Dreams in the Tower Part 3 Read Online Free PDF

think anyone else in the building could eavesdrop on them up here. “I think Carl Bellowe is having an affair with Diane Salpollo.”
    Leutz stopped her eye movements and focused completely on Mike. “An affair… No, I don’t think so. But you definitely know the two have been meeting privately?”
    Nodding, Mike said, “At least once, late at night.”
    “Hmm.” She paused, thoughtful. “I think we can rule out a sexual relationship based on what we know, but this is the first I’m hearing of secret meetings between the two. We don’t have any surveillance footage of the two meeting privately, so they must be covering it up—with a high enough level of technical skill to warrant outside help, no less. The fact that they conveniently ended up on the same floor is looking less and less like a coincidence. Good work, Mike.”
    Surprised at this praise and at her certainty that his assumption about a romantic relationship was wrong, Mike simply sat there. Since he had entered the office and sat down in this chair his perspective had gone through a complete reversal, and he couldn’t believe his luck. But his newfound smugness died on his face when he saw Leutz’s serious glare.
    “Okay then,” she said. “Your next job is to get in there and find out what they’re up to. You’re going to join them, Mike.”
    “Join them? Are you asking me to—?”
    “Absolutely. It may take a while, but I suspect they’ll have a much easier time accepting someone who is as new to Silte headquarters as you, especially if they know about this guilt you’ve been going through lately. Get in there. Do whatever you need to. You don’t have access to anything that could harm us, and you shouldn’t be in any type of danger as long as you’re in the Plaza. They wouldn’t risk doing anything drastic right under our noses.”
    “I…I understand,” he said. I need a drink , he thought.
    “Excellent,” she said. “You can report to Lom as soon as you get in. Though, if you’d rather come here in person to report, I won’t be upset.”
    The smile she flashed him then was an even more unsettling sight than the bodies in the streets.  

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    22
     
    “I’m coming up, Captain,” Dellia called as she briefly paused her ascent up the carpeted stairway to the Wyles ’s musty little wheelhouse. “So put your dick away and turn the porn off.”
    “None of that goin’ on up here, Miss Dellia,” Lester the captain yelled back, his voice echoing off the rusty, off-white metal walls. “That’s what I got a private cabin for.”
    Grinning brightly, Dellia climbed the last few steps and emerged into a cloud of stale smoke and sweaty air: the now-familiar perfume of the captain’s nest. She found Lester in his usual position, lounging back in his bolted-down chair with his work boots up on the desk beside the console, his arms behind his head and a cigarette smoldering between his lips. As she approached, he took a deep drag and put his cigarette in an ashtray by his feet.
    “I’d ask how I earned the pleasure of another visit from you,” he said, “but I think I already know why you’re here again.”
    There was only one other chair in the wheelhouse—an uncomfortable metal seat also bolted to the floor. Dellia sat in it and spun it around to face the captain’s seat. “You know me too well,” she said wryly. “It’s not that I don’t like talking with you or anything, but there are more urgent things happening right now.”
    “Yeah, I know.” Lester’s face darkened slightly as he gazed out through the window, squinting at the sunlight shining off the tall stack of shipping containers on the center of the ship. After a while he looked down and grabbed his dying cigarette for one last drag before he snuffed it out. “We’ll dock in Savannah before dawn,” he said solemnly. “I won’t tell you how close I was to crossin’ the Atlantic first and