Lorenzo nodded, frowned and stared at the wall over their table, all at the same time.
“By the way, after we left the house, we were shot at, chased into the sewers and ambushed, so it’s been a long day. Let’s skip the formalities.”
“You trust her.” The flat intonation wasn’t a question. It was more like an accusation.
“I do,” Wulf said.
For Theresa, those two quietly spoken words rekindled the confidence that the older man’s disapproval had begun to squelch.
“So be it.” Lorenzo pulled reading glasses from a pocket inside his suit and laid several folded pieces of paper on the table. “The information you requested. Most of the numbers you gave me were easily traced, but for one I had to seek assistance from your brother.” His glance cut to Theresa. “At the time I was not aware...” He appeared to lack a word to describe her.
Too bad. She had a couple for him. She dredged up the expression she reserved for preteen smokers loitering at convenience stores.
Lorenzo adjusted his cuffs, as if to indicate, Your glare is a mere speck of dust, before he continued. “All the telephone numbers, less one, are mobiles. The Italian ones are disposables activated in Rome within the past forty-eight hours and purchased with cash. Two are American satellite phones that appear to be owned by a business.” His salt-and-pepper eyebrows raised to match the arches of an aqueduct lithograph on the wall. “Black and Swan.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised.” Wulf remained impassive. “And the landline?”
The dapper man harrumphed into his fist before he continued. “Your brother traced it through Polish number forwards and two Caribbean exchanges. He was not amused.”
“Is he ever?”
Theresa needed to hook a thumb under her bra strap and yank it into place, but the way the older man twiddled with his glasses, as if something as innocuous as a telephone number could disturb his world-class equilibrium, made her stifle the impulse.
“This number rings in an office in Langley, Virginia.”
Langley? She ought to know why that sounded familiar, but her mind blanked.
“Your brother requests that you cease and desist activities that intersect with the American CIA. I transcribed his quote verbatim. Let me find it.” He shuffled his papers. “Ah, yes. ‘Tell the puny milk-sucking idiot not to involve me, my resources or you—’ I believe he meant me, ‘—in this business again.’”
Wulf chuckled. “Tell my corporate-fat-licking big brother I salute his insult and would cheerfully exchange more over ale, if I weren’t busy earning an honorable living.”
“Of course.” Lorenzo cleared his throat and stood. “Will that be all, sir?”
“The man in the car.” Theresa’s voice cracked, but she had to know before he walked away. “What did you do with him?”
Lorenzo looked startled that the wordless bump would speak. “He is locked in the wine cellar.”
Laughing, Wulf tilted on his chair. “Hope you removed Ivar’s cases of Château Pétrus.”
“Sir, I am not a puny milk-sucking idiot.”
In the silence after Lorenzo’s departure, Theresa looked at the congealed chunks of gravy on her plate and realized her appetite had deserted her. Was the CIA on their side or not? What should they do? She still had her passport in her purse, but where could she go?
Again, Wulf read her mind. “We’ll take the rear exit.”
Because the restaurant had been dug out of the hillside, his plan made as much sense as dropping into the sewer, but she didn’t have a better one. She followed him through a stainless-steel door and an industrial-plastic curtain.
“A refrigerator!” Her feet slid on the metal floor.
“Relax.” His advice left a visible cloud in the freezing air.
She tried to ignore the red-and-white beef haunch he shouldered aside while he twisted an empty meat hook and immediately straight-armed a wall panel. It pivoted to reveal their path. Another. Damn. Tunnel. Every cell of her being balked. “Wasn’t the sewer enough?”
“I promise there’s a safe room and a bathtub at the end.” He handed her a flashlight from a niche. “I delivered on dinner, didn’t I?”
True, he had; more importantly, she wasn’t ready to be left behind.
As they walked down a slight incline, pieces of something bigger and more slippery than gravel crunched under her feet. Although the tunnel smelled old, like Great Aunt Mary’s living room, it was dry, which boded well for the room at the other end. She pictured cold beige tile and government-issue furniture, but it would be a secure space to clean up and rest.
Ninety percent of her believed Wulf could deliver hot water underground in an ancient landfill. The smarter ten percent focused on the key component of bathing: getting naked. Before she could decide which part to listen to, he stopped at a wooden door hung between massive beams and typed a numeric code on a keypad. A bolt snicked open. With the flick of a switch, he illuminated a large room. “Welcome to my parlor.”
“Isn’t that what the spider said to the—oh.” This wasn’t a sterile dormitory for American agents. As he beckoned her into a Renaissance fantasia, she understood why the fly had fallen for the fatal lure. A king-size four-poster anchored the right-hand wall, plum-colored velvet curtains trimmed in gold fringe matched tasseled pillows piled against the headboard and jewel-tone fabrics and polished wood filled the large room. The scene was the antithesis of the bland austerity she’d expected, and a manic need to giggle with relief expanded her lungs.
A few hours ago they’d been fighting to stay alive, and now...those were gold tassels.
Inappropriate reactions were natural after a release of tension, but she suspected that if she started to laugh, she wouldn’t stop, so she looked away from the bed to the tapestries and gilt-framed landscapes that covered the walls. Above an empty pool in the floor, stacked semicircles of exposed pottery had been smoothed into undulating ochre waves.
Wulf turned knobs to make water cascade from a faucet shaped like a dolphin’s head. “It takes time to fill deep enough for bathing.”
The massive bath couldn’t distract her from the bed. She knew exactly how far behind her it lurked.
As he shrugged out of his jacket and shoulder holster, Wulf stared at her face. One by one he undid the buttons of his ruined shirt. He intended to strip. In front of her.
“Who are you?” Grime glued her clothes to her back as she tried, and failed, to ignore the water thundering behind him. The steaming hot and clean water.
“You know who I am.” He sat to unlace his boots. “Wulf Wardsen, staff sergeant, United States Army.” He reached under his pant legs to unclip his knife sheath and the contraption that had once held a flashlight.
“How gullible do you think I am? You’re no more an E-6 than I’m a Swedish supermodel.” Even with his head lower than hers and his body still in the chair, she couldn’t feel at ease, so she put another chair between them. “Yesterday you said you lie to everyone. Right now that’s all I believe.”
“I am what I do.” He offered her a neutral expression, neither threatening nor revealing.
“The fancy motorcycle, the dinners, that huge house.” She waved her hand at his opulent cave, wanting to prod until he reacted. “And this place. Where’d you get the money?”
“My brother’s an independent investor.” To unbuckle his belt, he stood. “He handles my finances too.”
Dinner soured in her stomach. She’d lived her whole life trying to distance herself from “independent investors” like her stepfather and his cronies. She’d tried to live by the ethics of her biological father, but one smoking-hot kiss and she wasn’t so different from her mother. “I refuse to have anything to do with a criminal.”