Turk nearly jumped. Ginella had come up behind him. She placed her hand on his hip.
It felt good, tempting even. But…
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she told him.
“I–I didn’t know you were here.”
“I was waiting. They said you were out.”
She was in civilian clothes, a mid-thigh black skirt and a red top. Not quite see-through, the top gave a hint of lace beneath.
Which was pleasant.
He thought of objecting, but what could he say?
And why? Why object? Why not just… go with what felt good?
“I was — I kinda went for a walk to clear my head,” said Turk. “After everything that’s happened. You know?”
She nodded sympathetically, then leaned toward the concierge. “Can you make a reservation for two at il Bambino. Say in about an hour? No — make it an hour and a half.”
“Il Bambino,” said the concierge approvingly. “Very nice.”
They made love twice, once in a frenzy before dinner, Turk still damp from his shower, then again afterward, this time with even more desperation. Ginella silently urged him on, pulling him toward her. The second time she dug her fingers into his back so hard as he climaxed that he found tiny traces of blood on his sheets in the morning when he woke.
She was gone by then. There was no sign that she had been on the bed or even in the room. The scent of her perfume lingering in the sheets and on his chest was the only hint that she was there.
He called down for coffee, and took a shower for so long he was still inside when the coffee arrived. He got out, brought the tray inside, and showered again.
It wasn’t pathological, he told himself. He had wanted to have sex. The memory of it as he showered threatened to arouse him again.
Turk shaved and dressed. He jogged down the stairs rather than taking the elevator, trotting out to the lot after scoring his pick of the car pool.
Heading to the base for the mission briefing, he began rehearsing different things he might say to her to break off the affair.
He wouldn’t say them today, probably. But soon. Very, very soon.
11
Kharon’s search for Rubeo’s hotel turned out to be much easier than he thought, though as always it was absurdly expensive. He called the man who had arranged to connect the USB device to the maintenance computers; the man called him back inside an hour, while he was still driving. For two thousand euros he learned the American civilians were staying at the Crown Prince, a fancy hotel a few miles from the base.
For another thousand euros he got the floor and room number.
Kharon reserved a room at the hotel without trouble. He studied the layout, and within a half hour had it memorized.
He walked through, placing a dozen miniature video cameras around, giving him a full view of anyone entering or leaving the hotel, and surveying each of the floors.
Sending the images directly to his laptop would have been too easy to trace, so Kharon routed the data through the hotel wireless out to the Internet, then through a set of servers, and had it post to a Web page hosted by a Polish provider. The page was encrypted, but it wouldn’t take a hacker with half the expertise of Rubeo to track it down and eventually decrypt it. For that reason, Kharon resisted the temptation to put extra devices on Rubeo’s floor, and didn’t set up anything to watch specifically for the scientist.
Finished, Kharon went up to his room and took a shower. He decided he would rest — he hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours at least — but once in bed flopped around, unable to sleep. In short order he rose and began stalking the room. Nothing on television interested him, and he was loath to use his laptop to connect to the in-hotel network. He finally decided he would work off some of his excess energy with a walk. Dressing, he went out to the hall and walked down to the elevator. He leaned on the button, then saw from the display above the door that the elevator was all the way downstairs in the lobby.
Better to walk, he decided.
The marble tiles that lined the hallway floor were old and worn, but there were no cracks in them that Kharon could see. This intrigued him — was the marble so thick or perfect that it couldn’t break?
Or was it fake? The overhead lights were not particularly bright. He was tempted to drop down and examine the material.
Marble always cracked. The hotel had to be at least fifty years old. The floor looked original — scuffed and worn, yet no cracks.
The stair treads were made of thick stone, some sort of granite, he guessed.
Obsessing over odd matters was one sign of fatigue. Another was his eyes’ reaction to the light — everything seemed brighter than it was.
There was no door on the stairway where it opened onto the floor above the lobby. Kharon shielded his eyes from the bright light reflected upward from the lobby chandeliers by the mirrored walls below. He started down the steps. Already he was tired — he’d walk once around the building outside, then return quickly and sleep.
He was three-quarters of the way to the bottom of the stairs before his eyes could fully focus. Two men were coming in from the main door to the right. One large and bulky, the other even taller but thinner.
Ray Rubeo.
Rubeo saw the face float above the steps. It transported him back some twenty years to his early days at Dreamland.
Alissa Kharon. A talented scientist who’d died in an idiotic lab fire.
It wasn’t her — obviously — but the eyes, the cheeks, the nose: the face was almost exactly the same.
It was a man a little younger than she had been when she died, taller, but with the same coloring, the same expression.
Haunted.
Her son.
“Neil,” said Rubeo loudly. “Neil Kharon.”
He strode toward the stairs. The young man stared at him, confused.
“Neil Kharon. I’m Ray Rubeo. Do you remember me?”
“Uh, uh, yeah.” The young man stuttered, then glanced awkwardly at the hand Rubeo thrust toward him.
“Your mother worked for me at Dreamland, back in the nineties. Do you remember me? I sent you an e-mail when you graduated from MIT. I know it’s been years?”
Rubeo had done more than that. He had written a recommendation to help Kharon into a doctorate program in Europe — surreptitiously, with the help of the young man’s teachers at MIT. He’d actually hoped to steer him to Stanford, though there was really no arguing about Cambridge.
Rubeo had lost track after that. It was a shame — the young man was brilliant, every bit as smart as his mother.
“What are you doing in Sicily?” Rubeo asked.
“I’m here — I was supposed to interview for a position at VGNet.”
“With Rudd?” Rubeo touched his right ear, squeezing the post — an ancient habit, especially when holding his tongue.
Armain Rudd, who owned the company, had the ethical standards of a slug, and treated his employees little better than slaves. VGNet was active in the artificial intelligence field, handling cognitive interfaces — basically helping sensors “talk” to brains. Its work was solid, but not anywhere near as advanced or as interesting as Rubeo’s work.
Surely young Kharon could do better than that.
“You’re looking for a job?” Rubeo said. “Why didn’t you ask me?”
“I—”
“Give me your contact information.”
“Uh—”
“Forget what you’ve told them, or they’ve told you. They’re not to be trusted anyway. We will easily meet their offer. Really, Neil, I’m disappointed you didn’t think of us. You’ll be a good fit for us — we have a lot of interesting projects. Tell me about your interests.”