He looked back at the line of white hotels, his hands inert on one of Tsushimas teak railings Behind the hotels, the little towns three holograms glowed: Banamex, Aeronaves, and the cathedrals six-meter Virgin.
Conroy stood beside him. Crash job, Conroy said. You know how it is. Conroys voice was flat and uninflected, as though hed modeled it after a cheap voice chip. His face was broad and white, dead white. His eyes were dark-ringed and hooded, beneath a peroxide thatch combed back from a wide forehead. He wore a black polo shirt and black slacks. In-side, he said, turning. Turner followed, ducking to enter the cabin door. White screens, pale flawless pine; Tokyos austere corporate chic.
Conroy settled himself on a low, rectangular cushion of slate-gray ultrasuede. Turner stood, his hands slack at his sides. Conroy took a knurled silver inhaler from the low enamel table between them. Choline enhancer?
No.
Conroy jammed the inhaler into one nostril and snorted.
You want some sushi? He put the inhaler back on the table. We caught a couple of red snapper about an hour ago
Turner stood where he was, staring at Conroy.
Christopher Mitchell, Conroy said. Maas Biolabs. Their head hybridoma man. Hes coming over to Hosaka.
Never heard of him.
Bullshit. How about a drink?
Turner shook his head. Silicons on the way out, Turner. Mitchells the man who made biochips work, and Maas is sitting on the major patents. You know that. Hes the man for monoclonals. He wants out YOU and me, Turner, were going to shift him.
I think Im retired, Conroy. I was having a good time, back there.
Thats what the psych team in Tokyo say. I mean, its not exactly your first time out of
the box, is it? Shes a field psychologist, on retainer to Hosaka.
A muscle in Turners thigh began to jump.
They say youre ready, Turner. They were a little worried, after New Delhi, so they wanted to check it out. Little therapy on the side. Never hurts, does it?
2 MARLY
Her hand, in the pocket of her good jacket, a Sally Stanley but almost a year old, was a white knot around the crumpled telefax. She no longer needed it, having memorized the address, but it seemed she could no more release it than break the trance that held her here now, staring into the window of an expensive shop that sold menswear, her focus phasing between sedate flannel dress shirts and the reflection of her own dark eyes.
Surely the eyes alone would be enough to cost her the job. No need for the wet hair she now wished shed let Andrea cut. The eyes displayed a pain and an inertia that anyone could read, and most certainly these things would soon be revealed to Herr Josef Virek, least likely of potential employers.
When the telefax had been delivered, shed insisted on regarding it as some cruel prank, another nuisance call. Shed had enough of those, thanks to the media, so many that Andrea had ordered a special program for the apartments phone, one that filtered out incoming calls from any number that wasnt listed in her permanent directory. But that, Andrea had insisted, must have been the reason for the telefax. How else could anyone reach her?
But Marly had shaken her head and huddled deeper into Andreas old terry robe. Why would Virek, enormously weal-thy, collector and patron, wish to hire the disgraced former operator of a tiny Paris gallery?
Then it had been Andreas time for head-shaking, in her impatience with the new, the disgraced Marly Krushkhova, who spent entire days in the apartment now, who sometimes didnt bother to dress. The attempted sale, in Paris, of a single forgery, was hardly the novelty Marly imagined it to have been, she said. If the press hadnt been quite so anxious to show up the disgusting Gnass for the fool he most assuredly was, she continued, the business would hardly have been news. Gnass was wealthy enough, gross enough, to make for a weekends scandal. Andrea smiled. If you had been less attractive, you would have gotten far less attention.
Marly shook her head. And the forgery was Alains. You were innocent. Have you forgotten that?
Marly went into the bathroom, still huddled in the thread-bare robe, without answering.
Beneath her friends wish to comfort, to help, Marly could already sense the impatience of someone forced to share a very small space with an unhappy, nonpaying guest.
And Andrea had had to loan her the fare for the Eurotrans.
With a conscious, painful effort of will, she broke from the circle of her thoughts and merged with the dense but sedate flow of serious Belgian shoppers.
A girl in bright tights and a boyfriends oversized loden jacket brushed past, scrubbed and smiling. At the next inter-section, Marly noticed an outlet for a fashion line shed favored in her own student days. The clothes looked impossibly young.
In her white and secret fist, the telefax.
Galerie Duperey, 14 Rue au Beurre, Bruxelles.
Josef Virek.
The receptionist in the cool gray anteroom of the Galerie Duperey might well have grown there, a lovely and likely poisonous plant, rooted behind a slab of polished marble inlaid with an enameled keyboard. She raised lustrous eyes as Marly approached. Marly imagined the click and whirr of shutters, her bedraggled image whisked away to some far corner of Josef Vireks empire.