"Are you working on the formula for the enhanced soldiers?" she asked.
He looked up at the camera, then back at her, and tapped his nose. "Can you smell it?"
Her eyes widened with understanding. "Is that the thing you told me about?"
He leaned closer to her. "The stinky potion." He held up a vial containing a murky brownish liquid. "It's making me nauseous, but you and Petrov can barely smell it. Let's hope that you-know-who will find it repulsive."
Mattie smiled and batted her eyelashes. "I'm so touched. It's such a romantic gift."
"It is definitely a gift from the heart."
"Will I have to smell it too?"
"Can you smell it now?"
She nodded. "A little."
"That's because I made a large batch. In small quantities, it shouldn't bother you."
"Will it work on them, though?"
"We need to test it." He tapped his nose again.
She chewed on her lower lip. "What if it makes me repulsive to you?" she asked in a near whisper.
"Never."
"Oh, come on." She rolled her eyes. "If you smelled really bad, I would have a hard time getting past that. I don't expect you to be any different."
He rose from his stool and walked over to her. "Then I'll close my nose." He leaned and kissed the tip of hers.
They were taking a risk since Mattie was supposed to be Petrov's possession, but his boss had declared loudly that he was perfectly fine sharing Mattie with Dimitri. Hopefully, that would be enough of an explanation for those watching the surveillance feed.
"Dimitri, stop playing and work on the formulas for the enhanced," Petrov said in Russian. "They will be here this afternoon for their shots, and you haven't prepared them yet."
"I have enough from yesterday," Dimitri replied in Russian as well, even though it was ridiculous.
To run the recording through artificial intelligence translation was child's play.
Petrov swiveled his chair around and pinned Dimitri with a hard look. "I did the calculations. All you had to do was prepare the mix. That was what you should have been working on this morning."
They were making nearly daily adjustments to the drugs that kept Dave going and remaining sane, or as much as that could be said about eight persons becoming one entity, and they checked the effect of each incremental increase or decrease in every individual component of the cocktail. The improvements weremarginal at best, but as long as they could show that they were doing something beneficial, all was well.
"Yesterday's formula is just fine," Dimitri said. "Expecting improvements every day is unrealistic. We're scientists, not magicians."
"Tell that to Losham when he decides we're no longer useful." Petrov adjusted the volume on his speaker, making the music even louder. "We didn't get the new volunteers for testing, so all we are left with is improving Dave's performance."
It seemed like the enhancement program was an afterthought to Losham, and he wasn't getting around to providing them with new test subjects. Ever since Navuh had supposedly moved into the harem and stopped showing his face, they had been treading water.
Dimitri set the vial down. "Perhaps you should remind Losham? Lord Navuh won't be happy with our progress or rather lack thereof."
"What we need is to keep our heads down and look busy until whatever is happening on this island sorts itself out." Petrov switched to English, probably for Mattie's benefit, because he was keeping his voice down. "Something is going on, and the explosions this morning have something to do with it. I don't want us to be caught in the crossfire."
Dimitri nodded, his eyes drifting back to Mattie. She was watching them with that guarded expression she wore whenever she was afraid or overwhelmed. He wished he could tell her everything would be fine, but he wasn't in the habit of making promises he couldn't keep.
The music blared on, a new song starting up with a mournful violin and lyrics about a soldier leaving his sweetheart behind. Dimitri wanted to tell Petrov that his strategy of using loud music to mask their conversations was flawed, and that, with today's technology, it would be trivial for anyone monitoring the surveillance feeds to isolate their voices from the background noise. Audio filtering software had been available for decades, and any competent intelligence analyst would know how to use it.
But pointing this out to his boss would only make him paranoid, and a paranoid Petrov was an unproductive Petrov. Better to let him have his illusions of privacy.
