BLACK NOTICE. PATRICIA CORNWELL

another lock released, and we were met by a guard in suit and tie who looked strong enough to snatch up Marino and hurl him back to Paris: Another guard sat behind bulletproof glass and slid out a drawer to exchange our passports for visitor badges.

A belt carried our personal effects through an X-ray machine, and the guard who had greeted us gave us instructions with gestures rather than words to step, one at a time, inside what looked like a floor-to-ceiling transparent pneumatic tube. I complied, halfway expecting to be sucked up somewhere, and a curved Plexiglas door shut. Another one released me on the other side, every molecule of me scanned.

“What the hell is this? Star Trek?” Marino said to me after he’d been scanned, too. “How you know something like that can’t give you cancer? Or if you’re a man, give you other problems.”

“Be quiet,” I said.

It seemed we waited a very long time before a man appeared on a breezeway connecting the secure area to the main building, and he was not at all what I expect. He walked with the easy spring of a youthful athlete, and an expensive charcoal flannel suit draped elegantly over what was clearly a sculpted body. He wore a crisp white shirt and a rich Hermés tie in maroon, green and blue, and when he firmly shook our hands I noticed a gold watch, too.

“Jay Talley. Sorry to make you wait;” he said.

His hazel eyes were so penetrating I felt violated by them, his dark good looks so striking I instantly knew his type, because men that beautiful are all alike. I could tell Marino had no use for him, either.

“We spoke on the phone;” he said to me, as if I didn’t remember.

“And I haven’t slept since,” I said, unable to take my eyes off him, no matter how hard I tried.

“Please. If you’ll come with me.”

Marino gave me a look and wiggled his fingers behind Talley’s back, the way he did when he decided on the spot that someone was gay. Talley’s shoulders were broad. He had no waist. His profile had the perfect slope of a Roman god, and his lips were full and his jaw was flared.

I concentrated on being puzzled by his age. Usually, overseas posts were much coveted and were awarded to agents with seniority and rank, yet Talley looked barely thirty. He led us into a marble atrium four stories high that was centered by a brilliant mosaic of the world and washed in light. Even the elevators were glass.

After a series of electronic locks and buzzers and combinations and cameras that cared about our every move, we got off on the third floor. I felt as if I were inside cut crystal. Talley seemed to blaze. I felt dazed and resentful because it hadn’t been my idea to come here, and I didn’t feel in charge.

“So what’s up there?” Marino, the model of politeness, pointed.

“The fourth floor,” Talley impassively said.

“Well, the button don’t have a number and it looks like you have to key yourself up,” Marino went on, staring at the elevator ceiling. “I was just wondering if that’s where you keep all your computers.”

“Ibe secretary-general lives up there,” Talley matteróf-factly stated, as if there were nothing unusual about this.

“No shit?”

“For security reasons. He and his family live in the building;” Talley said as we passed normal-looking offices with normal-looking people inside them. “We’re meeting him now.”

“Good. Maybe he won’t mind telling us what the hell we’re doing here,” Marino replied.

Talley opened another door, this one made of rich, dark wood, and we were politely greeted by a man with a

British accent who identified himself as the director of communication. He took orders for coffee and let Secretary-General George Mirot know we had arrived. Minutes later he showed us into Mirot’s private office, where we found an imposing gray-haired man seated behind a black leather desk amid walls of antique guns and medals and gifts from other countries. Mirot got up and shook our hands.

“Let’s be comfortable,” he said.

He showed us to -a sitting area before a window overlooking the Rh8ne while Talley collected a thick accordion file from a table.

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