Shadow Knight's Mate (32 page)

“Do you want me to tell you all about how I got the car?”

“Sure, that would be entertaining,” Jack said, doubting her story would have many intersecting points with the truth. By this time he understood that Arden was quite aware of her air of mystery. She cultivated it. Of course, they all did, to different extents, but not with each other. That was one way she was different, outside the Circle, extraordinary.

Jack took her hand for a moment, raised it to his lips and kissed her knuckles. He smiled, out at the road, not at her, as if a lovely memory had just crossed his mind. From the corner of his eye he could see Arden smiling too, but still with that sadness in the heart of the smile. She was one of those women who started
thinking about the end even while a relationship was still new, he thought.

“Salzburg?”

Jack nodded. “But first I need an Internet connection, and fast.”

Level 5

There was an Internet cafe on the outskirts of Salzburg. There was always an Internet cafe, or a hotel offering free connections, or a wireless network to breach. It would not be long before the Internet would simply be in the air, you could think your way into it. And it into you. It was a tempting fantasy. But Jack, one of the best-wired people on Earth, would hate that. He wanted his thoughts to himself.

As he was launching the game in the café, leaving Arden the task of ordering German coffee, he began searching for his usual partner on-line. As Arden sat beside him, he muttered a curse.

“Am I not giving you enough space?”

“The person I usually play with isn't there.”

“Is that so important? I thought you just liked the game. Is it a competition thing?”

Jack turned to her. Her eyes were close to his. They looked different now, her blue, patterned eyes. He thought he could see a little deeper into them. Sex gives that illusion. On the other hand, he'd been as close to Madeline as any person he'd ever known, or thought he had been, and now he didn't know if he'd known her at all.

Arden must have seen something change in his eyes. She took his hand, under the tabletop of the booth, and raised one eyebrow. Now she looked amused. His eyes had gone sad with memory and that had made Arden happy. He wondered if they were going to be like that, on an emotional seesaw. The expression didn't just mean up and down, it meant that one was
going
up as the other went down. There could be only a finite amount of happiness between them, it had to be shared.

He smiled. Somehow having been intimate with Arden made him feel bad—sad or guilty or untrustworthy or maybe just
uneasy. But she was a lovely girl, and much more. She had depths and twisty byways to her mind he could explore for decades. They could be like Alicia and Craig Mortenson, except that those two knew each other so well that one stood up before the other even said
Let's leave,
and he thought he could spend a lifetime with Arden and never know her mind. Why was that?

“It's all right, Jack,” she said softly, still with that little smile.

“I wish you wouldn't say that—forgiving me in advance for whatever I might do, as if it's no big thing. Let me tell you something about myself, Arden, especially since we haven't had much conversation. I've never lost a friend except to death. Well, that's not true, but certainly not over sex. I'm still friends with everyone I ever liked who liked me.”

“Are you telling me you and I will always be friends?”

“If we ever get to be.”

Her smile broadened. “Like you and Rachel?”

Jack tilted his head, reprimanding her. “I don't betray my friends' trust, either.”

Her smile lost its power for an instant. He thought she was jealous. “I guess that tells me the answer.”

He shook his head. “No, it doesn't. Maybe Rachel or I, or both of us, wouldn't want people to think we
didn't
ever make love. Maybe one of us is gay, or both of us, and we're the only people who know it about each other. Maybe there was a lost—” He faltered. “—time, or—I'm not going to explore all the possibilities with you, that's the point. Why don't we talk about you and me instead?”

“Okay.” But she leaned back from him and took her hand from his. This was page one,
chapter one
of the body language textbook. Why didn't Arden want to talk? Did she not want to talk about herself, or about him? Interesting…

His game beeped. Jack glanced at the screen, which now said, “WANNA PLAY?”

He tapped a Y in reply. What time was it in America?

Arden sighed. Without glancing at her, Jack said, “You didn't want to talk anyway. And this is important, I'm sorry.”

She was silenced for a moment, an extraordinary event, not knowing which of his statements to answer. Then she leaned against his shoulder as he tapped keys.
Want to play Level 5?
he asked his unseen opponent.

“How can this be important? Is it the championship?”

Jack laughed quietly. At some point thick white mugs of coffee had appeared in front of them. He hoped it hadn't been while he was revealing world secrets. Jack took a quick sip and liked the cup. Heavy, substantial, no flimsy Starbucks plastic or paper. The cup was better than the coffee, in fact.

The answer to his question appeared on his screen:
There is no Level 5.

Jack grinned.
I have the European edition,
he typed.
Follow me.

It was almost as if he had his opponent by the hand as they jumped to the level they'd already been playing, and the other character followed Jack's assassin-with-no-loyalties character to a secret door behind the refrigerator in a run-down café. Not unlike the one in which Jack and Arden sat, as a matter of fact.

Jack had designed Level 5 himself, very hastily, partly in his mind while he was alone in jail, then on the train while Arden slept. So it was a hazy level, not very well filled-in. But 'twas enough, 'twould serve.

There was a pause while his opponent read the rules of this level. What was important at this part of the game was that the two characters would be separated. Each would have a home base, which he could take as much time as he wanted to explore and even alter to some extent, before venturing out in search of his adversary.

While his opponent read, Jack turned to Arden again. “I don't get it,” she said.

He shrugged. “Not much to it. I really don't know what to do next in Salzburg, and this relaxes me, helps me think.”

“I could relax you, I think.”

It was funny the way she said that, trying to be sexy and trying not to sound as if she were trying. Jack smiled at her, not trying to
convey an erotic response at all himself. Arden shrugged, looking more girlish, and smiled at herself. “That would be wonderful,” he said, but in a way that sounded even to himself kind of dismissive.

Arden stood up. “I'll go look around. How long will you be?”

Jack glanced at his screen, where his opponent was tiptoeing through his own territory. Even on-screen, Jack could see his wariness. He grinned. “Half an hour, tops.”

Rachel Green liked being part of a team. It had been a long time. Being a Circle member on foreign assignment—or a foreign member of the Circle, she was never sure which; it had led her into philosophical discussions in her own mind, which she had never resolved, such as Was the Circle a country unto itself?—was inherently lonely. Anyone who might act friendly to you could be a foe. Most of the time when you tried to make friends with someone, it was for a reason, which meant the ensuing “friendship” was an artificial construct, even if she genuinely liked the person. You never have friendships again like in school days. At least that was Rachel's experience. As for lovers—well, it was like she imagined being a spy in the Cold War days. Give yourself to someone wholeheartedly, but with a knife under the pillow and an escape plan.

The way some men were naturally, she chuckled to herself.

Her second in command, Captain Bernard Lowenstein, raised an eyebrow at her, asking her to share the joke. “Nervous chuckle,” she whispered.

He nodded understandingly. “I get gas from nervousness.”

“Great time to tell me.” Because they were walking through a concrete culvert, a very large pipe, barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast.

“It's why I always have new partners,” Captain Bernard Lowenstein said, and they both laughed.

To say Bernie was her second in command was misleading. Rachel had an honorary rank of Colonel, but no place in the chain of command. Her title was Consultant. Not Security Consultant or any other specification. Bernie had pointed this out and assumed
it meant Rachel was an expert on everything. “There's this girl I like who works in a flower shop. What should I take her if I ask her out on a first date? Chocolates?”

“Flowers,” Rachel had answered. “You know she likes them.”

“But then what if she asks me where I got them and I have to say I bought them from a rival so I could surprise her? Don't you think that would make her mad?”

Rachel had spread her hands, indicating the discussion had gotten too silly for her. But Bernie had persisted, shrugging and quoting. “If you have two Jews, you'll have five opinions. You owe me at least one more opinion, consultant.”

That was what Rachel missed about being part of a team: banter; easy camaraderie. The unspoken, unthought belief that they were all on the same team. Your colleague had your back, and vice versa. This feeling grew from talk as silly as flowers and first dates.

Now such a feeling was important, as she and Captain Bernie went slowly through the conduit, which was getting smaller. This drainage line, according to Salzburg city diagrams, eventually turned and went under the public square where the chief executives of eight nations would be meeting in the only public forum of this conference. Surely someone had checked it out, but Rachel wanted to be sure.

The concrete tube got shorter and narrower, until the two of them couldn't go side by side. “Which of us will go in front?” Captain Lowenstein asked.

“Which do you think, farter?”

While Bernie laughed again, Rachel got down on hands and knees and crawled ahead. She hated this part. Anyone who didn't wouldn't be human, in her opinion. She began to have fantasies that she was crawling back into the womb, or the heart of the earth. Behind her, Lowenstein was just grunting, his head occasionally bumping her feet.

Then she stopped dead. There were sounds ahead. When she stopped the sounds persisted for a second or two, then also stopped. Rachel started slowly forward, and the sounds started
slowly up again. Must be echoes. But she didn't believe it. This echo had an odor.

She turned on a flashlight just as someone else did. The two beams clashed like light sabers, revealing nothing but the lights. Rachel lowered hers, so that it would illumine her face. That took as much courage as anything she had ever done. In this confined space, her partner couldn't provide her any cover, and she couldn't see to defend herself.

“Israeli?” came a male voice from only a few feet ahead of her.

Rachel nodded. The voice laughed. Then the man turned his own light on himself, revealing craggy but youthful features, curly dark hair, and very dark eyes. “Syrian,” he said with an odd sort of sneer, then added, “Ill met by flashlight.”

The tunnel seemed to shrink even more. Their two countries had been bombing each other two months ago. At the moment— as of ten minutes ago, that is—a very fragile cease-fire prevailed, which militants on both sides were trying to destroy. This was one of the primary reasons for the peace summit. But few people believed there would ever be peace between these countries. Certainly there would never be any trust between their armed forces.

Rachel heard guns being eased out of holsters. She left her own in place. This was a situation for a voice. But her throat had gone completely dry. Behind her, she could hear Bernie trying to wriggle forward, but her body blocked his. When the Syrians shot her, maybe Bernie could use her as a shield, to fire back.

“What's back down that way?” she asked in a hoarse voice, stalling for time.

“Nothing,” said the Syrian. Then after a pause, “Do you believe me?”

Something was wrong here. Rachel's mind raced. Then she realized what was so odd. They were both speaking English. And his “ill-met” remark had a very English source: Shakespeare.

She turned her flashlight back on her own face. “Princeton,” she said distinctly.

There was a moment of silence, as if she had said something incomprehensible. Then there was an explosive laugh from the
darkness in front of her. The Syrian pointed his flashlight at his own face. “Columbia,” he laughed.

They crawled forward, almost face to face, and shook hands in the old student-power way. It was hard to study each other's faces in the moving shadows, but she thought he looked familiar. He may have thought the same thing. “Hassan,” he said, and Rachel told him not only her name but her year of graduation. Very briefly they reminisced. “What do you miss most?” Rachel asked, and Hassan sighed. “New York. Central Park. Chinatown.” “The Museum of Modern Art,” Rachel said, and he nodded. Then Hassan looked up, at the culvert barely overhead. “Sleeping through the night,” he murmured.

Rachel nodded too. Then she spoke in a businesslike way. “Both our Presidents are going to be on that platform. Does this culvert go directly under it?”

“Close enough, if the bomb is powerful enough.”

After a moment she sighed. “I have to go through. Make sure you didn't leave anything.”

“And I have to do the same.”

“We are carrying only sidearms,” Rachel pointed out.

“As are we. Do you want to frisk me?”

“I suppose there's no other choice. How far is the other end?”