the airport to the hotel across the street from the Clinic. Jefferson was staying there, no coincidence, and so were two of the Twenty—Ellie and the old soldier Cameron.
Jefferson and Cameron were dawdling over breakfast in the hotel cantina when she walked in to get a cup of coffee to take back to her room.
They both looked at her automatically, as men will when a beautiful woman makes an entrance, but Cameron kept staring.
Jefferson laughed and put on the accent of a popular comedian. “Jim . . . you don’t stop puttin’ eye tracks on her, she’s gonna come over and smack you one.” The two men had become friends, having worked their way up from the same beginning, the lower-class black suburbs of Los Angeles.
He turned around with a careful expression and said quietly, “Zam, she might more’n smack me. Kill me just for practice.”
“What?”
“Bet she’s killed more people than I have. She has that sniper look: everyone’s a potential target.”
“She does hold herself like a soldier.” He slid a glance over to her and back. “Or a certain kind of patient. Obsessive-compulsive.”
“How ’bout let’s not ask her over to join us?”
“Good idea.”
But when they left the cantina a few minutes later, they ran into her again. She was trying to deal with the night clerk, a frightened teenaged girl whose English was not good. Gavrila’s Spanish was worse.
Jefferson walked over to the rescue. “—Can I be of some assistance?” he asked in Spanish.
“You’re American,” Gavrila said. “Will you ask her if she’s seen this woman?” It was a picture of Blaze Harding.
“—You know what she’s asking,” he said to the clerk.
“Sí, claro.” The woman opened both her hands. “—I have seen the woman; she has been in here for meals a few times. But she doesn’t stay here.”
“She says she’s not sure,” Jefferson translated. “Most Americans look pretty much the same to her.”
“Have you seen her?” Gavrila asked.
Jefferson studied the photograph. “Can’t say as I have. Jim?” Cameron stepped over. “You seen this woman?”
“I don’t think so. A lot of Amricans coming and going.”
“You’re here at the Clinic?”
“Consulting.” Jefferson realized he’d hesitated a moment too long. “Is she a patient?”
“I don’t know. I just know she’s here.”
“What do you want her for?” Cameron asked.
“Just a few questions. Government business.”
“Well, we’ll keep an eye out. You’re . . .?”
“Francine Gaines. Room 126. I’d surely appreciate any help you could give me.”
“Sure.” They watched her walk away. “Is this deep shit,” Cameron whispered, “or just meters of excrement?”
“We have to get a picture of her,” Jefferson said, “and send it on to Marty’s general. If the army’s after Blaze, he can probably get rid of her.”
“But you don’t think she’s army.”
“Do you?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. When she looked at you, and when she looked at me, she looked first at the middle of the chest and then between the eyes. Targeting. I wouldn’t make any sudden movements around her.”
“If she’s army, she’s a hunter/killer.”
“We didn’t have that term when I was in the service. But it takes one to know one, and I know she’s killed a lot of people.”
“A female Ingram.”
“She might be even more dangerous than Ingram. Ingram rather looks like what he is. She looks like . . .”
“Yeah.” Jefferson looked at the elevator door that had just been graced by her presence. “She sure does.” He shook his head. “Let’s get a picture and get it over to the Clinic for when Mendez checks in.” He was down in Mexico City, scrounging raw materials for the nanoforge. “He had some crazy woman break into St. Bart’s.”
“No resemblance,” Cameron said. “She was ugly and had frizzy red hair.”
Actually, she’d had a wig and a pressure mask.
* * *
we walked right into Building 31, no trouble. To their computer, Marty was a brigadier general who had spent most of his career in academic posts. I was sort of my old self.
Or not. The memory modification was seamless, but I think if I had jacked with anyone in my old platoon (which should have been done as a security measure; we were just lucky) they would have known immediately that there was something wrong. I was too healthy. They had all sensed my problem and, in a way you can’t put into words, had always “been there”; had always helped me get from one day to the next. It would be as obvious as an old friend showing up without the limp he’d had all his life.
Lieutenant Newton