shrouding curtain Tach heard the clink of metal on glass.
"What are you drinking?"
"What do you think?"
"I'll take one, too."
"It's eight in the morning."
"So we'll go to hell drunk and together." Tach accepted the glass, allowed the water to beat on his shoulders while he sipped at the vodka. "You drink too much."
"We both drink too much."
"True."
"There's an ace at this convention."
"There are a shitload of aces at this convention."
"A secret ace."
"Yes, he's sitting on my toilet." Tachyon stuck his head around the curtain. "How long is this going to take? Can't you be a little less cautious and trust me just a little?"
Polyakov sighed heavily, stared down at his hands as if counting the hairs on the back of fingers. "Hartmann is an ace." Tach stuck his head back through the shower curtain. "Nonsense."
"I tell you it is true."
"Proof?"
"Suspicions."
"Not good enough." Tach shut off the water, and thrust a hand through the curtain. "Towel." Polyakov dropped one over his arm.
Stepping from the shower, the alien studied his image in the mirror as he towel dried his shoulder-length red hair. Noted the scars on his left arm and hand where the doctors had repaired the bones crushed in an eleventh-hour rescue of Angelface. The puckered scar on his thigh-legacy of a terrorist's bullet in Paris. The long scar on the right bicepmemory of a duel with his cousin. "Living takes a hell of a toll, doesn't it?"
"Just how old are you?" the Russian asked curiously. "Adjusting for Earth's rotational period; eighty-nine, ninety. Somewhere in there."
"I was young when I met you."
"Yes."
"Now I am old and fat and in the grip of a terrible fear. You can so easily establish if my fears are real or mere delusions. Probe Hartmann, read him, then act."
"Gregg Hartmann is my friend. I don't probe my friends. I don't even probe you."
"I give you permission to do so. If it will help to convince you. "
"Ideal, you must be in terror."
"I am. Hartmann is ... evil."
"Odd word from an old material dialectician like yourself."
"Nevertheless, it applies."
Tachyon shook his head, walked into the bedroom, rummaged in a drawer for fresh underwear. He could sense George behind him, a portly irritating presence. "I don't believe you."
"No, you don't want to believe me. A fundamental difference. How much do you know of Hartmann's early life? His passage through this world has left a trail of mysterious deaths and shattered lives. His high school football coach, his college roommate-"
"So he's had the misfortune to be on the periphery of violent events. That does not make him an ace. Or would you have him damned by association?"
"And what of a politician who is kidnapped twice, and escapes both times under mysterious circumstances?"
"What's so mysterious? In Syria, Kahina turned upon her brother and stabbed him. In the resulting chaos we escaped. In Germany-"
"I was working with Kahina." "What!"
"When I first came to America. Gimli too, that poor fool. Now Gimli is dead, and Kahina has vanished, and I fear she too is dead. She came to America to expose Gregg Hartmann."
"So you say."
"Tachyon, I don't lie to you."
"No, you merely tell me only as much as suits you."
"Gimli suspected, and now he's dead."
"Oh, so now Gregg is responsible for Typhoid Croyd? Gimli died from that virus, not from Gregg Hartmann."
"And Kahina?"
"Show me a body. Show me the proof."
"What about Germany?"
"What about it?"
"One- of the GRU's top operatives was in charge of that operation, and he ran like a raw recruit. He was manipulated, I tell you!"
"You tell me! You tell me? You tell me nothing! Just slurs and innuendos. Nothing to back up this fantastic allegation."
"What does it cost you to probe him? Read him and prove me wrong." Tachyon's mouth tightened mulishly.
"You're afraid. You're afraid that what I'm telling you is true. This is not Takisian honor and reticence. This is cowardice. "
"There are very few men who would be permitted to say that to me, and live." Tachyon shrugged on his shirt, and resumed in a dry, almost lecturing, tone, "Being an ace you must have considered the political climate. Supposing for the moment that you are correct and Gregg Hartmann is a secret ace so what? There is nothing very suspicious in a man with political aspirations hiding his wild card. This is not France, where it is the height of chic to be an ace. You damn him for keeping a secret that you have kept all your life?"
"He's a killer, Tachyon, I know it. That's why he