Линкольн Чайлд - Bloodless

In addition to the collections of firearms and pens, there was, curiously, a museum-in-miniature of cipher machines and pieces from the early history of computing. Several large display cases contained, Frost had explained, a Fialka M-125 Soviet cipher device, an Enigma machine, a set of gears of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, a relay and rotary switch from Harvard’s Mark I, and a pair of printed circuit boards from the landmark early supercomputer Cray-1. Frost’s knowledge of computers was remarkable, and it struck Constance this must be a significant link to her mysterious past — whatever that was.

“It’s almost eleven,” Frost said, glancing at a grandfather clock on the far wall. She was sitting on a chaise longue across from Constance. A well-thumbed paperback, which Constance had noticed on her first visit, was at her side, a constant companion. “I think something stronger than tea is called for — don’t you?”

Constance reminded herself that, because of the woman’s nocturnal habits, cocktails were apparently served half a dozen hours later than usual. “If you’d like.”

“I would like indeed. At my age, self-medication is practically the only vice left to me.” She stood up with effort, then walked over to a sideboard arrayed with numerous bottles. “Would you care to, ah, smother a parrot with me?”

“No, thank you,” said Constance, a little more sharply than she intended.

“In that case, name your own poison.”

“Campari and soda, please, if it’s at hand.”

“It is. And it will be in your own in a jif.” The old woman fussed around for a few minutes, then returned with two glasses — one pink within, the other a pallid, milky green.

“ A votre santé. ” And, lifting her glass, Frost toasted Constance.

They drank a moment in silence.

“Campari,” Frost mused. “An interesting choice for one of your age.”

“Perhaps I could say the same of you and absinthe.”

“Perhaps. It was made illegal before even I was born.”

“Outlawed in 1915,” Constance said.

“I’ll take your word for it. In any case, wormwood seems to agree with me. As someone said, ‘the dose makes the poison.’”

With this, the old woman sat back, observing Constance with an arched eyebrow. Constance began to say Paracelsus , but decided against it. Instead, she said: “I meant to compliment you on your piano playing.” She nodded in the direction of the music room. “That piece the other night is one of my favorite nocturnes.”

“Mine as well,” Frost said. She took a sip of her drink. “Do you play?”

Constance nodded. “But I’m partial to the harpsichord.”

Frost smiled. “And very accomplished, no doubt. But I’d have thought someone of your temperament would prefer an instrument with more dynamics.”

“That’s what the choir stops are for,” Constance said.

“No doubt.” And with another smile, Frost finished her drink. “Next time, I’ll have to ask you for dinner,” she said. “I have a decent wine cellar up here. Not what you’re used to, I imagine, but serviceable.” Once again, she fixed Constance with a quizzical look. “You’re used to drinking the finest wines, are you not? Just as I’m sure your harpsichord is of the highest quality. And your snickersnee is a rare antique.”

“Thank you,” Constance said, trying to suppress a growing annoyance. “But I doubt my blade is much rarer than the Luger you pointed at me the other evening.”

Miss Frost waved this away. “I only mention wine because we were speaking of music,” she said. “The older I get, the more I find myself thinking of composers in terms of wine. To me, Mozart is like a bottle of Château d’Yquem: sweet and silky, but more complex than it initially seems. Beethoven is like a petite sirah: ill-bred, brutish, chewy, but once tasted, never forgotten. And Scarlatti” — she laughed — “Scarlatti is like a cheap prosecco, full of bubbles that bother your nose.”

“And Brahms?” Constance asked, irritated at the aspersion cast on her beloved Scarlatti, but not wishing to be impolite.

“Ah, Brahms! Brahms is like... one of the best Barolos.”

And with this, Frost rose and, moving to the sideboard, helped herself to more absinthe. While her back was turned, Constance took the opportunity to reach out and flip through the paperback on Frost’s side table.

She sat back as Frost finished diluting her drink, holding it up to examine the louche, and then turning back toward her.

“It’s a curious thing, but as you get older, as I’m sure you know, you find yourself more and more stuck in an endless do-loop.”

“Pardon?” This as I’m sure you know phrase unsettled Constance.

Frost smiled. “That’s the old programmer in me talking.”

This was the most direct reference yet to Frost’s past. Constance realized any further dancing around was pointless. She paused to take a breath. “I’d like to hear more from the old programmer.”

Frost began to laugh: a low, breathy laugh, wry but genuine. “And so we come to it at last.”

“Come to what?”

“The real reason you’re here.”

“I’m here because you invited me.”

The proprietress batted this away impatiently. “Persiflage. I’d hoped perhaps you were different.”

“Different?”

“Interested in stimulating conversation, rather than my past.”

“Your past is only interesting because you’re so mysterious about it.”

But the old lady barely seemed to hear this. Her gaze had gone past Constance to some indistinct point. She sighed. “I always thought this might happen.”

When she said nothing more, Constance prompted: “What, exactly?”

“Someone might come along acute enough to beat me at my own game. Maybe ten or twenty years ago, I would have found such parrying amusing — even challenging. But I’m tired now... old and tired.” Her gaze returned to Constance. Leaning forward, she picked up her glass, drained it, and set it back down on the tea table. “So let’s finish the game.”

There was an edge in her voice that put Constance on guard. The elderly woman had proven a surprise: far sharper than she’d expected.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Frost went on. “You’re a perspicacious creature. You’ll make a statement about me that you think might be true. If it’s true, I will say as much and you can make another statement. But once you make a statement that’s wrong, the roles are reversed... and I get to make statements about you on the same terms. Agreed?”

Constance hesitated. She had the vague feeling she’d just been outmaneuvered in a chess game. But after a moment, she nodded.

The old woman sat back. “Proceed.”

“Very well.” Constance considered. “You were very fond of Patrick Ellerby.”

Frost tut-tutted, as if this were hardly deserving of an opening gambit. “True.”

“Yet he was disobedient. He disappointed you, even betrayed you.”

A shadow crossed the proprietress’s face, but she nodded. “True.”

Constance paused. She did not want to try Frost’s patience with trivial observations, but blind guessing was even more dangerous.

“You have, at least once in your life, reinvented yourself.”

Now it was Frost’s turn to pause. “True.”

“In some respects, you have an outlaw personality. The normal rules don’t apply to you.”

A hesitation and she colored slightly. “True.”

“You have a deep knowledge of science: particularly mathematics, programming, physics.”

“True.”

Constance continued probing, using her own past as a guide. “You had a difficult childhood.”

“False!” Frost laughed in triumph. “My childhood was quiet and unremarkable, thank you very much.”