In the highway light, she was unbearably lovely. Her green eyes just seemed to soak me up. She’d been waiting, waiting for someone-why couldn’t it be me?
“I want to help you,” she breathed in an impossibly soft voice, “but you have to let me touch you.”
If she’d told me to shoot myself in that tone of voice, I couldn’t have said no.
She put her fingers to my temples and I got an instant erection. A long blast screeched from a truck horn right alongside and I swerved back into our lane. “Sorry,” she said, reddening. “I–I didn’t…I never know when I’m going to do that to a guy.”
“You mean…that happens a lot?”
“Not always…but…with some guys, yeah, every time.”
“You must be very popular,” I said and she giggled. She reached for my temples again; ohh did I not want to resist but I had to pull away.
“I can help you,” she murmured. “I can feel it.”
“I believe it,” I said and I sure did. “But maybe while I’m driving isn’t the best time.”
She settled back into her seat and-just like that-the whole thing fell apart. She was still Kate, real pretty and interested in me but…normal pretty and interested, in a normal way. The magic was gone. I was back in the real world. Tess must have felt that way when Renn released her, though she wouldn’t have known what was happening. But Max hadn’t anything to do with this-he was still dozing in the back.
This was all Kate, feeding me what I wanted, locating my desire and offering it back. That would be part of a mindbender’s arsenal, wouldn’t it? Part of a woman’s, too. I waited for her to read that I’d caught on, waited a long moment but she just kept staring out the window and then flashed me her cute smile when she caught me watching. I was left wondering if she knew what she was doing at all.
Crossing the Verrazano Bridge, Max roused and Kate immediately asked, “Why mindbenders? If they want to assassinate her, mindbenders are a nuclear reactor for boiling water. All they need is a marksman with a telescopic sight.”
“All they need,” Max replied, “is a marksman with access. This is the G8. Rome will be totally locked down. Even before all this disarmament craziness, you would have had 100,000 protesters. Now? You’ll need DNA scans to get past the first barrier.”
She sat mulling a moment. “You don’t mean disarmament is crazy.”
“What’s it matter what I think?”
“You’re serious.”
“It’s not practical,” he said. “For smaller countries, nukes are their chance to play on the big stage. If the G8 agree to disarm, the small countries will just see it as a plot to keep them down.”
“It’s not worth trying?”
“It’s actually dangerous,” he continued. “At the moment, you have nation-states hiring and paying-paying well-the best nuke-making talent in the world. They build quality-controlled arsenals with oversight and checks and balances, if only because the Presidents don’t trust the Generals and vice versa.
“Nation-states have trade on the world market. Their politicians like going to the UN, getting their picture taken smiling with the President or insulting him. All these pressures tip nation-states toward some sort of moderation.
“Take them out of the nuke business, what’s left? An international class of brilliant bomb-makers with no paycheck or, if you pay them to do nothing, a pack of creative lunatics bored to death. And who comes calling on them next? Guys who are way scarier than the ones they work for now.”
Kate took this in and shook her head. She didn’t have an answer but she didn’t like his either. Max shrugged. I drove on as the sun came up over Brooklyn.
When we reached JFK, Tauber almost fell flat on his face getting out of the car. He threw an arm out to keep himself from capsizing completely, staggered upright and nearly swooned a second time.
I grabbed him by the shoulders. He was quivering like someone had put him in a deepfreeze. “Are you okay?”
“Mostly,” he lied, watching his feet like they might start jumping around on their own. “They denied me liquid companionship at L Corp and we haven’t had a lot of…time…since then…”
“Is this a good time to go cold turkey?” Max asked him.
“The question I keep askin’s if I’m more use to ya drunk or sober.” He frowned and rubbed his forehead-his hands were trembling. “Guess we’ll find out pretty quick.”
The garage elevator was right across from the terminal. Max and Kate came to a sudden stop as soon as the doors opened.
“Jesus,” Kate whistled. Nothing seemed wrong that I could see. Then Max whispered, “They’re all over the place.”
“Where?”
“Look for the lapel pins,” Tauber said and everybody turned on him like he’d lit a spotlight. A series of tremors passed through his shoulders-he shrugged, sheepish. “I’m sorry-didn’t think of it before. Special Duty, male or female, all have lapel pins.”
“To make it easy for us to pick them out?” Max asked.
“There’s six pins in a set,” Tauber answered. “each one stands fer a frequency. It’s a security double-check. If ya have L Corp ID but no pin-or ye’re ridin’ the wrong frequency for your pin-they’ve got ya.” He smiled. “Volkov’s paranoid about his shooters goin’ off on their own. Us bein’ able to spot ‘em easy-that’s a bonus.”
“They told you this?” I asked.
“They didn’t tell me shit. But,” he pointed to the black-and-blue bulge, “I know how to keep my eye open-”
“That’s good work,” Max said and Tauber cracked a smile between tremors. “We’ll be as inconspicuous as we can, get our passes, check the luggage and disappear until boarding. Okay?”
We hustled through ticketing and dropping luggage at the bomb-detector. Then we found ourselves on a mezzanine looking down on the food court. It was a sea of lapel pins, men and women in dark-suited clusters killing time, buying magazines and beers and duty-free IPods, arguing sports and reality shows but sticking to their little groups and eyeing their watches.
“They’re not here for us,” Tauber said. “They’re not even watchful.”
“Are they all flying to Rome?” I asked Max.
“Don’t know,” he said. “They’re blocking.”
“Can’t you break it?”
“Of course,” he sniffed like I’d insulted him.
I’m impatient-I know that. Maybe it’s my addled state-if I don’t find something out right away, I forget I wanted to know it. “So probe,” I suggested.
“That’s what I’m not doing. They’re are all on headset. One probe’ll set off alarm bells all over the place.” Max’s look swept from one end of the floor to the other. “Hang out here,” he said. “I’ll do a survey and be right back.”
He went down the steps and through the crowd, staggering slightly like he’d just left Happy Hour. He threaded a route that allowed him to bump into at least one member of each lapel-pin cluster, hitting them from angles that prevented their getting much of a look at him. Then he wandered up the stairs at the far end and returned to us.
“You’re right,” he told Tauber. “They’re not here for us. And you’re right too,” aimed at me, “they’re all going to Rome. There’s thirty of them on several flights-not ours, thankfully-and that’s just New York. The Washington crowd is going through Dulles and more are coming from North Carolina-Miriam Fine’s pupils-and Boston. They got the call two days ago; no plans, no details. Just show up with a suitcase for purposes unknown.” He looked down and shook his head. “The weakest minds in the bunch.”
“They’re plenty effective when they work together,” Tauber shivered. “They made me…feel things…at the headquarters. Like I was going to die, like I was suffocating.” He cleared his throat loudly. “And worse than that. They’re a weapon. If they’re sending that many, there’s a plan.”
“There’s a staircase at the other end of the mezzanine,” Max said, “We go to the bottom and keep our distance until they call our flight.” He turned to Kate. “Don’t focus on anybody as we pass, okay?”