second aspect of the proximity sense was qualitative, and this was perceptible only in the cases of a human object. Not only could Nicholai read the distance and direction of an emitting source, but he could feel, through the sympathetic vibrations of his own emotions, the quality of emissions: friendly, antagonistic, threatening, loving, puzzled, angry, lustful. As the entire system was generated by the central cortex, the more primitive emotions were transmitted with greatest distinction: fear, hate, lust.
Having discovered these sketchy facts about his gifts, Nicholai turned his mind away from them and applied himself again to his studies and to the task of keeping his languages fresh. He recognized that, so long as he was in prison, the gifts could serve little purpose beyond that of a kind of parlor game. He had no way to foresee that, in later years, his highly developed proximity sense Would not only assist him in earning worldwide reputation as a foremost cave explorer, but would serve him as both weapon and armor in his vocation as professional exterminator of international terrorists.
PART TWO
Sabaki
Washington
Mr. Diamond glanced up from the rear-projected roll down and spoke to the First Assistant. 'Okay, break off here and jump ahead on the time line. Give us a light scan of his counterterrorist activities from the time he left prison to the present.'
'Yes, sir. It will take just a minute to reset.'
With the help of Fat Boy and the sensitive manipulations of the First Assistant, Diamond had introduced his guests to the broad facts of Nicholai Hel's life up to the middle of his term of imprisonment, occasionally providing a bit of amplification or background detail from his own memory. It had taken only twenty-two minutes to share this information with them because Fat Boy was limited to recorded incidents and facts; motives, passions, and ideals being alien to its vernacular.
Throughout the twenty-two minutes, Darryl Starr had slouched in his white plastic chair, yearning for a cigar, but not daring to light up. He assumed glumly that the details of this gook-lover's life were being inflicted on him as a kind of punishment for screwing up the Rome hit by letting the girl get away. In an effort to save face, he had assumed an attitude of bored resignation, sucking at his teeth and occasionally relieving himself of a fluttering sigh. But something disturbed him more than being punished like a recalcitrant schoolboy. He sensed that Diamond's interest in Nicholai Hel went beyond professionalism. There was something personal in it, and Starr's years of experience in the trenches of CIA operations made him wary of contaminating the job at hand with personal feelings.
As became the nephew of an important man and a CIA trainee-in-terror, the PLO goatherd at first adopted an expression of strictest attention to the information rear-projected on the glass conference table, but soon his concentration strayed to the taut pink skin of Miss Swivven's calves, at which he grinned occasionally in his version of seductive gallantry.
The Deputy had responded to each bit of information with a curt nod of his head meant to create the impression that the CIA was current with all this information, and that he was merely ticking it off mentally. In fact, CIA did not have access to Fat Boy, although the Mother Company's biographic computer system had long ago consumed and digested everything in the tape banks of CIA and NSA.
For his part, Mr. Able had maintained a facade of thin boredom and marginal politeness, although he had been intrigued by certain episodes in Hel's biography, particularly those that revealed mysticism and the rare gift of proximity sense, for this refined man's tastes ran to the occult and exotic, which appetites were manifest in his sexual ambiguities.
A muted bell rang in the adjoining machine room, and Miss Swivven rose to collect the telephotos of Nicholai Hel that Mr. Diamond had requested. There was silence in the conference room for a minute, save for the hum and click of the First Assistant's console, where he was probing Fat Boy's international memory banks and recording certain fragments in his own short-term storage unit. Mr. Diamond lighted a cigarette (he permitted himself four a day) and turned his chair to look out on the spotlighted Washington Monument beyond the window, as he tapped his lips meditatively with his knuckle.
Mr. Able sighed aloud, straightened the crease of one trouser leg elegantly, and glanced at his watch. 'I do hope this isn't going to take much longer. I have plans for this evening.' Visions of that senator's Ganymede son had been in and out of his mind all evening.
'Ah,' Diamond said, 'here we are.' He held out his hand for the photographs Miss Swivven was bringing from the machine room and leafed through them quickly. 'They're in chronological order. This first is a blowup of his identification picture taken when he started working for Sphinx/FE Cryptography.'
He passed it on to Mr. Able, who examined the photograph, grainy with excessive enlargement. 'Interesting face. Haughty. Fine. Stern.'
He pushed the picture across to the Deputy, who glanced at it briefly as though he were already familiar with it, then gave it to Darryl Starr.
'Shee-it,' Starr exclaimed. 'He looks like a kid! Fifteen-sixteen years old!'
'His appearance is misleading,' Diamond said. 'At the time this picture was taken he could have been as old as twenty-three. The youthfulness is a family trait. At this moment, Hel is somewhere between fifty and fifty-three, but I have been told that he looks like a man in his midthirties.'
The Palestinian goatherd reached for the photograph, but it was passed back to Mr. Able, who looked at it again and said, 'What's wrong with the eyes? They look odd. Artificial.'
Even in black and white, the eyes had an unnatural transparency, as though they were underexposed.
'Yes,' Diamond said, 'his eyes are strange. They're a peculiar bright green, like the color of antique bottles. It's his most salient recognition feature.'
Mr. Able looked obliquely at Diamond. 'Have you met this man personally?'
'I... I have been interested in him for years,' Diamond said evasively, as he passed along the second photograph.
Mr. Able winced as he looked at the picture. It would have been impossible to recognize this as the same man. The nose had been broken and was pushed to the left. There was a high ridge of scar tissue along the right cheek, and another diagonally across the forehead, bisecting the eyebrow. The lower lip had been thickened and split, and there was a puffy knob below the left cheekbone. The eyes were closed, and the face at rest.
Mr. Able pushed it over to the Deputy gingerly, as though he did not want to touch it.
The Palestinian held out his hand, but the picture was passed on to Starr. 'Shit-o-dear! Looks like he went to Fistcity against a freight train!'
'What you see there,' Diamond explained, 'is the effect of a vigorous interrogation by Army Intelligence. The picture was taken some three years after the beating, while the subject was anesthetized in preparation for plastic surgery. And here he is a week after the operation.' Diamond slid the next picture along the conference table.
The face was still a little puffy in result of recent surgery, but all signs of the disfigurement were erased, and a general tightening-up had even removed the faint lines and marks of age.
'And how old was he at this time?' Mr. Able asked.
'Between twenty-four and twenty-eight.'
'Amazing. He looks younger than in the first photograph.'
The Palestinian tried to turn his head upside down to see the picture as it passed by him.
'These are blowups of passport photos. The Costa Rican one dates from shortly after his plastic surgery, and the French one the year after that. We also believe he has an Albanian passport, but we have no copy of it.'
Mr. Able quickly shuffled through the passport photos which, true to their kind, were overlit and of poor quality. One feature caught his attention, and he turned back to the French picture. 'Are you sure this is the same man?'
Diamond took the picture back and glanced at it. 'Yes, this is Hel.'
'But the eyes—'
'I know what you mean. Because the peculiar color of his eyes would blow any disguise, he has several pairs of noncorrective contact lenses that are clear in the center but colored in the iris.'
'So he can have whatever color eyes he wants to have. Interesting.'
