Free Changing of the Guard by Tom Clancy Page B

people living here since before the Revolutionary War, though the town itself was much younger. According to the realtor, crime was low, tiger mosquitoes sometimes got bad in the summer despite efforts to eradicate them, and just about all of the single-family homes were occupied by their owners. Upscale, but not ostentatious.
    From the outside, Thorn’s house was a two-story home, solid, and there was nothing to distinguish it from most of the others on his street, which was exactly what he had wanted when he set the real estate agent to looking.
    Inside, there was still work being done. The four-bedroom house was much larger than a man alone needed, and he was having the living room and parlor converted into a fencing salon. One of the joys of being rich was, if you couldn’t find exactly what you wanted for a home, you could have it built.
    Eventually, he would have fencing masters come to his house to teach him. He had been looking into the Japanese arts kendo and even iaido , with the live blade.
    Not that he wanted much other than that. Coming from a poor family had taught him early on to value people and small things. Yes, when he’d sold his first major piece of software and been handed a huge check, he had run out and gotten himself a bunch of new toys, ranging from top-of-the-line computer systems to fast cars to five-thousand-dollar suits. He had even bought his parents a house in Spokane.
    But that was long ago and money no longer burned a hole in his pocket. These days, he had a driver, so he didn’t need a car. He ate well enough, though he wasn’t a gourmet, and he didn’t buy his clothes at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. His one expensive hobby was collecting swords. Aside from working foils, épées, and sabers by such makers as Vniti, Leon Paul, Prieur, and Blaise, he had a collection of antique weapons ranging from Japanese katana s to Chinese broadswords to Civil War sabers. He would have these hung on the walls of the salle when it was done, and a monitored alarm service installed to keep sticky-fingered thieves from helping themselves to the weapons. Other than that, his fortune was not something he used all that much. He did like to fly first class, for the leg room, but he could have easily afforded a private jet, and first-class was a lot cheaper than that. . . .
    He smiled at himself as the driver opened the car’s door and he alighted at the new house.
    “Good night, Mr. Thorn.”
    “Good night, Carl. See you in the morning.”
    Thorn ambled to the door, carrying his equipment bag. He thumbed the door’s lock and pushed the front door open.
    Inside, the smells of sawdust and fresh paint greeted him. He put the sword bag down and went into the kitchen. He didn’t feel like cooking, it was late, and a heavy meal before bedtime was an invitation to night-mares, but he was hungry, so he grabbed an Aussie pie from the freezer and stuck it into the microwave, opened a bottle of beer, a Samuel Adams, and went to watch the late news on the television. So far, the new job had been easy enough. He had good people, there were a few more he would eventually bring in, and he hadn’t run into anything he couldn’t handle. Of course, he didn’t expect he would run into anything he couldn’t handle.
    He sipped from the bottle as the TV lit. It was a little disappointing, really. Sure, there was always a newness factor in any kind of job. Big projects brought their challenges, but it never took him long to get up to speed, and once he did, well, then it was just a matter of time before it got boring. Most of the time, he had to invent his own challenges, and now and then he would have liked to be in a position where he had to stretch a little to keep up. Mostly, that just didn’t happen.
    The news flared on, the end of a story about another crisis in the Middle East.
    When he’d been a kid, Thorn hadn’t realized that everybody wasn’t as smart as he was. A problem would come up, he’d see the