“That was quick,” Toni said.

Michaels nodded at her. “Yeah. Old soldiers never die, but they don’t hang out in hospitals tempting fate if they can help it.”

They were in the conference room at HQ. Somebody had put a pot of coffee and a box of assorted pastries on the table. Michaels picked up a bear claw, examined it, and put it back. He selected a glazed donut instead. A nice sugar rush and a little caffeine, just what he needed, so he could rot his teeth, court diabetes, and raise his blood pressure all at the same time.

Hell with it. Given the way things had been going lately, what difference would it make? He took a big bite of the donut.

“Julio says Howard’s ready to come back to work now.”

“He can take a few days off and heal. So can you.”

Jay shook his head. “I’m fine. I want to be here for this. It’ll be a lot less strenuous in VR. I can ride the net here, or I can do it at home, but I’m gonna ride somewhere.”

“All right,” Michaels said. “Let’s review what we have. According to your Mr. Fiscus, the man we are looking for used to be some kind of freelance hired assassin who supposedly got out of that business and into bodyguarding a few years back. Aside from ‘Dick Grayson,’ he uses a variety of names, among them Diego, Gabriel, Harbor, Colorado, and Ventura. Is he Hispanic, do we think?”

Jay laughed, then said, “Ow.” He pressed his hand against his sore rib.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t laugh. I don’t think he’s necessarily Hispanic or Latino, Boss. Those are all names of Los Angeles freeways.”

Michaels nodded. “Okay, so he knows about Batman and the SoCal highway system. What else do we have?”

“Zip. I looked in the phone directories,” Jay said. “He ain’t listed, and we haven’t been able to get a facial-points match on any police agency computers. Man has a very low e-profile.”

Michaels looked at Toni. He had to ask. “You’re going to take the job with mainstream, aren’t you? Working for the director?”

“I—yes.”

“So is the information flow going to be both ways?”

“That’s what the job description says.”

“Okay. See what you can get from them on this.”

If they could find out who this Ventura character was, if they could background and history him, they might be able to track him down. And if they found him, they’d find Morrison.

The intercom blipped. “Yes?”

His secretary said, “Sir, we have an incoming call from the director for Toni Fiorella.”

Michaels frowned. He waved at Toni, who picked up a handset on the table.

“Yes, ma’am?”

The director said something, and Toni nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I have decided.” She glanced at Michaels. “I’ll take it.”

His gut twisted a little at that, but she was a grown woman, she had to make her own choices.

“Yes, ma’am, go ahead.”

Toni listened for what seemed like a long time. Neither Michaels nor Jay made any pretense they were doing anything other than listening to her end of the conversation.

“I see. Yes, I’ll tell them. Yes, ma’am, I’m glad to be onboard.”

She cradled the phone, looking disturbed.

“What?” Michaels said.

“Sheriff’s deputies in Woodland Hills, California, were called to a disturbance at a movie theater there a few minutes ago. Inside, they found more than a dozen bodies, all shot dead, plus a locked storeroom full of screenwriters.”

“Corpses and a room full of screenwriters? This concerns us how?” Jay put in.

“One of the bodies was IDed as a man named Qian Ho Wu, a registered foreign lobbyist who the FBI Counter Espionage Unit has tagged as a probable spy for China.”

“Uh-huh?”

“One of the bodies has been identified as Dr. Patrick Morrison.”

“Oh, shit,” Jay said. Then he thought about it a second, and said, “But that solves our problem, doesn’t it? Dead men don’t generate radio broadcasts.”

Toni said it before Michaels had a chance to say it: “You’re assuming he didn’t tell anybody how he did it before he died.”

“Well, he probably didn’t tell the Chinese. Maybe they were after him because they figured out he was responsible for what happened to their villages. They caught up with him, there was a shoot-out, end of story.”

“Too easy,” Michaels said. He tapped the com. “Get me on the next flight going to Los Angeles.”

“You’re not a field agent, Alex,” Toni said. “The FBI will take care of this, you can’t—”

“But I can,” he said, cutting her off. “Portland got zapped with some kind of death ray, the leader of my strike team is in bed nursing a gunshot wound, and my top computer whiz just got the crap beat out of him—not to mention I had the guy responsible for all of this in my hands and I let him walk away. This has been a FUBAR from the word go.”

“You didn’t know—”

“But I know now. You want to tell your new boss I’m overstepping my bounds, fine, go ahead. I can take some vacation days myself if I have to.”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “And if you want, I’ll go with you.”

He considered his next words carefully. He considered not saying anything, but decided he needed to: “This is Net Force’s problem, Toni, and I think Net Force should take care of it.”

She blinked at him. “And I’m not part of Net Force anymore, is that what you’re saying?”

“You said it, not me.”

She nodded. “I see.”

He didn’t like the way it made him feel, didn’t like the distress on her face, but it was going to come out eventually, and better sooner than later. Maybe they could salvage their personal relationship; he sure hoped so. But the job had already changed. It wasn’t going to be the same as it had been. If Toni didn’t work for him anymore, okay, fine, he could learn to deal with that. If she was going to report about what he did to somebody else, he needed to have some control as to what he let her see and hear. If the director wanted to keep tabs on him, all right, that was her prerogative. Nothing said he had to make it easy for her.

Toni had made her choice. Now they’d both have to live with it.

He glanced at his watch. Maybe it was the flight. He was concerned about being in the jet’s first-class cabin—

“Can I get you anything?”

Ventura gave the young flight attendant a polite smile. “No, thank you.” He had booked a business-class e-ticket, using one of a dozen fake IDs he always carried, but the flight had been full, and by the time he’d checked in, the only empty seats remaining had been in first class. Normally, he didn’t fly first class; it was harder to blend into the herd when you were up front. But demanding to sit in the tourist section would really make you stand out—who refused a free upgrade?—and the idea was to be as anonymous as possible. You wanted to be just another middle-aged businessman, do nothing to stick in somebody’s memory, and hope you didn’t remind the stewardess of her favorite uncle.

The attendant moved on, and Ventura turned to stare out at the terrain. The flight from L.A. to Seattle took about three hours. He’d rent a car at SeaTac and drive to Port Townsend, probably another three or four hours—you had to allow for the ferry ride, plus he wanted to do a little circling for his approach. That would put him there in the evening, but it didn’t get dark up this far north in the summer before maybe nine-thirty or ten. So there was no real hurry, since night was your friend. Plenty of time to stop and have supper, get set up, do the job.

He looked out through the jet’s double-plastic window. There was a big snow-covered mountain below and in the distance. Shasta? Must be.

Ventura figured the local authorities in L.A. had uncovered the mess in the theater by now, and if so, they had certainly identified Dr. Morrison. As hard as the feds would have been looking for Morrison after the shootings in Alaska, they’d be on the case quickly. He had considered hauling the corpse away, disposing of it, but since the man was dead and no longer his responsibility, it was tactically much smarter to let him be found. He’d made sure that Morrison’s wallet was still in the dead man’s pocket, to speed things up. That would certainly stop the direct search, and maybe the feds wouldn’t be all that interested in looking for accomplices.

It wouldn’t slow the Chinese down. Surely Wu had passed his intel along to somebody higher up the food chain—Ventura couldn’t imagine that the man’s stingy government had given him hundreds of millions of dollars to spend without knowing every detail of what they were buying. The Chinese would very much like to speak to anybody connected to the deal. Once they found out Morrison was dead, they’d really have their underwear in a wad. Ventura would be at the top of their list of people to see.

The feds would have dropped their surveillance of Morrison’s house as soon as they realized what had happened to him—dead men didn’t move around a lot on their own, and the only way he’d be coming home would be in a box. Ventura’s team was, of course, long gone, pulled off as soon as he’d realized the man he’d shot in Alaska was a marshal and not a Chinese agent, and that more feds would thus be coming to have a little chat with Morrison’s spouse. He hadn’t told his client, who thought his young trophy wife was protected—no point in giving him anything else to worry about.

The feds would probably want to have a few more chats with the widow Morrison, and certainly the Chinese would pay the young lady a visit, but since she didn’t know anything, she couldn’t tell either side anything. She might be joining her late husband by the time the Chinese figured that out, but that wasn’t his problem—as long as he wasn’t there when the Yellow Peril came to call.

The Yellow Peril. He smiled. He wasn’t a racist. Sure, he played that card for people like Bull Smith, to allow them to believe he was simpatico with their beliefs, but he didn’t care one way or another about somebody’s skin color or gender. He’d worked with people of every race, male and female, and the single criterion that mattered to him was how well they could do the job. If you could pull the trigger when it came to that, and hit your mark, you could be a green hermaphrodite with purple stripes for all he cared. He’d learned the term “Yellow Peril” from the old Fu Manchu books, material that had been written in an age where racism was the default belief and nobody thought much about it.

Normally for this kind of work Ventura would have wanted to take his time. He’d get to know the territory, learn the patterns, who went where, when, and how, and not move until he had everything pinned down. The more you knew, the fewer chances for surprises. He didn’t have that luxury now. He needed to move quickly, get his business done, and leave this behind him. He had his money cleared, clean IDs, and safe places where he could hide until he had a chance to work out his longer-term plans. Being in the moment didn’t mean you couldn’t think about the future; it merely meant you didn’t live in the future.

He was, he figured, in a fairly good position. Still there was that nagging uneasiness, that sense of being a bug on a slide. As if a giant eye could appear in the microscope at any time, staring down at him. He did not like the feeling.

Well. You did the best you could, and that was that; nothing else mattered.

They were still an hour or more away from SeaTac. He’d get some rest. It might be a while before he had another chance. He took a series of slow, deep breaths.

In three minutes. he was asleep.