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She was exhausted, sweat beading her forehead. She wouldn’t go tomorrow, she thought; she was still too weak. But day after tomorrow, she would have to move, and move fast.
So far she’d been lucky. Rodrigo had kept the news of Salvatore’s death quiet for several days, which had bought her some time, but with every minute that passed, the danger grew that someone in Langley would see a photograph of Denise Morel, scan it into a computer, and the computer would spit out the report that, hair and eye color aside, Denise Morel’s features matched those of one Liliane Mansfield, contract agent for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Then the CIA would be hot on her trail, and the Agency had resources Rodrigo Nervi could only dream about. For practical reasons, Salvatore had been left in place with the Agency’s blessings; no one there would look kindly on her for taking him out.
It was a toss-up who would come after her first, Rodrigo or someone sent by the CIA. She would have a better chance against Rodrigo, because he would probably underestimate her. The Agency wouldn’t make that mistake.
Because it would look odd if she didn’t, and also because she wanted to see if she was under surveillance, she bundled up against the chill and walked to the neighborhood market. She’d spotted one guard as soon as she came out of her building; he was sitting in a nondescript gray car parked halfway down the block, and as soon as she walked out, he lifted a newspaper to cover his face. Amateur. But if there was one in front, she could assume there was also one in back. The good news was there wasn’t a guard inside her building, which would have made matters a bit more iffy. She didn’t want to have to go out a third-story window, as weak as she was.
She carried a cloth shopping bag into which she put some produce and fruit. An Italian-looking man—who didn’t really stand out unless you were specifically looking for him—meandered around in her wake, always keeping her in view. Okay, that made three. Three were enough to do a competent job, but weren’t so many that she couldn’t handle them.
After paying for her selections, she walked back to her flat, careful to keep her gait rather slow and laborious. She walked with her head down, the picture of dejection, and not the way anyone who was the least alert would walk. Her watchers would think she was completely unaware of them and, moreover, that her health was still so precarious she could scarcely get around. Since they weren’t extraordinarily skilled in surveillance, that meant they would somewhat relax their guard without realizing it, because she was such a poor challenge.
When her cell phone was fully charged, she took it into the bathroom and turned on the tap water to mask sound, in case a parabolic microphone was aimed at her flat. The chance of that was admittedly small, but in her business paranoia saved lives. She booked a first-class one-way ticket to London, disconnected, then called back and, under another identity, booked a flight out of London that left within half an hour of her arrival, headed back to Paris, where absolutely no one would expect her to go. After that, she would see, but that little maneuver should buy her some more time.
Langley, Virginia
Early the next morning, a junior analyst named Susie Pollard blinked at what the computer facial-recognition program had just told her. She printed out the report, then wove her way through a maze of cubicles to stick her head inside another cubicle. “This looks interesting,” she said, handing the report to a senior analyst, Wilona Jackson.
Wilona slid her glasses into place and swiftly looked over the document. “You’re right,” she said. “Good catch, Susie. I’ll kick this upstairs.” She stood, a six-foot-tall black woman with austere features and a no-bullshit attitude honed to perfection on her husband and five rowdy sons. Without another woman in the household for backup, she said, she had to stay on top of things. That carried over to her work, where she tolerated no nonsense. Anything she kicked upstairs was given proper consideration, or else.
By noon, Franklin Vinay, director of operations, was reading the report. Salvatore Nervi, the head of the Nervi organization—he couldn’t call it a corporation, though corporations were involved—was dead of an undisclosed ailment. The exact date of his death was unknown, but Nervi’s sons had buried him at their home in Italy before releasing the news. His last sighting was at a Parisian restaurant, with a lapse of four days between then and the announcement of his death. He had apparently been in perfect health, so the unknown ailment had occurred rather abruptly. It happened, of course; heart attacks or strokes struck down seemingly healthy people every day.
What set the alarm bells to clanging was the facial-recognition program, which said that, without doubt, Nervi’s newest lady friend had been none other than one of the CIA’s best contract agents in disguise. Liliane Mansfield had darkened her wheat-blond hair and put in dark contacts to hide her distinctive pale blue eyes, but it was undoubtedly her.
Even more alarming was the fact that, a few months ago, two of her closest friends and their adopted daughter had died at Nervi’s hands. All of the indications were that Lily had gone off the reservation and taken matters into her own hands.
She’d known the CIA wouldn’t sanction the kill. Salvatore Nervi was a disgusting example of humanity who deserved killing, but he’d been smart enough to play both ends against the middle and make himself useful, as insurance against just this sort of thing. He had passed along extremely useful information, and done so for years. That information pipeline was now lost, perhaps irrevocably; it would take them years, if they could at all, to develop the same relationship with the heir apparent. Rodrigo Nervi was notoriously suspicious, and not apt to jump at any partnership. Frank’s only hope in that direction was that Rodrigo would prove to be as pragmatic as his
father.
Frank hated working with the Nervis. They had some legitimate business concerns, yes, but they were like Janus: everything they did had two faces, a good side and a bad side. If their researchers were working on a cancer vaccine, another group in the same building was working to develop a biological weapon. They gave huge amounts of money to charitable organizations that did a lot of good work, but they also funded terrorists groups that killed indiscriminately.
Playing in the pool of world politics was like playing in a sewer. You had to get dirty in order to play. Privately, Frank thought the end of Salvatore Nervi was good riddance. In the realm of his work, though, if Liliane Mansfield was responsible, he had to do something about it.
He pulled up her security-coded file and read it. Her psychological profile said that she’d been operating under some strain for a couple of years now. In his experience there were two types of contract agents: those who did their work with no more emotion than they would expend on swatting a fly, and those who were convinced of the good they did but whose souls, nevertheless, wore thin under the constant assault. Lily was in the latter group. She was very good, one of the best, but each hit had left its mark on her.
She had stopped contacting her family years ago, and that wasn’t good. She would feel isolated, cut off from the very world she’d worked to protect. Under those circumstances, her friends in the business had become more than just friends; they’d become her surrogate family. When they were hit, her tattered soul had perhaps taken one blow too many.
Frank knew some of his colleagues would laugh at him, thinking in terms of souls, but he’d been in this business a long time and he not only knew what he saw, he understood it.
Poor Lily. Perhaps he should have pulled her out of the field when she first started showing signs of psychological strain, but it was too late now. He had to deal with the situation that existed.
He picked up the phone and had his assistant locate Lucas Swain, who, wonder of wonders, was actually in the building. The fickle Fates must have decided to smile on Frank.
Some forty-five minutes later, his assistant buzzed him. “Mr. Swain is here.”
“Send him in.”
The door opened and Swain sauntered in. Actually, he sauntered everywhere. He walked like a cowboy who had nowhere to go and wasn’t in any hurry to get there. Ladies seemed to like that about him.
Swain was one of those good-looking people who seemed to be perpetually good-natured, too. There was a goofy smile on his face as he said hello and took the chair Frank indicated. For some reason, the smile worked in the same way as the walk: people liked him. He was a devastatingly effective field officer because he went in under people’s radar. He might be a happy man, he might have a walk that looked like the definition of laziness, but he got the job done. He’d been getting the job done in South America for the better part of a decade, which explained the deep tan and rock-hard leanness.
He was beginning to show his age, Frank thought, but then, weren’t they all? There was gray at the temples and along the hairline of Swain’s brown hair, which was kept cropped short because of an unruly cowlick in front. There were lines bracketing his eyes and on his forehead, creases in his cheeks, but with his luck, the ladies probably thought that was as cute as his walk. Cute. It was a sad day in hell, Frank reflected, when he was mentally describing one of his best male field officers as cute.
“What’s up?” Swain asked, stretching his long legs out as he relaxed, his spine curving so he sank down in his chair. Formality wasn’t Swain’s way.
“A delicate situation in Europe. One of our contract agents has gone off the reservation, killed a valuable asset. We need her stopped.”
“Her?”
