Noel laughed. “Remember, we’re playing the tune here. Enjoy it.”
The car slowed and rolled to a stop at a security checkpoint. Noel, in his role as Prince Siraj’s attache, offered over their identification. The French soldier peered at the papers, then peered into the car, nodded in satisfaction, handed back the documents, and waved them through.
The car joined the line of vehicles disgorging passengers in front of the I.M. Pei glass pyramid. In the west the setting sun managed to struggle out from beneath the hem of the clouds. The glass facets of the building grabbed the fire and glowed red and gold.
Noel checked his watch. It was still seventeen minutes until he could have access to Lilith. He didn’t think he would need her, but he would have preferred to have this party either in full day or full night.
Another soldier, this one in more antique, comic-opera uniform, opened the back passenger door. Siraj stepped out and Noel followed. He shot the cuffs of his shirt until he had the perfect rim of white beneath the cuffs of his tuxedo coat. Noel had opted for the traditional white tie. He didn’t want to stand out in this gathering.
They entered the pyramid.
“Dr. Okimba?” a sleek UN gopher said. “I’d like to introduce some of the Committee members who are providing security for the peace talks.”
Tom Weathers nodded his head. It was still his head. It still felt like his head. But to the glittering crowd beneath the smoked-glass and steel pyramid it was the big, shaven, plump-featured head of Dr. Apollinaire Okimba.
“Your Honor, Simone Duplaix from Canada, whose ace name is Snowblind. And Nikolaas Buxtehude from Brussels. He’s called Burrowing Owl.”
“Enchanted,” Okimba said, cupping the soft hand of the girl in a tight black T-shirt and black jeans and raising it to his lips. Her bobbed hair was electric blue, with a gold stripe dyed in her bangs. Okimba didn’t know her from Grace Slick, but Tom Weathers had met her in Kongoville, before the Committee turned on the PPA-and Tom. “It is always a great pleasure,” he murmured, “to meet a young woman as formidable as she is lovely.”
He turned to the second ace. Burrowing Owl was a short shit about as wide as tall, wearing an odd pointy brass cap, goggles, and old-time leather flying clothes under what was either a feathered cape or folded wings. He clicked his heels and nodded as Okimba shook his hand. The hands were big and red and massively calloused, as if he used them to burrow with. “Deeply honored, sir,” he said.
“Likewise.” This was a groovy power, though one Tom didn’t use much. Which was too bad; he was a pretty good actor, if he did say so himself. He looked and sounded and even smelled exactly like the jurist: a large, fat, heartily affable black man in his early sixties.
The real Dr. Okimba was a major legal eagle. He was also a counterrevolutionary pain in the ass who made a lot of noise about civil rights for the citizens of the People’s Paradise. Right now the good doctor was enjoying captivity deluxe and incommunicado in a suite in the Nshombos’ vast new palace.
The gopher was burbling about how historical this all was. Tom tuned him out. He was scoping the crowd, checking out the opposition. Several of the Committee members who’d been in Africa last year were there: big Buford Calhoun looking as out of place in his human skin as he would as a toad the size of a Volkswagen; the Lama, snickering at what Tom suspected was a most unsagelike dirty joke; Brave Hawk, visible through the glass of the pyramid overhead as he soared the pink and pale green sunset sky on combat air patrol. No one he couldn’t handle, if it came to that.
Tom excused himself and moved off as if to find a waiter serving champagne. He wouldn’t dare drink it. He didn’t trust himself to keep from showing sudden fury on his borrowed face. He’d just spotted a tall, handsome dude with white-blond hair hanging to the broad shoulders of his Savile Row suit. Men and women crowded around him like groupies at a rock concert. He was the German ace Lohengrin, current chairman of the Committee and global superstar. But Tom knew that broad-jawed smiling face from another setting. Jackson Square in New Orleans. Where Tom had gone to rescue his kidnapped daughter.
“Keep it cool, lover,” Hei-lian whispered in his ear. She and her Guoanbu nerd-gnomes were ensconced in a pension just across the Seine, keeping track of the proceedings via a shitload of little audiovisual pickups studded literally all over him and siphoning feeds from the innumerable media cameras present. “You’ve got a job to do.”
Tom made himself nod. Smile while you can, you square-headed Nazi puke, he told himself. Payback’s a motherfucker.
Then by a trick of acoustics he heard Simone burble to her companions, “Oh, my God, did you see that? That fat geezer totally came on to me!”
Tom allowed himself a grin. I guess I’m glad Doc Prez hasn’t let Alicia feed this fat fuck to her pets after all, he thought. Shit, this is fun.
Siraj opted for the escalator rather than the winding staircase. As they glided down Noel noted the white linen-draped buffet table, the white-coated waiters slipping through the crowds with trays of drinks and canapes for those too lazy to walk to the buffet. The glass above them, the white marble underfoot turned the usual drone of conversation into a sound like clashing cymbals. The setting was fantastic, but as a place for diplomatic conversation it left much to be desired.
Noel noticed Lohengrin’s golden head looming above the crowd. Here and there a leopard-print fez thrust above the crowd, marking the presence of Leopard Men. Secretary-General Jayewardene, with Babel at his side, moved through the crowd looking plump, smug, and serene. Or perhaps that was just him showing a what, me worry? diplomat’s face to the world.
Personally, Noel was worried. There was a level of free-floating tension that was almost like a metallic scent beneath the smell of perfume and canapes.
Siraj walked away to greet Jayewardene. Noel snagged a glass of champagne and started moving toward the buffet. He noticed Lohengrin skittering off in the other direction.
Wondering if it was just coincidence, Noel changed course and moved toward Lohengrin. The young German ace looked around wildly, spotted Jayewardene and Babel, and started heading for them. Tallyho, Noel thought, and ducked into a clump of people. He moved through the crowd, staying out of Lohengrin’s sight until he stepped out of another knot of people directly in front of the younger man.
Klaus reared back like a startled horse. “Didn’t you and I have a weekend in Paris?” Noel asked.
Blood washed up Lohengrin’s neck and suffused his face. “Don’t talk about such things,” he said in a low whisper.
Noel thought back on those times when, as Lilith, he had seduced and pumped (so to speak) the big German ace for information about Jayewardene and the Committee.
“I cared for you. I told you my deepest dreams. I planned for a life together-”
“I used you. Get over it,” Noel said.
Lohengrin’s expression registered both hurt and shock at the blunt reply. “Have you ever cared about anything?”
“Don’t go there, Klaus. I have many things I care about. You just don’t happen to be one of them.”
“Would you ever consider coming back to the Committee?” Lohengrin asked. “We could use you.”
“No, thank you.”
“So, the good work of the Committee means nothing to you?”
“No. I think you’re a bunch of idealist idiots.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because there are things I do care about.”
“I think you are a coward. I think you got scared in Jackson Square, and now you leave others to fight your battles.”
“And I think you haven’t gotten over discovering your Lili Marlene was a boy.” Noel clinked his glass against Lohengrin’s and sauntered away.
The conference began with the reception; the Louvre closed for a private party, and how classy was that? Tables laid out with the most expensive snack food known to man. Soft music supplied by a string quartet in somber attire. And milling around like guests at a party, the representatives of the bloodiest war on the planet. Over there by the stairs Prince Siraj, who now commanded the same people who had been trying to kill Bugsy in Egypt. On the far side of the space, Dr. Okimba radiated charm and goodwill on behalf of the PPA. And all around them, spreading out for miles, the greatest works of human art, as if by rubbing Okimba and Siraj against civilization, maybe some of
