“I’m going to swim some laps,” she said.
And she did for the next twenty minutes, back and forth, flip-turning at the precise moment. He swam a few laps with her and then climbed out of the pool, toweled off, lay under the beautiful Provençal sun, and watched her.
When she came out later, she wrung out her hair, grabbed a towel, and looked up.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Shaw was standing on top of the stone-tiled dining table under a wooden pergola next to the wall separating her villa from its neighbor. The wall was high, but the table plus his own considerable height enabled him to easily peer over.
“Checking out the next-door thugs.”
She crossed the tiled surface in a flash and forcibly pulled him off his perch.
He feigned amusement. “What’s wrong?”
Her face was pink underneath the tan, her eyebrows knitted together in anger. “Just don’t do it again.”
“Why, aren’t you curious?”
“You were the one who saw the creep spying on me. You said the guy you saw in the village this morning was tough-looking. Like a mobster. I don’t want them mad at me. I’m on vacation.”
“Fine, fine. That’s reasonable enough. How about some lunch? I’m starving.”
She regained her composure and continued to towel off. “I was thinking a shrimp salad, some bread to dip in olive oil, and a bottle of white wine? I got some tomatoes, cucumbers, and artichoke hearts from the market.”
“Sounds great. Put me to work. I know my way around a kitchen. I can sous-chef with the best of them. Well, I can’t really, but I can slice vegetables.”
“I will put you to work.” She slipped on her shorts, but did not cover up her bikini top. She twisted her hair back and secured it with a red scrunchie. She’d looked more voluptuous in her sundress, Shaw noted. And yet he was really thinking that she’d failed his little test. He’d stood on the table—a spot he’d calculated could not be seen from next door unless someone were standing in the rear grounds—simply to gauge her reaction. She’d said all the right things, exhibited normal concern about getting mixed up with “tough” people. Yet Shaw had been doing this a long time, and his instincts told him that her emotional underpinnings accompanying these words were off the mark just enough. She was fearful, but not for the obvious reason.
He helped her fix lunch and they ate outside; their talk was innocuous for the most part and neither mentioned the developing plot next door. Later he walked back up to his hotel. He immediately checked the three little traps he always set to see if someone had been there. They were located such that a cleaning person would not disturb them while performing their regular duties—his desk drawer, his closet, and on one of his bags.
He sat back on his bed. Of the three traps, two had been sprung. While he’d been out cavorting with “Janie” someone had searched his room.
CHAPTER
28
WALLER SHOWERED and used a razor to slice a few errant hairs off his head. He was not naturally bald, but had begun shaving his head as an act of disguise when he’d fled Ukraine. He knew that almost nothing changed a man’s appearance more than hair added or subtracted.
After giving himself another injection of his special elixir he strode through his penthouse, reaching the end of a corridor and a built-in cabinet. He twisted in a counterclockwise motion the pull knob on the right-side cabinet door and a piece of wood slid aside, revealing a digital pad. He punched in a four-digit code. There was a click and the cabinet front moved forward on smooth hydraulics. Waller passed through, and the door, operating on a motion sensor, automatically closed behind him. It was a nifty piece of craftsmanship.
Waller’s penthouse was over ten thousand square feet, not including the “hidden” space located here, in the center of his home. This was the primary reason why he allowed no one else in his apartment. He couldn’t chance anyone discovering it. The space was a bare concrete shell, part of the original bones of the penthouse. The man who’d constructed this “safe room” for him was of Ukrainian descent, loyal to Waller, and now dead, of natural causes. Waller rarely if ever killed his true friends.
He’d decorated the safe room himself. Stainless steel boxes with electronic locks had been delivered via a secure courier and Waller had unpacked them alone in this sanctuary. He stood in front of an old metal locker with “Fedir Kuchin” engraved on a small plate affixed to its door. He took out his officer’s parade uniform. It still fit rather well, he thought, though it was tight in places where gravity had bested him. He secured his gun belt around his middle, in which was holstered a vintage Russian 9x18 Makarov PM-53. This had been the Soviet Union’s standard military sidearm for forty years, ending its run in 1991 when the Soviet empire collapsed completely. He placed the bright blue cap with gold piping on his head with the red Soviet star in the middle and turned and looked at himself in the mirror bolted to one wall. The material was scratchy and the fabric did not breathe very well, but to him it was the
finest silk.
In his full KGB dress regalia he was propelled back to a time in his life that even then he had realized would be the high point of his existence. He touched the medals, ribbons, and badges riding on the left side of the jacket. Three Irreproachable KGB Service Medals, Distinguished Worker of State Security, graduate of Leningrad University badge, and another badge indicating that he had attended the prestigious Andropov Red Banner Institute. He also had medals for combat service, which he’d earned with his blood in Afghanistan among other places. There were many terrible things his enemies could truthfully call him, but a coward was not one of them.
Though born in a rural fishing village only six hundred kilometers from Kiev, Waller had always considered himself a Soviet and not a Ukrainian. His mentor in the KGB had been a three-star colonel general with the reputation of being the “Butcher of Kiev.” This man was also Ukrainian-born but had sworn his allegiance to Moscow. Everything Waller knew about counterintelligence, crushing insurgencies, and ensuring the security of the Soviet way of life had come from this man. Waller had a picture of him on the wall next to the red Soviet flag with its golden hammer crossed with a golden sickle and the star denoting the Communist Party residing in the upper canton.
He marched to the center of the room, came to rigid attention, and saluted this great Soviet, who was now dead, having been unceremoniously shot for his glorious service. Then Waller, feeling slightly foolish at this attention given to a man long in his grave, seated himself at an old 1950s-era metal desk that he had used when with the KGB in his home country. Old papers and forms in triplicate with cumbersome carbon copies were stacked neatly on his desk. Scarred metal filing cabinets were lined against one wall. Inside those plain depositories were as many of the records of his decades-long service to his adopted country as he had managed to smuggle out. He would come here from time to time to go over these “accomplishments” and allow himself to relive past glories.
In truth, he cared little for his current life. He was rich, but money had never been a primary goal. He had been born poor, grown up in poverty, and joined the ranks of those defending his way of life. Yet even those in the highest levels of the Communist Party typically only had “luxuries” such as a flat with its own bath and a car. It did not pay nearly as well as capitalism.
Yet now that is what I am. A capitalist. The same thing I fought against all those years. Well, I have to admit, the Americans probably had it right.
The trafficking of young girls for prostitution bored him. He had entered into negotiations with the Muslims to sell them nuclear weapons capability principally because it allowed him to recapture a little of his past, when what he did, what he ordered, affected thousands. Now he was just a businessman, like so many others. He made a lot of money, he lived in great luxury, but if he were gone tomorrow who would care? No history book would hold his name. His superiors in the KGB had earned much of the credit for his work. They were immortal. By comparison, he was quite ordinary. Yet there were those who knew what he had done. And that was why he’d had to run, hide like a mouse in a wall. He’d had little choice if he wanted to live. He had seen what happened to comrades who were not so nimble. Some were torn apart by hordes of angry people who had spent their entire lives imprisoned while living in their own country. He understood the emotion perfectly; he just didn’t want to suffer the consequences of it.