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of London's best restaurants, since Remo's digestive system couldn't handle anything but rice and fish and water, but he didn't care. This was his night. He duked the headwaiter five pounds and got the best table in the place, with squishy red leather banquettes to sit on and real English roses to look at beneath the painted Edwardian ceiling. A perfect table.
Except that it was a table for two, and there was only one of him.
"Well, what did you expect?" he asked himself. "You don't know anyone here. You don't know anyone anywhere. You want to be surrounded by friends, kid, you're in the wrong profession."
He guessed he was, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. Loneliness was part and parcel of the life that had been foisted on him. He had dreamed, once, of finding a woman and making a normal life for himself. His fantasies included every corny cliche he could imagine, from kids in the rumpus room to a white picket fence. With time, though, he grew to realize that even such an ordinary ambition would be impossible for him.
He was different. His very body was different. His nervous system was more complex than other men's, the result of years of exercises on his senses. His digestive processes had simplified to the point where he could no longer ingest meat or alcohol, relegating him to a constant diet of unappetizing foods. The training of Sinanju had made him one of the best assassins who had ever lived, but it had also deprived him of any possibility of ever connecting with another human being.
He sipped his water and watched the other diners, romantic couples and merry groups.
Only one person came in unattended. Not for long, Remo guessed. There had to be some guy with a fat cigar and a fatter bankroll waiting for her. She was easily the
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most beautiful woman in the room. Her gold-blonde hair was pulled back into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, setting off the classic, poetry-and-polo features of her face. She wore a white dress with a little cape of sheer stuff around her shoulders. Probably owns a castle somewhere, Remo thought. The Lady Griselda, raised on horseback and weaned on high tea.
The woman's eye caught his own. Involuntarily Remo smiled. She stopped where she stood, leaving the head-waiter to wend his way halfway around the room before noticing that he'd lost her. She took in Remo with a deep, studious glance. It wasn't sexual, just curious, as if Remo were an interesting exhibit in a museum.
"I'd like to sit over there," she told the impatient waiter. With a curt nod, he led her in Remo's direction.
"HeHo, Remo," she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek.
She had the most compelling eyes he'd ever seen. They were light, but beyond that, he couldn't decide on their color. The irises seemed to shift from gray to pale blue to turquoise to yellow-green and deep emerald, with a hundred shades in between.
"It's so nice to see you. Do you mind if I join you?"
She spoke with a slight accent. So she wasn't English, after all. And she knew Remo's name. He racked his brains trying to remember who she was, but nothing registered.
"Uh-I'd be delighted," he said, rising.
No, he didn't know her, he decided. There was no way he could have forgotten those eyes.
When the waiter had gone, she said, "I hope you don't mind my barging in on you like this. I hate to dine alone. Don't you?"
And a mind-reader, too, he thought. "I've gotten used to it."
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"Yes," she said appreciatively. "I imagine you have."
The wine steward came over with a list. Remo asked the woman if she felt like something to drink, hoping she knew enough about wine to make her own selection. It had been so long since Remo had touched alcohol that he'd forgotten the names on the labels.
"I'll have vodka," the woman said.
The waiter nodded. "A martini?"
"A bottle. And a water glass."
The unflappable waiter left. Remo smiled. "We've never met," he said.
"No."
"How did you know my name?"
"I guessed."
What kind of a con is this, he thought. "What's yours?"
"What would you like it to be?"
He sighed. A call girl. "I've got fifty-two dollars," he said flatly. "That's it."
"Good for you."
He was embarrassed. "I only meant-"
The waiter showed up with the vodka and a large tumbler, which he filled to the brim.
"Have you decided on a name for me yet?" she asked, raising her glass.
"How about Sam?" he asked drily. "I knew a guy named Sam once who drank vodka by the bucket."
"Sam it is, then." She downed the glass in one draught.
"Who are you?" Remo asked.
"I thought we just decided on that."
"Come off it. My guess is you're some kind of bored society dame acting cute with the hoi-polloi-"
She laughed. "Not at all. I'm new in London. I walked in here alone, saw you, and sat down. Does everything have to be so complicated?"
"Have it your way," Remo said. "Are you hungry?"
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"Starving."
"Figures." He eyed the prices on the menu. His fifty-two dollars might stretch as far as one meal and two bottles, all for her. Another breakfast of berries along the side of the road.
"I'd like fish," she said. "Raw."