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Jeremy showed a piece of paper to Taz. After a single glance, she shoved it in front of Clarissa. A meaningless hodgepodge of numbers and scattered words. The only part she understood was Miranda’s name at the top.
Taz waved for her phone.
Having no way to interpret what was so urgently relevant about Jeremy’s scribblings, Clarissa switched to speakerphone.
“Do your satellite-based lasers have the ability to deliver three hundred kilowatts to a sea-level target, with active tracking?” Taz asked.
Clarissa saw the words300kWandtrackingon the note, along with a daunting amount of math. How was she supposed to have picked out those as the pertinent details?
Gregor hummed thoughtfully as ABBA gave way to AC/DC. Perhaps their DJ played music alphabetically. It made her wonder what was happening onstage at the sex club. But that only reminded her that the last time she’d had sex with Clark had been in the Camp David sauna a mere twelve hours before his death. That took all of the fun out of it.
“We are challenged to deliver one kilowatt from orbit. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
Taz stared at her across the table.
Rose and Jeremy looked back and forth between them, obviously not understanding Russian.
“Would he even know?” Taz asked softly in rough Arabic. A safe choice as Gregor spoke only Russian and English, and the latter was mostly what he’d needed to help understand stolen US designs.
Clarissa could only nod. She wouldn’t call off the other agents she had mobilized in Russia, but Gregor was a major department head at Samara. If the Russians built any secret satellite weaponry, it would be done there and he would know.
She asked him a few more questions to be sure, but it was clear that, as always, Gregor knew everything that happened at Russia’s premier satellite factory.
“I’m sorry for the scare, Monster.” And Rose wanted her to be nicer to people. “Also apologize to your lady as well. I had to know.”
“Um,” Gregor didn’t sound convinced. “If you find out how it was done, you will be telling me?”
“Nyet!”They said in unison and both laughed weakly.
It was a joke they had traded many times since their first sexual bout, when it had been a question of if the other was worn out yet. The contest had remained undecided as they’d eventually passed out together from sheer exhaustion. The scorching lust between them was no more, losing the last dregs of any residual heat.
With nothing more to say, all that remained was listening to “You Shook Me All Night Long” giving way to Aerosmith telling them to “Dream On.”
“Goodbye, Monster.”
“Goodbye, Beast.”
She wondered if she’d ever talk to him again. Another piece of her past, of simpler times, burned away and gone to ash.
