe musk.

  But on the nightstand was a red pillow, and upon the pillow was a kris inside a wooden and brass sheath.

  Toni knew what it was. She had done some reading about Indonesia, curious about the country that fostered the martial art she studied, and while she had never trained with a kris, she had played with plenty of knives.

  She picked the weapon up. She couldn't tell from the sheath what the shape of the blade was, but the typical Javanese kris was a foot to a foot and a half long — this one looked to be maybe fifteen or sixteen inches — and had a wavy, undulating double-edged blade, made of layers of forged, hand-hammered steel. Thus, like the swords of Damascus or the samurai katana, the final knife had a grain, a pattern in the welded metal itself.

  She hurried back into the living room, wanting to hear the rest of Guru's story.

  Guru traded the weapon for her empty coffee cup, which Toni quickly refilled.

  "My great-uncle Ba Pa had no sons, only daughters, and when it came time for my grandfather to become a man and receive his kris, this is the one he inherited. It had been in the family from my great-uncle's father's father's father's time."

  With that, the old woman drew the knife from the wooden sheath and held it up.

  It was an undulate blade, a ribbon of steel with six or seven curves on either side, narrowing from a wide base under a slightly curved and short pistol-like handle to a sharp point. The metal was black, it had a dull, matte look, and on one side there was a little loop of steel protruding under the inside of the guard, almost like a tiny tree branch. On the other side of the blade were tiny, jagged teeth-like points.

  "In the days when spirits were still powerful in Java, this kris had much hantu—much magic." She waved the weapon. "It has thirteen luk dapor, thirteen curves, and the pamor is called udan-mas; it means ‘golden rain.' Here, you see?"

 
Guru pointed at the pattern in the metal, which looked like little drops of rain had spattered upon dry ground.

  "This kris was supposed to bring good fortune and money for its owner.

  "Some believe a good kris could kill slowly an enemy simply by stabbing his shadow — or even his footprints. If an enemy approached, a good kris would rattle in its sheath, to warn its owner of danger. The sight of the naked blade would turn a hungry tiger in its tracks. According to my great-uncle's grandfather, this kris once flew from its sheath like the garwk and cut the wrist of a thief trying to enter his house during the dark of the moon."

  Guru smiled. "Of course, some of these old stories might have become embellished with the telling."

  She returned the weapon to its sheath and held it in both hands on her lap, her coffee now growing cold on the doily upon the small table next to her chair.

  "My grandfather gave this to my father when he became a man, and my father gave it to my only brother when he became a man." She stared into space, remembering. "My brother died in the war against the Japanese before he could begin a family. Many of our young men died in that war. My father had no sons, no nephews after that war. So the kris came to be mine."

  They sat quietly for a moment.

  "I bore my husband three sons and a daughter. Two of my sons live, and I have six grandsons and a great-grandson, and two granddaughters. My sons are old men, my grandsons are teachers and lawyers and businessmen, my granddaughters are a teacher and a doctor. They are a fine family, successful, scattered all over the country, and they are all good Americans. There is no wrong in this.

  "But of all my family, none have studied the arts. Well, no, I do have a grandson in Arizona who plays tae kwon do, and one of my sons does tai chi to keep his joints limber, but none of them have studied silat. You are my student, the holder of my lineage, and so now, this kris now belongs to you."

  The old woman held the dagger out on the palms of her hands to Toni.

  Toni knew this was no small thing for Guru, and she had no thought for refusing. She knelt in front of the old woman and took the weapon in both of her hands. "Thank you, Guru. I am honored."

  The old woman smiled, tobacco stains on her teeth. "Well you should say so, child, and a credit to my teaching that you should know to say so. I could not have wished for a better student. You should keep this on the red silk pillow near the head of your bed when you sleep," she said, waving at the kris. "It may make an American lover nervous, though." She giggled.

  Toni looked down at the smooth wood of the sheath. Why was Guru giving this to her now? She had a sudden chill.

  "Guru, you aren't… I mean, your health isn't…?"

  The old woman laughed. "No, I'm not ready to leave just yet. But you have more need of the hantu than I do. I have had a full life, and you are still unmarried. A woman your age needs to think of such things. It is a magic blade, after all, kah?"

  Toni smiled. "More coffee, Guru?"

  "Just half a cup. And tell me more of this young man who has yet to recognize your spirit. Maybe together we can find a way to wake him."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Saturday, December 25th, 6:30 a.m. Alexandria, Virginia

  Julio Fernandez went to early mass at St. Gerard's, in Alexandria. He sat in the back of the small church, listening to Father Alvarez drone on in a dull monotone broken only occasionally by a louder "Lord," which tended to rouse the sleepy congregation.

  Fernandez was used to being up this early, of course, but usually he'd be moving, doing laps or running the obstacle course or otherwise keeping his blood circulating. Sitting on the hard wooden pew in a too-warm and stuffy building listening to the old priest who could preach this sermon in his sleep — and might well be doing just that — was not a good way to stay alert.

  Still, if he hadn't come to mass, he might have thought about lying to his mother, and he did not want to actually do that. He was on duty and couldn't fly back for Christmas with the relatives. Well, that wasn't strictly true. He could have gotten leave because he had seniority, but there were other men with families locally who needed the time more than he did, so he had volunteered — but he didn't have to tell Mama that. He would call her later today, she would be expecting that. There would be aunts and uncles and at least half of Fernandez's six brothers and two sisters would be there in La Puente at Mama's with their broods, probably bitching about the El Nino rains forecast to pound southern California. It wasn't as if Mama was going to be rattling around in her house alone; still, she wanted to hear from her children who couldn't get there, and the first question she would ask him after how was he doing would be had he gone to mass this morning? Mama suspected that her third son was more lapsed than good Catholic, and she was right in that suspicion, but at least he could tell her he had in fact been to early mass. He could tell her how Father Alvarez, who had once been a parish priest where Mama went to church some forty years ago, looked. Old, Mama, he would say, the man must be at least five or six hundred years old. I kept expecting somebody from the Cairo museum to come in and grab him, to take him back to King Tut's pyramid where he belongs.

  Mama would laugh at this, tell him how awful he was, but it would make her happy that he went to mass, at least on Christmas, and it wasn't too much for a son to do for his mother, was it? One time a year?

  So he'd get a few points for this — assuming he didn't doze off on the pew, sleep all day, and completely miss calling home…

  Saturday, December 25th, 7 a.m.. Boise, Idaho

  Alexander Michaels rang the doorbell of the house that had once been his. It was a big, wooden, two-story home built in the early 1900's, at the top of a slight rise, with a high front porch at the top of ten broad steps. When the house had been built, it had been just outside what was then the city limits. Boise had engulfed the neighborhood long ago, but the houses along the street were still much as they had been a hundred years past. Outside of a new paint job that matched the old pale blue, and a couple of repaired steps and slats in the porch floor, the house looked the same as he remembered it. The same glider he'd installed when they'd bought the place hung on rusty chains at the south end of the porch, looking out over a somewhat cold rhododendron bush that would blossom a hard pink come the first warm weather. He'd spent some wonderful hours in that squeaky old wooden swing, looking out over that rhoddy bush, listening to the wind play in the big Doug fir trees that shaded the lot.

  He heard his daughter's footsteps and her yelling as she raced for the door. "Daddy's here! Daddy's here!"

  Susie flung open the door and jumped. With her present under one arm he had to make the catch one-handed, but she helped by wrapping her arms and legs around him and hugging him tight. She wore a pair of red-flannel pajamas and butter-yellow fuzzy slippers. "Daddy!"

  "Hey, squirt. How are you?"

  "Great! Great! Come in, we've all been waiting on you to open presents!"

  Michaels stepped into the house, and what Susie had said registered.

  We've all been waiting for you? Did she mean herself, Megan, and the dog Scout?

  Susie slithered down and took off running down the hall for the living room. And sure enough, little Scout, the poodle who thought he was a wolf, came sliding around the corner from the kitchen, scrabbling on the hardwood floor, trying vainly for traction, to greet Michaels. The dog barked once, saw who it was, and wagged his tail so hard Michaels thought he might fall down. Michaels squatted and put the presents down as Scout ran and jumped into his arms.

  Two for two, he thought.

  As he stood, the little dog licking his face, Megan stepped into the hall from the living room.

  Tall and leggy, with long brown hair worn in a ponytail, she was still one of the most beautiful women he had ever known. She wore a black T-shirt and blue jeans, her feet bare. She also looked nervous. "Hello, Alex."

  "Hello, Megan."

  "Come on in. Susie is about to pop."

  He put the dog down, picked up the p
resents he had brought, and followed his ex-wife into the living room. Oh, well. Two out of three…

  They had put up a large tree, an eight-footer, easy to do in a place with such high ceilings. The tree glistened with lights and fake snow and ornaments and tinsel. There was a fire in the wood stove, burning brightly behind the thick glass. Susie was on her knees under the tree, amidst a pile of wrapped gifts, grinning.

  And standing by the old plush blue couch was a stranger, a big man with a full beard. He wore jeans and a blue work-shirt and cowboy boots. He looked to be about thirty, a good ten years younger than Alex, and at least five years younger than Megan.

  Megan walked over to the bearded man. She slipped her hand under his arm, smiled at him, then turned back to look at Michaels and said, "Byron, this is Alex Michaels, Susie's father. Alex, this is my friend Byron Baumgardner. He's a teacher at Susie's school."

  The big man grinned, showing nice, white teeth, and ambled over to take Michaels's hand. "Glad to meet you, Alex. I've heard a lot about you."

  Michaels felt his belly twist into a frozen knot. So. This was Byron. He forced a smile as he stuck his hand out. "Byron."

  The two men shook hands. Michaels shot a glance at Megan. She had looked nervous, and now he knew why. Here was a nice surprise on Christmas. Meet the new boyfriend. Your replacement.

  "Can I open my presents now, can I?"

  "Sure, honey," Megan said.

  Michaels smiled at Susie as Byron moved over to stand next to Megan. The bearded man put his arm around Megan.

  Michaels felt sick. He wished the ground would open up and swallow him. He wanted to be anywhere on the planet instead of here. Anywhere, for any reason.