"This isn't the right time to say this, but I think you should know I love you."
He stared at her, his thoughts still dark and private. She died a little inside until the murderous glint faded from his eyes.
"I figured that out," he said. "Finally."
Her hand flattened against his cheek. His skin was warm, and the bristles he always sprouted after a long day tickled her palm.
"You don't have to worry, Marc. I just needed to say it aloud this once. I won't let my feelings for you get in the way."
"Of what?"
"Of Sloan Engineering."
He gave an un-Marc-like snort. "Now who's being the idiot? Sloan Engineering wouldn't be what it is today if the two of us hadn't worked so hard and so well together all these years."
He caught her hand and brought her palm to his lips.
"Maybe we should think about formalizing the partnership," he suggested.
It was what she'd ached to hear. She'd imagined this moment so many times, had scripted a dozen different responses. The one that came to her lips surprised them both.
"Maybe we should. After we've had time to figure out what that new partnership might entail."
14
Cleo flew out of JFK first class and waited three hours in London for a connecting flight. She used most of the wait time to do research.
She lost six hours due to the time change, so it was midafternoon local time when Cleo stepped off the plane into sunlight so dazzling she had to take instant refuge behind sunglasses. She passed through Customs with the ebu strapped to her ankle and undetected. Exiting the airport, she hailed a taxi.
The driver's prominently displayed license tagged him as Salvatore Sayed. Whipping into a stream of traffic, he aimed his cab down a palm-lined road, hooked an arm over the passenger seat and twisted around to converse with his passenger.
"This is your first time to Malta, yes?"
Cleo kept one eye on Salvatore, another on The Middle Sin 181 the donkey cart they were hurtling toward at warp speed.
"First time."
"I will tell you our history."
She started to inform him she'd Googled up most of Malta's colorful past, but he'd already launched into full tour-guide mode.
"We are Phoenician. We are Carthaginian. We are Greek and Roman and…"
"We are dead," Cleo interjected, jerking her chin at the obstacle now just yards ahead.
Her driver threw a careless glance over his shoulder, gave the steering wheel a yank and careened around the donkey cart on two wheels.
"The Arabs come after the Romans," he continued without missing a beat. "The Normans invade and drive out the Arabs."
He punctuated his recital with extravagant gestures that necessitated taking one or both hands off the wheel at different points. Cleo had to admire his technique even as she darted wary glances at the road ahead.
"After the Normans come the Sicilians. Then the pope makes a plea to Catholic nations to send knights to hold Malta against the Turks, who want our harbor for their Mediterranean fleet. Knights come from all across Europe, yes? Castile. Portugal. Provence. They fight a great battle. Eight thousand Turks against nine hundred knights."
Not unlike the battle fought hundreds of years later, Cleo had discovered in her research, when the Germans conducted a determined air campaign to gain Malta's deepwater harbor as a staging base for their invasion of Africa. The native Maltese and a handful of British defenders had held out against two years of continual bombing and strafing.
"You will visit the cathedral built by our knights, yes? The Co-Cathedral of St. John?"
"If I have time."
"But you must, signora! It is of all the most magnificent."
Since he took both hands off the wheel to slap his palms together in a passionate appeal, Cleo hastily promised to visit his cathedral.
Reassured, he resumed his narrative. By the time he'd detailed Napoleon's invasion, Britain's subsequent rout of the French and Malta's eventual transition from crown colony to independent nation, Cleo was awed by both his grasp of history and his blithe disregard for everything around him.
And people accused her of kamikaze road tactics! This guy beat her out in every category. Breakneck speed. Screeching, two-wheeled turns. Evel Knievel-style leaps over every bump. All conducted on the wrong side of the road.
Between the history lesson and the daredevil driving, she caught only fleeting glimpses of the passing scenery. Most of it seemed to consist of colorful fishing boats, red tile roofs and whitewashed buildings that glowed a pale gold in the afternoon sun.
But as they approached the city perched atop a distant hill, she leaned over the front seat to drink in the spectacle of massive, crenellated walls complete with sally ports and watchtowers. Inside the walls was a maze of buildings constructed centuries ago, all crowned by the cathedral built by those industrious knights.
"Your hotel, it is inside the walls. No taxis can go into the old city, you understand. You take a horse, yes?"
"Uh, I guess."
To her relief, the horses lined up at the gate to the inner city came equipped with carriage and driver. Her only luggage was her leather carryall, but Taxi Man insisted on transferring both it and her from vehicle to vehicle with Old World gallantry. Moments later, she was clip-clopping through streets so narrow the balconies of one building almost kissed those on the opposite side of the street.
The Auberge St. Georges sported a narrow facade, a set of ancient wooden doors and a doorman attired in an embroidered surcoat and a square velvet hat dripping gold tassels at each corner. When he handed her down from the carriage and escorted her into the lobby, Cleo's jaw sagged.
She could have sworn she'd just stepped into the Middle Ages. Tapestries embroidered in rich, glowing jewel tones adorned the walls. Flambeaux flickered in iron holders. Medieval suits of armor stood at attention on either side of a stone fireplace large enough to roast a mastodon.
Dangerously close to being a gawk, Cleo approached the front desk. The attendant was too well trained to give her jeans and wrinkled linen blazer more than a cursory glance, but his polite smile turned positively effusive when she provided her name and passport.
"Ah, yes, Madame North. We have you booked into the King's Suite."
"Which king?" she couldn't resist asking.
"Actually, three monarchs have occupied those rooms. Also two prime ministers and four presidents. You'll find information regarding their visits in the suite."
Ooooh-kay.
Somehow, she managed to keep her cool when he slid the registration form toward her and she saw the daily room ra
te. Good thing Sloan Engineering was covering her expenses. Signing the form with a flourish, she accepted an iron key that weighed at least a pound.
"Can you give me directions to the Cafe Corinthia?"
Visiting the taverna Frank Helms had called topped her list of priorities-right after she'd showered away the effects of her long flight.
"The cafe is just a block away, madame. In the square directly behind the cathedral. You cannot miss it."
"Thanks."
"Phillipe!" A snap of his fingers summoned the doorman. "Escort Madame North to her rooms."
The lobby had pretty well prepared her for the suite's baronial opulence. Nothing could have prepared her for the view.
"Oh, man!"
She stepped out onto the balcony that ran the length of the sitting room, awed by the panoramic vista of stone battlements, swaying palms and a row of glistening white cruise ships docked just below her in the Grand Harbor. And to the right, almost close enough to touch, were the square towers of the cathedral.
"Do you desire anything else, madame?"
"What? Oh, no thanks."
Fumbling in her purse, Cleo dug out the roll of Maltese lira she'd purchased at the airport.
Numbers weren't her strong suit. In fact, she'd expended considerable energy trying to convince her high school math teachers she lacked the necessary gene for geometry. After the long flight from the States, she was too ragged to even attempt the exchange rate, but the porter's beaming smile told her she had erred on the right side of the equation.
She closed the door behind him, longing to get at that opulent shower with its twenty-four-karat-gold fixtures. Years of training and an inbred caution exerted an inexorable pull, though. Before stripping off and leaving herself vulnerable, she set the deadlock and attached one of the military spec sensors to the assembly. That done, she dug the T-26 out of her carryall.
The unit consisted of off-the-shelf electronics considerably enhanced by the inventive Doreen. In transmit mode, the palm-size box emitted silent signals designed to trigger any listening device. In record mode, it could pluck the vibrations caused by those same listening devices right out of the air.
Cleo didn't really expect to find any bugs. Given the high-profile guests who'd occupied these rooms, she figured security teams from just about every nation on the planet had swept the suite at one time or another. So when the T-26 burped, she blinked in surprise.
Frowning, she tracked the signal to the fridge in the well-stocked minibar. No device of Doreen's making would react to vibrations caused by the champagne bottles squeezed into the racks or even the hum from the copper tubing that fed the ice-maker. There had to be something else.
She found it behind the fridge, wedged into a crack in the baseboard. The metal collar was corroded with rust, but the glass diode was intact…and right out of the fifties.
"Well, damn!"
Cleo had seen a bug just like this one in the Spy Museum, otherwise known as the Air Force Office of Special Investigations Historical Devices Display. It had been invented by a Russian by the name of Lev Termen back in the dark ages of electronic spookery.
A Lev Termen bug had found its way into the Great Seal of the United States that had hung for years behind the desk of Henry Cabot Lodge, America's ambassador to the Soviet Union. This particular copy looked to have been planted about the same time. Cleo could only imagine the conversations it must have transmitted before more sophisticated devices made it obsolete. Dropping the rusty diode into her bag, she completed her sweep and headed for the shower.
After tugging on her jeans and a clean, cream-colored rib-knit shell, she caught her still-damp hair up under a ball cap. She strapped the sheathed ebu to her right ankle, then placed the faxed surveillance photo of Frank Helms into her shoulder bag.
A short walk through streets frozen in time brought her to a square surrounded on three sides by the palatial medieval residences of former knights. Cafe Corinthia occupied one corner of the square. The lively taverna was wedged between two similar establishments, all apparently popular with locals and tourists alike.
Red-and-white-striped umbrellas shaded the outdoor tables, where sweaty soccer players sat elbow to elbow with businessmen in suits, students hunched over laptops and visitors in T-shirts decorated with cruise ship logos. As Cleo wove through the tables, she picked up a smattering of French, German, Italian and Japanese. Crisp British accents dominated, although the delegation from one of the cruise ships was definitely American.
Inside the cafe, blue cigarette smoke mingled with the heavy scent of garlic. The waiter who approached pinpointed Cleo's nationality in a single glance.
"Are you only one?" he asked in perfect English.
"Only one."
"This way, please."
"I need to make a call first. Is there a phone in the cafe?"
"Yes, madams. There, by the bar."
Obtaining the appropriate Maltese coins from the waiter, she dialed the Auberge St. Georges to make reservations for dinner. It was a feeble excuse for a call with the hotel just a block away, but it served her purpose. The number printed on the phone's placard was the one Frank/Adrian had called from Charleston.
When she hung up, the waiter appeared at her side. "This way, madame."
Cleo squeezed through the crowded bar and into the chair the waiter held out for her. She ordered tea, which she sipped while nonchalantly scrutinizing the restaurant's patrons. None of them resembled the man in the airport-surveillance photo.
Just as casually, she downed a late lunch consisting of the house specialty, a spicy, boat-shaped pastry stuffed with ricotta cheese, egg and peas. When she asked for the check and peeled off a wad of lira, the waiter fought a brief, heroic battle with his baser self.
"It is too much, madame."
"Maybe. Maybe not." She unfolded the surveillance photo and nudged it across the table. "I'm looking for this man. Do you know him?"
He flicked the printout a quick glance. "No, madame, I do not."
"Are you sure?"
Cleo tapped the lira with a fingernail. The waiter took another look.
"This is not a very good photocopy."
"I know. The man's name is Adrian Mustafa Moore. In the States, he went by Frank Helms."
"He is American?"
"British and Saudi."
"And he lives here in Malta?"
"He has friends here."
"I'm sorry, madame, I do not recognize him. But I will ask at the bar, yes? Perhaps one of them knows this man."
The photocopy made the rounds of the locals at the counter. Cleo picked up a lot of muttering and head shaking, but nothing that registe�
�red as recognition. She hadn't really expected it to be that easy.
Pocketing the faxed image, she passed the waiter the lira.
"Here's my business card. I'm staying at the Auberge St. Georges. Call me if anyone recalls seeing or speaking to this man."
Her next stop was the Pulizija ta' Malta. Cleo's research had confirmed that Malta's police force was one of the oldest in Europe. Her worry that it might have gotten stuck in some past century vanished when Inspector Renaldo Aruzzo introduced himself.
The man only came up to Cleo's shoulder, but the shrewd intelligence in his dark eyes was as reassuring as the sleek laptop on his desk. Dapper in his Italian-cut suit and neatly trimmed Vandyke beard, he invited Cleo to take a seat.
"I have received a fax from the Charleston Police Department, Ms. North. They wish information on the same individual you are inquiring about. I understand they desire to question him in regard to a missing woman."
"She's no longer missing. Her body was found yesterday."
"Ah. How unfortunate. Perhaps you will tell me your connection to this woman?"
"I was hired by her employer to find her. Now I want to find her killer."
"You have evidence she was murdered?"
"The autopsy was still pending when I left the States, but there's little doubt in anyone's mind."
"I see."
Crossing his arms, the inspector stroked his pointed beard. His gaze was thoughtful as he regarded Cleo. She suspected he'd received recent inquiries about Frank Helms from several other sources besides the Charleston Police Department. Donovan had to be working his channels, too.
"So do you have anything on Mr. Helms-slash-Moore?"
"Only that he flew in last week, cleared through Customs with a British passport and has since dropped from sight."
THE MIDDLE SIN Page 15
