“He’s an ace, after all,” she said, glancing back. “We didn’t do such a hot job holding on to him either.”
“Big of you to admit it,” said Belew. He had his shoes off and his feet up on the bed. His hands were clasped behind his close-cropped head, and his eyes were closed; everyone had assumed he was asleep.
“Let’s see you do better, big fella,” Saxon said. He sat down on a chair beside the table on which his partner worked, his butt barely seeming to touch the fabric, as if he were about to bounce right up again. He brushed his right nostril rapidly with his thumb, dropped his hand to his lap to tap his thigh with restless fingers.
“Speaking of aces,” Belew said, “just what are you doing along on this expedition, Ms. Carlysle? I didn’t think the Governor had any use for aces.”
“Fucking SCARE saddled us” Saxon began.
“Hey, we’re not prejudiced or anything,” Hamilton said hurriedly. “The Director just believes the job can best be done by real people. I mean, normal people. I mean — oh, Jeez, Ms. Carlysle, I’m sorry.”
“What dickwit means is that the Director thinks us nats can do the job just fine,” Saxon said sourly.
Belew swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “I reckon I can rustle up some forms from the American embassy if you want to file a discrimination complaint against our little pal here,” he said to the woman. “They’re making insensitivity a crime, back in the world.”
Helen turned with a tight, ironic smile. “Nobody seems to care much about insensitivity toward aces, Mr. Belew.”
“I guess aces aren’t a fashionable minority,” he agreed, nodding affably to Hamilton, who was staring gape-mouthed at him and Helen alternately, trying to figure out if they were kidding.
“In answer to your question, Mr. Belew, SCARE believed ace talents would come in handy in a hunt for America’s most prominent rogue ace. Director Martinez agreed. I’m a civilian contractor, much as you are yourself; my father is … was a personal acquaintance of Mr. Bennett.”
“That’s no surprise. Old Vernon made it a point to be acquainted with everybody who turned up frequently on the CBS Evening News, with the possible exception of the Nur.”
Her eyes flared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was unaware simple declarations of fact were required to mean anything, honey.” He stood up and walked over to the table where Hamilton was just fitting the slide back onto his piece.
“You speak of insensitivity,” she said in a shaky voice. “I don’t think repeatedly throwing my father in toy face is very sensitive.”
Hands in his pockets, he looked at her. “Don’t you think it’s time you came to terms with it?” he asked quietly.
Color burned like slap marks on her cheeks. “What makes you think it’s any of your business —”
“I don’t know why we had to come to this dump,” Saxon said loudly, flipping a hand at the Art Deco decor. The wallpaper was mauve above the molding. “It’s so fucking tacky, it hurts. Aren’t there any Hyatts in this town?”
“This place has character, son,” Belew said. “There’s more to life than Big Macs and The Cosby Show.”
He unfolded a map of the Mediterranean. “Right now we maybe ought to figure out where our Dr. Meadows is going to be heading from here.”
“He’s going to Beirut,” Hamilton blurted. He looked down at his hands, immediately aware he’d made a tactical mistake.
“Yeah,” Saxon crowed. “That’s where he bought a ticket to on your credit card, Gary. He’s headed there on your passport. You’re his best friend, Gary.”
“I think we can forget about Beirut at this point,” Belew said, picking up an ornate cigar cutter from the dresser. “At least as a near-term destination. He knows ifs blown.”
“He didn’t realize we’d trace his route through Agent Hamilton’s credit card,” Carlysle pointed out, all business once again. “Why should he suddenly be so sophisticated as to realize we’re onto his destination?”
“He’s a naïve son of a gun, I’ll give you that. But he’s behind the times, and as a consequence he’s still capable of doing something that’s currently out of fashion: learning.”
“You’re sure a hell of an expert on this old fucking hippie,” Saxon said.
“Son, I make it a point of knowing my enemy. You talk about it; it’s not just words to me. It’s kept me alive in places they’d have had your hide drying on a rock.”
Outside, the sun had dissolved into bloody-looking drool. Saxon started to his feet, eyes crazy-mad. Hamilton got a big hand on his arm and held him in his chair by main force.
“We’re running the problem through our computers in Washington,” Hamilton said. “We have a complete personality profile on Dr. Meadows. They’ll war-game the possibilities and give us some insight into where he’ll head from here.”
“Fine,” Belew said. “We’ll let your pocket-protector brigade play their computer games. In the meantime, let’s try to get a handle on where our quarry is in the real world.” He snipped the end off his right forefinger.
Saxon jerked back as blood squirted from Belew’s fingertip. The younger man’s face instantly drained of blood. “Jesus Christ!”
Belew pressed the raw tip of his finger against the base of a gooseneck lamp. It glowed to life. The head suddenly craned and swiveled to bring its glow to bear on the map.
Time to cast a little light, rather than curse the darkness,” Belew said with satisfaction.
Helen stepped forward with her arms crossed tightly beneath her breasts. Reflections from the lamp glittered in her eyes. “You’re an ace, too, aren’t you?”
“You never told us that,” Saxon said sulkily.
“Son, Langley isn’t in the habit of telling everything it knows, unlike certain of our finer government agencies. Now, pay some attention here. I’d at least like to have some tentative answers to hand before I have to leave.”
“Leave?” Saxon said. “Where the hell are you going?”
“The opera, of course. The Marriage of Figaro. They’ve got an ultramodernistic set and staging for it. I hear it’s a hell of a mess, but I like to see things with my own eyes.”
The old night train to Brindisi. Mark’s asleep.
Elite unit or not, the Rome antiterrorist unit had a tendency to mill. When somebody dressed in the same coveralls they and the legitimate ground crew were wearing dropped into view beneath the tail of the Airbus, all eyes were locked on the front of the plane, where the first team was going up a ramp that had been wheeled across the heat-shimmering pavement. When the figure strolled away, no one paid any mind.
Escape was what Cosmic Traveler did best, after all.
Mark will have to engage in some creative chemistry before he can play that ace again.
The train is winding its way across Italy’s Apennine spine. Mark is heading east — where, he isn’t sure. He’s mainly on the train because you don’t need to surrender your passport to spend the night on the train the way you do to spend your night in a hotel.
The night is clear, but that’s okay. The roll-down plastic shade is drawn. He paid cash for the tickets. He’s still using the passport; he figures it isn’t quite as hot as the credit card. Most grunt-level Eurocrats, he’s noticed, don’t look beyond the distinctive American jacket on the document, if they look at it at all. If you look like a North African or a Turkish guest-worker, they’re liable to want to count the hairs in your mustache to be sure the number’s the same as in your passport photo. Americans get treated differently. He’s learning, Mark is.