Read The Golden Shield of IBF for Free Online Page B

smoking.
    Bill Brownwood did not smoke, but wished that he did. Allergic to cigarette smoke ever since childhood, he had nonetheless tried smoking on several occasions and only become terribly ill. Lighting up was a way of saying, “Fuck the establishment,” and he liked that. At last, with no one else in sight, a solitary smoker of appropriate size emerged onto the roof, the man dressed in some sort of movie swordsman get-up with a big, ugly mask clutched under his arm.
    Brownwood walked from behind the air conditioning unit and toward the railing, looking out over the downtown area. “Would you look at that!” Brownwood said as loudly as he could without sounding fake. “What the fuck next, huh!”
    “What do you see, man?” The voice from behind Brownwood sounded interested.
    Without looking back, Brownwood said, “Topless right out there for everybody to see! Wow, what a pair, too!”
    In the next moment, the costumed man was beside him, peering down into the street. “I don’t see anything at all.”
    Brownwood glanced over his shoulder. No one had come out onto the roof. Brownwood started saying, “She must have ducked inside. Knockers like you’ve never seen.”
    The man Bill Brownwood was about to kill leaned out further over the railing.
    Brownwood looped the piano wire garrote over his victim’s head in one motion while hammering his right knee into the small of the man’s back. There’d be a little blood, but that couldn’t be avoided...

    Alan Garrison had mentioned to certain of his friends as he encountered them, “I’m looking for someone who might be extremely dangerous. Take a look at this photo. If you see him, call this telephone number immediately and get patched through to me my radio. Try to keep an eye on the guy, but don’t be obvious. And under no circumstances should you attempt to apprehend the guy or even approach him. Got it? Also, if you see something odd—yeah, I know—but I mean like somebody in a costume that just doesn’t look right on him, or a costume you’re familiar with but the wrong person seems to be wearing it. We think the guy might have tried to disguise himself so that he can get out of the con without being recognized.”
    Several different variations on the same general speech secured promises of cooperation and caution.
    Alan Garrison kept plying his way through the corridors of the con, going through the hucksters’ room—too enormous to be covered by one man, he realized—and going through the art exhibit.
    By late in the afternoon, Wisnewski’s voice buzzing in his earphone like some sort of fly, Garrison stepped outside, lit a cigarette (he smoked very rarely, less than a pack a week) and got on his cell phone. “Yeah, maybe it was a bad idea. Got a better one?”
    Wisnewski’s voice paused for a moment, then said, “I’m giving you until six p.m. You’ve got almost an hour and forty minutes to find this guy your way, or we seal the convention and send in the HRU and bomb disposal.”
    In the middle of eighteen thousand people, a Hostage Rescue Unit looking for a man who might be in costume would make a Three Stooges routine look like something out of Henry V. Garrison almost said that, but realized there was no use in arguing. And, in the final analysis, Wisnewski’s idea might be the only chance they had. “Fine. I’ll call you at six, but don’t send anyone in until I call. We could get a lot of people hurt for no reason. And start telling HRU now that guys with swords or axes or rayguns or empty tubes from LAW rockets aren’t bad guys, they’re just in costume, okay?”
    “Six. By five after, we’re going in.” Wisnewski clicked off.
    Garrison closed his cell phone and put it away. “Shit,” he murmured.
    “What is shit?”
    Garrison was so startled, he almost reached for a gun. It was the girl named Swan, the exquisite girl he’d seen at Hank’s demonstration, the loveliest woman he had ever seen in his life. Her voice was