The Deep Zone

said, “Where did they come from?”

Seated on a banquette were two of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. They must have come out while he and Adelheid were facing forward, talking. Both looked to be in their mid-twenties. One had shining, shoulder-length red hair. The other was blond, her hair in a shorter blunt cut. Their faces were different in details but alike in the beauty those details combined to create. Adelheid turned around then.

“Magic,” he said.

“Magic indeed,” Rathor agreed. Both women wore silk blouses, one pale blue and the other lime green, and white linen walking shorts. They were barefoot, and Rathor noted that their perfect tans extended all the way to the tips of their toes. He was struck by how perfectly the tailored blouses revealed the contours of their breasts, neither hanging loose nor stretched lewdly tight. Rathor thought himself a connoisseur of women, and these two, he knew, were rare jewels. His heart quickened just looking at them. Taking his elbow, Adelheid guided him to the table, where the women sat drinking champagne and nibbling sashimi.

“Erika and Aimee, may I present our guest for the evening.”

“Hello,” Erika, the woman with red hair, said.

“Enchantee.” Aimee’s accent was heavily French.

The touch of their cool hands, one after the other, set off a buzzing in Rathor’s chest.

“Erika and Aimee will be joining us for dinner,” Adelheid said.

Nathan Rathor was not often at a loss for words, but just now he could not find the right ones. Finally he said, “You are a man of many surprises.”

“Indeed? It is good to be surprised, would you not agree? Otherwise life becomes”—he shrugged, appearing to search for just the right word—“unlivable.” He raised his glass in a toast. The women raised theirs, and so did Rathor. They settled deeper into the banquette’s cushions, sipping champagne, Adelheid doing most of the talking, the yacht rolling along with agreeable small swells that eased its landward passage.

Astern, the sun became a shimmering red globe sinking into the edge of the darkening ocean. The light began to go blue, and attendants placed candles in windproof crystal holders on the table. They were served oysters on beds of crushed ice with crescents of lemon. Rathor noted that Adelheid and the women ate noisily and with great relish.

Adelheid seemed to have no desire to talk more about their venture. Instead, he led them into discussions about medieval art, the planets, evolution. To Rathor’s surprise, Erika and Aimee held their own, and it must have shown on his face because Adelheid said, “Erika and Aimee are both graduates of excellent colleges.” He looked at Erika.

“Kiev University,” she said.

“Sorbonne,” Aimee said.

“Without intelligence, we do as the animals do,” Adelheid remarked. “For the greatest reward, we must bring intelligence to all in our lives. Including the taking of pleasure.”

“Of course,” Rathor said. “Otherwise we’re just like… like a bunch of rutting hogs.”

Adelheid blinked, coughed. “Perhaps not how I would have phrased it, but the thrust is correct.” Adelheid glanced over his shoulder at the sunset, just then completing. “I believe we will have dinner now, but let us move inside.”

They all got up and went into the yacht’s saloon, a glittering cave of leather and marble. The two women excused themselves. “To dress for dinner,” Erika said.

“Just so.” Adelheid nodded.

Rathor needed to use the bathroom—the head, as Adelheid called it out here—and went there. It took him a while to get things working with the deck moving underfoot, but finally he did. When he returned to the yacht’s dining salon, Adelheid and the two women were already seated at a rosewood table long enough for twenty. Adelheid had donned a black blazer and put on a pale rose ascot for the occasion. Erika and Aimee, Rathor saw, had also changed for dinner, though not as he might have expected. Both had removed their blouses and now sat across the table from him bare from the waist up, shoulders back, sipping champagne with insouciance. Their tans, he noticed, were complete. Both smiled when he caught their eyes, but they might have been fully clothed, for all their poise. He swallowed. What promises here?

“Is there anything more exciting,” Adelheid said, “than anticipation? I think not. And what is anticipation but the sweet pain of self-denial? To be in the presence of great reward and endure an ordeal of delay. It is”—he gazed at the women—“an exquisite thing.”

Teasing, was how Rathor put it to himself. But he had to agree with Adelheid that by the end of a leisurely dinner with Erika and Aimee displayed this way, his pent need would be like the water held behind a great dam.

Adelheid raised his glass of champagne and said something—a grace or benediction, perhaps. Rathor had heard him say it before, had thought it sounded somewhat—but not exactly—like German. He had never asked what it meant, and Adelheid had never offered to explain.

Adelheid picked up a fork, but before starting to eat he said, “In case you were wondering, they are both for you. I have my own.”

FORTY-THREE

“WELL, HELLO THERE.”

One of the men spoke, the huge one. They had not been there seconds earlier. For a moment she thought they were narcotraficantes. But the man did not sound Mexican. His accent was distinctly American South, red-clay, redneck cracker. The other man, standing to his left, was black, not quite as large. They wore camouflage uniforms, helmets, giant knives, sidearms, even grenades. They certainly looked like warriors, but they were too neat and their uniforms were too complete for them to be narcos. They wore no insignia of unit or rank. And their helmets were not U.S. mil-spec gear.

“You’re Americans?” Hallie thought perhaps they were part of some special operations unit sent to retrieve and protect the team. She had seen pictures of such fighters, and they often looked less than spit-and-polish. The two men exchanged glances and the big man snickered. She sank lower in the water, right up to her chin.

“We sure are, honey,” the big one said. “Patriotic Americans, both of us. Retired veterans, too. Hey, let me ask you a question: any of your friends coming out behind you?”

“Did BARDA send you?”

The huge man looked puzzled. He glanced at his partner, who shrugged.

“Well, no, as a matter of fact.” The giant was grinning, and she could not help noticing that he had amazing teeth, as even and white as a news anchor’s. “We work for the competition, you might say.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. Why don’t you come on out of there and we’ll get you a blanket and some hot chow. I bet you’re hungry after all that time down in that cave. We got some great stuff. Delta rations. None of that MRE junk.”

“How did you know how long I’ve been in the cave?” Hallie was feeling more afraid with each passing second. The two men radiated threat like heat. Watching them, she started to swim away on her back, sculling with both arms.

“Whoa now, that’s not very friendly. Come here so we can talk.” The giant was still grinning, but his mouth was tight around the white teeth.

She flipped onto her stomach and started swimming as fast as she could toward the other shore. Then she heard a short, sharp noise that sounded like puppuppuppuppuppup as the man squeezed off a six-round burst from the silenced rifle and the cenote’s surface erupted three feet in front of her face. She stopped, turned, treaded water, unsure of what to do. There was no way she could dive deep enough quickly enough to escape if they fired again. She was a good swimmer, but not faster than rifle bullets.

The big man held his rifle at the hip. Looking down, she saw the red laser aiming dot centered on her exposed breastbone. Twenty feet away. He can’t miss.

“Now why don’t you just swim your beautiful self on over here and let’s talk.” No more nice, the voice raw