Polar Shift (NUMA Files 6)

"I'll do that."

"When you're through I have another job for you. Meet me in the garden in fifteen minutes."

While Gant went off to hobnob with his guests, Doyle slipped a hand radio out of his pocket and barked an order to two guards who were sitting in a jeep off the main access road to the house. The driver had just finished acknowledging the order when an Arabian mare galloped by with the rider low in the saddle. The driver started the jeep's engine, jammed the stick shift into first and punched the accelerator.

The jeep was going nearly sixty miles an hour when it flew by the copse of elm trees where Austin was hiding. He watched it speed by, consulted a handheld GPS unit and set off across the meadows and fields until he came to woods bordering the property. A horse and rider emerged from the trees and rode up to meet Austin.

"Nice day for a ride in the country, old chap," Zavala said with a lame attempt at an upper-crust English accent.

"Tallyho, bangers and mashed and the rest of it," Austin said.

Taking their time, they brought their horses to a trot and came out on the other side of the woods where the trees had been cleared for a road allowed by the security patrol. There was no fence, only a number of no trespassing signs facing outward, each with its own motion-activated cameras.

Zavala took a small black box from his pocket and pushed a button. When a light glowed green, they rode between two of the signs across open land, then onto a public road. A big pickup truck with a horse trailer attached was pulled off the side of the road.

Spider Barrett got out of the truck's cab as the two men rode up. After the horses were led into the trailer and the door locked, Zavala handed the black box to Barrett. "Worked like a charm," he said.

"It's a pretty simple concept," Barrett said. "This gadget doesn't interrupt the transmission, which they'd pick up immediately. It just delays it for a couple of hours. They'll eventually get a speeded-up picture of you two guys, but it will be too late, and they won't be able to make much sense out of it. Let me show you something even more exciting."

He opened the truck door and removed a small television screen from the cab. It was plugged into the cigarette lighter outlet. He switched the set on and Gant's image appeared on the small screen, saying, "This is private property," followed by Austin's laconic "Do tell."

"Did anyone ever tell you that you were a wiseass?" Zavala said.

"Constantly."

Barrett fast-forwarded to a picture of Doyle. "This is the sonofabitch who tried to kill me," he said.

Austin removed the baseball hat and examined the tiny camera lens hiding in the Harley-Davidson logo on the crown. "Mr. Doyle would have been very surprised if he knew that your beady eyes were watching him from the grave."

Barrett laughed. "What was your impression of Gant?"

"Brilliant. Arrogant. Psychopath. I was watching him after the foxhunt. He was gazing at the killing ground as if it were a shrine."

"Gant always gave me the creeps. I could never figure out why Tris hooked up with him."

"Evil doings make strange bedfellows, I guess. I didn't think he would go for my appeal to reason, but it gave me a chance to size him up, and plant a bug under the garden table before I left."

"It's working fine, but hasn't picked up anything yet."

"Do you think the Trouts will have any better luck with Margrave?" Austin said.

"I hope so, but I'm not very optimistic."

Austin thought about his encounter with Gant. "Neither am I," he said.

Here's to Arthur C. Clarke," Gant said, raising his glass high.

He was sitting in his study with three other foxhunters dressed in regulation red. One of them, a thickset man with a face like a bull, said, "Who's Clarke?"

Gant's oily smile veiled his contempt. "He is the British science fiction writer who first suggested back in 1945 putting three manned satellites in twenty-four-hour orbits over major landmasses to broadcast television signals. His vision is what brings us here today."

"I'll drink to that," said the thickset man in an English accent.

He raised his glass, and Gant and two other men in the study followed suit. One man was as gaunt as the bull-faced man was thick. The fourth man in the room was in his eighties. He had tried to stave off the inevitable advance of age and his decadent lifestyle through plastic surgery, chemicals and transplants. The effect was a hideous face that was more like the corpse of a young man.

Even Gant would admit that none of his partners would have won a competition on character, but they were incredibly shrewd and ruthless men who had become wealthy beyond belief with their multinational companies. And they would suit his needs. For now.

"I asked you to join me so I can bring you up to date on our project," Gant said. "Things are going well."