Lee Child - First Thrills

They could never take that away from him.

For some reason, he became aware of the feel of water evaporating from the reflecting pond behind him, sending a chill down the back of his neck.

There was no sound. He was alone.

It was all as it should be.

He drew in a breath as though it might be his last. Finally: “Gato,” he whispered into the cavernous emptiness. And then again, more loudly. “Goddamn it, gato.”

And from behind the statue, he heard the footsteps-a light tread, but businesslike, echoing within the semi-enclosed chamber.

A figure began to emerge from behind the sculpture. Matosian raised his laser beam, hesitated, and then pressed the button, bathing the figure in a green fluorescent light.

“Hello, Don.” How Chloe had beaten him here from Paris he didn’t know and couldn’t imagine. And she also had managed to find the time to change her clothes, for now she wore a well-tailored dark business suit. “Well done,” she said, stopping ten feet in front of him. “Congratulations. You’ve passed.”

“I’ve passed ?” A slow, deep rage seemed to settle into the middle of his chest. “What do you mean? Has this all been some sort of a game?”

“Not some sort of a game, Don. The most important game in the world. We had to know what you were capable of, what motivated you, how you reacted under pressure. And we had to see it ourselves, not hear about it from some questionably reliable third source. This is the last round before you’re allowed to do the really important work, the work no one can ever know about.”

“But what…” The world seemed to be whirling about him. He brought his hands up to his forehead and closed his eyes against the sensation of vertigo. He became vaguely aware of another set of footsteps emanating from the opposite side of Lincoln’s body. Opening his eyes, he pointed his light in that direction and was not surprised to see his original connection from Langley, call him Honest Abe now, rounding the corner by the emancipator’s right foot. “Hi, Don. Glad you could make it.”

“ You’re glad I could make it? ” Again the rage threatened to undo Matosian. “But what about your sister?” he said to Chloe. “What was that?” He whirled on his CIA contact. “Was that simply collateral damage, as you called it, Abe?”

“Easy,” Chloe said. “We expected you to be upset, Don. Most people who get to this stage in their training are upset. It’s natural. But first, know this. She wasn’t my sister, and…”

“That doesn’t forgive…”

But she raised her hand imperiously, stopping him. “Second, and perhaps more important, she’s not dead. She took a small pill we provided that mimics death very effectively for the better part of an hour. Her job was to get the key to you and then to appear to die. Your job, which you performed spectacularly, I might add, was to forget about her as an acceptable loss and move on with the mission. If you’d have stayed around long enough for her to recover, you wouldn’t be here now. You’d be lateraled into career oblivion and never even know what happened.”

Matosian shook his head. “You people are cold,” he said.

“Cold is a virtue,” Chloe answered. “Cold is a necessity. And you’re a few degrees below lukewarm yourself.”

“For a while there I wasn’t,” Matosian replied.

“No. That was clear.”

Their eyes met. Even in the dark, Matosian thought he could still detect a spark there.

But Honest Abe spoke up, breaking the palpable tension of the moment. “Your mention of Langley was your only mistake. We thought of shutting down the mission then.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because you played it right, plain and simple. Of course, it only makes sense that someone had given you your marching orders, and you being an American, they could rationally have only come from one source. You telling Chloe about it the way you did established your credibility and gave away nothing she wouldn’t have already known if she were on the other side anyway. You may have even let the information slip on purpose. It would be interesting to know if that were the case.”

“I’ll keep that as my own secret,” Matosian said, “if I’m allowed to have any, that is.”

“We’ll give you just the one,” Honest Abe said, and Matosian thought he could detect the trace of a smile in the gash of his mouth. Agency humor.

“Don,” Chloe said. “We’re done here unless you’ve got any other questions.”

“Just one,” Matosian said. “What was the deal about the password. It had nothing to do with the mission.”

“It helped bring you to Paris,” she said. “Otherwise, it was meant to be a conundrum.”

“You mean a riddle?”

“Well, not precisely. You know that a conundrum is a riddle whose answer is a pun. For example, when is a door not a door?”

“When it’s ajar, of course,” Matosian said.

“Right. So we knew we were going to keep you running around. Everywhere you went, you checked out your surroundings, and if you were going to succeed, you had to say, ‘Got to go.’ Gato go. It suggested itself.”

“And on that note,” Matosian said. “I’ve gato go now. You’ll know how to reach me again, I’m presuming.”

“Bet on it,” Chloe said.

Twenty-four hours later, Matosian walked out of his beachfront bungalow and across the white sand into the crystal clear and warm Caribbean water. Navigating by the bright full moon, he swam straight out from the beach for four thousand strokes, then nearly out of sight of land, turned and began the long swim back.

By the time he got to where it was shallow enough for him to stand, the sky to the east was just lightening to a nacreous glow. He could make out the tracks he’d made in the sand on the walk down from his bungalow, but now standing in those tracks was a woman, facing away from him, wearing a diaphanous white shift and nothing else.

When he finally made it back to the hardened sand where the water lapped the shoreline, she turned around and tentatively walked down to where he stood, stopping in front of him, looking up at him with a mixture of trepidation and longing.

“In Paris, I thought you were with them,” he said.

“I know. When you took the phone call. Then with the waiter.”

“Would you have let me eat that little spoonful?”

“I knew you wouldn’t, by that time. Would you have let me?”

“I didn’t, if you remember. Even though I’d been convinced you were the enemy.” He paused, then came out with another question. “And I presume the waiter, like the woman who wasn’t your sister, is all right?”

She nodded. “And ten thousand dollars richer.” A pause. “But that was when you were sure, wasn’t it? At the restaurant?”

He nodded. “Yes. No one else but you could have known where we were. You called Abe when you went to the bathroom.”

She put a hand on his arm. “By that time, I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to leave me, but you had to. We were both trapped in the maze we’d helped create.”

“And,” Matosian asked, “are we still trapped in it now?”

“No,” Chloe said. “I’ve gotten word of a secret mission involving the Vatican that we’ll need to see to soon, but until we get the call from Abe, our time is our own. One day, maybe even two, if we want to take them.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “If you could find it in yourself and in your heart to trust me again.”

“If you put your arms around me,” Matosian said, “maybe you can convince me.”

She did as he’d suggested, and after holding her body against his for a moment, he pulled away enough to let him lean over.