“Doesn’t matter to me what you believe.”
“Okay, now what?”
“Now you just sit there and chill. We’ll treat you well, food, water whenever you want it.”
“All that water I’m going to have to take a piss at some point.”
He pointed to his left. Shaw saw the toilet in the shadows. “Just let me know.”
“Just like that?”
“Like I said, just chill and pretty soon you get out of here.”
“Where’s Waller?” Shaw said sharply.
“Who?”
“Now I don’t believe you again.”
The man locked the door behind him, leaving Shaw to puzzle all this over once more. He rocked back and forth in the chair and quickly found that it was bolted to the slab. These folks had put some thought into this. He wondered how far away from Gordes he was. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. He might not even be in France any longer.
If these guys weren’t with Waller, who were they? No, of course they had to be with him despite his captor’s feigned ignorance. He also wondered what Frank was thinking. When Shaw didn’t show up at the airport Frank would go to his hotel room. Then he’d conclude that Shaw had screwed him and gone AWOL.
He leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. He was out of options. And Janie was probably with Waller right now. Or maybe dead.
CHAPTER
47
YOU SEEM preoccupied.”
Reggie looked over at Waller as they walked along the streets of Roussillon. They had driven separately, with her following the man’s caravan of vehicles. Roussillon held all the charm of the typical Provençal village but with the added burst of ochre on most of the buildings.
“Just tired. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
“I hope nothing is troubling you so that you cannot sleep.”
The man was dressed in ironed jeans, a white cotton shirt that he wore out, and leather sandals. A Panama hat covered his hairless head, protecting his pale skin from the sun. It gave him a jaunty, relaxed appearance that Reggie was having trouble discounting for some reason.
“Probably just delayed jet lag. This village really is beautiful. The colors are so different from anything I’ve seen.”
“My mother was born here,” he said proudly. “I remember it well from when I was a child.”
Reggie paused to study a painting in a window, but she was really thinking of something else. She wondered how Fedir Kuchin had been able to escape from behind the Iron Curtain to come here as a young boy, or rather how his parents had with him in tow. Travel was severely restricted back then. His father must have been very high up in the Communist Party to be allowed such freedom. She also wondered how a Frenchwoman from a rural town in Provence had come to marry a Ukrainian communist. Yet perhaps he was telling her a lie. That was actually more likely.
“You like the painting?” Waller asked over her shoulder.
Reggie continued to study the peaceful harbor scene depicted on the canvas. “It’s far more pleasant than Señor Goya’s works.”
“Ah, but this painter will never have the reputation of Goya. Goya did the world an important service.”
She turned to him. “How so?”
“He lived during difficult times. War, poverty, cruelty. Thus he painted nightmares. As I told you before, using oils on canvas, he reminded the world that there is evil. That is an important lesson that we should never forget, but unfortunately we do all the time.”
“Have you experienced such things?”
“I have read of such things, and they are to be avoided if at all possible.”
“But sometimes I guess it’s not possible.”
“You are an American, so of course you would say such things. You are a superpower, you can do what you want.”
Reggie wasn’t sure if she saw a spark of envy in his eyes when he said this or if it was her imagination. He took her by the arm.
“I understand that dear Bill has left us.”
Reggie almost pulled her arm away. “He had to go home. Some family issue.”
“Then I will do what I can to fill any void.”
She gave him a searching look and then forced a smile. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I never do that.”
“So where did you and your family stay when you were here?”
“I will show you.”
They walked on, through the center of town. A quarter of a kilometer past that, Waller led her down some worn steps and stopped at a small cottage with a wooden door and two windows in front.
“There,” he said.
“It’s very quaint.”
“My father died in that cottage.”
“God, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m sure he was too.”
He took her arm again. “Now, for the lunch. Down this way. All is arranged. We must eat light because the meal tonight will be substantial.”
“I take it you like to be in control.”
“There are leaders and there are followers. It is the natural order of things. Would you want a follower leading or a leader following?”
“I guess it depends on where they wanted you to go.”
“You are a strange young woman.”
“I’ve heard worse.”
“I meant that as a compliment.”
His grip tightened on her arm. As they walked along Reggie found herself consumed with worry over what had happened to Bill Young. If Kuchin had harmed him? Then even killing the man would not be enough. Nothing would, if an innocent man had died because of her.
CHAPTER
48
I’VE GOT TO USE the john,” Shaw called out into the darkness. “Now.”
A minute went by and he thought that no one was going to respond. Then the door opened and the same man appeared. “I told you about the toilet in the corner over there.”
“I don’t think I can hit the bowl from here. Go figure.”
The man stepped forward. “Then I guess I’ll have to untie you.”
“I guess you will.”
“Firing line,” the man reminded him.
“Right, got it.” Shaw kept his gaze dead on the man as he approached, his muscles tensing, his mind burning through every possible angle and point of attack on the primary and secondary targets. He would put the man between him and the shooter and work his way out of here. It was as solid a plan as he could concoct under the circumstances.
Unfortunately, he never got a chance to execute it.
The man punched the syringe in his arm, right through his shirt.
When Shaw awoke, he was on the floor, his arms tucked under him. He slowly rose, flexing his limbs, trying to bleed circulation back into them. He did his business at the toilet and looked around. The room was empty except for the bolted-to-the-floor chair and a mattress lying in one corner and the toilet. He paced off the parameters of the square. Eight by eight. Sixty-four square feet with a ceiling that was not much higher than he was tall. Walls were stone and solid, no chinks in the mortar, slab floor. He lifted his hand up. The ceiling was plaster.
A rattling sound behind him made Shaw whirl around in time to see a tray of food come through a hinged slot in the lower part of the door that he hadn’t noticed before.
He picked up the tray and carried it over to the mattress, sat down and ate, finishing off the bottle of water in a couple of long gulps. He examined the residue on the tray. No utensils, so no sharp edges. Styrofoam plate, plastic bottle.
A few minutes later a voice called out, “Slide it through.”
He rose and passed the tray through the slot. It was barely three inches high and he had to lay the bottle of water down. He resumed his pacing, examining every square inch of his prison. His gaze returned to the toilet. He walked over, lifted the tank lid in back, and felt around. A minute later he’d worked free the long piece of metal. He walked over to the door and examined the lock.
br /> Deadbolt. Made things problematic but maybe not impossible.
Plopping down in the chair, he began fashioning the metal into the instrument he needed to attack the lock. Well, actually two instruments since it was a deadbolt. He had no idea what time it was, day or night. They’d taken his watch. But he did start counting off the seconds in his head. He would work from the notion that the meal he’d been given was either lunch or dinner and time it out from there. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing.
After he’d broken the metal in half and worked the pieces into proper shapes using the hard surface of the walls to bend them, he ventured quietly over to the door. He listened for a moment, his ear right against the two-inch-thick wood, at least judging by the width of the slot. The hinges were on the outside of the door, so they were no help to him. It was just him and the lock.
He got down on his hands and knees and edged open the slot a few centimeters. He listened for sounds of breathing, of movement, of a heart thudding too fast—other than his own, that is.
There it was. A foot grazing across the floor. He retreated to the chair and sat down, continuing to count the seconds. He needed to get out of here, fast. But that was obviously not going to happen.
Slow it down, take your time. Speed means mistakes.
His only problem with that philosophy was that Janie might not have a lot of time left. Even if Waller had nothing to do with his kidnapping, the guy was now free to do whatever he wanted to with her. And it sickened Shaw to think what the guy must want whenever he looked at the young woman.
Patience, Shaw, patience.
He fingered the pieces of metal and kept counting the seconds.
CHAPTER
49
SO HOW LONG have you worked with Evan?” asked Reggie.
She was standing on the terrace of Waller’s villa looking at the descending sun. Alan Rice was next to her dressed in khaki pants and a loose-fitting shirt with a red kerchief around his neck. If he was looking for a debonair effect, he had missed the mark, she felt. He was sipping from a glass of wine while Reggie worked on some club soda. She’d selected a knee-length skirt and blouse with low heels for the dinner. Her hair was damp and hung to her shoulders. The trip to Roussillon had been relatively uneventful, and Waller had been charming and informative and treated her like a princess. She could see how an unsuspecting woman might be taken in. However, each time she looked at the man all she could see were the hopeless victims of his sick mind. And yet she smiled and was playful and even seducing to him at times, because she had to be.
“Nearly four years,” said Rice, setting his glass down on a table and placing his arms on the chest-high stone wall enclosing the terrace. “He’s a brilliant businessman.”
“He seems quite accomplished at everything. Very worldly.”
“That’s the exact right word. Worldly.”
“How did you two hook up?”
“I was working at a firm in New York. He came there on business. We met. He charmed me, like he does everyone else. One thing led to another. And I came to work for him.”
“I assume it’s challenging.”
“Absolutely. Mr. Waller doesn’t suffer fools or anyone else gladly. Makes for a lot of pressure to perform. But you learn a lot.”
“Well, then you probably needed a little vacation. I see you’re not limping as much. Were you injured?”
“Fell in the shower and messed up my knee awhile back. It’s healing fine.”
Waller came out a few moments later and Reggie noted that Alan Rice quickly disappeared back into the house. Waller took a sip of his cocktail and said, “I trust Alan was keeping you in good company.”
“Absolutely. He really likes working for you.”
He sat down on a sofa and motioned for Reggie to join him. “I am fortunate to have him.”
She sat near him, their knees almost touching. “What kind of business are you in?”
“The kind that makes money.”
“The profit motive drives you, I guess,” she said coolly.
“When one grows up without money, yes, it can be a motivating force.”
“But you came to Provence as a child. You must have not been in too desperate circumstances. Traveling here from Canada couldn’t have been cheap, even back then.”
He flashed a look that was inscrutable. Yet for one terrible instant Reggie thought she had gone too far.
“It’s none of my business, of course,” she added hastily.
“No, it’s all right. As I mentioned, my mother was French. So we did not have to pay to stay anywhere. We had the family cottage. And back then we came by boat, third-class steerage. Followed by third-class steerage on a train. It was very cheap, if not very comfortable.”
“Of course.”
“And once one arrived in Provence, how one got there became irrelevant.” He stood and looked out at the breathtaking view of the Luberon valley. “It is glorious.”
She joined him. “It is.” She added, “My mother would have said that God was in fine form when he created Provence.”
“A religious woman, I take it?”
“A good Catholic, just like me.”
“On her dying bed my mother said to me, ‘Never forsake your faith in God. It will keep you, in the good and especially in the bad.’ She was a wise woman.”
“And has it kept you, in good and bad?”
“No life is without pain. I am rich now, but once I was not. Once I…” He smiled. “I think dinner is ready. You will sit next to me. Alan is joining us as well. You should ask him about his theory on French versus California wines. It is most interesting. He is completely wrong, of course, but it is worth hearing nonetheless.” He walked her into the dining room.
After the meal was done, they had more drinks and then dessert out on the lower patio next to the pool. Rice joined them for a few minutes but then abruptly left. Whether this was on a high sign from his employer or not, Reggie didn’t know. Waller stared moodily at the water.
“You have a pool at your villa, correct?”
Reggie nodded. “I swim. In fact, after this meal I should probably swim a couple of miles to work it off.”
He waved this comment away. “Ridiculous. You are in superb shape.”
“You don’t have much fat on you either.”
“I do what I can,” he said modestly. “Americans eat too much garbage, but you have obviously escaped that trap.”
“Being wealthy gives me certain advantages many Americans don’t have. I can afford to eat right, and I have the time to exercise.”
“Here, a peasant can go to market and get the freshest ingredients for a few euros. And they walk to market and thus get their exercise.” He paused and added, “But I judge no one.”
Reggie felt her face flush uncontrollably at this statement. Fortunately, Waller was not looking at her. You only judged hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths.
She rose. “Thank you for a wonderful day.”
He said, “You are not leaving.”
She flinched for an instant, since it was not clear if that was a question or a command. “It’s been a long day.”
“But it is still early.”