"That's a reasonable inference. But I'm not asking you on behalf of anyone else. What you choose to say or not say to anyone at the consulate is your own business. What you say to me stays with me."

He looked at her as if he were evaluating this statement. But, Lise thought, why should he trust her? What had she ever done to instill trust in him, besides sleep with him during the course of one exceptional weekend?

"Yeah," he said finally, "I flew with her."

"Okay… can you tell me anything about her? Where she is, what she talked about?"

He sat back in his chair. True to his prediction, the lights in the restaurant began to dim. A couple of waiters rolled back the glass wall that separated the indoor dining room from the patio. The sky was starry and deep, slightly washed out by the lights of the Port but still crisper than any sky Lise had known back in California. Had the meteor shower begun? She saw what looked like a few bright flashes across the meridian.

Turk hadn't spared it a glance. "I'll have to think about this."

"I'm not asking you to violate any confidences. Just—"

"I know what you're asking. And it's probably not unreasonable. But I'd like to think it over, if that's okay with you."

"All right." She couldn't push it any farther. "But you mentioned a quid pro quo?"

"Just something I'm curious about—I thought you might have picked up a word or two from one of those sources you don't like to discuss. Arundji got a memo this morning from the air regs department of the Provisional Government. I filed a flight plan for the far west, and all else being equal I probably would have been in the air by the time you drove up this afternoon. But they disallowed the flight. So I called around to find out what's happening. Seems like nobody's being allowed to fly into the Rub al-Khali."

"How come?"

"They won't say"

"This flight ban, is it temporary?"

"Also a question I can't get an answer to."

"Who imposed it? Under what authorization?"

"Nobody at the PG will own up to anything. I've been shuffled between a dozen departments and so has every other pilot who's affected by this. I'm not saying there's anything sinister about it, but it's kinda surprising. Why turn the western half of the continent into a no-fly zone? There are still regular flights to and from the oil allotments, and past that there's nothing but rocks and sand. Hikers and wilderness types go there—that's who had my charter. I don't understand it."