“People like you don’t come to people like me for easy jobs,” Harbin said.
He’s not afraid, Verwoerd saw. He’s not frightened or disappointed or angry. He’s like a block of ice. No visible emotions. No, she corrected herself. He’s more like a panther, a lithe, deadly predator. Every muscle in his body under control, every nerve alert and ready. He could kill me in an instant if he wanted to.
She felt strangely thrilled. I wonder what he would be like if I could break through that control of his. What would it be like to have all that pent-up energy inside me? Not now. Later, she commanded herself. After the hearing is over. If we come out of the hearing okay, then I can relax with him. If we don’t… I’d hate to be the one sent to terminate him. If it comes to that, we’ll need a team of people for the job. A team of very good people.
Then she thought, Why think about terminating him? Use him!
Can I make him loyal to me? she asked herself. Can I use him for my personal agenda? Smiling inwardly, she thought, It could be fun. It could be very pleasurable.
Aloud, she said, “There is one more task you could do for us before you…eh, retire.”
“What is that?” he asked, his voice flat, his eyes riveted on hers.
“You’ll have to go to Ceres. I can arrange a high-thrust flight for you. But it must be very quiet; no one is to know. Not even Grigor.”
He stared at her for long, intense moment. “Not even Grigor?” he muttered.
“No. You will report directly to me.”
Harbin smiled at that, and she wondered again how he would look without his beard.
“Do you ever shave?” she asked.
“I was going to, when you knocked at my door.”
Hours later, sticky and sweaty in bed beside him, Diane grinned to herself. Being Delilah was thoroughly enjoyable.
Harbin turned to her and slid a hand across her midriff. “About this business on Ceres,” he said, surprising her.
“Yes?”
“Who do I have to kill?”
CHAPTER 35
Much to Hector Wilcox’s misgiving, Douglas Stavenger inserted himself into the hearing. Two days before the hearing was to begin, Stavenger invited Wilcox to dinner at the Earthview restaurant. Wilcox knew it was not a purely social invitation. If the youthful founder of Selene wanted to be in on the hearing, there was nothing the IAA executive could do about it without raising hackles.
Stavenger was very diplomatic, of course. He offered a conference room in Selene’s offices, up in one of the towers that supported the dome of the Grand Plaza. The price of his hospitality was to allow him to sit in on the hearing.
“It’ll be pretty dull stuff, mostly,” Wilcox warned, over dinner his second night on the Moon.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Stavenger, with the bright enthusiasm of a youth. “Anything involving Martin Humphries is bound to be interesting.”
So that’s it, Wilcox said to himself as he picked at his fruit salad. He’s following Martin’s trail.
“You know, Mr. Humphries won’t be present at the hearing,” he said.
“Really?” Stavenger looked surprised. “I thought that Fuchs was accusing him of piracy.”
Wilcox frowned his deepest. “Piracy,” he sneered. “Poppycock.”
Stavenger smiled brightly. “That’s what the hearing is for, isn’t it? To determine the validity of the charge?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Wilcox hastily. “To be sure.”
Fuchs had not slept well his first two nights in Selene, and the night before the hearing began he expected to be too jumpy to sleep at all, but strangely, he slept soundly the whole night through. Pancho had come up to Selene and treated him to a fine dinner at the Earthview Restaurant. Perhaps the wine had something to do with my sleeping, he told himself as he brushed his teeth that morning.
He had dreamed, he knew, but he couldn’t remember much of his dreams. Amanda was in them, and George, and some vague dark looming danger. He could not recall any of the details.
When his phone chimed he thought it must be Pancho, ready to pick him up and go with him to the hearing room.