Page 5 of Nikolai
Her lips curved.“Actually, we’ve just met.”
“Not really.I’ve spent hours listening to your voice and ideas.As a matter of fact—” Nick looked away, over the gorgeous bay, at the light and life and beauty of the place.He hesitated.He wasn’t used to sharing any but the most superficial of emotions, happy to keep his innermost thoughts completely to himself.But lately…well, lately he’d been feeling a little restless.A little empty.One could almost say a little lonely, only Nikolai Garin didn’t do lonely.
Whatever it was, he found himself saying things that could never have come out of his mouth ten years ago when he’d been a hotshot commando, tough as nails.Invincible, uncrackable.
“A year ago, your documentary saved my sanity.My team and I had been hired by the World Health Organization to accompany and provide security for a team of doctors and nurses in Afghanistan.There’d been an outbreak of polio, and they were going to immunize the whole population of a region.We’d set up tents and they were immunizing several hundred people a day.There was this kid—Ahmed—who hung around.Skinny little guy who was completely fascinated by the procedure.By the tenth day he had an English vocabulary of about a hundred words and was really eager to help.We had a big security team because the immunization program was something the warlords hated.I’d just come back from patrol duty and was at one end of the encampment when I saw Ahmed.He was wearing a coat and looked like he’d put on twenty pounds.”
She drew in a breath and covered her mouth.
Nick nodded sharply.
“Ahmed looked across at me and had the saddest look I’ve ever seen on a human face.Then he turned around and went into the immunization tent.I screamed and started running but I was too late.One half the encampment blew up.All ten doctors and fifteen nurses died.Together with two of my men and something like fifty locals.A forensic team came in and determined that Ahmed’s bomb was remote controlled.They just…blew him up.They took a lively and affectionate and smart little boy and…blew him up.Together with their countrymen and twenty-five medical personnel working hard to keep their people safe from a deadly disease.”
He drew in a deep breath.“That night I watchedThe Smiling Peoplefour times and it reminded me the world wasn’t just pain and viciousness.”
For a moment the sights and sounds of that awful day were superimposed on the amazing view right in front of him.That day still haunted his nights and had changed him in some fundamental way.He was still coming to grips with it.
He felt warmth on his arm and looked down.She’d put her hand on his arm.It wasn’t in any way a come-on.It was a gesture of human connection.He put his hand over hers and held it there a moment.
Then reality rushed back in.He wasn’t in Afghanistan, wounded and grieving and broken-hearted.He was in Naples, at the United States Consulate, on a freaking job.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Parker shook her head, that shining fall of blue-black hair swishing across her shoulders.
And…the earth moved.
George wasglad he had a chance to see the enemy, Nikolai Garin.George hadn’t really gamed out what would happen if a security expert were called in.He’d expected to continue what he was doing because the Consulate staff were all lightweights, except for Caroline Munro.But she wasn’t a technical expert.
Garin was.
George knew what Munro expected Garin to find—a leak, someone careless or compromised, some minor breach.But Garin would have to pass in review the entire Consulate.How could he possibly know how tech savvy George was?And yet George felt anxiety grip him.
It wasn’t rational, that was the worst part.Objectively, he was safe.Perfectly safe.No one had ever caught the smallest trace of what he was doing.His app left nothing obvious.He had compartmentalized contacts, banked the bulk of the money safely in Aruba, never left a trail.
He knew intelligence.He knew how professionals worked.He wasn’t some hacker selling compromising photos.He was a professional.
But still.Garin unnerved him.
Maybe he should cut back.Do one more job, maybe two, and then quit.Here in Naples, anyway.Do some investing.Step carefully.Start again in the next posting, and then the one after that.End up rich, with a laughable State Department pension.
And then Garin walked up to Parker Donovan.Just like that.Walked up to her, introduced himself and…she smiled at him.
What the hell?
George had always had to game it out when approaching Parker.Make it seem casual, not planned.Not that it ever made a difference, because Parker basically turned up her beautiful nose at him.
It made him deeply, bitterly resentful.
Parker smiled at something Garin said.She never smiled at him, never.She was always super polite, as she should be with her aunt’s staff, but nothing more.She never gave him the warm smile she was giving Garin.Not once.
George forced his gaze away, lifted a glass to someone he saw across the terrace.A local businessman he cared nothing about.
Sipped his wine, which was good, but soured in his stomach.
Watched as Parker smiled again at the rich man who’d come to ruin his life.
And then the earth moved.
