Chastity Flame (11 page)

"Not clever enough, apparently," she
said as evenly as possible.

"Oh, never fear," he said, turning
back to regard her face with careful scrutiny. "I shall not tell
our host that he has been speaking with a special operative in
government employ. You are still part of the government, hmmm? I
know there has been some downsizing in recent months." His chuckle
evoked no humor as far as she could tell, though there seemed to be
something playful in his method of attack.

"My employment varies," Chastity said
with a shrug. It was probably the best she could hope for under the
circumstances, but it wasn't much. If he already knew who she was,
there was little she could do about the breach. She itched to use
the phone immediately, yet caution seemed wise. He must be the real
money, Chastity realized.

"I suspect your friends and my friends
have had a few too many encounters of late," he continued at last,
sipping his drink with relish. "It was unfortunate that you let
that young computer whiz slip through your fingers."

Chastity looked at his long elegant
fingers and cursed inwardly. So, it was his men that she and Amélie
had met outside the conference. "You need a better class of thug,"
Chastity said as coolly as she could manage. "They didn't require
much of an effort to subdue."

"Yes, I'm afraid this is what happens
when you have to delegate too many of your duties to subordinates.
I have had to take a great deal of time to begin to put things to
rights. Including visiting my dear friends in London." As if to
accentuate the point, Wesenlund waved and smiled at someone across
the room, who returned the gesture enthusiastically. "Such lovely,
wealthy friends."

"Convenient, that," Chastity said.
"Some might call them traitors."

"A harsh word, an unkind
characterization," Wesenlund tutted. "They are merely looking to
support the kind of world they wish to live in."

"A fascist state," Chastity said, her
voice flat.

"A good economy," Wesenlund countered,
meeting her gaze unflinchingly as he struck a match for a
cigarette. "Miss Flame—"

"Ms. Flame, if you don't
mind."

He lit the cigarette, eyes still upon
her, a smile breaking around the smoke that billowed forth.
"Indeed, Ms. Flame, a good economy is a tide that raises all boats.
You'll find people are much happier in general when they have a
little bit of money in their pockets." He waved the cigarette
around in a semi-circle, as if taking in the entire room. "And
these people are much happier when they have a lot of money in
their pockets. That is why they love me."

"I'm sure they find you useful,"
Chastity murmured, although inwardly she was cursing her
ineffectiveness.

"Oh no, they love me, they do,"
Wesenlund continued. "Quite smitten, in fact." He breathed out a
plume of smoke and grinned at Chastity, who stared back nonplussed.
What on earth could that mean? He seemed like a bit of a madman, as
controlled and coiled as he was. There was something deeply
disturbing here.

"I wish I had time to get to know you
better," he said, bringing her attention back to his words, "but I
fear I must go now. We will meet again," he added with a slight
bow.

"I suppose we shall," Chastity said
and watched him weave his way back through the crowd. The chill he
left behind settled about her shoulders. I'd better contact
Monitor, she sighed at last and slipped away quickly.

Chapter Eight

"Wesenlund," Monitor repeated, then,
"Ah. Yes."

"You've got a file on him?" Chastity
asked. Of course, they did. A little chime indicated that it had
been sent to her computer.

"He indicated he was the guiding
spirit behind things? Well, that's very interesting."

"Why?" Chastity had a feeling she
didn't really want to know but it was her job, after all. This guy
was trouble.

"He's protected." While Monitor
maintained her poise, Chastity could see on the computer screen the
tightening of her face muscles that indicated irritation.
"Well-protected, in fact. Five years ago he appeared to be involved
in a scheme to destabilize the Euro. Nothing was proved, no charges
were ever brought except against a couple of low-level stooges. But
his fingerprints were all over it, the canny bastard. There are
folks high up in the Norwegian government shielding him from any
kind of inquiry. I don't know what he has over them. It must be
good."

"Is this hacker business another
currency scheme?"

Monitor sighed. "It's very difficult
to tell. There doesn't seem to be any pattern in the various
security breaches engineered by this hacker. None of them seems to
have affected the systems breached, but the possibility was
there."

"Either that or he placed some kind of
worm in the system that won't operate until later," Chastity mused
as she tapped her fingers, scrolling through the file on Wesenlund.
"I know they checked for things like that, of course, but what if
it's something new? Our Belgian op said this guy is the whiz.
People were hanging on his every word and there was something…"
Chastity paused. What was the thing buzzing just out of her memory?
Something Amélie had mentioned.

"Something new?" Monitor said, her
voice perking up.

"Ask Kevin, I'm sure he would have
heard rumors about a new worm, some kind of time delay. Honestly,
most of what the guy said was gibberish to me, but the Belgian op
seemed to find it significant that he mentioned a release
date."

"For?"

Chastity shrugged. "I didn't catch it.
Not sure it would have mattered if I did. As I said, I couldn't
follow most of it. Call the Belgians. Maybe they've figured it
out."

"Yes, I shall certainly do so. I'll
get Kevin on the hunt as well. If there's some kind of worm
planted, we need to know."

"Any word on the hacker?"

Monitor looked at her with frank
curiosity. "He has been sighted, but we haven't nailed him down
yet."

"Sighted in Aalborg?" Chastity
couldn't quite conceal her own surprise.

"Yes," Monitor said. "Are you going to
tell me how you knew this?"

"A hunch."

"A hunch?"

Chastity was glad she wasn't in
Monitor's office right now. That lifted eyebrow enhanced a glare
that she found hard to meet, even through the computer screen. "I
have my methods," she decided to reply, hoping Monitor might let it
go for now. She didn't seem pleased, but she did let it go and
Chastity switched off the screen. She had avoided thinking about
that strange episode, but maybe she should face the
facts.

It was weird.

She was not some kind of religious
nut, she was not a psychic on the telly, she was just a normal
woman. Admittedly, she did not have a normal job, but that hardly
mattered. Chastity walked down to the kitchen to make some hot
chocolate. As the kettle heated, she recalled the disconcerting
feeling earlier that day. The flashing lights in her eye were bad
enough; the sudden dredging of memories was far worse. Worst of all
was the complete lack of control she had felt as the migraine hit
her. She had been helpless.

The horrible day when she saw her nana
suffering—more than saw, Chastity thought, be honest. She felt her
pain. It ripped through her head as if it were real. The pain was
there, her grandmother's fear was there, the terror that no one was
around to see it and that she would die alone. All of that was in
her head, too.

Chastity stirred her chocolate with a
spoon and resisted the urge to bury the memories once more. As much
as she found it disturbing to have her mind open up in this bizarre
way, it clearly could be useful. There had to be some kind
scientific explanation for it, right?

Sitting on the sofa, looking out onto
the square, Chastity resolved to harness the power if she could. I
won't panic next time, she promised herself. Whatever this ability
was (and she was already reconciling its strangeness in that way),
it might be the edge she needed to get back on track.

So, now a more pleasant task lay
before her: choosing a theatre outing for tomorrow! With a grin,
Chastity hiked back up the stairs to her computer and began to
search the 'net for reviews and recommendations. She wondered what
sort of thing Damien would like, and then stopped dead.

Had she ever wondered such a thing in
her life? Not since childhood, surely. She didn't know whether to
be pleased or perplexed. It was rather wonderful to look forward
with such anticipation to the next day. Not because she was
traveling somewhere new or about to nail some unrepentant criminal,
but because she was going to do something fun. It was hard not to
grin, particularly when she thought of Damien's hands caressing her
body. She imagined him behind her now, hands on her breasts, mouth
on her neck, hard against her back. The thoughts made her feel
languorous and warm. Chastity wished she could phone him, but the
fewer links made, the better. It wouldn’t do to have to explain
such a call to Monitor, considering her general mood of
late.

Besides, Kevin or one of his staff
would be checking the call, which suddenly made her feel
self-conscious. She had enjoyed flirting over the phone in the
past, knowing someone else was in on the show. It was part of the
job, but she also enjoyed the playful power of words alone to
excite. It was always possible to tell when she next went in to the
office, because whoever had listened in would usually be unable to
meet her gaze.

Just admit it, Chastity told herself,
you're smitten. It had to happen sometime, right? Maybe it wouldn't
last all that long, but as long as it did, why not enjoy it? She
turned off the computer and went to bed thinking it was going to be
a wonderful day.

In the morning she got the usual
special greeting from her postman, cheery as ever and pleased to
see her home. He had news to share with her. "Look at this! Woman
moved in across the square, her name is—get this—Angel Hunter! Can
you believe it? I think she's a prostitute," he added in a stage
whisper, audible perhaps halfway across the square. Chastity closed
the door, already in a great mood.

When she phoned Damien to announce
that she had terrific seats to the sold-out play with the big
theatre icon and the well-known television personality, he was
charmed. Chastity was absurdly pleased with her success. "I
wouldn’t ever go to it on my own, but I'm dying to see what it's
really like."

"I'm dying to see you," Damien said
with a chuckle, but Chastity could hear a need in his voice that
matched her own. "If I didn't have lectures to give today, I'd try
to convince you to steal away now."

"When will you be free?"

"Half three. Late lunch?"

"Where?"

"Oh, I don't know. My
place?"

Chastity laughed, even though the
thought had already made her wet. "Are you talking about eating me
or some food?"

He paused before answering and
Chastity felt the heat rise through her body. "No reason we can't
do both, eh? You're feeling all right now?" he added, suddenly
sounding concerned again.

"I'm fine, fine," Chastity told him.
"Just make sure we have some food. I don't want to fall asleep
during the show from low blood sugar."

After they hung up, Chastity
stepped out of the booth with a broad grin plastered across her
face. With no pressing work calling her, she decided to wander
around the museum, wandering amongst the Egyptian statues for a
while before climbing up to the clockworks. Idling along the
street, she decided to stop at the Oxfam bookshop and search for
something to read in the evenings. She picked up a biography of
Suzi Quatro which looked to be a lot of fun, and a copy of
Monsignor Quixote
which
she had somehow never got around to reading yet. There was time to
drop them back at the flat and check the computer before heading
down to Damien's.

Her step was light as she
headed down Garrick. When she knocked on the door, Chastity was
slightly surprised to see a fully-dressed Damien, who nonetheless
pulled her into a warm kiss immediately. "Hello," he breathed at
last when she let him pull away, then led her up the stairs.
"
Voilá
!"

Spread across the low table was a
fabulous feast of Thai food. Chastity inhaled the various aromas
and sighed happily. "Wonderful!"

"I forgot to ask if you liked Thai,"
Damien said, grinning sheepishly. "Okay?"

Chastity sat down cross-legged at the
table. "Absolutely! Of course it's not as good as you can get in
Bangkok, but—"

"Oh, of course," Damien mocked as he
tumbled down beside her. "Not as good as in Bangkok, but it'll
do."

Chastity buried her nose in one of the
containers, inhaling the rich aroma. "You haven't had tom yum until
you've had it with fresh lemongrass harvested the same
day."

"You travel a lot? You were in Belgium
this week, you said."

"Yes, I was," Chastity said, taking
the glass of wine Damien had poured her. "I love to travel to
different locations."