Deliver Us From Evil (12 page)

“
I
DON’T THINK
I’ve ever seen water this clear,” said Reggie as they paddled along.

She was in front and Shaw was in the rear of the red kayak. He’d changed into long bathing trunks and a loose-fitting T-shirt
with a life jacket worn over it. Reggie had on a striped bikini top under her life jacket and a pair of white cotton butt-huggers,
thin enough for the striped bikini bottom to be visible through them. She had the same Red Sox baseball cap on, only now it
was turned backwards.

“You’re good at this,” said Shaw as he watched her muscled delts work, dipping the paddle in and out of the water. He’d synchronized
his movements with hers except when he had to use his paddle as a rudder to navigate them around the curves of the river,
whose current was deceptively fast. In large masses under the otherwise clear water were bright green and purple vegetation
and long strands of what looked like kelp. Shaw felt like he was in a large aquarium.

“I like the water. When I lived in Boston I crewed on the Charles River every chance I got.”

He said, “Okay, so you’re a ringer. Now I don’t feel so bad about not being able to keep up with you.”

“You’re doing fine.”

He dipped his hand in the water. It
was
very cold. He was definitely staying in the boat.

There were five other kayaks in their party, but Shaw and Reggie had quickly outdistanced all except for one. In that kayak
Whit and Dominic, dressed as tourists and loudly speaking French, were acting out having a go at paddling. While Dominic held
a camera and pretended to shoot video of Whit doing something funny, he was able to record about two minutes’ worth of close-ups
of Shaw.

They had to stop at various small dams and the guides helped them transport the kayaks over them. There was one “surprise”
rapid that they easily navigated before ending their river run and climbing in the kayak company’s van for transport back
to their point of origin. Shaw and Reggie rode near the front, Whit and Dominic in the rear. The van rocked back and forth
over winding and rutted dirt roads before they reached asphalt once more. Only once did Reggie glance back and flash Whit
a signal by blinking her right eye. He answered by lightly squeezing the bag he was holding. Inside was the gun with Shaw’s
prints on it. By prearrangement he’d snagged it out of her car while the others were getting their kayak gear together.

They climbed out of the van and into Reggie’s red Renault. Shaw had to bend his long torso and legs to awkward degrees to
accommodate the small space.

“Euro cars are definitely not for tall people,” Reggie said sympathetically.

“I’ll survive.”

The drive back to Gordes took less than twenty minutes.

“You can just head to your villa,” he said. “I can walk back up to my place.”

“How about a swim and some lunch first?” she said. “You’re already dressed for it.”

He hesitated, mentally going through all that this might entail. “All right. Sure.”

They parked in front of her villa. Shaw glanced at the entrance to the villa next door. “Don’t see the Citroën.”

“I know. It was gone when I left to pick you up.”

“Interesting. I saw one of the guys walking through town this morning.”

“Really? Did you talk to him?”

He looked at her strangely. “Uh, no, he looked pretty tough. Sort of like a mobster.”

She unlocked the door, disarmed the security system, and led him into the back. She passed him a towel and some sunblock,
pointing to his forearms that were already a bit red from the kayak ride.

“Yeah, all those years spent indoors,” he lamented.

They went out to the pool area. She slid off her shorts and stepped out of her sneakers while he pulled off his T-shirt and
kicked off his sandals.

Behind his sunglasses he took a moment to assess her physical condition and came away impressed. There wasn’t an ounce of
fat on the woman and her muscles were lean and defined; her midsection was a hard pack, her calves as defined as a professional
sprinter’s.

She dove in the pool and then came back up treading water with easy motions of her arms and legs. She nodded to her right.
“That’s the deep end. Twelve feet. Don’t want you to hit your head, six-six.”

He dove in and came up next to her.

“I’m going to swim some laps,” she said.

And she did for the next twenty minutes, back and forth, flip-turning at the precise moment. He swam a few laps with her and
then climbed out of the pool, toweled off, lay under the beautiful Provençal sun, and watched her.

When she came out later, she wrung out her hair, grabbed a towel, and looked up.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Shaw was standing on top of the stone-tiled dining table under a wooden pergola next to the wall separating her villa from
its neighbor. The wall was high, but the table plus his own considerable height enabled him to easily peer over.

“Checking out the next-door thugs.”

She crossed the tiled surface in a flash and forcibly pulled him off his perch.

He feigned amusement. “What’s wrong?”

Her face was pink underneath the tan, her eyebrows knitted together in anger. “Just don’t do it again.”

“Why, aren’t you curious?”

“You were the one who saw the creep spying on me. You said the guy you saw in the village this morning was tough-looking.
Like a mobster. I don’t want them mad at me. I’m on vacation.”

“Fine, fine. That’s reasonable enough. How about some lunch? I’m starving.”

She regained her composure and continued to towel off. “I was thinking a shrimp salad, some bread to dip in olive oil, and
a bottle of white wine? I got some tomatoes, cucumbers, and artichoke hearts from the market.”

“Sounds great. Put me to work. I know my way around a kitchen. I can sous-chef with the best of them. Well, I can’t really,
but I can slice vegetables.”

“I
will
put you to work.” She slipped on her shorts, but did not cover up her bikini top. She twisted her hair back and secured it
with a red scrunchie. She’d looked more voluptuous in her sundress, Shaw noted. And yet he was really thinking that she’d
failed his little test. He’d stood on the table—a spot he’d calculated could not be seen from next door unless someone were
standing in the rear grounds—simply to gauge her reaction. She’d said all the right things, exhibited normal concern about
getting mixed up with “tough” people. Yet Shaw had been doing this a long time, and his instincts told him that her emotional
underpinnings accompanying these words were off the mark just enough. She
was
fearful, but not for the obvious reason.

He helped her fix lunch and they ate outside; their talk was innocuous for the most part and neither mentioned the developing
plot next door. Later he walked back up to his hotel. He immediately checked the three little traps he always set to see if
someone had been there. They were located such that a cleaning person would not disturb them while performing their regular
duties—his desk drawer, his closet, and on one of his bags.

He sat back on his bed. Of the three traps, two had been sprung. While he’d been out cavorting with “Janie,” someone had searched
his room.

W
ALLER SHOWERED
and used a razor to slice a few errant hairs off his head. He was not naturally bald, but had begun shaving his head as an
act of disguise when he’d fled the Ukraine. He knew that almost nothing changed a man’s appearance more than hair added or
subtracted.

After giving himself another injection of his special elixir he strode through his penthouse, reaching the end of a corridor
and a built-in cabinet. He twisted in a counterclockwise motion the pull knob on the right-side cabinet door and a piece of
wood slid aside, revealing a digital pad. He punched in a four-digit code. There was a click and the cabinet front moved forward
on smooth hydraulics. Waller passed through, and the door, operating on a motion sensor, automatically closed behind him.
It was a nifty piece of craftsmanship.

Waller’s penthouse was over ten thousand square feet, not including the “hidden” space located here, in the center of his
home. This was the primary reason why he allowed no one else in his apartment. He couldn’t chance anyone discovering it. The
space was a bare concrete shell, part of the original bones of the penthouse. The man who’d constructed this “safe room” for
him was of Ukrainian descent, loyal to Waller, and now dead, of natural causes. Waller rarely if ever killed his true friends.

He’d decorated the safe room himself. Stainless steel boxes with electronic locks had been delivered via a secure courier
and Waller had unpacked them alone in this sanctuary. He stood in front of an old metal locker with “Fedir Kuchin” engraved
on a small plate affixed to its door. He took out his officer’s parade uniform. It still fit rather well, he thought, though
it was tight in places where gravity had bested him. He secured his gun belt around his middle, in which was holstered a vintage
Russian 9x18 Makarov PM-53. This had been the Soviet Union’s standard military sidearm for forty years, ending its run in
1991 when the Soviet empire collapsed completely. He placed the bright blue cap with gold piping on his head with the red
Soviet star in the middle and turned and looked at himself in the mirror bolted to one wall. The material was scratchy and
the fabric did not breathe very well, but to him it was the finest silk.

In his full KGB dress regalia he was propelled back to a time in his life that even then he had realized would be the high
point of his existence. He touched the medals, ribbons, and badges riding on the left side of the jacket. Three Irreproachable
KGB Service Medals, Distinguished Worker of State Security, graduate of Leningrad University badge, and another badge indicating
that he had attended the prestigious Andropov Red Banner Institute. He also had medals for combat service, which he’d earned
with his blood in Afghanistan among other places. There were many terrible things his enemies could truthfully call him, but
a coward was not one of them.

Though born in a rural fishing village only six hundred kilometers from Kiev, Waller had always considered himself a Soviet
and not a Ukrainian. His mentor in the KGB had been a three-star colonel general with the reputation of being the “Butcher
of Kiev.” This man was also Ukrainian-born but had sworn his allegiance to Moscow. Everything Waller knew about counterintelligence,
crushing insurgencies, and ensuring the security of the Soviet way of life had come from this man. Waller had a picture of
him on the wall next to the red Soviet flag with its golden hammer crossed with a golden sickle and the star denoting the
Communist Party residing in the upper canton.

He marched to the center of the room, came to rigid attention, and saluted this great Soviet, who was now dead, having been
unceremoniously shot for his glorious service. Then Waller, feeling slightly foolish at this attention given to a man long
in his grave, seated himself at an old 1950s-era metal desk that he had used when with the KGB in his home country. Old papers
and forms in triplicate with cumbersome carbon copies were stacked neatly on his desk. Scarred metal filing cabinets were
lined against one wall. Inside those plain depositories were as many of the records of his decades-long service to his adopted
country as he had managed to smuggle out. He would come here from time to time to go over these “accomplishments” and allow
himself to relive past glories.

In truth, he cared little for his current life. He was rich, but money had never been a primary goal. He had been born poor,
grown up in poverty, and joined the ranks of those defending his way of life. Yet even those in the highest levels of the
Communist Party typically only had “luxuries” such as a flat with its own bath and a car. It did not pay nearly as well as
capitalism.

Yet now that is what I am. A capitalist. The same thing I fought against all those years. Well, I have to admit, the Americans
probably had it right.

The trafficking of young girls for prostitution bored him. He had entered into negotiations with the Muslims to sell them
nuclear weapons capability principally because it allowed him to recapture a little of his past, when what he did, what he
ordered, affected thousands. Now he was just a businessman, like so many others. He made a lot of money, he lived in great
luxury, but if he were gone tomorrow who would care? No history book would hold his name. His superiors in the KGB had earned
much of the credit for his work. They were immortal. By comparison, he was quite ordinary. Yet there were those who knew what
he had done. And that was why he’d had to run, hide like a mouse in a wall. He’d had little choice if he wanted to live. He
had seen what happened to comrades who were not so nimble. Some were torn apart by hordes of angry people who had spent their
entire lives imprisoned while living in their own country. He understood the emotion perfectly; he just didn’t want to suffer
the consequences of it.

He opened another drawer, pulled out an old book, and leafed through it, revealing page after page of drawings, in his own
hand. He had always been a good sketch artist, having learned the skill from his mother, who had earned her living as a street
artist first in France and then in Kiev before ending up in a fishing village that was icebound five months of the year, married
to a man who did not love her. Even now Waller did not know the full history of the pair and what had drawn them together.
Reproduced in this book were many of the people he’d killed, their dead or dying faces done in charcoal, black ink, or pencil
only. There was no color in this book. The dead did not require it.

The next book he slid out of his desk might have surprised some people who had known the old Fedir Kuchin. He hefted the Bible
in his hand. The Soviet Union of course had been vehemently opposed to organized religion of any kind. “The opium of the masses,”
as Marx had pointed out. Yet Waller’s mother had been French and a devout Catholic. And she had raised her son in her religious
beliefs even though it was a very dangerous thing to do. She read the Bible to him every night while his usually drunk father
slept.

What had first appealed to Waller about the readings was how much violence was contained in a book purportedly espousing peace
and love. Many people were slaughtered in ways even the grown Fedir Kuchin would not have employed. Reciting the Lord’s Prayer
with his mother each night, she had always emphasized one phrase above all others, lingering over it as though giving it its
due.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Waller well knew the evil she was referring to: her husband.

His poor mother, good to the last. Yet what she didn’t understand about evil, her son clearly did. Given the proper motivation
anyone was capable of terrible cruelty, baseless savagery, horrific violence. A mother would kill to protect her child or
a child his mother. A soldier kills to protect his country. Waller had killed to protect both his mother and his country.
He was good at it, understood quite clearly the mind-set required. He was not desensitized to violence; he respected it. He
did not use it cavalierly. Yet when he did employ it, he couldn’t say that he didn’t enjoy the process, because he did. Did
that make him evil? Perhaps. Would his mother have considered him evil? Clearly not. He killed for his country, his mother,
and his own survival. When people struck him, he struck back. There could be no fairer set of rules ever conceived. He was
who he was. He was true to himself, while most people lived their lives as a façade only, their real selves buried under a
platform of lies. They would smile at their friend before thrusting the knife into his back. Under those parameters, who was
truly the evil one?

The lion roared before it attacked, while the snake slithered in silence before sinking its fangs into unsuspecting flesh.

I am a lion. Or at least I used to be.

From a storage locker he pulled an old projection camera, set it on his desk, and plugged the power cord into an outlet. He
opened his desk drawer and took out a projection reel with film wrapped around it. He snapped it into place on the camera,
fed the film through the machine, pointed the camera at a blank concrete wall, turned down the lights, and flicked on the
projector switch. On the wall appeared black-and-white images from over thirty years ago. Striding into view was a young Fedir
Kuchin in full uniform. The present-day Kuchin smiled proudly when he saw his younger self.

On the wall the young Kuchin marched to the center of a compound with high fences of concertina wire and guard towers visible
all around. He said something and armed men drove a dozen people forward into view, forcing them to kneel in front of Kuchin
with thrusts from their gun barrels. There were four men, three women, and the rest children. Kuchin bent down and said something to each of them. Sitting in his desk chair, Waller mouthed these
same words. This was one of his favorite memories. On the wall the black-and-white Kuchin led the children off to the side,
away from the adults. From his pocket he took out candy and gave it to the frightened kids with rags for clothes, even patting
one little girl on the head. From the pocket of his uniform the present-day Waller withdrew a decades-old disc of stale chocolate
from that very occasion.

As the starving kids hungrily ate their treats, Kuchin walked back over to the adults, pulled his pistol, and executed each
one of them with a bullet to the back of the head. When the screaming children rushed forward to hold their dead parents,
Kuchin shot them too, sending his last bullet into the spine of a little girl who was cradling her dead mother’s head. The
final image was Kuchin taking a half-eaten piece of candy from the dead fingers of a boy lying sprawled in the mud and devouring
it himself. When the film reel finished playing and the wall became light again, Waller sat back with a level of pride and
satisfaction that had once been his on a daily basis. That had been his job, and he had done it so well. No one in Ukraine
had done it better.

He took off his uniform and hung it carefully back in his locker, smoothing out a few wrinkles in the fabric. Before turning
out the lights and exiting, he glanced back at the flag and the photo of his mentor.

I just want something worthy of me again. Something that really matters.

He turned out the light, secured the door, and returned to the only life he had left. He was leaving for France shortly. Maybe
he would find something there to make him care again.