She gazed levelly at him. "Tomorrow, next week, the coming year, how can I be sure you will not decide to raise the interest rate?"
Pitts eyes turned cold and his voice was like ice.
"Don't put me in the same league with your other playmates. Mass murder and extortion have never turned me on. Your secret is safe with me, and it's even safer with the N.I.A.-they'll see to it that Rondheim, Kelly and Ybirra will never get within fifty feet of a press reporter."
She hesitated. "I'm sorry, truly sorry. What else can I say."
He didn't answer, just looked at her.
104
She turned and gazed out the window at the park.
The turrets of the Magic Castile were lit lip like a birthday cake.
The lanilies were gone now. The young couples had taken over and were strolling along the park walkways and streets, hand in hand, breathing in the make-believe romantic atmosphere.
"And where do you go from here?" she asked.
After a short vacation, I'll go back to NUMA headquarters in Washington and begin work on a new project."
She turned to look at him. "And if I asked you to come to Iceland with me and become a member of my board of directors?"
"I'm not the board-of-director type."
"There must be some other way for me to show my gratefulness."
She came toward Pitt and stood in front of him. A knowing smile curled her lips, the doelike eyes grew soft and there seemed to be faint signs of dampness on her forehead.
"All will be as you ask," she said slowly. She raised her hand and her fingers lightly touched his battered face. "Tomorrow I will see Admiral Sandecker and affirm out mutual efforts." She hesitated and stood back from him. "I must, however, extract a small cost in return."
"And that is?"
She loosened the sash and shrugged the kimono from her shoulders to the floor, standing there in the relaxed classical pose of the nude.
Under the light from the lamp, she was like a sun-bronzed figure crafted to exacting satin smoothness by the patient hands of a master sculptor. The full rounded lips were slightly open with excitement and impatience. The soft violet eyes gave forth a silent invitation. Her features and body could only be described as magnificent: a perfectly constructed monument to the miracle of medical science.
"If it's any compliment," she said in a throaty voice, "I never for a minute believed your gay act,"
"It takes one to know one."
She turned pale. "What I became is not the same."
"What you became is a cold, shrewd, calculating witch."
"No!"
"Kristjan Fyrie was a warm, honest lover of humanity. Your change was emotional as well as physical.
People to you are only to be used, to be thrown away when their usefulness ends. You're cold and you're sick."
She shook her head. "No . . . no! I've changed.
Yes. But I'm not cold . . . not cold." She held out her arms. "Let me prove it."
They stood in the center of the room, facing each other silently. And then she saw the expression forming on Pitts face, and her arms slowly dropped to her sides.
She looked dazed, those exotic eyes were stricken. She stared at his face with a strange, paralyzed intentness.