Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,12

into the more complex Serak system. Bukti was pretty much a filter, she’d said, a perfectly good system of self-defense, but used to strain out casual students from the really serious ones. After you learned the eight Bukti Negara forms, then you were allowed to proceed—if you were lucky—into the parent art, Serak. Toni had decided he was serious enough, apparently. So he had already learned the first two from the mother art and had bagged practicing the others. This was pretty quick, she’d told him. Some teachers only showed students two or three djurus a year, and he had twice that in six months.

And Michaels already knew the third one, pretty much. He’d watched Toni enough to pick up the moves, though he didn’t tell her that. So he was way ahead of the learning curve here.

Probably helped if you were working out every day. Not to mention sleeping with the teacher, Michaels thought.

Though that wasn’t happening anymore.

Shit. Let’s not even go down this road again, okay? Either work out or get back to the computer, but don’t sit here whining!

Yeah. I hear that. The computer. He could practice his silat later.

He looked around. Most of his regular crew was gone, only the night shift was on. Gridley and Howard were on vacation, and Toni was in England.

Very quiet around here.

Saturday, June 4th

London

“Why all the secrecy?” Toni asked.

Carl smiled. “Come on, everybody likes pleasant surprises, don’t they?”

“Well, not really. I know some people who wouldn’t answer the door if somebody showed up on their porch with a check for a million dollars—not unless they had called first.”

They were in a section of London that Toni didn’t recognize, a fairly well-to-do neighborhood. They had passed Elephant’s Castle, and she thought they were heading north and west, but she had gotten turned around during Carl’s tour of interesting places.

He laughed as he downshifted the Morgan’s manual transmission. He’d told her that the car, a classic from the fifties, spent most of its time in the shop, but that when it was running properly, he much enjoyed driving it. The problem with old British cars was that they only worked if they liked you. If you accidentally insulted one, it would pout, he said, and simply refuse to go until you had suffered enough.

They passed a big building off to the left. “Imperial War Museum,” Carl said. “We’re not far now.”

She had to admit, she had been enjoying her time with the silat instructor. Enough so that she considered getting to know him better than just as a teacher and friend. But despite having quit her job, and the breakup with Alex, she wasn’t ready to get into another relationship just yet. The wounds were still too raw.

“Here we go, then.”

He pulled the two-seater to the curb.

“This is a no-parking zone,” she said.

“Right. And the meter maid who usually works this stretch is one of my students. Orinda? Short, built like a fireplug? Be hell to pay in class if she had my motorcar towed.” He smiled.

The building they parked in front of was another of those sixteenth- or seventeenth-century things with columns and dormered windows and all, not particularly large or imposing, but stately enough.

They walked up to the front. A uniformed, but unarmed, guard saw them, tipped his hat, and said, “Morning, Mr. Stewart.”

“Hello, Bryce. Lovely day.”

Toni looked at him. “Come here a lot, do you?”

“Now and then.”

There was a brass plate on the wall next to a pair of tall wooden doors, and Toni saw that they were about to enter the London Museum of Indonesian Art.

Ah.

She happened to notice a list of the board of directors for the museum posted just inside the door, and prominent on the list was the name “Carl Stewart.”

She looked at her companion. “You’re on the board of directors here?”

He shrugged. “My family contributes to various foundations and such. Give enough money, they put your name up somewhere. It’s nothing, really.”

“Place seems to be empty except for us,” she said.

“Well, that is one of the perks of having your name on the wall. They’ll open a bit early for you.”

When she’d first met Stewart, just after going to his silat school in a bad section of town, she’d used her access to the local computer nets to check him out. His family was more than well-off, a thing he had not mentioned. The rich were different, and not just because they had more money.

“This way.”

She followed him down a corridor with shadow puppets