Her face was a vision, but only to Mike. Oh, she was pretty, even beautiful, but you could see a dozen like her in any American college, three or four as good looking among the Keldara and several who were, arguably, more beautiful. But none of that mattered to the man in the comfortable chair placed at perfect viewing distance from the painting.

Mike lifted the glass and considered the lips for the thousandth time. He had given the artist very precise instructions and even a photograph. And in almost every way the artist had caught Mike’s vision, or surpassed it. That, and the secrecy with which the picture was made, was why he’d been paid a fee four times his normal. But if the artist had one flaw, it was in lips. He almost invariably used his wife as a model for his art, and she had a very definite Hapsburg lip. Oh, pretty, yes, but not right. Not for this painting. Everywhere else the image was perfection. A way to ensure that no matter what, Mike would never forget that face. But the lips were creeping in, erasing the image of them caressing his chest, his stomach…

He lifted the glass, realized it was mostly ice, and poured in more Elijah Craig. Hey, you couldn’t fly on just one wing.

Or two. Or a dozen or a thousand. At this point, the bottles lined one wall of the small room.

“When the mound reaches the very sky,” Mike said, not looking at the bottles.

There was a tap on the door and he pressed a solenoid, dropping a steel plate over the painting. Then he hit the release on the door.

“Come.”

“Kildar,” Mother Savina said diffidently. “There is a call from Colonel Pierson.”

“You can tell Colonel Pierson to fuck off, with my compliments,” Mike slurred. “And tell him to tell his boss the same thing.”

“Yes, Kildar,” Mother Savina said, closing the door.

Mike pressed the solenoid again, locked the door, and took another sip.