hell.
The coffee was indeed terrible, so bad that Thera stooped to putting in two packets of sugar and even a bit of powdered milk in an attempt to make it palatable. She sipped it, then took a quick shower, not bothering to wash her hair. Ferguson was waiting when she was done, standing so near the door she bumped into him. Thera felt herself flush.
“I’m giving myself two hours,” he told her. “But if Rostislawitch gets moving before then, you wake me up, you hear? You don’t go anywhere without backup. All right?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t ‘sure’ me. ‘Yes. I will wake you up or I will forfeit my first, second, and third child to you.’ Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Don’t forget, I sleep in the nude, so if you have to come in for something, be prepared.”
“Ha, ha.”
Ferguson smirked and then disappeared into the bedroom. Thera knew from experience that he did not sleep in the nude, and in fact sometimes kept his shoes on in case he had to get up quickly. But that was Ferg — busting and semi-flirting, dead serious about his job but little else.
Thera took her coffee and went over to the desk, where the laptop display showed the feed from the video bug Rankin had planted the previous evening. Rostislawitch was sleeping, arms and legs spread-eagle beneath the covers.
She checked her watch. It was a little past four, ten p.m. back in the States. Unsure when Ferguson had last checked in with the Cube, she called herself.
Lauren DiCapri greeted her with a complaint about some of the video bugs they’d planted two days ago; their batteries had run down and the units were no longer feeding images to their boosters.
“We’ll take care of it when we can,” Thera told her.
“We can’t see what’s going on.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t mean now.”
“Neither do I,” said Thera, annoyed by Lauren’s tone. For some reason the desk people tended to act like the ops worked for them, rather than the other way around.
“Where’s Ferg?”
“He’s sleeping,” said Thera.
“What’s up with him and the Russian agent? Is he sleeping with her?”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone here knows she’s T Rex, but he won’t admit it.”
“Do you have anything useful to say?”
“You don’t have to defend him,” said Lauren.
“I’m not.”
“OK, Thera. I’m uploading the new keys for the phone encryptions. Use them if you have to use pay phones.”
Thera got up from the desk and stalked over to the coffeepot. She splashed some of the coffee onto the table, then burned her fingers as she daubed at it with a napkin.
Aside from her snarky tone, Lauren did have a point. Why
He rarely explained anything, did he? Pretty much he did what he pleased — including sleeping with people he was spying on, like T Rex’s advance “man.”
God damn him.
Thera finished cleaning the table and went back to the desk. She’d been gone so long that the screen saver had popped on.
She set the coffee down and tapped one of the arrow keys. She had to enter a password and use the thumbprint authentication before the screen would clear.
When she did, she saw that the light was on in Rostislawitch’s room. He was no longer in his bed.
Thera backed the feed up, hoping to see him going into the bathroom, which was just out of range of the camera. Instead, she saw him get up, take his shoes and coat, and go out of the room.
“Ferg! We have a problem!” she yelled, switching the feed to look at the other bugs.
20
Atha made his way from the train platform through the station, letting the businesspeople and students rush past him. It wasn’t quite five — the train had been about a half hour late — and the station was not entirely awake yet. He walked past a row of gated stores, then found the left luggage room; the sign said that it didn’t open until eight.
There was no sense waiting at the station. Atha decided he would find some place for breakfast, then conduct a little business by phone. There were many arrangements to be made.
Atha didn’t think it likely that he’d be followed, but he decided to take a turn around the station just in case. Glancing at the departures board, he realized an Italian military policeman near the ticket counter was staring at him. Atha’s skin was not noticeably darker than that of many native Neapolitans, but somehow the policeman seemed to have identified him as a foreigner. He had his thumbs in his belt, ready to pounce.
Under other circumstances Atha might have confronted the man, but now he decided his best course was to simply leave without creating a fuss. He spent a few more moments checking the board and consulting his watch, pretending to mentally calculate his time between trains. Then he moved to his right, making sure to keep his gaze well away from the policeman.
It seemed to work. Atha reached the row of closed stores before turning sharply right, aiming toward the side exit to the station. No one bothered him, and he thought he had escaped notice when two carabinieri suddenly appeared at the side of the archway that led to the exit.
“Where am I going? I was hoping to find a place for breakfast. My train doesn’t leave for several hours,” replied Atha in Italian.
“May we see your ticket?”
“I haven’t bought it yet,” Atha told him. “I thought I’d get something to eat first.”
“You are going where?” asked the taller policeman.
“Salerno,” said Atha, sharpening his tone in response to the man’s own gruffness. “Why?”
“Let us see some identification,” said the first man, still conciliatory.
“But of course.”
Atha reached into his pocket and took out his diplomatic passport. The carabinieri examined it, leafing through the pages and then coming back to the cover where his picture was posted. They pretended not to be impressed by the diplomatic stamp, though in theory it meant he should have special treatment — or at least lip service in that direction.
“There is a train to Palmero in fifteen minutes,” said the taller man.
“True. But then I would arrive too early. And Palmero — it is not Naples, is it? I would expect to get a better breakfast here.”
The man chortled, then took Atha’s passport from his partner to check it himself.
“I wonder where a good place to eat breakfast would be,” said Atha. “A place with fine coffee but not too expensive.”
“Nowhere in Naples,” said the shorter man good-naturedly. Then the two carabinieri began debating the
