Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Helen shook her head when Alex Diamond offered her a bottle of water. She wasn’t thirsty.
“Drink,” he ordered.
“Later,” she said. She examined the dress she had been given. She frowned when the bottle was shoved under her nose. “What is it with you and water?”
“You have that serum in you. The first time, you forget to eat or drink.”
She looked up and found herself staring into his light blue eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I’m feeling neither hungry nor thirsty.”
“When did you last eat or drink?”
The thought hadn’t occurred to her. “A while,” she admitted. “Is it the drug doing this?”
Alex Diamond took her hand and put the bottled water in it. “It takes a few times to remember that what you aren’t feeling is still there,” he said before he walked off down the aisle of the plane.
Helen stared after him thoughtfully as she unscrewed the cap from the drink bottle. She took a long swig.
It takes a few times to remember that what you aren’t feeling is still there. Interesting turn of phrase. And he was correct. Mentally counting, she should be hungry by now. It’d been a long day. Yet she wasn’t feeling any need for food or drink at all.
They had told her the effects of the serum but telling her wasn’t the same as experiencing it for herself. She had thought, for some reason, that she would feel like a superwoman or something, able to do anything. A high or a rush, maybe.
Nothing. She felt perfectly normal. Yet, she’d forgotten to eat and drink.
Of course the drug would be insidious, you idiot.
It was a painkiller. Like a giant dose of Advil or something.
Like he said—she glanced down the aisle again—she had to pay attention to what she would usually be feeling.
She finished her drink as she continued watching him move around the spacious plane.
Number One, that was what they called him during operations. Alex Diamond looked the part of the initiator. She thought of what little she knew about him through files. T. wasn’t too forthcoming with the information for some reason. Helen smiled wryly.
Alex Diamond, late thirties, one of the original commandos.
One of the five in that incident that had killed two of her GEM sisters, one of whom happened to be his wife.
The only one who had ever walked out of a COS operation and had to be lured back into the fold.
In a way, Alex Diamond had initiated the beginnings of the merger between COMCEN and GEM.
Initially, the big blast had been thought to have killed all of the operatives. GEM was just a contract agency for COMCEN then, but without Diamond and the others at the helm, COMCEN was forced to change.
Helen wondered how they convinced him to come back.
Alex Diamond didn’t seem the type that could be easily threatened or tempted.
She had an idea T. had something to do with it.
Anyway, he was back as Number One, and she was to work with him today.
She glanced at her watch. Frankfurt’s time difference was six hours.
“Should I sleep, too?” she asked as he came back toward her.
It was disconcerting the way his gaze seemed penetrating and yet, uninterested, at the same time. “You won’t be able to the first time,” he said. “Your body’s confused, even though you feel fine.”
“Is that how the serum affected you?”
“SYMBIOS 1. I’ve heard your version is an improvement,” he said, his expression hardening slightly as he added, “as Armando would no doubt testify.”
Was that a warning? “They told me the thing about both serums is that they have different effects per individual. I’m just collecting data from all of you who’ve tried it,” Helen said. “It’ll help me.”
“Help you?”
He was looking at her as if she’d grown two heads. “I’m the test subject, remember?” she reminded him. “Everything you can tell me about how the serum affected you will help me adjust.”
Standing so close and being near him longer than the few times they had been together, Helen was able to study him better.
He had the long lean body of an athlete.
She’d read that he liked to do extreme sports, those daredevil acts that tested strength, endurance, as well as stupidity, and she wondered whether maybe that could be one of the serum’s effects.
His sun-blond hair and tan certainly testified to an outdoor lifestyle.
And there was something untamed about the man, in spite of the crisp and expensive snow-white shirt and tailored pants he favored, as if he held himself tightly inside.
It gave him that elusive aura that made a man so damn intriguing.
“None of us have tried it long term or in high dosage,” he finally said, “except, perhaps, Armando. You’d best talk to him instead.”
“You’re not going to tell me about your experience with it,” she pushed.
He sat down directly across from her. There was that look in his eyes again, the one that was both penetrating and dismissive. “No.”
“Why not?”
“You have a drug in you, Helen,” he said quietly. “At this moment, it’s running through your bloodstream, taking over your system. You’re going to get your answers soon enough, don’t you think?”
He had a point, but she had her own reasons. She was looking to find out more about the COS commandos. “So let’s go over the details of when we reach our target again instead,” Helen said, with a shrug. “I don’t think you’re interested in playing a card game or something.”
“Which part are you confused about? The part where you dress up and stand quietly by me? Or the part where you go off on your own?” he asked.
Helen smiled. She was beginning to enjoy trying to find a way to rile Mr. Number One. “The part in between. You know, when T. makes an appearance as her U.N. self. Do you think she would be able to pull off the distraction? It might look suspicious.”
She watched with interest for Alex’s reaction. None. The man was a cool customer.
“She’s the U.N. liaison. Lobbyists walk in and out of that institution every day. Why would a think tank like Deutsche International be suspicious? They would welcome any inside information that might further their agenda.”
In her contracted stints with international think tanks, mostly under the guise of interpreter-eavesdropper, Helen had learned that deals were often made under the guise of funded projects. But there was something new going on here.
“Why do you think Deutsche International would want to buy a stolen electronic key? I know it has something to do with passwords. What exactly is it?” She felt as if she had been plunged into the middle of something bigger than a stolen key, but the briefing on the plane had only focused on this coming operation, the retrieval, and nothing else.
She wanted more back story. “I know now that the institute isn’t just a regular think tank but a front, a dummy corporation. Care to enlighten me further?”
“No,” he said.
Helen cocked her head to one side. “Not a very sharing person, are you? Are you so short of words with T., I wonder?”
For the first time, she saw a glimmer of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He didn’t bother to answer her dig. Instead he stretched out his long limbs, leaned back, and closed his eyes.
Helen stared at him, for a moment considering kicking his shoes and scuffing that nice expensive leather.
She knew what he was doing—punishing her probing.
He’d known she wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep.
She supposed she could get up and walk to the other end of the plane to bother the other two operatives at their little compartments.
She didn’t even know those two, since no one bothered with introductions.
She had met Flyboy, who was in front. Alex here. Armando Chang who wasn’t here. And Big Swimmer Guy, whoever he was. She had never worked with these guys before and yet, here she was, expected to perform as part of their team. Was it part of the test? Whose?
It was becoming clear that she wasn’t just being tested by all the departments who were involved in this experiment.
She was also being tested by people at COMCEN itself, not to mention her secret monitor.
And probably most of these commandos knew about it, hence their leaving her alone.
She had worked on teams before. There was always a team protocol, some kind of set rules to follow.
She hadn’t been told of any. It was as if she was expected to just figure it out on her own, while these guys went about with their operation.
She blinked. Right. She was expected to get the key all on her own after the team had created the distraction.
She reached for the folder by her seat. They had gone over the known layout of the building itself. COMCEN had obviously had dealings with this Deutsche International before. Since it was a front, COMCEN had probably infiltrated it with some operatives.
As for T., her presence was no surprise to Helen. Alex was right: as a U.N. negotiator and lobbyist, T. would be familiar with the think tank itself. These corporations and institutes tended to work as advisors for different countries and had lobbyists of their own within the U.N.
It would be late afternoon by the time they walked into Deutsche International. By that time, T. would have made arrangements to meet with some of the officials there. The aim was to keep things chaotic with the arriving lobbyists and officials along with their respective entourages.
Add unexpectedness into the mix. Alex Diamond—correction, Alexander Barinsky, Alex’s current alias—would make an appearance, too.
It was not usually easy to interrupt a top executive’s day, especially when he or she had to meet with U.N.
officials. Alexander Barinsky’s presence, however, would cause a stir; some of the aides were bound to recognize him.