“Just like that?”
“Like I said, just chill and pretty soon you get out of here.”
“Where’s Waller?” Shaw said sharply.
“Who?”
“Now I don’t believe you again.”
The man locked the door behind him, leaving Shaw to puzzle all this over once more. He rocked back and forth in the chair and quickly found that it was bolted to the slab. These folks had put some thought into this. He wondered how far away from Gordes he was. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. He might not even be in France any longer.
If these guys weren’t with Waller, who were they? No, of course they had to be with him despite his captor’s feigned ignorance. He also wondered what Frank was thinking. When Shaw didn’t show up at the airport Frank would go to his hotel room. Then he’d conclude that Shaw had screwed him and gone AWOL.
He leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. He was out of options. And Janie was probably with Waller right now. Or maybe dead.
CHAPTER
47
YOU SEEM preoccupied.”
Reggie looked over at Waller as they walked along the streets of Roussillon. They had driven separately, with her following the man’s caravan of vehicles. Roussillon held all the charm of the typical Provençal village but with the added burst of ochre on most of the buildings.
“Just tired. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
“I hope nothing is troubling you so that you cannot sleep.”
The man was dressed in ironed jeans, a white cotton shirt that he wore out, and leather sandals. A Panama hat covered his hairless head, protecting his pale skin from the sun. It gave him a jaunty, relaxed appearance that Reggie was having trouble discounting for some reason.
“Probably just delayed jet lag. This village really is beautiful. The colors are so different from anything I’ve seen.”
“My mother was born here,” he said proudly. “I remember it well from when I was a child.”
Reggie paused to study a painting in a window, but she was really thinking of something else. She wondered how Fedir Kuchin had been able to escape from behind the Iron Curtain to come here as a young boy, or rather how his parents had with him in tow. Travel was severely restricted back then. His father must have been very high up in the Communist Party to be allowed such freedom. She also wondered how a Frenchwoman from a rural town in Provence had come to marry a Ukrainian communist. Yet perhaps he was telling her a lie. That was actually more likely.
“You like the painting?” Waller asked over her shoulder.
Reggie continued to study the peaceful harbor scene depicted on the canvas. “It’s far more pleasant than Señor Goya’s works.”
“Ah, but this painter will never have the reputation of Goya. Goya did the world an important service.”
She turned to him. “How so?”
“He lived during difficult times. War, poverty, cruelty. Thus he painted nightmares. As I told you before, using oils on canvas, he reminded the world that there is evil. That is an important lesson that we should never forget, but unfortunately we do all the time.”
“Have you experienced such things?”
“I have read of such things, and they are to be avoided if at all possible.”
“But sometimes I guess it’s not possible.”
“You are an American, so of course you would say such things. You are a superpower, you can do what you want.”
Reggie wasn’t sure if she saw a spark of envy in his eyes when he said this or if it was her imagination. He took her by the arm.
“I understand that dear Bill has left us.”
Reggie almost pulled her arm away. “He had to go home. Some family issue.”