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hadn’t made any great effort to find him and drag him back.
    He spent some time learning how to live in the mean, crowded streets of Hong Kong, learned how to fight with a knife and his hands while in the gangs, and was certainly on the short road to jail or an early grave when he had been found by a high-born English woman, Lady Patricia Knowles. Patricia—one never called her “Pat,” even in bed—had thought him a diamond in the rough. She was richer than the Queen, thirty-six years old, and married to a dotty English lord who was pushing seventy-five and beyond Viagra’s help.
    She cleaned Locke up, gave him his new name, installed him in an apartment in a good neighborhood, and taught him all manner of things, ranging from how to dress, eat, and behave in polite society to most of the positions found in the Kama Sutra . Patricia had been that classic storybook woman—a proper English lady at a formal dinner—and a shameless whore in bed. He could barely keep up with her, even though he was half her age.
    After five years, she and her husband had returned to England, but by then Locke was more than a little adept at pleasing a woman, and polished enough to pass for a gentleman. Patricia had directed him to one of her friends, Martha, and he hadn’t even had to change apartments.
    After Martha, there had been other women eager enough to pay for his company. Sometimes he was merely arm-candy, most times he earned his way in private, but there was always another woman waiting. He had learned his lessons well, and he knew that his appeal, whatever it was, was something upon which he could depend.
    He supposed he could have lived that life for a long time. But one can only lie in so many beds, drink so much expensive champagne, attend so many tuxedoed parties before those things begin to pall.
    So Locke had turned to crime.
    Not because he needed the money—his benefactors had been generous enough over the years, and he was well enough off that he could live on his investments. No, it was the challenge, the spike of adrenaline that let you know you were alive—but that death was coming up just behind you.
    Locke’s talent here had not been in strong-arm robberies, but in setting up heists worth small fortunes. He traveled in circles wherein there were rich people with cash, jewelry, and art in their homes. That was the beginning. From there, Locke had gone on to bigger things: galleries, jewelry merchants, museums. He had scores all over the Orient, and even into Europe.
    If one moves in certain circles, and becomes expert in them, word gets around. Even though Locke hadn’t been looking for a job, Wu had found him. Wu had a proposition. When he had put it to him, Locke had been surprised, but intrigued. What Wu could bring to the table made the venture not quite as impossible as it seemed on the face of it.
    Locke had said he would consider it. He spent a week mulling it over, then went back to Wu. He was in.
    And Wu had known that, too.
    “What next?” Wu asked.
    “France, then America,” Locke said. “Shing’s mastery of the virtual does not extend to the real world. There are things that must be seen in person to be known.”
    Wu nodded. “Yes.”
    “I will keep you apprised.”
    Locke stood. The two men gave each other military bows. Locke made sure his gesture was deeper than Wu’s. The general would notice. Locke considered himself an equal in this project, not an employee, but it never hurt to be well mannered. Patricia had taught him that. Bless her, wherever she might be.

Route du Parc
Near Nice, France
    Charles Seurat exited the A-8 toward Sophia Antipolis, accelerating into a tight, controlled turn in the little Peugeot he’d rented at the airport in Nice. The car was a natural-gas /electric hybrid and had surprising power.
    Not too bad.
    Still, he missed the larger engines and power afforded by essence —gasoline.
    C’est la vie.
    It would have been gauche to drive anything else to this