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
