“I am happy, Mom.”
“Really?” She reaches across the table, takes my hand in hers. “Are you truly?”
“Yes,” I say, but it’s after a moment of hesitation, enough for both of us to catch it and understand the importance.
“Despite what you think,” my mother says, “I am proud of you and Tina. I love you both very, very much. But Tina … the direction of her life has already been set. She’s married. She has the boys. She paints when she can. But you, Holly, I see the future wide open for you. I see you doing so many different things, and then … then I open my eyes and I see you are still here, living less than twenty minutes away from me. I want more for you. I want you to live life.”
“I am living life.”
“Are you?”
“I guess we all live life differently.”
“I guess.”
My mother retracts her hand, takes another bite of her slice. I just stare at mine, no longer having any appetite.
“As long as this life is the life you want,” she says, “then I’m happy for you. I can’t say I won’t try to push you again, but if I do please understand why I’m doing it. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
“Yes, Mom, I’m very happy,” I say, and this time I don’t hesitate at all.
Thirty-One
For some reason I expect Nova to be the one who picks me up. Instead, it’s a small man with a shaven head and a pointy nose who introduces himself simply as Philippe. He wears a long brown raincoat and holds an umbrella.
“Please, please”—motioning me toward a gray sedan parked on the edge of the runway—“let us get out of the rain.”
The cargo jet did not land in Paris but at an airstrip located fifteen miles south of the city. The entire area is surrounded by farmland. Cows that haven’t been ushered into barns lie on the ground beneath trees and watch us dully.
Once we load into the sedan, Philippe asks, “How was the flight?”
“Eight hours with no real seat, no toilet, and no service carts—how do you think it was?”
We start driving past farms. Eventually we get on a highway called the N12. Philippe doesn’t play the radio, he doesn’t talk. After eight hours of listening to myself think, the silence becomes much too unnerving.
“So are you a company man or do you work off the books like me?”
Philippe moves his jaw around, like he’s chewing something, before answering. “I’m an operator with the Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion. It’s a—”
“Counterterrorism unit of the French National Police.” I smile at him. “I’m not as stupid as I look.”
“Yes, well, that is what I am officially.”
“And what are you unofficially?”
He gives me a sideways grin. “Why are you in this line of work?”
I think briefly of Nova when I say, “Work is work.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Is that so?”
“You have a fire in your eyes. You have a passion.”
“If you’re trying to get in my pants, you’re going to have to do better than that.”
He holds up his left hand, just long enough for the headlights of an oncoming car to illuminate his silver wedding band. “Married now fifteen years, have a beautiful wife and three children at home.”
“Good for you.”
“Yes,” he says, nodding slowly, his voice suddenly somber. “Yes, well, I do what I do to keep them safe. But it’s never enough. When I work officially I have to deal with the law. But unofficially …”
Staring out my window, watching the quickly passing buildings and lights drenched in rain, I say, “Laws are meant to be broken.”
Philippe goes silent for another minute. He has a thoughtful yet conflicted look on his face. Finally he clears his throat.
“There is a man very well known around Paris. He is a bad man much like Roland Delano was before he was killed. Speaking of which, I’m told we have you to thank for that.”
“I do what I can.”
“Well, the world is better off without him, trust me on that. But now this other man, I fear he plans to take Roland’s place. He already has his hand in drugs, pornography, weapons, and money laundering. We know all of this, but of course we cannot touch him. That’s the law for you. It protects the worst of the criminals.”
We drive for another minute in silence. After we merge onto the A12, I speak.
“What did he do to you?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said I had a fire in my eyes, a passion, that that’s what makes me do this work. It’s the same for you, only when you speak of this man there’s a darkness in your voice.”
“He was responsible for the death of my parents.”
“How?”
Philippe shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What’s his name?”
“Why—do you plan to kill him just as you killed Roland?”
“If I have the time.”
“Let’s stop talking about him. Our worry right now is Alayna Gramont.”
“Who else is here?”
“You mean besides your associate Nova?”
“Yes.”
“Two agents from England, both MI6, and an agent from Russia who’s FSB. Tell me—do you know what is on Roland’s flash drive?”
“No, and to be honest, I don’t care.”
“You should. Because if the flash drive and the code fall into the wrong hands …” He shakes his head. “I don’t even want to imagine the consequences.”
“Let me guess—the end of the world as we know it?”
He glances at me, and in the dark I can see that his face has actually paled. “That would be the very least of our worries.”
Thirty-Two
Our safe house is a two-bedroom flat in a tall and ornate building overlooking the Seine. Apparently it’s one of the places rented out by Philippe’s unit for covert operations such as this.
Nova is the only one waiting inside. He has a Beretta in his hand, and he
