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"Wait," said Bergman as I reached for the latch. Another couple of seconds passed and
then I heard a final click. Bergman nodded, so I turned the knob. As the door swung open
Vayl said, "Just remember Bergman, sooner or later you will have to give us a way to get
inside without the benefit of your eyeball."
"No problem. As soon as all our stuff is unloaded I'll modify the system."
I stepped into the front hall and a piercing whistle stopped me in my tracks. Knowing
Bergman, if I moved any further a cannon would descend from the ceiling and blow my
head off.
"What is that?" Vayl asked as Bergman came in to give me a critical look.
I held up my hands. "I didn't do anything."
"But you did. That's a wavelength sensor. You're sending some sort of signal."
"Is it the watch?" I asked, snapping the band to see if that stopped the alarm. Nope.
Bergman had run out to the van. He brought back a box, dug around inside and came out
with a hand-held wand that looked like a super-sized cigarette lighter. Starting at my head,
he swept it down my body. As soon as it reached my navel it sent out its own warning
beep.
I raised my shirt. "It's your belly-ring," Bergman said, adding urgently, "Give it to me."
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I took it off and handed it to him. He jumped back into the van, started it up and raced off.
In the time it took us to figure out how to turn the alarm off he returned. "I planted it on
an ice-cream truck. Whoever's following that signal will hopefully zero in on the truck and
forget the signal stopped here for a couple of minutes."
"Pete said I had to break it to activate it. That only then would our backup team get
involved."
Bergman grimaced. "Somebody activated it remotely."
"The same somebody who supplied it in the first place?" wondered Vayl.
"Well it's not one of mine," said Bergman.
"That's how they found us," I said. "Those God's Arm fakes on the road. Liliana at the
restaurant. Mr. and Mrs. Magoo in the hotel. All they had to do was follow the belly-ring
signal." I clenched my jaw, trying not to kick a hole in the wall. "When I get hold of this
senator I'm going to rip his ears off and stuff them down his throat."
"What about the Raptor?" Vayl asked.
"I'll leave him to you, as long as you promise to make it vile. God, that pisses me off!" The
anger wasn't going to help me think clearly though, so I tried to walk it off by exploring
the house. Its interior lived up to the exterior's promise. Wooden floors, colorful throw
rugs, overstuffed furniture and antique accessories in twisted iron and oak made the house
feel like the set for one of the daytime dramas Granny May used to love to watch. She
called them her "stories," and never failed to shake her head sadly when last season's true
love became this season's big breakup.
I just about had it back under control once we unloaded Bergman's van into the living
room, a light, airy place with pale blue beadboard walls and a huge fishing net hanging
from the ceiling. A long, mahogany bar separated it from the kitchen/feed-a-party-of-thirty
dining room. A hallway, painted pastel green, led to three bedrooms and a bathroom.
Stairs just to the right of the doorway led to a large family room, a home office and a
master bedroom with a view that made me wish I could sail. I thought there might be
some truth to the idea that surroundings influence mood. Maybe I should paint my
apartment.
Once everything was in, Cassandra and I started unpacking while Bergman and Vayl set
everything up. Several of the boxes held computer components, and before long they'd
transformed the dining room table into a communications center. Four PCs sat back to
back, connected to each other, the Internet and a central printer through a maze of cords
that lay like a big, sloppy coil basket in the middle of them all. Our laptop sat beside them
and yet separate, a snooty, secretive step-sister. The table was so long that half of it still
remained free for other purposes.
Bergman and Vayl began setting up a mini lab on the bar while Cassandra stored the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]