“Not my finest moment.”
“Perhaps not, but from my perspective as your potential employer, it shows me that you are a mission-focused man and that you displayed a powerful loyalty to your country. Am I correct or am I missing something?”
“I think it’s a charitable view of my situation.”
They talked for an hour and as they did, the dining room thinned out. Mickey told him about the security challenges that Andreason Engineering faced and posed question after question about how Marcus might approach various sets of problems.
“Why don’t we continue down in my office,” Mickey said at one point. “I’m going to have our general counsel give you a non-disclosure agreement to sign so I can share with you some specific acts of espionage we’ve had to deal with recently. I want to pick your brains.”
Just then, a young couple entered the dining room, the woman was pushing a toddler in a stroller. Marcus thought the little girl had the most remarkable hair that fell in ringlets around a perfectly round face. Mickey instantly sparked to them and Marcus found himself momentarily fading into the background.
“Jesper, come over here,” Mickey called out. “I want you to meet someone.”
Jesper Andreason was strikingly handsome and Marcus immediately recognized him as a younger, taller version of the chairman. He came over to the table, leaving his wife stranded. A waiter rescued her, showing her to a table where she sat down and discreetly began to breastfeed.
“For goodness’ sake,” Mickey said to his son. “Does she have to do that here?”
“Yes, Dad, she does. Elizabeth is hungry and Elena doesn’t flash her tits.”
“Well, your mother never breastfed in public.”
“I was under the impression I was suckled by wolves.”
“Very funny. I’d like you to meet our new head of security, Marcus Handler. Marcus was, until recently, a card-carrying spook.”
Marcus hadn’t been aware he’d been offered or accepted the job.
“CIA?” the young man asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to call him sir,” Mickey said. “Jesper may be heir apparent, but he’s a long way off from taking the throne. He’s only a senior manager of our missile guidance division and you’re a VP, so he should be calling you sir.”
“Well,” his son said awkwardly, “I’ll be off. I’ve got a late night planned, so my wife came by for lunch.”
“A pleasure meeting you,” Marcus said. “Your little girl is very beautiful.”
“Yes, she is,” the young man agreed. “She’s out of this world.”
*
Armed with a firm offer and a compensation package that exceeded his expectations, Marcus returned to Virginia to sort out his affairs. The first person he called was a realtor who came by to do a valuation and a pitch. Her perkiness and can-do spirit nauseated him, but he warmed to her when she dropped her veil and frowned at some of the problematical areas such as the haze of cigarette smoke, empty bottles of booze crowding the kitchen counters, a sink filled with crusted dishes, dirty clothes on the bedroom floor, and bank statements and estate documents scattered everywhere.
“I know this neighborhood extremely well,” she said. “It’s highly desirable and I think we can get a good price. But we can’t list it until the place has a very thorough clean-out. Frankly, it would show better if it were completely empty and the carpets were cleaned.”
“I’m going to Chicago for a new job,” he said. “Can you handle everything? I’ll take my clothes, some photos, some paperwork. Everything else can go.”
“We don’t operate that way, but I can get you a list of people who can help with furniture sales, cleaning services, and the like.”
He lit a cigarette and asked, “What’s your normal commission?”
“Six percent.”
“Let’s make it ten percent and you take care of everything. I’m out of here on Sunday and I’m never coming back. Deal?”
She cleared her throat and asked for a cigarette. “I don’t ever, ever smoke in a client’s home, but four extra points is making me giddy.”
20
Present day
Roberto Lumaga invaded his dreams and Marcus was not pleased about it.
He tried to shake his heavy head to change the channels inside his brain, but with every movement came a new wave of excruciating pain. And Lumaga was still there. Worse still, he began to talk.
“Marcus? Can you hear me? It’s Roberto.”
It wasn’t a dream, it was the policeman in the flesh, but why was he here and where was here?
“I hear you,” Marcus said, shielding daylight with his right hand. “What’s going on?”
“You’re in the hospital, Marcus. The Santo Spirito Hospital, very near to the Vatican. That’s where you were taken after your accident.”
He tried to sit, but abandoned the effort to pain, this time coming from his left shoulder. “What accident?”
“You don’t remember?”
A nurse came in and demanded that Lumaga move aside. She told the Carabinieri that this was the first time he had become conscious since his admission. She checked his vital signs, then went to fetch a doctor.
“I don’t know if I remember or not,” Marcus said. “I’ve been having dreams.”
“About what?”
“Chasing an ambulance. Shooting someone. Those kind of dreams.”
“They’re not dreams, my friend. They’re memories.”
“The fuck, you say. I shot someone?”
“You shot two men, one in the hospital, one in the street.”
“Dead?”
“Very much so. Both of them. They badly wounded the Carabinieri who was guarding the girls, a good man, I’m told. He’s still unconscious down the hall.”
“I really killed two men?”
“You did.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“You have a friend in high places—me. You’re not even going to be arrested. We’ve done witness statements and looked at the CCTV. We can presume you shot the man in the hospital room in self-defense or in defense of the girls. You clearly shot the ambulance driver in self-defense. Another man who was in the passenger seat came around and hit you in the
