Body Surfing

the background. But the Legion’s last known twenty for her target was here, and the front desk had confirmed that a guest by the name of Antonio Soma had checked in several days earlier. The clerk declined to mention the room number aloud, so Ileana folded a blank piece of paper into an envelope, scrawled Soma’s name on it, and watched as the clerk slipped it into a cubbyhole. 206.
    In truth, Ileana hated knowing the name. Wished all she had was that number. Names made it harder. More personal. More human. Some members of the Legion hid behind words like “ichthys,” “mandorla,” or “vesica pisces,” archaic terminology that attempted to draw a philological distinction between target and host, but Ileana had no time for compartmentalized thinking. Her quarry was formidable enough as it was. She didn’t need to distract herself with mind games and rationalizations.
    But still. She hated knowing the name.
    Unfortunately, her mobile phone wasn’t receiving pictures, so “Antonio Soma” was all she had to go on. Her contact had described him as “on the tall side,” slightly built, with dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin. Not exactly novel features in an Arabic capital. But there were other things more telling than hair or eye color, or names for that matter. That had been Alec’s first lesson, all those years ago.
    Some two dozen men were scattered around the bar. Ileana ignored the groups, confining her attention to the single men. Her target would not want to make friends. She judged each sidelong glance for an appetite that betrayed a more than carnal hunger. She made no effort to conceal herself. There was an invisibility in being watched: no one would suspect the most conspicuous person in the room of engaging in subterfuge. She smoothed her dark blond hair into a ponytail, fished a rubber band from a pocket. Her bare arms moved dexterously, the skin so taut it revealed the action of the muscles beneath. Deltoid, triceps, and biceps flexed and stretched, augmenting the action of the rotator cuff in one of those miracles of human anatomy that go unnoticed on less refined specimens. Few would have guessed she was over thirty, and not just because of her lithe body. Her face was as smooth as a teenager’s. Some would’ve said it was because she rarely smiled—no smile, no smile lines—and only a blind man could have denied it was a beautiful face, with its Slavic cheekbones and almond-shaped gray eyes. But it was a cold beauty, aloof, untouchable. Not that many men hadn’t tried—and at least one succeeded, if the watch on her left wrist was any evidence. The band was an intricately woven platinum braid, the face broad, thick, unadorned. A man’s watch. Ileana had been rubbing it unconsciously for the past several minutes. She caught herself now, smiled at the watch wistfully, gave the knob a couple of turns.
    When she looked up she saw Dumas returning from the washroom. The scientist’s presence caused a chain reaction throughout the room as, one after another, the men looked away from her. She suppressed a frown. Dumas was genial, but she’d hoped to ditch him so she could concentrate on her hunt. But apparently her companion was not to be deterred. The tuft of dark hair that showed in the gap between the top two buttons of his requisite UN-issue khaki shirt made Ileana’s chest tighten. Was Dumas actually going to make a pass at her? But all the Frenchman did was pick up his glass with a theatrical air of trepidation.
    “This stuff is absolute poison.”
    Ileana didn’t take her eyes from the room. “Probably made from rotten yams and siphoned gasoline.”
    Dumas swirled the liquor in his glass. As Ileana watched his fingers, she remembered how delicately he’d probed patient after patient in the refugee camps. A true healer’s hands, nimble and nurturing, attuned to the flesh beneath the fingertips. She tried to think of the last time she’d felt a man’s hands on her body, then tried even harder to forget. She reached nervously for her watch, then jerked her hand back to her side. This is no time to get distracted, she chastised herself, let alone sentimental. Focus .
    Her contact had said Soma was clean-shaven. That could change in a week, of course—hell, the target’s sex could change in a week—but even so, she ruled out all the men with long beards, which took care of three-quarters of the room. In fact, there was only one patron about whom she had any lingering