“Nice plan,” I drawled, “in Miami. However I feel there might be a shortage of strippers in Tehran. And I believe you informed us the preferred drink here is tea.”
Cole, having run out of fingernails, began gnawing on the button of his shirt. He spat it out immediately. “Plastic sucks,” he said. “Dammit, I need gum!”
“I’m out,” I replied. “Here, chew on this.” I shoved up the sleeve of my light blue tunic, unbuckled the sheath I kept strapped around my right wrist, laid the syringe of holy water on the bedside table, and handed him the rest. “I imagine it tastes like old shoe, but the leather’s probably good for your teeth. Plus, maybe it’ll help zap your brain back to reality.” I shook my head. “Booze and strippers. Geesh!”
Bergman tapped me on the knee. “I’ve been thinking about the ways the mole might be contacting the Wizard.”
“Go on.”
“He’s carrying a transmitter on him, no doubt about that. But it may even be embedded under the skin, so I wouldn’t recommend searching for it as your first means of digging him out. He’s got to have a way to either power it up or key it to send messages. So we need to watch for odd gestures that don’t seem to fit with what he’s saying or doing at the time.”
“That seems easy enough,” said Cole. He began touching himself in random places. “These are my dad’s old baseball signals,” he told us as he pressed his thumb to the side of his nose, tugged his left earlobe, and slid the side of his hand across his chest. “I’m telling you to bunt, run like hell, and then if they throw you out at first, go to the concession stand and get me a Dr Pepper.”
“I hardly think it’ll be that obvious,” said Bergman.
“You never know,” Cole insisted. “When a guy’s scratching his nuts, they don’t always itch.”
“Okay.” I held up my hands. “No more testicular discussions. No more baseball. Though I can see how you got from one to the other pretty quickly, Cole, I am now certain the heat that built up inside that semi trailer during our ride here has boiled your brain. Bergman, anything else we should look out for?”
He began fiddling with his bootlace. “It seems stupid when I think about saying it now.”
I wasn’t sure how a guy with a genius the size of a small country could still worry about looking foolish in front of his buds, but I was beginning to think his troubles would drastically reduce if he could just find himself a good woman. Somebody to give him a daily dose of feel-good whether he needed it or not. I sure didn’t have the patience for it. “Dude, spit it out. If we laugh, you can punch us both.”
“But not in the arm,” said Cole. “I’m still sore from all those shots they gave us before we flew over here. You can punch me in the stomach, but give me time to get ready. Houdini died because some guy didn’t warn him first, you know.”
I regarded Cole with the thinning patience of a kindergarten teacher who has neglected to take her Zoloft. “What the hell is up with you?”
“I am experiencing a deep-seated need to blow a bubble,” he informed me.
I took his right hand, which held my syringe sheath, and shoved the leather in his mouth. It was like giving E.J. her pacifier. Instant relaxation of the facial muscles. Full-body quiver, as if a wave of stress had just exited his epidermis. And yet, at the back of his eyes lurked a tight black ball of tension that promised to explode the second he stopped chewing. Nope, Cole wasn’t just stressed about the lack of bubble gum. Something much bigger had him twisted like a pretzel. I could probe, but I’d never get anywhere with another guy in the room. It was part of their Code. I didn’t understand it. But I respected it. Like demanding silence while using the urinal. Some things men just wouldn’t say in front of other men.
I turned to Bergman. “Go on.”
“You guys are Sensitive’s, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, it seems to me the mole might be another. He could be communicating with the Wizard through telepathic or other non-traditional means. In which case one of you should be able to sense him.”
“But we haven’t,” I said.
Bergman nodded. “All that could mean is that he’s somehow shielded himself. In which case, you might be able to sense the shield.”
Cole and I looked at each other doubtfully. In the short time we’d known each other we’d learned our Sensitivities differed quite a bit. We could both detect vampires. But only I could tell when reavers were around. Cole was better at picking out witches and weres. And the powers our Sensitivities gave us differed greatly as well. The fact that so far neither of us had noticed anything amiss among David’s crew didn’t do much for Bergman’s second theory. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give it a spin,” I told Cole.
“So what do we do?” he asked. “Walk right up to them and give them a sniff?”
Sure, I thought, turning my card deck in my hands, three highly trained Spec Ops troops aren’t going to suspect a thing when we start nosing around their business. Especially after they start comparing notes. I had just opened the flap so I could get the cards out when an idea hit me. The ideal way to study our suspects without them ever wondering why we were giving them the once-over. “Cole,” I said, “why don’t you go see if everybody’s up for some poker?”
Chapter Eleven
Iranians dine on the floor, so, since we didn’t have a table handy for poker, we sat on the living room rug in front of the fireplace. It reminded me strangely of Girl Scout camp, when we’d play Snap and Crazy Eights inside our tents after the marshmallow toasting and song singing had run its course. We formed a circle, most of us cross- legged. Only Dave and Cassandra were missing. They’d chosen to spend the afternoon in the kitchen, drinking tea and gabbing like a couple of beauticians. In any other situation I’d have needled Dave so hard he’d have resembled a coke addict. But in front of his crazy loyal crew I bit my tongue and filed it all away for future use. He’d be home for Christmas one of these days and then,
whap!
Watch that boy squirm!
