Semyonov himself, before he died. Stone was reminded of the note Semyonov had given him. “
Stone looked again at the watch and took at look at the recent web site in Virginia Carlisle’s history. One caught his eye. It confirmed his theory as to why Virginia Carlisle had come to Sichuan. The page was just coming up on the screen as the door handle clicked and the door opened.
Carlisle didn’t handle it too badly in the circumstances. After a few seconds of shock and some harsh Anglo- Saxon language, the actress in her took over again. Her eyes looked at the open closet doors, then at her books and magazines on the table, then ran along Stone’s long legs, stretched out on the sofa on the other side of the room. Stone glanced up and then back down at the screen of her MacBook. That was a delightfully complex look she’d come up with after the initial shock. Anger, contempt, and a subtext of sexual interest all at the same time.
‘Now. I know you’re pleased to see me, Virginia,’ said Stone looking at the laptop. ‘But aren’t you supposed to know a man better before you use words like that with him?’
‘This CANNOT be happening!’ she hissed, grabbing at the telephone by the door. ‘This is Miss Carlisle. GNN. Give me hotel security!’ The hotel’s Chinese receptionist was going to need a few minutes to get to grips with Virginia in this mood. There was stammering on the other end of the phone. ‘SECURITY!’ she sang down the phone, then covered the receiver and turned on Stone. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ she yelled, her anger ramping up now she knew she wasn’t in danger. Stone had taken a tiny peek behind her facade. An unforgivable crime to actress Virginia. ‘You arrogant son of a…’
Stone got up from the sofa and walked over the walnut-covered floor of the suite, smiling. ‘Put down the phone, Virginia. If that security guy comes up here, I might have to deal with him. Neither he nor I would feel good about ourselves afterwards.’ He took her hand and moved it calmly to hang up the receiver.
Carlisle stood open-mouthed at her own acquiescence for a few seconds, but then got a hold of herself and turned up the volume again. ‘How dare you break into my room and go through my things? The closet, the computer…’
‘Does that mean there’s something interesting I missed?’ he said. ‘Tush, Virginia. I’m too much of a gentleman.’
‘You lousy…’ she repeated. ‘I got you out of that hole of a jail in Hong Kong so you could find out some stuff. You’ve done nothing but follow me to Sichuan. Pathetic.’
This was more like it — goading him to say what he’d been up to.
‘What brings you to Chengdu, Virginia? I didn’t see any sign of a brutal civil war breaking out on my way to the hotel,’ said Stone. ‘Or will you just use some old footage of carnage and mayhem in the background? That’s the way it’s done, isn’t it? Your news reports sound like they were made a week ago in a job lot.’
‘You’ve got nothing.’ She glowered at him.
‘Oh, hold on! I forgot. You’ve been looking at the Internet.’ He picked up the MacBook and showed her the web page he’d seen she’d been looking at. ‘Perhaps this explains what brought you to Sichuan.’
At this point there was a small line drawing of China. A single red dot indicated a spot in the West of China, and there was a reference to the place in latitude and longitude.
‘It’s not like you to read this kind of crap,’ said Stone. ‘In fact it’s not like you to read very much at all,’ he said, glancing at the unread pile of worthy journals. He was busting on her, but he was still annoyed with Carslake for publicizing the info he’d sent him. But why was he surprised? Few people were as fastidious about publicity and self-promotion as Stone — even Doug Carslake.
‘OK. So you’re here for the same reason, Stone,’ said Carlisle. She was calm suddenly, satisfied now that she’d got something out of him. ‘You’ve come because you think the Machine is only a few hundred miles from here. Or maybe you’re just following me in case you get lucky. Whatever. You’re too late. You probably think I spend my days in the gym and the beauty parlor,’ she said, with some satisfaction. ‘And you’d be right. I put on my work clothes and do my thing for about twenty minutes a day. I spend five times that long on makeup and wardrobe. But unlike you, I do not crawl in the dirt looking for the stories. GNN has an army of guys doing that. I’m the one who tells the story to the world. That’s why a billion people know my face, and no one knows you.’
‘It’s why a billion people aspire to nothing more than repeating the crap you tell them on TV, so long as they retain veneer of bullshit. Ignorance is Joy, yeah? It’s like something out of fucking George Orwell.’
She sneered gorgeously. ‘Cut out the professor stuff, Stone. It doesn’t suit you. You’re just another person I paid on the off chance you’d dig up a story,’ she laughed. ‘You failed, but that’s life. The money I gave you back in Hong Kong wouldn’t keep me in pantyhose.’
Stone thought about what he’d seen with Oyang in Shanghai. Maybe not the right time to bring it up with Carlisle. Also, that crazy UFO blogger Carslake had dutifully repeated the location of the Machine Stone had sent him. Stone had given a wrong location, and Carslake had made it even more wrong. Now it was out by hundreds of kilometres. Carslake was just seeking publicity, but it also served Stone's purpose of smoking out the bigger players who were interested in the Machine. He never thought Carlisle would be among them.
Stone turned to go, but she caught him by the hand. Her trick again. ‘Just a second,’ she said. ‘I’ve just figured it out.’ Stone looked at her again, and she held his eyes this time, and came up very close, still holding his shirt, looking deep into his green eyes. Smiling and knowing all of a sudden. ‘I have an idea why you came here, Professor Stone. You didn’t think you were going to get anything out of me. And you can’t be that interested why I came to Sichuan. You can watch the TV for that.’
‘So what’s your theory, Miss Nancy Drew?’
‘You’re here because you want to be.’
‘Er… I guess that makes sense.’
She pulled him closer. ‘You’re here because you like me.’
This was getting interesting. ‘Now, Virginia. What could you possibly have that I would like?’
‘Uh huh…’ she said, nodding semi-sarcastically, but still gazing into his eyes. ‘Well, maybe I know you better than you think. Something tells me you’ll turn up again. And again, until you get what you want.’ She had sidled up against him. He could smell her hair and the Chanel. You don’t get this on TV.
‘Don’t tell me. You’ll be ready for me next time,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should take what I want now, Miss Carlisle. Save us both the trouble,’ he said. 'Unless you like the idea of again and again…'
‘Maybe,’ she said.
Stone had kind of expected something like this. Maybe not so soon, but he was OK with it. He was definitely OK with it. He glanced around her suite, then looked back and met her gaze with his cool grey eyes. Her eyes were kind of melting. He had a decision to make in the next two seconds. She already had her fingers on his shirt button. It wasn’t a difficult decision.
Stone could see Virginia’s back in the mirror behind her. His fingertips were on her waist beneath the silk blouse she had on.
He inhaled her hair close-up, ran a fingertip ran along her spine beneath the shirt. ‘You have fine vertebrae,’
