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“As soon as possible,” said Rodrigo. “One other thing.”
“Yes?”
“Your contact with the Americans—”
“Yes?”
“There’s a possibility the person I’m seeking is an American.” Or had been hired by an American, thus the payment in United States dollars. While he didn’t think the United States government had anything to do with his father’s murder, until he knew for certain who had hired the bitch, he intended to keep his cards close to his chest where they were concerned. He could have gone directly to his American liaison and asked the same favor he was asking of Blanc, but it was better, perhaps, that he approach this from a more oblique angle.
“I will have my contact check their data banks,” Blanc said.
“Discreetly.”
“Of course.”
9
Despite the cold rain blowing in under the protection of her umbrella, Lily kept her head high so she could see what was going on around her. She strode briskly, pushing herself to see how her stamina held up. She was gloved, booted, and wrapped against the chill, but she left her head uncovered so her blond hair was visible. If by chance Rodrigo’s men were looking for her here in Paris, they’d be looking for a brunette. She doubted Rodrigo had followed her path back here, though, at least not yet.
The Agency, however, was a different matter entirely. She was almost surprised she hadn’t been detained in London as soon as she got off the plane. But she hadn’t been, and she hadn’t spotted a tail, either when she’d left de Gaulle airport or this morning.
She began to think that she might have been incredibly lucky. Rodrigo had kept Salvatore’s death secret for several days, then released the news only after Salvatore’s funeral. There hadn’t been any mention of poison, just that he had died after a brief illness. Was it possible the dots hadn’t been connected?
She didn’t dare let herself hope, couldn’t afford to let down her guard. Until she’d finished the job, she would stay alert for trouble from every corner. After the job—well, she really had no idea. At this point, all she hoped for was survival.
She hadn’t chosen an Internet café close to her sublet studio, because for all she knew there might be a trap on any online requests for information pertaining to anything about the Nervi organization. Instead she had taken the Metro to the Latin Quarter, and opted to walk the rest of the way. She had never used this particular Internet café before, which was one of the reasons she’d chosen it. One of the basic rules for evasion was to not follow a set routine, not be predictable. People got caught because they went where they were most comfortable, where things were familiar.
Lily had spent quite a lot of time in Paris, so that meant there were a lot of places and people that she would now have to avoid. She’d never actually had a residence here, instead staying with friends—usually Averill and Tina—or at a B and B. Once, for about a year, she’d rented a flat in London but gave it up because she’d spent twice as much time traveling as she had at the flat and it was just an added expense.
Her theater of work had been primarily in Europe, so going home to the States hadn’t happened very often, either. As much as she liked Europe and was familiar with it, truly settling down there had never occurred to her. If she ever bought a home—a very big “if”—it would be in the States.
Sometimes she thought longingly of retiring as Averill and Tina had, of living a normal life with a nine-to-five job, of staying in a community and becoming part of its fabric, knowing her neighbors, visiting with relatives, chatting on the phone. She didn’t know how she had come to this, to being able to snuff out a human life as easily as most people would step on an insect, to being afraid to even call her mother, for God’s sake. She had started so young, and that first time hadn’t been easy at all—she’d been shaking like a leaf—but she’d gotten the job done, and the next time had been easier, and the time after that easier still. After a while the targets had become less than human to her, an emotional remoteness that was necessary for her to be able to do the job. Perhaps it was naive of her, but she trusted her government not to send her after any of the good guys; it was a necessary belief, the only way she could work. And still she had become someone she feared, this woman who probably couldn’t be trusted to enter normal society.
It was still there, that dream of retiring and settling down, but Lily recognized it as just that, a dream, and unlikely ever to happen. Even if she got through this situation alive, settling down was something normal people did, and Lily was afraid she herself had become less than human. Killing had become too easy, too instinctive. What would happen to her if she had to deal with the same frustrations every day, a nasty boss or a vicious neighbor? What if someone tried to mug her? Could she control her instincts, or would people die?
Even worse, what if she inadvertently brought danger to someone she loved? She knew she literally wouldn’t be able to bear it if anyone in her family was harmed because of her, because of what she was.
A car horn beeped, and Lily started, jerking her attention back to her surroundings. She was appalled that she’d let her thoughts wander, instead of keeping herself alert and focused. If she couldn’t hold her concentration, there was no way she’d be able to successfully pull this off.
She might ha
ve squeaked under the Agency’s radar so far—she hoped—but that couldn’t last. Eventually someone would come for her, and she thought sooner rather than later.
Looked at realistically, there were four possible outcomes for this situation. In the best-case scenario, she would discover what it was that had lured Averill and Tina out of retirement, and whatever it was, would be so horrible that the civilized world would distance itself from the Nervis and they would be put out of business. The Agency would never use her again, of course; no matter how justified, a contract agent who went around killing assets was too unstable for the job. So she’d win, but be unemployed, which threw her back to her earlier concern about whether she could actually live a normal life.
In the next-best-case scenario, she wouldn’t find anything suitably incriminating—selling weapons to terrorists wouldn’t be bad enough, because everyone knew about it anyway—and would be forced to live out her life under an alias, in which case she’d be unemployed, and back to the question of whether she could hold down a regular job and be Jane Citizen.
The last two possibilities were bleak. She might accomplish her aim, but get killed. Finally, worst of all, she might get killed before she got anything accomplished.
She would have liked to say the odds were fifty-fifty that she’d have one of the first two outcomes, but the four possibilities weren’t equal in probability. She thought there was something like an eighty percent chance she wasn’t going to survive this, and that might be an optimistic guess. She was going to try like hell for the twenty percent, though. She couldn’t let Zia down by giving up.
The Latin Quarter was a maze of narrow cobbled streets, usually teeming with students from the nearby Sorbonne and shoppers who came for the odd boutiques and ethnic stores, but today the cold rain had thinned the crowds. The Internet café, however, was already busy. Lily surveyed the café as she closed her umbrella and removed her raincoat, scarf, and gloves, looking for an unoccupied computer where she was least likely to be observed. Beneath the lined raincoat she wore a thick turtleneck sweater in a rich blue that darkened the shade of her eyes and drapey knit slacks over low boots. An ankle holster carrying a .22 caliber revolver was strapped around her right ankle, easily accessible in the low boot, and the drapey fit of the trousers hid any telltale line. She had felt horribly defenseless during the weeks when she hadn’t been able to carry a weapon because of those damn searches every time she got close to Salvatore; this was better.
She located a machine situated at such an angle that she could watch the door while she was there, plus it was as private as she was likely to get in this particular café. It was, however, being used by a teenage American girl who was evidently checking her e-mail. It was usually easy to spot Americans, Lily thought; it wasn’t just their clothing or style, it was something about them, an innate confidence that often edged into arrogance, and had to be irritating as hell to a European. She herself might still have the attitude—she was almost certain of it—but over the years her style of dress and outward manners had changed. Most people mistook her for Scandinavian, given her coloring, or perhaps German. No one, looking at her now, would automatically think of apple pie and baseball.
She waited until the teenager had finished with her e-mail and left, then slid into the vacated seat. The rate per hour here was very reasonable, doubtless because of the hordes of college students. She paid for an hour, expecting to take at least that long or longer.
She began with Le Monde, the biggest newspaper, searching the archives between August 21, when she had dinner with the Joubrans for the last time, and the 28th, when they were murdered. The only mention of “Nervi” was of Salvatore in connection with a story on international finances. She read the article twice, searching for any detail that might indicate an underlying story, but either she was in the dark concerning financial matters or there was nothing.
