Rolfe made a single spare, elegant gesture. “Respect.”
“Respect?”
“I knew that you wouldn’t cave in to a simple threat, and there would be no point in it if I wasn’t prepared to follow through.” He cocked his head and examined Barnes again, openly this time. “Experience does confer some benefits—the ability to tell the difference between bluster and the real thing among them.”
Barnes looked at him for a moment, then nodded grudgingly. “Well, you’re a fascist bastard, but I suppose you draw the line at torture.”
Rolfe smiled, and Barnes blinked in startled alarm. “Oh, not at all. I’ve had men tortured—during the war, for example. If it was a choice between my men’s lives and the Geneva Convention… well, there’s a time an officer should walk around the hill and let someone like Salvo handle things. But I don’t inflict pain for amusement, or to settle a grudge. Or just to get something I’d like, but can do without.”
“You are a bastard,” Barnes said.
“Yes, Dr. Barnes, I am. But you’d better hope that I’m a long-lived one. Salvo doesn’t like being balked, and unlike me he does hold grudges.”
He chuckled a little at the brief look of alarm that passed over the young physicist’s face. And good-cop bad-cop may be a cliché, but it works. “And what will you do here, if I let you live? Please abandon any thoughts of teaching at our university, if you won’t cooperate over the Gate.”
“Oh,” Barnes said. “I think I might like to open a burger joint. I figure you owe me the seed money.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The park along the American River was one of Sacramento’s better spots. It stretched along both sides for twenty-four miles from the junction with the Sacramento River, and it was big enough to form a fairly considerable corridor for wildlife and birds. Tom parked his battered compact, paid the admission fee and looked around for the sleek little two-seater Italian job Adrienne Rolfe had driven to meet him at Maharani’s. It wasn’t there, and his chest gave an abrupt lurch; then he saw her stretching on the grass beyond the pavement, under the shade of a big willow tree. She was doing splits, then curling over to each side with her chin pressed to her knee and fingers touching around the sole of that foot. A water bottle and fanny pack lay against the base of the tree.
Ballet training for sure, he thought, watching her for a moment with sheer pleasure, then walking forward past a Ford Windstar.
Discovery Park was the western end of the riverside trail, at the mouth of the American River where it joined the Sacramento, and just north of downtown. It was flat—this was a spillover zone during the late winter when the river crested—but pleasantly landscaped, with open grassy fields, a band of alder and willow along the riverbank proper where it swelled out into a small lake, and some impressive valley oaks. A double-crested cormorant was sunning itself on a stump in the hot brightness beside the lake, with its black double-V wings spread and its snaky neck curved in an S, altogether looking rather like an organic Stealth Fighter. Pelicans and gulls rested out on the surface of the water; the sun was still high at five-thirty on a summer’s day, and the bands of strollers, kids Rollerblading and happy dogs leaping after Frisbees added to the pleasure of the scene. Still too urban for his taste, but a lot better than concrete and steel, and it smelled of water and fresh greenery.
The background faded as Adrienne looked up at him and smiled. Lot of megawattage there, he thought, smiling back. If they could hook that up to the grid, California’s energy problems would be solved.
“Hi,” he said. “Didn’t spot your car.”
“Oh, I walked,” she said. “Thought you might give me a lift back to Amber House afterward, and perhaps we could catch something to eat.”
“I’d be delighted,” he said sincerely, and began his own stretching.
“Want some help on that?” she asked, when he was seated and bending forward.
“Thanks,” he replied.
Adrienne went down on one knee behind him, pushing properly—a forearm just below the point between his shoulder blades, and a hand just above the small of his back. You were supposed to bend at the waist with your spine nearly straight, and try to lay chest and chin on the ground before you. He gave a grunt when the tightness in his back and hamstrings told him to stop, and held it while he controlled his breathing.
“That must have been alarming,” Adrienne said.
He could feel her breath on the skin of his neck, and the pressure of her hand and arm on the knotted scar tissue where three 7.62mm rounds had punched through his body armor. Interesting that she knows what a bullet scar feels like, he thought.
Fortunately they hadn’t penetrated very deeply, and God bless Kevlar and ceramic inserts for that. It had been alarming, afterward; at the time his first thought had been worry for the mission. The Rangers didn’t leave anyone behind, and humping his carcass out would be a genuine burden. Luckily they’d pretty quickly won the firefight that followed the ambush, and then had called for a dustoff. For an instant he was out of the hot Californian sunshine; the wind was bitter and cold and intensely dry, flicking grit and thin dirty snow into his eyes as he lay and let the medic cut the harness off. Explosions and the rattle of gunfire echoed off the great gaunt slopes of the bare mountains….
“Up,” he said, and shook his head as he eased back and got his feet under him. “Nothing too dramatic,” he went on as he rose. “We here heading up a gully, a dry wash. Had to be done, but the enemy were real good at hiding, even from our sensors; the recon drone said the way was clear. I was on point, and I didn’t see ’em either.”
“You remind me of Granddad,” she said. “He doesn’t talk much about Okinawa, either. Let’s go!”
They set out, running along the edge of the bicycle path to let the odd cyclist or Segway rider go by.
Now, that’s weird, he thought. Why on earth ride one of those things here, when you could walk?
The little two-wheel computerized electric scooters were fine for getting around cities, for distances where a car was too much and shank’s mare too little; he wished there were more of them, and fewer lawsuits and regulations to keep them out of towns, to cut down on smog and congestion. But what earthly purpose was served by standing on a platform and letting gyros and computers and electric motors do half the fun part here?
“Strange,” he said, indicating one of them with his chin.
There was an art to talking while running; you couldn’t do too much of it, and you had to synchronize your breathing.
“Yes,” she replied. “That’s like using a machine to live and hanging yourself in the closet.”
Hmmm, he thought. I approve the sentiment… but why doesn’t she ever use certain contractions? The next “yeah” I hear from her will be the first.
Aloud he went on: “And that’s a lazuli bunting, I think.”
The bird gave a pit… pit… pit as they went by, followed by a series of rising and falling warbles. It was a male, the head and upper parts a pale powdery blue with an iridescent sheen, very much like lapis lazuli, the wings blue until a white bar crossed them, and the chest orange fading to pale cream on the belly. Tom thought they were nearly as pretty as hummingbirds, and it was a pity they were so rare. It was a little odd that Adrienne gave it only a casual glance; it wasn’t that she didn’t know her birds. In the next mile she picked out as many as he; one was a black-headed grosbeak, a spectacular little black-and-orange bird with a fast, sweet warble.