At Gina's wave, Everett lurched forward in a shambling lope, traversing the steep declivity in a series of shallow zigzags. Exhalations condensed in his wake, wafting upward in the still air, and as he trotted in, she was grinning. "You leave a contrail like a 747," she marveled.
"Just out of condition," he puffed, hyperventilating. "Can't afford to inhale fast, it'd shrivel all those poor little alveoli."
"I'll take your word for it," she said quickly. "No more lectures, please; whatever's bothering you, suffer in silence!"
He unstrapped the snowshoes, amused, then followed her into the cabin. "Am I all that transparent? Well, humor me, babe; I just need time to get used to new ideas."
She was heating water for instant coffee. "Such as?"
"Such as undergoing cosmetic surgery," he said, and was grimly pleased to see that the notion disturbed her. By tacit agreement they eased onto separate sides of the bed, sitting side-by-side, sipping coffee as they argued the problem out.
At one point, Gina reached over to take the roll of fat at his waist between her thumb and forefinger. If he lost thirty pounds of suet, she joked, nobody would recognize him.
"That's the crux of it," he objected. "I hate being forced to extremes because a half-dozen gangs of charlies want my hide on their walls."
"Then repudiate your stand. You'd have all the media coverage you could want."
He was damned if he would. The very fact of his being hunted, he said, implied that young Rhone Althouse had found an Achilles tendon in terrorism. But between repudiation and a new identity there was an alternative. He could continue as always, but with tight security around him.
That, Gina said flatly, was suicide. "And I won't be a party to it," she warned. "Get yourself another boy, fifteen of 'em. It might delay the inevitable but sooner or later—" she broke off, laid a hand on his arm, not looking at him. "You're not seriously considering that, are you?"
Everett laid his big paw over her hand, turned to face her. "I considered it, yes. But General Patton was right: don't die for your country; make some other sonofabitch die for his. I'm no martyr, Gina." He withdrew his hand, powerfully conscious that she had made no move to retreat from this small evidence of a growing rapport.
Gina levered herself up to sit cross-legged, facing him. The act somehow lent her a gamin charm; in other circumstances he would have worn a wide grin. "So you're damned if you'll repudiate, and you won't paint a bull's eye on your butt," she urged. "That leaves us with a new you. Any other alternatives?"
"Only the choice between stories that I'm comatose, and stories that I'm dead. I like the coma; that, you can come back from. Only I'd have to come back with a different face."
"Just thinking about it must be a downer, huh?"
It was not so much a fear of surgery, he said; Fulton had hinted at temporary cosmetic techniques. The weight loss was a good idea in any event. He sighed, "I guess I'm just worried about the effects on the few people I care about."
"Ah," she breathed; "relationships." They were silent for a time before she added, "You have a solid self-image, Maury. No matter who you see in the mirror, you'll still be you."
He stared hard at her. "Tell me that when I have a new face."
"I will—assuming you'll still need me." It was a clear request for clarification; even a bit wistful, he thought, his gaze softening as he sought the frank hazel eyes.
To avoid making a fool of himself he swung from the bed. "That's your safest assumption of the day," he said. "I have a phone call to make."
Will Fulton did not have every detail worked out, but Everett accepted the story they had concocted for the press. Severe head injury during a kidnap attempt, condition improved but still critical, under heavy guard at an undisclosed location. "We can take you to Beverly Hills, Tucson, or San Antonio for the plas—uh, cosmetic surgery," Fulton said.
Everett glanced across the bed. "Tucson it is," he said, and exchanged slow smiles with Gina. "But why don't I just drive your Firebird down to Las Cruces and across?"
He frowned at the answer. "Okay, then the lady can do the driving and I'll hide my wallet. That's the way I want to do it, Fulton . . . I'm not asking you to take the responsibility."
There was more along this vein, the FBI loath to take chances on some accidental unmasking of Everett, and Everett determined to have his way. Everett finally terminated the call, met Gina's glance.
"What now?" she asked. There was something in her query that was calculated, yet far from cold.
"We head for Tucson tomorrow; and I start losing weight today. Get into your snowshoes," he smiled; "I'll tell you about it on the mountain."
She lay back on the bed, flexing the long bare legs in languid sensuality. "Tell me here," she purred. "I can think of better ways to lose weight." Her invitation left no room for misunderstanding.
Returning her smile: "I do believe your sense of duty is boundless." He took the hand that reached up for him, eased down beside her.
"Never think that," she whispered, graceful fingers sliding along the muscles corded at his neck. "I told you I was selfish." She felt his hands on her, tremblingly tentative, gentle in their vitality. "I won't break," she laughed, and thrust her breasts against his cupped hands. Murmuring with pleasure, she kissed his throat and then, her eyes wide and unfocused on his own, traced the surface of his lips with her tongue.
Maurice Everett, maltrained by a lifetime of cinema caresses, roamed weightless in the depths of the artless green-flecked eyes. It was a token of commitment, of sharing, that ravished him in its directness.
"When did you decide this was what you wanted," he asked, his hand moving down the voluptuous swell of her hip.
"When you called me `babe'." she murmured, lips fluttering against his, "and I didn't mind. Shut up and give me."
That lesbian contralto had fooled him badly. The moon was well up before he thought of snowshoes again.
Mr. and Mrs. Marks left their cabin on Monday, after defacing many kilometers of snow with their prints and breaking two slats in the bed. They found a motel in Socorro, New Mexico that night but were abashed into more quiescent love-making at two A.M. by the insomniac pounding on their wall. Tucson boasted a wealth of motels, at least one with a vibrating mattress and naughty movies on television. When Everett showed up Wednesday at the Tucson office of the FBI he was four kilos thinner, randy as a goat, and full of ideas for further weight reduction. Gina Vercours drove the Firebird on to Phoenix. En route, she saw the contrail of a commercial airliner at it lanced toward Los Angeles from El Paso. Gina stroked her thigh and smiled, thinking of the contrails Maury Everett made when loping over snowdrifts. She did not consider the passengers of the aircraft, who included Hakim Arif and, several seats ahead, Leah Talith.
Neither Bernal Guerrero nor Chaim Mardor were on the flight, having driven the little van earlier with its fresh Quebecois supplies. There was just no way to get surface-to-air missiles through a baggage inspection, not even the little shoulder-fired SAMs Hakim had earmarked for his war on media...
SATURDAY, 27 DECEMBER, 1980:
Charlie George's solution to the security problem was outlandish. He had paid a slather of money to NBN's best sound stage architect and three slathers to several independent special effects crews. The moving van that had backed up to his earth berm in Palm Springs contained twelve blue-tinted, shallow reinforced fiberglass trays, each nearly three meters across; enough structural aluminum to erect a small dirigible; and panel after panel of clear two-centimeter polycarbonate lying atop ultramodern furnishings.