David Baldacci: Deliver Us From Evil

On seeing her he slipped the gun in his shoulder holster, grinned, and took a sip of his tea. Whit Beckham said, “Eh, Reg, you shoulda rung up when you hit the gateposts. Almost shot you. Be in a funk for weeks if I did that.” His robust Irish accent had softened over the last few years to where Regina could understand almost all of what he said without the services of a translator.

She slipped off her jacket and hung it on a wooden peg on the wall. She was dressed in faded jeans, a burgundy lightweight turtleneck sweater with the collar turned up, and black ankle boots. Her hair was returned to its original shade of rich dark brown and was secured at the nape of her neck with a tortoiseshell clip. She wore no makeup, and as she stepped into the light thrown through the windows, one could see, though she was only twenty-eight, the beginnings of a fine web of lines around her wide, intense eyes.

“My mobile never manages to work round here, Whit.”

“I reckon it’s time to get a new mobile service then,” he advised. “Tea?”

“Coffee, the stronger the better. It was a long flight and I didn’t sleep much.”

“Coming up.”

“Brilliant, thanks. Dom here? Didn’t see his motorbike.”

“I think he parked it in one of the garages. And it’s not a motorbike.”

“What then?”

“It’s a crotch rocket. Has to do with horsepower and such, see?”

“Right, interesting stuff, male toys.”

He gave her a look. “You doing okay?”

She feigned a smile. “Smashing. Never better. You do it once, it gets easier each time.”

His face creased into a frown. “That’s a crock of shit and you know it.”

“Do I?”

“Keep in mind that Huber killed a few hundred thousand people and got away with it for over sixty years.”

“I read the same briefing papers you did, Whit.”

He looked put off. “Well, maybe you need to take some time off then. Recharge.”

“I am recharged. Only took that long flight and a couple of drinks to do it. Colonel Huber is extinguished from my memory.”

Whit grinned. “You sure you’re not going mental on me?”

“No, but thanks for asking. So who’s here?”

“Usual suspects.”

She checked her watch. “Early start?”

“New job, everyone gets a bit giddy.”

“Including me.”

“You really sure about that?”

“Don’t be a prat. Just get me the damn coffee.”

REGGIE WALKED through passages smelling of mildew until she reached a set of wooden double doors with lavish burned-in engravings of books on each. She tugged one door open and passed through into the library. It had three walls of books and sliding ladders running on tarnished brass rails to reach them. A fourth wall was lined with old photos and portraits of men and women long dead. The room was anchored by a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, one of the few in the house that worked properly. And even this one tended to belch smoke into the room with regularity. She took a moment to warm herself in front of the flames before turning to look at the people seated around the large Spanish-style table with turned legs that sat in the center of the room.

Reggie nodded to each of them, all older than she except for Dominic, who looked well-rested at the other end of the table. Her gaze then settled on the elderly man who sat at the head of the table. Miles Mallory’s outfit was tweed on tweed with elbow patches, crooked bow tie, a wrinkled shirt with one edge of a collar pointing to the ceiling, sensible blunt-toed shoes, and socks that failed to cover the man’s chubby, hairless shins. He had a massive head circled by a rim of grizzled gray hair that had not seen the barber’s shears in months. His beard, however, was neatly trimmed and matched the color of his hair except for a creamy patch the size of a penny near his chin. The eyes were green and probing, the spectacles covering them thick and black, the jowls heavy, the mouth small and petulant, the teeth tobacco-stained and uniformly leaning on their neighbors. He held a small curved pipe in his right hand and was busily packing it with his most noxious tobacco concoction, which would soon permeate the room and forcibly remove most of the oxygen.

“You look excited, Professor Mallory,” said Reggie pleasantly.

“I have already done so with young Dominic, but may I be the first to congratulate you on your excellent work in Argentina?”

“You could be, but I beat you to it, Prof,” said Whit as he came into the room and handed Reggie a cup of coffee so hot the vapors were still visible though the kitchen was about a mile from the library.

“Ah, well,” said Mallory good-naturedly. “Let me be the second, then.”

Reggie took a sip of the coffee. She never felt comfortable talking about what she had done, even with people who’d helped her do it. Yet killing someone who had slaughtered so many did not draw the typical human emotions. To her and everyone sitting at the table their targets had forfeited any rights they had by their heinous acts. They might as well have been discussing the killing of a rabid dog. But perhaps, Reggie thought, that would be an unfair comparison.

For the dog.

“Thank you. But unfortunately, I’m sure Herr Huber will still rest in peace.”

Mallory said stiffly, “I doubt very much if the colonel is resting comfortably at this moment. The flames, I’m very certain, do hurt.”

“If you say so; theology was never my strong point.” She settled in a chair. “But Huber is now history. So we move on.”

“Yes,” said Mallory eagerly. “Yes. Exactly. Now we move on.”

Whit grinned wryly. “Then let’s see if we can ride the monster one more time without getting our bloody selves trampled.”

Mallory nodded at the slim, fair-haired woman seated to his immediate right. “Liza, if you would be so kind.” She passed around manila folders bulging with copies of documents and held together with multiple blood-red rubber bands.

“You know, Prof,” said Whit. “All this can go on a portable USB stick and from there onto our laptops. It’s a lot more convenient than toting all this around in my car.”

“Laptops can be lost or compromised. Or even stolen. ‘Hacked,’ I believe, is the precise term,” replied Mallory with a trace of indignation, but also with the slightly insecure look of someone to whom computers remained an enigma.

Whit held up the folder. “Well, bloody paper can be nicked pretty easily too, particularly ten kilos of the stuff.”

“Now, let’s get down to business,” said Mallory brusquely, ignoring this comment. He held up a photo of an older man in his sixties with a long nose, a shaved head, and an expression that summoned only one reaction: fear.

“Evan Waller,” said Mallory. “Believed to be born in Canada sixty-three years ago, but that is incorrect. His public reputation is that of a legitimate businessman. But-”

Whit spoke up. “But his private rep is what?” He took the pistol from its holster and laid it on the table.

If Mallory was annoyed that Whit had interrupted him or placed the gun within view, he didn’t show it. In fact his eyes gleamed as he said, “Evan Waller is actually Fedir Kuchin.”

As he looked around the room and there was no discernible reaction from the group, disappointment replaced his glee. “Ukrainian born, he served in the military and then in the national secret police that reported directly to the KGB.” When even this revelation did not generate any comment he added sharply, “Have none of you heard of the Holodomor?” He looked at the opposite end of the table. “Dominic, surely at university you must have,” he said imploringly.

Dominic shook his head, his expression pained at having failed the older man.