Why the hell not? Mo nods and accepts the sample, smiles, idly rubs a smear of it on her wrist to check the color, and moves on before the woman can deliver her sales spiel. Okay, the hotel next. That'll do. As she walks through the door the Saint Martin climate clamps down on her like a warm, wet blanket, coating her in sweat. Abruptly, she's grateful for the hat and the sundress Wardrobe Department insisted she wear. It's not her style at all, but her usual jeans and blouse would be ... Hell, call me the Wicked Witch of the West and have done with it. She fans herself with the hat as she walks over to the taxi queue. What a mess.
"Where to, ma'am?" asks the taxi driver. He's pegged her for a tourist, probably American; he doesn't bother to get out and help her with the suitcase.
"Maho Beach Hotel, if you don't mind." She glances at him in the mirror: he's got crow's-feet around prematurely aged eyes, hair the color of damp newsprint.
"Okay. Twenty euros."
"Got it."
He starts the engine. Mo leans back and closes her eyes.
She doesn't let her fingers stray from the violin case, but to a casual onlooker she could be snoozing off a case of jet lag. In fact, when she's not keeping a surreptitious eye open for tails, she's working her way down a checklist she's already committed to memory. Let's see. Check in, phone home for a Sitrep, confirm Alan's on site, then ... a guilty frisson: off the roadmap.
Find Bob. If necessary, find this Ramona person. Make sure Bob's safe. Then figure out how to get him disentangled before it sucks him in too deep ...
Anxiety keeps her awake every meter of the way to the hotel drags her tired ass to the front desk for checkin: "Mrs. Hudson? Your husband checked in this morning. He said you'd be arriving and to leave you a key to your suite." The receptionist smiles mechanically. "Have a nice stay!"
Husband? Mo blinks and nods, making thankful sounds on autopilot. "Which room is he in?"
"You're in 412. Elevators are left past the fountain."
She rides the elevator upstairs in thoughtful silence.
Husband? It's not Bob. He wouldn't pull a stunt like this without forewarning her. And it's a suite: Laundry expense accounts don't usually run that high. Alan Barnes? Or ...? .
Mo pauses outside the door to room 412. She sets down her overnight bag on top of her suitcase, takes off her sunglasses and hat, and opens the violin case. She slides the card key into the lock with the same hand that grips the end of her bow, then nudges the door handle: by the time it's halfopen she has the violin raised to her chin and the bow poised above a string that seems to haze the air around it in a blue glow of Cerenkov radiation.
"Come on out where I can see you," she calls quietly, then kicks the ungainly train of bags forwards through the door, steps forwards after it, and lets the door shut itself behind her.
"I'm over here." The middle-aged white guy in the tropical suit isn't Alan. He's sitting in the office chair behind the — hotel room desk, nursing a glass of something that probably isn't water, he's got a twelve-hour beard and he looks haggard.
"You're all that Angleton sent? Jesus."
"What are you doing here?" Mo takes another step into the room, glancing sidelong through the doorways into the two bedrooms and the bathroom. "You're not part of my cover."
"Last minute change of plan." He smiles lopsidedly. "You can put the violin down — what were you planning to do with it, make me dance"
"Who are you?" Mo keeps the violin at the ready, its neck aimed at the interloper.
"Jack Griffin, P Division." The station chief, she remembers.
He waves at the room. "It's all yours. Bit of a mess really."
Mo's left earring tingles. It's a ward, attuned to warn her when someone's being truthful. In her experience, the average human being tells a little white lie once every three minutes. Knowing when they're telling the truth is much more useful than knowing when they aren't. "So what are you doing here?" she asks tensely.
"There's been a problem." Griffin's accent is clipped, very old-school-tie, and he sounds rueful. "Your predecessor ran into a spot of bother and Angleton asked me to take you in hand and make sure you didn't follow his example."
"A spot of bother, you say." Mo has half-closed the gap separating them before she realizes what she's doing. The violin string hums alarmingly, feeding off her anxiety. "What happened"
"He was working with a bint from the opposition."
Griffin puts his glass down and stares at her. "Billington lifted them both about, oh, twelve hours ago. Invited them to some sort of private party at the casino and the next thing you know they were over the horizon on a chopper bound for his yacht: the coastal defenses are compromised, you know."
Griffin shrugs. "I told him not to trust the woman, she's obviously working for Billington by way of a cut-out..."
Her earring is itching, throbbing in Morse: Griffin is mixing truth and falsehood to concoct a whirlpool of misdirection.
Mo sees red. "You listen to me — "
"No, I don't think I will." Griffin reaches into his pocket for something that looks like a metal cigarette case. "You folks from head office have fucked up, pardon my French, all the way down the line, sending lightweights to do a professional's job. So you're going to do things my way — "
Mo takes a deep breath and draws the bow lightly across one string. It makes a noise like a small predator screaming in mortal agony and terror, and that's just the auditory backwash.
A drop of blood oozes from each fingertip where she grips the neck of the instrument. Griffin's gin and tonic spreads in a puddle across the carpet from where he dropped it. She walks over to him, rolls his twitching body into the recovery position, and squats beside him. When the convulsions cease, she touches the end of the instrument to the back of his head.
"Listen to me. This is an Erich Zahn, with electroacoustic boost and a Dee-Hamilton circuit wired into the soundboard.
I can use it to hurt you, or I can use it to kill you. If I want it to, it won't just stop your heart, it'll slice your soul to shreds and eat your memories. Do you understand? Don't nod, your nose is bleeding. Do you understand?" she repeats sharply.
Griffin shudders and exhales, spraying tiny drops of blood across the floor. "What's — "
"Listen closely. Your life may depend on whether you understand what I'm about to tell you. My predecessor, who is missing, means rather a lot to me. I intend to get him back.
He's entangled with a Black Chamber agent: fine, I need to get her back, too, so I can disentangle them. You can help me, or you can get in my way. But if you obstruct me and Bob dies as a result, I'll play a tune for you that'll be the last thing you ever hear. Do you understand"
Griffin tries to nod again. "Beed. A. T'shoo."
Mo stands up gracefully and takes a step back. "Get one, then." She tracks him with the neck of the violin as he pushes himself upright slowly then shuffles towards the bathroom.
"You're a bard. Woban," he says aggrievedly, standing in the doorway clutching a tissue to his nose. It's rapidly turning red. "I'b on you're sibe."
"You'd better be." Mo leans against the sideboard and raises her bow to a safe distance above the fiddle. "Here's what we're going to do: You're going to go downstairs and hire a helicopter. I'm going to phone home and find out where my backup's gotten to, and then we're going to go for a little run out to visit Billington's yacht, the Mabuse. Got that"