David Weber - Torch of Freedom

He hoped. At least the silverware was clean.

"Need a refill?" an extraordinarily deep voice rumbled, and McBryde forced himself not to twitch.

He glanced up with exactly (or, at least, what he hoped like hell was exactly) the right degree of disinterest at the massively built "waiter." He'd been hoping that if he only drank enough of the diner's truly atrocious coffee, this particular waiter would eventually come close enough. Now that the moment had come, however, he felt his pulse speeding up. At the same time, a little to his surprise, he felt his professionalism kicking in, as well, including his trained ear. He'd heard recordings of this man's natural accent, and he was privately amazed by how well the other had managed to turn his normal buzz saw burr into the guttural yet still far softer accent of the Mesan slave underclass.

"Sure," he said casually, hoping that his own accent was equally convincing. He held out his cup, watching the waiter top it off, then raised his other hand, index finger extended in a "wait a minute" gesture.

"Something else?" The waiter arched one eyebrow, his expression calm, and McBryde nodded. "What can I get you?" the other man asked, setting down the coffee pot to pull his battered order pad out of his pocket and key the screen.

"Something from off-world," McBryde said softly.

The waiter didn't even twitch. His shoulders didn't tense; his eyes didn't narrow; his expression didn't even flicker. He was good, McBryde thought, but, then, he'd already known that. Just as he knew that at this particular instant his own life hung by the proverbial thread.

"I think you're in the wrong place for that," the waiter replied in obvious amusement. "In this joint, we're lucky to get our hands on local produce that doesn't poison the customers!"

"Oh, I don't doubt that," McBryde snorted with an edge of what he was astonished to discover was genuine amusement. "On the other hand, I wasn't thinking about the menu . . . Captain Zilwicki."

"Then you're really in the wrong place," the waiter said calmly. It wasn't a calm McBryde found particularly reassuring, but he made himself smile and twitch the extended index finger in a cautionary sort of way.

"Actually, I'm not," keeping his own voice low enough to avoid being overheard yet loud enough—and steady enough—to project a confidence he was actually quite some way from feeling. "I came here to speak to you . . . or to Agent Cachat, if you'd prefer."

Anton Zilwicki's eyes narrowed—minutely—at last, and his right hand shifted ever so slightly on his order pad.

"Before you attempt to twist my head off like a bottle cap—probably with a degree of success I'd regret—" McBryde continued, "consider your situation. I'm sure you and Agent Cachat have several alternative escape strategies, and it's entirely possible that several of my fellow 'customers' would be delighted to help you slit my throat before taking your leisurely and well-planned leave. On the other hand, I wouldn't be sitting here running the risk of your doing exactly that if I hadn't taken a few precautions of my own, now would I? And if it should happen that I'm wired, then whoever's at the other end of the link already knows what's going on here, doesn't he? Which, presumably, means my backup—assuming, of course, that I was clever enough to arrange one—would undoubtedly arrive before my lifeless body hit the floor. So before either of us does anything the other one would regret, why don't you and I talk for a moment."

"While we waste enough time for your goons to close in, you mean?" Zilwicki inquired calmly.

"If my 'goons' were planning on closing in on you, Captain, I'd for damn sure have had them do it before I sat here in arm's length of you and blew the whistle on myself, now wouldn't I?"

"The thought had crossed my mind. So since we're being so civilized and all, just what is it you do want?"

"I want to talk," McBryde replied, expression and tone both suddenly dead serious. "I'd prefer to talk to both you and Agent Cachat simultaneously, but I'd be very surprised if the two of you were willing to run that sort of risk. I'd also like to talk to you now, if possible, but no matter how good your security is—and, by the way, it's actually pretty damned good—I don't think we need to be seen having a tête-à-tête right here in front of everybody."

Zilwicki considered him thoughtfully for a moment or two, then slid the order pad back into his pocket. To McBryde's considerable relief, when his hand came back out of the pocket it didn't bring a lethal weapon with it. On the other hand, Anton Zilwicki didn't exactly need artificial lethal instruments to deal with most problems likely to come his way.

"Two minutes," he said. "Drink some more coffee, then amble down the hallway. Outside the men's room, turn left. Take the 'Employees Only' door."

He nodded, turned, and walked calmly away.

McBryde pushed open the old-fashioned, unpowered swinging door and stepped through it. He'd fully expected to be looking down the muzzle of a pulser when he did, but instead he found himself in what clearly passed for a staff break room. At the moment, it was empty, aside from the single massively built man seated at its single battered table with a cup of coffee.

"Sit," Anton Zilwicki invited, pointing at the chair opposite him across the table. McBryde obeyed the one-word command, and Zilwicki slid a second cup of coffee across to him.

"This is better than the crap we have to serve out there," he said, this time making no effort to hide his Gryphon accent. "Of course, it could be laced with all sorts of deadly poisons. Would you like me to take a sip first?"

"Why?" McBryde smiled crookedly. "If I were going to poison me, I'd've taken the antidote first myself, then put the poison in both cups."

He accepted the coffee and—not without an internal qualm or two, despite his own words—sipped. It really was much better than the brew served to the diner's patrons.

Assuming of course that it wasn't poisoned, after all.

"All right," Zilwickis said, leaning back in a chair which creaked alarmingly under his weight, "now that we've both established our professionalism, suppose you tell me what it is you wanted to talk about."

"First, let me point out a couple of things," McBryde said. "As I already mentioned, if all I wanted was to get my hands on you and Cachat, I wouldn't need any elaborate tricks to pull that off. Or, rather, my chances of success would probably be higher just going straight after you and the diner in a brute force kind of way. Or, for that matter, waiting until you return to your quarters this evening and pouncing then. In other words, it will save both of us a lot of time and wasted effort if we just start out assuming that I really do want to talk , and that I'm not baiting some kind of incredibly devious trap by coming here."

"Speaking purely theoretically, I can more or less accept that," Zilwicki replied. "Of course, there's no telling what kind of devious strategy—other than getting your hands on me and my associates, that is—you might have in mind."

"Of course," McBryde acknowledged. "And, as it happens, I do have a strategy in mind. I don't know that I'd call it 'devious,' but I do rather suspect that it's going to come as a surprise to you."

"I'm not especially fond of surprises." There was an undeniable note of warning in Zilwicki's deep voice, McBryde noticed.

"This one might be the exception to your rule, Captain," he replied calmly. "You see, I want to defect."

"Well, I guess that's about the best we're going to be able to do," Luiz Rozsak said, He leaned back in his chair to arch his spine and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while his right hand cradled his coffee cup. "It's not perfect, but then again, nothing ever is, is it?"