their faces as they realized that they were dying. Each of them, even the very bad ones, had died the same way: surprised. That sort of a profession tended to be hard on a relationship, any relationship.
After graduating from Kansas State University with masters degrees in literature (his specialty had been Voltaire) and languages, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency as a translator and analyst. But the Cold War was in high gear and the Company needed talent because a lot of its agents were getting burned. They saw something in McGarvey that even he didn’t know existed. His instinct for survival and self-preservation was a hundred times stronger than in the very best field agents. Combined with his physique, his facility for languages, his intelligence, and the results of a battery of psychological tests which showed him to be extremely pragmatic and under the correct circumstances even cold, he’d been offered the job as a field agent. But a very special agent. His training and purpose so black that only a handful of men in the agency and on the Hill knew anything about him.
Bad times, he thought now, studying Jacqueline’s pretty face. She was forty, and from Nice, and was aging as only the Mediterraneans did. Like Sophia Loren she would become even more beautiful as she got older.
“Such deep, dramatic thoughts for such a lovely Saturday,” she said, reaching across the table for his hand.
He raised hers and kissed it, tenderly and with a little sadness, because when this one was gone he knew he would miss her. “It’s my day to feel a little lugubrious. Sometimes spring in this city does that.”
“Hemingway,” Jacqueline said. “I thought you were a fan of Voltaire.”
He managed a slight smile. He’d never told her that, which meant her SDECE briefing had been very complete. It was one of the little inconsistencies he’d spotted from the beginning.
In the end the Company had sent him to Santiago to kill a general who’d massacred hundreds of people in and around the capital. But the orders had been changed in mid-stream without his knowledge, and after the kill McGarvey was out.
He’d run to Switzerland where for a few years he’d made a life for himself, operating a rare-book store in Lausanne. There, like here, the secret service worried about his presence and had sent a woman to his bed to keep tabs on him, though how they’d found out he once worked for the CIA was a mystery. When the CIA called him out of retirement for a particularly bad assignment they couldn’t handle, he’d left her. The call to arms had been stronger than his love for her.
Greece, Paris, even back to the States for awhile, the CIA kept coming for him, and he kept losing the women in his life, and kept running from his demons. And now he was getting the odd, twitchy feeling between his shoulder blades that it was about to happen again. Lately he’d been thinking about returning to New York to see the only woman he’d ever loved unreservedly, and the only one who’d loved him back the same way. His daughter Elizabeth, now twenty-three and working as a translator and analyst for the United Nations. He smiled, thinking about her.
“That’s better,” Jacqueline said.
“I’ll try to smile more often if it has that effect on you,” McGarvey said.
“That too,” she said. “But I meant here comes our lunch and I’m starved.”
“You’re not a cheap date.”
She laughed. “You can afford it. Besides, there’s something I haven’t told you about myself.”
He waited, an indulgent smile on his lips.
The waiter served their filet of sole and tournedos of beef plat du your expertly, then refilled their wine glasses.
“What’s that?” McGarvey asked.
“Whenever I have a good meal like this I get homey as hell. I’ll show you when we get home.”
The waiter nearly dropped the wine bottle. “Excusez moi,” he muttered, and he left.
“That wasn’t very fair,” McGarvey said.
“Paris waiters are all shits. Nobody dislikes them worse than a Parisian. Maybe next time he won’t eavesdrop.” “I think you ‘re becoming a crusty bastard from being around me so much.”
“Anatomically impossible,” she said airily as she broke off a piece of bread and buttered it. “Crusty bitch, not bastard.”
McGarvey raised his wine glass to her. “Salut,” he said.
She raised her glass. “Salut, man cher.”
After lunch they took the elevator to the observation deck a thousand feet above the Seine, and looked out across the city. From here they could see people strolling through the park, and along the river. It was the most famous view of Paris from the city’s most famous monument, and McGarvey felt at home here as he always had.
“When are you going to let me read your book?” she asked. McGarvey was a hundred pages into a personal look into the life of the writer, philosopher Francois — Marie Arouet, whose pen name was Voltaire. His working title was The Voltaire I Knew, but the SDECE almost certainly believed that he was writing his memoirs, a book that no one wanted written. He wrote longhand, and kept the manuscript and most of his notes under lock and key. So far his failsafes had not been tampered with.
“When I’m finished with it,” he said. “How about an after lunch drink at Lipps?”
“You are a Hemingway fan,” she laughed. “Let’s walk along the river first. Then afterward we’re going home.”
“Sounds good,” McGarvey said, and she turned to go, but he stopped her. “Are you happy, Jacqueline?” A startled look crossed her face. “That’s an odd question.”
“Are you?” McGarvey studied her eyes.
It took her a moment to answer, but she nodded. “Yes, I am.”
She was telling the truth, he decided.
They took the elevator back to street level, and headed past the sidewalk vendors and jugglers to the busy Quai Branly where they could cross to the river. Out of habit he scanned the quay; the pedestrians, the traffic, the taxis lines up at the cab ranks and the cars parked at the curb. His gaze slipped past a dark blue Citroen parked behind a yellow Renault, a man seated behind the wheel, and then came back. His stomach tightened, but he did not vary his pace, nor change his expression in the slightest. Jacqueline, holding his arm, detected nothing.
He turned left toward the taxis, and Jacqueline looked up at him.
“Aren’t we crossing here?” she asked.
“I want you to take a cab back to my apartment. There’s an errand I have to run.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you,” she said.
“Don‘1 be so snoopy, or you’ll spoil my surprise.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want you to wait for me at home. I won’t be long, and when I get back you’ll know what I meant.”
“Why can’t I wait here?”
“Because I don’t want you to.”
“Are you a macho pig?”
He laughed. “Not so long ago someone else called me that same thing. But right now you can either wait for me at my apartment, or go back to your own place and stay there. I have something to do.”
She was torn by indecision, he could see it in her eyes. But finally she nodded. “Don’t be long.”
“Come on, I’ll get you a cab.”
“I can manage,” she said, pulling away from him. She searched his face for a clue, then walked over to a cab, climbed in the back, and the taxi headed away. As it passed she looked straight ahead.
McGarvey waited until the cab was out of sight, then went back to the tower, where he bought another ticket for the fourth floor.
Upstairs, he leaned against the rail in front of the windows and lit a cigarette. The observation deck was busy. A few minutes later the man from the Citroen joined him.
“She is a very pretty woman,” he said.
McGarvey focused on the man’s reflection in. the glass. “Hello, Viktor Pavlovich. Yes, she is.”
“French secret service?” Yemlin asked.
“Probably.”
“I figured that was why you sent her away when you spotted me. She’ll wonder why.”
