attention yesterday. After today, he'll want another look at you.' She looks pensive. 'Just in case, I've got some ideas. We can go over them later.'
I steel myself. 'I get the feeling you're trying very hard not to tell me something that's not related to the mission,' I begin. 'And you know I know but I don't know what I'm not supposed to know, and so — ' I wind down, trying to keep track of all the double-indirect pointers and Boolean operators before I succumb to a stack crash.
'Not your problem, monkey-boy,' she says with a false smile and a toss of her beautiful blonde hair, now coiling up into tight ringlets as the seawater dries in the breeze over the windscreen. 'Don't worry yourself about me.'
'What — ' My skin crawls.
She looks at me, her eyes abruptly distant and hard. 'You just have to get aboard the yacht, figure out what's going on, and expedite a solution,' she tells me. 'I've got to sit it out back here.'
'But.' I shut my mouth before I can stick any of my feet in it by accident. Then I point my head forwards, watching her out of the corner of my eye. Thin-lipped and grim-faced, knuckles gripping the steering wheel. The mermaid who clutched me to her watery bosom is frightened. Ramona, who plays with her food and never slept with a man who didn't die within twenty-four hours, is concerned. Driving me back to the hotel and the safe house and a setup where she'll have to hand me over to people she seems to despise — Ramona, the spy who loves me? No, that dog won't hunt. It must be something else, but whatever it is, she isn't talking.
So we drive the rest of the way to the hotel in lonely silence, grappling with our respective demons.
10: DEAD LUCKY
WHEN I BET BACK TO MY HOTEL ROOM I FIND BORIS pacing the carpet like a trapped tiger. 'What time you are naming this?' he asks, tapping his heavy stainless steel wristwatch. 'Am being on edge of calling in Code Red on you!'
Pinky has plugged a PlayStation into the TV set and is making zooming sounds, bouncing up and down on the bed; and from the sounds leaking under the bathroom door Brains is testing a radio-controlled hovercraft in the shower.
'I've been running some errands,' I say tiredly. 'And then I went swimming.'
'Swimming?' Boris shakes his head. 'Am not enquiring.
Are giving Angleton the Sitrep yet'
'Oops. My bad.' I pull out the desk chair and slump into it. My forearms and thighs are aching in unaccustomed places: I'm going to feel like shit tomorrow. 'How did you get in here'
Pinky saves his game and looks round. 'Picked the lock,'
he says, waving what looks suspiciously like a hotel card key at me.
'You picked.' I stare at it. 'The lock.'
'Yup.' He flips it at me and I catch it. 'It's a smartcard, got an induction loop instead of the usual dumb mag stripe on the back. Guaranteed to run through the complete list of makers' override keys in under twenty seconds.'
'Right.' I put it down carefully.
'Hey, I'll want it back in a minute — where'd you think I saved my game'
Boris snorts, then stares at me. 'Report, Bob, now.'
'Okay.' I cross my arms. 'When I left this morning, I thought I'd check out a hunch. I found out the hard way that Billington's got a total surveillance lockdown on the French Cul de Sac north of Paradise Peak. Dead birds on Anse Marcel, seagulls everywhere. His people are running zombies.
Human ones, too.' Boris looks like he's about to interrupt, but I keep on talking: 'I had a run-in with one of them. Ramona helped me get out of it, and we lost them by going swimming close to the island defense chain. Which has been tampered with, incidentally, compromising the three-mile offshore thaumaturgic-exclusion zone — did you know that? Ramona says her sources say Billington's going to be back at the casino tonight, so we made a date. How does that fit with your plans'
When I finish Boris nods. 'Is making progress. Please to be continuing it.' He turns to Pinky: 'Get Brains.' To me: 'Am authorizing contact tonight. These two are being explain gizmos for self-defense. Call me later.' And he leaves, just as there's a loud toilet-flushing sound and Brains comes out of the bathroom.
'Okay,' I say, pointing at the half-inflated, bright yellow life belt hanging round his waist. 'What's that about? And do I want to know'
'Just testing.' Brains pushes it down around his feet then steps out of it. 'Can I have your dress shoes, please'
'My shoes?' I bend down and rummage for them in my luggage. They're horrible things, shiny patent leather with soles that feel like lumps of wood. 'What do you want them for'
Pinky is doing something to the PlayStation. 'This.' He flourishes another smartcard, which Brains takes and slides into a hitherto invisible seam in the leather tongue of my right shoe.
'And this,' Brains says, holding up a shoelace. 'That's a — '
'Miniature 100BaseT cable. Pay attention, Bob, you don't want to lose your network connectivity, do you? It goes in like this and to activate it you twist and pull like that; it uncoils to three meters and the plastic caps expand to fit any standard network socket. It doubles as a field-expedient grounding strap, too. That's right. No, you don't want to tie your shoelaces too tight.'
I try to stifle a groan. 'Guys, is this really necessary? Does it help me do the job'
Pinky cocks his head to one side. 'Predictive Branch says there's a ten percent chance of you failing on the job and dying horribly if you don't take it.' He giggles. 'Feeling lucky, punk?'
'Bah. What do I really need to know'
'Here.' Brains tosses a stainless steel Zippo lighter to me: 'It's an antique, don't lose it. Predictive Branch said it would come in handy.'
'I don't smoke. What else'
'The usual stuff: There's a USB memory drive preloaded with a forensic intrusion kit hidden in each end of your dickey-bow, a WiFi-finder on your key ring, a roll-up keyboard in your cummerbund, the pen's got Bluetooth and doubles as a mouse, and there's a miniaturized Tillinghast resonator in your left heel. You turn it on by twisting the heel through one-eighty degrees; turn it off the same way.
Your other heel is just a heel: We were going to hide a Basilisk gun in it but some ass-hat in Export Controls vetoed our requisition because it was going overseas. Oh, and there's this.' Brains reaches over to a briefcase on the bed and pulls out a businesslike nylon shoulder holster and a black automatic pistol. 'Walther P99, 9mm caliber, fifteen-round magazine, silvercap hollow-points engraved with a demicyclic banishment circuit in ninety-nanometer Enochian.'
'Banishment rounds?' I ask hesitantly, then: 'Hang on.'
I hold up one hand: 'I'm not cleared for carrying guns in the field!'
'We figured the exorcism payload means it's covered by your occult weapons certification. If anyone asks, it's just a gadget for installing exorcism glyphs at high speed.' Brains sits down on the bed, ejects the magazine, works the action to make sure there's no round in the chamber, then starts stripping it down. 'Word from Angleton is the bad guys are likely to get heavy and he wants you carrying.'
'Oh my.' I blank for a moment. It's only about an hour since I sliced some poor bastard's air hose in half, and having to deal with this so soon afterwards is doing my head in.
'Did he really say that'
'Yes. We don't want to end up losing you by accident because someone starts shooting and you're unarmed, do we'
'I guess not.' He passes the shoulder holster to me and I try to figure out how it goes on. 'Well, if you're all done now, maybe you could leave so I can phone home'
After Pinky and Brains leave, I call down to room service for a light lunch, put the door chain on, then go run
