The Whole Truth (7 page)

“The deal was for five years, Frank. I’ve hung on for almost six.”

“You nearly killed me.”

“You had a gun pointed at me. And you didn’t show your badge. I thought you were just one more goon looking to shoot me in the back.”

“So if I’d flashed my badge you’re telling me you wouldn’t have shot me in the frigging head?”

“I
did
take you to the closest hospital. Otherwise you would have bled to death.”

“Hospital!” Frank roared. “You left me holding what seemed like half my brain in the parking lot of a human chop shop in the middle of Istanbul.”

“You really think it was just half?”

“Look—”

But Shaw cut in. “I shot you in self-defense, but when your guys showed up in Greece a month later they obviously didn’t see it that way. So we made a deal and I lived up to it. There’s nothing else to talk about.” They did have a deal, Shaw knew. In return for not spending the rest of his life at hard labor in some hellhole in Siberia that Frank would’ve gleefully arranged once he’d recovered from the large-caliber hole in his head, Shaw had spent nearly six years running around the world risking his life so, as Frank quaintly put it, others could live in peace and security. Well, Shaw wanted a little peace and security in
his
life and he wanted it right now. With Anna.

Yet arrangements with men like Frank were sort of like hanging off the Golden Gate Bridge by your pinkies while high winds kicked off the bay. And Shaw couldn’t exactly grab a lawyer off the street and sue in open court for his contractual freedom. That was why he’d agreed to spend an extra year getting nearly shot, stabbed, poisoned, and even blown up. When he’d implied that tangling with the Amsterdam Islamic nuke squad was a cakewalk, he’d meant it.

“But for your special ‘skills’ I wouldn’t have offered you anything except a prison cell.”

This was news to Shaw. “So
you
were the one? Why?”

“After my brains got put back in my head I realized anybody who could almost take me out was somebody we needed on our side.”

“Then you should understand that I’ve done my duty.”

Frank said slowly, “I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to my people about that. Maybe I could bring myself to cutting you loose, but I don’t think they’ll be too happy about it.”

Shaw had never been able to go over, around, or through Frank. The burly baldy had stood his ground like a stone wall.

I should have shot him between the eyes.

“I don’t care if they’re happy! Just tell ’em what I said.”

“In the meantime I need you in Edinburgh and then Germany, Heidelberg. You don’t come through on that you can forget me talking to anybody except your new warden.”

Shaw was silent for a few moments, trying to get his anger under control. “This is the last time, Frank. This is it! You can tell your people whatever the hell you want. Understood?”

“Instructions the usual way. Two days. Enjoy Dublin. And your friend.”

“You really don’t want to go there.”

“Just making an observation.” The line went dead.

“I hate your guts, Frank,” Shaw whispered to the empty air.

CHAPTER 14

S
HAW SLIPPED INTO
the small bathroom. Most European baths were small; these folks apparently required far less space to relieve and bathe themselves than the rest of the world. He splashed water on his face, looked up and caught his reflection in the mirror.

Rugged is how most would describe his features. Even Anna had called him ruggedly handsome. The bones and skin were in decent shape. The eyes had always been his most distinctive element, though. Not only were they the lightest of blues that eyes could generate without artificial aids, they didn’t go with the rest of his coloring. His skin was swarthy, more Italian or Greek than Irish or Scottish, and his hair was dark and wavy, often with a mind of its own. Fetchingly rumpled, Anna had once described it. Yet when Shaw looked at himself all he saw was a haunted man with scars that ran far too deep to endure.

As though she had sensed her presence in his thoughts, Anna appeared behind him, wrapping her long arms around his bare and brawny shoulders.

She was wearing his T-shirt. On Shaw, the breadth and cut of his delts and chest made the shirt a tight fit. Yet even on the tall Anna, it was more like a dress.

“Trouble sleeping?” she asked.

“Rain. Don’t like rain at night.”

“I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

Shaw stared at her in the mirror’s surface as her fingers traced a small scar near his throat. It was a little souvenir from a visit to the Ukraine. He’d told her it was from falling off a bike. Actually it was from a knife thrown by an ex–KGB agent whose only qualification for the job was that he was a homicidal maniac. It’d missed Shaw’s jugular by about two centimeters. Still, he’d come pretty damn near bleeding to death in a place that would have made the chop shop in Turkey he’d dumped Frank at look like Johns Hopkins.

He had another scar on his right side that he’d never explained to her for a simple reason: he wanted to forget it was even there, because every time he did think of it, he felt shame. Branded. Like a horse. No, like a slave. In fact, that was the other reason he was in Dublin, to do something about that little present.

She said again, “
Were
you talking to someone?”

Frank, scars, and the KGB butcher passed from his mind. What Shaw was really wondering was whether Anna was now having second thoughts. His proposal had been followed with a tearful “yes” from her that he could barely hear. And then the bride-to-be’s enthusiasm and excitement ratcheting up, she’d accepted his marriage proposal in
nine
other languages, her tears leaching onto his skin, finally bringing Shaw the man as close as he’d ever come to crying.

But something in her tone now was signaling a message other than happiness. It really was time, he thought.

He splashed water on his face, licked some off his fingers, and turned to face her.

“I’m not really a business consultant specializing in international mergers and acquisitions,” he said.

“I know that.”

“What?” he said sharply.

“I know many business consultants. They rarely can beat unconscious two armed men. They rarely have knife scars on their bodies. And they almost always want to show off their wealth. I’ve never even seen where you live. We always stay at my London flat.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?”

“It’s different now. I just told you I’d marry you.”

“And if I’d still said nothing about what I did?”

“I’d have asked. Like I am now.”

“But you already said yes.”

“And I can also say no.”

“I’m no criminal.”

“I know that too. I can tell. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Now tell me the truth.”

He leaned back against the sink basin and marshaled his thoughts. “I work with an international law enforcement agency funded by several of the G8 countries. We handle stuff that’s either too dicey or too global for one country. Sort of like Interpol on steroids. I’m not in the field anymore. I’m in a desk position now,” he lied, carrying it off reasonably well, he thought.

“And what laws do you enforce?” she asked firmly.

“We try to stop bad people from doing bad things. Any way we can,” he added.

“And what you do now isn’t dangerous, though you get calls in the night?”

“Living is dangerous, Anna. You can turn the corner and get nailed by a bus.”

“Shaw, don’t condescend.”

“It’s not dangerous, no.” He could feel his skin growing hot. He could lie to a Persian madman with ease. But not to Anna.

“Will you continue to come and go as you have been?”

“Actually, I’m planning on retiring. Start doing something else.”

Her face brightened. “This . . . this is a surprise.”

I hope I live to carry it out
. “Marriage is supposed to mean two people together, not apart.”

“You would do this for me?”

“I’d do anything for you.”

She stroked his cheek.

“Why?” he asked suddenly.

“Why what?”

“You could have any man you wanted. Why me?”

“Because you are a good man. A humble man. And a brave one. But as capable as you are, you need looking after, Shaw. You need me. And I need you.”

He kissed her, ran his fingers along her cheek.

“Do you have to leave now?”

He shook his head. “Two days.”

“Where to now?”

“Scotland.”

He took Anna in his arms, let her blonde hair touch his face, her scent mingle with his, canal stink and all.

“But first, to bed.”

They made love again. After she fell asleep, Shaw put one hand behind his head and the other protectively over Anna’s arm.

He listened to the rain and envisioned Frank chuckling at having screwed him again. He touched Anna’s face. Yes, it
was
different now.

The Dublin torrent poured on; each drop of water was a jacketed round fired right into his brain. Shaw had asked her to marry him. But after his conversation with Frank, he feared it might turn out to be the biggest mistake of his life.

CHAPTER 15

“R.
I.C.?” ANNA SAID
as she held the paper up to Shaw, who was pouring coffee, still dressed in his boxers. She pushed the room service cart away a bit and unfolded the insert that had slipped out from the
Herald Tribune
.

Shaw looked over her shoulder. The article was long, brimming with factoids, and constituted another compelling broadside fired against the government of the Russian Federation. The title of the article might have been, “The Evil Empire, Act Two.”

Shaw read out loud, “The Russian Independent Congress, or R.I.C., and its adjunct division, the Free Russia Group, appeal to free countries everywhere to stand up to President Romuald Gorshkov and an administration of terror and oppression before it is too late.”

Anna glanced at another section. “The Gorshkov administration has filled secret prisons with political opponents, murdered rivals, instituted a policy of ethnic cleansing at the highest levels of power, and are secretly manufacturing and stockpiling WMDs in clear contravention of myriad disarmament treaties.” She gazed up at Shaw. “First the Konstantin business, then all those allegedly dead Russians, and now this? Have you ever heard of this organization, the R.I.C.?”

He shook his head. “There’s a Web site listed at the bottom of the page.”

She slid her laptop out, fired it up, and within a minute was hooked to the hotel’s wireless network. Her quick fingers skimmed across the keys and a colorful page sprang up on the screen.

“Look at this Web site.” She pointed to the screen. “This wasn’t online yesterday, I would’ve heard about it.”

Anna snatched up her ringing cell phone, listened, asked questions, and listened some more. She clicked off and glanced over at Shaw. “Well?” he said.

“That was my office. Everyone’s buzzing about this new article. Gorshkov and his ministers are said to be furious. They’re denying everything and demanding to know who’s behind what they call a grand smear campaign.”

“Any idea who did do it?”

She shook her head. “As yet unknown. It needn’t be a large group behind this. Or even lots of money. Although this newspaper insert wasn’t cheap, a few good computer people can swamp the globe with propaganda, we’ve all seen that.”

“And everyone else has sort of jumped on the bandwagon.”

She looked back at the computer and scrolled through the site. “It’s Russian evil this and Russian evil that. My office has done several white papers on the Russians’ slide back to an autocratic system of government. It’s of concern professionally
and
personally. Tensions are very high between Moscow and the rest of the world right now. And all of this certainly hasn’t helped matters.”

“Well, forewarned is forearmed,” Shaw said.

She looked at him thoughtfully. “That’s the problem. When one is forearmed, one tends to pull the trigger faster than one should.”

“Like old times, though,” he said. “Cold war redux.”

She stared at him strangely. “Perhaps someone wants the old world order back.”

The rain had broken. He only had two days left with Anna. Perhaps forever.

He took her in his arms and said, “Screw the Russians.”

He held her so tightly she said, “Shaw, I can’t breathe.”

He let her go, stepped back, staring down.

She cupped his chin with her hand. “We’re engaged. You should be happy.”

“I am, happier than I’ve ever been.”

“You don’t look very happy.”

“We have to leave each other.”

“But not for long. We’ll be together again soon.”

He wrapped his arms around her again, though not as tightly.

There is no guarantee. None
.

CHAPTER 16

T
WO DAYS LATER
Shaw kissed a tearful Anna good-bye.

“We need to set a wedding date,” he told her.

She looked at him strangely. “Yes, of course.”

Shaw drove off in a rental car, but didn’t head to the airport. He was going to Malahide Castle.

Malahide, in Gaeilge, means “on the brow of the sea.” It is situated on the Howth peninsula at the north end of Dublin Bay. Built on a small rise, it has a commanding view of the water, because in those days enemies would often come by boat to pillage and slaughter. Now Shaw passed broad fields on the grounds of the castle where local teams played rugby and cricket, without an ax-wielding pillager in sight.

He paid his euros and was admitted to the oldest inhabited castle in Ireland. It looked like one would expect of a medieval keep: built of sturdy stone block, with wings of imposing circular turrets and ivy grafted onto its hard skin. It had belonged to the Talbot family from 1185 right up to the 1970s.

He waited until the current tour was over and then walked up to the small, thin woman who’d just finished telling a gaggle of tourists all about Malahide Castle, the Talbot family, the Battle of Boyne, the disappearing virgin, and the building’s four ghosts, including the puckish “Puck.”