He watched a young couple at the table across the pool engage in lively conversation. He heard only the rhythmic heaves and sighs of the waves, until, from directly behind him, came, “I have to tell you, Mr. Thornton, only once have I ever been on the receiving end of a lamer pickup attempt.”
He turned to find Mallery, draped in a thick, black cashmere shawl. Hoping that she was playacting for their unseen audience, he sat up and said, “It’s always nice not to be the lamest. Who gets the prize?”
She lowered herself onto the foot of the chaise lounge. “Guy sidles up to me at a bar in the Haight and says, ‘Scotty’s my favorite member of the Starship Enterprise crew. How about you?’ ”
“That’s not so bad.”
“Maybe not by your standards, but you’re lucky. You can get away with any line because hunk and intrepid journalist are an unbeatable one-two punch.”
“Thank you.” He didn’t flatter himself that her words contained any truth.
“So, if you’d like, expound upon the phrenological significance of each of the twenty-seven subdivisions of the cranium?”
“How about a walk along the beach?”
“Wherever.”
Apparently Mallery intuited the need to perpetuate their cover. As they wandered away from the pool, she looped an arm through Thornton’s. She had to miss her shoes, cast aside when the heels hindered her progress through the cold sand, but she didn’t show it.
“So does phrenology usually get the ladies onto the beach?” she asked.
“It’s never once failed.”
“Any reason I should know how you acquired your expertise? Skeletons buried in your backyard?”
“You can rest easy: I live in a third-floor apartment. Do you know who Margaretha Zelle was?”
“Your ex?”
“No, but she was the ex of a lot of other guys when she was known as Mata Hari. I learned about phrenology, like most everything else I know, while reporting. Margaretha Zelle made the news in 2000.”
“Wasn’t she killed during the First World War?”
“Executed by firing squad, after which her skull became part of the collection at the Museum of Anatomy in Paris.”
“Funny that I’ve missed that museum.”
“In 2000, the museum’s archivists discovered that the skull was missing. Eventually they concluded it had been stolen. My reaction was, Why would anyone steal a skull? Or even want one? Little did I know, skull collecting is a veritable subculture.”
“Really?”
“Really, a function of the enduring popularity of …”
“Phrenology?”
“It drives devotees to skullduggery, literally.”
“As in grave robbery?”
“Exactly. There’s a long list of notable victims throughout history, including Mozart and Beethoven.”
“Gives new meaning to the Chuck Berry lyrics, doesn’t it?”
“Roll over Beethoven …?”
“… and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”
Liking her no longer required any pretense on his part. She held up her end of the act, frequently making him laugh. When a wave broke too close to them, they skipped out of its way together. The only thing missing was mid-romantic-movie-montage music.
Ascending a dune brought their destination into view. “Hey, check that out!” he said.
The “restoration” of the nineteenth-century seaman’s shack included a 4,000-foot airstrip. The lights lining the tarmac turned it into a white stripe through the night, the wash outlining the flock of private jets parked to the side. Releasing Mallery’s arm, Thornton headed, as if intrigued, for the runway’s inland end, the location of a radar system encased in a metal box the size of a refrigerator. Atop it rotated a dome-encased sensor with a cyclopean lens.
He walked to the metal rail fence surrounding the unit. “Looks like Robbie the Robot,” he said.
Mallery stayed alongside him. “The Nolends know just everyone, don’t they?”
He clutched the fence rails, pulling his body as close as possible to the radar unit, as if trying to attain the best vantage point. “Theoretically, the radar causes electromagnetic interference that prevents the device from recording.”
Joining him, her playfulness vanished. “How did Langlind do it?”
“He, or, more likely, some organization sharing his interests, gave you a short-acting sedative, then implanted a subminiature, self-powered eavesdropping device behind your right ear. I’d tell you you’re in good company, but the only other implantee I know of is me.”
“Why you?”
“I’ve been wondering about that every waking moment since I learned about the bug last week. Do you know about Leonid Sokolov?”
Mallery nodded. “The physicist who was assassinated.”
“The killer administered a sedative called midazolam first,” Thornton said.
“Why?”
“The FBI thought it was to subdue him.”
“Wouldn’t shooting him in the head do that?”
“In rare circumstances, midazolam can be fatal. It’s possible that the purpose of the shooting was to cover up an implantation that had gone wrong.”
“Do you have any evidence of that?”
“None, and I don’t want any; I hope there’s no connection whatsoever to Sokolov — his secrets in the wrong hands could be disastrous. There is a connection to you, though: Catherine Peretti.”
“The Langlind staffer who was murdered?”
“Actually, shot by a professional when she was seconds away from telling me some sort of secret.”
Mallery gasped vapor into the cold air.
“So the obvious question is whether that murder had something to do with Langlind,” Thornton said.
“If we’d had anything on him, we would have used it.” Mallery rubbed behind her right ear.
“Try not to do that, in case anyone’s watching, okay?”
Her hand moved through her hair, her fingers flipping wind-strewn strands from her eyes, as if that had been her intention all along. “Gordon Langlind could just be a stooge in this equation,” she said.
“Why do you think so?”
“Since Great-Granddaddy Cloyd Langlind’s first big oil strike in 1912, it’s practically been a family tradition that the craftier offspring are sent to Wharton and then corporate headquarters; those who don’t make the cut, like Gordon, are sent to law school and then are bought political offices on the chance they can be of use to the company. Langlind Petrochemical has a private espionage firm on a five-million-dollar-per-year retainer. The right nugget of intelligence on a prospective oilfield can mean the difference between a hundred-million-dollar loss and a hundred-billion-dollar profit. They would view an eavesdropping system of this nature as the wisest investment they could ever make. Also Cloyd Langlind’s 1912 strike was in Kazakhstan, and the company’s been in bed with the Russians ever since. Wasn’t Sokolov assassinated by Russians?”
“That’s never been determined. The case is essentially cold.”
“Is it possible that someone else altogether dug up dirt on me, their goal being — for some reason — to keep Langlind in office?”
“Either way, it was election tampering.” Thornton hoped that would be enough to secure her cooperation. “I have a friend in New York, an NSA electrophysiologist with access to a Faraday cage that blocks radio signals. Inside it, he can easily remove a device without the surveillants knowing; then he can track the signal to their listening post. The catch is he needs two devices to do that.”
She said nothing. She just stared at the machine, her expression flickering between shock and horror.
“We should get going,” Thornton said. “A radar tower is only so fascinating, and it’s the third source of electromagnetic interference I’ve had a conversation by this week. We need to decide on our next steps before anyone gets suspicious.”