Mariel lifted her head, listening for a moment. Nothing. Listening was an automatic response, making sure you didn’t get too deep in what you were doing. She checked the clock—11:38—then clicked on the next Ghasib-prefixed e-mail. A few lines of encryption gibberish met her eyes, and she instantly exited again and clicked it to download to the zip disk. The next few were the same.
The last file had only just arrived, so Michel hadn’t seen it yet. Mariel felt a curious presentiment as she clicked it open. Maybe it would be significant. Maybe this would be the break she needed.
Another encrypted message, with an attachment this time. Mariel bit her lip as she clicked on the attachment.
It was a photograph. The image slowly formed on the screen, and Mariel blinked and opened her eyes in dumb disbelief. It was no one she recognized, but it was the most gorgeous man she had ever clapped eyes on.
In her life.
Mariel sat gazing at the handsome masculine face while her brain circuits started misfiring, one by two by four, triggering off a chain of explosions that blew reason into the void. She knew about the reality of love at first sight. Coup de foudre, it was called in French. She believed it was possible.
But she had never heard before of anyone falling head over heels in love with a face in a photograph.
Two
Waving dark hair above a broad, wide forehead. Strong square eyebrows. Eyes dark with an intensity that seemed to burn her. A mouth tilted with devilment, passion in the beautifully shaped full lips, and a kind of wildness in the expression as a whole. Like looking into a storm.
Who was he? Mariel had a deep feeling of recognition, but was that real, or just the effect the face was having on her, as if she had known him in another lifetime, was destined to love him in this one?
She shook her head, trying to re-establish a sense of reality, and glanced at the computer clock again. She had lost her sense of time. Was it really only 11:48, or had the clock frozen along with her brain? She was suddenly frightened. How long had she sat here, staring at this not-quite-stranger’s face?
It was her job to download the file, she reminded herself, like a child who had forgotten the alphabet. But she could not bear to lose the face. Without any pause for rational thought, she dragged the cursor over Print. She clicked the mouse, heard the printer whirr into life, and then bit her lip with regret. This, she told herself, was the way spies crashed in flames—letting your guard down for one fatal second.
But it was too late now.
She downloaded the file to the disk, then deleted it from the secret folder. Michel would never know it had been opened.
Two minutes later she was still standing there, the zip disk in her hand, waiting as the printer ground back and forth over the page. The colour printer printed slowly, and it printed exceeding fine. What a fool she was! She ought to be getting out of here, but now she was rivetted, waiting. Printers were not her field. She was afraid of what might happen if she tried to abort the print. Would it spew the thing out the next time it was activated?
Usually when she had finished, Mariel locked this office before returning to her own desk to send the contents of her disk. But the printer was going to take forever. So to save time she went out to her computer and slipped the zip disk into the slot.
Michel had secret software on every computer in the place, which allowed him to recap every keystroke his employees typed. She was pretty sure Michel checked each of the firm’s computers in rotation every week, reading e-mails and the history of everyone’s cyber activity. If so, he never found any evidence of her Friday-night activities. Mariel simply disabled the program whenever she wanted an activity to go unrecorded. She did that now, then fired off the contents of the disk to Hal’s safe address, and deleted all record of the transaction before restoring the monitoring software.
She wiped the zip floppy, dropped it into a drawer, and went back to the private office. The printer had finally finished.
Mariel plucked the page from its tray, and again all thought left her head as her eyes fell on the image of that perfect, masculine face. What a devil-may-care smile, what eyes! Who was he?
So entranced was the spy that she did not hear the sounds of stealthy entry in the outer office. She heaved a sigh, flicked off the light, pulled open the door, and stepped through.
The man getting his bearings in the outer office was as surprised as she was. For a moment they were silent, gaping at each other.
“It’s you!” Mariel whispered, amazed, as the world reeled and rocked and all the landmarks she knew sank without trace.
The man standing halfway across the office in the gloom, looking much more dangerous in the flesh, was the man whose picture she had just taken from the printer.
Haroun al Muntazir frowned and cursed himself for a fool. Ash was right, he was too impetuous. To break in to the office when someone was in it was the work of an ignorant amateur.
But the woman in front of him was a mystery. The brassy red wig and the black leather micromini and boots might have been enough to tell him what her profession was, even if she hadn’t been so sexually alluring that he had the urge to negotiate terms with her there and then. But what was she doing in Michel Verdun’s office?
When he managed to unfix his eyes from her, his gaze fell on the grotesque picture on the screen in the office behind her. A porn video. That went some way towards explaining her presence—did Verdun come to the office at night to indulge his extramarital passions?
Which meant he was behind her in the office? Hell! thought Haroun. Just my luck I’ve broken in on orgy night.
Then he belatedly heard what she’d said. It’s you. What did that mean? Some kind of hooker’s ploy to convince a client he was the stuff of her fantasies?
It followed that she didn’t know her client by sight. Maybe she thought he was the one who had booked her time.
With typical boldness, he decided to bluff. He could get out of this yet.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he agreed. “Have you been given the details of what’s expected?”
She nibbled at a corner of her mouth, unconsciously turning her red mouth into an exotic, inviting flower. Haroun’s blood was too quick to respond.
Mariel quietly folded the paper she held, hiding the photo. How on earth had he got in? Her brain rushed to fill the gap—had Michel given him a key? Had the photo been sent to identify him to Michel prior to a meeting? Did that mean Michel would be arriving here?
Did his question mean this man was assuming she was the contact he was due to meet? She forgot the outfit she was wearing, what she must look like to him.
“No. Um…I’m filling in at the last minute,” she stammered. “Michel—is sick. So if you don’t mind briefing me…”
Haroun breathed a quiet sigh. The fates were being kind to him tonight. So Verdun’s regular girl, Michelle, was ill, and the replacement needed briefing. Well, he certainly would enjoy briefing her, but the important thing was to get out of here before Verdun arrived.
“My car,” he said, looking at his watch so that she would understand he was a man in a hurry.
She felt a surge of sharp regret that the face she had fallen for belonged to a man connected to a villain like Michel Verdun. Then her spy’s practical brain took over. She wondered whether he bought secrets, or sold them. She might, with luck, pick up something interesting from him, and that would be the last of her usefulness to her cousin Hal. Because her work at Michel Verdun et Associés was finished as of tonight.
“All right, I—I’ll just get my bag.” She whirled to run lightly to her desk, as eager to get out of here as the stranger could want. She picked up the items she had tossed on her desk, dumped them back in the drawer.