The periodic drone of passenger helicopters landing and taking off from the barge was noticeable, but not overly loud.
She could get used to this. Too bad Alex wasn’t here to enjoy it with her.
Late in the afternoon, she went back to her cabin and changed into workout clothes, bike shorts and a halter-top, running shoes, white cotton socks. She didn’t want to practice silat while she was here, even in her room, but she could at least ride the stationary bike and maybe do a few sets on the weight machines. She draped a towel around her shoulders, tucked her room keycard into her left sock top, and headed for the gym.
There were a dozen people in the gym, which was down a level from her cabin. The place had eight or ten weight station machines, pneumatic rather than stacks of iron, six bikes, three stairclimbers, two treadmills, and in one corner, a heavy punching bag hung on a thick nylon strap, the bag itself center-wrapped with layers of duct tape. Toni wished she could work the bag, but she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself. Even in this day and age, a little woman beating the stuffing out of a punching bag drew raised eyebrows and male interest. Men who might not ever speak to you while you were on a bike or stairclimber would feel the need to say something if you were kicking a heavy bag. It was somehow a challenge to their masculinity.
Toni got a free bottle of spring water from a dispenser, found an empty spot in front of the mirrors, did a little stretching and a few warm-ups, then moved to one of the cardiobikes. The one she picked had one of those fan blade front wheels, so the harder you pedaled, the more air you had to move. This was good, because it helped keep you cooler. The electronics allowed a choice of difficulty. She started off slow, and built up resistance after a few minutes.
She was halfway through what she figured would be a forty-minute ride when the black man she’d seen on the copter ride came in. He wore an old pair of baggy shorts, no shirt, rubber sandals, a white cotton headband, and had a towel around his neck.
The shorts had the Bon Chance logo on them. He must work here, she realized. If he was a tourist, the shorts would be new, not old and worn as they were, right?
Toni sipped at her water. The man was well-built, all muscle, no fat on him. Not like a power lifter, but more like a boxer a few days from a championship match.
He moved to the hanging bag, kicked off his sandals, tossed the towel next to them, and went through a series of stretches.
He was very limber for somebody with that much muscle, she noticed. She was curious to see if he was going to work the bag, or that was just a place where he loosened up.
It didn’t take long to satisfy her wonder.
The man stood in front of the bag, and started slapping it. Open-handed, first with the palms, then with the backs of his hands, he developed a rhythm — palm right, backhand right, palm left, backhand left, over and over, until the sound of the strikes sounded like somebody working a speed bag, wapata, wapata, wapata, wapata.
After a couple of minutes, with a sheen of sweat beaded on his head and body, he switched to elbows, and the rhythm was slower, but similar. Right horizontal elbow inward, then back, followed by the left, bap-bap!
Toni kept pumping, watching the man in the mirrors rather than looking right at him.
He switched from elbows to punches, using hammer fists in the same pattern. Then he went to his knees, and then to a series of instep-then-heel kicks. Right, left, right, left.
He was working really hard. Most people didn’t realize how difficult it was to strike a heavy bag like that — it took a lot more energy than riding a bike or walking on a treadmill, a lot more. And not wearing bag gloves was hard on the hands, too.
The timer on Toni’s bike cheeped. She looked down at it. The black man had been working the bag for twenty minutes, and while he was sweating profusely, he didn’t look particularly tired.
The guy was in incredible shape. And though she couldn’t tell from the strikes what his art was, he was obviously deep into some fighting discipline. He moved in balance the whole time, and his hits, while fast, were also powerful. Interesting.
She warmed down on the bike for another minute, gradually slowing her pedaling. She stepped off the bike, wiped her face with the towel, finished off her water, then started for the exit.
The black man stepped back, threw a hard sidekick at the bag, and lifted it a foot into the air, to drop back on its nylon strap hard enough to shake the mirrors. He reached for his towel, wiped his face and head, slipped his feet into his sandals, and walked away.
He was a few feet behind Toni when she stepped into the hall.
“You a dancer?” he said. He had an accent, sounded like Spanish or Portuguese, maybe.
Toni looked at the man. Was he hitting on her? In her guise of divorced secretary, she would probably be receptive to such things. He was a strong, good-looking man. Then again, she was supposedly from the South and might have a racial prejudice, so perhaps she ought to seem a little timid. If he worked here, maybe she could find out some things from him.
“No,” she said. “Not really.”
“You have the legs,” he said. He nodded at her.
Toni gave him what she thought would pass for an embarrassed smile. “Well, I try to keep in shape. Are you a boxer?”
He shrugged. “Kind of.”
He moved up next to her as they walked. “Your first visit to the ship?”
“Yes. You’ve been here before?”
“Oh, yeah. I work here.”
“Really? What do you do?”
“I’m with Security,” he said.
No surprise, but Toni raised her eyebrows. “How exciting.”
He shrugged again. “Pretty dull, mostly. You maybe want to get a drink later?”
Toni pretended to be more nervous than she felt. “Uh, well, maybe.”
He grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “I don’t bite, Missy. My name is Roberto Santos.” He put out his hand.
“I’m Mary Johnson.” She took his hand. It was damp, but warm, and she could feel the power in his grip, even though he throttled it way back. “From Falls Church, Virginia.”
“It is my pleasure to meet you,” he said. He released her hand. “That drink?”
“Oh. Okay. I want to shower and change. Can I meet you somewhere?”
He smiled again. “How about the Lady Luck, that’s the little bar next to the dining room outside the main casino. In an hour?”
“That would be fine,” she said.
After he had gone on his way, Toni felt her heartbeat start to slow. It had been a long time since she had been in the field working a contact. That he was such a primal, physical man added something to her nervousness. This man was dangerous. No question of that.
When Jay sneaked onto the train, he kept it simple. This close to Keller, he wanted to be sure he wasn’t distracted by historical details or esoteric odors in a complex scenario — Keller was, he had shown, too good to shrug off. So the train was just a train, the era was the present and real-time, and Jay’s plan was to get in and out without raising a ruckus. He hadn’t come to slap Keller’s face with a glove and challenge him to a duel, only to find out whether he was here or not.
The duel would come later. On Jay’s terms.
Not that even this much was easy. He made his way through the baggage car with his utmost stealth, stopping frequently to look and to listen. Cracking any of CyberNation’s secure services would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. These were people who prided themselves on their ability to program and weave, and any chinks in their armor would be microscopically small. But the train ran on public tracks, and it had a connection to the railway system’s computers, which were a lot easier to rascal. Jay wasn’t hurting anything, he wasn’t going to even peek at the rail system’s files, he was just riding their coded sig into the CyberNation train. They had to allow it access, and while it wouldn’t get him past their foot-thick firewalls, the information he wanted wasn’t behind them anyhow.