cosmetic surgery, for one thing. Again, that would be the smart thing for a woman on the run to do. She hadn’t opted for that, though; instead she’d come back to Paris. Maybe going into hiding and not coming out until after she’d had cosmetic alterations would have taken too long. Maybe there was some kind of time limit for something she wanted to get accomplished.
Such as? See Disneyland Paris? Tour the Louvre?
Maybe killing Salvatore Nervi was just the opening act, instead of an end unto itself. Maybe she knew the Agency’s best of the best-namely himself, not that she knew him from Adam’s house cat-was on the job, and it was only a matter of time before she was grabbed. That kind of faith in his abilities made him feel all warm inside. At any rate, say his thinking was on the right track: she had something she wanted to do, something so urgent that hours counted, and she was afraid she wouldn’t have time to do it.
Swain groaned and sat up, rubbing his hands over his face. There was a flaw in that logic, too. She’d have had a better chance of accomplishing whatever it was if she’d gone to ground and had the cosmetic surgery. He kept coming back to that. The only thing that made sense of her actions was if there was a metaphoric time bomb somewhere, something that wouldn’t wait a few months and had to be accomplished right now, or at least in a short period of time. But if there really was something along those lines, something that posed a world danger, all she had to do was pick up a phone and call it in, let a group of experts handle whatever it was rather than her trying to pull a Lone Ranger.
Scratch “world danger” as a motivation.
Something personal, then. Something she wanted to do herself, and felt a compelling urge to get done as soon as possible.
He thought about the contents of her file. Her motivation for killing Salvatore Nervi was the deaths of a couple of her friends and their adopted daughter a few months ago. She’d done the smart thing and laid her groundwork for that, taken her time, got close enough to Nervi to do the job. So why wasn’t she doing the smart thing now? Why was an intelligent, professional agent doing something so dumb it would ultimately get her caught?
Forget motivation, he suddenly thought. He was a man; he’d go crazy trying to figure out what was going through a woman’s mind. If he had to pick the most likely scenario, he’d say she wasn’t finished with the Nervi family. She’d struck them hard, but now she’d circled back for a killing blow. They had pissed her off big-time, and she was going to make them pay-
He heaved a sigh of satisfaction. There. That felt right And damn if it didn’t provide motivation, too. She’d lost people she loved, and she was striking back no matter what the cost to herself. He could understand that. The reasoning was simple and clean, without all the why-do-this and not-do-that second-guessing.
He’d run it by Frank Vinay in a few hours when sunrise hit D.C., but his gut told him he was on the right track and he’d start nosing around before he talked to Vinay. He just needed to decide on a starting point
It all went back to her friends. Whatever they’d been doing that got on Nervi’s bad side, that same thing would be her target as a sort of poetic justice.
He thought back to the file he’d read in Vinay’s office. He hadn’t brought any paperwork with him, because it could compromise security; unsanctioned eyes couldn’t read what wasn’t there. He relied instead on his excellent memory, which produced the names Averill and Christina Joubran, retired contract agents. Averill had been Canadian, Christina from the States, but they’d lived in France full-time and been completely retired for over twelve years. What could have spurred Salvatore Nervi to kill them?
Okay, first he had to find out where they’d lived, how they’d died, who their friends were other than Lily Mansfield, and if they’d
Such as? See Disneyland Paris? Tour the Louvre?
Maybe killing Salvatore Nervi was just the opening act, instead of an end unto itself. Maybe she knew the Agency’s best of the best-namely himself, not that she knew him from Adam’s house cat-was on the job, and it was only a matter of time before she was grabbed. That kind of faith in his abilities made him feel all warm inside. At any rate, say his thinking was on the right track: she had something she wanted to do, something so urgent that hours counted, and she was afraid she wouldn’t have time to do it.
Swain groaned and sat up, rubbing his hands over his face. There was a flaw in that logic, too. She’d have had a better chance of accomplishing whatever it was if she’d gone to ground and had the cosmetic surgery. He kept coming back to that. The only thing that made sense of her actions was if there was a metaphoric time bomb somewhere, something that wouldn’t wait a few months and had to be accomplished right now, or at least in a short period of time. But if there really was something along those lines, something that posed a world danger, all she had to do was pick up a phone and call it in, let a group of experts handle whatever it was rather than her trying to pull a Lone Ranger.
Scratch “world danger” as a motivation.
Something personal, then. Something she wanted to do herself, and felt a compelling urge to get done as soon as possible.
He thought about the contents of her file. Her motivation for killing Salvatore Nervi was the deaths of a couple of her friends and their adopted daughter a few months ago. She’d done the smart thing and laid her groundwork for that, taken her time, got close enough to Nervi to do the job. So why wasn’t she doing the smart thing now? Why was an intelligent, professional agent doing something so dumb it would ultimately get her caught?
Forget motivation, he suddenly thought. He was a man; he’d go crazy trying to figure out what was going through a woman’s mind. If he had to pick the most likely scenario, he’d say she wasn’t finished with the Nervi family. She’d struck them hard, but now she’d circled back for a killing blow. They had pissed her off big-time, and she was going to make them pay-
He heaved a sigh of satisfaction. There. That felt right And damn if it didn’t provide motivation, too. She’d lost people she loved, and she was striking back no matter what the cost to herself. He could understand that. The reasoning was simple and clean, without all the why-do-this and not-do-that second-guessing.
He’d run it by Frank Vinay in a few hours when sunrise hit D.C., but his gut told him he was on the right track and he’d start nosing around before he talked to Vinay. He just needed to decide on a starting point
It all went back to her friends. Whatever they’d been doing that got on Nervi’s bad side, that same thing would be her target as a sort of poetic justice.
He thought back to the file he’d read in Vinay’s office. He hadn’t brought any paperwork with him, because it could compromise security; unsanctioned eyes couldn’t read what wasn’t there. He relied instead on his excellent memory, which produced the names Averill and Christina Joubran, retired contract agents. Averill had been Canadian, Christina from the States, but they’d lived in France full-time and been completely retired for over twelve years. What could have spurred Salvatore Nervi to kill them?
Okay, first he had to find out where they’d lived, how they’d died, who their friends were other than Lily Mansfield, and if they’d
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