“Actionable?” She chewed on the word. “You’ve spent too much time with Americans.”

He laughed at that. “Oh, no question. I’d far rather be spending my free time with lovely and ageless Swedes.”

“Eddie, there’s another.”

“Another man? I’m shocked.”

“Another Doll Ship. That’s what she called it: the Doll Ship. It’s a human doll house for the Armstrong Twins. And there’s a second. A replacement for the one that sank. They are still at it.”

Eddie’s face darkened. His eyes went from interested to predatory. “Is there indeed? Do you have proof?”

“I have evidence. Circumstantial evidence. I need you to supply proof.” Pia sat forward and spilled a little tea in the process. “Eddie, they kidnapped a young Japanese American girl from Okinawa just a week ago. A fourteen-year-old child. The Doll Ship is near.”

She let that hang in the air. The wheels were turning in her friend’s head.

“The Albion has completed maneuvers with the Five Power Defense Arrangement and is steaming toward Hong Kong for a bit of a show….”

The admiral made a tiger shark smile that must have come down through generations of prize-seeking Royal Navy captains and a few privateers as well. His eyes were dreamy. He said, “I was just this very minute thinking that the Albion could do with a sudden, surprise inspection by a senior officer. Do the Americans know anything about this?”

She shook her head. “I came straight to you.”

“Better and better,” he said. “Do you have a description of this Doll Ship of yours?”

Pia nodded. “I believe it is a liquified natural gas carrier.”

The admiral opened his briefcase, an ancient leather object with far too many buckles. He pulled out a pad and began tapping away. “Yes,” he muttered.

“Yes what?”

He held up a finger to silence her. Tapped some more. Swiped. Frowned. “Interesting. As luck would have it, there’s an LNG carrier on a course that would have brought it past Okinawa at roughly the right time.”

Pia’s heart leapt. “Where’s it heading?”

“Practically to our table.”

He went back to his pad. “But there is no way to have Albion intercept this ship…. It’s the SS Gemini, that’s the registered name.”

Their eyes met. “Gemini,” Pia said. “The twins.”

“We don’t want some sort of fight with a dangerous LNG carrier inside Hong Kong harbor. They are floating bombs, really, if mishandled.”

“But you said your ship can’t intercept them.”

“No, but the Albion’s helicopters certainly can. I’ll fly out as soon as I’ve taken care of a few things here.” Then, innocently, “I don’t suppose you’d want to come with?”

“It would take more than one aging admiral to stop me,” she said.

SIXTEEN

It was too intimate.

Plath was inside Vincent’s brain. She was touching his memories. She was seeing things he would never have shown her. Things no one would ever voluntarily show another person.

Plath lay back on a dusty IKEA Poang chair. She wore sweater and jeans. No shoes, but two pairs of socks so her feet wouldn’t get cold. It was chilly down in the sub-basement.

She lay back, eyes closed but not asleep. Sometimes she would gasp or suck air like a person surfacing after a deep dive. Sometimes her fists would clench on the paint-spattered blond-wood arms of the chair, only to be released by conscious effort.

She was aware that Nijinsky, leaning against the side of the biot hatchery, did not want her to narrate. He didn’t want the details of what was in his friend’s head.

The new biot—the very first of the four series—was accompanied by one of her older biots. The difference in main visuals—what she saw through her biots’ eyes—was noticeable, though still grainy and distorted.

The bigger difference was the input from sticking pins into the brain matter beneath her feet.

Normally a biot either wiring or pinning a brain could bring up a sort of sketch of the reaction it was causing. Stick a pin in a particular neuron bundle associated with a particular memory and you’d get an idea of what you were pinning, but only an idea, a hint. You got a sort of scratchy, jumpy snatch of video or more likely nothing more detailed than a vague feeling.

You didn’t get the equivalent of HD quality.

This input was HD and 3D, too.

Plath had done some wiring before. She’d done some practice work, and she had been inside the twisted brains of the Armstrong Twins.

This …Oh, boy, this was different.

“I can’t see this . . .” she said. “I can’t be looking at this.”

“You need to know enough to help.” Nijinsky said, his voice flat.

“I don’t need to …I’m not even sure if what I’m seeing is real or memories of imagination, of things that never really happened.”

Nijinsky didn’t answer.

“I’m not a voyeur,” Plath said.

Oh, but she was. Unwilling, maybe, but she was a voyeur all right, a Peeping Tom, a creep looking through the curtains, a pervert with a buttonhole camera.

Stab a pin. Vincent is hearing a blues song. I worked five long years for one woman, and she had the nerve to kick me out.

Stab a pin. A beach. He’s a small child and has to pee. “Just go in the water, Michael,” a voice tells him. But it’s too cold.