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Then she slipped into the chair and grabbed her computer mouse with one hand. The screen saver was a shot of moving clouds and sea, and was another thread in the fabricated character of Michel Verdun’s wuss of an employee. Mariel’s screen saver of choice would have been something closer to the wild starbursts on the desk next to hers—or perhaps a series of morphing faces. She liked colour and wackiness and excitement.
The serene sky dissolved, and her desktop appeared.
For a few moments Mariel typed and clicked until the window she wanted appeared. Then she grabbed up a pen and, on a bright pink Post-it note, copied the short list of letters and numbers that appeared. She carefully double-checked them, then deleted the file and exited. After a few moments the desktop would dissolve and her screen saver would reappear, leaving no evidence that she had touched the computer.
Mariel pulled a zip disk from a drawer, stood and, armed with the little pink square of paper, moved through the shadows and paused before an internal door.
Noting the first figure she had scribbled down, she keyed the code into the security keypad. She waited till she heard the click, then opened the door and slipped inside, closing it firmly behind her before reaching for the light switch. It was just possible someone in a building opposite might phone the police if they saw lights.
A few feet away, two bright squares of light showed two identical images of a naked couple deriving a great deal of apparent mutual satisfaction from the close conjunction of their rather improbably endowed bodies. After a moment the fluorescent lights flickered and settled into a bright glow.
Against the wall were two computers on a long desk. Beside it were several tall black filing cabinets. These and a chair made up the entire contents of the room. These were Michel’s top secret, dedicated computers. The room was off limits to everyone save Michel himself.
Mariel crossed to one of the computers. She dragged the wheeled chair over and sank down, dropping the pink note beside the keyboard, reaching for the mouse. The pornographic movie loop disappeared as the desktop came up on one screen, but on the other the couple moved tirelessly through their paces.
It was Michel’s favourite screen saver. Mariel hardly saw it anymore. She knew Michel did it to annoy, and it was annoying if she thought about it. Under ordinary circumstances she would have taken a stand, but these were very far from ordinary circumstances. Michel was a man whose guard went down around women whom he was successfully sexually harassing, and it was no part of Mariel’s plan to figure in his mind as a woman to reckon with. Mariel the Mouse was her role.
The real Mariel de Vouvray would have mentioned twice that she found his screen saver offensive and then would probably have kicked the screen out of the monitor the third time to make her point. The Mariel Michel knew lowered her eyes and bit her lip whenever he summoned her to some discussion while the screen saver was on. Which was something he did to all the women staff—too regularly for chance.
But that was okay. If she did her job right, she would have all the revenge she could want on Michel Verdun. And Mariel intended to do her job right.
Mariel was a corporate spy. She had ostensibly been working for Michel Verdun et Associés for four months—but in fact she was working for her American cousin, Hal Ward, of Ward Energy Systems in California.
Hal was the inventor of the world’s most efficient fuel cell technology, but he hadn’t stopped there. His work now involved research and development into a variety of energy alternatives to fossil fuel and the combustion engine.
And someone was carefully and consistently stealing the results of that research and passing it on to foreign-based companies and governments. The pipeline for the stolen material had finally been tracked last year. Michel Verdun et Associés was a “détective privé”—detective agency—based in Paris, with links all over the Middle East and, most importantly, with the country of Bagestan. It was Bagestan, and Bagestan’s unpleasant dictator, Ghasib, who benefited most from the stolen industrial secrets.
Hal wanted the leak stopped. But Michel Verdun—as might be expected—had some of the best data protection software in the world on his computers. Hal had decided to put someone right inside Michel Verdun’s organization, not only to discover the source of the leak in his own corporation, but to unravel Michel Verdun’s entire operation, from leak to end user.
Mariel de Vouvray’s father was French, and a not too distant cousin of Hal’s father. Her mother was American, and the sister of Hal’s mother. Mariel had spent every summer in California almost since she was born, many of them on Hal’s family estate. She was fluently bilingual. She had taken her university degree in computer intelligence and then had gone to work full-time for Hal. She was a natural for this job.
It had been a relatively simple matter to get her into Michel’s organization. Through one of his friends in Silicon Valley, Hal had engineered the head hunting and abrupt departure of one of Michel’s key computer people. Mariel’s fluent English and glowing references from her mythical former job (courtesy of another good friend of Hal’s), added to her willingness to start immediately, had nailed her the post left vacant by the departure.
Since then, slowly and carefully, because time was not the most important factor, Mariel had wormed her way into the most secret parts of Verdun’s organization. She had placed “moles” into his computer programming so that her own computer was e-mailed a copy of all his new passwords and codes every week. She had reconnoitred the building and found the old disused fire escape, and the hotel.
Every Friday night before she left the building at the end of the day she went up to the fourth-floor toilets, unlocked the window and opened it a crack. Then she went home, changed into her disguise and returned as Emma.
And then she checked the computers in this room for data files that had arrived during the week and sent them on to Hal Ward’s own safe computer. Even if Michel did discover that he was being spied on, he would not find out where the information had gone.
Mot de passe? demanded the screen, and Mariel consulted the little paper and keyed in that week’s password. Then she summoned up the list of everything that had arrived during the past week. Michel routinely deleted the files as he dealt with them, but Mariel had installed a mole on the computer that saved all files to a second, hidden folder. Since she had been inside his firewall when she did it, the program remained undetected.
Michel had a finger in lots of pies, most of which were rotten. He had agents, moles and hackers everywhere, stealing data and sending it to these two computers anonymously. He then sold it to his many clients.
One of the things for which she most despised him was the work he did for a Swiss bank. Michel investigated the lives of the people who were fighting to get back the money that had been deposited before the Second World War by relatives who had afterwards died in German concentration camps. The bank was hoping to blackmail vulnerable people into dropping their claims. He did the same for a multinational pharmaceutical giant, investigating the backgrounds of anyone—politicians included—who challenged them.
That was Michel Verdun. Very, very choosy about his clients—he wouldn’t touch anyone who didn’t have money.
Mariel scanned the list of received data with practised skill. Michel’s system worked on a number code. Agents sent data signed with a code. In return he paid money into anonymous bank accounts. Anyone trying to sort out his little empire would have one hell of a time.
It hadn’t taken Mariel long to learn that one code prefix always related to Ghasib. Suffixes sometimes were also apparently assigned, but she hadn’t discovered yet whether a suffix related to a particular source or a particular job.
Of course Mariel’s priority was anything with a Ghasib prefix. Tonight there were nearly a dozen. It had been a busy week for the Ghasib spies. And most carried the same suffix number.
In the past few weeks there had been a new suffix used on more and more incoming Ghasib data, but since most were encrypted she had not been able to glean much.
She opened each file before sending it, and read it if possible. Then she downloaded it onto a zip disk and deleted it from the secret folder. When she had checked and downloaded all the new files she would take the zip disk to her own computer and send the files off to Hal.
She never sent anything out from the secret computers. Michel’s firewall was extremely efficient, and he had software monitoring all traffic from this machine.
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.
It took only a second, time which Haroun passed in contemplation of the sloping hips, the firm bare thighs. “Let’s go,” she said, kicking the drawer shut. She had just picked up her bag when she noticed that the secret office door was hanging open. She ran lightly back across the room.
As she reached it, there was the sound of a key in the main door.
Mariel froze, her eyes flying to the stranger. In amazement she saw that he was running silently towards her. He was much bigger than she. He scooped her up in one arm and shoved her through the doorway into the secret office ahead of him. One hand clamping over her mouth, he pushed the door almost shut.
They were in darkness, the only light in the room the glow from the two horrible screen savers flickering on the computers.
His hand tightened over her mouth as the sound of the outer office door opening reached them. “If you make a sound I will strangle you,” the stranger whispered in her ear. Mariel shook her head, her eyes wide, speechlessly promising to be silent, and slowly his hand slipped down to her throat, where it rested in light warning.
A crack of illumination told her that whoever had entered the outer office had put the main light on. It had to be Michel.
Her only hope now was not to be discovered. And clearly Adonis here felt the same. But who was he, then? If he was afraid of Michel, Michel clearly hadn’t given him a key. So how had he got in? And why?
He stood beside her, his body hard, watching through the tiny crack of the door. She could smell the musky scent of him, feel the firm muscles of his arm, his thigh, his chest, as he held her.
“The alarm’s been coded,” she heard a mutter from the outer office. Michel’s voice. Who was he with? She turned in the stranger’s hold and tried to see out the crack. One finger slipped up to her lips in warning.
Probably it was the danger that transmogrified that light brushing of his finger over her mouth into the most erotic thing she had ever experienced. Mariel’s blood raced so that she felt faint. Her body seemed to melt with yearning for the hard curves of the stranger’s body.
His voice rasped in her ear again. “There is your client,” he whispered.
Michel was just coming into her line of vision, moving towards the back corner of the outer office. He hadn’t noticed that the secret office door was ajar, but he would.
“You can go out to him.”
He probably planned to take off in her wake, but the last thing Mariel could do now was walk out and greet Michel. “No,” she whispered desperately, just as another man came into view, his eyes dangerous and wary. “No.”
“No?” The stranger’s gaze narrowed, raking her face in the thread of light in a new assessment.
The second man had a gun. A small, square automatic. Mariel felt as if her eyes were glued to the neat silver barrel in his hand. Beside her, the dark man went still.
“Let them go past. Run for the door. I will follow,” he whispered briefly, and waited only for her answering nod before pushing her to one side.
The armed man was just turning, Michel was facing in the other direction. It was now or never, and as the stranger whipped the door open and launched a kick at the gunman’s elbow, Mariel tore out the doorway behind him and headed for the main entrance.
She heard the kick connect, a shout, and the sounds of struggle. Michel cried out in surprise. Mariel didn’t waste a moment looking back. She wrenched open the door and dashed down the hall.
Behind her there were more shouts, and pounding footsteps. She hit the button summoning the elevators as she ran by, but carried straight on past, heading for the door to the stairwell she had entered by.
She burst through it, then turned to look out. The stranger was pounding down the hall after her, giving her a chance to appreciate his athletic perfection. She opened the door further.
“Ici!” she hissed, and a second later he came bursting through to the small concrete landing. She was already halfway up the steps. “En haut!” she whispered and, not waiting to see how he responded, turned and ran harder than she had ever run in her life.
He was behind and gaining on her. They were halfway up the next flight when they heard someone crash through the door below. They froze, and listened as the others went thundering down the steps to the lower floors.
Mariel breathed a prayer of gratitude, then crept up the last steps and through the door into the fourth-floor hallway. The stranger understood that she was running to a known goal, and wasted no time on questions. She led him to the door marked Toilettes, in and past the basins, and into the last cubicle in the row.
She was up on the windowsill while Haroun was still half wondering if she had led him into a trap after all. But with a flash of thighs she leapt through the window, and he was quick to follow.
“Close it,” she hissed. “And go carefully, this thing is not very safe. Stay a few feet behind me and keep as close as you can to the wall, or it may come down.”
He slid the window down and after giving her a head start followed her along the tottery fire escape, wondering if it would hold his weight. Ahead of him she turned and went down one flight, then paused. To his amazement, though nothing amazed him anymore, she hoisted herself up onto a windowsill.
He caught up with her. “Let us get down to the ground,” he hissed.
“It doesn’t lead anywhere—it’s been destroyed lower down,” she said, swinging her entrancingly naked legs over the sill. He hesitated for a moment. Suppose he had walked into an elaborate setup?
But now he could see that she had told him the truth—the fire escape simply stopped two flights up from the ground. No way to leap that without serious damage.
She had disappeared through the window. Haroun shrugged and, with a murmured “La howlah wa la quwwata illa billah,” followed her into the unknown.
