Miata circled ahead of us as we followed a dirt footpath beneath the trees. The sand was fine and hot beneath my feet, and the sun had risen to almost directly above us. We sat on the beach.
She had put on a pair of sunglasses. I'd taken the Walther with me, holding it in my hand, but now, as she sat watching the water and talked, it seemed a both ridiculous and obscene thing to be carrying around.
"You are fucking out of your mind," I told her.
"I do not want to die." Her eyes tracked Miata's movement, as the dog played in the surf. "Why is that insane?"
"There are too many places to begin, but for a start, I don't believe you…"
"I am telling you the truth."
"…and even if someone is trying to kill you, you sure as hell don't need my help to keep you alive. You've got to be one of the most dangerous people in the world, and I mean physically, lethally, dangerous. I don't even like sitting this close to you, and I've got a goddamn gun in my hand."
Her mouth twitched. "Thank you."
"It's not a compliment. Even if I accept everything you've told me – and I'm not saying that I do – you have in your head more knowledge about death, about causing it, about preventing it, than any person I've ever met. And I've met some very skilled killers in my time."
She removed the sunglasses, squinting at the water. "The man after me… he is one of The Ten."
Oh, I should have seen that coming, I thought. I should have seen the headlights on that one a mile away, coming through the tunnel and making straight for me.
"Oxford?" I asked, but it was rhetorical, and even as I said it, I hoped she wouldn't answer.
"You know of Oxford?"
"I was briefed on him four days before you snatched Lady Ainsley-Hunter. Told he was coming to New York."
"He is searching for me." Miata came trotting back up the beach, sand stuck to his paws. She scratched his ears, then brushed his coat clean. When she glanced at me, she saw that I was staring at her, and she read the suspicion in my face. "What?"
"I'm trying to figure out if Miata's for show."
"He is my dog. He relies on me."
"Is that why you cut out his voice box?"
She was up and shouting down at me so quickly it made me remember just how true everything I'd said about her, thought about her, was. In her anger, she'd turned the sunglasses in her fist, now holding them like they could double as a knife. In her hands, they could.
"Poshol v pizdu!" she spat at me. "You think I would do that? You think I would do that to an animal, to a dog, to something that cannot even understand? Nu tebya k chortu!"
The gun was still in my hand and I thought I could bring it up and maybe save my life, but she had already turned away, was striding down to the water. Miata looked at me accusingly, then followed her.
Like she cares about a dog as anything other than a tool.
Like she really needs help, anyone's help, and mine specifically.
She'd stopped at the edge of the water, letting the foam splash over her feet, and I watched as she swiped sand from the seat of her shorts, then crossed her arms over her chest. Miata was pawing at some driftwood that had washed up on the shore nearby.
I went down to join her.
She stood watching the ocean, where a boat had stopped about a mile out, at the edge of the cove. Small figures wearing snorkeling gear were preparing to dive.
"I did not cut his throat," she said. "A man in Miami did that, and he is dead now, and yes, I did kill him, and yes, I was paid to do it. But I would have killed him for free."
One of the skin divers, a woman, went over the edge of the boat. There was a small splash.
"Do you know why Miata's throat was cut?" she asked. "The man I killed, he had houses where he kept drugs, and in them he had men and dogs on guard. He set traps in the houses, grenades screwed into light sockets so that when the switches were thrown the grenades would detonate. He made pits, cut holes in his floors and then filled his basement with sharp metal and broken glass.
"And he cut the throats of his dogs so the police would not hear the animals coming. He took their voices because it would make them crazy and silent and savage. I had been paid by his competition to shut down his businesses. His guards, his men, they fled when I killed him. But the dogs did not, they were mad and they were loyal, and I had to kill them to save my own life. Miata, he was still alive when it was over, and I took him away with me."
She opened her hand, unfolded the sunglasses and then, using both hands, put them back on her face. Her mouth was closed, still angry.
"I am not a monster, I am not some freak who can only achieve climax through another's pain or death. I am – I was- an assassin. Everyone who has died by my hand, they died for a very specific reason, either because they were the mark, because they led to the mark, or because they were trying to kill me."
She turned her head to see my expression, but I kept my eyes on the divers in the water.
"I do not torture animals," she said.
We watched the skin divers in the water for a while as they surfaced and dove and surfaced again.
"Why does Oxford want to kill you?" I asked her.
"Because of you," she said, and turned and walked away, calling for Miata to follow her.
"Bullshit," I told the Caribbean.
"I should have killed you," Drama said. "I should have gone through the door after the explosion, and shot you, and Dale Matsui, and Pugh."
"You would have died, too."
"Yes. But that should not have stopped me."
We had moved back into the house, into the kitchen, which was a narrow rectangle with the same earth-toned tile that covered the second floor. Drama was washing the dishes from breakfast, dumping the grounds from the French press into a trash can beneath the double sink. For a moment, I flashed on her as a kind of lethal Donna Reed, and the mental image had me grinning without meaning to.
She saw it and frowned. "When I was younger, Atticus, when I was training, death did not frighten me. Now it does. I knew if I went through the door, if I finished the job and killed you and Pugh, I would die as a result. And I wanted to live. So I ran."
A stainless steel bowl was on the floor by her feet, and she picked it up, then filled it with fresh water from the tap. When she bent to grab it, the muscles in her legs were taut and defined. I realized that she shaved her legs and pits, found that surprising. The bullet she'd taken to the thigh was a through-and-through, and it looked like she'd been lucky, that the round hadn't expanded as it passed through her body. It made me remember when I'd been shot.
"Then your friend, Chris Havel, she writes this book," Drama said. "I should have stopped her. I didn't. I should have come back and killed her, and you, and Dale, and Natalie, and Corry. I should have made the statement."
"Why didn't you?" I asked.
She moved her eyes from me, looking out the window. The breeze had picked up, and shadows came and went as the branches randomly blocked the sunlight. After a minute, I realized she wasn't going to answer.
"Why did you tell me where you live?" I asked.
Still no reply.
"Alena," I said.
Her head whipped around, and there was the hint of distraction in her look, as if I'd caught her attention by accident, as if the usage of the name amused her. Her lips came together, the corner of her mouth rose briefly.
"You will laugh," she said. "I didn't like Pugh, but I saw things in you that I saw in myself. You understand this, I know you do, it happens in your profession as well. The sense of artificial intimacy. I watched you for several weeks, and although I knew it was false, I felt it anyway. So I wanted to give you something that was special to me, something that no one else had. I gave you my home."
I nodded, thinking that I should be surprised, and finding that I wasn't. What she was describing wasn't that unique a phenomenon. There was a reason, after all, that so many bodyguards ended up sleeping with, romancing, or in some cases, marrying their principals. The nature of the relationship is intimate and high stress, and in such an environment connections between individuals develop in unexpected ways and with an alarming intensity. More than once I'd had a principal indicate a willingness to let our relationship stray from professional to personal, and I knew that Natalie had experienced the same thing with an even greater frequency. What Drama did and what I did were different sides of the same coin.
I thought about the last night I'd spent with Bridgett, the argument we'd had.
Alena took a blue-and-white dish towel from the hook by the sink. She started drying the dishes.
"By letting Havel publish her book, I made myself a target," she said. "There is too much truth in it. It generates interest, attention, pressure. And it marks me specifically. An assassin is supposed to be invisible. I let Havel inform the world about me."
"And Oxford's been hired to keep the world from learning anything more?"
"Oxford will try to discredit Havel, and possibly you as well. He will most certainly destroy me."
"So it's in my best interest to help you?"
"It is in your best interest to keep Oxford from succeeding. Keeping me alive is only part of that." She assembled the now clean and dry French press and folded the towel. "You believe I should die?"
"I believe you should be punished for what you've done," I answered. "Thirty-seven people are dead because of you, eleven of them murdered to line your own pockets."
"General Augustus Ndanga," she said.
"Who?"
"General Augustus Albertus Usuf Kiwane Ndanga, Uganda, four years ago. I shot him through the head at six hundred and forty meters."
"Nice shot."
She moved closer, leaning on the counter to meet my eyes. "Ndanga would enter villages with his army and murder all the men, even the boys, even the infant boys. He would kill the women, even the little girls, but those who could bear children, he would rape them repeatedly, until he was certain he had made them pregnant. I killed him. I should die for that?"
"Depends who hired you for the job."
"The CIA paid me four million dollars for his death," she replied. "You have killed. You must understand."
"Yes. I have killed. But I have never committed murder. If a man comes at my principal, I'll draw my gun not to kill him but to stop him, and there is a world of difference in that. For me a gun is a tool, used to force an assailant to stop their assault. For you, it's a means of ending a life as efficiently as possible."
"You shot Erika Wyatt's mother, four times. One bullet would have stopped her."
"One bullet might have stopped her," I said, more harshly than I intended. "She had a gun and I had to be sure."
"And being sure, that is more or less a reason to kill than organizing the rape of a whole people?"
"I'm not about to argue the necessity of Hitter's death, or Stalin's. We had this conversation the first time we met. What I do and what you do are very different."
She stared at me for a moment longer, then moved away from the counter, back to the sink. I'd seen nothing in her eyes. She hung the dish towel on the hook.
"Has it not occurred to you that I didn't kill anyone when I took Lady Ainsley-Hunter from you?" she asked. "That I did not kill you, or Natalie Trent, or Corry Herrera? That I did not kill Bridgett Logan or Dale Matsui or Robert Moore?"
"It has occurred to me. And I think the only reason you didn't is because you want something from me, and you know that if you'd killed any of them, I'd make it my mission in life to…" and I shut up, because I realized what it was I was about to say.
She didn't press it, just opened the refrigerator and, after viewing the contents, asked me if I wanted fish for lunch.
We ate on the patio, grilled yellowtail with thick slices of pineapple. It was the kind of lunch I'd have chased with a beer if she'd had any, but there was no alcohol in the house, so we both drank water. The Walther stayed by my plate, but I was getting tired of lugging it around, which I supposed was one of the things she'd thought would happen.
She'd put music on her little stereo before taking her seat, and I could hear the Beatles singing softly inside. The album was Rubber Soul.
"I couldn't simply approach you in New York and ask to hire you," Alena said. "You understand why I had to do it this way."
"I would have run screaming," I admitted.
"Yes."
I put my utensils down and looked at the bare bones on my plate. "Why me? You've certainly encountered other PSAs."
"None that I respect." She drank some water, gauging my reaction. From what she saw, she felt the need to clarify. "You beat me. No one has ever done that before."
"I didn't beat you."
"My job was to kill Pugh. I failed."
"I was lucky and I was working with people who were outstanding at their jobs," I said. "What you're asking me to do, you're asking me to do alone. You, of all people, should know what that means."
"You're forgetting that I will be your principal. Pugh could not fire a gun, Lady Ainsley-Hunter could not rig an explosive. Pugh was an old man, diabetic and possibly alcoholic. Ainsley-Hunter is an activist, a public figure and a zealot. I am a thirty-one-year-old woman in excellent physical condition, mentally acute and – despite what you would care to believe – emotionally stable."
I hated the fact that I was actually considering what she was saying. I hated it even more that, once again, she knew what I was thinking.
"There is more," she said. "No one you have ever protected before can teach you what I can teach you, Atticus. I can teach you everything Oxford knows, because I know it, too."
"You're offering to turn me into an assassin?"
"I'm offering to show you how we work, how we think. How we see the world. How we see ourselves." She looked at me across the table. "There's something else. You need to do this."
I didn't quite laugh, but it came close to an outright snort. If I'd had water in my mouth, she'd have gotten an impromptu shower.
"You are losing yourself," Alena said softly. "Fame does not suit you. It is distracting to you, and perhaps even offensive. The money is nice, it allows you comforts, allows you to provide for Erika and even Logan…"
"Logan makes a fine living without my help."
She blinked at me, waiting to see if I was finished, then continued. "It allows you to provide for Erika, but that is not enough for you. It has allowed you to meet those people who, culturally, you have been told it is desirable to know, women like Skye Van Brandt. But your association with people like Van Brandt has not made you happy. It has, in fact, made you weak."
"Hold on…"
"Last year would what I did in the elevator a week ago have worked? Last year, given the same situation, would you have debussed your principal to a publicly known location after an attempt had been made?"
"The 'attempt' was a man playing with himself."
"That should not have mattered in the slightest," she said, annoyed with me.
I drank water and didn't say anything.
"The man who beat me a year ago never would have made that mistake."
I set the glass down empty. It wasn't actually made of glass, but instead a clear molded plastic, light blue. Hers was from the same set, but pale green. "Then why would you want to hire that man?"
"You are also the man who put himself between an Accuracy International AWM and Ainsley-Hunter, and then demanded to see his principal safely to the car. You are the man who bid his principal goodbye, and then came to meet me, believing that his life was a fair trade for hers. You are the man I want to protect me."
"Her life was worth saving."
Now it was her turn to drink water and not respond.
I shook my head and looked off the patio. The breeze was moving palm fronds and branches, as if they were waving me either to come closer, or to make a discreet exit. It was getting warmer as the day progressed, but in the shade of the patio, surrounded by the concrete and tile, it remained comfortable.
"You killed three men in Dallas, Texas, ten days ago," I said. "Video surveillance caught you leaving the scene."
"No I didn't." She said it with conviction and almost surprise.
"There were pictures, Alena. Three men – Ortez, Montrose, and a third whose name I don't remember. All had been shot. There was a picture of you leaving, driving a car out the gate."
"It was not me. The photograph was a fake."
"Sure."
"I have not been to Dallas in over three years. Who showed you these pictures?"
"It's not important."
"I did not do it."
I looked at the trees some more, felt her looking at me. I said, "Tell me about Oxford."
"He is like me."
"Another Russian?"
"No, American, I think. Maybe British. I'm not certain who trained him, but he is from the West. What little I know about him suggests a military and intelligence background."
"I heard he specializes."
"Scandal," she confirmed. "He uses sex, it is the way he stages his bodies. But it means nothing, it is simply a kind of job, one that takes its own special planning, the way a bombing or a poisoning takes special planning. He knows what I know."
I had to wonder about that. It could be as simple and straightforward as she made it sound, staging bodies the way other people move their furniture. But I doubted it. Someone who kept returning to the sex angle was probably someone who liked playing with naked bodies. Maybe Drama wasn't a monster, but I wasn't willing to extend the same faith to Oxford.
"Is there a history between you two?" I asked.
"No."
"And you're sure he's coming after you? You've confirmed that?"
"Yes. I have sources."
"Sources like Dan?"
"My sources say Oxford is looking for me. I take that kind of threat seriously, so I checked."
"But you don't know who bought the hit?"
"No."
"And you're sure it has been bought, that he's not doing this on his own?"
"Oxford would not undertake such an operation for free. Pro bono, as you say. To kill me, he would demand a substantial payment."
"How much?"
"Four million dollars, at least. More, perhaps."
"How long has he had the contract? Or whatever it is you folks call it."
"Job. I call it a job. Just as you call it."
I was silent.
She took a green orange from the bowl at the center of the table and began peeling the skin. The bowl was white porcelain, with two thin, sky blue stripes running around its center. "He has had the job only a month or two."
"If he was in New York looking for you, he knew you were in the U.S. That means he's close."
"New York is a clearinghouse." She was removing the skin from the orange as a single piece, using only her fingers, trying to keep it from tearing. "It is the place to acquire everything, from equipment to people. Everyone goes through there. New York means nothing."
"Does he know about this place?"
She hesitated.
"Does he?"
"He knows about the connection between you and me, about Pugh. I'm certain he's read Havel's book." She looked up from her work with the orange. "It will take him some time, but he will find me here."
"How much time?"
She finished removing the skin, coiling it on her empty plate. She offered me a wedge of the orange, and when I shook my head, ate it herself, her eyes wandering to the water. She was quiet long enough for "Girl" to end, and John and Paul's harmony on "I'm Looking Through You" to begin, and it was clear she was thinking about it, considering how she would search if the positions were reversed.
"At least three months," she said, finally. "Possibly four. Maybe longer. I do not think any less – he would have to have extraordinary luck. It will cost him a lot of money. He will start by establishing what occurred between you and me and Ainsley-Hunter, then attempt to recreate your route. He will try to track the equipment I used. The rifle would be the weakest link, and with time, it would lead him to Brighton Beach. There he will learn about the Scarab, and he will know we took the boat. He will calculate the range of the vessel, and then he will begin a methodical search of all those places where we made landfall, where we refueled. He will lose us for a while once he reaches the Caribbean. He will have to move from island to island, carefully, because he will believe he is close, and he will not want to show himself. It will take him at least six weeks before he narrows his search to the Lesser Grenadines. He will lose us again at Kingstown, realizing that was where we left the Scarab. It will take him at least another week before he reaches Bequia.
"But once he reaches Bequia, it will not take him long at all. The island and the population are both small, and it will take him less than a day to locate this house, to verify that I am here. Then he will withdraw and plan.
"And then he will kill me."
"And me."
"Yes." She ate another wedge of the orange, holding it on the pads of her fingers. "He will be surprised you are here, because he believes you are dead, that I killed you, and that your body is rotting at the bottom of the Hudson River. He cannot conceive that I spared you. He will not expect you here."
"But he'll spot me during the surveillance," I said.
She finished the orange, dropping her right hand and allowing Miata to lick the juice from her fingers. "There is an optometrist in Port Elizabeth, we will get you contact lenses. You will cut your hair and dye it. You will grow a beard. With the sun, the tan, it will make recognition difficult."
"You're getting ahead of yourself," I said. "I didn't say I was staying."
This silence lasted long enough for Rubber Soul to end.
"You should leave here," I told her. "Keep moving."
"Movement is exposure."
"So you're just going to wait until Oxford shows up? And then kill him?"
"If you can think of another way to stop him, I'd be quite interested in hearing it."
I ignored that. "Do you have any idea how he'll come at you?"
Again, she gave it some thought before answering. "He will want to verify the kill with his own eyes. Pistol, probably. It will be close work, inside the critical space."
That was both surprising and distressing. Jeppeson's attempt on Lady Ainsley-Hunter had been inside the critical space, and I'd gotten her out of that with dumb luck and nothing else. I doubted there would be anything dumb about Oxford's try when it came. Survival would hinge on reaction times, how quickly I could spot the threat and respond, how quickly Drama could do the same.
"He can get that close?"
"I can," she said simply.
You're thinking about this, I realized. You're considering it seriously. You're out of your miserable little mind.
She was petting Miata's neck, waiting for me, as if she could see me teetering on the brink.
"Most principals, they hire a BG because the BG knows something they don't, namely how to keep them alive," I finally said. "They're buying that knowledge far more than they're buying the body. They normally get their money's worth. But this is different, this is a whole different level of play. This isn't lunatic-in-the-crowd stuff, this isn't some overzealous fan. This is a professional killer. That's your territory. You have knowledge I don't."
"Some of the knowledge, yes."
"Which makes me think that I'd be cannon fodder for you, nothing more."
"I have already said that I will teach you what I know. I will teach you everything."
I took off my glasses. The left lens had taken a hairline scratch at some point, probably before I'd left New York. I hadn't noticed it. I put my glasses back on.
"If you stay," she said, "I will have no secrets from you."
She waited for me to respond for nearly a minute, and when it was clear to her that I wasn't going to answer, she cleared the table and went inside. I heard the faucet in the sink open, the water splashing. Miata moved from where he had parked by her chair to me, resting his muzzle on my lap. I decided that scratching him on the head would not be wholesale collaboration with the enemy.
If I believe her, I thought. If I can believe her. And I know I can't, so why am I even thinking about this?
The photographs that Gracey and Bowles had shown me, they could have been faked, it was true. Why they would fake them, why they would go to the time and the effort to put a scare into me, I couldn't begin to imagine. It had been in that same meeting that Oxford had been mentioned, that I had seen a picture that connected him to Drama. That meeting had put the players on the table, linked them all together.
There just wasn't any logic to it that I could see other than a means to set me up. So maybe the Backroom Boys were in on it with Drama; she'd already admitted to having worked for the CIA, or at least she had if I was willing, once again, to believe her. It was like following a loop of lies, a Mobius strip that, no matter where I began to follow it, fell back on itself. I couldn't even see a fundamental truth anymore, a place to start. I was being played, sure; by whom, why, I no longer had any idea.
Then there was the other thing, the chance, however remote, that she was telling me the truth. That Oxford had been hired to kill her, that the CIA had misread their intelligence, had overreacted to the presence of two of The Ten arriving in the United States at the same time. If that held, then Drama was lying about Dallas, but that could be explained.
It was, in fact, harder to do what she had done to me in New York without killing people than the other way around. If the deal in Dallas had gone sour, if she'd had to defend herself, then it made sense she would lie to me, deny having been there at all, for fear of pushing me away.
Of course, I didn't actually know if Drama was telling the truth, if my friends were still alive.
Too many variables, too many things I didn't know.
She emerged from the house, carrying a beach towel and no longer wearing the shorts, now just in the one-piece bathing suit.
"I must exercise," she said without looking at me, and headed down the path back to the beach. Miata left me and followed her.
I stayed at the table.
There was only one door that I couldn't open, in the basement. Shielded wiring ran along the basement ceiling, into the room. Throughout the house I found signs of an alarm system, though I couldn't locate the controls. Motion detectors had been discreetly placed in the foyer, the living room, and the kitchen. Another was at the head of the stairs, and on the second floor, after some looking, I found sensors at both ends of the hall, and the bedrooms. The only room that wasn't covered was the master bathroom.
I didn't find any video surveillance equipment, no cameras or the like, but I didn't take a lot of time to look, so I could have easily missed them.
There was no telephone that I could find, and no television. The only household electronic was an Aiwa compact stereo system with multidisc CD player, sitting on a shelf in the living room with a stack of discs beside it. She seemed to be a big fan of the Fab Four, had a copy of everything they'd ever released, as well as orchestral recordings of their songs, pure instrumental versions. There was a scattering of classical music.
The house was Spartan. A framed poster for the Easter Regatta hung beside an ugly oil painting of a milkmaid working a cow. The only bookcases I found were in the living room, filled with tired paperbacks, their spines creased and broken, most of them at least ten years old. There were several spy stories, and a lot of true-crime books. Most were in English or French, but there were a handful written in German.
In the kitchen, in a cupboard by the sink, she kept cookbooks. The majority of these were in French, lessons in the preparation of fine foods, and none looked to have ever been opened. The rest were in English, titles that talked of maximizing your potential through food, the power of fresh fruits, healthy vegetarian cooking, performance diets.
Aside from the knives in the kitchen, the only weapon I found was upstairs in the master bathroom, a Korth.357 Combat Magnum, resting on a box of tampons in a drawer by the sink. I'd never actually seen a Korth before. It is a six-thousand-dollar gun, handmade and superbly tooled.
If you're going to be attacked in the John, I thought, you might as well defend yourself with the best.
I dropped the Korth back on the tampon box and headed back outside.
The sun had dried most of the water from her skin and swimsuit. She sat on the towel, tossing a piece of driftwood for Miata to fetch. The Doberman seemed ecstatic with the game, running back and forth with his mouth open and his tongue flapping, and if he'd had his voice, I'm sure he'd have been barking in delight.
"I want to use a phone," I said.
She didn't look at me. "I can't allow that."
"I have to know if my friends are still alive."
"If you call them, you will tell them where you are. They will come for you. They will alert the authorities. I can't permit that." She held out her hands as Miata returned with the stick, and they played a short game of tug-of-war before he dropped it and crouched, ready to resume the chase again. She hurled the stick end over end a good twenty feet, and he was after it almost before it had left her hand.
"I won't tell them," I said.
She'd been sitting with her hands on her knees, her legs drawn up, and now she stood on the towel. With her index fingers, she pulled the elastic at the seat of the suit, making the fabric taut again. She had a swimmer's body, with a powerful torso and defined muscles in her shoulders and arms.
When Miata had returned and then left again in pursuit of the same stick, she said, "You will do the job?"
"I can't answer that until I talk to my friends."
"I will pay you three million dollars, and provide you with any equipment you require. I will transfer the money to the accounts you specify, or show you how to establish a new one, one that will keep the money safe and hidden."
"I haven't said I'll do it. I need to use a phone first."
She picked up the towel and shook it out. Miata came back and dropped the stick at her feet, and she said something to the dog in Russian, and the dog, for a moment, looked annoyed.
"Follow," she commanded.
I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or to the Doberman.
The keypad to unlock the basement door was hidden behind the light switch, and the code was long and she blocked my view of the sequence with her body.
The room was enormous, though mostly empty, a concrete bunker with a low ceiling. A couple of mats were spread out on the floor in the middle of the space; heavy, sway, and speed bags hung just past them. A weight bench was in the corner, a stack of plates beside it. A single column stood in the center of the mats, wrapped in gray and black foam and held in place with duct tape. At the far end of the room was a man-shaped silhouette, plywood painted black, and farther along more mats, these positioned in front of a series of floor-length mirrors. A dance barre was bolted to the wall nearby. On the left-hand wall as I entered, about halfway down, was an alcove, and another door, closed. The scent of cordite lingered, stale in the air.
She led the way in without stopping, saying only, "My hard room."
To the right of the door ran a long metal counter that turned at the corner and continued down for several more feet. There was only one chair, positioned in front of a battery of video monitors, all on, that fed their images into a stack of VCRs to one side. The monitors covered both interior and exterior access to the house, and stretched along a fair portion of the beach. A laptop computer handled the alarm system, with a map of the house on the screen, showing all the open doors and windows.
At the end of the counter was the handset for a satellite phone, and she switched the power on, waiting for the red light on its face to stop blinking and verify a signal lock. The dish for the phone had to be outside somewhere, but with all the foliage, she could have left it unconcealed and nobody would ever find it.
"Who are you calling?" she asked.
"My home."
She knew the number, activating the speaker and then dialing. She leaned back against the console, giving me room to access the phone, but keeping one finger on the power switch. From the grill, I heard the beep and whistle of the satellite. The phone rang three times before it was answered by Erika Wyatt.
"Hello?" The connection was clear, as if I was calling from Midge's apartment below, and Erika's voice was full of fatigue.
"It's Atticus."
She shrieked so loudly, the noise echoed off the concrete all around us, clearly delighted that I was alive. I tried not to let Alena see me grin.
"Oh my God!" Erika said. "Where have you been? Where are you?"
Alena was moving her finger lightly back and forth over the switch. Her expression said to hurry up.
"Where have you been, Atticus? Are you all right? Jesus, everyone's been so worried about you…"
"I'm fine," I said. "Is Bridgett there? Natalie?"
"No, no, I mean, Natalie's at the office and Bridgett went with Agent Dude to look for you, they sent divers into the Hudson looking for you, you know that? Oh my God, it's so good to hear your voice…"
"Erika, listen. I need you to tell me what happened."
"What happened? You disappeared, that's what happened, you should be telling me what happened…"
Alena was making a whirling motion with the index finger of her free hand, telling me to wrap it up. I said, "Erika, I'm all right. But I need to know if everyone there is okay."
"They've been really worried about you, it's even been in the papers…"
"Dale and Corry and everyone?"
"They're all fine. What's going on? Where are you?"
"It may be a while before I get back."
"But why? Where are you…"
"I'll be in touch as soon as I can," I said, but Erika never heard it, because Drama had already killed the connection.
"You didn't have to do that," I said. "I was wrapping it up."
"You were wasting time."
"I wanted her to know I was all right. You made a choice to remove yourself from humanity, to live on an island. But I have people, and I owe them consideration for their feelings."
She shut off the power to the phone and folded her arms over her chest. It was cooler in the basement, and goose bumps had risen on her arms and legs.
"He'll kill us both," I said.
"I don't think he will. I think we can stop him."
"And then what happens? Whichever way this goes, it'll end in death."
"Yes. It will be him or me."
"And if it's him…"
"I will not kill you," she said.
"I am a fool, I admit that without provision," I said. "But I'm not an idiot. If Oxford dies, and you live, and I'm alive, you've got to kill me, or else your little Paradise Island is revealed for all to see."
"You don't understand. I am done, I have quit. Oxford will be the last life I take. After that, I am an assassin no more. I would not harm you."
"How can I believe you?"
She gestured to the phone, and when I shook my head, she got angry. "I do not know what else to do! I have shown you my life, Atticus, I have asked you for your help, and I have kept my word to you each and every time it was given! What more can I do to earn your trust?"
"Let me walk out of here. Now."
She pushed off the counter and practically ran to the door, yanking it open and gesturing for me to go through.
"Go. Go ahead! Go!"
I went out the door and up the stairs, hearing her swearing in Russian behind me. On the ground floor I crossed the living room and went out onto the patio, then down the steps. The abrupt change in temperature brought sweat onto my skin. Across the driveway I met up with the little road, following it under the shade of a grove of mahogany trees. Birds were singing.
Something rustled in the foliage, and I turned around, ready to shout at her that I'd known she was a liar, and that at least she could be bothered not to shoot me in the back.
Miata was standing on the road, looking at me, and I scowled. He blinked, curious perhaps as to why I was suddenly so angry at him. Then he snuffed the air and turned back toward the house.
I followed the dog.