The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [51]
“You’re with her.” He jerks his chin at Ramona. “Do you know what she is?” He sounds dryly amused.
“Yes.” I blink. “Ellis Billington, I presume?”
He looks me in the eye and it feels like a punch in the gut. Up close he doesn’t look human. His pupils are a muddy gray-brown, and slotted vertically: I’ve seen that before in folks who’ve had an operation to correct nystagmus, but somehow on Billington it looks too natural to be the aftereffect of surgery. “Who are you?” he demands.
“Howard—Bob Howard. Capital Laundry Services, import /export division.”
I manage to make a dog-eared business card appear between my fingers. He raises an eyebrow and takes it. “I didn’t know you people traded over here.”
“Oh, we trade all over.” I force myself to smile. “I sat through a most interesting presentation yesterday. My colleagues were absolutely mesmerized.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I take half a step back, but Ramona and Eileen are laughing loudly over some shared confidence behind me: there’s no escape from his lizardlike stare. Then he seems to reach some decision, and lets me down gently: “But that’s not surprising, is it? My companies have so many subsidiaries, doing so many things, that it’s hard to keep track of them all.” He shrugs, an aw-shucks gesture quite at odds with the rest of his mannerisms, and produces a grin from wherever he keeps his spare faces when he isn’t wearing them. “Are you here for the sunshine and sea, Mr. Howard? Or are you here to play games?”
“A bit of both.” I drain my cocktail glass. Behind him, his lawyer is approaching, the casino president at her elbow. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from business, so . . .”
“Perhaps later.” His smile turns almost sincere for a split second as he turns aside: “Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
I find myself staring at his retreating back. Seconds later Ramona takes hold of my elbow and twists it, gently steering me through the crowd towards the open glass doors leading onto the balcony at the back of the casino floor. “Come on,” she says quietly. The courtiers have formed an attentive wall around the fourth Mrs. Billington, who is getting ready to recycle some of her husband’s money through his bank. I let Ramona lead me outside.
“You know her!” I accuse.
“Of course I damn well know her!” Ramona leans against the stone railing that overhangs the beach, staring at me from arm’s length. My heart’s pounding and I feel dizzy with relief over having escaped Billington’s scrutiny. He was perfectly polite but when he looked at me I felt like a bug on a microscope slide, pinned down by brilliant searchlights for scrutiny by a vast, unsympathetic intellect: trapped with nowhere to hide. “My department spent sixty thousand bucks setting up the first introduction at a congressman’s fund-raiser two weeks ago, just so she’d recognize me tonight. You didn’t think we’d come here without doing the groundwork first?”
“Nobody tells me these things,” I complain. “I’m flailing around in the dark!”
“Don’t sweat it.” Suddenly she goes all apologetic on me, as if I’m a puppy who doesn’t know any better than to widdle on the living room carpet: “It’s all part of the process.”
“What process?” I stare her in the eyes, trying to ignore the effects of the glamour that tells me she’s the most amazingly beautiful woman I’ve ever met.
“The process that I’m not allowed to tell you about.” Is that genuine regret in her eyes? “I’m sorry.” She lowers her eyelashes. I track down instinctively, and find myself staring into the depths of her cleavage.
“Great,” I say bitterly. “I’ve got a station chief who’s as mad as a fish, an incomplete briefing, and a gambling-obsessed billionaire to out-bluff. And you can’t fucking tell me what I’m supposed to be doing?”
“No,” she says, in a thin, hopeless tone. And to my complete surprise she leans forwards, wraps her arms around me, props her chin on my shoulder, and begins to weep silently.
This is the final straw. I have been clawed at by zombies, condescended to by Brains, shipped off to the Caribbean