his boots, then stooped to touch the bottoms of his jeans and wondered why he thought they might be wet. 'I can't remember. A damp place? Voices? Numbers?'
But Liz only shrugged. 'You tell me,' she said, and turned away so that he wouldn't see the look she flashed at the others up front. And over her shoulder she told him, 'We're on our way down. Brisbane next stop.'
Ben Trask, Lardis, Goodly and the others were looking at Jake where he worked the stiffness from his joints and followed Liz to her gunner's chair. As she strapped herself in, he indicated the gun ports and asked: 'Is it okay to open one of these up? And which side is Brisbane?'
One of the technicians answered him: 'Sure — you can open the doors. But you better hook yourself up first. Brisbane's to port.' There were safety straps dangling from the ceiling. Jake pulled one down, hooked it to his belt, jerked on the port-side door's handle, and slid the door open. Air blasted in, the downdraught from the big fan, and immediately the whup, whup, whup of the rotors was a deafening throb.
Liz hooked up, joined him at the door. 'Have you been here before?' she inquired, but her words were whipped away. It made no difference; he 'heard' her anyway. And answered:
No, I haven't. And you're getting good at that.
She only looked at him and said, But I'm not a natural — not at sending, not yet anyway — so maybe you're the one who's getting good at it.
No. He shook his head to give his thoughts emphasis. It's all you, Liz. It's your talent, getting stronger all the time. And maybe some kind of rapport we seem to be developing. Which was the closest he had yet come to admitting any kind of serious involvement.
Their eyes met, locked just for a moment, and each of them knew that the same thought was in the other's mind: that out of the blue Jake was accepting telepathy that much easier — as if he'd been getting in some practice. And they both knew where he had been getting it. It was as he'd explained to Lardis: sleep, the subconscious mind, was a strange thing. And dreams could be stranger yet. Sometimes they could even be more than dreams.
Then they looked down on a small airfield six hundred feet directly below them, and, two or three miles to the east, central Brisbane.
Brisbane was big and sprawling, but it didn't lack order. On the contrary, for if anything it was too symmetrical, ultra-modern. Its streets were too broad, with too many parks, pools, green areas. It should have looked as cool and fresh as an oasis, which in all this heat, when even the downdraught of the rotors felt as hot as hell, would have seemed very welcoming. But the river, instead of being a fat, winding silver eel, was more a thin, snakelike whiplash. Most of the pools were empty down to their liners, and all of the green places had yellow tints.
Jake frowned and might have commented, but the horizon was rapidly narrowing down. As they watched, Brisbane came up level, finally disappearing behind the airport buildings. And just a moment or two later they bumped down.
When the rotors went into braking mode, their whine became unbearable. Grimacing, Jake slammed the door to shut it out…
The small airport — more an airstrip, really — belonged to a private flying club for well-to-do members of Brisbane society. The chopper's pilot had been directed to it by air traffic control, who in turn had taken their orders from higher authority. It might seem odd if a paramilitary jetcopter was seen to land at a main international airport… especially carrying the E-Branch contingent, whose members were by now beginning to look something less than reputable.
Trask had radioed ahead before decamping on the other side of the continent; discreet arrangements had been made while the chopper was still in the air. Met by a pair of clean-cut, immaculately-uniformed 'chauffeurs,' the drivers of limos with one-way-glass windows, Trask and his people were soon on their way into the city.
As they left the airport, heading for a main arterial road, they passed a small parking lot. Sitting on the hood of a battered blue-grey Range Rover-styled vehicle, a tall, angular male figure in jeans, open-necked shirt and broad-brimmed hat gazed intently into the sky over the airport through a pair of binoculars. With his hat shading his face, his features were blankly anonymous under the brilliance of the mid-afternoon sunlight.
Except to Liz, there seemed nothing special about him. Liz had noticed him. She'd seen how, at the last minute, before the car threw up a screen of dust in their wake, the man had turned his binoculars on the two vehicles. Now, with a frown, she tapped Trask on the shoulder where he sat in front of her.
'That man back there/ she said, hurriedly. They were negotiating a bend and the parking lot was already disappearing in the driver's rearview. Trask turned his head, looked back where Liz was indicating; he saw nothing but a dust-plume and a distant shimmer of heat-haze.
'A man?' he said. 'What about him?'
The intercom was on, and the chauffeur — a special agent — asked, 'Something suspicious, miss? A man, did you say? Back there? What was he doing?'
'Sitting on a car,' Liz answered. 'He was watching the sky through binoculars.'
'A plane-spotter?' Through the plate-glass screen that divided them, they saw the driver shrug. 'A wannabe fly-boy member of the club. Hull Some hope. Flying is for rich folks.'
But Liz leaned forward and quietly, right in Trask's ear, said, 'The last thing I saw, he was looking at us.'
They were turning onto the main road and picking up speed. 'Let it go,' Trask told her. 'It may have been nothing, and in any case it's too late now. If we've been made we've been made. But if we've been made, then obviously someone was sent to make us — sent by someone. Now all we have to do is find out who and where.'
Liz nodded, said: 'And… he was wondering about us.'
'That's all you got?'
'Yes.'
Trask shrugged, but not negligently. 'Maybe he was simply curious. But by the same token maybe this wasn't as discreet as it might have been. Two chauffeur-driven limos, doing reception at a small, private airport? I mean, turn the situation around and I might be curious myself. Do you think you'd recognize him again?'
'Probably,' she answered. 'There was something unpleasant, spidery about him.'
'Well, if you do see him let me know,' said Trask. 'Once is coincidence. Twice… this spider might need stepping on.' And the cars sped for the near-distant city…
Back at the parking lot, the long thin man got into his car and called a number on his portaphone. A disinterested female voice said, 'Xanadu, reception?'
'I want to speak to Milan,' the thin man told her.
There was a pause and she said, 'Your identification?' Now she was a little more animated.
'Mind your business/ the thin man replied, with the emphasis on 'mind', but with nothing of rebuke or unpleasantness in his voice. It was simply a code.
'Just a moment, sir,' said the girl. And the phone played some indifferent Musak.
While he waited, the thin man coughed to clear his throat, mopped sweat from his brow, got his thoughts in order. His employer — Mr Milan, to whom he was about to make report — had a liking for ordered minds; he much preferred to hear and understand things clearly and precisely the first time around. And in a little while:
'Milan speaking/ a deep, accented, seemingly cultured yet vaguely threatening male voice replaced the Musak. 'What do you want?'
And the thin man told his employer what he had seen of the jetcopter, gave him brief descriptions of the people he'd seen getting into limos outside the flying club's main building, and closed by saying: 'They drove off towards Brisbane.'
There was a brief pause before the other queried: 'And you didn't follow them?'
'It was the chauffeurs/ the thin man answered. 'They were too good to be true. No one looks as neat, tidy, and as cool as they looked — not in this weather — without they're trying real hard. They looked like government men. And if they were, they'd be on me like flies on shit as soon as they spotted me in their rearviews/
'I see/ said the foreign, Mediterranean-sounding voice of Mr Milan. And in a moment: 'Would you know these people again?'
'Sure.'
'Good. I think this may be what I've been waiting for. You can call your other observers off, Mr Santeson. Let
