They sat in silence, in trepidation, and then they heard the security key turn in the cabin door and saw Ali Fitzgerald walk through, her face white and pale. The very appearance of her made the knot in Seabright's stomach turn on itself once more until this tangle of pain in his gut was rock-hard, icy and immobile.
'We've got a medical out there,' she said, and Seabright could see how close she was to real panic. 'It's a bad one, sir, and I already asked. There's not a doctor on the plane.'
Seabright stared hard at his first officer, checked the panel and made sure nothing else was blinking there except the one errant amber light on the main gear.
'You okay on your own, Jimmy? Don't just say yes. Think about this. I don't want more than one emergency on my ship.'
Mulligan thought before he answered; he knew the old man would demand that.
'I'll be fine. Best leave the door unlocked anyway.'
'Yes,' Seabright said, then unstrapped the shoulder harness, pulled himself out of the left-hand seat, and followed the stewardess to the door, held it half-closed, not letting her through.
'Sir?' She looked into his face, not understanding, not far from the edge, he thought, not far at all.
'Ali,' he said, as quietly, as gently as he could. 'Your shirt. You need to change it. You need to put a jacket on. Something. You can't go back through the cabin like that.'
She looked at herself, at the broad red bloodstain that marked the entire front of her white blouse, down onto her skirt, marked her skin too, around her neck, where she'd held the man's head, trying to do something, trying to do anything.
'No, sir,' she said, then waited for him to open the door, stepped behind the bulkhead that separated them from the first-class cabin, and pulled out a clothes carrier. It happened so quickly he scarcely had time to tear his eyes away. She tore off the blouse, then the skirt, washed her neck and forearms rapidly with a damp Kleenex and a bottle of Malvern water, and put on the dirty uniform she was carrying back from the outward journey.
'He's in business, sir. We've got the medical kit.'
'Good,' Seabright answered, and watched her step in front of him, turn in to the first-class cabin, smooth down her dress, start to do her job.
He followed her down the aisle, felt the eyes on him, the tension in the seats, and thought to himself that Jimmy Mulligan could do a lot worse. A hell of a lot worse if he wanted to.
CHAPTER 2
Sunrise
It was pushing four in the morning in the white-walled bed-room-cum-office on the first floor of the Mallorcan mansion. Somewhere else in the great airy country house people were beginning to stir. The computer screen burned a luminescent grey. The whispery haze of dawn came in through the window. It was a little cold just then, but the latent heat of the previous day, so hot it left him thinking he had never escaped Morocco, made the room smell damp.
'Michael?'
Sara Wong looked at Lieberman from the screen, her picture jerking a little with the slow frame rate, but not so much that he couldn't see something was going on there, something to do with concern and affection and other emotions he preferred not to think about too directly.
For a while, there had been little in his thoughts except this serene Chinese face gazing back at him from the other side of the world. Then the great domestic earthquake had struck, and the walls came tumbling down around their lives.
'We ought to get on with this,' she said, her voice a little tinny down the line. 'NASA or somebody else is paying a fortune for this direct satellite uplink. They may get a little cross if they find we're just staring at each other like a couple of tongue-tied kids.'
'Yeah,' Lieberman said, grinning. 'This is a hell of a long way to come to find your ex-wife staring back at you from the PC.’
'Strange for me too,' she said. 'Now we've got that out of the way, can we get on to something real?'
Lieberman lazily ran his fingers over his head, twisting his thick black curly hair.
'I told you,' Sara said from the screen. 'So many times. One day it will just fall out.'
He blinked, uncomprehending, then jerked his hand away from his scalp like a guilty kid. Sara had a way of mothering you, even after all these years separated.
'So what time is it in Lone Wolf?' he asked.
She looked really nice tonight. Just a plain white shirt, two buttons open at the neck, and her skin a pleasant shade of brown on the screen.
'You can count, Michael. You know what time it is.'
'Let me guess. Nine hours back from this bustling corner of civilization makes it… six fifty-two in California.'
She leaned forward, touched something on the keyboard that was out of sight of the camera perched on top of her monitor, and two analogue clocks appeared on his screen, one marked Lone Wolf Observatory, Los Altos, Northern California, the other Mallorca, off the north-eastern Mediterranean coast of Spain, the first with the hands at 6:54 pm, the second nine hours later.
'So.' She smiled. 'Tell me about the people. How are they?'
'Okay. Not that we've talked much.'
'You know anyone?'
He shook his head, and six thousand miles away in Lone Wolf Observatory, Sara Wong watched the intelligent tanned face move in the faint grey light of the monitor. Michael had always reminded her of some myopic bird of prey, trying to focus on the horizon, wondering whether to stretch his wings and fly or just stay motionless on the tree, doubtful if he could make the kill if he found it.
'Only one, and that's by reputation alone. The show's being run by that Cambridge guy, Bennett.'
'Simon Bennett?' She looked excited. 'He did the paper on planetary tides and… what was it? Heliocentric syzygies.'
'Yeah. I'd do that too if I thought I could pronounce it after a few drinks.'
Sara frowned. 'That's an educated attitude.'
'Sorry.' He did his best to look contrite.
'And the rest?' she asked.
'They seem friendly enough.'
'Work on it, Michael. You could use some contacts.'
'Thanks. I'll bear that in mind. Your tan looks great.'
He meant that. He really did.
'Yours too. Not that sunbathing is recommended these days.'
He stopped for a moment, wondered whether to say it, did anyway. 'It's still that hot there, huh?'
She nodded, and, for once, he couldn't read her expression.
'Been pushing a hundred for three weeks now. You need to keep out of it. There's people getting burned, talk of a skin cancer scare. The TV people say maybe it's El Nino, or just some kind of new level of instability in the weather system. Or maybe this little galactic ballet that's on the way. I don't know. The National Enquirer certainly seems to be making hay with it. Myself, I think we should be taking it more seriously.'
'Yeah.'
'And there?'
He really didn't know how to answer that one. 'Be fair. I only just turned up.'
'Right,' she said, and he could almost imagine there was something hard and grim in her voice, a wisp of anger because of the way he was avoiding the question. 'But what's it like now, Michael?'
'It falls at night. You'd expect that. But from the little I've seen and what people tell me, during the day it's hot, dry, and sunny with no letup. I don't smoke any more, you'll be glad to hear that. But if I did I wouldn't dream of lighting up around here. One match out that window and this whole damn island would be on fire. It's like walking on tinder. Just dry grass, dead trees, people wondering when the rain's going to come and clear the dust from their throats. There are pictures of this place when it was a farm. It should be green and fertile. Instead, it's just dry and desiccated.'