Harbin’s expression changed minutely. A hint of curiosity flickered in his eyes.
“Very clever,” Humphries continued. “But really unnecessary. You have nothing to fear from me. I’m grateful to you, and I don’t turn on the people who do their jobs well. Ask Grigor. Ask anyone.”
Harbin seemed to think it over for a moment. Then, “I was being cautious.”
“I understand. In a way, I even agree with you. If I’d been in your position, I probably would have done the same thing, more or less.”
“You mentioned a bonus.”
“One million international dollars, paid to any bank you name.”
Harbin didn’t move a millimeter, but he seemed somehow to stiffen, like an animal that suddenly senses danger.
“I had expected more,” he said.
“Really? I think a million is very generous.”
“Diane said there would be more.”
There! Humphries cheered silently. He’s brought up her name.
“Diane? Diane Verwoerd?”
“Your personal assistant, yes.”
“She has no authority to make you an offer that I haven’t approved,” Humphries said sternly.
“But she told me . . .” Harbin’s voice trailed off in confusion.
Humphries made himself smile understandingly. “Diane sometimes exceeds her authority.” With a sly wink, he went on, “That’s the trouble with a woman. If they share your bed they start behaving as if they own you.”
“Share your bed?”
“Didn’t you know? She didn’t tell you? For god’s sake, the woman’s carrying my baby.”
Harbin rose slowly to his feet. “Carrying . . . your baby?”
Trying to keep from showing fear, Humphries sat where he was and said innocently, “We just found out about it a few days ago. She’s pregnant, all right. We’ve been sending the happy news to all our friends. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”
CHAPTER 58
The drugs only made it worse. Harbin selected carefully among the narcotics available from Humphries’s supplier, but he could not eradicate the thought of Diane betraying him. For two days after his arrival in Selene he lay in the apartment Humphries had provided him, trying to smother the pictures that played in his head. The drugs distorted his visions, twisted them and made them physically painful, but they did not bring the peace and oblivion that he sought. Just the opposite. They sharpened the knives that twisted in his flesh; they drove the daggers deeper inside him.
She’s been sleeping with him! She’s allowed herself to get pregnant by him! All the time she was with me, she was mocking me, manipulating me to do what she wanted, what they wanted me to do. She’s played me for a fool and she thought she could get away with it.
At last he could stand it no longer. Close to midnight, he lurched out of his apartment into the corridors that honeycombed Selene, bleary-eyed, unshaven, still in the clothes he had slept in for the past two nights. He shambled along the nearly empty corridors, heading for Diane’s quarters.
Sleeping alone in his giant bed, Humphries was awakened by the buzz of his private phone. Grumbling, he sat up and told the computer to put his caller on-screen.
The wallscreen showed Grigor’s somber lean face.
“He’s left the apartment,” Grigor said without preamble.
Humphries nodded and cut the connection. Wide awake now, he bunched the pillows behind him and sat back comfortably, then commanded the computer to show the display from the picocameras built into Diane Verwoerd’s apartment. She had searched her quarters several times, seeking the bugs, Humphries knew. But no one had found the microscopic cameras built into the apartment’s wiring.
Four dark pictures quartered Humphries’s bedroom wall-screen, one view of each room in Diane’s apartment: sitting room, bedroom, kitchen, lavatory. He switched to infrared mode and saw that she was lying asleep in her bed. For two days she had searched Selene for Harbin and not found him. Humphries had secreted the mercenary far from her prying eyes. And fed the man with drugs that heightened his normal sense of betrayal, elevated his anger into homicidal fury. Years earlier chemists had developed hallucinogenic PCPs such as angel dust out of the primitive natural amphetamines. What Humphries’s people were feeding Harbin was far more sophisticated, fine-tuned to turn him into a raging maniac.