“Doesn’t really matter if I believe any of it, does it?” Kelly said as Elaine swung the car around the rank of cabs waiting to load at the entrance of the Sheraton. “Just so long as I do my job.”
He had spoken as much to himself as to Elaine, but the woman raised an eyebrow over her smile and replied, “Are you going to have difficulty working under those conditions?”
Before Kelly answered, she stopped the Porsche and handed the keys to the attendant, who had scurried in a failed attempt to open the door for her. “It might be as well,” she said over her shoulder as Kelly too got out of the car, “if you carried the suitcase yourself. There’ll be people waiting in the room.”
“There’s no difficulty,” the veteran said as he tugged out the big case. “I spent years without thinking any of the people giving me orders knew what the hell they were doing. Doubting that I do’s something of a pleasant change.”
They took the elevators from the ground-floor service area. Kelly noted with amusement that Elaine waited a moment, watching him from the corner of her eye, before she touched the button for the seventh floor. Kelly grinned broadly at her, letting her wonder whether or not he knew which floor their rooms were on this time.
He didn’t want to talk business with Elaine, and he didn’t have anything but business – one way or the other – to talk with her. Unless – and he looked toward the ceiling of the elevator – he asked the question to which his mind kept returning, whether or not she ever wore a bra. His smile, carefully directed away from anything human, became innocence. A question like that struck him as a pretty good way to get his hand bitten off to the elbow, which would complicate his job a lot. . . .
“A penny for your thoughts,” Elaine said, her voice more guarded than the words.
Kelly shrugged and faced her, the bulk of the suitcase on the floor between them. “Just thinking that maybe my first priority was to get my ashes hauled,” he said, “so it doesn’t get in the way.”
She laughed as the elevator cage quivered to a halt. “Are you asking for a list of addresses,” she said, “or would you just like the equipment delivered to your room?” She pointed down the hall, her arm a shadow within the puffy translucence of her sleeve. “Seven-twenty-five.”
“Naw, no problem,” the stocky man said. He wasn’t embarrassed – cribs in the Anti-Lebanon had been ponchos pegged into three-sided windbreaks, which pretty well blasted the notion of sex being a private affair. It was useful to note that his case officer wasn’t embarrassed either.
“Well, it wouldn’t be a problem, you know,” Elaine said cheerfully as she, a pace ahead of Kelly, stopped at a door and tapped on it. “All part of the unobtrusive luxury service you’ve been promised.”
“Unobtrusive will do just fine,” Kelly replied. Doug Blakeley opened the door with a frozen scowl on his face. There were two other men within the room carrying radio-detection equipment. One of them was smoking a cigarette.
“You’ve met Doug,” Elaine said as she entered 725, moving Blakeley back away from the door by stepping unnecessarily close to him – giving Kelly and the suitcase room without need for the macho games of which both men were capable. “George” – she pointed to the fat, balding man with the tone generator – “and Christophe,” she indicated the pale, almost tubercular smoker who wore headphones connected to the wide-band receiver slung from his right shoulder.
“Christophe, put the cigarette out in the toilet and flush it,” Elaine continued. She kept her voice as neutral as if she were commenting on the view, being very careful not to raise the emotional temperature. “And where’s Peter?”
“What’s the matter with the cigarette?” demanded Christophe, taking the half-smoked cylinder out of his mouth to examine it rather than to obey. His English was accented, but it appeared to be German – Flemish? – rather than the French Kelly had expected.
“He’s next door in your room,” Doug was saying. “I thought we’d sweep his first, before we did yours.”