Free Changing of the Guard by Tom Clancy

solidly on his mask.
    “Halt!” the director cried. “Touché.”
    Thorn nodded and acknowledged the touch.
    “Nice one, Jay,” he said.
    He returned to his guard line, saluted his opponent, and came to guard.
    “Et vous pret? Allez!”
    Thorn smiled and moved forward.
    He maintained his guard, more cautious now. He looked for an opening, a weakness, anything.
    There wasn’t much. Jay had done a good job, coding in all the basics and also giving his construct good reaction time. That would make it hard to fool him.
    Good.
    Blade extended, his right hand and wrist shielded by his bell guard, Thorn began testing his opponent. He engaged his point, throwing a fast beat at his foible, the weak part of the blade near the tip, to try and open up his wrist. He followed that with a quick thrust at the bell guard, hoping to slide off and pick up part of his cuff.
    The move didn’t work, but he hadn’t really expected it would. He’d throw that shot again and again, setting up an expectation in his opponent’s mind. With a real opponent—a human one—there was the chance that he would tire and start to get sloppy on his parries, and leave an opening for Thorn to slip through. He didn’t think that would happen here, unless Jay had programmed in a fatigue factor.
    He threw the beat again, working the interior of his opponent’s blade. Did it seem as though he was a trifle strong in his counter? Thorn nodded. He thought so, and that was something that could be exploited.
    He made the beat a third time, but now it was a feint.
    Instead of hitting his opponent’s blade, he came up and pressed it to the outside. As soon as he felt the counter pressure, he disengaged, dropping below his opponent’s point and circling, coming up on the outside. He pressed and added momentum to the parry—
    His opponent’s point drifted in just a hair too far, and Thorn extended, aiming for the outside of the wrist. He caught fabric, and felt the point of his épée sink home.
    “Halt!” the director cried. “Touché.”
    Gotcha!
    He had a sense of his opponent now. He could work with this. Give Gridley credit, it was a good simulacrum.
    He returned to his guard line, saluted, came to guard, and waited for the director’s command to begin.
    Now they were having fun. . . .

Cal’s Bistro Manhattan, New York
    Natadze took a sip of the beer—some kind of dark ale—and nodded. “Good,” he said.
    Cox waited. The place was crowded and noisy, they were in a booth in the back, and the lunch crowd’s babble was probably a more effective protection than debugging his office once a week was. The food and beer were good, but Cal’s, there for forty years, was on the verge of being “discovered.” Another couple of weeks and Cox would have to stop coming here because he would start running into people who knew him. Too bad.
    “I have considered the matter,” Natadze said, after another sip of the dark brew.
    Cox waited, knowing that the man would get to the subject in his own time. Part of having a highly trained expert was allowing him to present what he was being paid to present in the manner he thought best. You don’t hire Michelangelo and then try to give him lessons on how to paint a ceiling.
    “This information will be restricted,” Natadze said. “It will not be ‘Net Force’ working on it, but a man or perhaps a small team of men within the organization.”
    Cox nodded. “Right.”
    “The team leader, if there is more than one man, is the key. He will know how much progress has been made, who has made it, and any other pertinent information related to it.”
    Well, of course, Cox thought. Any idiot could figure that much. But Cox refrained from saying such aloud. Let him go where he wanted to go.
    “Therefore, we need only to secure this man’s help.”
    “Are you thinking about bribing him, Eduard?”
    “No. Collecting him.”
    Startled, Cox looked around. Nobody was watching them. “Kidnapping?”
    “It is the