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Damone laughed, too, and color darkened his cheeks. “I don’t know when, because I haven’t asked her yet. But I think she will say yes. We have been seeing each other for over a year—”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Us included Salvatore, who would have been delighted that one of his sons intended to settle down and provide him with grandchildren.
“—but exclusively only in the past few months. I wanted to be certain before I said anything. She is Swiss, of a very good family; her father is a banker. Her name is Giselle.” His voice deepened when he said her name. “I have known from the very first that she is the one.”
“But she took longer, eh?” Rodrigo laughed again. “She didn’t take one look at your handsome face and decide you would make beautiful babies with her?”
“She knew that immediately, yes,” Damone said with cool confidence. “It was my ability to be a good husband that she doubted.”
“All Nervis make good husbands,” Rodrigo said, and it was true, if the wife didn’t mind the occasional mistress. Damone, though, would probably be faithful; he was just that type.
This happy news did explain why Damone was anxious to put this problem of Liliane Mansfield to rest. While it was true that wanting retribution was also part of it, he might well have been patient enough to let Rodrigo handle things had events in his personal life not spurred him to action.
Damone looked at Rodrigo’s desk and saw the photograph lying on it. Walking over, he turned the file around and studied the woman’s face. “She’s attractive,” he said. “Not pretty, but . . . attractive.”
He flipped through the rest of the file, reading rapidly. He looked up in astonishment. “This is the CIA’s file on her. How did you get it?”
“We have someone there on our payroll, of course. Also in Interpol, and Scotland Yard. It has, on occasion, been convenient to know certain things in advance.”
“The CIA calls here? You call them?”
“No, of course not; every call going in or out of there is logged and perhaps recorded. I have a private number for our Interpol contact, Georges Blanc, and he contacts the CIA or FBI through normal channels.”
“Have you thought of asking Blanc to get the mobile phone number of the person the CIA has sent to track Mansfield? The CIA doesn’t do this itself; it hires others to do the work, am I correct? I’m certain he or she would have a mobile, everyone does. Perhaps this person would be interested in making a considerable sum of money in addition to what the CIA pays, if certain information comes our way first.”
Intrigued by the idea, chagrined that he hadn’t thought of it himself, Rodrigo stared at his brother in admiration. “Fresh eyes,” he murmured to himself. And Damone was a Nervi; some things were inborn. “You have a devious mind,” he said, and laughed. “Between the two of us, this woman has no chance.”
15
Frank Vinay always rose early, before dawn. Since the death of his wife, Dodie, fifteen years before, it had been increasingly difficult for him to find reasons not to work. He still missed her, dreadfully at times; at other times it felt more like a distant ache, as if something in his life wasn’t quite right. He’d never considered remarrying, because he thought it would be grossly unfair to a woman to marry her when he still loved his dead wife with all his heart and soul.
He wasn’t alone, anyway; he had Kaiser for company. The big German shepherd’s chosen sleeping place was in a corner of the kitchen—maybe the kitchen felt like home to him, since that was where he’d been kept as a puppy until he became accustomed to his new surroundings—and he rose from his bed, tail wagging, as soon as he heard Frank’s footsteps coming down the stairs.
Frank entered the kitchen and rubbed Kaiser behind the ears, murmuring silly things that he felt safe in saying because Kaiser never betrayed a secret. He gave the dog a treat, checked the water in the bowl, then switched on the coffeepot that Bridget, his housekeeper, had prepared the evening before. Frank himself had no domestic skills at all; it was a complete mystery to him how he could take water, coffee, and filter and concoct an undrinkable brew, while Bridget could use the same components to make a pot of coffee that was so good it
almost made him weep. He’d watched her do it, tried to do the same things, and ended up with sludge. Accepting that any further efforts of his to make coffee would fit the definition of insanity, Frank had acknowledged defeat and saved himself from further humiliation.
Dodie had made things easy for him, and he still followed her guidelines. All his socks were black, so he wouldn’t have to worry about matching them. All his suits were neutral in color, his shirts either white or blue so they’d go with any suit, and his ties were likewise of the mix-and-match variety. He could pull out any item of clothing and be assured that it would go with anything else in his closet. He’d never win any awards for style, but at least he wouldn’t embarrass himself.
He’d tried to vacuum the house . . . once. He still wasn’t certain how he’d managed to explode the vacuum cleaner.
All in all, it was best to leave the domestic front to Bridget, while he concentrated on paperwork. That was what he did now, paperwork. He read, he digested facts, he gave his learned opinion—which was another phrase for “best guess”—to the director, who then gave it to the president, and he made decisions about operations based on what he’d read.
While the coffee was brewing, he turned off the outside security lights and let Kaiser out into the backyard to do a perimeter patrol and also take care of nature’s call. Kaiser was getting old, Frank realized as he watched his pet, but then so was he. Maybe both of them should think about retiring, so that Frank could read something besides intelligence reports and Kaiser could give up his guard duties and just be a companion.
Frank had been thinking about retiring for several years now. The only thing that held him back was the fact that John Medina wasn’t ready to come in from the field, and Frank couldn’t think of anyone else he wanted to see fill his shoes. Not that the position was his to bestow, but his choice would carry a lot of weight when the decision was made.
Maybe soon, Frank thought. Niema, John’s wife of the past two years, had commented rather testily to Frank that she wanted to get pregnant and she’d like for John to be there when she did. They had done a lot of operations together, but John’s current assignment was one in which she couldn’t participate, and the long separation was grating on both of them. Add that to the ticking of Niema’s biological clock, and Frank rather thought that John would finally be turning over his spurs to someone else.
Someone like Lucas Swain, perhaps, though Swain had spent a long time in the field, too, and his temperament was totally different from John’s. John was patience itself; Swain was the type who would prod a tiger with a stick, just to get some action going. John had trained from the time he was eighteen—in truth, even before that—to become as superlative at his job as he was. They needed someone young to replace him, someone who could stand up under the rigorous physical and mental discipline. Swain was a genius at getting results—though he usually got those results in surprising ways—but he was thirty-nine, not nineteen.
Kaiser trotted up to the back door, his tail wagging. Frank let the dog in and gave him another treat, then poured himself a cup of coffee and carried it into his library, where he sat down and began catching up on the news of the day. By that time his morning papers had been delivered and he read them while he sat at the table eating a bowl of cereal—he could manage that without Bridget’s aid—and drinking more coffee. Breakfast was followed by a shower and shave, and at seven-thirty on the dot he was heading out the door just as his driver pulled to the curb.
Frank had resisted being driven for a long time, preferring to take the wheel himself. But D.C. traffic was a nightmare, and driving tied up time he could devote to work, so he’d finally given in. His driver, Keenan, had been his regular driver for six years now, and they’d settled into a comfortable routine, like an old married couple. Frank rode up front—it made him nauseous to sit in back and read—but other than greeting each other, they never talked during the morning commute. The afternoon drive was different; that was when Frank had found out Keenan had six kids, that his wife, Trisha, was a concert pianist, and that his youngest child’s cooking experiment had almost burned down the house. With Keenan, Frank could talk about Dodie, about the good times they’d had together, and what it was like growing up before the advent of television.
“Morning, Mr. Vinay,” Keenan said, waiting until Frank was buckled in before pulling smoothly away from the curb.
“Good morning,” Frank absently replied, already absorbed in the report he was reading.
