She glared at him, long-lashed eyes narrowed, two little, vertical, white lines beside her lips. He was reminded of one of their discussions about the Islamic concept of God. Allah, she said, displayed two aspects, Jamali and Jalali, the former being beautiful and gentle, the latter powerful, harsh, and violent. Like each of Allah’s creatures, Jameela Husaini displayed both of these aspects, too, and her Jalali manifestation was truly a terror to behold!
She snapped, “Mercenary work!”
It wasn’t a question, but he grunted, “Yes.”
“You just go… kill people, shoot people… fight. No reason except money. No principle. No… no—”
“Ethics? We meres… soldiers… have ethics. Sometimes they’re different from those of the folks back home “
“No feelings! A… a robot with a gun!” Tears welled up, and she fiercely scoured them away. “Stay here, Alan. My father is a high officer in our CID. He’ll protect you. He’s what protects Indoco.”
That confirmed one of Wrench’s more devious suspicions. Jameela Husaini had been planted in Indoco as a spy, to keep an eye on the foreigners. Her father probably had not ordered her to start an affair with Lessing, however. The Soviets and some Western intelligence agencies might do that sort of thing, but it would violate too many taboos for an Indian father to ask that from a daughter, even in the interests of national security.
“I don ‘t need protecting. I ‘m going on a trip to see an old friend.”
How devious one could be and still speak the truth! He would not tell Jameela about Mulder’s Nazi machinations or about Pacov. Either might get her thumbed. As far as he knew, too, she had no connection with Bauer; at least she hadn’t gone up to Balrampur Hospital in Lucknow to see him, according to Kuldeep, the driver.
“Stay with me. I… want you.” It was the nearest she had ever come to saying “I love you” out loud.
He went to her.
Memories. Lips, breasts, nipples, soft skin, smooth thighs, fingers sliding and grasping and caressing, heavy tresses upon his breast, perfumed serpents coiling in the dark.
Orgasm, thunderous, rhythmic, and savage, as close to the raw animal as a human being can get.
But was it “love”?
He shook his head, ran fingertips through his hair. Jameela knew him better than he knew himself. It was so hard to feel, so impossible to speak. Others could say “love” as glibly as they said “hello.” Not Alan Lessing. Others instinctively sensed a “right” and a “wrong,” although that was perhaps cultural and not some internal, universal voice of conscience, a God who just coincidentally happened to have all the values of a twenty-first century, middle-class, American WASP from Iowa. Others had something to live by, even when it was demonstrably stupid. Even Mulder and Liese and Mrs. Delacroix stuck to their principles, although the rest of the world might despise them for it.
He looked inside himself, as he often had done when he was a child, then later as an adolescent, and still later when he had faced death in a half-dozen unmemorable countries. He looked within… and discovered the same, old jumble of half-formed ideas, feelings, sensations, facts, fancies, memories — an attic full of junk he could neither use nor throw away.
Was everybody like this? Jameela and Liese and the rest seemed so certain of themselves. Were they as confused inside? Were they too, unable to speak, souls imprisoned in statues with hps of stone?
God damn it.
Or had God already damned him?
The telephone purred. Monsieur Copley would see him now. The squat, little “dodgem” taxi let him off in Rue Madeleine Michelis in Neuilly. He checked carefully for pursuers but saw no one Copley had a flat in one of the nicer buildings the French government had built after the labor riots of 2035. Lessing found “511-COPLEY” beside a button on the directory board in the glossy, plastic-panelled lobby. He pressed, received an answering buzz, and entered the elevator beyond. It was undoubtedly fitted with a spy-eye, and there would be more along the white, antiseptic corridor that led to number 511. Copley was a cautious man.
The blank outer door opened upon desks, secretaries, computers, filing cabinets, molded Paradox chairs, and a coffee table heaped with magazines. The place looked like a dentist’s waiting room. Three swarthy men, Arabs or Iranians, occupied seats along the left wall, and a single youngish European with a scraggly, blonde beard sat by himself on the right. Lessing tossed his jacket onto a chair, sat down next to the blonde man, and waited. It was a full half hour before the plump French receptionist called Lessing’s name.
Colonel Terence B. Copley, U.S. Army, retired, rose from behind a paper-cluttered desk and stuck out a hand. He hailed from Alabama, a red-haired, bony, freckled, barrel-shaped man m his forties, with eyes as sharp — and, oddly, as leaden — as two splinters of shrapnel. His short-sleeved shirt and Parisian string-tie gave him a raffish, slightly silly look. He would have been more at home m a jogging suit and running shoes, a high school gym teacher who had gone astray and ended up in far-off Paris.
Lessing glanced around. The room was painted a bland off-white, its wall-to-wall carpet a neutral beige. The desk that sat squarely in the center of the floor was a bad copy of an ugly original, the chairs the sort that businesses rented by the month. Thick, velvety, dark-green drapes mostly covered the long window on the western side. The only decoration consisted of a display of antique weapons on the wall behind Copley’s balding skulclass="underline" a lethal-looking old Heckler and Koch submachine gun, worth a couple of months of Lessing s salary, an Uzi, and one of the Ingram models, all three gleaming a menacing gold and black in the sunlight that crept in through a gap in the drapes. These weapons would be deactivated, the ready stuff stored elsewhere. Copley’s real protection would consist of stitch-guns concealed in the wall, probably a pistol under a pile of papers on the desk, and armed assistants within call. The colonel was paranoid enough to have bulletproof glass, poison gas, and a trap-door over an oubliette filled with spikes, but there were limits.
“Get down and kiss my hairy ass, recruit!” Copley chortled.
“And up yours with an umbrella, sir!” Lessing had served under this man in Angola. They had been friends, then.
“Wait’ll you get it in before you open it!” Copley bellowed merrily in return. He waved at the one chair before his desk. “What canldoy’all?”
Lessing took the indicated scat, feeling the beady muzzles of the hidden stitch-guns upon his back. He cleared his throat. “I’m pressed for time.”
“No drink?”
“No, thanks. Gave it up. India does that.” And Jameela had helped. An occasional cold beer was all he wanted these days. “So what do I do ya?” “Answer questions. Urgent ones.”
“Try me.” Copley poured himself a glass of something brown and pungent from a bottle behind his in-basket. “People say I’m thumbing. That so?”
The other’s blunt, ruddy face went shut, as though a book had been closed.
“Jesus, you do like it short and sweet!” The glass made a wet ring on the desk, and Copley rubbed at it ineffectually. He scrutinized Lessing’s face quizzically. “All right. So I’ve heard. Rumors… shit-talk.”
“It’s not true.”
“Nobody showed me no dead bodies. I never believed it. Man, you know me.”
“What did you hear?”
“Only that your squad was dying off too fast to blame on old age. Hjellming dead, Hollister popped at in Copenhagen… not like you to miss the bastard, Alan, if you are thumbing. You always was a good shot. Felix Bauer’s disappeared. Rose Thurley’s the only one still walking around, and people say that’s because you and her had something going.” He put on a lascivious little smile. “Not much for looks, but real expert, as many a regiment of satisfied sojer-boys can attest.”