A/N: In case anyone cares, I've been doing a bit of soundtracking with this one. Maybe I ought to post stuff like this over in my profile, but the tune I had absolutely stuck like a tick in my brain for Jackson and Lisa at the top of St. Paul's was and is "The End of the World," by former Catherine Wheel frontman Rob Dickinson. That is all. Oh: and brace for incoming plot. As always, thanks for reading.
*****
Rippner woke. He was on his back, as was typical; he wasn't hung over; he was, under the cloud-white comforter, very cozy. And Lisa Reisert was curled on her side, asleep, next to him. For a man who'd had his share, fair or un-, of post-surgical, post-beating, post-knockout, and post-drugged awakenings, it wasn't a half-bad way to regain consciousness. Before he looked at the alarm clock, he guessed the time from the light filtering past the drapes; he came within eight minutes: 7:37. He reached to switch off the unringing alarm, then lay and had a long, indulgent look at the woman sleeping next to him.
He didn't regret having stalked her as part of his work; he simply wished, now, that all his watching of her could be this innocent. Lisa had her share of the sheets and comforter pulled nearly to her ear; the index finger of her left hand was resting lightly along her chin, as if she were deep in thought. Rippner let himself go still, lay listening to her breathe. Their relationship was still new enough for him to find wonder in the fact that she could sleep so soundly next to him.
His mouth was dry. He eased reluctantly away from Lisa and got up. He had on a pair of silk boxers; the air of the room was cool, but not uncomfortably so, on his back and chest. The suite had a full bar and a well-stocked refrigerator. He got himself a tall bottle of spring water and stood for a moment looking out the window, at the bleary, intermittent flow of Saturday-morning traffic, at the pale yellow sunlight trying to penetrate the blue shadows sunk down deep between the buildings.
He went back to the bedroom. Lisa was shifting, still buried under the covers, her eyes still closed.
"Good morning," Rippner said.
"Morning. Mmm--"
She opened her eyes, looked at him, indulged in a languid stretch. Rippner offered her the bottle of water as he came back to the bed.
"Thanks, sweetie." She took the bottle, drank deeply. She sat up as she did, and the comforter fell away from her shoulders and torso. Rippner found himself staring.
"Were you wearing that when we went to bed?" he asked.
"Yes." She smiled up at him, handing back the bottle. "You must have been as tired as I was."
Rippner shook his head, smiling back. "I must have been."
Lisa lay back on her pillow, her eyes not leaving his. "So, what do you think?"
Simple but effective. She wasn't one for heavy come-ons, flashy details. It was a pale dove-gray camisole, that was all. A tracing of lace at the modest scoop neckline. She wanted him to look, so he looked. He might have looked all day.
"I'm accustomed to seeing you in bed in t-shirts four sizes too big."
"Take your time."
Perhaps a closer examination would be helpful. Rippner crept back onto the bed. Onto Lisa. He leaned in with his weight suspended on his straightened arms and kissed her. She kissed him back. She ran her hands along his sides while he eased more of himself onto her, pressed himself more closely against her.
"I like it," he said, finally, very softly.
Her body beneath his was absolutely relaxed, absolutely open. "I can tell," she murmured.
Invitation in her eyes. Wanting. Rippner kissed her jaw, her throat; he nibbled the exposed skin of her shoulders. He worked his way lower, gently cupped her left breast, took the erect nipple carefully, tenderly, between his lips, through the whisper-soft cotton of her camisole. He nuzzled his way to her belly, pushed away the cami's hem, playfully slipped his tongue-tip into her navel.
"Matching underwear," he observed.
Her breathing was deep and even. Her body was rising slightly toward him, in response to his touch. "Mm hm."
She brushed her fingers into Rippner's hair as he drew away the lacy narrow waistband, just an inch or so to start, possibly three centimeters, if they were to acknowledge their host country. Now her breath was becoming a bit rough. His was, too. He was nibbling the soft skin in the exquisite hollow to the left of her right hipbone when a phone rang.
It wasn't the bedside set.
"That's not mine," Lisa said.
Rippner raised his head, listening to the ring tone. "It's Carter."
"He knows we're here?"
Rippner felt every bit as frustrated as she was trying not to sound. "There's nothing he can't find out."
The phone continued to ring. Rippner got up. His phone and Lisa's were sharing charging space on a polished ebony table in the sitting room. He unplugged his, held it to his ear.
"Rippner," he said, flatly.
Good morning, Jackson. How are you?
Rippner wandered back to the bedroom. If Carter was in the mood for hushed tones and grim secrets-- not that it seemed he was: his tone was irritatingly chipper-- Rippner was in no mood to play along. Lisa could hear anything he and Carter had to say to one another.
"What do you want, John?"
There's someone I want you to meet.
"And there's someone I want you to meet. Her name is Raphaela Montez, she works in Human Resources, and she'd be more than happy to tell you that I'm on vacation."
She'd be more than happy to remind you that you still work for me, Jackson.
"I was about to eat breakfast, John."
You haven't ordered yet.
Rippner scowled toward the curtained windows, suddenly picturing Carter in a room directly across the street, armed with a bugging set and binoculars. "Where are you?"
Here in London. Claire and I are at the Savoy. Look, Jackson, this is nothing dangerous. Nothing risky. Lisa is free to come along. Four o'clock, Gordon's Wine Bar, off Villiers. Do you know it?
"Yes, I know it."
A scientist we're handling. Quite the character. Almost like something out of a Fritz Lang film. Very interesting work, too. He knows your sister--
"Fine, John, fine: we'll be there."
Thanks, Jackson. I appreciate this. A pause that might have been paired with a sly smile. Enjoy your breakfast. Give Lisa my regards.
"Four o'clock, John. Gordon's."
Rippner hung up, shut off his phone, rehooked it to its charger. He walked back to the bedroom, paused in the doorway to scratch his neck.
"Carter wants us to meet a mad scientist later," he said.
Lisa watched him from the bed. All of him. Silk boxers, even ones in dusky gray, left little to the imagination. Her eyes on him were tenderly frank, frankly possessive. "Right now I'm in the mood for something else."
Rippner crossed the room, smiled for her as he climbed back into bed. "Breakfast?" he asked.
"Something like that."
Lisa drew him close.
*****
As it happened, they had plenty of time for the Tate Modern, where they debated whether a wall crack, running from ceiling to floor in a gallery on the museum's third level, was actually part of a sculpture installation, dared one another to ride the slides (without success, despite Jackson's poignant insistence that Lisa would consider it one of her life's deepest regrets), and still had time to kill at the National Gallery before they were due at Gordon's. All this after a long, leisurely, mutually pleasurable breakfast.
*****
Off the Strand, down narrow, sloped Villiers Street, Lisa followed as Jackson turned left into what appeared to be half an alley, half back garden. Moss flecked a run of worn steps and a cracked sidewalk leading down to a second, short flight of steps descending into a basement entryway. A pair of doors, one screened, the second old and wooden, opened into a cellar, a sudden, cheery storm of voices, and a third, brief run of steps almost comically uneven. John Carter, stationed near a corner buffet with a tall, gaunt man and two women, one solid, of average height, with dark straight hair, the other tall, an athletic low-mileage forty-something with short ash-blonde hair of the sort that seemed perpetually wind-confounded, waved a greeting.
"You made it," he said, smiling. "Good."
At least that's what Lisa thought he said, above the din.
"For God's sake, John," Jackson half-shouted, "the place doesn't exactly scream 'visiting dignitary'--"
"I know, I know--" Carter closed the distance between himself and them. "Jackson, you know my wife, Claire--"
The fair-haired woman smiled. "Hello, Jackson." She leaned close and kissed Jackson on the cheek. Her eyes were deep-sea blue, and they sparkled mischievously.
Lisa saw Jackson's cheekbones color as he returned the kiss. Not as a lover, though-- she sensed no intrigue, no need to be jealous. If anything, his expression was that of a little boy snared by a doting aunt.
Who was then turning her keen eyes Lisa's way. "You must be Lisa Reisert," Claire Carter said. "I'm very happy to meet you, Lisa."
Lisa took the hand Claire offered. Claire's expression was open and sincere, but appraising, too. A mother's expression, Lisa thought. She found herself deeply touched. In Claire's face she could see the concern of a woman who wanted to know that a man she considered a son was keeping company with the right kind of girl.
She had a good, solid handshake, too. Lisa smiled. "My pleasure, Claire."
Carter, making way for a young man and woman seeking access to a warming tray brimming with chunks of beef and vegetables, was continuing with the introductions. He placed a hand on the arm of the tall, gaunt man--
"Professor Becker, this is Jackson Rippner. Jackson, Professor Becker--"
Lisa's turn. Wenzel Becker looked like something out of silent expressionist cinema. Aristocratic features, graying hair swept off a high forehead. Eyes very pale, a color like a winter sky, blue-gray and clear, very sharp and intelligent. A master hypnotist's eyes. But kind as well.
"My pleasure, Miss Reisert." A gentle, purring voice, a trace of a German accent. The last syllable of her name became -airt when he said it. The r very soft. Lisa liked him immediately.
"And his assistant--"
"Kathy Hobart," said the second woman, offering her hand to Jackson. He frowned slightly as he took it-- only enough for Lisa, perhaps, to notice. Lisa knew why a moment later, when she got her own handshake from Becker's assistant: the woman was trembling slightly. Maybe she didn't like strangers. Or close spaces. Or crowds in such spaces.
"It's secure in its way," Carter was half-shouting to Jackson, as he and Claire led the way through the noisy young-business throng cramming the space between the old pocked bar and a pillar packed with fading, water-damaged posters, framed newspaper clippings, an elbow-high ledge on which were lined glasses of wine at various stages of drainage. "Bugging this place would be a nightmare."
"And only Gordon's has the Number Two Oloroso," said Professor Becker. He offered Jackson an apologetic smile. "We're here on my request."
In reply, Lisa gave him the smile that Jackson didn't seem quite able to manage.
*****
A man was seated at one of two empty tables at the rear of the cellar, under a low brickwork arch. He rose as they approached.
"I've earned my pay today, Carter," he said. "Two tables at Gordon's during rush hour. Tell me that's not worth a bonus."
His tone was genial, but Lisa thought his expression, when he saw Jackson, was too carefully neutral.
"Hello, Rippner," he said.
"Grant." Jackson reached for a handshake. The man called Grant gave him one. His eyes strayed to Lisa.
"And--?" he prompted.
"Lisa," said Jackson, "this is Robert Grant. He's a colleague of mine. Grant, this is Lisa Reisert--"
"-- also a colleague?" Grant prompted. He was wearing a brown suit over a frame as compact as Rippner's. He had eyes the color of semi-sweet chocolate and features that were nearly delicate, and he obviously knew how handsome he was.
"A friend." Lisa, as they shook hands, felt a sudden need to clarify: "A close friend."
A flash of amiable disappointment. "Ahh--"
"If you're done flirting, Grant," Carter said, "maybe you and I could fetch some wine. What do you say--?"
"Of course. Pardon me, Miss Reisert--" As Lisa and the others seated themselves, Grant edged out from under the arch. Kathy Hobart kept her eyes on him. Jealously, Lisa thought.
*****
Two wobbly wooden tables braced together with the judicious assistance of knees and feet. Seven people hunched on tippy chairs around said tables. Jackson looked as if he more than half hoped that Carter would forget how low the ceiling was and smack his head on one of the blackened brick arches when he next got up. A casual drink, two decanters of said sweet Oloroso, drawn off a cask behind the bar.
"I yearn for this wine," Becker said. "It tastes like spring."
"Like a meadow." Lisa sipped thoughtfully. The candlelight trapped in her glass glowed red-gold in the wine. "The way-- the way the meadow on Grandma's ranch smelled. Bluebells. Timothy grass and fresh dirt."
"Dirt?" Rippner echoed, drolly, turning the stem of his glass between a thumb and forefinger.
"No: that's exactly it. Musky, but clean and sweet." Suhveet, Becker's German accent said. In the light of the jar candle, his eyes were luminous as he looked at Lisa. He raised his glass to her. "To your grandmother's meadow."
Lisa raised her glass in turn. "Thank you, Professor," she said, smiling.
*****
She found herself wondering if Carter hadn't arranged the meeting with Becker as much for her benefit as Jackson's. He was here in London, Carter was, and Robert Grant was here as his right-hand man (his manager, Lisa thought), to coordinate a summit between a handful of countries regarding a certain technology Professor Becker had developed.
"We're calling it 'freeze-tech,'" Carter said, reaching for one of the decanters. "Though that's not entirely accurate, as the professor, I hope, will be good enough to explain."
Becker looked back at him slyly. "Am I allowed to explain it to Mr. Rippner and Miss Reisert, Mr. Carter--?"
"Absolutely. They have my complete trust."
"And your beautiful wife--?"
Carter, caught out, laughed. Claire sighed and pushed back from the table. "I guess that's my cue to step outside," she said. Carter pulled her back into her chair. She let him pour more wine for her as the professor, obviously pleased at having a new, interested audience, began to describe his work:
There was a machine, part auto-C.A.D., part sculptor. There was a chemical compound consisting of two parts: a material whose natural state was very cold--
-- "Hence the 'freeze' in 'freeze-tech,'" said Professor Becker, for Carter's benefit.--
-- and a controller, self-replicating, capable of obeying commands from the machine, that actually sculpted the first material into any shape, at any temperature, the user desired.
"My first thought was that the technology might be used as a coolant for nuclear reactors," Becker said. "I also made overtures to the build team at C.E.R.N., but they seem intent on using good, old-fashioned helium to cool their new collider. That's how your name came up, Mr. Rippner; your sister is working for one of the men who turned me down. She seemed interested in my toy; unfortunately, she does not manage their funds."
"Unfortunately, too, the possibility arose that someone might use freeze-tech as part of a weapons system," Carter said. "Professor Becker has yet to fully map the potentialities: were the compounds used, for example, in place of fissionable materials in a warhead, we have no way, as yet, of estimating the damage."
"Miniature ice ages to order?" Claire suggested.
"Or mutually assured glaciation," Jackson countered.
"Hence the summit," Carter said. "To which the professor has kindly and reasonably agreed: we want the technology available to the entire world, not in the hands of a single, highest bidder."
"The controller," Lisa said. "Is it alive?"
Becker, smiling, poured more wine into her glass. "After a fashion, yes. Nanite technology. Creatures that are basically half-organic, half-microchip. Potential applications in medicine as well: surgery, arterial repair, even the treatment of cancer."
"Is the compound dangerous?" This came from Jackson.
"Completely non-toxic. The nanites feed off plastic. A six-inch square of cellophane will support a colony comfortably for a week. The possible uses there are obvious, too."
"Recycling," Claire Carter said.
"What happens if someone touches it?" Jackson asked.
"Ahh-- that." The professor's brows lowered slightly. "We think it would make the brain more receptive to command. To suggestion."
"Potential applications in pharma, anti-psychotics," Carter mused.
"And interrogation," Jackson said quietly.
*****
While Lisa and Rippner learned, over sweet, cask-drawn Oloroso, about Professor Becker's freeze-tech, Roland Mason and Rosemary Wheeler were stealing one of the two vital components of that tech. As Claire Carter finally ordered her husband to open the company's expense account to the hearty delectables of Gordon's buffet, Mason and Wheeler, wearing the faces of Professor Becker and his assistant-- cast in micro-thin latex, very flexible, very convincing-- walked into the labs of Imperial College, London, where Becker's molding compound, the material Seth Patterson called Play Doh, was being stored, placed the Play Doh container in a soft leather satchel, and walked back out. They had passes as convincing as their faces; the university guards saw nothing amiss. Rosemary and Roland entered the restrooms of a nearby pub and emerged as themselves. The faces of Professor Becker and Kathy Hobart swirled away into the bowels of London's sewage system.
*****
Jackson's sour mood when they arrived at Gordon's had been at least partly a product of hunger, Lisa realized; he seemed to cheer up as they ate. Between the seven of them, they plowed through a cheese plate, shared pasties, roast beef, Brussels sprouts, and salad. Add another decanter and a half of Oloroso to the mix, and soon their corner was nearly as boisterous as the rest of the semi-cave that was the oldest wine bar in London. At one point, Lisa dropped her napkin, and she and Becker laughed when they nearly cracked heads as he bent off his spindly chair to pick it up for her. They made their farewells just after six. Wine, it appeared, had made the professor gallant as well as nostalgic; Lisa saw Jackson frown as Becker bowed and kissed her hand.
"Wait--" said Kathy Hobart, pushing her way through the crowd to the side. "I think-- Lisa, yes: I have your bag."
She offered Lisa a multi-pocketed soft leather rucksack that appeared to be the twin of the one Lisa had picked up as they left the tables. The lining of the shoulder strap of the bag Lisa was carrying was tan; the strap of Lisa's bag-- the one that, yes, Kathy was offering her-- had a black lining.
"Sorry; you're right," Lisa said, as she and Kathy exchanged bags. "My mistake."
She and Rippner were the last up the wine bar's narrow, almost comically treacherous stairs. They parted, heading for their respective hotels. Jackson and Lisa strolled back along the Strand. A cool breeze was blowing up off of the Thames; the sun was dropping down toward the high rooftops through a sky of patchy but gathering clouds.
"Well, that was an experience," she said.
"There was something he wanted me to see."
"Carter?"
"Mm hm."
"Why couldn't he tell you what it was when he called?"
"Maybe because someone was listening. Maybe because he's not certain himself. Maybe he wanted a second set of instincts in the room."
"Did they tell you anything?"
"Grant seemed awfully quick to smile. Did you notice?"
"Yes."
"He's impatient about something."
"Miss Hobart was keeping a pretty close eye on him."
Rippner stopped walking. Looked at her in admiration.
"Both of them, then."
"Both of them... what?"
"That will require further thought." He checked his watch. They had theatre tickets for tonight; they'd have time enough to clean up before they left the hotel again. He drew Lisa's arm through his, and they walked on.
"She wasn't the only jealous one at the table," Lisa added.
"I wouldn't be a man if I weren't jealous when it comes to you," Jackson replied.
He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and again she had the sense that he was looking less at her than into her. Perhaps in an effort to make him feel as exposed as she felt, she said, not ungently:
"They really love you. John and Claire."
Jackson laughed, surprised. "You're delusional. They do not."
"Because you and he are-- I get it mixed up-- is it stone-cold killers with hearts of ice? Or ice-cold killers with hearts of stone?"
"You're--" Jackson paused. He shook his head and grinned, despite himself. "Unbelievable, Lisa."
He walked on. Lisa, following, slipped her arm back through his. The wind from the south was chilly and clean, and the sky above the rooftops was darkening to a dusty lavender. Jackson hugged her arm to his side.
*****
"Do you know where you are?" Roland Mason asked.
Kathy Hobart had entered St. Paul's Cathedral, after hours, through a side door facing the dark trees of the churchyard.
She'd followed Robert Grant down a seemingly endless spiral of meshed metal steps, blackness to the left and right, above and below, the only light coming from his flashlight and hers. A round, ribbed steel vent plunging into the earth. They'd descended through a hatch like a submarine hatch, its thick circular door propped open against the steps, then climbed the rest of their journey down ten rusty rungs of a steel ladder.
Now she stood in a tube like a Tube station would be if the platform were removed. Possibly sixteen feet in diameter, caged bulbs along its length, a hundred feet, roughly: the light wasn't strong enough to render the far end distinct. Crates, scientific equipment, a generator. At a table surrounded by monitors and keyboards sat Seth Patterson.
He was testing the sample she'd brought, the living nanites Becker had been keeping in the safe in his hotel room. He wasn't by nature a suspicious man; he trusted the hotel staff, the laboratory personnel at the Imperial College. No: unlike the molding compound, the Play Doh, Becker had simply wanted, almost paternally, to keep the nanites close.
He'd trusted Kathy Hobart, too. Now, looking at the man for whom she'd stolen his nanites, Professor Becker's assistant shook her head.
"You're standing in a national secret," Mason said.
"During the Second World War," he continued, "the Crown Jewels were removed from the Tower of London and stored in a place-- or places-- unknown to this day, all around the city. This is one of those locations. As Hitler's bombs fell, the church shied away from risking the structural integrity of its precious cathedral for the sake of the cowering unwashed-- hence, it refused to allow London Transport to build a full-size deep shelter parallel to St. Paul's station-- but it opened its turf to the glitter of gold and gems. Church and state united for a common cause."
"For a price, of course," added Rosemary Wheeler, seeming to manifest herself from the shadows behind Mason. "Touching, eh?"
"These aren't the nanites," Seth Patterson said.
Mason stared at Patterson where the younger man sat, perched on a stool, in his tangle of electronics. "They're dead? Becker pulsed them?"
"No." Patterson nodded toward the sample he'd taken from the container Kathy Hobart had brought with her to the shelter. "This is a random oleo-polyresin. Plastic," he clarified, looking at the disbelieving faces around him. "Junk."
"What are you playing at here, Miss Hobart?" Mason asked. She tried not to cringe when he looked at her. "Who else had the combination to Professor Becker's safe?"
"Only I did. I set it for him when we arrived."
"So who has the real nanites?" Wheeler asked. "If they weren't in Becker's safe, and he thought to leave a decoy, that means he was suspicious. Of you, dear," she added, directly to Kathy. "Unfortunately, that means he's apt to suspect you , too, Robert. He likely handed them off-- to whom? Carter? Rippner--?"
Grant smiled drolly. "I can't imagine Jackson inspiring trust at first sight, Rose, can you?" His eyes widened, then, in realization. "Reisert. Lisa Reisert. He had a woman with him," he said, directly to Mason and Wheeler. "She was friendly; Becker took to her; you could tell--" Kathy saw in her mind the meeting at Gordon's as Grant was seeing it--
"When she dropped her napkin," she said. "He put the nanites in her bag."
"You had her bag." Grant said sharply. "You came that close to finding them. What in the world were you--"
"I wanted this." From her own bag, Kathy took Lisa Reisert's passport wallet. She handed it to Mason.
"Why would we want this?" Mason asked.
His tone chilled her. "You might use it to find out who she is-- I thought maybe she and Rippner--" Kathy began.
"No. You're a secretary. You don't think." Mason glanced at the passport, gave the wallet back. "Return it to her before she misses it." He turned his attention to Grant. "Think you can find those nanites for us, Bob?"
"If she has them, they're as good as ours."
"Good man." Mason showed his teeth, smiling. He patted Grant on the shoulder. "Get on it. I'll see Miss Hobart out."
*****
The Jewel Shelter of St. Paul's had two exits: one, as Kathy Hobart had already seen, leading up directly to an alcove off the cathedral's crypts, the other leading, as Mason informed her now, back through a tunnel that reached a disused area in the lower level of St. Paul's station. Said tunnel, having been dug by hand, was only slightly wider than Mason's shoulders. Metallic stalactites spiked the ceiling; the concrete floor was damp and slick. She could hear the late-night trains of the Central Line rumbling far overhead.
Mason led her on a long climb up a ladder whose cold rungs left her fingers covered in rusty dust; at the top, he threw a locking bolt and pushed open a creaking steel door. He looked from side to side, then stepped out. Kathy followed.
They weren't in St. Paul's station. They were in a Tube tunnel.
"Afraid the tunnel actually comes up a few yards short of the station," Mason said, closing the door. "Government funding: you know how it goes." As he spoke, he took a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket. Kathy, puzzled, watched him put them on.
"Don't worry, though," he continued. "If you stand here long enough, Miss Hobart, you're sure to catch a train."
Suddenly afraid, Kathy backed away from him. She was careful of the rails-- she didn't know which one was live. She turned in the direction of the station--
Before she could run, she felt something cold splatter on the back of her neck. Shocked, she reached to touch it. Mason held his flashlight on her as she watched the fingers of her right hand turn to ice.
"I found myself wondering," Mason said, "whether, if Professor Becker had seen fit to place dummy material where the nanites were meant to be, he might have dummied out the Play Doh, too."
It was spreading. The ice. Kathy watched in mute shock as her hand froze, then her forearm. The pain struck when the icing reached her right shoulder: a horrible, prickling burning. Her scream choked off as the ice reached her throat, froze her chin and lips. She started to run, blindly, as her eyes crystallized.
She took three steps before she stumbled on a rail tie, and the icicle-bone of her left ankle snapped. She was on her knees, moaning, when Mason came close enough for her freezing ears to hear, for her dying brain still to understand--
"Now I know it works. Too bad we don't have the nanites handy to control it, though, hm?"
In the distance, Kathy could hear-- the sound rattled up through the frozen branches of her nerves-- a train approaching.
"But don't worry," Mason added, before he left her there, kneeling, paralyzed and dying, on the track of the Central Line east of St. Paul's station. "Miss Reisert won't be needing her passport."
*****
That night, as the lights of Piccadilly Circus gleamed in a light drizzle, Rippner and Lisa sat in row five at the Criterion Theatre and watched a four-person adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps.
On impulse, they'd gotten same-day tickets for the show, and Rippner had to admit that the play, slyly faithful to one of Lisa's favorite classic films, was about the cleverest-- and funniest-- thing he'd ever seen. The dapper man playing Hannay was in the clear-- he had only the one part-- but the others, riding herd on all the other parts from the film, every one, were working for a living. Conspirators, traitors, blundering policemen, a stuttering, spittle-mouthed orator, a cranky Scots farmer and his wife, the innkeeper and his wife (who was played by one of the other men in the cast, not by the cast's only female member), and the hapless but eerily robotic Mr. Memory: they were all there. Again, Rippner thought, smiling with open delight as Hannay and a policeman, leaping between wooden crates, managed to convince him that a hair-raising chase along the tops of the speeding cars of the Highland Express was happening right there on stage, as with the great film directors, this was how management happened: you made your mark, your target audience, see exactly what you wanted that mark to see.
That Lisa was enjoying herself certainly didn't hurt. She was sitting forward slightly in her chair, thoroughly caught up, completely focused on the stage. She and plenty of others in the audience were clapping spontaneously and often. Rippner, joining in, thought how much he loved to hear her laugh.
*****
The insanity ended-- the traitors exposed, Hannay cleared of charges of murder-- with a shower of soap bubbles that rained down like fluffy confetti from the ceiling just beyond the proscenium arch. Rippner and Lisa and the rest of the audience in the first six rows, laughing in wonder and shock, were the hardest hit. Not that they were covered, or that the soap seemed like anything that would stain or even linger, but it was a definite surprise and one last, giddy visual joke. Rippner brushed flecks of white foam from his sweater while they waited for the seats around them to empty out. No hurry. The Criterion, enjoying status as a historical property, was small yet palatial. It was a comfortable, well-maintained old theatre, classic in its red velvet and pale rose, the soaring ceiling of its auditorium lending an illusion of space.
"Come on," he said to Lisa, as they walked the upward slope of the aisle leading to the lobby, "let's go bully our way into the Jewel."
The Jewel Bar, discreet and exotic and exclusive, was two streets away, around Piccadilly Circus. Lisa looked at him sidewise. "We can do that?" Her eyes were mischievous, still bright with laughter. "We won't simply hit a wall of bouncers?"
"Trust me," Rippner replied, smiling mysteriously.
They entered the cream-and-onyx of the lobby. The place was emptying out quickly. Lisa drifted to the right, toward a hall overhung with a sign that said Ladies.
"Let me comb the bubbles out of my hair first."
"There aren't any--"
"Oh, really--?" She reached over and flicked foam out of his bangs.
Rippner let his smile become a grin. "You look perfect," he persisted.
"Is that a fact?"
"It is."
She paused, looking up at him. She seemed to be feeling the same giddy post-play energy Rippner was feeling. Her dimples were absolutely wicked. "Do you know why you never lie, Jackson?"
"Tell me."
"Because you're so damn bad at it."
*****
The restroom was down not one corridor but two, in, off the lobby, and then back, into one of the halls running parallel to the auditorium. Lisa had the lounge to herself. She touched up her lipstick, got out her comb. Jackson had only half-lied: the bubbles were dissipating on their own. She was reaching to re-pack when her fingers brushed something odd, buried well down in her bag.
Something smooth and round and flat. Lisa frowned as she took from her bag a twist-topped brushed-steel jar, about the size of a powder compact, roughly two inches high. It was screwed shut, and four metal twists like spindly spider-legs were clamping the top to the bottom.
The seal wasn't perfect. Lisa saw residue where lid met bottom. Blue, metallic. It shimmered in the soft lighting around the restroom mirror. She looked more closely at it-- Was she imagining things, or had it moved--?
Then she saw: she'd touched it.
(Or it had touched her.)
A pencil-line of indigo, an eyelash-trace, a nail-clipping. A tiny crescent of blue on her index finger. As she watched, it disappeared into her skin.
"What--"
She staggered, gasping. The jar fell from her fingers back into the depths of her bag. Lisa leaned helplessly against the vanity. It was as though someone had shouted inside her head, and the sound, her own voice, and not her voice, was echoing--
WHat what What whAt WHAT--
She managed not to collapse. She focused on breathing, on staying upright.
Jackson--
She didn't know if she said his name or merely thought it. But it came back to her, booming inside her skull, pealing like cathedral bells much too close up, at a volume that shook the air from her lungs. As if his name were a command, as if it were bonding with her very bones, becoming part of her--
No thought. No. She reached blindly for her bag. She forgot her jacket. The soles of her shoes caught on the carpeting as she staggered for the door.
In the corridor outside, standing in a pocket of shadow between the powdery pooled light of two wall sconces, a man was waiting.
"Jackson--"
It wasn't Rippner. This man was wearing a black trenchcoat. The shoulders shimmered with rainwater. He boosted away from the wall and stepped into the light.
"Hello, Miss Reisert."
It was Robert Grant.
"I believe you have something I want," he said.
Lisa backed away from him, down the corridor. She opened her mouth to shout--
"Don't," he said.
Her voice turned to concrete in her larynx. She couldn't speak. She reached for her throat, shocked. For a moment, watching her, Grant seemed just as surprised and puzzled as she was--
Then, clearly, he said: "Come here."
(Like Jackson at St. Paul's, only very much not.)
Her feet moved her toward him. She went where they took her. She couldn't help herself. No one was around. No other patrons, no beleaguered theatre employees going to help with the locking-down. Looking past him, desperately, toward the lobby, her voice frozen in her throat, Lisa felt she was trapped in one of those nightmares where you can't scream, can't run. Grant had a knife in his hand. A short, serrated blade glinted in the dim light. It and her stomach seemed destined to meet--
To her left along the wall, between herself and Grant, she saw the light of an emergency exit.
She threw herself at it. Shouldered through a barred door, no startled honk of an alarm, into a bare, narrow, yellow-walled corridor, stumbling, her breath catching, through another door, and into a black, greasy, rain-wet alley. To her left she saw the traffic of Piccadilly Circus--
No: she saw an explosion of color and motion. Taillights swirled like lava; headlamps seared her eyes. The shops pulsed with glare. It was as though she could hear the huge animated billboard across the junction roaring its messages--
Buy SANYO. Buy SAMSUNG.
For a second, she stopped. Transfixed by the lights.
Drink COCA-COLA.
She stood, looking, frozen in surprise at the sheer primal terror she felt. That, and a sudden, ridiculous impulse-- the neon telling her--
I need I want I'm craving McDONALD'S--
Grant was right behind her. She felt his fingers brush her sleeve as she pushed away from the door and ran. A thin cold rain was falling. Her soles held on the wet pavement. For a second, his didn't. She heard him grunt as he slipped--
-- "Shit--!"--
-- and then she was sprinting, away from him, away from the shouting, seductive lights of the Circus. North, though she didn't quite know it.
*****
Rippner gave her a tactful five minutes. He had profound respect for Lisa's intelligence and practicality, but he understood the lingo, too: when a woman said she wanted to comb her hair, it could mean anything from "I've got a cowlick to tame" to "I'm going for a full makeover." In the box office, the lights went out. One of the theatre's bartenders pushed through a door to his left, to the right of the main entrance, opening an umbrella as he stepped out into the rain.
Rippner walked back into the corridor under the sign that said Ladies. No one around. An emergency exit on his right. Just before that, in a dim spot between wall sconces, he saw damp footprints, a moist sponging shoulder-height on the wall. As if someone had stood there, waiting--
Rippner frowned. He went to the women's lounge, stepped to the side, and, without hesitation, opened the door.
"Lisa--?"
Nothing. No reply. No breathing, no motion. Rippner looked in.
On the vanity to the left of the sinks he saw Lisa's folded jacket.
*****
Not only was Lisa running blindly, she was trying to run without looking. Every sign she passed, every piece of neon, every ad was a command--
I must SEE the HIT OF THE SEASON I want a STEAK a PIZZA and NOODLES EGG ROLLS COFFEE and a SUB--
Needing money magazines souvenirs ice cream tickets, she joined the flow of people leaving a late screening at the Empire Leicester Square. To follow: she needed that, too.
Walking, half-running, within a rivulet of her stream of people, she entered Leicester Square station. The warmth on the water-spattered steps was sudden and muggy, the smell musky. Shoes and sweat and skin within wet sweaters and jackets. Ads were all around, on the walls. She forced herself to move at speed past the pleas of bestsellers, cosmetics, Ox Fam; she focused on the turnstiles, on taking her Travelcard from the front outer zipped pocket of her bag--
A tickling at the back of her neck told her to turn. Behind her, past the people moving in knots and singles toward the turnstiles, Grant was just reaching the bottom of the stairs. She turned away again, quickly, before their eyes met.
In the station concourse, she looked frantically for directions. To her right, signs called her to the Northern Line. To her left--
Piccadilly Line.
Piccadilly. Piccadilly Circus--
(-- the terror of the lights, all those lights, those signs like lava in the rain--)
"Jackson--" she said, out loud.
His name echoed in her head, along with the exhortations from the gods of the station. If you do not touch in and out with your Oyster Card, you will be charged the maximum cash fare--
(--OYSTERS. She wanted OYSTERS--)
He would be there, at the Criterion, waiting. One stop back, right? Piccadilly Circus station was there, right there, outside the theatre. She was at the waterfall downflow of the escalators to the Piccadilly Line when she saw Grant clear the turnstiles.
He saw her.
The escalator was half-packed with people, and the angle was steep. Lisa took her hand from the railing, stepped to the left on the slotted metal steps, began pushing her way more quickly downward, carefully, frantically, through knots of shoulders, past walls of jacketed backs. Shoves back her way. "Hey! Mind yourself--!" "Fucking tourist--!"
Tunnels toward the westbound platform. She ran into one as she heard the words--
The doors are closing. Mind the gap. The doors are closing. Mind the gap.
She stepped onto the platform as the train pulled away.
Grant stepped out of the access tunnel next over, to her right.
A muffled roar behind her. Lisa looked at Grant. He looked back. He stepped onto the platform and came toward her. She turned and ran, against the flow of traffic heading to the westbound platform, through the access tunnel, back across the escalator concourse, into the tunnel leading to the train now opening its doors on the eastbound platform.
In the mouth of the tunnel she paused, just off the platform. She pressed her back to the tiled wall and looked back the way she'd come. No Grant. Not yet. He might have paused to check the WAY OUT, the traffic on the escalators leading back to the station concourse.
Maybe three dozen people left the train. Maybe two dozen got on board. Traffic was thinning. She wondered what time it was. Past eleven, likely. On the overhead, a man's canned, clipped voice was saying --planned disruption to service at Covent Garden station. Alternate station: Holborn. Transport for London apologizes for any--
A second voice, a woman's, the announcement Lisa had heard on the westbound platform:
The doors are closing. Mind the gap.
To her right, from the access tunnel that would have been nearest the upward-bound escalators, Robert Grant stepped onto the platform. His eyes swept the platform, the cars of the train. He turned to go. When he was back in his access tunnel, Lisa dashed across the platform onto the train.
The doors are closing--
Empty promises. The doors remained open. Lisa looked back toward the tunnel at the far end of the platform, under the sign reading WAY OUT. She felt eyes on her, there in the train. Or maybe she was imagining that she did. She felt dizzy and sick and afraid, too. She didn't dare look at the ads above the windows. Peripherally: Lancombe, security services, a trip to Greece, something in her head shouting YOU WANT IT ALL. A trio of drunken young men slouched behind her. A handful of tourists perched tensely in their seats, messenger bags clutched in their laps. Two women, maybe service-industry workers, waitresses or cashiers, sat, pale and tired, in the car's unforgiving light. A big, middle-aged man in a rust-colored suede coat cradled a folded newspaper in the crook of his arm as he lounged in the seat to the right of the doors. Lisa stood with her bag hanging from her shoulder, gripping the vertical handrail just inside the car, looking back where she thought Grant would be--
"Close, close, close--" she whispered. A couple in their thirties scowled at her as they pushed past, boarding. The doors began to slide shut.
Two cars back, Grant stepped across the platform onto the train.
*****
The doors shunted closed. Before Lisa thought of clawing at the seam, of looking for an emergency handle, the train was pulling away into the tunnel heading north-east, away from Leicester Square.
She stayed where she was, braced against the handrail inside the doors. She looked toward the back of the car she was on, the door there leading to the next car back. She couldn't see Grant.
She got out her phone. She and Jackson had service over here; he'd made sure to check before they left. Screw the roaming charges. She found his number and pressed dial, then held the phone tightly to her ear, above the rumble and rush and metal squealings of the train--
A moment, a pause long enough to hold maybe four rings, though she couldn't be certain if she was hearing those rings or if the thing in her mind was simply spinning wishes into sound--
Hi--
"Jackson--?" she blurted.
-- this is Jackson. Please leave a message.
She looked back through the train car to the rear door. A door after that. Another car. Doors. And there, after the train straightened coming out of the curve of the tunnel just east of Leicester Square, she saw Grant looking back at her.
A beep from the earpiece of her phone. Again the feeling that she was frozen in place. An awful, gut-punch fear. The rumbling, the clacking, the blackness beyond the windows of the doors--
-- a thrumming, a humming. Like voices--
"Jackson, I'm on--"
Looking back along the car, her eyes strayed to the window ads. BENETTON. Colours, all the COLOURS OF APPLE-- iPod iMac iWANT--
"-- a train. I'm on a train, I'm on a train, I'm on a train. Something's wrong with--"
-- wrong with voices in my her head voices like a hum like a thrumming of metal and wheels air and dust--
Covent Garden station flashed by. Disruption of service to. Transport of London apologizes for. Feeling as though she might fall through the doors, Lisa closed her eyes against the sense of extra motion--
Above the noise in her head she heard the hiss of the line, the sound of her call to Jackson going dead.
*****
Rippner pushed open the barred door and stepped out into the rain. No sign of Lisa in the hallway of the emergency exit. No evidence of a struggle. No blood.
And no sign of her out here.
He checked the front of the theatre. Maybe she'd been shut out when the emergency exit closed behind her. Of course she hadn't.
Looking, blinking in the rain. He made a quick round of the Circus. Just before midnight, the patches of pedestrian pavement around the statue of Eros were emptying out as the post-casino, post-theatre crowd found its way to late suppers or bars or home to bed. She might be trying to get back to the hotel--
Why doesn't she call?
A moment of perfect, stupid realization: He'd turned his phone off before the play.
He fumbled it out of his pocket. The screen glowed to life in the drizzling dark air. He had one missed message. From Lisa.
Jackson, I'm on a train--
*****
Grant managed, between Leicester Square and Holborn, to pry open the doors between his car and the next, the one hooked to Lisa's. He was pulling at the door at the end of his car when the train pulled into Holborn. Lisa was still at the sliding doors of her car when the train came to a stop.
Grant abandoned the inter-carriage doors. He was two seconds, maybe three, behind Lisa when she bolted onto the platform.
*****
She wasn't anywhere near the theatre. Not that he could see. Ripper hit dial. Lisa's phone rang half a dozen times, and when she picked up the reception was terrible.
"Lisa--?" Rippner said.
Jackson, help me--
Her voice was a ragged whisper. He could barely hear her. "Lisa, where are you--?"
I'm in-- tunnels-- I can't talk; I can't: he'll hear--
Her words were garbled, shot through with static. In the background, Rippner thought he heard the rumble of a train.
"Are you in the Tube? What station? Lisa, tell me--"
I'm not sure, Jackson. It might be-- I want to tell you, but my head is-- I think I'm-- She stopped speaking. For a second, Rippner thought they'd been disconnected.
Lisa said: Oh, God, he's here--
"Who--? Lisa, what station are you--"
A shriek of static. The line went dead. He tried calling her again, knowing it wouldn't work. Nothing. Not even a ring tone.
He stood for a moment, facing into the drizzling wind. He felt as though his heart had stopped. He called Carter.
"She's in a Tube station, John." This after only the briefest preliminaries. Carter, hearing his tone, made no protests about the hour or the weather. "Piccadilly or nearby. Charing Cross, maybe Leicester Square."
I can be at Charing Cross in five minutes, Carter said.
****
"I think that was the last train, Lisa," Grant said.
She was backing away from him along the empty platform at Holborn, in the direction the train had gone. For the better part of fifteen minutes after leaving the train from Leicester Square, they'd cat-and-moused their way through the maze of tunnels leading to and from the platforms. He'd managed to keep her from getting to the escalators, trying to go up the stairs would leave her too visible for too long, and she hadn't thought to use one of the emergency call boxes. Or she had, and either she'd picked a dud or the station attendants weren't as quick to respond to her danger as the prevalence of CCTV in the Tube would lead people to believe. In any case, he knew there was something wrong with her. He could see it now, in her eyes, across the space separating them on the westbound platform of the Central Line. She wasn't simply afraid of him: scowling, in or close to tears, shaking her head, she seemed to be having trouble focusing.
His phone buzzed. He kept his eyes on Lisa as he answered it. "Robert Grant."
Where are you? asked John Carter.
Lisa was nearly to the barrier at the mouth of the westbound tunnel. A white sign, a stick figure staggered by a lightning bolt: DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE. She bumped up against the barrier, started. She looked behind her, into the tunnel. She looked back at Grant--
Their eyes met. She was maybe thirty feet away. "Holborn station," Grant said. "Heading back to my hotel. Why, Carter?"
Lisa Reisert has gone missing. Rippner is-- well, as frantic as he gets. He thinks she might be in or around one of the West End stations. He's checking Piccadilly; I've got Charing Cross.
"If there's another train, I can cover Leicester Square in addition to Holborn," Grant said. "Have you contacted the police?"
Not yet. It's too early.
"Of course--"
Twenty feet ahead of him, Lisa Reisert climbed down off the platform and ran off into the darkness of the westbound tunnel of the Circle Line.
"Well, I'll be damned," Grant muttered.
What's that, Grant?
"Nothing, Carter. Bad reception down here. If I see her, I'll let you know." As he spoke, Grant felt wind at his back: the mouth of the tunnel at the platform's eastern end was exhaling, announcing, even before the telltale, distant rumble, the approach of a train.
Thanks, Grant. Keep in touch.
"I will. Good luck."
He put his phone away as the final westbound train of the night pulled into Holborn and discharged the last of its passengers. From here to Chancery Lane, from there to St. Paul's. He didn't know where the trains went to roost for the night. He stood looking at the narrow spaces around and above the front of the train while a handful of men and women cleared the platform on their desultory way to the escalators. All alone on the platform as the doors closed and the train slid off into the westbound tunnel, the way Lisa Reisert had run, he said to himself: "Sorry, Lisa, old girl. I guess I was wrong. That wasn't the last train."
*****