The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [119]
“That leaves nobody outside here to lock this door,” Van pointed out. “If they find this place unlocked, then they’ll know we’re in there.”
Hickok froze in confusion. He looked at the padlock, and then he gazed down the mountainside. “I can see those headlights coming fast.” Hickok began to pray under his breath. “Lord, I, your soldier, am called upon to perform tasks in isolation, far from familiar faces and voices. With help and guidance from my God, I will never surrender, though I be the last. If I am taken, I pray that I may have the strength to spit upon my enemy . . .”
“I’m going inside,” Van told him. “You run the team awhile, okay? If they catch me, I was just curious.”
Van slipped inside the observatory. He ran across the floor, kicked some heavy luggage aside, and hid himself beneath the big console desk.
It took Tony some time to key his way through the jiggered lock.
Distant conversation. Van stuck an earpiece into his ear and turned down the light on his laptop screen. The audiobugs worked splendidly, sending him six different audio streams. It was like he had six ears.
“Try to be nice to Mrs. DeFanti,” said Tony. “She’s been through a lot of emotional pain over all this.”
“Why don’t you call her ‘Katrina’ to me?” said the actress girlfriend viciously. “It’s ‘Katrina’ you are always calling her, so sweetly, face-to-face!”
“Honey lamb, if the former ‘Li Huping’ wants to be ‘Katrina DeFanti’ now, why is that a problem? Give me the word, and you could be ‘Angelie Carew.’ That would look great on a nice new American passport.”
“You are lovers with her.”
“Look, she is twelve years older than I am,” said Tony, pleading. “Mrs. DeFanti is completely devoted to a much older man who is mentally ill. Katrina and I have useful talents for each other. It is very possible for an adult man and woman just to be good friends. Really, it is!”
“You are lying!” The actress drew a sharp breath. “Or you are abnormal.”
“Okay, fine, I’m abnormal,” Tony said. “I prefer ‘extraordinary.’ ‘Brilliantly talented.’ ‘Fantastic.’ ‘A dream boyfriend.’ But okay, ‘abnormal’ will do. Just be nice to Katrina for one evening. That’s all I ask! There is a lot of money at stake. Crores and crores, and lakhs and lakhs, of rupees.”
Tony’s voice faded in Van’s earplug. To Van’s astonishment, he saw that Tony was suddenly standing right next to him, at the edge of the outsized desk. Tony set down his black shoulder bag. It brushed the edge of Van’s black shoe.
Van looked up, and saw Tony’s pale, strained face. But Tony did not look down. Tony’s special guests were arriving.
As the observatory door yawned open, Van’s earpiece caught a faint cross-talk of radio chatter. The cyberwarriors outside the observatory sounded real busy.
Tony left to face his guests. Van quickly opened Tony’s shoulder bag. Tony’s bag was a rat’s nest. Crumpled business documents. Headache medicines. Indian gossip magazines. A laptop. A set of Bollywood DVDs.
A titanium ray gun.
Tony’s customers entered the observatory for their demonstration. There was a babble of voices and the clatter of portable chairs.
Someone wandered into range of the fifth audio bug. Van turned up his audio stream.
“I can’t like a man who lies to a hunting companion,” said a male voice. “Yes, I might buy a jet from him, but I can never be his friend.”
“I hate what he did to my husband’s elk,” said a woman. “He never asked my permission to blind them and scorch them with his laser beams. Those poor creatures!”
“How could poor animals hide from a reflecting balloon in the sky?” said the man. “It’s just not sporting. Such an ugly business happening there, when your American plantation is so pretty and beautiful. My film crew and I, we so enjoyed our stay at Pinecrest. That suite was just like the Raffles in Singapore.”
“Oh, you noticed,” said the woman, pleased. “I’ve been to Singapore so many times.”
“Look at Carew moving those chairs. Can’t he let the guards do it? He’s so busy, busy, busy all the time! He’s like a