Cadogan counted a hundred steps. There was a run of fifty-four, a small oblong platform, a run of thirty, a change of direction to avoid the overhang and then the stretch he was currently on. He had come up fast, deliberately putting in more effort than was strictly necessary.
At one hundred, although it was a no-man's land between platforms, he stopped to check out his reaction. Pretty good. Breathing hardly quickened, heart steady. Not a trace of the vertigo that had dogged him through convalescence.
Out in the bay, a dinghy with a red sail was motionless. Heat fell on his bare back as though it had tangible weight.
Down below, nobody had moved. The narrow coastal strip was lined with brown flesh and asterisks of bright fabric, fixed in parallel contours by the logic of the blank wall of cliff and the encroaching sea. He was the only restless element in the composition. It was a positive sign of health.
Twenty-two more steps and he was on a ribbed ramp that took him over the top with the hotel standing away from the edge on a broad terrace of green and white flags.
Now there was noise, which had been screened by the acoustic barrier of the rock face. A freight car, moving in the lowest flight lane, left the service port of the building and sent up a muted howl from an ageing motor that must bring it knocking the permissible decibel level.
There were voices too, from the open pool at the end of the terrace, melding in an ululation that, to his sensitive ear, had a harmonic of hysteria.
It was not much more to his taste than the graveyard silence of the beach. He faced himself squarely with the issue. "What do you want then, you half-wit? You don't know when you're well off. Full pay and a back-log of credits to work through. Alison back in half an hour full of sap and brio. You must be daft as a brush."
Certainly it had seemed a fair enough bonus after the mission that had seen him carried off the returning IB shuttle strapped to a stretcher and virtually a write-off on any prudent insurance man's book.
The nubile Alison had worked a fair part of the therapy, and a feeling that one more merry quip would have him beating her about her flaxen head with an occasional table was pure ingratitude.
A bell hop in a sky blue tunic was coming across the terrace making for the pool and then swerving out of line to come his way.
"Dr. Cadogan?"
"The same."
"There's a call for you, Dr. Cadogan. Said they'd hold for five minutes in case we could locate you. Failing that there's a number for you to ring. But I reckon you'll just make it. Shall I have it put through to your room?"
Cadogan told himself that he ought to have recognized when he was ahead. A call for him in this place could have only one source. His recent medical report would have reached the department within the last twenty-four hours. Someone, probably Franklin, was making sure it gathered no dust.
He made no alteration in pace but wasted no time.
The tell-tale above the video was still blinking its alert as he entered his ground floor room.
It was just as well that Alison Greer had elected to go into town on a shopping jag. Though god alone knew where she would put anything she brought back. Her room was full to the sill and the overflow was creeping across his like a city dump.
He kicked a bright yellow kimona off the threshold and closed the connecting door. Stubbed the operating button of the console and said briefly, "Cadogan."
There was a five second pause, while the electronic switchgear made connecting noises, and he had time to zip open a travelling case and slip out a compact shaver with a dial-set head.
A gravelly voice, working hard at bonhomie, said, "Mike. Glad to hear you're back in raw health. Must be something in the air down there."
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