Chapter 2
Hong Kong, three weeks ago.
"Scope the hotel exits," Aaron said as handed her out of their taxi. He let the hotel porter retrieve their two new leather suitcases from the driver. Tugging at the lapels of his pale linen suit, he straightened the line then ostentatiously wagged his neck to get the blue tie to hang correctly. Damn, he looked good. His said something to the porter in Russian. The porter looked blank. Aaron snarled the same thing again.
Marta wished he'd picked a language she knew better for their masquerade. "And those languages are …?" he'd asked.
"Uh, Latin, enough German and Russian to read treatises, French, of course." She'd spent half of her life with her older sister in Montreal. Of course she knew French. He must have known that. It was creepy how much he knew about her.
"You can be my French mistress, if you like." She'd declined, afraid of slipping up. Besides she had a Canadian accent to cut with a knife.
Running up to Hong Kong on the Filipino boat – Aaron said its Tagalog name translated to Stinky Rose and that it was probably a drug smuggler based on the captain's flexible morality, the limited number of nets and fish bins on the deck and the small crew - she'd found Aaron on the back deck checking maps and plotting their futures. "I was hoping we were lost," she'd said.
He'd grinned faintly and let the map roll back up on its own. "What did you have in mind?"
"First, let's take off those bandages and I'll check your leg and shoulder." That hadn't gone over well. Since he didn't get infections, fevers, or even stiffness, he'd known what she really wanted - to evaluate his body for viral after effects. His upper lip had twitched in a controlled sneer and he'd growled, "No more, Doc. No more Participant Five. No more Outcome. I'll live with what I've got."
A doctorate and two fellowships, and thanks to the US Government, Marta had absolutely no purpose. Her one test subject wouldn't let her near him. She could hear her mother snickering, "Told you so." Two years dead and Mother still managed the last word. She had hated Marta's career. Marta had hated her.
That first night on the Stinky Rose Marta had killed an entire bottle of native wine. Aaron had none. He said he didn't drink. Ever.
Aaron did give her one job. Pulling a digital voice recorder out of his seemingly bottomless backpack, he ordered her to record everything she could remember about Sterisyn, Project Outcome and viral enhancement technology. "At some point we'll need insurance," he said. He also recorded several hours of his own recollections. She could hear him droning into the recorder at night when they anchored up and the captain slept. The Filipino captain wouldn't let Aaron take a turn at the wheel. Aaron had shrugged. Captain's boat, captain's rules. They weren't in a hurry.
When they arrived in Hong Kong Aaron had stored the recordings online in a free Amazon Cloud account. He'd made her memorize the login and password.
They were staying here looking for contacts that could them back into the States. Container shipping lines had offices nearby. Visiting personnel favored this tourist class hotel.
As Marta circled the lobby she glanced in Aaron's direction. She found herself tracking where he was and what he was doing, like a wife tracks her husband – or a victim tracks a tiger.
Aaron stood more or less in the center of the white marble tiled lobby, away from the tourists lounging around, sipping iced drinks and otherwise hanging out in air conditioned comfort. The porter already had their bags at the check in counter, but Aaron seemed frozen in place, staring eye to eye with a muscular older man, at least half a head taller and 50 pounds heavier than him, wearing a casual linen suit almost identical to Aaron's. A grey crew cut gave the man a soldier look. Marta had seen dozens like him at Sterisyn. A few paces behind Crew Cut stood a woman of about the same age. She looked anxious, the man like a drill sergeant chewing out a recruit, and Aaron frozen at full attention uncertain. Aaron never looked uncertain. He always had a plan.
"Kitsom, Kitsom! Are you in there! What do you have to say for yourself, soldier? Why aren't you dead?" The man's parade ground bark started to attract attention. Bored loungers looked hopefully in their direction.
Aaron needed help. Marta reversed course.
She wrapped her hands around Aaron's right arm, careful to leave his dominant left free. "Oh, Ivan dahling," she cooed, "is this the chauffeur you were telling me about? I thought you said he was blond. You know I want all the servants to be blond."
This morning when they were shopping in the consignment shop for clothes, Aaron had bought her this white silk f**k me dress that barely reached her mid-thigh, saying, "Trophy wives need trophy clothes. Grab a wedding ring too." He waved at the sparkling trays of zirconia jewelry. She chose something that would have horrified a Hollywood starlet.
Yeah, right, she'd thought. Trophy clothes. You just want to see my ass in something besides blue jeans. But the dress slipping on her thighs gave her a sudden idea. Rubbing against Aaron, she dragged the hem up even further. Her hand slid in the general direction of his crotch. "Why are we hiring servants today? Can't that wait?" She gave him a brief open mouthed kiss. His eyes smiled even more than his lips. Relaxing, he wrapped an arm around her waist and squeezed, saying something in Russian too fast for her to catch.
"Oh you know my Russian is terrible, sweetie. Slower please."
"I say this man no chauffeur. Don't know this man." Aaron's Russian accent sounded genuine. "You no like this man? I no like him either." He reached out and gave Crew Cut a light push on the shoulder. "If you please, get out of way. We check in, wife and me."
Crew Cut had been watching their kiss with an expression like a thundercloud and definitely did not like Aaron's push. "If you're not Kitsom, who the f**k are you?" he demanded.
His woman had come up and taken his arm. "Griss, honey, let's go to our room. I'm tired." Griss growled under his breath.
Aaron drew himself up. "I Ivan Sergei Illovich." He nodded at Marta. "My wife Mart-ye." Breaking into a grin, he added, "We just married." He looked down at Marta with a sloppy grin, perfectly imitating a lovesick new husband.
Crew Cut's wife tugged on his arm again. "Leave the newlyweds alone, Griss. Let's go clean up for dinner." They left, Crew Cut looking over his shoulder all the way to the elevator.
"I'm not going to even ask," Marta said sotto voce as they turned to the check in desk.
"Master Sergeant Grissom Collins, my NCO in Iraq." He added under his breath, "Bastard killed me …" and something about bombs and dead soldiers. She didn't think he'd wanted her to hear that.
They stayed that night in the hotel because Aaron said they couldn't run away. It would look suspicious. "It was stupid to come here in the first place," he said, looking away, his jaw and lips working around tightly clenched teeth, his eyes avoiding hers. She knew that look. He was planning something she wouldn't like.
Aaron ran the television on CNN all night. Marta drank most of the mini-bar.
In the morning they ditched their leather suitcases, fancy clothes and the zirconia fake wedding ring and moved to a flophouse. That night Aaron crawled out of their window in worn out sweats. As the sun came up he returned in a tee and blue jeans, the smell of blood, gunpowder and dirty drains wafting in with him. Vodka soothed Marta back to sleep, and she was grateful Aaron didn't lie down on the bed. Although he never touched her sexually or otherwise, it was too close when he smelled of blood. Way too close. Master Sergeant Collins should have kept his mouth shut.
She asked Aaron about Collins the next day. Looking away, he said, "I do what I have to do to stay alive."
What he had to do. She wondered how far he would go, who he would kill to stay alive. Everyone on her study team acknowledged that Outcome agents thought differently, that the virus channeled their brains in new patterns that no one really understood. Doctor Hillcott had just begun an in-depth study when Foite had shut down the Blue Lab … hard and with bullets.
Would Aaron kill her to stay alive? Did she want him to? She poured another inch of vodka into her glass and considered the question.
