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As soon as he disappeared over the wall, Reggie stripped off her robe to reveal dark shorts and a navy blue tube top underneath. She waited for a few beats before going back in the villa and exiting through a door on the lower level that emptied out onto the public path. Finding the same blind spot in the observation lanes of the men in the van that Shaw had earlier, she started following him. He took the shortcut up to the village and wound his way slowly back to his hotel through the silent streets. If he knew he was being followed he gave no indication of it.
Reggie broke off her tail when he entered the hotel’s front doors. At least she knew now where he was staying. She made her way slowly back down to the villa, skirted the men in the van, and re-entered her villa the same way she had left it. She retrieved her robe where she’d dropped it on a table and carefully lifted out the gun. She put it in a plastic baggie. It had Bill’s prints on the muzzle.
She searched the place from top to bottom after locking all the doors. Satisfied, she put on a long T-shirt, climbed into bed, and made a call.
Whit answered on the second ring. His voice did not sound sleepy. He and Dominic were staying at an isolated cottage barely fifteen kilometers away. She filled him in on the night’s events.
“I don’t like this guy,” Whit said.
“There were two men out front,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but you still don’t know what his angle is. I think we can safely assume that he’s not some bloody lobbyist from the States. The whole mission could be compromised now.”
“I don’t see him working for Waller, if that’s what you’re getting at. He wouldn’t have pointed out the man’s advance team to me and then warned me about the man watching me.”
“So if he’s not with Waller, what then?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got his prints on my gun that I’ll send along to you. I want to see if we get a hit somewhere.”
“Okay, I can pick it up tomorrow. But look, Reg, it’s hard enough going up against Kuchin. We don’t need any unknown shit on top of it.”
She put the phone down and lifted the sheet over her. But she couldn’t sleep. She rose, padded over to the window, opened it, and stared out. She was on the top floor of the villa with excellent views of Gordes. Up there was a tall man who’d just manhandled her. He could have killed her tonight but he hadn’t. She’d never seen anyone move that fast, that fluidly. Not Dominic or even Whit. Or even her.
Who is he?
“Damn,” she muttered before closing her window and flopping on the bed with a long groan. This complication was the last thing she needed right now, if it somehow caused them to miss getting Kuchin. It took another hour for her to fall asleep.
In his room Shaw had just finished talking to Frank, reporting in what had happened. He stripped down to his skivvies, but couldn’t sleep. Lying down he sometimes found it hard to breathe because of a recent nasty attack on his windpipe by a fellow named Caesar. Shaw’s muscles were long and ropy and he was actually stronger than he looked. Yet the giant Caesar had been more physically formidable. However, Shaw had gotten a little help in their confrontation from unexpected sources. Love. Hate. Rage. But mostly hate and rage. The result was he was here and Caesar wasn’t.
He rose and opened his window to let in some fresh air. His window didn’t have a view of the villas below, but he could see them clearly in his mind.
So who was the woman and
why was she really here? She might be simply who she said she was. Rich and traveling alone, a woman might carry a weapon—it was not unreasonable. And the database search on her fingerprints had produced no hits. Then an image drove into his mind that he tried but could not get rid of. Her bathing suit coming off and revealing the long, tanned torso sliding down into the smooth, shapely, and naked backside. Massive waves of guilt poured over him. He got back into bed and finally fell asleep.
CHAPTER
25
EVAN WALLER closed his eyes and let his mind wander back twenty, thirty years. In his mind’s eye the trappings of the legitimate Canadian businessman with the underlying criminal enterprise fell away and the soul of Ukrainian Fedir Kuchin emerged like a serpent discarding an old faded skin for a supple new one. His gaze wandered over his bare arm, searching for a spot to do it. He made a bicep, the clench tightening the rubber strap around the muscle. The veins in his forearm swelled. His eye lit on one tunnel of blood and he pushed the needle in and forced down the plunger. The customized cocktail flowed into him, some steroids, some purified drugs, a bit of his own expensively purchased elixir from the Far East. It was totally unique, what he was shooting in himself. As it should be, he felt. What was good enough for everyone else was not good enough for him.
He took a deep breath and let the fire rain over him, from the inside out. He smiled, sat back, then the adrenaline hit. He jumped up, did some jacks, then some rat-a-tat push-ups, then more jacks, and then he snagged the pull-up bar and did a quick ten, grinning with each one.
He dropped back to the matted floor, breathing hard. He looked in the mirror. For sixty-three he was in extraordinary shape. For sixty-three, fifty-three, hell, probably even thirty-three, at least by softened Western standards. He had small wedges of love handles and the rock abs were no longer there, but the belly was flat and when he clenched it the muscle underneath was hard. His thighs were a little thinner than before, but his arms and shoulders still bulged. He rubbed his bald head, checked the gray mat of hair on his chest. It didn’t really matter anymore what he took, how much he exercised, how far he ran, he was still getting old. A part of him was grateful about this, grateful that no one had managed to kill him yet. The other part, well, he was just getting old. And he didn’t like it.
He showered, rubbing the sting out of his arm around the injection site. Wrapped in a robe, he walked through the confines of his Montreal penthouse. He had fabulous views through the latest generation of ordnance-proof material. He knew this because the U.S. president had similar materials on his limo and at the White House. Also laced into the thickened window glass was a membrane that distorted the image portrayed to the outside world. He was now standing in the middle of the room, but the image projected through the glass wall had him seven inches to the right. Five minutes later and at another spot in the room, his image would be nearly a foot to the left. It constantly changed so no one could draw a perfect bead on him. At least in theory.
As he stood looking out into a cool summer night he glanced down at his chest for the telltale red dot from the sniper scope. There could be something out there that could calibrate the image illusion and shatter the whiz-bang barrier he’d put up between himself and his enemies. Yet he didn’t step back into the shadows. If they wanted him badly enough they could try. They had better take him down with the first shot, though, because they wouldn’t get a second chance. In his world whoever killed harder survived.
The Muslims would soon find that out. The man they’d captured had not lasted long. After thirty minutes alone with Waller and his little toolbox the fellow had told him everything he’d needed to know. Well, almost everything. He knew the names of the men who’d ordered his death and their locations. And there was one more fellow, Abdul-Majeed. He had been Waller’s initial point of contact, leading him down the road that had nearly resulted in his death. Waller was not easily fooled, and yet Abdul-Majeed had managed it.
What the captured Muslim could not tell him was why they had attempted to kill Waller, because he didn’t know. At least he’d sworn that with his last dying squeal. That was the most perplexing question of all. Was there some other force out there targeting him?
He changed into dark slacks and a white silk shirt, then rode the private elevator down to the garage where his men met him. He allowed no one in his apartment, not even cleaning personnel. Not even tough, faithful Pascal. It was his private sanctuary. They climbed in their caravan of SUVs and rode out from under the cover of the parking garage.
Their route was north and the metropolis quickly fell away to more open spaces. Waller tapped his fingers on the glass, watching the large trees pass by in the darkness. He thought he saw a moose near the roadway and then it was gone. His father had hunted animals for food back in the rural part of Ukraine where he’d grown up. Now his son hunted human beings for pleasure and profit. This was one of those excursions.
The building was drafty, cold. Because of the poor insulation, condensation clung to the windows like a fungus. Waller slipped on a warm coat and walked through the door opened by one of his men. The room was large, warehouse-size, with girder ceilings that disappeared into darkness. Six people stood lined up in the center of the space. They wore black jumpsuits and hoods covered their heads. Their feet were shackled, their hands bound behind them. The tallest one barely came up to Waller’s pecs.
