"Steven Gould - Jumper 02 - Reflex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

She'd had breakfast with Sojee, but she went into the restaurant anyway, asking for a table at
the window, the very one, she figured.

The windows in the place were bordered with announcements of this and that performance, this
and that dance studio offering classes, this or that dojo offering martial arts instruction, this and that
person looking for a roommate. Even when they'd been ripped off, the layers of yellowed Scotch tape
formed reefs and shoals. Except this window. This window must've been replaced recently. There
were a few announcements on it, but none of the ancient evidence of bygone posters. This window
had just been replaced.

She ordered coffee but didn't drink it.

Hopefully the management was a little more careful about letting non-employees serve food
now, but this wasn't the time to test the issue.

She felt a little odd, today, like a corner had been turned. She'd looked, the day before, for the
NSA watchers, but hadn't really seen anybody. She believed they were keeping back, depending on
the bug and intermittent checks, hoping to lure Davy's snatchers back into the open. Their absence
had been palpable after the seven days she'd spent under surveillance back in Stillwater.

Today, her back itched.

They're out there.

She laughed at herself.

You're imagining things.

The itch was still there and no matter how she squirmed in the chair, she couldn't scratch it.

She left Interrobang and walked east, but the sidewalks were so busy that anybody could have
followed her without detection. A cab went by, then another. She flagged the third one,
self-consciously thinking about Sherlock Holmes, and told the driver, "The Mall, please, at the Capitol
end."

He dropped her at the corner of Fourth and Independence and she walked across the grass to
the East Wing of the National Gallery. She headed up the stairs for the Upper Level where the huge
red and black Calder mobile hung in space beneath the faceted glass roof, but when she reached the
top of the stairs the elevator doors opened and a woman pushing a fussing baby in a stroller got out.
Millie couldn't hear anybody on the stairs below but she stepped quickly into the elevator. The doors
shut, then it continued up. She stayed in when it opened on the top floor, then she pushed the
basement button and took it down and rode the moving sidewalk down the concourse toward the
older West building. At the end of the walkway, she crossed to the gift shop, and browsed, standing
behind one of the display shelves and watching the pedestrians coming from the East building
carefully. Across the way, water sheeted down the glass wall of the Cascade Caf├й.

Several minutes passed and she frowned. There was a cluster of Japanese tourists, a family of
five, three elderly ladies practically tottering, one of them using a rolling walker, and a single man
carrying an easel and wooden paints case. They'd have to be more organized than I could imagine
to come up with that outfit on such short notice.