Belloc began to draw invisible pictures on his desk with the back of a ballpoint pen. He had his coat open, and Pigoreau could smell his sweat all the way across the desk. What we need is a hard connection. If this Yugo, thisβ? Belloc went on. Hamy flinched; Belloc frowned.
Come on, Belloc! If you have, he can ID Zulu and place him there, and you have a connection. Belloc picked up the photographs, glanced at Hamy. He had an odd voice, almost a whisper, as if something was seriously wrong where sound was produced. Somebody leased a mini-sub and had it shipped to Tunis. Them and their goddam hamburgers. He tried to kill us, did kill one of us, remotely detonated bomb!
His voice sounded as if he was strangling. Too dangerous. The man must know a lot. We want him. He rose, shook hands with both men, and went out, retrieving his cigarettes from the desk at the last moment and beginning to burrow in the pack as he went through the door.
When Pigoreau was gone, Belloc looked at Hamy, then picked up the photos and dropped them in front of the other man. Put a team togetherβhelo, two cars, civilian clothes, body armor underneathβyou know. Benoit to meet us at the gate and let us in. Efremov and Anna worked in harness, patching together the conspiracy and its target from tiny bits of information, rather like two devoted archeologists reassembling a shattered vase from the tiny flakes that they dug, each day, from the ground outside.
Anna was taking to the kingdom of the World Wide Web as if she was to the ether born. Efremov excelled at puzzles. Anna had little to do in a house run by servants. She was a courtesan, and she spent hours each day on her body, coating it in glittering artifice and honing it with exercise. Efremov had begun to buy her loyalty when he got her a martial arts instructor. Martial arts were, as far as Anna was concerned, more exciting and more fun than calisthenics and Western aerobics.
