“So you’re just going to stand by and watch it happen, with your arms folded, shaking your head at the shame of it all, trying to snatch the money out of Harry’s hands before he stops breathing?”
“He could come to us for help, Mara. Did you ever think of that?”
“He did.”
“No, he didn’t. He came to us and threatened us.”
“You don’t buckle to threats.”
“No, we can’t.”
“But you’ll ‘help’ him. If he comes in… with the money… you’ll cut a deal.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
She looked at him. “I’ll bet it’ll be a sweet deal, too.”
Howard didn’t respond.
“What if…” She stopped.
Howard tilted his head, waiting.
Mara turned away from him and faced the lake. Howard hesitated and then walked over and stood close to her. In front of them the morning was rising against the Alps. Below, the waterfront was beginning to come alive. An early sailor moved out from the harbor, well before the morning breeze, his boat chugging slowly under its own power toward the open lake. No doubt there was a romantic at the helm, yearning to be the first to raise his canvas, to sail quietly, and alone, into the rising sun.
“Let me be clear about something,” Howard said. “We’re not going to give you a hell of a lot more time. They’re weighing their options again back in Washington. My guess is that they’re going to be coming after the money. It’s over half a billion dollars, Mara.”
She shot him a look. They had never told her how much money was involved. She just knew it was millions.
“They’ll probably prosecute,” Howard went on. “Do you understand what I’m saying here? For that kind of money they’ll go for his throat. As for his ‘insurance,’ we’ll argue that he’s an intelligence officer, for God’s sake. He knows how to doctor films, tapes, recordings, documents. That’s his trade. No, he’s not a righteous man, he’s a rogue officer, a greedy rogue officer just like dozens of others who have shamed U.S. intelligence agencies over the years. He’s got to be taken down. We’ll crucify him. By the time it’s over, if he doesn’t go to prison, he won’t have any kind of a life left at all. For that kind of money-I don’t care how he’s invested it to protect it-for that kind of money we’ll pull every string we can get our hands on.”
Howard turned to her. “Mara, get him to give it up. Look, he miscalculated. Hell, it happens. Convince him to walk away from it. He can keep the interest he’s made during the past four years. It’s a goddamn lot of money.”
Howard’s voice changed. When he spoke again it was flat, clinical.
“If Schrade’s people don’t kill him, our people are going to make him wish they had. Convince him to give it up. He’ll get a life out of it.”
It was late afternoon, and they were still several hours away from leaving for the Villa d’Este to meet Lu. They undressed and lay on the bed, their balcony doors open to the afternoon warmth and the faint sounds of the harbor. Everything in Bellagio was languorous. Here even the black kites that scavenged the shoreline and the alpine swifts that skimmed the surface of the lake for insects did so in an unhurried manner that was at once graceful and serene. Strand could smell the water and the cypresses on the hillsides and the faint sweetness of Mara’s body.
The idyllic setting was in sharp contrast with the reality of their situation and with the roiling emotions that he struggled to temper. There were treacherous days ahead, and a sense of ever shortening time wore and tore at him like a debilitating fever. He had been enormously relieved that Mara had chosen to stay with him, not only because it confirmed how much they meant to each other, but also because he could not in good conscience have allowed her to go. If she had fled, she would have lost even the dubious protection he was able to give her. Schrade would have found her in days.
In watching her come to this decision, Strand observed yet another dimension of her personality. She was not simply giving up, yielding to his wishes. Rather, her decision was the result of her sensible assessment of her circumstances. She must have reasoned that her best chances of survival lay in trusting him, even though, despite her personal feelings about him, she must have found it difficult to do. It was this calm common sense that he had been slow to appreciate. In most people a talent for balanced judgment was not an attribute that advertised itself. But in an attractive woman it was even less readily apparent. Beauty was too often an unintended diversion, a distraction that seduced one’s attention away from the essential qualities of the person who possessed it.
“Where is Wolfram Schrade?” she asked, breaking the silence. Her head was on his shoulder, her long legs running alongside his, her breasts against his side.
“What do you mean?” He was surprised at the sudden question.
“Do you really think he doesn’t know where we are, or does he know and he’s just… waiting?”
Strand decided not to finesse the answer. “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times,” he said. “I honestly think that when we left Rome, the way we left Rome, we slipped his surveillance. And I think we’re still clean.”
“What makes you believe that?”
“I told you last night, if he knew where we were, I think he would’ve let me know that he knew. Just like he did in Rome with the videotape.”
“You don’t think Ariana’s death was a similar notice?”
“Maybe you’re right… but I don’t think so. If that’s the way he’s working and if he knows where we are… why are you still alive?”
Mara said nothing, but she grew very still, her breathing momentarily interrupted. He felt a pang of conscience. God, that must have sounded raw to her, grim evidence that his theory was sound. In truth, he was talking with far greater confidence than he was feeling. A pall of anxiety lay upon him that acquired a denser gravity with each shocking death.
As for the FIS surveillance, he was even less sure about having eluded that than he was of having escaped Schrade’s private intelligence operatives. He knew what the FIS was capable of doing, but he also knew that excellence in surveillance required planning, and planning took time. He was beginning to have doubts about how long they had been on to him. If they had known about the embezzlement scheme before Ariana went to them-if they had had time to actually target him for a surveillance operation-it would be a serious challenge to hide from them.
So in part his argument was specious, an attempt to portray a confidence in their safety that he really did not feel. Moreover, he guessed that she knew what he was doing. He thought he felt her body gradually tense against him.
“What about you?” she asked.
“He wants to kill me. And maybe he will-eventually. But not until he gets his money. I’m okay until he either gets it or knows once and for all that he can’t get it.”
A murmur of voices wafted in from the balcony, a man’s laughter, a shout, and then they subsided and were gone. He could almost feel her thinking. And he could feel the impulse to speak rising from her abdomen against his hip, rising until it emerged on her breath, almost apologetically.
“Why don’t you just give him the money, Harry?”
He had anticipated that question since the moment in her bedroom in Rome when he had told her what he had done. She had waited far longer to ask it than he had guessed.
“I can’t,” he said.
Pause. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not possible.”
“You’ve spent it?”
“No. I haven’t spent any of it.”
She was silent, but again he could sense the turmoil of her disquiet. She didn’t move. There was no caressing hand, no tucking into him to be closer than close. She didn’t ask him what he meant, and she didn’t press him further on his questionable assessment of the danger they were in. It was an unexpected and unusual display of restraint, and Strand found himself as curious about the reasons for her reticence as about her ability to deal with
