They exchanged smiles.
The waitress was there before Santos settled fully in his chair, and she had a drink on her tray. It was mostly white, with streaks of brown in it. He smiled at the young woman and took the drink. “Thank you, Betty.”
The waitress dimpled and almost curtsied, then moved away. Toni had the impression that if Santos said “Jump,” Betty would be in the air in a heartbeat, and naked before she came back down.
Santos sipped at the drink. “Ah,” he said. He looked at her and answered what he thought was her unasked question: “Coconut milk and Cuban rum,” he said. “Very fattening. I have to work extra hard after I have one of these.” He raised his glass to her and she held up her tomato juice. It looked like a Bloody Mary. Let him think so.
“To new friends,” he said.
“Why not?” she said.
They clinked glasses.
She nursed her juice while he finished his rum and coconut milk and started a second one. He was very smooth, this Santos, not glib, but totally focused on her, appearing entranced by her every word or look, as if she were the most fascinating woman in the world. Which, in her fake identity, she certainly was not. It didn’t take a genius to realize he was hoping to get laid.
Well, he was going to be disappointed, unless he could talk Betty the waitress into it, which didn’t seem like much of a chore.
When she asked questions about his work, he managed to slip them, like a good boxer does punches, giving her almost no information. He walked around, he said. He watched for trouble. From time to time, he ran errands. Nothing special. Just a job.
Toni smiled and nodded and pretended to be impressed anyhow. He wasn’t telling the truth. If something was going on upon this ship, Santos here was a part of it, she was sure of that. But — short of blowing in his ear and going off to his cabin with him — how was she going to find out what he knew?
“You have not had supper yet,” he said. “We should go and eat.”
Toni realized that extracting herself from this would be more difficult if they had dinner, and she was about to offer an excuse — a sudden unexpected visit from Mr. Red ought to do it — when Santos glanced away from her at somebody who had just entered the bar. He looked back quickly, and he wore a small smile when he did.
Toni looked at the entrance.
There was a strikingly beautiful woman standing there. She looked Asian, maybe Amerasian, Toni couldn’t pin her nationality down exactly. She was tall, had black hair past her shoulders, so black it looked like shimmering ink. She wore a red blouse, tucked into a matching skirt that stopped four inches above her knees, hose, and heels. The clothes were snug enough to reveal a svelte hourglass figure, but not so tight as to look trashy. Toni was aware that the conversational background noise suddenly dropped in volume, and a quick glance around showed virtually everybody in the place was looking at the new arrival.
Except Santos. And given his obvious attraction to women, that seemed odd.
“Who is that?” she asked.
He looked at her. “Pardon?”
“In the red, over there.”
He looked, pretending not to have seen the woman before. “Ah. That is Jasmine Chance.” His accent thickened a bit, so that his next sentence came out, “She work on de boat, too.” Not Hispanic, Toni decided. Brazilian, maybe.
The woman, meanwhile, was on the move, and it looked to Toni as if she was heading right toward their table, smiling like the Cheshire cat as she walked, heels clicking in the suddenly quiet bar. Here was a femme fatale.
Sure enough, she approached their table and stopped, still smiling. “Roberto.”
“Hello, Missy,” he said. He grinned back.
While it was all pleasant and smiley on the surface, Toni immediately felt that charged atmosphere that couples who’d been arguing sometimes had — just before they put on their public faces.
Bad blood here.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Roberto?” Another smile, and if ever an expression was fake, this one was. It had crocodile all over it.
Santos held up a lazy hand. “This is Mary Johnson, she is an executive assistant from Falls Church, Virginia. Mary, this is Jasmine Chance. Head of Security. My boss.”
“A secretary,” Chance said, looking at Santos. Contempt practically dripped from her voice.
Toni felt a strong urge to stand up and slap the woman for that patronizing tone, but that wouldn’t be in character, not at all.
“There was something you wanted?” he said.
Chance never moved her penetrating gaze from him. “An important security matter came up. Perhaps your friend could excuse us for a moment?”
Toni would have loved to stay and listen to this conversation, but it provided the easy exit she needed. She said, “Oh, of course. I was just about to leave anyway. I’m feeling a bit under the weather.”
“I’m so sorry,” Chance said, the words absolutely devoid of any sympathy at all.
“No need to leave,” Santos said. “I’m sure this won’t take long.” He wasn’t looking at Toni, either, but at Chance.
If looks could kill, anybody walking between these two would have been turned into crispy critters as if bathed by flamethrowers.
Toni stood. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Chance. Thank you for the drink, Roberto. Maybe I’ll see you again.”
She hurried away, just in time. She had to call Alex, and the window for the call was pretty narrow.
Back in her cabin, she went into the small bathroom and started the shower. That her room might be bugged was unlikely, but it paid to be careful. Once the water was running and making noise, she used her disguised scrambler phone to call Alex, vox only, no visual. There was a long-distance microwave repeater on the ship — they couldn’t expect people to be without their phones even out here — but Toni’s call went through a military comsat she knew would be footprinting the area for the next ten minutes.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey,” she said.
“How’s it going?”
“Fine. I haven’t seen Jay’s guy.”
“That’s okay, we think he’s in Germany. Anything else?”
“I’ve managed to meet a couple of people who look interesting. You might have Jay run their names and see what he can come up with.”
“Shoot.”
She gave him Santos and Chance, described them. “Santos says he’s with ship security, and that Chance is his boss. They have some kind of thing going between them, if that’s any help.”
“I’ll pass it on to Jay. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. I miss you and Little Alex.”
“We miss you, too. He’s fine, Guru is fine, I’m fine. Nothing to worry about here. Listen, I need you to plug whatever you’ve got, pix, thoughts, diagrams, into a file and upload it to one of the secure mailboxes. Mark it for John’s attention.”
“I won’t be able to do it until the next comsat pass,” she said. “Unless you want to risk using the ship’s transmitter.”
“No, it’ll wait a couple hours.”
“What’s up?”
He explained Jay’s theory about CyberNation’s train and barge. He finished by saying, “I spoke to the director. Ordinarily, the government would be hesitant to move with so little hard evidence, but the powers-that-be uplevels are really nervous about this whole situation. There are going to be some strings pulled, some favors called in. The German train and the Japanese barge are going to get unexpected visitors. If what Jay thinks is right, that’ll
