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surfactants: Anionic, cationic, nonionic and zwitterionic. Zwitterionic—as words went, who could beat that?
    And upon leaving, she found herself facing an electronics and entertainment store. “I knew you’d be here somewhere,” she murmured at it. Better yet, it was one of the more populated stores in the center, full of kids playing with the games and adults admiring the big-screen entertainment system on display. The music was too loud to suit her purposes, but she found a spot near the entrance behind a stack of quiescent boom boxes and pulled out her personal digital assistant. A few quick shortcut commands with the stylus and the screen showed her the little dancer icon that Stony Man’s tech master, Aaron Kurtzman, had installed on her PDA OS with much sly pleasure.
    The dancer had blunt-cut hair and a unitard outfit, but was far too highly endowed to have made it as a professional; she danced across the small screen until Barbara Price’s image replaced her. It didn’t matter that it was late evening in Stony Man’s time zone; Barbara was somehow always there, always looking like Beth’s call was the most important thing in the world to her. Today Barbara didn’t bother with small talk. She said, “Things went badly.”
    “They went badly,” Beth agreed, adjusting the ear bud that made Barbara’s end of the scrambled conversation private. “But not as badly as they could have. I have what she was carrying.”
    Barbara frowned, with the faint drawing of her brow the only real manifestation of the expression. “Then why the delay? I expected to hear from you hours ago.”
    Beth quickly sketched the events on the dock, and said, “I think I should stay. If Lyeta was right about Egorov’s involvement, then the Bad Sniper mole might be after the keycard. It’ll be a race to see who finds it first, and we have no idea what the mole already knows. You’ll lose too much time bringing in someone else. I’m already in place.”
    “You’re compromised,” Barbara pointed out.
    “You should be able to mitigate some of that from your end.” Beth kept her voice mild as two young teens hesitated by the boom boxes, swapping technical turns in Afrikaans accents thick enough to baffle her.
    “Possibly.” Barbara gave her a thoughtful look. “But this isn’t the situation we sent you in to handle; you’re not prepared for it. You shouldn’t be alone, for one thing.”
    “You never know,” Beth said, and she switched toRussian for a few blunt words she didn’t want overheard. “Maybe Mr. MI6 will come along and I can convince him to play nice. I can use him, ditch him, and come home with the goods.” She added a quick description of the man, embellishing with a wicked grin.
    With the ear bud in place, Barbara could speak freely. “That’s not a bad idea.” She tapped a few keys on the keyboard that was just out of sight on the PDA screen and said, “Of the MI6 agents known to be anywhere near that area, the description you gave me identifies your man as Jason Chandler. Very old-school, but he’s had SAS training. He can handle himself. He’d be a good backup, if you can convince him you didn’t shoot Lyeta. She scrolled through a few screens of text, her eyes flickering as she took them in. She nodded with approval. “He’s a good one, Flash. If you get the opportunity, take it.” Then she gave a little frown, staring at the off-screen monitor more closely. “I don’t see anything here about ‘really great ass,’ however.”
    “He’s SAS-trained,” Beth said airily. “And what is SAS but ass spelled sideways?”
    Barbara smiled briefly, a genuine amusement that Beth rarely saw in her. “The truth is, I should pull you and send in another team. But…you’re also right. We don’t have the time. If we can get our hands on a copy of Scherba’s master keycard, we can take Egorov’s organization apart from the inside out—not to mention get a handle on Krystof Scherba. He’s been a