Spartan Resistance (11 page)

Laszlo frowned. “How—”

“Not now,” Mariana said quickly. “I think Mathieu understands more Standard than he’s letting on. Ask him. And ask him what the time is, too. The
exact
time.”

They exchanged words once more and one of the bodyguards jog-trotted over to a nearby hut and disappeared inside. He came running back, a very modern reading board in his hand.

“Thought so,” Mariana said, pleased. “They’ve got the technology they need to do deals. No self-respecting criminal would deprive himself of transaction power, no matter where he is.”

There was a brief exchange between the guard and Laszlo, then the guard handed the board to Mathieu. Laszlo turned back to her. “It’s eight-twenty-eight exactly. Mathieu agrees that if the funds are completely untraceable, he will release us.”

“What account?” Mariana asked. “Give me the number.”

Before Laszlo could speak, Mathieu moved his fingers over the board, then held it out to her. There was an account number on the screen. Thirteen letters and digits. She studied it, memorizing the sequence.

“Now tell him to check the balance in that account,” she told Laszlo.

“I don’t understand....” But Laszlo turned back to Mathieu and passed her suggestion on.

Mathieu worked on the board for a minute, calling up the balance. Mariana held her breath, waiting. The next few seconds would be vital.

Mathieu’s old eyes widened and the men standing over his shoulder muttered.

He looked up at Mariana. Slowly he smiled.

She had bargained their way to freedom.

* * * * *

“I’m completely baffled,” Laszlo complained as they hurried across the clearing after one of Mathieu’s men, who was leading them to the transport Mathieu had promised. “What just happened back there?”

“A deal,” Mariana said complacently. “We reached an agreement, I paid Mathieu the amount we agreed upon and he is living up to his side of the bargain and giving us transport back to Macapá.”

“You conjured five hundred thousand up out of thin air! I watched you. You didn’t move a muscle.”

“I did, actually. So did you. We went to a great deal of trouble to get that money into his account in a way that couldn’t be traced.”

The guard stepped aside and waved his hand toward....

“Saints preserve us,” Mariana muttered, looking at the
thing
the guard was presenting.

“What on earth
is
it?” Laszlo demanded.

“A car. Just as Mathieu agreed to provide.” Mariana moved toward the vehicle.

“It looks ancient.”

“It
is
ancient,” she said. “It runs on gasoline.” She looked at the guard. “Keys?”

“
Clés
?” Laszlo added.

The guard thrust a thumb toward the rust-covered vehicle. In the moonlight it looked like there was very little left of the exterior that wasn’t a lacy, fragile pattern of eaten-away metal.

“Makes sense the keys would be in it,” Laszlo said. “Who in their right mind would want to steal it?” He moved around to the driver’s side.

“Have you ever driven a gasoline powered car before?” Mariana asked him.

“How hard can it be? Steer, accelerate and brake when needed.”

She looked through the glass-less window at the controls and stood up again. “This one has a manual transmission. Have you ever used gears before?”

Laszlo stared at her. “Are you telling me you
have
?”

Two hundred years ago, I have
. But saying that aloud would open up a conversation she couldn’t have with him. Instead, she moved around to where he was standing. “I’ll drive.”

Laszlo looked like he wanted to argue the point, so she rested her hand on his arm. “You can do all the fancy flying. You already have. But I can drive this and you can’t. Leave this bit up to me.”

He moved away from the door, letting her through. “Hell, it will probably break down a hundred meters down the road, anyway.”

“It won’t,” Mariana assured him and wrestled open the door. It slid aside with a squeal of raw metal on metal, making her wince. “Hop in,” she told Laszlo. “We’re going home.”

French Guiana, 2265 A.D.

The engine took coaxing, but it finally started with a roar and a cough of black exhaust that made Laszlo hiss.

“It’ll settle down once it warms up,” Mariana told him and dropped the car into gear. She waved at the guard, who was watching her with a scowl on his face. Mathieu had probably counted on neither of them being able to drive the car. They would have been forced to bargain with him again for a driver or a more modern vehicle. She laughed and deliberately took off hard and fast, spraying dirt and billowing fumes.

There was only one track. Mathieu had assured them it would reach the east-west road that would take them back to the highway. Once on the highway, they merely had to turn south and keep going, for the highway would take them all the way to Macapá.

Mariana settled into steering the car down the bumpy, wildly overgrown track. She kept it in low gear, not rushing it. It had been well over a year on her subjective timeline since she had driven one of these, although the skill was coming back in a rush.

“You’re a woman of very unexpected talents and depths, aren’t you?” Laszlo said.

She glanced at him. He was turned on the seat to face her, his back against the door. The dashboard had few working dials or lights, so he was a dark shadow against dimly-lit jungle on that side of the track. There was only one working headlight, too.

“Make sure that door is locked if you’re going to lean against it that way,” she told him. “It might not hold your weight, otherwise.”

“You don’t get to change subjects now. There’s no one around to hear but me. Will you tell me what happened with the account? How did we pay Mathieu?”

“We haven’t. Not yet.”

“Yet you said we went to a great deal of trouble to do so. Not that I recall doing any such thing.”

“You will.” She frowned. “That’s the problem with playing around with time. There’s no language you can use that adequately describes it.”

“Wait…
time
?” He gave a soft exhalation. “Of course, of
course
. Time travel. Your agency’s specialty. We went—we
will
—go back far enough in time and do something so the money arrived in Mathieu’s account.
That
’s why you wanted the exact time.”

Mariana nodded. “It might not be us who goes back. But the money arrived in the account at the exact right moment, which tells me that
someone
did—someone in our future at this point in time.” She glanced at him. “I can scrape up almost half of the five hundred thousand, if you don’t mind providing the rest?” She had a robust savings account since she rarely spent the money the agency paid her. Everything she needed was right there at the villa.

“Don’t be stupid,” Laszlo said. “You’re a working girl. Half the ransom would cripple you. Of course I’ll pay it all. I owe you that much for getting us out of this jam.”

Mariana smiled at his description. It had been a long time since anyone had called her a girl and even longer since she had stopped thinking of herself as one. “Thank you for the offer. But if you don’t mind, I don’t want to feel I owe you anything.”

He stayed silent. Mariana listened to the sound of the wind whipping past them through the broken window. She could hear the jungle, live and busy.

“You really must think I’m a monster.”

“No, that’s not it—” she began, uncomfortable.

“Why
did
you agree to come out with me, if you think so little of me?”

Mariana recognized the position she was in, from watching Nayara and Ryan maneuver through political discussions strewn with verbal landmines. Nothing but truth was going to do, now. She sighed. “I was so flattered you asked me, of all the women in the world you could have asked, I couldn’t resist saying yes. I’m not your….usual type.”

“And now that any hope of having a quiet romantic evening has blown itself completely out of the sky and you’re stuck with a Lothario as a companion in this adventure you’re in, you’re wishing it was someone with a more sterling character?”

“No,” she said flatly. “That, you most definitely have wrong. I
did
want to find out why you have such a way with so many beautiful women. That part is true. I just….I don’t know why you asked
me
.”

“You distrust my motives,” he finished softly.

Truth
, she reminded herself. “I’m sorry, but yes. It’s a horrible thing to believe that someone has an ulterior motive, but I just can’t see how asking me out has anything to do with wanting to know me better. I’m afraid your reputation is making me very biased.”

He was silent for much longer, this time.

“That’s why I want to pay my half,” she added, after the silence stretched on too long.

Again, he didn’t rush to respond. She couldn’t see his face. It was too dark. So she couldn’t tell if he was angry, or what his reaction was. Cáel Stelios was fond of saying that truth-telling was a delicate and dangerous thing. Mariana was learning that first hand.

When Laszlo did answer, his voice was low. “Very well,” he said, his tone even and perhaps even a little amused. “I will let you pay your half.”

“Thank you.” Relief touched her. He had taken it well, in the end. He must surely be aware of his public persona and what most of the world thought about him. He had access to the same nets she did.

Then he startled her by sliding along the bench seat until he was very close to her. She drew in a quick breath as he picked up stray locks of hair that had escaped the rough knot she had pinned it into and pushed them behind her ear. It was a gentle movement.

“You underestimate how strong and interesting a person you are,” he said. “You always have. We’re going to have to work on changing that. Just give me a chance to prove it to you. Will you do that?”

Her heart was stuttering. Her breath evaporated. He was so close she could feel the heat of his body radiating against her flank. It made it suddenly hard to think properly. “I....” She cleared her throat and started again. “You don’t want to prove how nice a person you are, instead? Wouldn’t that make more sense?

“I already know myself.” His voice held a touch of dryness. “I want you to know
you
. The real you. Then you’ll be able to see me properly, without all the filters and gossip skewing the picture.”

Mariana glanced at him. “Public perception is skewed about you, huh? There’s a surprise. The neural nets are usually
so
accurate.”

“Ouch. That sounds bitter. Who took a cyber-bite out of you?”

Mariana sighed. “Old experience, best forgotten,” she told him. “A while ago, my entire social life and…actually, make that
all
my life, except for the attentions of a single cat who didn’t like me…everything came from the nets.” She grimaced. “Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“It’s better than being lonely,” Laszlo said.

“I embraced it,” Mariana said frankly. “Anyone’s life seemed far more interesting than my own. I ended up coordinating a…” Could she confess this? It was more than pathetic. “…A vampire fan group. One of the biggest in the world. That’s how I ended up working for the Agency.”

“You wrote that book, didn’t you? The one about the CEO and the President.”

Mariana shrugged. “They wanted someone who understood vampires and would write about them with empathy. I fit the bill, although they came behind me and cleaned up everything before it was published.”

“Publishers do that with every book ever written. You’re still the author.” He shifted away from her and she let out her breath. “So, you like vampires. A lot.”

“Actually, I have a hard time remembering they’re vampire at all, now,” Mariana confessed. “They’re just a group of some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.”

“I can see that. Justin, the consultant organizing my tour, caught my attention and I’d only known him a few minutes. Are they all like him?”

“They’re all different from each other, like night is different from day,” Mariana said. “Each of them is so highly individual. It has to come from living so long, I suppose. There are very few humans I’ve met who are like them and the humans who are have usually lived a long and very full life.”

“I’m beginning to see why you look at me sideways like you do. I’ve only been around for a mere forty-plus years. I must seem very superficial to you compared to them.”

Mariana shook her head. “I don’t think like that about humans, either. I don’t compare. We’re different from vampires, that’s all.”

“And she answers in the general when I spoke in the specific.” He gave a dry laugh. “I can see I’ve got a long way to go to impress you with my better qualities.”

There was nothing she could say that would amend his impression, for it was true. He had inherited his money and he did nothing with it, except live a fast life that entertained millions of net users and kept divorce lawyers busy. It was the most clichéd life she had ever come across.

“Why is it so important I get to know your better qualities?” she asked.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

“For what?”

“For believing I have better qualities in the first place.”

“My question still stands.”

“Ask me again in three weeks’ time. I’ll answer truthfully, then.”

“Aren’t you making a huge assumption?” Mariana asked. “What makes you think we’re still going to be talking to each other in three weeks’ time?”

“If we
are
still talking, then in three weeks’ time you can ask me that, too.” He moved back to leaning against the door and let silence settle over them once more.

It was a warmer and friendlier silence than before. He had given her plenty to think about and Mariana didn’t mind being alone with her thoughts like so many humans did. Proper thinking always led to interesting insights.

Forty-five minutes later, they reached the highway, the single strip of old tarmac tunneling through the wilderness, green growing things arching over it. Through the thin strip of night sky above, Mariana could see the moon, down low toward the horizon. “It’s getting late,” she murmured and turned the car onto the highway and changed up through the gears to a moderate cruising speed. The gas tank indicator was broken, of course, but that was a worry she kept to herself for there was nothing they could do about it. Gasoline was next to impossible to get and from the way the car was running, she suspected the gasoline in it was bootleg and full of impurities.