Channeling Cleopatra (22 page)

"Wild horses couldn't keep me away." Leda
said.

"But please, we would prefer to do this in
as peaceful and nonaggressive a way as possible. Not only are we
more assured of gaining the contessa's cooperation with such means,
but we also place ourselves in a less dangerous position."

"You are not the one who should be worried
about a dangerous position," Leda snapped. "I should have known
that damned Gabriella was up to something! She was just tooooo
helpful with everything and always going on and on about how much
she admires Cleopatra. Hah! She'll never get that specimen
now."

"It still exists?" Chimera asked.

"It does." Leda reached into the front of
her shirt and with great relief extracted the two hard and lumpy
items putting grooves in her boobs. She handed them to him, the
specimen case with the original, repaired DNA and the disk
containing the data for its duplicates. "Dad was bringing this one
to you just before everything went down the drain at the beluga,
and this I rescued from the computer before it got eaten by the
quake."

"Excellent. Leda. Mrs. Wolfe will be very
pleased."

Leda felt an unexpected bolt of anger
lancing through her when Chimera said that. Mrs. Wolfe had Dad. She
could even afford him, something none of his wives had actually
been able to do. Why the hell did she need Cleopatra, too, when she
didn't even care about what the queen knew that couldn't be found
in the pages of racy women's magazines, which could probably teach
Cleopatra herself a few tricks?

"Peachy. Meanwhile, have you told Wolfe
about Gabriella? Because the two of them arrived in Alexandria on
the same plane."

"We have not been able to get a call
through, but Gretchen and your father left only a short time ago.
They will warn him if we cannot reach him any other way."

"I suppose that will have to do. I'll try
again pretty soon."

"Yes, we must find your father's body as
quickly as we can and take fresh tissue samples before the DNA has
had a chance to deteriorate. Gretchen will want the process
reversed as soon as Duke's inquiries into his murder have reached
their conclusion. The donor material does not survive the reversal
process. When we are acquiring samples for clients, we make sure we
have plenty of the original DNA to replicate, but in your father's
case, that is unavailable. If we have a good fresh sample, we may
be able to find a suitable host and—"

"Bring him back to life?" Leda considered
this. It was an abstract idea at the moment, almost a funny one.
Dad couldn't be dead. He wasn't the type. "Hmm. I don't know. I
guess you'll have to see when the time comes what he thinks of the
idea. Maybe Mrs. Wolfe will want to keep him. He has been known to
have that effect on quite a few women. Maybe since he's part of
her, he'll be able to make her understand, in a way that none of
his wives have, just how many cars, motorcycles, and boats he
really needs. Or needed." The last word caught in her throat. She
didn't like the way it sounded. It was as if she was giving up too
easily. It seemed disloyal to count him out before she knew. Maybe
Chimera was right about finding the body, if for a different reason
than getting a tissue sample. She was not going to believe this
until she saw. Dad always turned up okay, somehow.

Chimera smiled a bit sadly. "Maybe so, but
it is doubtful such charm would work on Wilhelm as well as it may
on Gretchen."

Leda shrank from the gloomier aspects of the
situation and decided that until she had more proof, she'd just
carry on as if Duke was up to his usual tricks. Playing it that way
would help her continue to be useful, whereas the alternative . . .
Nope. It wasn't getting brain space right now. "Well, if Gretchen
kicks him out, it will be a little like one of the divorces, I
guess, and Dad has always been one for . . . er . . . remounting
right away. Just so we take enough security personnel with us."

They tried again to reach Wolfe without
success, then Leda called Agelakos, the security chief, and told
him that she and Dr. Chimera would require a helicopter to Dilos in
the morning to recover her father's body. She also told him they'd
need enough armed security guards to protect them against those
responsible for the crime, since calling local authorities or
Interpol could be a bit tricky under the circumstances.

Agelakos was not as cooperative as she might
have hoped.

"We are spread pretty thin now. There's a
situation developing in Egypt. Rumors being spread about Nucore are
causing riots in some areas. Much of our Kefalos security staff has
had to relieve the Egyptian guards, who cannot be trusted in the
present climate. Relief personnel have been made available to us,
however."

"Just so they're large and have really big
guns," Leda said. Agelakos rang off.

Leda held onto the phone
for several seconds after it went dead, thinking what an odd choice
of words Agelakos had used:
"Made available
to us."
But then she decided almost
everything seemed odd, if not downright surreal. For instance,
Daddy was dead/Daddy was running around Egypt somewhere looking
like Wolfie's blond wife and riding an uncustomized new bike. The
ideas were equally preposterous, and she just really couldn't take
it all in. She needed to sleep again so very badly.

Dimly, in one of her mixed-up dreams, she
heard a phone ring, but she thought it might be Wolfe. She tried to
rouse enough to ask Chimera but couldn't make herself wake up.
Every time she thought she was awake, she opened her eyes just long
enough to see that she was still in bed and hadn't moved.

Later, she awoke to voices in the living
room, which was beneath the room where she slept. A woman's voice,
low, tearful, whispery, and urgent.

"Dr. Chimera, you must help me. You must
remove her from me. That man-crazy hag has caused me to violate
every principle I hold dear, to betray the people I most care
about. My doctor, Nessa, is murdered; one of her patients murdered
in my own house; and my dear Gaby is in terrible danger. Please,
you must help me so that I can help her. Remove that woman so that
I can no longer be swayed by her. I admired her so much! I had no
idea she was like a bitch perpetually in heat. Oh, tell me you can
help me, please!"

"We think we can, yes. But first you must do
something for us. Duke Hubbard, the security guard, was killed in
your house."

"Yes, yes, he was the
patient of Nessa's I told you about. She did her best for the poor
man, and Gabriella was most upset about it. It was an accident, you
know. No one meant for him to die. No one except
him."

"We need to find his body, Contessa."

"I cannot help you there. Rasmussen took it
when he left, and I'm not sure where he went except that I know he
caused Nessa's death. I came also to warn that young woman,
Madelaine. But first, dear Dr. Chimera, I cannot promise to be your
true ally until you reverse the process."

Leda smelled a rat big enough to swallow
Athens. If the imported personality was so dominant as the contessa
said, where was she now? Why was she allowing the contessa to
petition for separation? Without turning on the light, Leda tiptoed
to the window that looked down the hill to the little harbor. A
large yacht was anchored just offshore. There were people on the
road, too. Not milling around type people, either. These looked
like guards, though the security force did not normally park
themselves at the entrances of the executives' villas. If Agelakos
was short of his own staff, Nucore security had been more than
adequately beefed up by whoever sent the replacements. Who might
that be, anyway?

She heard footsteps below her again and soon
saw the contessa and Chimera riding up the road to headquarters.
Two pairs of guards closed in behind them. Leda did not like the
way that looked. She did not trust the contessa, and she really
didn't think Chimera trusted her, either, not after what the
techie, Madelaine, had said about the contessa.

Was the yacht the contessa's? It could
be.

But Leda's guess was—not.

She hurried as quickly and quietly as she
possibly could downstairs and picked up the phone to call security.
This time, there was no answer at all on the other end. That alone
confirmed her suspicions. Someone should have been there manning
the desk at all times. She hung up and hurried on to the lab. The
portable transfer unit was lying there on the table where Chimera
had been working with it when she first arrived. So were the
Cleopatra disk and specimen case, as if she and her dad hadn't been
guarding them with their lives.

But the machine was what the contessa was
really after. Chimera didn't trust the contessa any more than she
did, Leda was sure. Like a mother bird leading intruders away from
the young in her nest, the scientist was leading the woman and her
accomplices away from the latest innovation, the one that was most
potentially harmful to the most people in the wrong hands. The
transfer units at the main lab were larger, hooked into the central
Nucore computer, and would be unwieldy to try to use elsewhere.

That meant Leda had a certain amount of time
to think how to hide or remove or use the portable unit to best
advantage. First she snatched up the specimens she'd so diligently
delivered. She was damned if Gabriella was going to get her hands
on them. She'd destroy them first.

And then she realized that maybe the way to
use the portable unit to best advantage didn't involve removing or
concealing it at all. It looked complete, as if Chimera had either
finished the repairs or hadn't yet begun them. She carried it to
Chimera's desk, set it up, unscrewed the lid from the cylinder
she'd brought with her, and pulled out the printout. Then she stuck
the Cleopatra DNA sample, unlabeled, in a tray with other samples,
and set it in the back of the refrigerator. She pulled out another
sample and ground it onto the floor. For a moment, she studied the
disk she had rescued from the computer during the earthquake.
Taking a deep breath, she stuck the disk into Chimera's computer.
Hooking the portable unit to it, she uploaded and converted the
codes as she'd been taught. Carefully placing the printout on the
desk in front of her, she pulled the goggle-style eyepieces of the
unit onto her face.

CHAPTER 21

The contessa might not be entirely sincere
about her motives, Chimera thought, but she was certainly upset and
anxious about something. She chattered nonstop about matters so
personal that Chimera wondered if she only confided them because
she thought the person listening would not be around to repeat the
details later. Chimera hoped some of the remorse she seemed to feel
was genuine; some small part of it must be. The contessa's
reputation had been one of charity and kindness: the sort of woman
who took in stray animals, gave lavishly to many causes, sent money
to support children orphaned by war.

Even her motive for wishing to blend with
Pandora Blades had been altruistic. It was a shame she hadn't been
better informed, but then, the process was not exact and the
interactions of the personalities involved unpredictable.

The contessa was obsessing now about
Gabriella Faruk.

"We had such a fight, said terrible things
to each other, Gaby and I," the contessa said as they rode up the
hill in the little three-wheeled cart. "I fear she may never come
back. Rasmussen frightens her. She had such a hard time as a little
girl, poor thing. Her stepfather drowned her mother—quite legally
mind you—in their swimming pool, in front of her and other
witnesses, accusing the woman of infidelity. And he had his mother
and sisters circumcise Gabriella . . ."

"They circumcised a little girl?" Chimera
asked. "But there is no foreskin!"

"That doesn't stop them from removing what
they feel might make the girl 'unclean.' It often includes removal
of the clitoris and all of the sensitive tissue around it and the
sewing shut of the vagina, to make sure a girl is "pure" until her
wedding day. As why shouldn't she be, since conventional sex will
never be pleasurable for her, and in fact, will only bring
pain?"

"And this is permitted in Egypt? Is the
religion practiced there so brutal?"

"Her family lived in Upper Egypt at the
time, near the Sudan, and the brand of Islam practiced there is
quite fanatical, as it is in parts of Africa. Gaby ran away,
disguised as a boy, and for a time lived on the streets like a
little rat. Fortunately, she was old enough to have remembered her
life with her mother and real father, my brother, and me. One night
she was able to steal into a closed shop and call me. I came to
Egypt and collected her. This may shock you, Doctor, but when I saw
what he had done to my poor little niece, I hired some people to
see to her stepfather so that he wouldn't trouble her again."

She sighed. Her story would have been very
touching except that Chimera felt it was a smoke screen of chatter
to prevent questions or comment on her motives. "She was never
entirely happy in Europe. She felt such a kinship with the ancient
Egyptians, you know, and perhaps, given her mixed heritage, more
kinship still with the Ptolemys. And now that awful man has come
between us and sees her as a 'useful conquest.' That is what he
told me. I feel so helpless, Doctor. All of the good I have managed
to do with my life that poisonous poet has undone."

"Excuse me, sir, may I see some ID?" Two
armed figures stepped forward, flanking Chimera and the contessa as
they left the cart. Chimera was startled. Challenges were not
routine on Kefalos. Most of the security was electronic.

Chimera showed them the required badge, and
they seemed to accept it. "We have a procedure to perform on this
lady tonight," Chimera told the guards. "We will call our
technician to assist, so please allow her to pass as well."