Rotating the spit with his fork – the motor drive shut off when the spit was removed from the fire – the owner stripped another portion of the loaf’s surface.
“Aren’t many useful things you can do with a knife sharp enough to shave with,” said Kelly approvingly, “but this is sure one of them.”
“You don’t believe in sharp knives?” Elaine asked in surprise.
“I don’t believe in – work knives,” Kelly replied with a grin, “so sharp that the edge turns when you hit, let’s say, a bone.”
The meal was everything Kelly had hoped, hot and good and profoundly real in an existence that was increasingly removed from what he had known and done in the past. If incongruity were the essence of humor, then what Tom Kelly was doing with and to Pierrard’s little playmates ought to be the laugh of a lifetime.
He sipped his Pepsi, put on a serious expression, and said, “I can never remember: should I have ordered lemon sodas instead with mutton?”
Elaine laughed, relaxed again. “We could ask the maitre d’, I suppose,” she said with a nod toward the owner beaming beside his grill.
“Who would tell us,” Kelly said, slumping a little, “Efes Pilsen – like everybody else.” His eyes swept the tables of other customers, crowded with the fat brown bottles of Pilsener beer. “And he’d be right, it’s great stuff, but I don’t suppose …”
Elaine touched the back of his fingers. “Tom,” she said, “you’ve got more balls than anybody I ever met in my life. And it isn’t because you act like you could tell the world to take a flying leap.”
“Which it damned well can,” Kelly grumbled. He was pleased nonetheless at the flattery, even though he knew that the woman was a professional and would have said the equivalent no matter what she really thought.
“I’m so very glad you’re using me the way I’m here to be used,” Elaine continued without taking her hand away from Kelly’s. “We both want the same thing.”
Except that one of us would really like Tom Kelly to survive the next couple weeks, the veteran thought as he turned over his hand and briefly squeezed her fingers. And the other cares more about what the weather in Washington’ll be like when she gets back. But nobody was holding a gun to his head just now.
“Let’s go see,” he said, rising with a broad smile for the owner and everyone else in the restaurant, “just how efficient a team we’re all gonna be.”
Elaine checked the clasp of her little purse as they approached the door of 727. Kelly caught the angry red wink of a light emitting diode and the woman stutter-stepped, not quite a stumble, before halting.
“Problems?” the veteran said, unaware of the growling catch in his voice as he stepped to the hinge side of the door.
“No, we were expecting a courier, weren’t we?” Elaine mumbled back, but she tapped on the door panel instead of inserting her key.
Doug opened the door. The LED warning went off. “I’ve been waiting here with the file,” the blond man said.
“Very tricky,” said Kelly with an approving nod toward the intrusion indicator.
“Not in the goddam hallway,” snapped Elaine, using the purse as a pointer to thrust her big subordinate back in the room.
Kelly closed the door behind them. “The light wouldn’t come on if somebody hadn’t opened the door?” he asked.
“Amber if the door hadn’t been breached, no light at all if the transmitter had been tampered with,” said Elaine absently. She kicked off her shoes. “Doug, thank you for bringing the file. You can leave us to it now.”
She looked at Kelly. “Unless you want to be alone with this, Tom?” she asked, gesturing with the red-bordered folder Doug had just handed her from his Halliburton.
“We’ll take a look together,” the veteran said, seating himself at the desk. He felt momentarily dizzy and, squeezing his temples with both hands, brought the world he saw back into color and focus.
“Are you all right?” the woman asked. “Doug, wait a minute.”
“No problem,” said Kelly. “Haven’t slept in, you know, the whole flight. And with food in my belly, the brain isn’t getting all the blood supply it’d like to have.