“Yeah,” he said.
The guy flashed his eyes at him. For a moment Tom thought he might take a swing at him. But no such luck.
An image of a different John Fortune flashed through his mind: a little boy, clutching the hand of his slim, beautiful mother with her wings folded at her back. He hadn’t had the lump in his forehead then. . . .
Tom shut his eyes and shook his head once, quickly. Not my memory, he thought. That dude’s dead.
“So you are the famous Radical,” said the slim Goth chick beside Fortune. She had chin-length hair, brass red, streaked electric chartreuse. Her English had a French accent. “I’m totally excited to meet you.”
“This is Simone Duplaix,” Fortune said. “Also known as Snowblind. She’s from Quebec. That’s in Canada.”
Ignoring the gibe, Tom grinned as he shook her hand. “Pleasure’s mine. But these days I just go by Tom.”
Her grip lingered on his. “I had your poster on my closet door in college,” she said. “To me you are a hero.”
“Long live the Revolution,” he said. He let her hand go and turned to the next visiting fireman. Sure, Snowblind was ready to get it on. But not really that cute. He was doing better. And if he was going to get some on the side, that ace chick who’d gone with them on the Oil Rivers raid was pretty foxy. Before her arms blew off and all.
Briskly, Nshombo introduced Buford Calhoun, a big blond redneck who wore a dark business suit and tie, but looked as if he ought to be wearing greasy coveralls with his name on the chest. “Pleased to meet a famous ace such as yourself, Mr. Weathers,” he said. Southerners always sounded dumb to Tom. He right away suspected that dumb ran a little bit deeper with ol’ Buford.
“And this is Mr. Tom Diedrich,” Nshombo said. “He also goes by Brave Hawk.”
Nshombo spoke English not with a French but with a touch of stuck-up-sounding English accent. Tom usually talked French with him anyway to keep his hand in. He’d learned the language during an earlier go-round in Africa. He picked it up pretty easily. He did most things pretty easily. Except keep a gig.
Until now. Nshombo might be a stiff. But the man had vision. And he wasn’t afraid to leave Tom free to do his thing. To let him be . . . Radical.
Even before he heard the ace name, Weathers had this other Tom pegged as Native American. He stood six or seven inches less than Weathers’s six-two, copper-skinned, hair black as a crow’s ass. He wore cowboy duds: pointy boots, faded denim jeans, blue denim shirt. A coral-bead necklace with a smooth-polished stone hawk fetish encircled his neck.
To Tom’s amused delight he actually tried the hand-crushing game. Diedrich had pretty strong hands. For a nat.
Tom Weathers’s grip could powder brick. Literally.
He was above that kind of macho posturing. He squeezed back just hard enough to make the Indian’s eyes water and bandy knees buckle. Then he let him go.
Gotta admit the little fucker’s pretty hard-core, he thought. He’d let me squash his hand before he cried uncle.
Diedrich gave him a flat look and a tiny nod. “Hear you fight for the rights of indigenous peoples,” he said huskily. “Don’t see a lot of white-eyes actually step up and do that. Mostly they’re just talk.”
Looking as if Brave Hawk’s implied slam had put his aristocratic nose a bit off true, John Fortune said, “And this is the Lama, from Nepal.”
He’d saved the weirdest for last. The Lama was a skinny little brown guy in a yellow robe who sat in the lotus position.
Two feet off the hardwood floor.
He didn’t offer a hand. Tom didn’t push it. “The Llama?” he said. “Isn’t he some South American guy, spits, like, sticky tear-gas slime, kicks real hard?”
“That is properly pronounced yama,” the floating man snapped. “I must mention he is merely a poser with a cape and a pencil-thin mustache. Whereas I am being a seeker after spiritual truth.”
“Whoa! Hang on, Mr. Holy Floating Dude,” Tom said, holding up his hands. “Don’t get your dharmic diapers in a wad.”
The Lama looked pissy. Before he could say anything Tom heard a pop and felt air puff against his face. A woman appeared in the briefing room.
Tom blinked. An amazing woman. Gleaming black hair flowed down over her shoulders to blend in with a black cloak worn over a white jumpsuit. Her eyes were silver in her exquisite heart-shaped face. Zippers slashed this way and that across the jumpsuit. Tom noticed they offered ready access to ripe breasts and pussy. His heartbeat picked up.
“Fashionably late again, Lilith?” Fortune asked acidly.
“Right on time, I’d say, Johnny dear,” she said. Her voice was a kind of purr that tickled right up Tom’s nut sac. Complete with one of those velvety Brit accents. “I’ve just missed the boring parts, it seems.”
John Fortune clenched his hands. His lips moved. So did the lump in his forehead. Tom stared at it with horrified fascination. Christ, is that a fucking bug? He almost imagined he could see little legs twitching under the coffee-with-cream skin. He’d first thought it was just some physical thing that came along with Fortune’s ace, a minor joker manifestation . . . .
“She brought us here yesterday,” John Fortune said with what seemed unnatural control. “She’s been away on business of her own. As is often the case.”
“She only comes out at night,” Simone said. “Like a vampire.” Tom wasn’t sure if she was being—what was the word?—snarky, or if she spoke with a certain admiration. Outside he knew the sun had just dropped below the horizon with equatorial abruptness. In here it was never day or night, warm or cold. It just was, like Limbo.
“And you must be the famous Radical,” Lilith said, ignoring the editorial commentary. She smiled at Tom. He forgot all about John Fortune.
It took a strong man to withstand the sheer sensuality of the look and not get knocked flat on his ass. They didn’t come stronger than Tom. Rest easy, sweetheart, he thought at her. I’m Alpha Male of the whole fucking continent of Africa.
Except the little dapper guy at his side. But Nshombo never showed any interest in sex. What got him off was power.
Tom Weathers had charisma in buckets. He knew that. He used it—for the Revolution, of course. But if he’d had any of what the petit bourgeois wimps called “people skills” these days, he wouldn’t have had to tuck Sprout under his arm and run away from the collapse of a score of revolutionary movements in a dozen years, brought about by the sudden onset of pissed-off government troops or mutiny by capitalist running-dog lackey traitors in his own band. Or both. Still, he couldn’t help noticing that if either Hei-lian or little Goth-punk Simone had drawn a death glare ace, the newcomer would be a smoking heap.
“Now that we are all present,” the president said through silence thick as the sex in the air, which hung heavier than the humidity of the Kongoville night outside, “has your delegation had sufficient time to peruse the evidence we provided you, documenting Nigerian crimes against the native peoples of the Niger River Delta, whose land they plunder of oil?”
That was the problem with the man. He really talked like that.
“Not really, Your Excellency,” Fortune said. “You loaded us down pretty well.”
“My eyes are turning around in my skull from all this stuff,” Brave Hawk said.
Buford gave him his lights-on/nobody’s-home smile. “I don’t bother my head with none of that,” he said. “I just go where they point me and do what they tell me, and leave the thinking to them as’re good at it.”
Nshombo nodded his big head precisely. He was very good at it. “We wished to leave no doubt in your minds as to the justness of the cause we share with the oppressed people of the Delta. Now, please give your attention to our guests from Chinese Central Television. As you may know, Ms. Sun and Mr. Hong accompanied yesterday’s attack which interrupted the Nigerian atrocity.”
He nodded to Hei-lian and one of her pet geeks, who had hung back playing furniture during the introductions. Hei-lian smiled
that gorgeous smile of hers. It lost a little bit of its luster with Lilith in the room. But not all.
Tom slid his tongue over his underlip. He was starting to get ideas.
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Hei-lian said. “Gentlemen, Ms. Duplaix, Ms.—Lilith. If you’ll just look at the monitor here—”
“I am so not watching that horrible arm-chopping video again!” the Goth girl exclaimed.
“I quite understand your feelings,” Hei-lian said. “Fortunately, we need not. My crew has blown up and enhanced certain frames from footage taken moments before the counterattack began.”
Hong diddled dials. To Snowblind’s visible relief—and what’s somebody called Snowblind doing here just south of the equator? Tom wondered—what appeared on one of the big flat-screen monitors was huddled Ijaw huts, distance-grainy. Among them stood a figure. It looked up and to its right, then backed into a doorway out of sight.
“Wait,” Fortune said. “Run that back.”
Hong did. The man stepped back out into sunlight. He was short, plump, white, and bearded, and wore the same style bush hat, khaki shorts, and short-sleeved shirt as the red-haired guy Tom had torched. He carried a long old-style Brit assault rifle.
“Freeze it,” Hei-lian said.
“Son of a—” Fortune cut himself off just before he said something a well-behaved little fascist type didn’t say in front of presidential guys. “That’s Butcher Dagon!”
“He is familiar to you, Mr. Fortune?” Nshombo asked.
“Le bête!” Snowblind hissed.
Fortune controlled himself with visible effort. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said. “Yes, he is. The Committee knows him way too well. His real name’s Percival Chauncey. I’m not sure if he’s number one on the list, but he’s definitely one of the most-wanted ace criminals in the world today.”
“So my intelligence analysts tell me,” Nshombo said. “He currently styles himself a captain, although his actual military record is spotty. The Nigerians, it would seem, have added a rogue ace to the SAS advisors who lead their death squads.”
“If that Limey prick’s involved,” Diedrich said, “something bad’s definitely going down.”
He and Tom gave each other hard grins. Tom may’ve been like that with Nshombo. It didn’t mean he had to go sucking up to him like Fortune did. He appreciated Brave Hawk’s disrespect for authority. Even if he’d be smart not to push it here in the PPA.
Nshombo ignored the crudity. He gazed intently at the delegation’s young leader. Despite modern A/C Fortune’s forehead shone with sweat. It made the strange bulge gleam in the fluorescent light.
Fortune’s eyes flared. He clenched a fist and raised it. “We’ll—”
He cut off. He unwound his hand, dropped it behind his back, as if it suddenly embarrassed him. In a less clotted voice he said, “We’ll have to study the situation carefully before committing to a course of action. A lot’s at stake here. And Nigeria’s not the first country to hire a dodgy mercenary ace.”
Tom smiled a slow smile and glanced at Nshombo. The president’s face showed no more emotion than the polished teak idol it resembled. But if he’d been a betting man, he would’ve just lost to Tom Weathers.
Tom stooped and opened a red and white cooler that sat discreetly against a wall. A wisp of dry-ice fog puffed out. He took out a white plastic garbage bag. It was full of lumpy, pokey objects.
“Here’s what’s at stake here, man,” Tom said, handing it to Fortune. “See for yourself what we’re up against.”
Its weight caught the slick Committee ace off guard. He’d forgotten how strong Tom was. Fortune fumbled the bag and it fell open, spilling its contents down his pants and across the floor.
“Fuck!” he yelled.
Snowblind screamed.
It was a bag of severed hands, their dark skin gone ashen.
“Daddy! Oh, I want my daddy!”
Sun Hei-lian prided herself on her ability to keep cool under the most demanding circumstances. Being interrupted while concentrating so intently snapped her equally well-honed survival reflexes into play against her. Startled, she jumped up from elbows and knees.
Tom slid out of her. She bounced on her bare buttocks on his disordered bed.
“It’s all right, honey,” said Tom from his knees behind Hei-lian. “I’m here.”
Sprout’s hair was disarrayed, her eyes puffy with tears. She wore an oversized Hello Kitty T-shirt that came down almost to her knees and clutched a well-worn teddy bear to her breasts.
Lying supine to receive Hei-lian’s ministrations, Lilith raised her head from her pillow with one brow raised. “And what might this be?”
“My daughter,” Tom said. “She’s—special. You know.”
“I see. Does she often burst in under such . . . circumstances?”
“Hey. Sex is a natural thing.”
But Hei-lian noted he swept up the sheet to cover his rampant erection and turned away as he folded the woman weeping into his arms, so as not to give her an inappropriate prod in the flank. He also left both women completely uncovered.
“I had a bad dream,” Sprout sobbed. “I want my daddy.”
“Hey, sweetheart,” Tom said. “You got the world’s greatest ace right here. I’ll always be here for you.”
Sprout buried her face in his shoulder. Tom embraced her, stroking her long blond hair with genuine tenderness.
To muster such modesty as was available to her with minimum commotion Hei-lian lay down on her belly. Now that the passion-spasm had been broken she felt glad enough for a break.
Her mind whirled with thoughts. There was the odd phrasing Sprout had used—twice saying she wanted her daddy, when he was right here in front of her. But that struck her as a likely product of the creature’s retardation. One could read nothing into it.
What stuck in her mind, though, was the stricken look in Lilith’s silver eyes as she watched Tom Weathers comforting his daughter like any loving father.
“So,” Lilith said, “however did a Western man of mystery wind up warlord of a Central African revolutionary movement?”
The lovemaking was done. Hei-lian was glad. Although the pleasure had been seismic she was both exhausted and sore. And now that the passion had subsided she felt a certain shame at what she had done.
You’ve done worse for the People’s Republic, she reminded herself.
She raised herself to prop elbow on bed and cheek on palm and gazed with half-lidded eyes across the golden length of Tom Weathers in the light of the bedside lamp. He lay on his back with hands linked behind his glorious halo of hair. Sweat didn’t seem to dampen its spirits. Hei-lian wondered if that was another facet of his ace. He certainly displayed a remarkable array of powers.
On his other side Lilith lay in similar pose, all silver skin and gleaming midnight hair. She had asked her question lightly, almost teasingly.
Hei-lian kept her expression neutral. She was skilled at that. She felt a visceral dislike for the other woman. Even though she still had the smell of her on her upper lip.
It’s not jealousy, she told herself. That’s personal sentiment. This is national security.
Tom’s eyes flicked from Lilith to Hei-lian and back. He smiled lazily. If he made an effort to hide his smugness, Hei-lian thought, he failed.
“If I tell you, I won’t be mysterious,” he said.
Silver eyes narrowed. Hei-lian watched the British ace raptor-close. Lilith seemed as skilled and imaginative at pleasing a female lover as a male one; the more so when the object of their exercise was to excite a man who scarcely needed erotic encouragement. Until the fourth or fifth time, anyway . . .
And Tom—before sleeping with him the first time, weeks ago, Hei-lian expected his lovemaking to be brisk and perfunctory, perhaps even brutal. And indeed when his passion mounted he was forceful as a stallion. But before that he was both remarkably sensitive and skilled.
As he had been tonight, despite devoting greater efforts to the i
nterloper. I suppose I can assuage my ego with the fact Tom can actually enjoy my aging face and body at the same time as this perfect black and silver succubus.
“You’ve fought many brilliant guerrilla campaigns, Tom,” said Lilith, running a black-painted fingernail down his chest. His pectoral muscles were defined but no more: without his remarkable ace gifts he would have been strong, but wiry-strong, not a steroid-pumped freak. “Each time betrayal brought you down.”
“Damn straight,” Tom said. “It was the only thing that could.”
“Yet your partnership with President-for-Life Nshombo endures. A few years ago, he was just another minor faction leader in the endless, bloody Congo wars. The next thing the world knows you’re at his side; he’s vanquished his rivals, conquered the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then the Republic of the Congo, and is well on his way toward carving a new resource-rich superpower from the heart of Africa. What transformed both your fortunes so?”
Tom shrugged. “Nothing succeeds like success, like the capitalists say. Dr. Nshombo’s objectively Marxist. We’re after the same ends. We agree on the means. Especially that to make an omelet you’ve got to break a few eggs.”
Hei-lian wasn’t objectively Marxist. Far less Maoist. Never had been. She had learned all the right words, and parroted them with appropriate conviction. She had her Party pin, which always delighted Tom when she wore it. But to her it was no more than a necessary token, a kind of union card. Had she actually believed the rhetoric, the Ministry would have purged her years before as an idiot or a dangerous loon.
A brow-furrow marred the smooth perfection of Lilith’s face. Hei-lian repressed a smirk. She almost wished her opposite number—for Guoanbu agreed with the world intelligence community’s consensus that Lilith was a spy for the Crown, although her background was if anything a darker secret than Tom’s—luck in learning anything. Hei-lian had gotten little more from Weathers than anyone could get from a quick Google. And Hei-lian was good.
“And then there’s your daughter, Sprout,” Lilith said. “She’s quite lovely, make no mistake. Yet one almost gets the impression she’s older than you. How is that possible, really?”