The Coil

by Gayle Lynds

  She picked up her glass and walked toward the fresco. “Gaspare Vazzano?”

  “Sì. You know Vazzano’s work?” He left the bar and followed.

  “I know he painted a lot of frescoes around here, but I thought they were mostly in churches. Your place must date back to the sixteenth century.” Vazzano was born in the mid-1500s in Gangi, where she first had seen his work.

  “No one knows for certain exactly when, but yes. Here, the years run together.” He snapped his fingers. “There. That’s my life.” He snapped them again. “And yours. We have a saying that life’s not a gift, it’s a surprise, and death is never a surprise, but it’s often a gift. This is a hard land. A hard country with hard rules and even harder customs. You know my name, signorina. It’s only fair I know yours. Come si chiama?”

  “Elizabeth Sansborough.” She sipped her wine. It had a rough coat to it, a taste of good local grapes but not aged enough. “I’m looking for my father.” She took out the drawing from her backpack and handed it to him, watching his expression. “He may be using the name Bosa or Firenze. Those are family names. Perhaps even Duchesne.”

  “So?” He stared down at it a long time, expressionless. At the square face and bald head and even features. When he raised his gaze, it was to study her again. There was knowledge in those eyes. He made no effort to hide it.

  Breath seemed to catch in her throat. “You know him, don’t you? Where is he!”

  He shrugged. For a flash, she saw beneath the mask. He was a man who calculated risks. For whatever reason, he had decided there was little this time.

  “He was a Bosa, Don Alessandro Bosa. Yes, that’s what he was called. There are changes in his face.” He tapped the drawing. “He was reading The Leopard.” He stared into space. “Ah, yes. ‘Bare hillsides flaming yellow under the sun.’ He quoted it to me, because he’d come from Cefalù to see our summer.”

  “Where is he now?” She kept her tone neutral, but her heart was racing with excitement, with hope.

  He frowned. “Didn’t you know? He died. Someone dynamited his villa, and it killed him. Several years ago. Maybe eight. A big event like that, word spreads.”

  “I heard he’d survived.”

  He shook his head. “Who could’ve survived that?” He handed back the drawing. “Drink your wine. Don’t be upset. How long have you been looking?”

  “I heard he reappeared recently.”

  “I see only with my eyes, hear only with my ears. I have no magical powers. I’ve told you what I know.” He returned to the bar, no longer interested.

  She watched his straight back and thin, ropy shoulders as he rounded the counter. He was a man who had managed to create some kind of neutrality in a country where old grudges and simmering passions exploded with ease.

  “You haven’t seen him lately?” she demanded.

  He made a dismissive gesture. “It’s what I told you. He’s gone. Dead. Not alive…even to you. Go home. You won’t find him here. Why do you persist in looking for what no longer exists? If he’s really alive, he doesn’t want to be found. If he’s dead, give him his peace. Go back to California. Find your own life. Leave his memories here, where they belong. Respect him enough to make your way without him.”

  She glanced away. The lined, formidable face of an old Sicilian woman in one of the photos caught her eye. As she stared at it, an odd relief swept through her. She felt comforted.

  Then she looked back. Her gaze bored into him. “You haven’t seen him?”

  “No!” He threw up his hands. Then calmly: “I have customers who’ll be here soon. Sit. Drink your wine. I have work.” He pulled up bottles of red wine from somewhere beneath the bar and stacked them behind it, against the wall.

  She walked to the bar and set down her glass. “Quanto costa questo?”

  He told her the euros. She left them next to her wine and walked out into the long shadows of twilight.

  The wind was dying down at last. As she crossed the courtyard, she took off her straw hat and rubbed her forearm across her brow. Immediately, it was wet again. The rainy season had not yet begun. All day, hot sirocco winds from North Africa had blasted across the parched hills and valleys, sucking the last molecules of moisture from people and land. Astoundingly, tempers were seldom short. After being conquered and reconquered for three thousand years, Sicilians accepted acts of God and nature with equanimity.

  Three middle-aged men strolled in from the road, laughing, cigarettes dangling from their lips, and sat at one of the outside tables. Signore Cappuccio emerged and, without a look at her, asked what they were drinking.

  She hiked away, passing a grizzled goatherd, his dog, and a herd of mangy goats. As night approached, the wind changed directions, coming from the north. She lifted her face, finding relief in its coolness. The lonely sound of a car engine carried clearly from the east through the quiet mountains. She checked her watch. Yes, he was on time.

  Eagerly, she climbed another hill and stood there waiting as sunset painted the western horizon the brilliant colors of the oranges and lemons for which this region had once been known. Now half the residents of a decade ago were gone to the cities of Europe in search of work. People had told her over and over how empty their mountains were—only the old, the lazy, and the drunk remained. Globalization had struck even here, stealing the young and leaving their elders to pine. Like the seasons, globalization was inevitable. The only question was whether its leaders would push it forward with the least damage to the voiceless or with the greatest profits to themselves.

  As she stared out over the darkening hills and valleys, her memory returned again to her father. In her mind, she saw him clearly, leaving the Dreftbury hotel room. She could have called his name, revealed him, fired a round over his head. But she had not, because he had been the one to walk away. After that, she had waited almost a month, a dull pain near her heart. Then she went in search with a desperate, hopeful longing to find him, his love.

  Behind her, the pickup pulled off the road. She turned and ran to the door. “Come look at the sunset with me. Did you learn anything?”

  Simon’s craggy face smiled at her, his thick hair shiny in the waning light. “A few things,” he told her, climbing out. “How about you?”

  As they walked back toward her spot on the hill, she told him, “I met an interesting man. If anyone knows whether Papa’s here somewhere, it’d be him. But he believes Papa’s dead. So I think Papa’s probably not here.”

  He nodded. “None of my people turned up anything about Jack O’Keefe or any of his compadres, including Elaine and George Russell. O’Keefe’s got to be in his seventies by now, so he could’ve died quietly somewhere in his sleep.”

  “Or he could be alive. With Papa.” It was through O’Keefe that Sarah had sent the message that had trapped the Carnivore at his Cefalù villa.

  Simon shrugged. “True. But if O’Keefe were active, I think we’d know.”

  She had been wrong to assume that MI6 would not want Simon back. As for Sarah and Asher, they had returned to Paris, determined to finish their vacation. Gary Faust was alive and healthy, still flying his Westland Lysander wherever the circus pitched its tent. She and Simon had replaced Paul Hamilton’s Jeep and sent a cash donation to the studio apartment in Pigalle for clothes and food. The agitators arrested that day at Dreftbury were quickly bailed out, represented by lawyers hired by an umbrella group that was bringing together the disparate branches of the movement, hoping to make it more effective by taking it mainstream.

  And so life went on, too often filled with interest, not passions. For a few brief days, Nautilus was in Europe’s spotlight, and the nature of the group—whether sinister or benevolent—was an issue discussed in barrooms and board-rooms and even a few bedrooms. Then another small war broke out somewhere, and British and American soldiers in Iraq came under fire, and the news value of the still-clandestine organization plummeted.

  As it turned out, the vanished César Duchesne was the onl
y outside witness to the Coil’s bloody plot. The authorities had found Henry Percy’s information intriguing, but only as background. As for the damage to his mansion caused in the fake attack, he had laughed, saying he had enjoyed the adventure, and after all, what was money for but to have a good time occasionally? Gregory Gilmartin’s brother, the second eldest, had assumed the reins of the family construction empire and was pressuring EU Commissioner Santarosa to render a favorable decision in the merger with Tierney Aviation.

  It was no surprise Richmond Hornish, Nicholas Inglethorpe, and Christian Menchen did not turn against one another but instead brought in their lawyers. The Coil would continue, shaken but resolute. They lived by their own golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

  When Liz reached the crest of the hill, she gestured at the seamless panorama of rolling hills draped with shadows, their tops burnished with the radiant light of the setting sun. It was one of those moments she wished would extend forever, standing there with Simon, looking out at a world that seemed unsullied.

  He took her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed her fingers. She leaned against him, her side to his, as they continued to stare out, soaking up the wild beauty.

  “Have you decided?” she asked.

  “Yes. I’m going to Santa Barbara with you.”

  She pulled away. She looked into his eyes, saw a weariness that had been growing since July. She kissed him, and he kissed her back, lingering.

  “I can’t do it anymore,” he told her at last, stepping back. “Somewhere while I was in MI6, I got lost. It’s such a bore, but it’s the truth. I want to find out what else there is.”

  “I’m glad you’ll come. Very, very glad. And I feel the same way. That’s why I have to keep teaching. The students give me hope.”

  “I know.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her close again, and they resumed their watch. “The best is, we’ll be together.” The sun had dropped below the hill. The sky was red.

  “Did you see that?” she asked.

  “No. What?”

  “Across on the next hill. A flash of light. It’s gone now.”

  “Probably a bicyclist, or maybe a shepherd with some metal on his knapsack. We should go. It’s a long drive out to Cefalù.”

  She nodded, and he swung his arm across her shoulder, holding her close as they walked to the pickup.

  She slipped her arm around his waist, her body matching the rhythm of his. “Did you know that Gangi has a pagan festival? The Christians don’t much like it, of course. It’s called the Sagra della Spiga, and there’s a procession of the old gods—Pan, Bacchus, and Demeter, the fertility divinities. When I was in town, a man at the Bongiorno palace told me Monte Alburchia may be the site of an ancient fertility temple built by the Greeks.”

  “The Greeks? I’d forgotten they’d gotten this far inside Rome’s territory.”

  “Curious, isn’t it? Wherever humans go, we take our gods, in one form or another.”

  As they continued to talk in low, intimate voices, a man rose to his haunches on the hill opposite, where Liz had seen the flash of light. He had been lying on his belly under the leafy branches of an olive tree, using a powerful directional microphone as he listened and watched through binoculars. For an instant, he had worried he would be discovered. But the moment passed, because Liz was involved in Simon and the future. This was good; what he wanted.

  He ran a hand over the new growth on his head. Soon his hair would be full again, thick and gray. He repressed a wave of yearning to be with his daughter, packed away his equipment, and hiked off into the night.

  Also by Gayle Lynds

  Masquerade

  Mosaic

  Mesmerized

  With Robert Ludlum:

  The Altman Code

  The Paris Option

  The Hades Factor

  Acknowledgments

  Several years ago, Liz Sansborough took up residence inside my mind. She’d played a pivotal role in my first novel, Masquerade, but that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted her own book, her own story. So she lingered, contemplating her future, making me increasingly uneasy as I waited. What would happen to her? Her life had been suffused with violence. Both parents were international assassins, now dead. Her CIA husband was tortured and killed in the field. She was CIA, too, and loved the work. Or thought she did. But all of us change. Sometimes we learn. Now Liz wants out. She wants peace. For herself, for the world. In this new violent millennium, perhaps impossible. But she must try.

  Liz returns to school to earn her Ph.D. in the psychology of violence….

  Because the examination of violence from its most subtle to its most bloody permeates The Coil, I turned to friend and colleague Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D., who in earlier books led me in explorations of Asperger’s syndrome, cellular memory, and conversion disorder. As always, her guidance was revelatory, providing an insider’s view of violent people and acts and cultures.

  For information about assassins, MI6, the CIA, and the globe’s underbelly of crime and espionage, I thank several sources who must remain unnamed and in particular fellow author Robert Kresage, founding member of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.

  Paris, France, played a major role in The Coil. For advice, photos, and translations, I am indebted to Christine McNaught and novelist Len Lamensdorf for their selfless help.

  Editing is that mysterious but crucial art form that in rare instances elevates a work above the author’s vision. Most of us start with a blank page and a dream. Somewhere along the line, the pages fill, and the dream is overpowered by the words, scenes, chapters, sections. I was saved from that by Keith Kahla, editor extraordinaire, who knew better than I the novel inside The Coil. With deep appreciation, I thank him for his insight and wisdom, his nights and his weekends, and the unfettered access to his highly creative brain.

  My husband, novelist Dennis Lynds, is both editor and collaborator, a constant source of feedback, revision, and ideas. My gratitude to him is boundless, as it is to my literary agent, Henry Morrison, and my international agent, Danny Baror, and my former webmaster, Brandon Erikson, and my new webmaster, Greg Stephens.

  I’ve been blessed with a spectacular new publishing family at St. Martin’s Press, including Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, George Witte, Matthew Baldacci, John Murphy, James Di Miero, Joan Higgins, John Cunningham, Jennifer Enderlin, John Karle, Dori Weintraub, Steve Eichinger, Harriet Seltzer, Christina Harcar, and Jerry Todd. I’m most appreciative for all of their help and support.

  And finally, no book comes to life in isolation. My gratitude to Barbara Toohey, Paul Stone, Julia Stone, MaryEllen Strange, James Stevens, Theil Shelton, Philip Shelton, Kathleen Sharp, Elaine Russell, Monika McCoy, Kate Lynds, Deirdre Lynds, Fred Klein, Randi Kennedy, Steven Humphrey, Melodie Johnson Howe, Bones Howe, Nancy Hertz, Gayatri Chopra Heesen, Julia Cunningham, Ray Briare, Katrina Baum, Vicki Allen, and Joe Allen.

  Read on for an excerpt from the next book by Gayle Lynds

  THE LAST SPYMASTER

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Press

  Prologue

  November 16, 1985

  Glienicke Bridge, between West Berlin

  and East Germany

  The wintry darkness seemed colder, more bitter, at Glienicke Bridge when a spy exchange was about to begin. Jay Tice shoved his hands deep into his overcoat pockets in a futile attempt to warm them. Beside him stood a young Muslim revolutionary—Faisal al-Hadi, his half of the predawn swap. Moving like shadows over the snow-dusted road and among the skeletal trees were a dozen U.S. Army soldiers on high alert, armed with M-16 rifles. Their truck waited, engine rumbling.

  On edge, watching for trouble, Tice scanned carefully. He was a rumpled man of thirty-four, just shy of six feet tall. His nose was straight, his hair brown and of average length, his mouth wide and implacable. Depending on the light, his eyes were blue or brown. His one distinctive feature was the deep cleft that notched his chin, which was dramatic. Still, Tice ha
d perfected the art of appearing almost bloodless, clearly boring. Seldom did anyone remember him or his cleft chin—unless he wanted them to.

  “Issa’a kaem?” al-Hadi demanded.

  With a sharp movement of his head, Tice peered at the militant. Gazing up at the fading stars, the youth stood straight as a sword in his Western jeans and duffel coat, as quiet as death. He had yet to look at the bridge, which Tice found highly unusual. Those waiting to be traded tended to stare across it with raw hunger. Just twenty years old, he was Tice’s height but narrow, with the acute features of a desert falcon. According to his dossier, he spoke English, but no one in the command had heard him use it.

  Tice checked his wristwatch. “Issa’a 5:12. Da’ayi’ hidashar.” The exchange must be finished by 5:42 a.m.—sunrise—which meant it must begin soon, eleven minutes to be exact. Tice glanced around once more, then raised his binoculars. Across the bridge, Kalashnikov-toting Communist soldiers moved slowly, menacingly, in the gray light as they guarded Pavel Abendroth, the human-rights dissident and Jewish refusenik. Jailed nine years in the gulag, Dr. Abendroth had lost a third of his body weight from starvation rations and illness. Dressed in baggy clothes, he pressed his ear muffs close and smiled toward the West. With him was Stasi officer Raina Manhardt—Tice’s opposite number. A half-head taller than the diminutive doctor, she wore a fur hat and a stern expression. He lowered his binoculars.

  This was Glienicker Brücke, “Bridge of Spies,” witness to many of the Cold War’s most crucial exchanges. It was a bridge leading nowhere, unused but for the infrequent official vehicle on a military mission between the Communist East and the Free West and the occasional vital exchange. It was here in 1962 that downed U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers walked grimly past Soviet spymaster Rudolf Abel to freedom. Here, too, just last June, twenty-five European operatives were swapped for four East Bloc spies jailed in America. Some trades were made in daylight, and press conferences followed. Most, however, required secrecy and the cover of darkness.