Doug looked from Elaine to Kelly in genuine puzzlement. Elaine nodded and said, “All right, we’ll see what we can do.” She cleared her throat. “It’s absurd for you to trust taxis to be where you need them. We can give you a driver, if you like.”
It’d be absurd to accept a car with the array of tracking beacons that anything she’d provide would have, Kelly thought. Aloud he said, “I’m a tourist, I take cabs. When I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”
The sweep team had moved into the bathroom. The receiver in the spectrum analyzer was of lower sensitivity than the one Christophe used to listen for the tone they would generate in a few minutes. In order to pick up a hump on the display, which was the low-powered signal of a bug, the unit needed to be fairly close to the transmitter. “What’s the band width on that thing?” Kelly asked, nodding toward the bathroom.
“What?” said Doug. Elaine decided not to argue further about the car. Both of them followed Kelly’s nod toward the bathroom.
Kelly slipped the cavity resonator, a three-inch metal tube with a nine-inch antenna of flexible wire, between the back and the cushion of the love seat. “I mean, what range in megahertz does the display cover? Eighty to three hundred? More?”
“I can’t imagine, but you can look for yourself if you feel you must,” the woman said in exasperation.
“That all we need to cover?” Kelly said, no more relaxed than he had been a moment before. “The car, I mean? Because if it – ”
“There’s money,” Elaine said, lifting a Halliburton from the floor to the bed and opening it, “though you can always say you don’t need that either.”
“I don’t,” the veteran agreed, “but I’ll take what’s going.” Hard to tell whether the asperity in Elaine’s voice was fatigue, the difficulty in getting subordinates to take orders from a woman, or simply Kelly’s own arrogance. Probably a combination of the three; and probably things weren’t going to improve for the duration, because none of those factors were likely to change for the better.
Elaine tossed a fat, banded packet of Turkish lire onto Kelly’s lap. They were used bills, bearing, as did all denominations of Turkish currency, the face of Kemal Atatürk, the republic’s founder. “That’s a hundred thousand,” she said, closing the attache case. Doug, literally and figuratively the odd man out, looked with his hands clasped from Elaine to the sweep team, which was beginning to make its circuit with the tone generator and receiver.
“It’d seem like a lot more,” said Kelly as he stripped off the banding, “if I hadn’t checked the exchange rate in the terminal. Do I sign for it?”
“It’s over a thousand dollars, Kelly,” said the woman, “which ought to be handy – unless you plan to pay your bloody taxi fares with credit cards. There’s more if you need it” – she spun the lock dials of her Halliburton with grim determination – “and if you need large sums, we’ll talk.
“And the answer is no, I signed for it,” she concluded with her eyes fierce.
Kelly wondered if she’d shoot him if he asked if she were on the rag just now. Probably not: she wasn’t the type who ever really lost it, any more than Kelly himself did. “I appreciate the way you’re covering for me,” the veteran said calmly as he rose.
He slipped half the lire – pounds, from the Latin, just like the Italian equivalent and the British symbol for currency – into the breast pocket of his jacket, and the other half, folded, into the right side pocket of his slacks. “I suppose I get this way because I figure the best way to be left alone is to make you’all” – he smiled around the room – “want to keep clear. But I do understand that you’re keeping your side of the bargain. And that it can’t be easy for somebody in your position.”
He walked toward the door. Behind him, Doug called, “The coffee hasn’t come yet.”
“No,” agreed Kelly as he stepped out into the hallway, “but Peter left, which was all I had in mind.”