"You could have been killed."
"That's what the vests are for. Good thing it was only one round, though."
"Do you think we stopped them tonight?"
"I don't know," Nick said. "We sure as hell slowed them down."
"People like them shouldn't be allowed to exist," she said. Her voice was touched with anger.
"There's always someone like them."
"That's the problem, isn't it? There's always someone who wants to run the world their way and who'll do anything to get what they want."
"At least this time we know who they are and where they live. We didn't stop AEON before, but we didn't know as much. Maybe this time around we can finish it."
"Adam and his group tried to stop them for centuries," Selena said. "They couldn't do it."
"They didn't have us to help them out," Nick said.
Selena laughed.
"Ah, hell, I'm tired," Nick said. "All I want is to get under that nice warm quilt on the bed over there. With you."
"That's all?"
"Well, maybe not."
He leaned over and kissed her. They held it for a long minute. She reached up and pulled him closer.
"Ow," he said again.
"You sure about the bed? I thought you said you were tired. And you're hurting."
"What's a little pain between friends? And I'm not that tired."
Later, after he was asleep, she stared at the ceiling for a long time. Next to her, his body radiated heat like a furnace. She thought about what he'd said about Adam, about his group not having the team to help in the past.
He was serious, she thought. People have been trying to bring down AEON for a thousand years and he thinks that we're the ones to do it. He meant it, it's how he thinks of himself, of the team. He means to take them down.
Outside the window of the bedroom, the wind was dying out. They'd be able to leave tomorrow and it couldn't be soon enough for her. She'd always loved the Alps, but after tonight she didn't think Switzerland would ever feel the same.
How did I get here?
She stared up at the ceiling for a long time.
CHAPTER 22
Valentina Antipov waited until Gutenberg's snoring was in full flower before she got out of bed. She looked at him with distaste. He'd been particularly clumsy tonight and it had taken all her considerable skills to convince him of his romantic prowess. She picked up a red silk nightgown from the floor by the bed, slipped it on and padded softly into the other room.
Gutenberg's laptop computer sat on a desk by the window. It was password protected, of course, but Valentina had long ago discovered the key, a combination of his wife's name and his birth date. For all his power and intelligence, Gutenberg was naive about things like passwords. It would never occur to him that his not-so-intelligent mistress would even look at his computer, much less be able to access the files on it. He should have been using a biometric security lock, but he'd once told her he didn't trust them. Biometrics had been known to fail.
Valentina enjoyed making a fool of him. It was one of the pleasures of her job.
Something had happened to upset him. She didn't know what it was, but she knew it was important. Johannes had flown in to Paris unexpectedly and ordered her to be ready for him later in the day. A business meeting, he'd said, but then he'd be free. He'd sounded strained over the phone, even worried, angry. She had never known him to be worried about anything.
Valentina had decided to look at the laptop and see if she could find out why Gutenberg was here, or who it was he'd met with. There was little risk she'd be discovered. His snores echoed loudly in the other room.
Half a bottle of cognac will do that to you, she thought. Pig.
An ornate iron street lamp cast soft, yellow light over snow dusting the cobbled street outside the window. This part of Paris still had the feel of the old city, the Paris of van Gogh and Matisse, of Voltaire and Moliere. Valentina loved Paris. As much as she missed the sounds and nightlife of her native Moscow, she had to admit it was nothing like the city of light.
The sounds in the other room stopped and Valentina froze where she was. A moment later, they started again. She took a deep breath and opened the computer. She entered the password. The screen filled with fifty or sixty file icons, like miniature file folders. Gutenberg was obsessive about records. There was probably a psychological term for it, but she didn't know what it was. He always kept a record of anything he thought important.
If there was something that could tell her what had upset Gutenberg, it would be a recent entry. There was no time to look into each folder. Most of them would be business files, of interest but little use to her. She wanted something recent.
She moved the cursor over the folders, pausing only to see the date of entry. She came to a folder marked K. The entry date was the night before. She clicked on the file. Flashing red letters appeared on the screen.
ENTER CODE
Damn!
That had never happened before.
Her purse lay on a chair nearby. She went to it and took out a high speed flash drive given to her by SVR's technicians and went back to the computer. She inserted it and copied Gutenberg's entire drive without trying to crack the code on the file. She shut down the computer, withdrew the device and put it back in her purse.
Let Moscow worry about it, she thought. She'd arrange for it to get to the embassy tomorrow, after Gutenberg was gone.
Her work done, Valentina slipped back into bed. She looked over at the man sleeping next to her.
Men are such fools, she thought.
CHAPTER 23
"I like it," Nick said.
"You do?"
Nick and Selena stood in the empty space of a converted loft building overlooking the Potomac and Robert E. Lee's beloved Virginia.
The loft was on the top floor of an eight story brick warehouse that had been a clothing factory at the turn of the 20th century. The machines, cutting tables and bales of raw cloth were long gone. No one from that time would have imagined the change that had come to the building.
The original floors of oak had been sanded smooth, stained and finished to perfection until they glowed with warm light. A row of tall, paned windows faced out onto the river. The bricks had been exposed and finished along one wall. Light poured into the loft through skylights placed along the high ceiling. The space had been partitioned with an architect's skill into a great room, master bedroom, a large study/library and two guest rooms. There were two and a half bathrooms. There was a gas fireplace in the living area and the master bedroom. Overhead lights were recessed into the ceiling.
The walls were painted off-white. The loft was a blank canvas, ready for whatever imagination its new owners could bring to it.
"What do you think?" Nick asked. He walked over to one of the windows. His footsteps echoed in the empty space. A line of barges was passing on the river, shepherded by two large tugs.
"I like it too," Selena said.
"Then let's take it."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Then we should go see the agent."
"We need to talk about how we pay for it," Nick said.
It was a conversation Selena knew was coming.
"Nick…"
"Hear me out," he said. "I know you can pay for it. I don't want you to."
"Why not? I have more than enough, you know that. What good is money if you can't spend it on what you want?"
"There are plenty of things you can spend it on here, if that's what you want," Nick said. "But this has to be a 50/50 deal. You cover half, I cover half."