He looked down at his hand now. It was scuffed, and he knew from past experience the knuckles would probably bruise to a yellowish gray, but his hand wasn’t bleeding.
“I’m fine,” he said.
She did not look up from her work. “It’s not for you. It’s for him.”
“The hell with him.”
“I’m not going to let him bleed all over the place.”
Jack would have done just that. He was furious that his feeling of safety and anonymity had been destroyed in the blink of an eye. His time here in Rome, his utterly perfect two weeks, was over, just like that, and he was having a hard time accepting this fact.
Ysabel asked, “Who is he?”
“He’s been following me.”
“Then why on earth did you lead him here?”
“I didn’t. I shook him at the Piazza del Popolo, I’m sure I did. I spent fifteen minutes in a cab checking behind me the entire time, then I came back here and he followed me in. Somehow he knows where we live.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“Camera equipment, mostly. And some fake creds that say he’s a journalist.”
“No weapon, then.”
Jack shrugged. “No. No weapon.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“I’m going to find out who sent him.”
“Before you do that, I’m going to clean him up and stop the bleeding.”
Ysabel knelt in front of the man at the kitchen table, and Jack took the man’s backpack into the living room and sat down, careful to position himself so he could keep an eye on him in the kitchen.
He watched Ysabel kneeling in front of the man. He still seemed to be dazed, and she worked expertly on cleaning his bloody face, applying ice to the lacerations to slow the bleeding.
The man wasn’t badly hurt. Jack himself had taken blows much harder and kept his wits about him.
For just a quick flash it occurred to him that he should be appreciating the kindness of his girlfriend. Ysabel was in the same boat as he was; the appearance of this son of a bitch was a death knell to the perfect little world they had created. A temporary respite after the time of great danger and stress they’d shared on their last mission, and before Jack inevitably returned to real fieldwork with The Campus.
But Ysabel’s compassion for this man just annoyed him. He didn’t have the humanity she did, he supposed. He was just pissed.
Jack stood back up and stormed into the kitchen now. Playtime was over. It was time for answers.
He asked, “Do you speak English?”
The man had clearly come out of his stupor, because he shouted, “Eat my shit, Jack Ryan Junior!”
Jack scooped the backpack up again and began to recheck it, looking for a false partition or hidden compartment. As he did this he said, “So… you know who I am. You are going to tell me who you are and who you work for.”
“You going to hell, man!”
This guy was pissed. Not scared. That seemed odd to Jack. He pulled out the camera. “This is a nice rig. Where did you get it?”
“From your mother.”
Jack sighed. “Right. Well, I found your fake media credentials in your bag and a fake ID in your wallet. I am going to do some digging into these and see if I can figure out who you really are.”
“Fake? What shit are you saying?”
“I’m saying your name isn’t”—Jack looked at the ID card again—“Salvatore.” He cocked his head in confusion. “What, you couldn’t be bothered to make up a fake last name?”
The man touched his face. “You broke my nose!”
Jack knelt down directly in front of the man now. He had four inches and twenty-five pounds of muscle on the seated man. “It’s not broken, but I’ll break your neck if you don’t talk.”
“I’m Salvatore.”
Jack just looked at him.
“Salvatore!”
“Right! I got it! You’re Salvatore. But who the fuck are you?”
“You see the ID, man. It say who I am. I am photographer. You know… celebrity photographer.”
Ryan looked down at the credentials again. “Wait… you are saying you are a paparazzi? Bullshit.”
“Paparazzo, sì,” Salvatore said, and he fingered his swollen lip.
Ysabel had been listening in. She walked over to her laptop on a desk next to the doorway to the kitchen and began to type the man’s name into a search engine.
Jack asked, “Why were you following me?”
“You’re a celebrity, you son of a bitch.”
Ysabel called across the room. “Jack? Can I speak with you in here for a moment?”
Jack stepped up to Ysabel’s desk, a sudden pang of worry filling the pit of his stomach. When Ysabel looked up from the desk to face him, he said, “Don’t tell me.”
“He is exactly who he says he is. He’s just a photographer. A paparazzo.” She turned her laptop so he could see the website of Salvatore — just the first name, along with several celebrity photographs. Ysabel added, “And you just beat him up.”
Jack’s jaw muscles flexed under his beard. Oops. He turned and headed back into the kitchen. “Who sent you?”
“Nobody send me nowhere.”
“Bullshit,” Jack said again.
Salvatore said, “You had coffee at Café Mirabelle. The hostess… she send me tips when somebody famous comes in. She recognize you, and she send me a text.”
Jack remembered the hostess now. A beautiful college-age girl with eyes that stayed on his an uncomfortably long time. He’d mistaken the look as one of attraction.
It was a mistake that had nothing to do with vanity, just experience. More women looked at Jack because he was good-looking than due to the fact he came from a famous family, because he’d done everything within his power to change his appearance. His beard, his powerful physical bearing, the eyeglasses with the uncorrected lenses — he was night and day a different person from the much younger man who had been on TV some when his dad was in the White House for his first term.
But every now and then, somehow someone still realized who he was.
“How did you find my apartment?”
“I followed you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You didn’t see me,” Salvatore said with a smile. Jack could see blood captured between the man’s teeth. “I am good.”
“If you’re a photographer and you saw me, why didn’t you take any pictures?” Jack had checked the man’s cracked camera and found nothing but a few pictures of a fountain.
Salvatore said, “The girl at restaurant told me who you were, but I no sure. I want follow you, wait you are sitting so I can get good pictures.”
That made sense to Ryan, and he caught himself actually wishing this guy had been some sort of an assassin, because he’d roughed him up so bad.
Ysabel stepped up behind Jack now. She whispered, “You need to let him go.”
Jack nodded. Of course he did.
He looked down at the man on the chair. Blood dripped from his chin again, and his shoulders hung slumped.
This was going to be awkward.
Jack knelt down and, with a tone much more conciliatory than before, said, “Look… Mr. Salvatore. Here’s the situation. I don’t have security protection, I don’t really need it… but the Secret Service insisted I go through some… specialized training so I could protect myself if something bad happened.”
Salvatore said nothing.
“I’ve had a couple of crazy people come after me in the past. I guess I just overreacted a little this time.” Jack held out a hand. “I hope you will accept my apology.”
The Italian just stared at him, but after a moment he shook the extended hand.
Jack said, “I think you’ll be fine, but I’d be more than happy to take you to a doctor.”