were Kowalski’s most important business partner. He couldn’t afford to look weak to them.
And yet. he had built this mansion, built his empire, by thinking clearly, never letting emotion cloud his business dealings. Only women had the luxury of setting reason aside in their decisions.
He didn’t need to kill John Wells. Why take this risk?
“Thank you, Anatoly.” Kowalski nodded to the door. “Come back in a quarter-hour.” He needed a few minutes alone. A few minutes to think.
TARASOV REAPPEARED fifteen minutes later.
“So the home is impossible,” Kowalski said. “And also the office.”
“Not impossible, but—”
“Then we will hit them in between, I think.”
“I thought you might say that.”
“Will Markov want more men?”
“He believes in three-man teams.”
“And these men?”
“The best, Pierre. I know them myself.”
“Good,” Kowalski said. “Now let me find that girl before she gets herself into trouble.” He pushed himself from the table and padded toward Nadia. In the desperate weeks to come, he would ask himself more than once whether he would have made a different decision if he hadn’t been so damned hungry.
5
Wells awoke to Exley’s hands on his back, sliding across the base of his spine, over his hips, up to the thick muscles in his shoulders. Outside their bedroom the sky was dark, no sign of dawn in the winter night.
“Time is it?”
“Five-thirty.”
“Have you been awake long?”
“Hush, John.”
He tried to turn on his side, but she pressed him down.
“I’m treating you. Close your eyes.”
Wells closed his eyes and tried to float, though weightlessness had never come easy to him. Except on his motorcycle on a good clean road. And hiking through the Bitterroots growing up, leaves crunching under his feet, the comforting weight of a rifle on his shoulder, the sky blue and wide and cloudless, the tips of the mountains painted with snow that never melted. Above him eagles and falcons circling, spreading their wings to catch thermals. Exley’s hands pulled him up and Wells left his gun behind and rose to meet the raptors. He made great mile-wide loops, peering at the mountains below until the sky turned black. He wondered what had happened to Exley. But no matter where he turned, she was gone.
HE WOKE AGAIN to the blare of the radio by their bed: 6:45. The sky outside had turned gray and the WTOP announcer was promising a blustery cold day. Exley was gone, and the shower was running. He wandered into the bathroom.
“Come in here. I’ll wash you.”
Exley liked to mother him sometimes, pretend he couldn’t take care of himself. Wells wondered sometimes whether all women had this instinct. Maybe she did it to cut him down, make him more manageable. Or maybe she just liked him clean. Living in Afghanistan, he’d gone weeks, even months, without washing himself properly. Old habits died hard.
“I can handle it.”
“Get in here.”
“Why is it I think you’re looking for more than a shower this morning?”
At that, a hand reached out from the curtain and tugged him in.
AFTERWARD, she sat beside him on the edge of the bed. She was flushed and pink, her mouth open, her lips swollen. Wells was breathing hard, too.
“So good today,” she said.
“You always say that.”
“No, it’s true. I’m just glad we have our own house now. So I can make all the noise I want.” She kissed his cheek.
“Let’s get dressed. Or we’ll never get out of here.”
“Then let’s not. Let’s stay in here forever. Make a little world, just us.” She wrapped her arms around him. Her blue eyes shone and he knew she was serious. Like him, she’d devoted her life to the agency, given up everything — her first husband, her kids, her friends.
But since Wells had come back from China, she’d begun to pull away from the CIA. She was more engaged in planning their vacation than with anything happening at Langley. She kept extending the trip, too. First they were going to South America for two weeks. Then a month. Now she was talking about visiting Africa, too, six weeks in all. He’d joked that she should look into Antarctica.
Wells couldn’t blame her, not after everything that had happened over the last two years. But quit? Retire? He couldn’t imagine it. The job was all he knew how to do.
The job was all he was. He disentangled himself from her.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll stay in here forever.”
“You promise, John.”
“I promise.”
EXLEY HEADED BACK into the bathroom to put her face on. But do you love me, John? Do you
Not that she could complain. She’d made this choice, or more correctly the choice had made her. She couldn’t imagine ever being with anyone else. She would take as much of him as he could give. And maybe, one day, she’d find the key and he’d be hers for good.
Not likely.
BACK IN THE BEDROOM, Wells was doing push-ups, the scar on his back twitching with each rep. He was nearly forty, and he’d taken a lot of abuse the last two years, but physical therapy and constant exercise and his natural strength had saved him. He still looked like the football player he’d once been, his muscles laced atop one another like illustrations in an anatomy textbook.
“Come on, sit on my back,” he said.
“What are you, fourteen? You just showered. Now you’re going to be sweaty again.” Nonetheless she kneeled atop him while he finished another twenty reps. Wells was showing off, she knew, but she couldn’t help herself. He was never more endearing than when he was acting like a big kid. And she found touching him this way nearly irresistible. He finished and she stayed on him, not wanting to move.
“Up,” he said. “You’re going to break me.”
“You asked for it.” She ran a finger across the sweat on his back. “Come on. Let’s get dressed, go to work. Such as it is.”
EXLEY’S DODGE CARAVAN was six years old and had a deep dent in its back fender from a tailgating cabbie. Inside, the carpets were grimy and cluttered with broken pens, coins, half-filled bottles of diet soda. Its heaters poured out an indefinable but vaguely unpleasant odor.
