base of operations, and other than working out and acting as if he was employed by an American software importer, he was left with time to explore and observe. In between assignments he would return to the apartment in Montparnasse and recharge by attempting to live life like a normal person, which was no easy thing when you were constantly looking over your shoulder. Rapp had been born with a great sense of awareness, but to survive in his line of work, he knew he had to take that awareness to another level. He needed to be keenly attuned to his environment at all times.
The easiest way for him to do this was to practice on his runs and stay very alert while eating most of his meals at nearby cafes. There was no better way to watch and observe people than sitting at a cafe with a cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other, or depending on the time of day, maybe a glass of wine and a cigarette. He was always on the lookout for a face that he had seen one too many times—someone new to the neighborhood who might have more than a passing interest in his comings and goings. He spent a great deal of his time working out. He ran nearly every day, his routes always varied, but as things worked in Paris he usually ended up at the river where he didn’t have to contend with traffic and stoplights.
Rapp often cut through the Latin Quarter, home to some of France’s greatest institutions of higher learning, such as the Sorbonne and the College de France. The narrow streets of the quarter were lined with cafes and bookstores that catered to the literary elite of France—poets, writers, theorists, and philosophers who were treated with a respect that no other city could match. These demigods of Parisian culture had certain needs that the public in general accepted. In order to tap into their genius and break their earthly bonds, many of them needed the assistance of certain hallucinogenic drugs. Rapp wasn’t interested in these people. They were too old and too wise for what he had in mind. The quarter was also populated by thousands of students, and a subset who wanted drugs for no other reason than to delay their passage into adulthood. Drugs had a powerful effect on certain people. They created dependence and were expensive. Over the years, this harsh paradox had driven countless souls to sell their bodies for sex and commit crimes as small as theft and as heinous as murder to feed their addiction. The longer the time between fixes, the more quickly logic and rational thought fell to the wayside.
Rapp was looking for just such a desperate soul as he emerged from the St. Michel Metro stop wearing a pair of black Persol sunglasses and a three-quarter-length black trench coat with the collar flipped up and his chin down.
“Why won’t you tell me your plan?” Greta asked.
It was a bright afternoon and the sidewalk was heavy with a blend of Parisians and tourists. The North Americans were easily identified by their girth, their bulky clothes, their various packs, fanny, back, or otherwise, and cameras dangling from their wrists. The Asians traveled in tight packs, were smaller, and had nicer cameras that were slung around their necks. The Russians and other Eastern Europeans added another interesting mix. The women usually wore too much makeup, their hair was bleached and dried at the ends, with dark roots, and their men wore lots of jewelry and track suits, or at least track jackets and oversized sunglasses as if they were Elvis impersonators. The Brits, Germans, and other Europeans were a little more difficult to pick out, but Rapp could still tell the difference.
He placed a hand on Greta’s waist. With her good looks and blond hair, she stood out like a beacon. “I told you I have a thing for brunettes.”
“A weird sex fetish, no doubt.”
“Something like that.”
Greta stuck out her tongue and made a sour face.
“If you’re going to make faces like that we could skip the wig and put you in a pair of pigtails.”
She smacked him in the chest with the palm of her hand and tried to pull away.
Rapp held her tight. “I already explained, if you want to come with me tonight we need to put you in a wig.”
“No one knows who I am.”
They’d already been over all of this back at the hotel. “Probably not, although Stan most certainly knows you and he’s about as alert as they come.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t just go to him. He is a good man. He will hear you out.”
“And then he will lock me up and put me through the wringer for a month.”
“The wringer?” Greta asked with a confused frown.
“He’ll take away my watch and all my clothes and put me in a very dark cold room and fuck with my mind for as long as it takes for him to make sure I’m telling the truth.”
“I don’t believe it. I’ve known him since I was a little girl.”
“There’s another side to Stan. A very dark side.” He could tell she wasn’t buying it. “Greta, you know what we do for a living.”
“You’re spies.”
She succeeded in pushing away this time. “You’re telling me that’s who you are?”
“No,” Rapp moaned. “I’m telling you that’s who Stan is . . . and maybe that’s who I’ll be someday, but I sure as hell don’t plan on it.”
“But you are a good liar?”
“Not like Stan Hurley, but when I’m on assignment I do what it takes to get the job done.”
“And when it comes to me?”
Rapp placed both hands on her shoulders. “If I didn’t care about you I wouldn’t have bothered to call. I would have let you go to Brussels and you would have been a nervous wreck when I didn’t show. Instead, I called you. You came to Paris and this morning I told you things that could get me killed and you still doubt me. Greta, you can’t discuss any of this with your grandfather or anyone else. I like your grandfather. I know what he did during World War II and then after when the Russians started throwing their weight around. If he found out that I had
