“He’s coming here to Selene on an HSS vessel, isn’t he?” Humphries pointed out. “The crew can get rid of him.”
Verwoerd sighed like a schoolteacher facing a boy who hadn’t done his homework. “Then you’d have half a dozen people who’d have something on you. Besides, I don’t think the entire crew could take him. As I said, he’s trained and he’s tough. Things could get quite messy if we try to take him out.”
“Then what do you recommend?” he asked sullenly.
“Let me deal with him. Personally.”
“You?”
She nodded. “Keep Grigor out of this. Harbin is most likely worried that we want to take him out, especially since he failed with Fuchs and he knows enough to hang us all. Let me show him that it’s not that way. I’ll offer him a bonus, send him back to Earth with a fat bank account.”
“So he can blackmail me for the rest of his life.”
“Yes, of course. That’s exactly what he’ll think. And we’ll let him go on thinking that until he’s living it up on Earth and his guard is down.”
A crooked smile slowly curled across Humphries’s lips.
“Delilah,” he murmured.
Verwoerd saw that he was satisfied with her plan. She took a long swallow of the licorice-flavored Pernod, then agreed, “Delilah.”
Humphries’s smile turned sardonic. “Are you going to fuck him, too?”
She made herself smile back. “If I have to.”
But she was thinking, You don’t know whose hair is going to get trimmed, Martin. And there’s more than one way to screw a man; even you.
Fuchs had dreaded this moment. He knew it had to come, though. There was no way around it. The IAA official was due to arrive at Ceres in another few hours.
He started packing his travel bag for the trip to Selene. When Amanda took her bag from the closet and laid it on the bed beside his, he told her that he was going without her.
“What do you mean?” Amanda asked, obviously startled by his decision.
“Precisely what I said. George, Nodon and I are going. I want you to remain here.”
She looked puzzled, hurt. “But, Lars, I—”
“You are not going with me!” Fuchs said sharply.
Shocked at his vehemence, Amanda stared at him open-mouthed as if he had slapped her in the face.
“That’s final,” he snapped.
“But, Lars—”
“No buts, and no arguments,” he said. “You stay here and run what’s left of the business while I’m in Selene.”
“Lars, you can’t go without me. I won’t let you!”
He tried to stare her down. This is the hardest part, he realized. I’ve got to hurt her, there’s no other way to do this.
“Amanda,” he said, trying to sound stern, trying to keep his own doubts and pain out of his voice, out of his face. “I have made up my mind. I need you to remain here. I’m not a little boy who must bring his mother with him wherever he goes.”
“Your mother!”
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m going without you.”
“But why?”
“Because that’s what I want,” he said, raising his voice. “I know that you think I’d be safer if you were with me, that Humphries won’t attack me if he believes you might be hurt, too. Poppycock! I don’t need your protection. I don’t want it.”
She burst into tears and fled to the lavatory, leaving him standing by the bed in agony.
If he’s going to try to kill me, it won’t matter to him whether Amanda’s with me or not. The closer I get to hurting him, the more desperate he becomes. She’ll be safer here, among friends, among people who know her. He wants to kill me, not her. I’ll face him without her. It will be better that way.
He was certain he was right. If only he couldn’t hear her sobbing on the other side of the thin door.
Hector Wilcox felt extremely uneasy about going to the Moon. His flight from the spaceport at Munich had been terrifying, despite all the reassurances of the Astro Corporation employees. Their stout little Clippership looked sturdy enough when he boarded it. The flight attendant who showed him to his seat went on at length about the ship’s diamond structure hull and the reliability records that Clipperships had run up. All well and good, Wilcox thought.