Le Bon sipped his martini and scanned the surrounding tables in the Casbah Lounge. He'd spied an unconventionally attractive brunette gracing one of the stools along the bar earlier, but no sign of her now. She'd been accompanied by a balding man twice her age, hardly someone who would be much of an obstacle for him. Smoke twirling out of a nearby electric blue hookah sent him into a trance.
A woman's voice, throaty and musical, brought him out of it again. "Are you with someone?" She'd taken the neighboring stool.
"Depends on who's asking," he said, looking her up and down. Long, tanned legs ending in strappy high heels. Her emerald green silk dress draped over firm and shapely thighs. Ample breasts, squeezed tightly between her arms. A stunningly beautiful face craning closer towards his. Her squarish features were dark and vaguely Persian. Her thick black hair was parted in the middle and tumbled down over her shoulders.
"I'm asking," she said, arching one of her brows. A hint of an accent. Educated at one of the better schools in England.
He smiled at her, let his eyes drop to her cleavage, brought them up again and said, "May I buy you a drink?"
She lifted a cosmopolitan off the bar and said, "Thank you all the same."
"Are you here with anyone?" he asked, resting his palm on her thigh. She made no attempt to move it or shift away from him.
The corners of her luscious mouth curled up. Her gaze was that of a cat, brazen and unflinching. "I am now."
With his free hand, he raised his martini to her and clinked the rim of her glass. "My name is Le Bon. You may call me Simon."
"Ayesha." Her eyes didn't move from his as she sipped from her drink. "I'm here for a conference. Right now I am skipping a presentation on creating strategic alliances with genome editing technologies."
"Sounds riveting." Dropping his voice he said, "So am I." He winked conspiratorially and pressed his finger to his lips. "Though every year it seems there are more salesmen and fewer scientists."
She began stroking his calf with the instep of her foot. He set down his drink and cast a glance at her empty glass, clouded by mist billowing from a nearby hookah. "I know of a better place to continue this conversation. Less smoke and ... more fire."
With the grace of a lynx she slid off her seat and took his hand. They ambled out of the lounge, down the escalator, through the gaming floor and across the hotel lobby to the elevators. On their way, she told him more about her work and how one of the therapies she developed involved genes from the saliva of a praying mantis.
Praying or preying, he mused. She hadn't yet asked him about himself, so either she already knew who he was, or she wasn't especially interested in finding out. Hopefully the latter.
Inside the lift, he put his hand around the small of her back. He clasped her waist, the silk of her dress soft under his fingers. She was a tall woman in her spiked heels, nearly matching his own height. They kissed as the elevator gently rose. His groin tingled with anticipation. The lights for each floor blinked on their way up. A bell dinged. On the thirtieth floor, the elevator stopped and the doors eased open.
"The Egyptian suite," she said, seemingly impressed. "I've stayed in here before. It's a lovely room."
"Indeed." He slid his card into the slot and pushed the door open. No sign of his chaperone, which was good. In all likelihood, she was at her desk in the adjacent room, giving the money for the deposit one more count before turning it over to Yushenko.
He went to the mini bar to fix her a cosmopolitan. She placed her hands on his shoulders and began expertly massaging them. "You haven't told me what you do with yourself yet."
"I rarely find that necessary." He turned, pulling her closer so that his erection was pressing against her belly. His hands groped her shapely rear end and he resumed kissing her.
"Allow me to guess then." She reached up behind her back and unzipped her dress. The straps parted and slid down her shoulders. The soft fabric fell to her waist. She shimmied out of the rest of it, revealing a curvy, evenly-tanned body underneath. "You're here for Yushenko's poker game."
"A good guess," he said, unhooking the strap of her lacy black brassiere. "But a wrong one, none the less." He left her bra hanging off her shoulders and ran his lips around her long, swan-like neck.
The sound of metal unsheathing made his blood chill; a sharp edge prodded against his jugular vein. The smoke from that hookah. He thought it'd had an odd smell. He gazed at the rippling wall behind her and said, "I should have realized you were lying when you said you were skipping the genome speech. That seminar isn't scheduled until tomorrow afternoon. So what does Yushky want from me? Until he gets his money, I doubt it's my corpse."
"Now you are the one guessing wrong," she said, dragging the metal point down past his shirt collar to the tender spot at the base of his throat. "I know that ten percent of your buy-in sits in a briefcase somewhere in your suite. I suggest you bring it to me, lest you find out the hard way what other weapons I've concealed in my clothes. Or elsewhere."
Something that felt very much like the barrel of a small pistol pressed into his solar plexus. Any wound from that wouldn't be immediately fatal; it would take weeks for him to die. She forced him over to the bed and darted her eyes at the telephone sitting on the side table. "With that. Call her in here. Your partner."
"No," he said, staring into her brown, reptilian eyes, daring her to strike.
Her blade pierced the skin of his neck, stinging in excruciating pain. He fought the urge to press his fingers to the wound as he felt blood dribble out.
She dragged the pistol up to the wound she'd just made. "I'd hoped I wouldn't have to leave a mess in the–"
A shot fired and he squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself for the searing agony. The woman toppled against him, collapsing into a heap on the floor. With his foot he rolled her over onto her back. Blood seeped out of her temple, staining the pale beige carpet. She wasn't dead quite yet, but would be soon. Behind where she'd been standing, Agent Matins glared blankly, a twenty-two clutched so tightly in her grip her knuckles were alabaster white.
He jogged up to her and lifted the gun out of her hands. "What a pleasant surprise––I didn't hear you come in."
"Can it," she said, snapping out of her stupor. She held out her palm and he placed her gun on top of it. "You are so bloody stupid sometimes! I was tempted not to bother trying to miss your own idiot head––if it weren't for the extra paperwork, I wouldn't have."
"Now, now." He knelt to pick up the dead woman's purse, which lay on the floor next to her sprawled legs. From a white, patent leather wallet he withdrew an identity card with a familiar eight-pointed logo in green. Iranian intelligence. "Well this is an interesting turn of events. Do you suppose she was acting on orders, or if this would have been a lucrative side business for her?"
"I'll be sure to include it in my report." She snatched the card and wallet out of his fingers and crammed them back into the purse.
"You're sexy when you're holding a smoking gun," he said, standing again and putting an arm around her shoulder.
She shrugged it off, violently. "You're welcome." She wheeled around. Purse tucked under her arm, she marched back into her suite, slamming the door behind her.
Le Bon crouched next to Ayesha's body to check for a pulse. Satisfied she was gone for good, he stood again and went to the phone next to his bed. He dialed zero for the front desk. "Rebecca Marks, please. I'll be needing maid service in here after all."