He still had the option to take her now, by himself. Under any pretense or none at all, he could simply knock at her door and wait until she opened it. Why would she suspect anything? She'd been living here, apparently unmolested, for ten months now, and her life must have settled into some kind of a routine.
But he would be wise not to take her too lightly. She'd had years of experience in the terrorist underground of Algeria, and in that time had learned who could say how many tricks to elude capture or incapacitate authorities when capture was a synonym for death. And truth be told, though it galled him, he was not sufficiently prepared for an arrest. Even if she had no weapon at her disposal, he had no handcuffs, and no way to restrain her except at the point of a gun, which might turn out to be a limited option if he wasn't prepared to shoot her out of hand.
He had to get to a phone. He thought it unlikely that having just returned home, she would leave again, especially in the rain. He wondered if one of the cars in the lot was hers. Maybe the apartment belonged to a friend and she was visiting, not living there.
He had to move. He could lose her if he waited until every possible contingency had been covered.
But she was right here! He stood under the tree, torn by indecision, mesmerized by the light in her window. Had a shadow just moved in the room? He moved a few steps to his left to get a better view. The rain fell in slow, steady vertical drops. A little harder now in front of him, suddenly audible above him in the leaves of his sheltering tree.
He had to move.
The familiar snick semiautomatic's round being chambered sounded very close to his ear. The woman's voice from behind him was quiet and assured, with no trace of panic or even unusual concern. "I have a gun pointed at the back of your head. Don't turn around. Don't make any sudden movements. Keep your hands out in front of you where I can see them. The only reason you're still alive is that I need to know who you're with." "San Francisco police."
"Walk toward the apartment house, second door from the left."
"Are you going to shoot me?" "If you don't walk, yes."
Glitsky moved forward, out into the rain. He heard her footsteps now behind him and marveled that she could have come up behind him so quickly without a sound or a warning.
"Stop," she said when he reached the door. "Turn the knob and kick the door all the way so it swings open." Following her instructions to the letter, Glitsky stood in the threshold. "Now walk into the middle of the room and link your hands on the top of your head."
He did as he was told, heard her come in behind him and close the door. "Now turn around." The orders continued, specific and organized. "Take your right hand only-slowly, very slowly-and unzip your jacket all the way. Thank you. Get it off, easy, slowly, and drop it to the floor behind you. Step away from it. Now!"
She held the gun steadily in one hand. Glitsky noted how comfortable she looked with it and, at the same time, how nearly unrecognizable she'd made herself. The haircut was not so much short as chopped unevenly. With no lipstick or other facial makeup, and with the silver post through her bleached white eyebrows, she had adopted the look of an all but marginal figure, anonymous. By looks alone, she was a kind of lost-looking older and pathetic waif, a spare-change artist from whom people would naturally tend to avert their eyes.
But she never took her eyes from him. "Hold your left arm straight out like I'm doing. Okay, now with your right, thumb and first finger only, lift the gun out of the holster and put it on the floor. Stand." She raised her own gun to his chest and Glitsky thought she was going to execute him. But she extended her arm instead and said, "Back up. More."
The backs of Glitsky's knees hit the couch and he heavily, awkwardly, went down to a sit on the piece of furniture. She got to his gun, picked it up, put it into the pocket of her overalls. "Pull both of your pant legs up to your knees. All right, you can let them back down. Now hands back on your head. Link them." Neither eyes nor gun ever leaving him, she went to the open kitchen area, six feet away, and pulled a metal chair over onto the rug in the center of the room. She sat on it, facing him. "What's your name?"
"Abe Glitsky."
"You're with the San Francisco police?" "Yes, I am."
"You need training in how to follow people. You're no good at it."
"I'll keep it in mind next time," he said.
But she didn't follow up on that, a conversation line that he thought might humanize him, which in turn could perhaps give her pause as she was deciding whether or not to kill him. Although to protect her identity and her family, he knew that she would have to.
But she simply said, "It's about Paul, then. "
"And Dorris." Glitsky would keep her talking if he could, even if he had to bait her. "You remember Dorris?"
She moved her shoulders in a kind of shrug. "Dorris had to be. In the world, there are millions of Dorrises who have uses and then become expendable. I wish it hadn't been necessary." Almost as an afterthought, she added, "I thought I was done with killing. But no one will ever miss her. She didn't matter."
"And what about Paul?"
"We won't talk about Paul. In fact, there is nothing more to say." Her eyes went to the gun in her hand.
"But there is." He was staring at the gun's barrel. If it moved, he would try to jump her, and probably die trying. But maybe they weren't quite to that point yet. "I don't understand what happened," he said. "You had a life together. You were going to get married."
Shaking her head as though to ward off the thought, she snapped out the words. "I loved him." Then, matter-of-fact. "I loved him."
"But you killed him?"
"I killed him. That's what I do. I betray people and then kill them. Or someone else does."
Glitsky risked unlinking his hands, lowering them slowly onto his lap. "Why?"
"Because I have no choice. He gave me no choice. I begged him please."
"Please what?"
"Please not to let them… how do you say? It's not exactly the right word. Investigate him." "For what?" "For the nomination."
Glitsky's every nerve pulsed with urgency. He knew that if he was to have a chance at life, he would have a split second to recognize his moment and seize it. But part of him settled to a stillness with this information. "You mean the cabinet post?"
"With the government, yes."
"And they needed a background check?"
"The FBI, yes. But don't you see? He didn't need it, the post. He had position and power and money and love. He didn't need it. I begged him not to let them even start."
"Because once they started on him, they'd get to you."
She nodded. "They would have to. I was his fiancee, soon his wife. They would have to background me, too."
"You could have left him. Wouldn't that have been better?"
"Of course, if it would have been possible. You think I would not have done that? But it wouldn't have done any good. I was too close to Paul. They would still have needed to check me."
"But the FBI already knew about you. You were in witness protection."
"Yes? So? The people checking me and Paul were a different department." She hacked in disgust. "They could do nothing. I asked them. They would not. They said they could contain it."
"Did you try to tell them it was life and death?"
"Ha! Of course. The CIA in Algeria knew that, but the FBI didn't believe it, or didn't care. I didn't matter. It's government, don't you understand? Where-how do you say?-the left doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and doesn't wash the other even if they could. And the FBI doesn't answer to the CIA."
"So they would have found out who you were and gone public with it?"
"That's what they do. Not on purpose, certainly. Very discreetly, of course. Need to know, high security. Like every junior congressman and tabloid journalist in Washington. And their wives. And their whores. And anyone who would trade the information for something they wanted."