The restaurant was crowded, but Sam got us a quiet table in a corner. He and Greg were already there when I arrived. Shortly after me, Josella swept in, looking like an African princess in a long, clinging gold-mesh sheath. Sam’s eyes went wide. He had barely flickered at my Parisian original, but I didn’t have Josella’s figure or long legs.
Sam sat Josella on one side of him, me on the other. Greg was across the table from him. I think he was enjoying having two women next to him. I only hoped he couldn’t see how jealous I was of Josella.
Trying to hide that jealousy, I turned to Greg. I was curious about him. Over pre-dinner cocktails, I asked him, “You’re a Catholic, aren’t you? How do you feel about all this?”
Greg looked down into his drink as he stirred it with his straw. “I am a Catholic, but not the kind you may think. There are many of us in Latin America who recognized ages ago that the bishops and cardinals and all the ‘official’ Church hierarchy were in the service of the big landlords, the government, the tyrants.”
“Greg was a revolutionary,” Sam said, with a smirk.
“I still am,” he told us. “But now I work from inside the system. I learned that from Sam. Now I help to create jobs for the poor, to educate them and help them break free of poverty.”
“And free of the Church?” Josella asked.
Greg said, “Most of us remain Catholics, but we do not support the hierarchy. We have worker priests among us, men of the people.”
“Isn’t that what Pope William wants to encourage?” I asked.
“Perhaps so,” Greg said. “His words sound good. But words are not deeds.”
“You’re really going to insist on a trial?” I asked Sam.
He didn’t look happy about it, but he said softly, “Got to. Ecuador National is close to bankruptcy. We need that money.”
Greg nodded. I believed him, not Sam.
Dinner was uncomfortable, to say the least. Pope William had gotten to all of us, even Sam.
But by the time dessert was being served, at least Sam had brightened up a bit. He turned his attention to Josella.
“Is your last name Dutch?” he asked her.
She smiled a little. “Actually, its derivation is Greek, I believe.”
“You don’t look Greek.”
“Looks can be deceiving, Mr. Gunn.”
“Call me Sam.”
Josella seemed to consider the proposition for a few moments, then decided. “All right—Sam.”
“Did you call your bosses in Hartford, Josie?” he asked her.
“Did I! Old man Banner himself got on the screen. Is he pissed with you!”
Sam laughed. “Good. He’s the sonofabitch who shifted the blame to God.”
“That’s a standard clause in every policy, Sam.”
“Yeah, but I asked him personally to reconsider in my case and he laughed in my face.”
“He said if you took this case to trial he’d personally break your neck,” Josella said, very seriously. “He used a lot of adjectives to describe you, your neck, and how much he’d enjoy doing it.”
“Great!” Sam grinned. “Did you make a copy of the conversation?”
Josella gave him a slow, delicious smile. “I did not. I even erased the core memory of it in my computer. You won’t be subpoenaing my boss’s heated words, Mr. Gunn.”
Sam feigned crushing disappointment.
“This Mr. Banner hates Sam so much?” Greg asked.
“I think he truly does,” said Josella.
“Perhaps he is the one who sent the assassins after Sam,” Greg suggested. “At least one set of them.”
“Mr. Banner?” she looked shocked.
A thought struck me. “You said the assassins were amateurs, Josella. Have you had much experience with terrorists?”
“Only what I read in the news media,” she answered smoothly. “It seems to me that real terrorists blow you away as soon as they get the chance. They don’t drag you across the landscape and gloat at you.”
“Then let’s be glad they were amateurs,” Sam said.
“Professionals would have killed us all, right there in your office,” Josella said to me. Flatly. As if she knew exactly how it was done.
“Without worrying about getting caught?” Greg asked.
“Considering the response time of the Dutch security people,” Josella said, “they could have iced the four of us and made it out of the building with no trouble. If they had been professionals.”
“Pleasant thought,” Sam said.
There was plenty of night life in Selene, but as we left the restaurant Sam told us that he was tired and going to his quarters. It sounded completely phony to me.
Then Josella said she was retiring for the night, too. Greg looked a little surprised.
“I understand there’s a gaming casino in the hotel,” he said. “I think I’ll try my luck.”
We said good-night to Greg and headed for the elevator to take us down to the level where our rooms were. On Earth, the higher your floor, the more prestigious and expensive. On the Moon, where the surface is pelted with micrometeors and bathed in hard radiation, prestige and expense increase with your distance downward.
Sam made a great show of saying good-night to Josella. She even let him kiss her hand before she closed her door. I walked with him as far as the door to my own suite.
“Want to come in for a nightcap?” I asked.
Sam shook his head. “I’m really pretty pooped, kid. This business with the Pope’s hit me harder than I thought it would.”
But his eyes kept sliding toward Josella’s door, down the corridor.
“Okay, Sam,” I said, trying to make it sound sweet and unsuspecting. “Good-night.”
He pecked me on the cheek. A brotherly kiss. I hadn’t expected more, but I still wanted something romantic or at least warm.
I closed my door and leaned against it. Suddenly I felt really weary, tired of the whole mess. Tired of chasing Sam, who was interested in every female in the solar system except me. Tired of this legal tangle with the Vatican. And scared of the effect that Pope William had on me. I wondered if one of the changes he wanted to make in the Church was to allow priests to marry. Wow!
I honestly tried to sleep. But I just tossed and fussed until I finally admitted that I was wide awake. I told the phone beside the bed to get Sam for me.
It got his answering routine. “I’m either sleeping or doing something else important. Leave your name and I’ll get back to you, promise.”
Sleeping or doing something else important. I knew what “something else” was. I pulled on a set of coveralls and tramped down the corridor to Sam’s door. I knocked. No answer. Knocked harder. Still no answer. Pounded on it. He wasn’t there.
I knew where he was. Steaming with rage, I stomped down the corridor to Josella’s door and banged on it with both fists. I even kicked it.
“I know you’re in there, Sam!” I shouted, not giving a damn who in the hotel could hear me. “Open up this goddamned door!”
Josella opened it. She was wearing nothing but the sheerest of nightgowns. And she had a pistol in her hand.
“Senator Meyers,” she said, with a sad kind of resignation in her voice. “I had hoped to avoid this.”
Puzzled, I pushed past her and into her room. Sam was sitting on the bed, buck naked, a sheet wrapped around his middle.
“Aw, shit, Jill,” he said, frowning. “Now she’s got you, too.”
It hit me at last. Turning to Josella, I said, ”You’re an assassin!”
She nodded, her face very serious.
“She wants to waste me,” Sam said gloomily, not moving from the bed.
“But why?” I blurted.
Josella kept the pistol rock-steady in her hand. “Because the ayatollahs are unanimous in their decision that this unbeliever must die.”