“I think so.”
“Then let’s cut our break short and get back to work.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, puzzled.
As they stood, she hugged him tightly and held him at arm’s length. “For being understanding and being a colleague,” she said.
“Very important,” he muttered as they folded the blanket and picked up the empty beer cartons.
“Damn right,” Carol said.
51
Tropical night, blaze of stars, rushing in a black limousine driven by ghosts through a black countryside, seated across from a brooding and unhappy man who had said not a word for the last half an hour, Mary Choy watched the procession of villages fields scrub more villages, black asphalt road. The limousine moved smoothly up steep grades onto curving mountain highways.
She had touched her pistol often enough to find it familiar and not very reassuring; if she had to use it very likely she would die anyway. So why had Reeve given it to her?
Because no pd enjoyed the thought of going in harm’s way absolutely powerless. She thought of Shlege’s mistress in the comb Selector jiltz firing wildly with her flechettes.
“We are getting near,” Soulavier said. He leaned to look through the windows, rubbed his hands together, bowed his head and rubbed his eyes and cheeks, making preparations for something he would not enjoy. He lifted his head and regarded her sadly, steadily.
“Near to what?” Mary asked.
He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he turned away. “Something special,” he said.
Mary clenched her teeth to control a chill. “I’d like to know what I’m getting myself into.”
“You get yourself into nothing,” Soulavier said. “Your bosses get you into things. You are a lackey. Do Americans still use that word?” He glanced at her in imperious query, nose raised. “You have no control over your fate. Nor do I. You have made your commitments as have I. You follow your path. As do I.”
“That all sounds terribly fateful,” Mary said. She contemplated again pulling the pistol and forcing him to bring the limousine to a stop and let her out. Weak contemplation, no action. She could not lose herself in the countryside for long; it was no problem finding a single lost human today or even selecting an individual out of a crowd; no problem even for Hispaniola, twenty years behind the times.
Soulavier asked the limousine something in Creole. The limousine replied in a light feminine voice. “Two more minutes,” he said to Mary. “You are going to the house of Colonel Sir in the mountains, which mountains do not matter.”
She felt relief. That did not sound like a death sentence; it sounded more like diplomatic card games. “Why are you unhappy, then?” she asked. “He’s your chosen leader.”
“I am loyal to Colonel Sir,” Soulavier said. “I am not unhappy to visit his house. I have sadness for those who oppose him, such as yourself.”
Mary shook her head solemnly. “I’ve done nothing to oppose him.”
Soulavier waved that aside contemptuously, snapping, “You are part of all his troubles. He is beset from all sides. A man such as he, noble as he, should not face the gratitude of baying wild dogs.”
Mary softened her voice. “I am no more a cause of his troubles than you are. I came here seeking a suspect in a crime.”
“A friend of the Colonel Sir’s.”
“Yes…”
“Your United States accuses him of harboring a criminal.”
“I don’t believe—”
“Believe nothing then,” Soulavier said. “We are here.” They passed between broad stone and concrete pillars, missing the ponderous wrought iron gate by inches as it swung wide. Torchlight beams burst out all around. Soulavier pulled out identity papers. The limousine door sprung open automatically and three guards thrust in their rifles. They regarded her with viciously wise slitted eyes, shrewd, intensely skeptical. Soulavier handed them the papers as they glanced at Mary with an occasional murmur of masculine incredulity and admiration.
Soulavier exited first and held out his hand, fingers waggling, demanding hers. She emerged without accepting his help and blinked at the torchlights and searchlight beams.
A house? Guard towers all around as in a prison or a concentration camp. She turned and saw a gothic gingerbread monstrosity flanking the wide brick and asphalt courtyard. One vast many pointed curlicue of wood and carved stone and wrought iron, painted a greenish blue with white framed windows and doors like clown eyes and mouths.
Mary observed that all the guards wore their black berets tilted to one side and were dressed in black and red. All wore on their broad lapels fingersized pins of a ruby eyed skeletal man in top hat and tails. Soulavier stepped forward after conversing with a cluster of guards. “Please give me your weapon,” he said quietly.
Without hesitating she reached into her pocket, produced the pistol and handed it to Soulavier, who regarded it with some curiosity before passing it on.
“And your hairbrush,” he said.
“It’s in the luggage.” Oddly this revelation and disarmament seemed to cheer her. It removed one more level of decision making. Things were getting sufficiently in a rough to break the expected chain of her emotions.
“We are not simpletons,” Soulavier said as guards removed her suitcase from the trunk and knocked it open with rifles. One tall muscular guard with a wise bulldog face removed the hairbrush, held it up to torchlight, fumbled the cap open and sniffed at the nano within.
“Tell them not to touch it,” Mary suggested. “It could be harmful to their skin if they touch it.”
Soulavier nodded and spoke to the guards in Creole. The bulldog guard capped the brush and slipped it into a plastic bag.
“Come with me,” Soulavier instructed. His own nervousness seemed to have passed. He even smiled at her. As they approached the steps of the front entrance to the house he said, “I hope you appreciate my courtesy.”
“Courtesy?”
“To leave you the feeling of being armed, resourceful, until the last minute.”
“Oh.” The ornate carved oak double doors opened at their approach. Beyond them armored steel vault doors slipped back into recesses. “Thank you, Henri,” she said.
“You are welcome. You will be checked again for weapons, rather thoroughly. I regret this.”
Mary felt socially if not spatially disoriented. Giddy. “Thank you for the warning,” she said.
“It is nothing. You will meet with Colonel Sir and his wife. You will have dinner with them. I do not know whether I will accompany you.”
“Will you be searched for weapons as well, Henri?”
“Yes.” He watched her face closely for signs of irony. He found none; she meant no irony. Mary felt acutely the inebriation of danger. “But not as thoroughly as they will search you,” he concluded.
Past the vault doors, two women in black and red took her firmly by the arms and led her into a cloakroom.
“Remove your clothes please,” a short, muscularly plump woman with a stern face demanded. Mary did so and they tapped her on the shoulders and hips, stooping to inspect her skin for suspicious blemishes. They felt the gray crease in her buttocks with murmurs of dissatisfaction.
Doctor Sumpler will certainly hear about this, Mary thought, now knowing whether to laugh or scream.
They turned her quickly, warm dry fingers.
“You are not noir,” said the short woman. She smiled mechanically. “I must inspect your privates.”
“Surely a machine, a detector—” Mary began, but the woman broke off her protest with a sharp shake of her head and a tug on Mary’s wrist.
“No machines. Your privates,” she said. “Bend please.”