Breaking Point nf-4 Read online

  He laughed as he downshifted the Morgan’s manual transmission. He’d told her that the car, a classic from the fifties, spent most of its time in the shop, but that when it was running properly, he much enjoyed driving it. The problem with old British cars was that they only worked if they liked you. If you accidentally insulted one, it would pout, he said, and simply refuse to go until you had suffered enough.

  They passed a big building off to the left. “Imperial War Museum,” Carl said. “We’re not far now.”

  She had to admit, she had been enjoying her time with the silat instructor. Enough so that she considered getting to know him better than just as a teacher and friend. But despite having quit her job, and the breakup with Alex, she wasn’t ready to get into another relationship just yet. The wounds were still too raw.

  “Here we go, then.”

  He pulled the two-seater to the curb.

  “This is a no-parking zone,” she said.

  “Right. And the meter maid who usually works this stretch is one of my students. Orinda? Short, built like a fireplug? Be hell to pay in class if she had my motorcar towed.” He smiled.

  The building they parked in front of was another of those sixteenth- or seventeenth-century things with columns and dormered windows and all, not particularly large or imposing, but stately enough.

  They walked up to the front. A uniformed, but unarmed, guard saw them, tipped his hat, and said, “Morning, Mr. Stewart.”

  “Hello, Bryce. Lovely day.”

  Toni looked at him. “Come here a lot, do you?”

  “Now and then.”

  There was a brass plate on the wall next to a pair of tall wooden doors, and Toni saw that they were about to enter the London Museum of Indonesian Art.

  Ah.

  She happened to notice a list of the board of directors for the museum posted just inside the door, and prominent on the list was the name “Carl Stewart.”

  She looked at her companion. “You’re on the board of directors here?”

  He shrugged. “My family contributes to various foundations and such. Give enough money, they put your name up somewhere. It’s nothing, really.”

  “Place seems to be empty except for us,” she said.

  “Well, that is one of the perks of having your name on the wall. They’ll open a bit early for you.”

  When she’d first met Stewart, just after going to his silat school in a bad section of town, she’d used her access to the local computer nets to check him out. His family was more than well-off, a thing he had not mentioned. The rich were different, and not just because they had more money.

  “This way.”

  She followed him down a corridor with shadow puppets mounted on the walls, and into a room at the end.

  “Wow,” she said.

  All around here, in freestanding glass cases, or in clear-fronted cabinets against the walls, were scores — hundreds — of krises. Some were in wooden sheathes, some out, revealing a multitude of shapes and patterns of whorled steel in the blades.

  “Wow,” she said again.

  “Impressive, isn’t it? The largest collection of such daggers outside of Indonesia.”

  Toni nodded absently, looking at a seven-waved black steel blade with inlaid lines of gold outlining the body of a dragon whose tail undulated all the way up to the weapon’s point. The dragon’s head was at the base of the blade, opposite the longer side of the asymmetrical hilt.

  “Raja naga,” Carl said. “Royal dragon. It was made for a Javanese sultan around 1700. Both of those sheathes there belong to it — that one is the formal ladrang, the one shaped like a ship, the other one, with the rounded ends, that’s the gayaman, for informal wear.”

  The sheathes were made of carved wood, with embossed metal sleeves over the long shaft in which the dagger rode.

  “What’s the pamor?” Toni asked.

  He looked away from the exquisite blade to her. “You know about these things?”

  “Not really,” she said. “My guru presented me with one a few months back. I know just enough to ask questions.”

  “Ah. Well, the pamor on this one is bulu ayam, cock feather. I don’t know enough about them to be sure about the dapur.”

  Toni nodded. Pamor was an Indonesian word that described the pattern found in the steel. Genuine krises—sometimes spelled k-e-r-i-s—were generally made of hammered, welded steel mixed with nickel. When the final grinding and staining was done to finish the weapon, the iron in it would turn black, but the nickel would tend to stay shiny, thus creating designs in the metal. According to her guru, the staining process usually involved soaking the metal in a mixture of lime juice and arsenic, which probably accounted for the kris’s reputation as a poisoned blade.

  Dapur was the overall shape, the proportions and esthetics of the blade combined with the handle and guard. Krises could be straight or curved, the latter ranging from a few undulations to more than thirty, but always, she had been told, an odd number of waves.

  For hundreds of years, especially on the larger islands, no Indonesian boy could officially become a man until an elder, usually his father or uncle, presented him with a kris. More than a few were given to young women, too. They were not only weapons, but imbued with magic as part of their construction. The size, shape, pattern, time it was made, and desires of the potential owner were all taken into account by the smith, called an empu, who forged the weapon. Some krises were reputed to draw fire away from a house, protect the owner against black magic, or to rattle in the sheath to warn of approaching danger.

  Toni’s heirloom, a gift from her silat teacher, was in a safety-deposit box back in New York City. Her guru had given it to her so that its magic might help her get Alex. It had apparently worked.

  Too bad it hadn’t worked to keep him.

  Carl led her around, pointing out the various configurations of the daggers. They were beautiful, if you could take the time to look at them properly.

  “This is my favorite, right here,” he said. He opened the glass case, which was not locked. The British were a lot more trusting about such things, Toni had noticed. In some of the Royal museums, you could literally touch priceless works of art with your nose, if you were that stupid. They just hung unprotected on the walls.

  Carl took the kris and its sheath out. He gave it a quick nod, a kind of military bow, then held it up so she could see the designs in the steel. “This is a five-wave dwi warna — a two-colored, or double-pamor—blade. By the guard, it’s beras wutah, rice grains. From here to the point, it’s buntel mayit—the twisted pattern called death shroud. A very powerful pamor, this latter, particularly suitable for a warrior.

  “It’s a Balinese blade, they are generally longer and heavier than the Javanese make, though it has been stained and dressed in the Javanese style. Solo seven-plane ukiran handle, of kemuning wood. Look how intricate the carved cecekan is on the inside, here and here.”

  He pointed at the tiny stylized faces, said to represent kala, or protective spirits.

  “According to the history, this probably belonged to a mercenary who moved to the area of Solo, Java, from Bali, sometime in the mid-1800s. As a mercenary, he would likely have been employed by the local ruler.”

  He handed her the blade, and she took it and touched it to her forehead, a gesture of respect her guru had taught her. She noticed him nod in approval at her gesture.

  The sheath was an informal one, the comers rounded, the wood a light color with a couple of darker splotches, and the shaft was covered with a plain tube of reddish copper.

  “This is your favorite? Out of all these? Why?”

  He nodded, as if expecting the question. “Because it’s a working weapon. It was never worn in the sash of a maharaja, but belonged to a professional warrior. It probably saw duty on the field of battle, and as such, it is full of fighting spirit. Might just be my imagination, but I can feel its power every time I touch it.”

  “Too bad it’s in the museum’s coll
ection,” she said. He glanced away from her. “Actually, it’s on loan to them.” He grinned.

  She shook her head and returned his smile. Of course.

  It did have the feel of a fighting instrument in her hand. Krises were stabbing weapons, with a pistol-shaped grip, this one angled slightly inward, pointed where a thrust, if it hit a torso, would drive it into the body’s center, where it would likely find a major organ. The waves would gouge a wider cut as it went in, and allow more blood to flow when it came back out. They were ceremonial weapons and cultural artifacts these days, but you could skewer an enemy just as well with one now as you could two hundred years ago, human anatomy not having changed much in the past couple million years.

  Her own weapon had been used at least once that way that she knew of — she had seen John Howard take down a gunman who would have killed him, had she not thrown him the kris in time.

  Remembering John reminded her of her days at Net Force, though, and she did not want to travel that path right now.

  “I have trained with knives, but not the kris proper,” she said.

  “I know some of the methods,” he said. “I’ll show you, if you want.”

  “Yes. I’d like that.”

  “Over here, look at these, a matched pair…”

  She went along to see. She was enjoying herself here, despite all that had happened. Yes, sooner or later, she was going to have to go home. But, like Scarlett O’Hara, she could worry about that another day…

  5

  Saturday, June 4th

  Seattle, Washington

  Luther Ventura sat in the Koffee Me! store in the mall near the new entrance to Underground Seattle, holding a triple espresso. The textured cardboard sleeve around the paper cup allowed just enough heat to warm his hands slightly as he inhaled the fragrant vapor wafting up from the fluid. The brew smelled bitter, and it was as dark as a pedophile’s sins.

  He inhaled the scent, connecting to it as a wine expert might enjoy the aroma of a great vintage.

  When he was ready, Ventura sipped the espresso, let the hot liquid swirl around his mouth a bit, then swallowed it.

  Ah.

  When he drank or ate, that was what he did. He didn’t read the paper, he didn’t watch television, he didn’t split his attention — well, save for the basic Condition Orange he always maintained in public, but he had been doing that for so long it was almost a reflex. After twenty-five years of practice, you didn’t have to think about that consciously. You automatically sat with your back to the wall. You checked the entrances and exits of any building into which you went. You knew what kind of construction the building was, which walls you could smash through, which ones would likely stop a bullet. You were always aware of what was going on around you, tuned into the currents of who came and who left, alert for any small sign that danger might be casting a glare in your direction. You expanded your consciousness, relied on all your senses, including your hunches, tuned out nothing, but allowed yourself enough quiet that you could experience the total reality of the place where you were. Zanshin, the swordplayers called it. The Zen of being in the moment, no matter where you were and what you were doing, of being and not merely doing. To Ventura’s mind, this was all unthinking and basic, absolutely necessary to a man who wanted to stay alive in the business he’d been in.

  Once upon a time, Luther Ventura had been an assassin. And, once upon a time, he had been the best in the business. He had worked for governments, he had worked for corporations, and he had worked freelance. Twenty-three years he had done it. Seventy-six major assignments, ninety-one people taken down in the doing of them, and he had never failed to complete a job.

  Not any longer. He hadn’t assassinated anybody in a while, and if you didn’t sharpen your edge regularly, you got dull. Oh, he could still run with most of the elite; his skills had been considerable and they had not deserted him completely — but his time had passed. Somewhere out there was a man for whom hunting and taking human prey was a total focus. A man who was faster, stronger, younger, whose entire being was wrapped around what he did, and that made him better than Ventura. His ego didn’t want to hear that, but he wasn’t going to lie to himself. Experience could balance many things, but no fighter stayed champion forever. Those who tried to hang on too long always lost. Always.

  He could still do twenty chins, he could run five miles in half an hour, and he could hit any target his weapon was capable of hitting, but he was pushing fifty, and his reflexes weren’t what they had once been. He wore glasses to read and, these days, he missed some of the high notes he knew were there when he listened to a Mozart concerto or a Bach fugue.

  He could have tried to fool himself into thinking he still had all the moves, but that was the road to hell, sure enough.

  Three years ago, he had taken out a Brazilian drug dealer protected by a hundred troops and a dozen skilled bodyguards. The tap had been extremely difficult and it had been perfect in every way.

  Perfect.

  Even if your talents never wavered, you couldn’t improve on perfection. The best you could ever do was match it, and there was no joy in that. It was not worth the risk. He was on the downhill slope, and the lean and hungry days were long gone. There weren’t any old assassins, not at the level he’d played on. So he’d folded his cards and walked away from the game a winner.

  Sure, he had killed people recently, but those didn’t count, those had been defensive, more or less. Once, he had gone forth and stalked. Now he made his money protectiny people from other assassins. It was, in many ways, more difficult. There were still challenges to be met. That was his focus, and while it did not have the same level of excitement, it had some advantages. It was legal. It was less risky. And although he didn’t need the money, it was lucrative.

  He put the espresso down, finished. All he needed was the first sip. He didn’t need the caffeine, didn’t want the artificial mind-set that came with it. One sip was enough. It was the essence of the experience, no more was necessary.

  Finished with the coffee, he looked at his watch. It was one minute past eight A.M. He had a new client, though he was not to start officially working for the man for several days. But as soon as Ventura took on a job, it occupied his attention, and he did what it took to get into the proper mind-set.

  Although he was out of town for a few days, at around seven-thirty A.M. on Saturdays his client usually arrived in Seattle via ferry and came to this coffee shop, where he had a cup of triple espresso. For the next several days, Ventura would walk in his client’s shoes, go where he went and do what he did, as much as possible. He would get to know the man’s routine, just as he had gotten to know the routines of those he had sought out and killed. And when he knew what he needed to know, then he would notice anything that did not belong.

  He pulled a small phone from the pocket of his gray silk sport coat. He pressed a button on it, waited for a moment, then said, “All right. Let’s move.”

  The rest of his primary team — two men and two women — were in the coffee shop or covering the street outside. He watched the man and woman pretending to be a married couple stand and walk arm in arm toward the door. Both kept their gun hands clear — the woman was dexter, the man a sinister, so the man walked on the left, the woman the right.

  Ventura tucked the phone away and surreptitiously adjusted the hidden pistol on his hip as he stood. The leather was a custom pancake holster from Ted Blocker, the gun a Coonan Cadet, a stainless.357 Magnum. The pistol had been attended to by Ventura himself, the feed ramp throated and polished, the action slicked, custom springs installed, with the magazines hand-tuned so there would be no failures to feed..357s and.40s had the best record of one-shot stops in street shootings. A one-shot stop meant that one round to the body put a man out of the play. The Coonan held seven cartridges, six in the magazine and one in the chamber, and he carried it in condition one — cocked and locked. All he had to do was draw, wipe the safety, and fire. Using handloads he built him
self, Ventura’s one-shot stops should be right at 97 percent. Practically speaking, you couldn’t get any better than that with a handgun. A subgun was better, a shotgun more so, and a good rifle best of all, but such things were hard to carry around in public settings, so one made do with what was available.

  He had three other pistols identical to it. If he had to shoot somebody, the gun had to go away, and since he liked the design and action, he had bought several, through a dummy dealer. Three years ago, he’d had eight of the pistols. They were good hardware.

  Of course, the mark of a good bodyguard was not having to use the hardware. He allowed himself a small smile as he headed for the exit. Like a perfect crime, the best bodyguard was one you never knew about.

  He might not be the best yet, but there was still time for improvement.

  Quantico, Virginia

  “Sir? Somebody to see you. A Dr. Morrison, from Washington State?”

  Michaels looked up from his computer, blinking away the reading trance he’d been in. Morrison, Morrison…? Ah, yes, he remembered. Morrison had called yesterday, said he was in town, and needed to speak to somebody at Net Force about a problem with something called HAARP. Michaels had done a fast scan of the archives to find out that this was short for High Altitude Auroral Research Project, a joint endeavor that involved the Air Force, Navy, and several universities. Something to do with microwaves or some such. Sounded like a snorer to him.

  “Show him in.”

  The man who followed Michaels’s secretary into the office was tall, thin, nearly bald, and looked to be about fifty. He wore a plain black business suit and a dark tie, and carried a battered aluminum briefcase. He could have passed for a professor just about anywhere.

  “Dr. Morrison. I’m Alex Michaels.”

  “Commander. I didn’t expect to be meeting with the head of the organization.”

  Michaels considered telling him that his assistant had quit and that his best computer guy was tromping around in the woods somewhere with his new girlfriend, but decided it wasn’t any of the man’s business, and he probably wouldn’t care anyhow.