“We’re in Provence. I think it’s the law.”
They gave their orders to the waiter, who promptly brought the selected bottle of red and two glasses. He poured and left them alone.
“I’m sure this seems very forward of me,” she said. “Coming over to you like this.”
“I’m not sure there is such a thing as ‘forward’ anymore for men or women.”
“First things first, I’m Jane Collins. But Janie to my friends.” She held out her hand. With an amused look Shaw shook it.
“Bill.”
“American?”
He nodded. “You?”
“What it says on my passport.”
“I’m from D.C.”
“And what do you do in our nation’s capital?”
“As little as possible. I was a lobbyist, but I sold my practice and decided to see a little bit of the world beyond Capitol Hill.”
“Do you have a family?”
“Let me play the proud dad.” He took out his wallet and handed her the picture of a girl and a boy, that Frank had provided him. “Michael and Alli. They’re back in the States.”
She handed the photo back. “Beautiful. So your wife’s not with you?”
“We’re divorced.” He slipped the photo in his shirt pocket. “The picture’s a little old. They’re both teenagers now.”
“You must have started early, you don’t look that old.”
“Keep drinking wine, I like the effect on your vision. How about you? What’s your story?”
“Nothing very exciting. My dad made huge amounts of money. He and my mom died way too early and I was the only child.”
“Sorry to hear that. I guess the money doesn’t make up for it.”
“I never thought it could, and I turned out to be right. I was young when they passed away, but I still miss them.”
“I can understand that.”
“But life goes on,” she said, staring off for a moment before looking back at him and managing a weak smile. “I’m rich, I like to travel, see different places. It’s so beautiful here. So how long have you been in town?”
“A few days.”
“And after this?”
“Italy and then Greece. But I’m taking my time. My whole life has been run on a tight plan. I’m sort of into winging things now.”
“Where are you staying?”
Shaw shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, maybe there is such a thing as forward after all.”
Her cheeks reddened. “Okay, I guess I deserved that. I tend to ask too many questions and volunteer too much about myself to complete strangers.”
“I would agree with that. The part about you being rich is not something you want to blab about. Too many lowlifes who’d take advantage of that information.”
She looked like she’d been scolded. “I guess you’re right.”
“How come you’re solo? Don’t you have any friends who’d like to travel with you? I’m sure you go first-class.”
“Friends have jobs. That’s the downside to not having to work for a living.”
“I think most people would be able to cope with the trade-off,” he said kindly.
“Well, we could hang out.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Sure I do. You’re um…”
“Bill,” he said helpfully.
She playfully punched his arm. “From D.C. Ex-lobbyist guy and divorced with two beautiful teenagers. See, my memory’s not that bad.”
“Okay, Jane—”
“Janie to my friends.”
“All right, Janie, but just take it slow with people.”
She said sheepishly, “I’m nearly thirty; you would’ve thought I’d have gotten that lesson by now.”
“Some people never get it.”
“So where’d you learn to speak French?”
“How do you know I really can? The few words I spoke aren’t exactly going to get me a job at the UN. Your French sounded pretty authentic. Where’d you learn?”
“I took an immersion class for six months before I came here. It’s amazing what you can fit in your day when you don’t have a job.”
Shaw lifted his glass of wine and clinked it against hers. “I’m really looking forward to finding that out.”
Their food came and they continued to talk through dinner. They split the check using cash. Afterwards they walked through the street. Most of the shops were closed at this hour, but the warm breeze was nice, there were many people strolling about just as they were, and music could be heard coming from a bar past the town center.
She looked up at him. “How tall are you?”
“About six-six.”
“You must’ve been the tallest lobbyist in D.C.”
“Nope, they have some ex-NBA players trolling for dollars there. One of them is seven feet. Poor guy has to duck through doorways when he’s pressing the flesh and begging for his supper.”
“Well, I’m down this way,” she said.
Shaw hooked a finger over his shoulder. “I’m that way.”
“Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
“Small town, the odds are good.”
She smiled. “I’ll be far more reticent next time.”
He returned the smile. “And I’ll be far less critical.”
Reggie Campion immediately returned to her villa, where she made a call. She explained her meeting with Bill to Professor Mallory and gave him a detailed description of the man. “Find out what you can. There’s something about him.”
“All right, Regina. But it may be nothing.”
“And it may be everything. I trust my instincts. Word on Waller?”
“On schedule.”
“Then I have my work cut out for me if this new development turns into a mess. You’re certain everything is a go on my cover?”
“It has been for quite some time. One of our benefactors owns a technology company with elite-level programs and access to numerous core databases. He allowed us in through a back door to do all we needed to do. All the information you’ve memorized is backed up in all the places anyone might look. Vital records in the U.S., an American Social Security number, bank accounts, educational backgrounds, degrees conferred, parents’ history. Oh, did you like your Facebook page?”
“Brilliant. Nice chums I have. And I must say, Professor, you certainly know more about computers than you let on.”
“I’m just an old duffer. Merely regurgitating what I’m told.”
“If you say so.”
“Don’t push yourself too hard.”
“It’s the only way I stay alive.”
Barely a half mile away Shaw was sitting on his bed lifting a nice set of prints off the special coating on the photo of the fake kids he’d handed “Janie.” Using a handheld computing device he scanned them in, emailed them to Frank, and then called him.
“Sounds like a hottie,” said Frank after Shaw finished filling him in.
“I don’t like ‘hotties’ showing up when I have a job to do, especially if they’re staying at the villa next door to my target. And she made inquiries about Waller’s place earlier too.”
“But from what you said, she’s a bit of a ditz.”
“We don’t know that for sure. Could be an act.”
“I told you our prelim gave off no warning bells. You going paranoid on me?”
“No, Frank, I’ve been paranoid for a long time.”
CHAPTER
21
DO YOU believe in God?” Waller asked Alan Rice.
They had just gotten off Waller’s plane after a long flight. Now the two men were riding in the back of a rental Escalade on the way to a meeting. Rice had his gaze on the laptop screen where numbers flew across. If he was surprised by his employer’s question he didn’t show it. “I haven’t thought about it since I was a child, really.”
Waller looked interested. “And if you thought about it now?”
“I would come down on the
side that says one should hedge his bets, though I must admit I haven’t exactly been doing that very well.”
Waller looked disappointed. “Really?”
“But with the caveat that one should still count on individual efforts in getting what one wants in life rather than praying to something one can’t see.”
Waller looked pleased by this answer.
“I take it you are not a practitioner of a faith, Evan?”
“On the contrary, I pray every morning and night and go to church every week. I believe in God with all my heart, as did my mother and her mother before her. The French love the good life, but are very pious about their faith, you know.”
“But I don’t understand—”
Waller waved him off. “I don’t condemn others for not believing or, as you say, ‘hedging your bets.’ They must deal with God at some point.” He stared at Alan. “You must deal with God at some point.”
Rice was quick to glance back at the computer screen before an unfortunate choice of words or telling facial expression escaped from him. Then you must deal with God too. And I don’t believe praying twice a day and going to church will save you from hell. Those words would have cost him his life. “So tonight?” he prompted.
Waller nodded slowly and rolled down the window a bit to let in some air. “Another religious vexation, actually. The men we are meeting believe that whoever they kill in life will serve them in death. They also believe that virgins await them in paradise. I’m surprised more men have not converted to Islam based on that concept alone.”
“They might have except for the fact of wives’ putting their feet down on their husbands’ necks.”
“Alan, you are in rare form tonight.”
Rice said in a serious tone, “This is quite a different sideline for you. Dealing with Islamic terrorists?”
“Are you not tired of the Asian whores? How many units does it take to fill the crotches of Western male civilization?”
“Apparently more than we can obtain. But the money is colossal and steady. It’s the cash flow engine for all our other endeavors.”
“A man needs fresh challenges.”
“But highly enriched uranium? To make a nuclear device? It could as easily go off in Montreal as New York. I would not put great faith in their aim.”
“The world needs to be shaken up a bit, don’t you think? Too staid. Too predictable. Those on top have been there a long time. Perhaps too long.”
“I didn’t know you had an interest in geopolitics.”
“There are many things you don’t know about me. But I think we are here.”
Rice looked out the window and saw the building come into view. The plane ride had been very turbulent in the final twenty minutes as they had landed at the tail end of a passing thunderstorm, and the thirty-mile ride out into a rural part of the country had done nothing to settle his stomach. The people they were meeting with were making his belly uneasy for another reason. His boss, of course, had been undisturbed by the storm, or, apparently, by the upcoming meeting.
Anyone who was looking for the parts to a nuclear weapon so that they could detonate it and kill as many people as possible was of course insane. Rice could accept that his employer was at least partially insane, but he had learned how to survive around the man. The folks tonight were an unknown entity. He’d wished that Waller had not insisted that he come.
When he’d attempted to decline the request, Waller was predictably blunt in his response. “The right-hand man cannot select his encounters. And the squeamish cannot be the right-hand man. And, unfortunately for you, I have no use at all for any other body part you possess, Alan.”
The words were jesting, the tone in which they were said was not. Thus Rice had gotten on the plane and flown across numerous time zones to help his boss negotiate the deaths of thousands.
“How do you want to open the meeting?” Rice asked him.
“We will greet, we will smile. If they want us to eat and drink we will. Then we will negotiate. By the way, do not show them the bottom of your shoe, a great insult.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“Yes, the most important of all.”
Rice looked at him expectantly.
“If the need arises to run, make sure you run fast.”
Rice looked shaken. “Do you think the need might arise?”
“I cannot tell. But one thing I do know is I don’t trust desert men in hattahs who want to blow up the world.”
“Then for God’s sake why are we here?”
“I spoke of a man needing a challenge.”
“Do you really think we may need to run?”
“Perhaps. If so, just make sure I am in front of you.”
“And if you’re not?”
“I will shoot you and then run over your dead body.”
CHAPTER
22
THE HOME was large, contemporary, and miles from any other dwelling. They were met at the front gate by a man in a dark British-tailored suit and wearing a turban. He searched Waller and Rice, and Waller’s gun was confiscated. “That’s a customized Heckler and Koch nine-millimeter,” he told the Arab. “I expect it back in the same pristine condition.”
If the man understood this he made no sign of it.
“And my men?” Waller indicated behind him at the six burly fellows who had held on to their hardware. He’d asked the question and thought he knew the answer. In halting English the Arab said that they were free to come inside and could also keep their weapons. Waller frowned at this directive but said nothing.
Rice looked up at the face of the darkened structure. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” he said hopefully.
As they walked up the front drive, Waller said, “Oh, they’re home. I’m sure we’ll be very welcome.”
“Why don’t you sound too certain of that?”
“I am certain. It must be your nerves running away with you.”
“I wonder why,” the other man said under his breath.
The interior illumination was weak enough that Rice had to squint to make out things in the farthest corners of the large rooms. The bodyguards trailing them, Waller and Rice followed the turbaned man deeper into the house.
The man paused at a pair of large double doors that appeared to be made of stainless steel. He opened them and motioned the others through. When they passed into the room, they saw one man sitting at a round table in the center, the space lit only by a single table lamp. The man was dressed in a loose-fitting robe known in the Muslim world as a thobe. He was boxy through the middle though his face was drawn. His beard was trimmed short and he wore no headdress.
“Sit,” he said, motioning to the chairs set around the table.
Waller took his time looking around the room gauging tactical
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