Laura Caldwell - The Good Liar

They made sure it appeared as if Aleksei was living in the small hotel room where he’d been told to stay, and they made sure he checked in with his handler and turned over the photos that his sad little rock acquired every day. Once those things were done, no one seemed to care much about Aleksei. Except for Liza.

Every day, Liza conducted lessons with him, breaking the rules in a whopping way by letting him into the apartment in Gávea. She showed him the scopes and the listening devices and the alarms and bugs. She was reckless; she felt literally out of control. She had at first entertained the idea that Aleksei’s facade was just that—a facade—and that he might be a much better spy than she was, one who had quickly and easily wormed his way into her world.

And yet, for once, Liza trusted someone. She felt pulled toward him by an undercurrent she’d never seen coming and didn’t totally understand. She was attracted to him, but there was also something intangible that made her feel deeply connected to him. Throwing caution to the wind was intoxicating.

He never asked who she worked for, and she never told him. If an outsider learned about the Trust’s existence, there was a serious possibility that outsider would be eliminated. So Aleksei didn’t know her employer, but he knew everything else. She told him everything about her life, and she felt like he had grown to know all of her.

“You’re so lucky I’m teaching you all these things,” she said one night.

They were stationed in front of the window in Gávea, peering through night scopes at Franco’s front door and the one window that faced the street. Because of a party Franco was having, the window was open and the drapery pulled back.

Aleksei had been trying to quit smoking, he said, but Liza could smell the scent of a cigarette on his jacket. She hated cigarettes, and yet with him she didn’t mind. She even liked it. She liked everything about the man—his book-smarts, the way his thick hair was colicky and hard to tame, the way his green eyes filled with pain when he saw children barely clothed and nearly starving on the Rio streets.

“I am lucky,” he said, and then he was silent. His silences were different than that day in Rocinha. They were comfortable silences now.

“You probably would have been killed sooner rather than later if it wasn’t for me.” She had no idea why she was doing this bragging. “I could be killed for teaching you what I know.”

Aleksei remained quiet, then out of the corner of her eye, she saw him sit back from the scope. He gazed at his hands. He gazed at her.

In the moonlight filling the apartment, he appeared larger, the scar on his cheek almost white.

He moved toward her. It was a quick, clumsy rush of physical movement, and Liza almost blocked him. She could have easily defended herself if he were trying to harm her. But in a fraction of a second, in that moonlight, she caught the look in his eyes, and it was not the look she’d seen when she’d been attacked by someone before. This was a gentler look, and Liza thought, Is he going to kiss me? Then she thought, Finally.

Aleksei’s body met hers, his weight pushed her off her stool and the two of them tumbled to the hardwood floor. And then he was kissing her, and then his hands were on her shoulders, on her breasts, on her back, her waist. He was all over her. Liza felt enveloped by his eager touch. And she was happier than she ever remembered.

Anguilla, West Indies

L iza shook the thoughts of Aleksei from her brain. Enough, she said to herself. She checked her watch: 10:45 a.m. She looked at the villa to her right. She had fifteen minutes.

She stood, readjusted her black tank bathing suit and opened the straw bag on the chair next to her. She checked that the yellow tube that read Caprilano Sunscreen was tucked in the inside pocket.

Caprilano Sunscreen was sold only in two places—Barneys New York and a store in the Galleria Alberto Sordi in Rome. This tube, however, had not been purchased at either store. Instead, it was a replica. Likewise, the contents inside looked exactly like the white Caprilano sunblock and had been designed to bear its faint, citrusy scent.

Liza adjusted her earbud and put on her large, floppy beach hat. One side of the hat drooped almost to Liza’s jaw and had a tiny mike sewn into its cotton folds.

“Tucker,” she said into the mike. “Ready?”

“Confirmed,” came the reply in her earbud.

She went to the edge of her balcony and leaned over the railing. A hundred feet off shore, the multicolored sails of a Hobie Cat flapped prettily as it tacked back and forth across the water.

Liza called the front desk, gave the name Elena Mistow and checked out of her room over the phone. She asked for a bellman to collect her bags, which she put outside her front door, and requested that a cab be called. She left the room, walked downstairs and made her way to the beach’s edge.

Once there, she didn’t step into the sand immediately. Instead, she looked at the villa to her right. She glanced at her watch again. Any minute now. She waited patiently in her bathing suit, her straw bag in one hand, her hat firmly on her head, hiding her auburn hair. As she stood there, some of the resort’s guests began to filter down to the beach, throwing towels over the plush chaise longues and settling in with books or stacks of magazines.

Liza envied those people. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone on a real vacation or simply sat on a beach and read.

She turned her attention back to the villa. Five minutes later, she saw the French doors open and, as they had every morning for the last five days, the members of the Naponi family began to make their way to the beach. As usual, Angelo Naponi was the last to cross the threshold.

Angelo Naponi was the president of a wealthy family company that owned waste-disposal facilities around the world. Liza and the Trust had no problem with Naponi’s company and the work they did. What they had a problem with was how he spent some of his money. Lately, Naponi had been funding a militant Muslim organization that had its sights on a large-scale bombing in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Naponi himself was Roman Catholic, and was unsympathetic to the Muslims, but such a bombing would wreak havoc in Vilnius where Naponi had been trying to get a foothold for years. Once such havoc occurred, outside companies, just like Naponi’s, would be called upon to help clear the wreckage.

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