him. ”
“Except I don’t have enemies. As to the, ahem, French connection, my mother claims we are descended from the Huguenots—but isn’t that a socially acceptable variation of the asylum nuts claiming to be Napoleon reincarnate?”
The grounds crew stopped across the way. There were seven of them. They lighted cigarettes and leaned against their truck or sprawled in the grass and drank water from milk jugs. A young Mexican god shaded his eyes with his hand and smiled at Lancaster. The Mexican’s shoulders were broad and dark as burnt copper and his black hair fell in ringlets to his nipples. His chest and stomach rippled with the musculature of a bull. He unsnapped the cap on a jug and poured water over his head, a model pimping it hard in a rock video, and whipped his hair in a circle. Water flew everywhere. His teeth were white, white.
Dr. Christou followed Lancaster’s stare. He sighed and lighted a cigarette of his own. “I always enjoyed a cherry pipe. Had to quit—too de trop for a professor, chewing on a pipe stem. Damnable shame. You understand the power of perception, of course. I’ve accrued a fine, long list of enemies. My work is eccentric enough without piling on cliché. Ah, how I loathe those fuckers in admin.”
Lancaster laughed, unbalanced by Christou’s sortie and disliking the sensation intensely. He said, “An amazing coincidence, running into your colleague last night.”
“Indeed. Blaylock wasn’t…He wasn’t as I expected him to be. We’ve corresponded for years. I thought…Well, goes to show, doesn’t it? How meager our understanding of the human heart.”
“Only the shadow knows.”
“What a chestnut! Is that how you get through life, Mr. Lancaster? A sense of detachment and an arsenal of wry witticisms?”
“I’m not the best at small talk.”
“Nonsense—that’s why they sent you. You are an expert at small talk, a maestro at manipulating the inconsequential to your design. I’m hardly offended—fascinated, rather.”
The clouds kept rolling and the light changed and changed, darkening from red and orange to purple, and a damp breath moved across the land, but it didn’t rain. The air was supercharged and Lancaster tasted a hint of ozone. “Here comes the dinner wagon,” he said as a van with a corporate logo departed the main road and cruised toward them.
“The irony is, my connections are retired or passed on,” Dr. Christou said. “We’ve gotten old. If revolutionaries live long enough they become the establishment. The reef incorporates all discrete elements.”
“Honestly, doctor, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Right, then. For the record, you’re wasting taxpayer money on me. Any information I’ve got isn’t worth a drachma on the international market. Unless this is about revenge Perhaps someone simply wishes to discredit me, to ruin my life’s work.”
Lancaster wasn’t certain how to respond. Possibly the man was dangerous; perhaps he possessed contacts within some intelligence agency and had obtained Lancaster’s files, maybe he knew the game. He kept his emotions in check, paid out a bit of rope. “Kind of paranoid, yeah? It’s late in the day to achieve much by destroying you, isn’t it, doc?”
“There are those who can be relied upon in their pettiness. You tell whomever it is, this isn’t worth their effort.” Dr. Christou drew on his cigarette butt. He knocked on the limousine window glass, coaxing Kara to emerge. Lancaster keyed the caterers into the central office, superintending their deployment and beachhead in the largest conference room he could find. As the team spread tablecloths and arranged the dinnerware, the overhead lights flickered and hummed and Lancaster stood with his cell flipped open, his brain in neutral.
“This place is spooky,” Kara said, hipshot against the edge of the nearest table. She popped a cocktail shrimp into her mouth. Her little black magpie eyes blinked, blinked. “I hate empty buildings. This place goes for miles. Just a bunch of endless hallways. Almost all the lights are off. It feels like somebody’s going to jump at me from the shadows. I dunno. Silly, huh?”
“Not so much,” Lancaster said, marshaling his strength to play the part. He patted her arm, mostly to comfort himself. He suppressed his anxiety and phoned Ms. Diamond and informed her supper awaited. There was a long, chilly silence before she thanked him and said her group would be along shortly.
The meal was passable by elitist standards: over-done Beef Wellington and too-boney Alaska king salmon. Lancaster’s choice of a vintage Italian wines and two chilled bottles of Chopin mollified the party. He stopped after