and yellow rice she didn't see him enter. Her waiter brought her a drink - a tequini, he said - from the man at the bar. Soraya glanced up, and of course it was Arkadin. She looked into his eyes as she picked up the martini glass. She smiled. That was all the encouragement he needed.
"You're persistent, I'll give you that," she said when he'd sauntered over.
"If I were your lover, I wouldn't let you eat dinner alone."
"My ex pool boy? I sent him packing."
He laughed and gestured to the booth in which she sat. "May I?"
"I'd prefer you didn't."
He sat down anyway and put his drink on the table, as if marking out his territory. "If you let me order, I'll pay for your dinner."
"I don't need you to pay for my dinner," she said flatly.
"Need has nothing to do with it." He lifted his hand and the waiter glided over. "I'll have steak, bloody, and an order of tomatillos." The waiter nodded and left.
Arkadin smiled, and Soraya was astonished at how genuine it seemed. There was a deep warmth to it that frightened her.
"My name is Leonardo," he said.
She snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. No one in Puerto Penasco is named Leonardo."
He seemed crestfallen, like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and now she was beginning to make sense of his approach to women. She could see how magnetic he was, how compelling an impression he made, exuding the security of a powerful man with a softer core of vulnerability. What woman could resist that? She laughed silently to herself and felt better, as if at last she was standing on solid ground, in a place where she could confidently move forward with her assignment.
"You're right, of course," Arkadin said. "It's actually Leonard, just plain Leonard."
"Penny." She held out a hand, which he held briefly. "What are you doing in Puerto Penasco, Leonard?"
"Fishing, sport racing."
"In your cigarette."
"Yes."
Soraya finished up her shrimp just as his steak and tomatillos arrived. The steak, bloody as ordered, was smothered in chilies. Arkadin dug in. He must have a cast-iron stomach, she thought.
"And you?" he said around bites.
"I came for the weather." She pushed the tequini away from her.
"You don't like it?"
"I don't drink alcohol."
"Alcoholic?"
She laughed. "Muslim. I'm Egyptian."
"I apologize for sending you an inappropriate gift."
"No need." She waved away his words. "You couldn't have known." Then she smiled. "But you're sweet."
"Ha! Sweet is one thing I'm not."
"No?" She cocked her head. "What are you, then?"
He wiped the blood off his lips and sat back for a moment. "Well, to tell you the truth I'm something of a hard-ass. My partners thought so, especially when I bought them out. So did my wife, for that matter."
"She's also in the past?"
He nodded as he dug into his food again. "Nearly a year now."
"Children?"
"Are you kidding?"
Arkadin certainly had a gift for spinning yarns, she thought appreciatively. "I'm not much of a nurturer, either," she said, somewhat truthfully. "I'm entirely focused on my business."
He asked her what that might be without looking up from his steak.
"Import-export," she said. "To and from North Africa."
His head came up slowly, but very deliberately. She felt her heart beating against her rib cage. It was, she thought, like coaxing a shark onto the hook. She didn't want to make the slightest mistake now, and felt a little thrill pass through her. She was very close to the precipice, to the moment when her fictional self would fuse with her real self. This moment was why she chose to do what she did. It was why she hadn't walked away from Peter when he'd recruited her for the assignment, why she had set aside the demeaning aspect of what she was expected to do. None of that mattered. What mattered was standing a hairbreadth from the precipice. This precise moment was what she lived for, and Peter had known this long before she did.
Arkadin wiped his mouth again. "North Africa. Interesting. My former partners did a fair amount of business in North Africa. I didn't like their methods - or, to be honest, the people they were dealing with. That was one of the reasons I decided to buy them out."
He was quick on his feet, Soraya thought, improvising like crazy. She was liking this conversation more and more.
"What line are you in?" she asked.
"Computers, peripherals, computer services, that sort of thing."
Right, she thought, amused. She put a thoughtful expression on her face. "Well, I could connect