“I thought you were French?”
“When in Rome,” Gaspard said. “Or Lisbon…”
Gaspard’s bodyguards perked up. Farrin, especially, grew apoplectic about anything or anyone who got between him and his boss, but Gaspard waved them away. He’d warned them as soon as he’d seen the woman — targeted her, really — that he wanted space, ordering them to keep watch from a comfortable distance of at least twenty meters away. Having bodyguards showed everyone he was rich. Bodyguards who treated him as if he might shatter at any moment only made him look frightened, weak. It was a delicate balance.
Lucile was close enough to smell now, earthy, Gaspard thought, like warm rain.
“You are visiting Portugal?” Gaspard said.
“Small talk?” Lucile said. “I thought we were dispensing with such things.”
“Touché,” Gaspard said.
“Are you well and truly rich?”
The Frenchman smiled. “More money than you could possibly imagine.”
“Oh.” Lucile scrunched her freckled nose. “When it comes to money, I can imagine quite a lot. Do you really want oil on your back?”
“I do indeed,” Gaspard said.
“And you will buy me dinner?”
“Indeed.”
She leaned toward her bag. “I have some oil here—”
Gaspard grabbed her by the toes — tan things, painted pink — and thought that his reflexes were still very good. “You must use my oil,” he said. Farrin marched over an instant later, shoving a plastic bottle of suntan oil at the woman. It was greasy from recent use.
“Thank you,” Gaspard said to Farrin. “Now go away.” He released the woman’s foot and let his face fall forward, toward the towel. He turned slightly toward Lucile, words muffled. “I know it may be difficult for you to comprehend, but it is possible to kill someone with poisoned suntan oil.” He raised wildly overgrown eyebrows up and down. “The process will be easier if you straddle me.”
“Are you being serious?” Lucile knelt beside him. “Poisoned suntan oil?”
He wallowed deeper into the sand, head on his hands again, squinting into the sun. “There are people who do not like me very much.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” the young woman said. She threw her leg across his rump, climbing aboard to pour a line of oil onto the leathery folds below Hugo Gaspard’s hairy shoulder blades.
The book lay in the sand beside her right knee — within immediate reach.
5
Domingo “Ding” Chavez stood on the edge of the limestone cliff above the eastern end of the Praia de Benagil, eyes fixed at the small screen on the controller in Bartosz “Midas” Jankowski’s callused hands.
“She saw it,” Chavez said, gritting his teeth.
“Relax, boss,” Jankowski said. “How about you exhibit a little faith?”
“I’m telling you, she saw it.”
“That’s a big nope,” Jankowski said, popping the p for emphasis. “I’m keeping the bird in the sun. She didn’t see anything but glare.” Working the bird — a pocket-size unmanned aerial vehicle called a Snipe Nano — the retired Delta colonel swung his legs easily, as if he were sitting on a boat dock and not perched on the edge of a sheer seventy-foot drop. He was tied in, but that little factoid didn’t do much for Chavez’s churning stomach.
“You better be right,” Chavez said. “The last thing we need is for some beach bunny to tip off the target that we have an eye in the sky.”
Chavez had let his hair grow out over his ears, as he often did on ops where he didn’t want to look like the former Army NCO that he was. Even absent the military haircut, it was obvious to anyone with experience downrange that Chavez had been around the combat block. That wasn’t exactly rare in this day and age. There were enough war-fighters coming home who’d seen the elephant that he could at least blend in at the mall.
Domingo Chavez was in that height range that tall people called short and short people called tall. Good genes and a lifetime of PT gave him an athletic build, even in his late forties — an age his son reminded him was “too old to die tragically young.” JP was a good kid, but had he known the dangers his father faced “for reals, yo” on a daily basis, he wouldn’t have been such a smartass.
Chavez and Midas had counted four bodyguards, three on the beach plus the guy guarding the vehicles — a gray Mercedes that served as Gaspard’s limo and a dark Peugeot they apparently used as a follow car.
The rest of Ding’s team was doing some bouldering this morning while they watched. Hiding in plain sight was the only way to operate in these small villages where there was a hundred percent chance that you’d run into your target a dozen times a day. Scrambling around the rocks allowed Chavez and his team to blend in, to be noticed for something other than what they actually were — operatives from The Campus. The off-the-books intelligence organization worked under the guise of the financial arbitrage firm Hendley Associates, across the Potomac from D.C.
Free climbing over the ocean was fairly safe — so long as you knew what you were doing. Chavez did not, so he spent his time at the top, looking down, happy to keep his feet planted on the level. Hands and fingers were made for pressing triggers and slapping the shit out of bad guys — not hanging on to minuscule rock nipples on the face of some cliff. Still, he’d dressed to look the part — nylon running shorts, a tank top, Scarpa approach shoes with sticky soles, and a harness for a small bag of climbing chalk. Midas was dressed much the same, while Jack Ryan, Jr., worked his way up the rock face, shirtless, wearing skintight Lycra climbing shorts and pointy La Sportiva climbing shoes that made him look like some kind of ballet dancer. Chavez was just old enough that he would have looked like the creepy old dude in bicycle shorts had he tried for the same getup. Lisanne Robertson climbed with Jack, also wearing Lycra shorts — which she wore much better than Ryan did — and a black sports bra.
Not officially a Campus operative, the former Marine and police officer was the transportation coordinator and in-flight attendant for the Campus/Hendley Associates Gulfstream. Because she often pulled security when the plane set down in hostile situations, John Clark, director of operations — and Ding’s father-in-law — folded her into tactical training sessions and range time. She had zero experience running surveillance detection or tailing a target, but she was as savvy as Chavez had ever seen. She was also an accomplished climber, often hitting the rock gym in Bethesda after an evening team PT workout that left Chavez looking for the nearest couch and a cold beer.
Lisanne’s voice came over the net, as if she knew Ding was pondering her climbing skill. “I don’t think either of them saw it,” she said.
“Told you so,” Midas said, without looking up from the palm-size controller. “I still have eyes on our arms-dealing asshole — and the girl is still clueless. You gotta learn to trust me, boss.”
Lucile Fournier used her left hand to distribute the oil, keeping her right hand dry. Clasping with her thighs, she leaned forward, digging into the fleshy back with her forearms and elbows now, paying particular attention to the base of the disgustingly flabby neck — searching for just the right spot. Gaspard’s hair was well groomed but longish, the dark curls reaching below his collar, had he been wearing a shirt. Good. That would help to hide what she had in mind.
He moaned under her rough ministrations, his alligatored skin shining bronze in the sun.
Plouc, Fournier thought. Such a slob. Gaspard might have money, but he would never have class. But she laughed as though she were oh-so-lucky to be riding on this fat pig. She shot a quick backward glance under the crook of her arm, checking the location of the three bodyguards. As she suspected, they were behind her, slumping on the gunwales of a couple of fishing skiffs that were pulled up on the sand, more than twenty meters away. The black bottoms of her swimsuit had a small rip over her left cheek, and she was certain that all three men, including the more astute Farrin, were completely mesmerized by the flexing muscles of her toned derriere as the rip opened and closed and opened again in concert with her movements.