“I know.”
“I know you know.”
A moment, and “I’m very sorry,” he said.
“About what?”
“I’m very sorry that I’m obliged to live half a world away from you,” he said.
His words had the effect of knocking the legs out from under her.
She fumbled for the words of recovery but had none.
Peter was about to say something further, but then didn’t. It was almost as if for the first time, he was ill at ease with something-a feeling, a thought, an emotion, maybe. In any case, he gave it no voice. Instead, he turned and gave her a quick final hug. Then he turned away quickly and went to the first class check-in line for Iberia. His trip was to be a long one. Iberia to New York, then China Air to Hong Kong, and a connecting flight to Beijing. It would be twenty-seven hours before he set foot on his home soil. And who knew when or to what he would next be assigned?
She watched him all the way through the passport check, the ticketing, the checking of two sizeable bags. She had the wistful notion that someone she liked very much was stepping out of her life. She would miss him.
A quick reality check reminded her that he was a hired agent and assassin of a state that wasn’t always on the best terms with her own. And then a third instinct clicked in, that Peter Chang was a man who had done what he had to do, done it with honor, and done it in a way that she could respect.
In that way, he had been a soldier. A soldier and a very good one, one in which she had also fought with in the trenches. She respected soldiers.
As for his country, his employer, she didn’t care much for their system and their shortcomings, and vastly preferred her own. But his system worked for him, much the way hers worked for her. So who was she, she wondered, to pass judgment? At this stage of her life, he had been exactly what she had needed, in ways large and small.
She had more than the notion of liking him. She did like him, and it would take some time to adapt to the new reality of daily life without him.
She stood near the exit gate, not wanting to pull herself away. Her eyes were on him. There were police all over the place. She wondered, Were the police looking for Peter?
Suddenly, he turned. He scanned the terminal and found her. He said something to the security people. They nodded. He turned and jogged briskly in her direction.
Now what? Passport trouble? Was he going to make a run for it? He came to her.
“Sorry, I meant to mention something,” he said. “I left the box for your bracelet at the bank. In the safety deposit box in the vault. I like to keep things tidy. Can you deal with that for me when you stash the pistol?”
“Of course.”
“You can dip into some of the money too, if you want. I did. No one will care. Expenses, you know. Don’t be greedy, but I know you won’t.”
He jogged back to the line, nodded with a smile to the security people and proceeded. Her eyes were still on him when he took his suitcases to be X-rayed, and put them through the giant scanners. The security people nodded and waved him along.
He turned toward the place where Alex stood from a distance of maybe a hundred feet. Somehow he knew she hadn’t left, and somehow his eyes found hers immediately, even across the crowded entrance lobby of the bustling airport. Across many travelers, a multitude of cultures, across more languages than anyone in the room could count. This was how they had met and how they would separate.
He gave her that big smile again, raised a hand and waved.
She raised hers in response but without much enthusiasm. Then he turned and was gone through the security gates where they examined his shoes, his belt, and made him stand for an electronic, and then a manual, frisk. An absurd and amusing notion struck her. If these security people only know who they were frisking, she thought to herself. Well, it happened all the time.
She caught one more glimpse of him. Then he was gone.
Completely.
She walked out of the gates to the departures lounge and onto the sidewalk, lost in many thoughts…
She went back to the car and sat for several minutes. The degree to which she was rattled surprised even her. Time spiraled a little. So much had happened in so short a time. It seemed as if it had been only a few seconds ago that she had been emerging from the warm surf in Barcelona and answering the phone. Then she had been in Madrid, then Switzerland being undressed and re-dressed by Federov, then Rome, then back to the Spanish capital where she felt as if she had lost five years of her life pinned in a filthy tunnel under the streets-where she might have lost her life completely if Peter and his hit team hadn’t found her.
She shuddered. What kind of bizarre angel had been her guardian this time? If she believed in God at all, in what ways did He work? Would human beings, would she, ever understand anything?
She searched the geometry of events. In Kiev, she had lost a man who loved her, and lost a piece of jewelry. Here she had gained a piece of jewelry and found-
She examined the gold bangle on her wrist.
And then a realization hit her. It more than hit her. It jolted her.
She glanced at her watch. It was past 2:00 p.m. She turned the key in her ignition and jerked the car into reverse. She had to hurry. There was still some wrapping up to do, and she just had time today.
SEVENTY-THREE
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 21, AFTERNOON
She drove faster than she should have getting back into Madrid. The traffic was thick but allowed her to move around quickly. Her first stop was the rental car company. Quickly scanning the car to check for any of her own property, she found the black box in the trunk-the stealth box that would beat bank security-that Peter had mentioned.
She placed it in a black tote bag and took it with her. She dropped off the paperwork and the car keys, without going to the desk. So much the better, she mused. She had never been listed as an insured driver, so just as soon skip the desk. Nothing good could happen there.
She was in the old city. She knew the neighborhood well enough to know that the branch of El Banco de Santander where Peter kept his stash was a pleasant ten-minute walk away. She had on a good pair of walking shoes and a comfortable skirt. She pushed her sunglasses in place and hoofed the few blocks to the bank.
Twenty minutes later, she sat in the small private room that she had visited once in her life. A bank security man wearing white gloves delivered the safety deposit box to her. This was her first trip to the box alone, but obviously Peter, as he had casually said a few days earlier, had returned on the afternoon of the Connelly murder.
He had returned and made some adjustments.
“Muchas gracias,” she said to the bank guard.
“Da nada, Señorita,” he said with a slight bow. Spanish bank employees tended to elevate courtesy to an art form.
When the clerk was gone, Alex opened the safety deposit box. Everything was exactly as she had last seen it, with the exception of the cash, which Peter had drawn on. Well, those Madrid evenings, she noted with a wry smile, didn’t come cheap.
She lifted the gift box out, the one with the wrapping paper from the Swiss jeweler, and set it aside. It was slightly heavier, and she could see that Peter had opened it and rewrapped it. Typical male fingers, good at larger, more complicated tasks, not so good with the small stuff.
She smiled to herself at the thought.
She looked at the two stacks of money, the dollars and the euros. About twenty-five thousand dollars in US currency, depending on how much the people in the foreign exchange section upstairs were finagling with the daily rate.
She fingered the money and shook her head. She didn’t need any and didn’t want it. Her employer paid her for an honest day’s work and got it from her. She didn’t need to drink from a pool of poisoned water.