Read Linnear 03 - White Ninja for Free Online Page A

informally, it occurred to Branding that they were looking at him in a certain way. With a start, he realized that there was about their manner to him the same deference he reserved for the President of the United States.
    Branding felt wanned, honoured. He was well aware that one basis of his friendship with these men was their mutual usefulness. On the other hand, he was not so naive that he couldn't tell the difference between these serious newsmen, and the majority of their brethren, who were too lazy, bored or stupid to know what journalism was all about.
    Branding's mother had once said to him: 'Choose your friends with care. These are the people who will talk about you most.' Branding had never forgotten those words.
    At last, the topic reached the real reason for their meeting: the continuing 'field research' into Howe's professional conduct. Branding knew that he was on thin ice, that he was using up hard-won favours in order to keep the informal investigation going. There was, as yet, no hard evidence, and the on-air personality, the more impatient of the two, wondered aloud whether there ever would be.
    Branding, who had just flown in from Washington after addressing the National Press Club, assured them that there would be. He also spoke to them about his favourite topic - the one he had spoken of in his address - the Hive Project.
    At Washington's Johnson Institute, a team was putting the finishing brushstrokes on Hive, the advanced strategic computer that Branding's Ascra bill would fund over the next five years. The Hive Project was a revolutionary kind of computer that could reason, could create strategies. Branding hoped to install the Hive in every government agency: National Security Council, CIA, FBI, Pentagon, and so forth. The advantages of using such a system,
    which was far beyond anything any other nation had achieved, would be immediate and staggering, not to mention the ramifications for national defence as well as for a comprehensive anti-terrorist response and controlled tactical forays into the Middle East or elsewhere if the need arose.
    Now, Branding's people had given him some information. Someone had been nosing around the Johnson Institute team members, appropriating without permission computer records of their private lives - bank accounts, loans, that sort of thing. To Branding, this smacked of Douglas Howe. He told the newsmen that if he could link the unauthorized computer snooping to Howe they would have a basis to go forward. The two men concurred. Branding could see the greed filling them; they could already see the scoop playing out in their minds.
    The masque wound down, and so did the men's discussion. It wasn't until much later in the evening, after the three had split up, that Branding caught sight of Shisei.
    She was standing against the marble fireplace in the living room, and Branding remembered thinking how like marble her skin was. She wore a clingy, black sleeveless blouse and silk trousers of the same colour. Her startlingly narrow waist was cinched by a wide crocodile-skin belt with an enormous matt red-gold buckle sculpted into what appeared to be a free-form design. Her tiny feet were enclosed by high-heel crocodile shoes. It was not a typical East End summer outfit, and therefore Branding liked it and her. He remembered thinking: this woman's got guts. Not only for her sense of clothes style, either. She wore her glossy black hair long on top, in an ultramodern sculptured manner. A short fringe across her wide forehead was dyed a shocking blond.
    When he was closer to her, he saw that she wore no jewellery - not even earrings - save for a square-cut
    emerald ring on the middle finger of her right hand. Either she wore no make-up or it had been applied so skilfully that it was invisible.
    For a long time, Branding studied her face. He fancied himself a student of the human condition, therefore faces were important to him. He saw in Shisei something remarkable. Though her