Salvatore shook his head. He said, “You got anything to drink?”
“Sure, of course.” Jack stood quickly, headed to the refrigerator, and pulled out a bottle of still water. As he turned toward the paparazzo sitting at the kitchen table, the man shook his head. “Wasn’t talking about water. You have grappa?”
Jack didn’t have any grappa, an Italian brandy, but he did have a six-pack of Moretti beer in his fridge. He wanted more than anything to get this guy out of his apartment, but he felt obliged to drink a beer with him.
Salvatore drank in silence — mostly, he seemed like he wanted the alcohol, not the fellowship of sharing a beverage.
Jack muttered a few words here and there about wanting to protect his privacy for the benefit of the people around him, but Salvatore did little more than nod and drink.
When he finished he stood. Jack said, “Your camera equipment and your phone. What’s that worth?”
“Ten thousand euros.”
Jack shook his head. “Try again. That camera is fifteen hundred, and it’s repairable. The lenses might be five hundred each. Another five hundred for the phone. That’s less than three thousand euros.” Jack sighed. “I’ll give you five.”
Salvatore shrugged, then nodded.
Jack always carried a lot of cash when he worked an operation. Less this time than usual, because this was only half a mission, as much analysis as anything else. Still, he had exactly five thousand euros hidden under a shelf in the bathroom. He pulled an envelope containing one hundred fifty-euro notes out of a hiding spot in the back bathroom, then handed them over to the Italian.
Salvatore took the bills and tucked them into his pocket. Ysabel held out the backpack, and he took that and left the apartment without another word.
Ysabel locked the door behind him, then turned to look at Jack. He could see what she was thinking by the look on her face. She was also worried about what this meant for their time in Rome.
She asked, “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. Something about that guy… I don’t know.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I have to leave. Get out of town. It’s the only way to protect the operation.”
She said, “Why? I’m sure you aren’t the first person to punch a paparazzo in the nose. It’s a known job hazard for guys like Salvatore.”
“He’ll talk about this, you can bet on it.”
“Do you think he’ll call the police?”
Jack shook his head. “He had enough dope in his backpack to get himself thrown in prison. He knows that I know, so the last thing he’s going to do is go to the cops. They’ll give him a drug test, and that guy is an addict. He won’t be clean, and he knows it.”
Ysabel shrugged, as if the matter were settled. “So… he tells some friends. Some other paparazzi. Maybe somebody camps out with a camera outside. We’ll just deal with that when it happens.”
Jack shook his head. He’d been playing the double game of espionage a lot longer than Ysabel Kashani had. “I wish we could do that, I really do. But I need to get out of here. You, too, just to avoid any hassle if more media show up. We can sanitize this place and get a hotel room tonight, and I’ll head up to Luxembourg tomorrow.” He wanted to invite her with him, but he had not yet cleared that with his bosses at The Campus.
Ysabel said, “I thought we had more galleries to check out.”
“We do. There is another week’s worth of work here. But I can’t compromise the mission by sticking around. If Salvatore really did have a confidante at that café, he might have others all over town. Who’s to say someone in the hotel won’t tip him off, too?”
Ysabel thought for a moment. “I can stay here, Jack. I’ll just stay in a hotel and visit the remaining galleries. I’ll be finished in less than a week. Done by Saturday.”
Jack hesitated.
Ysabel smiled at him. “You said I was a natural.”
Now Jack chuckled. “Okay. But only to look for pieces that have already been purchased. If you find one of the paintings that has sold, you call me, and I’ll call Gavin to have him hack the gallery. If he can’t, we just move on. I don’t want you sneaking around, trying to plant bugs on their computers. Without me ready to help you out of there, it’s too dangerous.”
“No problem.” She looked around and sighed now. “I’m going to miss this place.”
“Me too. I’m sorry. This is my fault. I just thought he was going for a weapon when he reached in his bag.”
She nodded. “That’s good to know. I won’t make any sudden moves in front of you.”
“I guess I’m a little jumpy. We saw a lot of action in Dagestan. When this guy started following me, then showed up again, it felt like the real deal.”
She stepped over and kissed him slowly, running her fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair.
Jack smiled a little. He was in a shitty mood, but Ysabel was helping. He put his arms around her.
Ysabel said, “I can hear it in your voice. You feel like you’ve done something wrong. You haven’t. You are very good at what you do, Jack, but you will always have to deal with the fact that your father is a public figure.”
He shook his head. “Nobody has recognized me in months. Doesn’t happen more than a handful of times a year, and almost never when I’m outside of D.C.”
She shrugged. “Obviously the guy was telling the truth. You were recognized.”
Jack nodded, then he changed the subject. “Listen. I was going to ask you after I got it approved, but I’m sure it will be okay. I’d like you to come up to Luxembourg when you’re done here. You can fly up next week. You can help me on my surveillance there.”
Ysabel broke into a wide smile. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
“We work well together, don’t you think?”
She kissed him again. “I think so. We also play well together, wouldn’t you agree?”
He nodded. “I would.” In minutes they began sanitizing the apartment together. Regardless of the fact that today’s compromise didn’t put him or Ysabel in danger, Ryan knew he needed to get moving, because just the possibility another paparazzo might show up would destroy the operation he was working on, and he could not let that happen.
There was something else Jack knew he should do now, but he decided to wait. Standard operating procedure was to report this contact to John Clark. Clark was director of operations for The Campus, and he’d want to know that one of his ops guys was compromised in the field, even if it wasn’t by any foreign intelligence agency or enemy actor.
Clark would be pissed, not at Jack but at the situation. Jack had busted his ass to transition from straight analytics into fieldwork, and he’d acquitted himself well during many operations, but there was always the possibility that his cover would be blown. Not by any errors in his operational security, but simply by virtue of the fact that he still looked just a tiny little bit like the son of one of the most well-known people on planet earth.
Jack decided he could wait till tomorrow to let Clark know. For now he grabbed the two beautiful rib eyes wrapped in butcher paper, and he tossed them in the garbage. He had to get moving. For operational security reasons, he and Ysabel had no time for a cookout tonight.
A half-hour after he left Jack Ryan’s rented apartment, Salvatore pulled his scooter into the little driveway next to his apartment on Via Arpino in Municipio V, east of the city center. He locked it to a rack in front of his building, then took the outside stairs quickly to his first-floor flat.
Inside his apartment, he threw his backpack on a chair, then opened his freezer. He pulled out a frosty bottle of grappa and poured himself a double shot in a water glass, and he drank it down while he walked back to his bedroom.