She said it almost casually, with a light shrug and a turn of her head, but he had a glimpse of hurt, well concealed until now.
"You're quite a handful, Bertie."
She couldn't be playful any longer. "I hope I will be. Soon."
Sherard knew he had let himself in for that, and had no answer. At the age of twelve he had looked into Joseph's fire-lit eyes, eyes he trusted more than he trusted God, on the eve of his first blood stalk for lion. Still learning, but already seasoned enough to understand that the greatest pleasure of the hunt comes before the kill. And Sherard accepted with a pang of regret that one of the joys of living had so far escaped himâseeing the eyes of his firstborn son, eyes with no fear in them while he prepared himself, as Tom Sherard had prepared, for the ceremony of blooding.
"I'm more than twice your age, Bertie. Think about it. And too many of those years are like chains on me."
"No. Only one year. The year just past. Is it that you
can't
love me, or you can't bring yourself to love me?"
After a frowning silence he said, "That's difficult to answer."
"Chains don't make a cage. They can be broken. You only have to try." Her eyes were moist. "Would you try, Tom? For both of us."
He wanted to say no, to put an end to it immediately. He was sure if he did say it Alberta Nkambe would simply get up and walk out, leaving him alone at the newlyweds' table, beneath Buddha's stone weight of disapproval. In a moment of unusual clarity Sherard knew he did not want to spend the rest of his life reliving how that moment had felt.
He took a breath. "Let's see how it goes, Bertie. A day at a time, all right?"
"A day at a time
together
."
"Yes." With a sense of relief he reached across the table and took her hand. Ending, with that gesture, a kind of tyranny he had imposed on her. Bertie Nkambe's heart was in her face. A beguiling, beginning woman, for all her worldliness still defining herself, needing him in the process.
Gao reappeared with ceremonial tea. Bertie poured. They all had a cup, another tradition at the newlyweds' table. The other guests smiled and nodded happily, watching them. There was good luck and good feeling in the air.
Nothing Sherard had drunk or eaten had had much taste for a long time. But the tea was fragrant and delicious, the wine that came next a silvery treasure that restored his palate. There were no menus at the Elegant Forest. Each night Gao's chef prepared a communal feast, and those who were fortunate enough to get a table ate what was brought out to them. Sherard lost count of the courses that arrived sizzling, braised, or chilled. Also he wasn't paying attention to how much wine he consumed. He did remember at one point to ask Bertie about the peep she'd mentioned earlier.
"It was the painter. The ABC girl at the end of this alley. American-born Chinese. I was really engrossed in her work. Had my back to her. She just lifted a corner of my mind, you know, like a tent flap, and looked in. Idle curiosity, I guess. But it was deft. She's had better training than that ice-pick artist on the plane coming out."
"Was she MMF?"
Bertie paused to demolish a lotus flower made from pureed vegetables, then made a judgment call.
"I don't think she's in the Game. Not one of ours, anyway."
"Neither are you in the Game," Tom reminded her. "That's what Gillian wanted, and I insist upon it. And you never take chances, Bertie."
"I didn't do
anything
."
"Could she have peeped you long enough to get some ideas about you?"
"T-blocking leaves a definite signature. Nevertheless, I don't think it's anything to worry about."
"Right. Then I'm not worried."
"Nor am I. Don't know why I brought it up in the first place."
Neither of them paid attention to the Chinese man in a steel-gray silk suit who had come into the Elegant Forest. Midnight shades with Erector-set gold frames complemented the flash suiting. Gao looked up as he was pouring wine into Sherard's glass and turned as stony as Buddha. Then he backed away from their table with a reserved but suppliant bow as the newcomer approached, kicked a vacant lacquered chair ahead of him, turned it around and straddled it, arms across the back of the chair. Sherard glanced at the bead-curtain doorway. Two guys who looked like bodyguards loitered there, looking in. Sherard breathed cologne, took in the expensive tailoring of the man who sat four feet from him, the gold accessories, a thin scar running nearly the full angle of one jaw like a chin strap. In spite of the scar he was a handsome man until he pulled off the dark glasses. His uncovered eyes looked ruined, as if he were suffering from a permanent hangover, or arctic snow blindness. There was no focus in them. The lids trembled.
"Hi. Welcome to San Francisco. My hometown. Great place to eat, isn't it? Gao's the best, kid you not. Don't worry about the bill, it's taken care of. Entirely my pleasure." He finished out of breath, stroked his lips a few times with his fingertips. Some women would find his mouth sensual, some would find it cruel; most would just find it, buzzing with lust like a fly trapped on a windowpane. He slipped the shades back on in mid-blink, snapped his fingers at Gao, pointed to the wineglass in front of Sherard. Gao disappeared into the kitchen. "Name's Danny Cheng." He turned his hard flat head slightly toward Bertie, who looked at him with a level of response she usually reserved for a dirty rest room. "Question is, who the hell are you, Cute Stuff?"
GREENWOOD LAKE, CALIFORNIA ⢠MAY 28
G
eoff McTyer drove his Taurus to the vacation house that the Warings had borrowed, the man temporarily known as Phil Haman in the seat beside him. Haman passing the time playing a video game on a Toshiba laptop. That wasn't enough to keep him occupied. He had to make conversation too. Geoff acknowledged the attempts in monosyllables, kept his mind on his driving, tried not to give in to the panic that had resulted from being overtaken by events.
"You're not much for small talk is the impression I get," Haman said, staring at the active matrix screen and the bombast of the video game. His thumb was busy on the controller, lobbing fireballs at digitized goons with broadswords and two-headed wizards. "Or maybe it's just that you haven't warmed up to me yet."
Geoff didn't reply. Another few miles went by, mountainous places cragged and tufted against a softly luminous night sky. The moon floating above the tree line, disappearing at times. Twister of a road. Occasional traffic.
"We got far to go yet?"
"No."
"How far?"
"Up ahead we take a left. Pass the dam. Then, I don't know. The road follows the north shore of the lake. Look for the name. On a mailbox or something."
"Hassler?"
"Yes. Hassler."
"Lot of stress on you. I'm aware of that. I sympathize. She's a honey. You just can't stop thinking about her. How about her shape? Eden have a good shape? Sure she does. You fell hard. I'll bet she fell hard too, good-looking bullnuts like yourself. How did it go, the first time? In your apartment, right? Or, no, maybe it was a camping trip; you're the rugged outdoors type. Wilderness. All that hiking puts whang in your blood. You've built a fire, set up this little tent. Nobody else around for miles. The two of you have known all day that you're going to have sex. Can't go another minute without doing it. The kissing, the touching. The moaning. I love you, I love you. The clothes coming off. But maybe it's too chilly. Or she's too shy to get all the way naked. Just uncover those parts you need to work with, get your hands on. Both of you with your jeans below your knees, back door's the best way to get it in. She's even hotter than you hoped she would be. Hands on her breasts, lips on the back of her neck. Thrusting. I'm not hurting you, am I, Eden? No no don't stop oh it's so
big
oh God feels so
good
."
"You son of a bitch."
"This the dam? Pull over when you get across."
Haman turned off the laptop and put it away. On the other side of the small dam they sat in darkness by the side of the road, the lake below them painted by the moon.
"This heartthrob Eden, you lose perspective, you lose your sense of mission," Haman said. "But I'm not here to pass judgment. We all have our work. Mine happens to be wet. I go in, I get out. I work long-range, I work up close. I carry the tools for either eventuality. I'm expressing myself in this manner in order to spare your fucking sensibilities. Purely in terms of job satisfaction, up close is best for me. I like to see their eyes when I'm making delivery. So to speak. Same as show business. There's nothing like feedback from a live audience. But I don't let the promise of visceral reward interfere with my analysis of how to do the job effectively. There's no other factors involved. Politics don't interest me. Don't tell me any of your conspiracy theories. Everything's a conspiracy. I go in, it's done, I get out. My approval rating stays high. I don't know who makes those decisions. I get instructions from so deep inside the Sector it's possible no one actually exists there anymore. That could mean a lot of things. All I want are my instructions. Sometimes it's a blind man, stopping me on the street with a tap of his cane, whispering in my ear. If a month goes by and I haven't made a delivery, I start to feel listless. Apprehensive. Then the Voices begin. Far-off, chanting. A kind of déjà voodoo. I can ignore them for a while. Then it gets so bad they don't let me sleep. 'Bring out your dead,' they cry. 'Bring out your dead!' What do they mean? Are they holding me accountable? I follow instructions. I'm in, I'm out. Sometimes it's a little girl in a Baskin-Robbins, sneaking a crumpled napkin into my pocket."
Geoff's hands gripped the steering wheel. He looked straight ahead. One side of his face was illuminated by the cold sheen from the surface of Greenwood Lake. If he hadn't been certain before, it was clear to him now. A world that would not allow Eden Waring to live in peace was a grim asylum, a lurking hell. He had acquired a new slant on the man temporarily known as Haman. Whoever he was, he had emerged from the rubble of Geoff's former beliefs and misbegotten sense of duty expressly to torment and then to destroy him. Geoff was deeply afraid. But the fear that possessed him, he sensed, also had the power to define him.
After a couple of bleak minutes, the assassin yawned as if he'd been napping, and spoke again.
"What we do now, we locate the house. Stay back until we know if she's there or not. Then I'll take over. You don't have a part in it. When I come out, you drive me back to the burg we came from; I'm history where you're concerned."
Geoff turned his head slowly and looked at Haman. Knew that he was lying, wasn't how Haman had planned it at all. Rather than being horrified, he was almost elated.
"What about the Warings?"
Haman shrugged. "Well, Geoff. You know. What can I do? Unless you have an idea I can use."
Geoff pulled back onto the road, accelerating too abruptly.
"I don't. Let's just get it over with."
SAN FRANCISCO ⢠MAY 28
A
pair of hand-carved nan wood doors. Ming-style carved chairs. Eighteenth-century porcelain and ormolu vases. Lacquered gold and black
étagère
. Tang Dynasty funerary horse, saddled. A green-glazed Han dog. A bronze ritual vessel with water buffalo motifs, three thousand years old. Objects outliving vast buried histories. Things of seductive textures and artistry that begged to be touched, revered.
Danny Cheng was proud of his to-the-trade establishment, on the ground floor of a snowflake-white Italianate house built on Russian Hill in the days of windjammers, the famous China clippers, the Great White Fleet. The original house, Cheng said, had survived the 1906 fire because the roof had been protected with gunny sacks soaked in the wine from its capacious cellar. The fleet was long gone, but the view of the bay west to the Golden Gate Bridge was still as splendid as could be found on many a San Francisco hill.
"So antiques are your business," Sherard said.
"Fine antiques are more of a love affair than a business." Cheng smiled at Bertie Nkambe, who was oblivious to both of them as she drifted among treasures with an expression of near-rapture. "What else do I do? I grow grapes. I raise thoroughbreds on my place across the bay. My father made a little money in his time, and I've had some luck increasing it for him. Danny Cheng's core business is information. Information the CIA or NSA can't get a handle on in spite of their listening devices, the computers faster than whistling piss. I'm after the street stuff. But on a global scale. Words, phrases. A hint here, a whisper there. Morsels and tidbits. A look, a gesture. Pillow talk. Gossip always has that essential element of truth. Danny Cheng's information clock is set two days ahead of Greenwich Mean. I buy, I broker. Who wants my information? The kind of men who are too brilliant to quibble with. Their profession is the exercise of superior intellect. They read summaries. They get briefed. They make instant brilliant decisions about crises and conflicts that decide the fate of the rest of us. Is it possible we know some of the same people? Find yourself in Washington occasionally, Tom?"
"Not if I can help it. I guess I had a different impression of what you do for a living, from the style of the bodyguards you tote around. The ones with the tong tattoos."