Facing front, the driver put the NVGs up to his eyes again and glanced to his left, westward, the direction from which the train would come rolling down the hillside. Then he shifted his attention to the signal post. When the moment came, the dish would bathe it with a wideband pulse lasting several hundred nanoseconds--less time than it took to blink--then turn on its axis and emit another short, pulsed beam as the train entered its line of sight. According to the Russian, Ilkanovitch, that was all that would be required.

What was the clever little message he had asked the Albanian to deliver with the rest of the material?

A test and a taste.

Soon Kuhl would see for himself whether either was to his pleasure.

At five before midnight he heard the rumble of the train in the distance. While he knew the open acoustics of the valley would make the train sound closer than it actually was, Kuhl's teeth came together with an eager click. It would appear within minutes, chugging along at close to seventy miles an hour on the straight downhill gradient.

He watched the signal, which was now displaying a yellow "slow" aspect.

The clank and rumble of the train grew louder.

Closer.

Kuhl watched the signal. He thought he perceived a rise in the generator's hum, a crackle in the air around him, but doubted it was anything more than his gaining anticipation.

The first pulse was initiated.

Kuhl watched.

The yellow light fluttered off, on, off. Then stayed off.

A breath hissed through his teeth. His jaw muscles tight, he whipped his head to the left and saw the approaching locomotive's lights splash across the ties. Then it nosed into sight below him, the figure of the engineer visible through the windows of its raised cab, a long, streamlined set of passenger cars hugging the slope behind it.

The dish rotated silently on the roof of the van and released its second pulse.

She was tall, tan, young, lovely, and from Ipanema, just like the girl in the old song. Christina from Ipanema, could you believe even her name rhymed with the title?

Darvin had met her in a bar at Barra Funda station, where he had stopped for a martini while waiting for his train. He'd been sitting there sipping from his glass, thinking about the big-money deal he'd clinched for his company in New York--well, his father-in-law's company, if you wanted to nitpick--when she came walking along, just like in the song, strutting right past the bar in this light, scoop-backed, flowery cotton shift--dia--mond earrings, black pearl necklace, chic mehndi lotus tattoo on her bare shoulder, her hips swaying to the rhythmic Afro-samba music blasting from the P.A. system, her hands loaded with shopping bags from the expensive boutiques downtown. Christina from Ipanema.