"It's not that," she said tearfully, "it's the delay. All that time off the schedule."
"But I thought that was what you wanted," I said gently.
"Not any more. I—" She stopped suddenly and looked up at me, her eyes widening. "What are you talking about?" Her voice was as whispery as mine.
"It was the insistence on meeting me at the Seven Sisters that gave you away," I said. "Dyeing your hair and combing it straight back, and putting on that plexiskin mask and the contact lenses—none of that helped conceal that lush figure of yours. It can't be done under a union suit. So you had to put on jacket and shorts, and that meant you had to meet me in some plush restaurant like the Seven Sisters or you'd look out of place.
"I knew all that talk about being afraid of being overheard was just that—talk. A directional beam microphone could have picked up every word at our table.
"What made you change your mind about delaying the work on McGuire?"
"Buh-Buh-Brentwood. I duh-didn't know they'd go that far in trying to stop the work. Nuh-nuh-not kih-kidnapping and piracy." She took a deep breath and forced herself to stop sobbing. "I guess they didn't trust me, anyway. Otherwise they wouldn't have put Brentwood on the same job without telling me."
She didn't know that Brentwood was working for Baedecker rather than for the Thurston group. How could she? The difference lay in their tactics. Thurston wanted to take over Viking as a going concern—a little under the weather, perhaps, but still functioning. That meant that they wanted the work on McGuire delayed and complicated, but they didn't want to put him out of the picture completely, since they expected to take over the work as soon as they got control of Viking.
Baedecker, on the other hand, didn't give a care about Viking Spacecraft. They wanted to take over Ceres for their own firm. If that meant that getting rid of McGuire completely would give them what they wanted, then they'd get rid of McGuire.