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“Meed!” I shouted. “Please! I can’t swim!”
“I know,” she said. “That’s a serious gap in your education.”
She wrapped her arms around my chest and swung me hard. I felt my feet fly out from under me. The next second I was in the water, dropping to the bottom. Ten feet down.
I thrashed my arms and tried to move my legs, but it felt like my feet were tied to a bowling ball. I started to panic. I flexed my knees and managed to press off the bottom, kicking like a wounded porpoise. I muscled my way to the surface and gasped for air. Meed was standing at the edge of the pool.
“Ten laps, Doctor!” she called out.
What was shetalkingabout?? I threw my head back and screamed.
“I’m going todiein here!”
“After all I’ve done for you?” Meed called back. “That would be really inconsiderate.”
The lead weight was pulling me down again. My head went under. My toes touched the bottom. My cheeks puffed out. My lungs burned. I could feel my brain starting to blur. For a split second, I wondered what it would be like to just open my mouth, breathe in, and end this insanity once and for all. How long would it take to drown? Would it hurt? Could it be any worse than this?
Then my body took over. I pushed off against the bottom again and shot back to the surface. I leveled my chest in the water and started to kick my legs out behind me. My feet were like a single unit, so I had to generate all the torque from my hips and knees, until I felt myself moving forward through the water. My vision narrowed and my brain went numb. I was conscious of the splashes behind me, the rhythm of my arms in front, and my head turning to breathe after each stroke. The weight on my ankles was still there, but now it felt like part of me. I stopped treating it like an obstacle and started using it as a lever to propel myself. Faster and faster.
I looked up and saw the end of the pool. Four yards away. Nowthree! I could have grabbed the ledge, held on, and hauled myself out. That’s what any normal human being would have done. But I wasn’t normal. Not anymore. I swung my feet against the pool wall and pushed off in the other direction.
One lap down. Nine to go.
CHAPTER 41
MEED PACED CASUALLY along the edge of the pool. She was ready to make a rescue dive if necessary. She was even ready to perform CPR if it came to that. She was fully certified. But so far, she was impressed with the professor’s adaptability. It looked like she wouldn’t even have to get wet.
On the TV overhead, the hard-news block was over, and a young, doe-eyed culture reporter was talking about a gallery opening. Meed looked up.
The event of the week is tonight’s opening of the Armis Gallery in Pilsen, one of the city’s trendiest creative centers. The exhibits include paintings and sculpture from American and European artists. Part of the admission for tonight’s benefit opening will go to support arts programs in Chicago schools.
As the reporter spoke, prerecorded footage showed the stylish gallery owner giving her a tour of the artwork on display in the sun-flooded space. The collection was first-rate. But it was the owner who caught Meed’s attention. Handsome. Impeccably groomed. Expensively tailored. With shockingly white teeth.
Meed felt a jolt deep in her gut. She never forgot a face. And certainly not this one. The gallery owner rested one hand lightly on the young reporter’s shoulder as she delivered her wrap-up to the camera.
“Join us tonight for great art, and a great cause.”The camera moved in for her close-up.“For Chicago’s Art Beat, this is Amy-Anne Roberts.”With that, the show cut back to the studio for a cooking demo.
Meed walked to the far end of the pool and knelt down to meet the professor after his last lap. He had done well. Even better than she expected. It occurred to her that she might have gone too light on the ankle weights. Dr. Savage thrashed his way to the edge. He was breathing heavily, too exhausted to speak. But Meed saw fierce pride and determination in his eyes. Which is exactly what she was looking for.
“Not bad, Doctor,” she said. “Now climb out before you grow gills.”
CHAPTER 42
MEED HAD CHECKED her computer a dozen times during the day, waiting for the gallery segment to be posted on the Channel 7 website. Now, at 6 p.m., the link had finally appeared. She sat down at her console and got to work. Better late than never.
She stopped on a two shot of the reporter and the owner. She zoomed in on the face with the impossible smile and froze the frame. He might have had a lift or two since she saw him last, but it was first-rate work. Probably Mexico or Brazil.
With another click, she started running her facial recognition program. The software scanned through hundreds of documents and images a second, until it locked onto a series of matches. Over the past twenty years, that smile had been all over the world—anywhere death was profitable.
The man was a consummate chameleon, sometimes appearing in a business suit, sometimes a tunic or a Pashtun robe. He was frequently standing or sitting in the background of grainy group photos taken with telephoto lenses. In most of those pictures, weapons were in the foreground. Rifle crates, missile launchers, chemical cannisters. Some of the reports linked to images of carnage—bomb craters, leveled buildings, burned-out vehicles, charred corpses.
In more recent shots, the same bright smile stood out at a restaurant opening in Morocco and a ribbon cutting at a bank in Belize. Meed realized that both were convenient fronts for arms dealing. But nothing as highbrow as a big-city art gallery. Maybe the smiling man had taste. Or maybe he was just looking for a more elegant place to launder his blood money.
Meed took a deep breath. She had choices to make.
She pulled a small drawer out from under her console. She ran her fingers over the shiny cylinders inside and made an important selection.
Flamingo Pink would be perfect.
