by Dean Ing
Besides, it made him feel exultant whenever he managed to manipulate Kosrow Nurbashi. Smiling to himself, Winthorp sat up and levered the chair’s tray-sized desk module into place before him. He ran a code tape through his memocomp and then began to punch a Michigan area code into his phone.
FOURTEEN
Holding a grocery sack in each arm, Wes followed Vangie Broussard into the kitchen of her condo with a twinge of delicious guilt he might never outgrow. Across the pass-through, he admired her high-ceilinged living room made somehow mysterious by its hanging planters with lush foliage. The summer dusk flung a splash of subtle color through big windows, washing the room in gold. Magazines neatly stacked, couch and chairs nicely matched, a budgeted elegance: a Vangie room. “I like it,” he murmured, helping her sort the groceries.
“You’ll have a while to poke around in it,” she replied; “jambalaya from scratch takes time. Now shoo, scat! I need elbow room for this,” she added, softening her gentle push with a smile.
He scatted, kneeling to inspect her record albums: Les Baxter, Maysa, vintage Brazil 66, Almeida guitar. Not too esoteric, but lush, tropical: Vangie music. Wes moved near the windows and stood beside long drapes to scan the scene below. “Those buildings with the manicured lawns,” he said, “Mills College?”
“That’s right,” said Vangie, pausing to study the way he held that drape aside. “Don’t tell me you’re a wanted man on the campus.”
He turned away, chuckling. “Not that I know of. Just a feeling I’ve had, this past week. Ever get the sensation of being watched?”
“When I don’t, I’ll know I’m slipping,” she said. “You have that little whittler on you, the one Boff claims you fix dirigibles with?”
“I’m not worried about getting mugged, if that’s what you - ”
‘ ‘What are you talking about, Wes? I just decided you could stand across the pass-through and dice the celery and peppers for me, if you have a knife sharper than my cutlery. I never got the knack of sharpening a knife.”
He pulled the scarred old article from his pocket, grinning foolishly, and drew a cutting board to him. He took the vegetables from her, noting her quizzical half-smile. “What’s wrong?”
“I do believe you’re afraid somebody will spot you here, Wesley Peel. And I’m not sure whether I’m flattered or declasse.” She resumed operating on the shrimp, with the adroitness of long practice, and her expression was not far from a frown.
“Why do women always infer the wrong things from a man’s behavior?”
She arched one brow. “You mean, why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
“Vive /’ difference," he said in his best Albuquerque French. “I meant that my jitters aren’t on your account. For that matter, it was you who claimed we ought to keep our winks and nudges out of sight at the plant. I agree, by the way.” He paused, gestured with the knife toward her big windows. “But you’re right about one thing: I feel . . . spotted. Not here especially, and not because of you.”
He was gratified to see Vangie’s frown lines disappear as they proceeded with their tasks. It was no wonder he felt watched, said Vangie, with all the media attention he was getting. In the weeks since Delta One’s notoriety io Arizona, he’d given interviews to Aviation Week, the U. S. Naval Institute, the Wall Street Journal, and to his utter astonishment, People magazine. He agreed without much conviction that perhaps this was the source of his uneasiness, then set to work sharpening her kitchen knives as Vangie busied herself over the jambalaya. From time to time he studied the graceful lines of Vangie’s throat, the curve of her insteps, the swell of her hips - and managed to nick himself, which robbed him of the erection he’d been kindling just for practice.
“Penny for your thoughts,” said Vangie as she handed him a corkscrew for the burgundy, and could not understand why Wes burst out laughing as he glanced at the implement.
“Thinking about the maglev trials,” he lied. “With a little luck, we’re going to have a lot of folks absolutely homswog-gled. You know about the canards we’re fitting on the maintenance unit in Barstow?”
She looked at him sharply, then gave a noncommittal shrug. “I know it’s supposed to be a big secret. Don’t ask me why.” He explained, holding nothing back. If he couldn’t share company secrets with the woman who kept the place shipshape . . . “We’re not sure how fast she’ll go ultimately,” he finished. “Front end drag and instability is why maglevs can’t go faster, and the cure is to borrow from the agile aircraft programs. We let a computer operate those titanium canards, and - well, we’ll got-damn’ well fly the sucker. No human being could do it, not even Glenn Rogan.”
“I’ll bet he thinks he can,” she said darkly.
“You don’t like him any better than Tom Schultheis does,” Wes observed, “but for my sake, be nice to him. He’s okay, Vangie; he won’t spit on your shoes.”
“He won’t get close enough,” she replied.
“Tell you what. Dance with him just once, at the party. You might even like him.”
“What party?”
“Big blowout at my place, after the Mojave trials. Catering, a clown to keep everybody’s kids from under - you know. You’d better know, I’ll send fifty invitations and I’ll probably have my, um, executive assistant take care of the details on company time. It’s business. Some press people, a few from the Department of Transportation.”
“That gives me, what, fifteen days? Thanks for not telling me during die trials, ten days from now. Lordy, the things I do to further my career,” she sighed, and he saw she was teasing.
Now Vangie was ladling rich, steam-clouded masses of spicy yellow rice and creole stew together, and Wes helped her place everything on her transparent glass tabletop. She whisked her apron off, tossed it aside, then skipped toward her bedroom with a “Just a sec.” It was nearly full dark now, and from the shadowed bedroom she called, “Changing into my hotsy-totsies, dear. Hope you won’t mind.”
It took more than a sec, but it also took his breath away. He turned with his hands on the back of her chair, inhaled, and held it, suddenly dry-mouthed. He had seen those flesh-tan sling pumps before, but not matched to stockings of exacdy the shade to make it seem as if those delicate spike heels were extensions of Vangie’s legs. He had seen the yellow scarf, too, but now Vangie was tying it at her waist, accentuating the swoop of the short skirt of natural suede which ended above her knees. He had certainly never seen that blouse before, gleaming silky golden with its high collar to frame her throat and some of its buttons left enticingly unfastened. And after three evenings of lovemaking at his place, he knew that Vangie Broussard’s legs were stunning. But he had never seen all of Vangie’s charms framed with such . . . well. . . lecherous intent.
She made her expression innocent, trying not to laugh, her hands out as if she were holding a watermelon to him, then performed a perfect pirouette. “Shall we dine, suh?”
Deciding that leotards were sexless by comparison, he said, “I think I may be full already.”
“You’re getting there,” she murmured, with the briefest of glances at his tumescence. “But mama always taught me not to play at the table, so watch yoah mannuhs.”
That primly proper delivery of hers, he thought, somehow heightened his desire. And she got-damn’ well knew it. “If you don’t sit down in this chair, I may have my dessert right here on the floor. ”
“Good heavens,” shegiggled. “I hadn’t even thought about dessert.”
“The hell you haven’t,” he growled. “Sit.”
She did, with a propriety that had to be exaggerated, the long hair loose, brushing his cheek as she pivoted in front of her chair. Laughter bubbled just beneath Vangie’s surface, not at Wes, but with him. He backed to his side of the table, looking her over with frank ambition, fumbling with his chair, then sitting. “The wine, the sourdough, butter, napkins,” she recited, checking the table. “Is everything here?”
“A couple too many,” he admitting,
smirking.
“What’s wrong?”
‘ ‘These placemats. ”
“They’re my favorites,” Vangie pouted.
“They obscure my view through the glass,” he said, and leered as she removed her placemat. “I think it’s the color of those pantyhose that makes it perfect.”
“These are not pantyhose, as you may just possibly verify by-and-by,” she said. “And you dassn’t drop your napkin if you’re a gentleman, suh. Will you pour now?”
“If I’m not very careful, yes,” he said, making her whoop with merriment as he reached for the wine. Burgundy had been a good choice, he decided; anything less full-bodied would have been inappropriate for jambalaya - and for Vangie Broussard.
* * * *
Zahra Aram, a darkly attractive young woman with a narrow chin and nervous hands, kept her sunglasses on, and the floppy hat that hid most of her face, until dark. She found it necessary to cruise repeatedly past the ranked condominiums until she found the right parking space. Zahra had found one spot for the Toyota panel van earlier, and spent ten minutes verifying that an E. Broussard occupied the front-facing, third-floor condo, the same one that lit up two minutes after Peel entered the structure. But because a broad-leaved sycamore spread its foliage between her van and those high windows, she had to abandon that position. A microlaser audio pickup yields only frustration when leaves are constantly moving into the beam.
Zahra saw that she could hold an unimpeded line of sight from this new position, locked the van, and moved into its cargo compartment. She cranked up the ceiling hatch a necessary three inches, working in near darkness with only a red six-watt bulb to help her position the beam transceiver. She had learned to use the equipment in Dearborn with reluctance, and only because Golam Razmara demanded it, but the truth was that Zahra was beginning to love this work. It was a truth she would not have shared with Golam because, she knew, like many men from the Middle East, Golam treated a woman more like an equal when he wanted something she did not want to give. Zahra’s tactics, perforce, were those of an oldfashioned girl.
Zahra would be a fool to tell Golam how she became aroused, listening to the intimate conversations of a man she had never met, would doubtless never meet. She had managed it first in a rented Ford parked off Crow Canyon Road. She had found no way to do it on Peel Transit property, but by now Zahra knew a few things about the relationship between John Wesley Peel and the leggy Broussard woman, a statuesque creature who could have passed for an Iranian herself. Zahra did not have to monitor the audio pickup constantly because the cassette machine recorded everything, and those cassettes would soon be in Dearborn, Michigan, by express mail. No, Zahra Aram used the headphones because she liked listening. She liked it so much, she felt a moistness between her legs when she did it. And presently, aiming the wire-thin beam against an unobtrusive corner of a big window, she was doing it again.
Zahra needed some time to conclude that the drapes and a stack of pillows were damping a dinner conversation to audio mush. The cassette dutifully recorded that mush, but Zahra was betting that she herself enjoyed the experience more than Golam would - Golam and his friends, and another man she had never met, one who gave her gooseflesh merely from the way Golam spoke of him. A Shiite herself, Zahra knew that religious leanings came in all weights, from gossamer to very, very heavy. Golam himself, she felt, lacked the fiery zeal of a few of his friends; and in this delusion, Zahra took comfort.
In a way, Zahra felt it was too bad she would never meet this Peel fellow; but in every way she was satisfied that Golam did not intend her to meet that crazy mullah, Kosrow Nurbashi.
* * * *
Wes allowed himself two medium helpings, taking more wine than he might have as an antidote for the cayenne in that wondrous jambalaya. He refused a third, leaning back, patting his stomach and trying to avoid looking down through that glass tabletop because looking tended to make his fingers tremble. “Just let me digest awhile,” he explained; “maybe listen to a record.”
“I have a speaker setup in the bedroom,” she said.
“This woman is trying to destroy me! Nothing would suit me better, Vangie, but you’ve stuffed me like a turkey. Remember, you never go swimming for an hour after a heavy meal?” She nodded. “That goes for beddy-bye, too. I mean, uh, what if I got a cramp at the wrong moment?”
“That might depend on where you got it,” she said, and sipped demurely.
“Shameless hussy.”
“In the dining room, no; I hate a messy carpet. In the bedroom - yes,” she agreed happily.
“In the bedroom you won’t be blushing?”
“I might, but you won’t care,” she promised.
“I’ve just realized a great truth: Provocation is the enemy of digestion,” he said.
Vangie laughed then, and pointed a finger at him as she arose. “I’ll bet you didn’t know what I play. Musically, I mean,” she added, and retrieved an astonishing device from her coat closet. He was captivated instantly.
Wes had never heard of a National guitar, a huge instrument not of wood, but of metal plated with pure nickel. In a less subdued light, he realized, the damned thing’s mirror sheen would send you groping for sunglasses. He was further amazed to learn that it was over sixty years old, heavy as an armload of hymnbooks, a piece of technology far ahead of its time. Under Vangie’s fingers the thing resounded wonderfully with no amplifier but the thin cone of spun aluminum inside. Vangie’s percussive effects, he decided, would have literally shredded a wooden guitar. Lounging on her couch, listening to her renditions of some familiar pieces with “Joie Blon” for lag-niappe, Wes found it almost possible to ignore the nearness of those long trained legs, one foot tapping daintily to the rhythms of Cajun and Bossa Nova music.
And then she caught him gazing at her with distinctly unmusical intent, and asked, “Any requests, big fella?”
He stood up; reached a hand out, not caring that it trembled. “Yes, let’s see how the bedroom speakers sound.”
Vangie purred that they could make their own music. They moved slowly into her big-windowed bedroom hand in hand, chuckling together, Vangie’s head on Wes’s shoulder as lovers stroll through a park, and Vangie snapped on a night-light
because, as she had told him at his place, when engaged in serious affairs, a woman wants to see what she’s doing.
Once, when she had tossed his shirt from the bed and he was kissing away the imprint of a frilled garter - for those stockings were certainly not pantyhose - he wondered aloud why Vangie had chosen to be so much more daring on this night.
“I suppose because I’m at home here,” she whispered, loosening his belt. “Or maybe I’m just changeable.”
“I love it,” he whispered back, proving it with his hands and his mouth, her musician’s fingers massaging his scalp strongly, urgently. Neither of them noticed the tiny beam that eventually moved to the comer of one bedroom window, and perhaps neither would have cared much. They spoke little in any case, for the next half hour, although Vangie cried out twice during that time.
Eventually, as they lay with fingertips touching, their breathing normal again, Wes studied her face in the dim light. Amazing, he thought, that each curve of her lips and chin could be precisely expressed in equations, yet their sum remained inexpressible. All the equations on earth could not break a man’s heart with loveliness. She saw his smile lift the comers of his mouth and turned her head slightly, closing her eyes.
And something about that movement, and the faint play of tiny muscles in her face, was deeply disturbing. “Problem?”
“No problem,” she said, and made herself smile.
“Liar,” he said gently.
Now she was regarding him again, seriously. “Certainly no problem with us tonight,” she insisted. “Believe that, my dear. Whatever may happen in the future.”
“No problem except guilt, maybe?” He saw the instant flicker of . . . something; admission? sadness? ... in her eyes, which she quickly
forced away, and he continued, “That’s my line, Vangie. Early teaching, but I seem to have overcome it.”
“All right, Wes, guilt. Please, let me deal with it.” She lifted a languid arm; traced the heavy vein up his forearm with a fingertip caress. Then she deflected his thoughts with, “Now tell me more about that whopper of a party you’re going to toss. And do you still toss it if the maglev trials are disappointing?”
It was, he reflected, the damnedest setting for shoptalk he could imagine. And it did not last longer than it took Vangie to brush all the tangles from that ebony mass of hair, and to bring tiny aperitif glasses full of Drambuie into the bedroom, and by her outrageous applications of drops of liqueur here and there, each of which needed to be licked away.
But the shoptalk did last long enough for Zahra Aram, fifty yards away in a sweltering panel van, to become moist with her secret success. The tape cassettes, in their own way, were a smashing success back in Michigan.
FIFTEEN
“You’ve got a strong sense of the spectacular, Mr. Peel,” said Patrick Sage, marketing exec of Santa Fe Industries, nodding toward the lancelike maglev a hundred yards away. “Maybe even overdeveloped.” His delivery matched the morning air of the Mojave, dry and cool. The two men watched as the maglev unit, slung beneath Delta One, settled evenly between energized rails outside the Barstow maintenance hangar.
“She only weighs fifty tons. Why take two days to piggyback her out here by rail when we can do it in two hours?” Wes said it loud enough to be overheard by the handful of
Santa Fe men, all properly suited for a boardroom, all looking very much out of place here on the cutting edge of a bone-dry desert in mid-July. Pat Sage moved and gestured like a handball yuppie but had the squint lines of a more seasoned man. Wes made a private guess that Sage would be driven out of that suit coat and tie before lunch.
But Pat Sage was not all that conservative in his ideas. “Five years from now, maybe we’ll have a maglev spur from Hayward. Beat your time with that gasbag,” he said slyly, watching Wes for a reaction.