'Of course. Of course. I'll return. In the meantime I won der if I might use your bathroom.'
'Certainly.'
She showed him to a room down the first-floor hall, where he installed himself long enough to pull out a small remote microphone. Once he had it in his palm, he waited an appropriate time, flushed the toilet, and emerged. She had disappeared for the moment, so he moved quickly down the hall and stuck the microphone under the desk that held the sign-in book.
Gaudet turned, tottered out into the street, and was gone.
Michael rode through New York in a hired car with Sam, Anna, Yodo, and Grady. He wanted to see the area where the World Trade Center had once stood. They had arrived only the day prior and things were still new to Michael. Sam had protested getting Anna close to Michael, but she was a woman of means and willpower and she would not be de terred. Michael never seemed to deny another soul an adven ture and really did not argue with Anna risking her life to ride around town with the Gaudet 'bait' if that was her choice. Michael used Grady's cell phone to make his daily call to Professor Richard Lyman about his journals. There was silence and the tension was palpable as he placed the call.
After a brief hello and virtually no pleasantries, Michael popped the question. It looked to Sam like Michael's heart was sinking to his feet and so he knew the answer even be fore Michael reported that there was no package and no communication from Peru or anywhere else in South America. The professor took the number of the cell phone in case any thing changed.
After a time of disappointed silence Sam decided to try and improve the mood.
'New York must seem strange after the Amazon.'
'The people all seem to wear black shoes-like boots but with low tops. The buildings remind me of giant ant heaps. There's a sign for everything-almost as though no one has their own thoughts. The place is crawling with people.'
Sam was amused at the virginal quality of Michael's observations. He had now figured out, by listening to Michael or getting information from Big Brain, that Michael had left the United States when he was almost twelve. When he was six years old, his parents divorced and he moved from the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca to Humboldt County, California, where he lived with his mother. Sam marveled at the coincidence-so close to the Tiloks. Humboldt County was not a place visited by many, about 250 miles as the crow flies north of San Francisco, in redwood country. It was green and peaceful with many more trees than people, mountains pushed up against the sea with creeks in every furrow, and wild lands for miles and miles.
When Michael was nine, his mother died and he returned to Ithaca to live with his father. From talking with Michael, Sam had discerned that most of Michael's memories of the Finger Lakes region were indistinct, as though earlier memories were crowded out of his mind by Amazonia. For an eleven-year-old boy the culture shock of the deep jungle must have been incredible.
Michael gaped at the sheer number and enormity of the buildings, the volume of vertical concrete and brick placed on more concrete and steel.
'Amazing, huh?' Grady said.
'If there is some evolutionary advantage to all of this, it escapes me. Unlike the ants or the bees, it seems to me that all this jamming-people-together in buildings would in crease danger to the individual. The benefits of commerce obviously outweigh the hazards.'
'We Americans are in a frenzy to do something. When we don't know what to do, we work. I guess this is the re sult,' Sam said.
Michael found the Gramercy Park bed-and-breakfast oddly cluttered with knickknacks seemingly placed with great care. There were cookies and tea, silver urns, hushed silence-or at most half-whispered tones-and fabrics that all seemed to sleep. The place offered little for a man accus tomed to trekking in the jungle, fishing catfish for dinner, and having a good chew of coca before hitting the ham mock.
He did notice an unusual brightness in Grady's eyes when she looked at him. He couldn't recall ever seeing a woman with a better body. But he was confused at her relationship with Sam. (Robert had explained that his nickname was Sam and Michael was only now getting used to the new name.) He was also bewildered now that he had seen Sam with Anna. Obviously, Michael's place was in the Amazon and a woman like Grady would not last there, so any alliance would probably be temporary and he wasn't sure how she might feel about a short-term romance. Much less himself. He still was not over the shock of losing Eden and then Marita.
Still, Grady was long-legged and blond, with a narrow waist and high, firm bust. Her eyes shone with such a striking shade of azure that Michael wondered if it was some modern contrivance. But it was her glances, and her strong Slavic face, the high cheekbones, and especially the expressive lips, neither full nor thin, that piqued his desire. From the moment he had seen her in the jungle, he had concluded that she was an astonishment as females go. Even when he was half sick, he had wanted to grab her and plaster his lips to hers. He suspected that this uncommon rage to copulate was due in part to all the carnage he had just left-a coping mechanism that would enable the mind to let go of the pain and depression of death.
The desire remained in him here, but he kept it behind a controlled and seemingly placid exterior. Michael determined that in the fashion of a civilized man, this desire was best ignored, at least for the moment.
After Sam advised the proprietor that they wished to ex tend their stay, they made their way upstairs. Anna went with Sam, although Michael understood that she was staying at her own apartment. At the second floor Sam paused and gathered them around. They stood in a mezzaninelike area the size of the parlor with a well-furnished library. Behind a balustrade, which made a large oval around the staircase, were the doors to various rooms. Fresh flowers stood under a gilt-framed mirror.
'I'd suggest you stay around here. Let people come to you.'
Michael appreciated Sam's concern but bridled at it just the same. 'I have no problem with your bodyguards if they have the courage to go with me. But I will do my work. And that is the end of the discussion.'
'But, Michael, we talked…' Grady began.
'I said I would be careful. That is all I said.' He paused. 'I don't mean to be rude.'
She nodded and turned toward her room.
As Michael entered his, he turned and his eyes found Grady's across the way. It pleased him to see her eyes search ing for his. They both closed their doors in a slow, synchro nous movement, accompanied by an unmistakable smile. But he hadn't missed the worry behind the smile.
Chapter 11
A maiden's eyes are a club to the young man's head, her lips a snare for his neck.
Benoit sat at her desk in the government lab approving invoices from suppliers and coordinating the delivery of lab supplies, as well as supervising all of the clerical help. It was growing to be a substantial job and she had only been at it for eleven days, but her mind wasn't in it.
Unlike other lab offices, hers came equipped with a couple of guards, although the real security lay in the fact that there were only two exits in the whole building and she was not allowed through either without a full escort, and she had to be in shackles.
Her phone rang. The admiral.
'I have grown to anticipate your calls,' she began. 'Have you considered my suggestion that we meet for tea?'
'I am considering it. Baptiste certainly thinks it would be counterproductive.'
'Yes. Well, you will have to consider whether that is how you want to run your agency-always relying on secondhand information.'
'It seems I'm getting it firsthand over the phone.'
'You know what they say about looking into a person's eyes.'
'I know what they say about looking into your eyes,' Larive parried.
