“There were no ties. You’re a big boy, I’m a big girl. My only problem with that was I wasn’t sure you were alive. That’s why I called Frank. To make sure you were okay.”
This made Shaw feel even guiltier. “Well, I’m fine. Back working. Everything’s okay. I told you that on the phone.”
“I wanted to see for myself.”
He looked down at the table. “Have you eaten dinner?”
“I’m not hungry.”
This surprised him, her turning down his invitation to dine with him, and his face showed it. “Katie.”
She rose. Their gazes locked for an extended moment. “Good luck, Shaw.”
She hesitated for another second, long enough for him to say something to keep her there. Yet he remained quiet.
She turned and left.
Shaw sat there for several beats, a massive struggle going on inside his mind. Finally, he threw some euros on the table, hustled from the restaurant, and looked up and down the crowded street.
But Katie was already gone.
CHAPTER
15
IT WAS after midnight as Reggie crept down to the library at Harrowsfield. The rain was beating against the windows and a cold wind was catapulting down the chimney, feeding a burst of oxygen onto a fading fire. She closed the door behind her, sat at the long table, and picked up a file. Under the light of a single table lamp she went over the murderous career of Fedir Kuchin for probably the hundredth time. The atrocities hadn’t changed, of course, but if anything they had become more firmly embedded in her mind. She could recite the statistics from memory; she could see the faces of the victims, pages and pages of them. The images of the mass graves, unearthed long after the man had fled the locations of his brutal handiwork, appeared to be seared onto her corneas.
She picked up a grainy picture—they were all grainy pictures, as though violent death could never have any fragment of color—and stared down at the face there. Colonel Huber had had his David Rosenbergs and his Frau Koches, photos Reggie had selected from countless others to show the man at the moment of his death. Well, Fedir Kuchin had his own testaments to a level of insane cruelty that all these men seemed to possess.
The photo she was looking at now was that of a man with an unpronounceable surname. He’d been neither wealthy nor well connected. He’d lived nearly a thousand kilometers from the capital city of Kiev. He was a simple farmer with a large family, one that he worked long hours to support. His crime against the state had amounted to his refusal to turn in his friends to the KGB, to Fedir Kuchin specifically. His punishment had been to be doused with petrol and set on fire in front of his wife and children. He had been burned to bone and cinder while they were forced to watch and listen to his screams.
She picked up another document. Originally written in Ukrainian, it had been translated for her on another piece of paper. It was the order condemning the doomed farmer to death by fire. Fedir Kuchin’s signature appeared large and bold at the bottom of the page, as though he wanted no doubt as to who was the instigator of the man’s horrible murder.
Finally, she gingerly picked up another old photo. It was Fedir Kuchin himself. She held the paper only by the edges, as though afraid to actually touch the image of the man. He was wearing a uniform with the collar undone. In one hand was a pistol, in the other a bottle. It was obviously a staged photo. Back then he had dark hair, slicked back with a severe widow’s peak. His face had not changed all that much over time. Yet the eyes were what drew one in. Reggie felt as though she were traveling down a dark path to the very center of them, losing herself in shadows from which meaningful escape seemed unlikely. She righted herself and slowly put the photo back down, covering it with a stack of paper.
Over the next thirty minutes she went through dozens of other pictures of the dead, Kuchin’s bloody fingerprints on each one. The paperwork was in some ways mechanical; it could have been purchase orders for equipment or food. Yet it was written commands to kill other human beings, done in old-fashioned triplicate complete with carbon copies. Death by bullet. Death by fire. Death by gas. Death by the blade. Death by the noose. All neat and nice. Thank God for those carbon copies, thought Reggie. Without them it would have been nearly impossible to track down and then administer justice to men like Kuchin.
“Extra reading, my dear?”
Startled, Reggie looked around.
Professor Mallory stood in the doorway in an old, tattered checked robe, holding a book and staring at her.
“I never heard you come in,” she said, obviously unsettled that the old man could have gotten this close without her knowing.
“Well, I am light on my feet, despite my size and rheumatism, and you were very much engrossed in what you were doing.” He stepped forward and glanced down at the papers and photos with an inquiring look.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I often can’t sleep,” she admitted.
He sat down in a worn leather chair near the fireplace. “A fact of which I am aware.”
“What are you doing up? Do you have insomnia too?”
“No, Regina, not insomnia.” He winced in pain as he settled himself farther into the cracked leather. “An enlarged prostate, I’m afraid. Given a choice I’d gladly take the insomnia.”
“I’m sorry.”
He eyed the file she was holding. “So what do you think? Any brilliant insights?”
“He’s a man without remorse. He signed off on a thousand death warrants like he would a damn pub bill.”
“Well, I agree with you, but that’s something we already knew.”
He rose, placed another small log on the fire, sat back down in his armchair, and opened his book.
“What are you reading?” Reggie asked.
“On a wild night like this? Agatha Christie, of course. I still feel compelled to see if Hercule Poirot’s ‘little gray cells’ will do their job one more time. It seems to often inspire my own brain, however inferior it might be to the diminutive Belgian’s.”
Reggie rose and stood in front of the fire. Before coming downstairs she’d pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, but her feet were bare and a chill had worked into her. “There was one thing, Professor.”
He looked up from his pages as the storm threw rain at the old leaded window with nearly the force of an errant hose. A scream from the angry wind came down the chimney and Reggie backed away from the sound and sat on a small hassock near him.
“What thing?” he asked.
“Kuchin is a religious man.”
Mallory closed his book and nodded. He pulled his pipe from his pocket and began to stuff it with tobacco.
“Professor, if you don’t mind, that smell actually makes me sick.”
He looked surprised. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I guess I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” She gave a hollow laugh. “I guess after the things I’ve done that seems a bit odd.”
His expression remained serious. “What’s odd? That you have enormous compassion? I would imagine that facet of your personality is one major reason you do this job.”
Reggie hurried on. “Anyway, I read over the case notes. And it says that Kuchin goes to church every Sunday and gives large sums for religious purposes.”
Mallory slipped the pipe back in his pocket. “It’s true enough. I’ve seen it before with men like him. Seeking redemption, solace, hedging one’s bets, even. It’s madness, of course, for such men to believe that any ‘god’ of goodness would have anything to do with the likes of them after death.”
“Mass killers, you mean?”
Mallory interpreted the intent behind her words immediately. “You are nothing like the Fedir Kuchins of the world, Regina.”
“Funny, some days it’s hard for me to tell the difference, really.”
Mallory stood so fast that he dropped his novel. He strode over to the table, picked up a piece of paper, and came back to her, thrusting it in her hands.
It was the photo o
f the remains of the incinerated farmer. “There is the difference, Regina. Right there.” He took her hand, gripped it firmly, and looked directly into her eyes. “And now tell me about the church.”
CHAPTER
16
THEY WERE SITTING in a car outside Charles de Gaulle Airport. Shortly, a turboprop plane would be taking Shaw to Avignon. The plan was for him to stay there a few days before venturing on to Gordes, which was less than an hour’s drive away.
Frank said, “Amy Crawford is already in Provence.”
“I’ve worked with her before. She’s a top-notch field agent.”
“Got the plan down pat?”
“In my head it’s perfect. We’ll see how it flies on the ground.”
Frank made to light one of his little cigars, but Shaw stopped him. “Give it a rest until I’m twenty thousand feet up. I need the extra oxygen right now.”
Frank put his cigar away. “Nervous? Not like you.”
“I saw Katie the other night.”
“The hell you say. Where?”
“Right here in Paris. You telling me you didn’t know?”
“Scout’s Honor. First I heard of it.”
“Come on, Frank. She showed up at the restaurant where I was having dinner. How do you think she managed that?”
“You ever stop and think that the lady is a world-class journalist? She finds stuff out.”
“Right.” Shaw clearly did not believe this.
“What’d she want?”
Shaw didn’t answer right away because he didn’t really have an answer. What did she want? Was it really just to see for herself that I was okay? But I told her that on the phone.
“Shaw?”
He noticed that Frank was staring at him and didn’t look happy. “You just zoned out on me. You’re heading out on a mission against one very scary guy and you’re already zoning? Not good.”
“She didn’t really say what she wanted. And she only stayed a minute.”
Frank gripped his arm. “What, you telling me you didn’t invite her to join you for dinner? She traveled all that way and—”
“How do you know how far she traveled?”
Frank made a face and slumped back in his seat.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” said Frank grumpily.
“Half the time you act like you don’t give a crap if I live or die. The other half it feels like you’re trying to play matchmaker.”
“My mother was the same way with me. Must be genetic.”
“We’re not family, Frank.”
“Hell, in some ways we’re closer than family. And who else do you have?”
Shaw looked away, tapped his travel documents against his thigh. Who else did he have? Just Frank? God, that was a depressing thought. “So why do you think she came to see me?”
“Ask me a hard one. She wanted you to tell her, face-to-face, to stay.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“It doesn’t take a brilliant deduction. And no, she didn’t tell me that, if that’s what you’re really asking.”
“Nothing can happen between her and me, Frank.”
“Well, something already has, apparently.”
“Anna’s grave isn’t even cold and—”
“It doesn’t have to be about that. You think a smart lady like Katie doesn’t know what you’re feeling about Anna? She knows you’re not going to jump into bed with her. She knows you may never jump into bed with her. And I don’t think she even wants that. At least not now.”
“So now you’re a shrink?”
“I’m just a guy making a reasoned observation.”
“So what does she really want?”
“You two shared a lot. Went through hell together. Both came out of it emotional wrecks. I think she just wants to be your friend.”
“Well, here’s a news update for you, my line of work doesn’t allow for friends.”
Shaw slammed the door shut behind him and walked off to grab his wings to Avignon.
Frank stared after him until the tall man disappeared into the masses entering the airport. He told the driver to head on. He pulled out his cigar, started to light up, and then stuck it back in his jacket pocket.
“Sometimes you don’t know how lucky you are, Shaw,” he muttered to nobody.
CHAPTER
17
FEDIR KUCHIN was a very smart man, smarter than all of them had thought. Not only had he outwitted Professor Mallory, but he’d outmaneuvered Reggie and her team on the ground in Provence. The penalty for this failure was steep. Reggie stared over at the bodies of Whit and Dominic. Whit’s head was gone; Dominic no longer had a face.
Reggie had been forced to kneel in the center of the freezing room while Kuchin and his men encircled her. There really was no escape this time. She looked up into the long, cruel face as he stroked her chin with one of his hands. She would have attacked him, but her hands and legs were bound. She focused on the bodies of her dead colleagues so she wouldn’t feel the touch of the monster against her skin.
Kuchin laughed, a smug, deep laugh that seemed to go on for minutes. Did you think it would be that easy? he said to her. Did you really? After all those years of guarding myself against this very thing, you really thought someone like you could get to me? You’re an amateur sent in to do a professional’s job.
The stroking changed to a hard slap and Reggie fell backwards, hitting her head on the concrete floor. He immediately pulled her back up by the hair. His face nearly touching hers, he said, Tell me your name. Your real name.
Why? she mumbled.
Because I like to know these things.
No, I won’t.
He hit her in the mouth with his gun, loosening two teeth and breaking a third. She tasted blood and pieces of her gum and swallowed part of one shattered molar.
No.
He hit her again in the stomach and she doubled over. He stomped on her right hand, snapping two fingers. He crushed her left knee with another blow.
Now!
Reggie, she muttered as the blood trickled down her face.
Reggie, what?
Reggie Campion.
Well, Reggie Campion, now you’ll know.
Know what?
What it feels like to die in beautiful Provence.
He motioned to one of his men, who came forward with the canister. A moment later Reggie could taste the petrol as it poured over her, clogging her nostrils, stinging her eyes.
She wanted to be brave. But she heard herself scream, No, please. Don’t. Like a child. Pathetic. Weak.
Kuchin smiled, took the match from his pocket, struck it against the heel of his shoe, and held it up for her to see.
No, no, she cried out.
I actually thought you’d be a worthier foe, Reggie, said Kuchin.
No, please, don’t kill me.
This time the monster wins, Reggie Campion, he said.
He dropped the match on her head and she burst into flames.