Yeo had to tell Ilina. He even looked forward to observing her response.
Would she pity him enough to open her heart? Would that same violet shimmer play in her eyes once more?
Or would she maintain the same cool demeanor that she always met him with?
It was her eyes that struck him the first time he saw her in Tehran.
She was covered in a turquoise sari. Her iris eyes looked out from the long silk scarf that partially covered her face.
In a single flash, she turned toward him and locked eyes with him. The thick black eyelashes closed over them and she turned back to the silver bowl she was examining.
As she moved through the marketplace, she occasionally stopped to gesture gracefully and bargain with the seller. But she did not have the manner of a native.
The woman’s bearing and statuesque appearance seemed European to him. She seemed a stranger here, much like himself.
Yeo followed her through the market at a discreet distance, until she had circled the market and stood in front of him.
“You may walk with me to my hotel,” she said.
He had a meeting with the Shah, a company to buy, but negotiations had stalled.
He was overdue at headquarters. His father was starting to worry. But nothing mattered now.
“I’d be happy to,” he said in the same even tone.
It was an erotic moment for him. Her bold approach left him defenseless, tripped by a primitive impulse that bypassed logic, formality, simple cordiality—any set of civilized impressions that he might have approached a woman with in the past.
After a few days together, he stopped asking himself why he was so addicted to her.
Those moist, sultry eyes never lost their impact.
And her voice was just as sweet.
But he soon found that the sweetness of her voice and the moisture of her eyes were only a lure.
The ferocious beast that greeted him at the gate to her heart concealed some bitter wound, the nature of which she never revealed to him.
She seemed to cherish, not only the pain it caused her, but the pain it caused him.
He had not recalled these moments in years, as he sat in the back of the town car, on the way to her villa, overlooking Lake Como.
Yeo checked his cell.
In coded language, Chuck informed him that the Israeli operation had come off flawlessly.
He found her in the garden, leaning over some plants.Her passion for gardening began after Roland’s death. She spent the entire afternoon in the sun. It kept her free from the shadows of her thoughts, at least for a time. She once had friends who came in the afternoon and sat on the veranda over lunch.The rest of her time had been spent painting in the studio on the third floor, looking out on the lake.
She brought the platter heaped with feta cheese, tomatoes, and red onions and set on the table on the veranda. She sat down beside Yeo and poured herself a glass of wine.They began to eat.“Do you like my tomatoes?” she asked after a while.“They are better than last summer,” he told her.
Yeo flew back to New York.He called a meeting of the board members and the full management team. Chuck Maitland had delegated authority to the people he knew he could rely on.Pulling a tight-knit organization together, sworn to silence, everyone acting like a CIA suddenly converted to gentleness and love for human kind, required a lot of discretion.And even more trust.
He had fucked up 9/11. It was right in front of his eyes and he blew it.Dink could never stop whipping himself for this oversight.In retrospect, the hints were clear, but there was nothing solid enough to go running upstairs to Shroud.In the aftermath, informational interference created so much chaos and distorted feeling that Dink’s blindness was never addressed, in spite of the fact
Sonny Boy was a twenty-six-year-old black drag queen.She was testing games for software companies when she was eight.She was a manager by the time she was ten.By the time she was twenty-two she was designing software for Fortune 500 companies.
Dink walked down the stony corridor, with rough-hewn stone walls on either side of him, the rugs as soft as down beneath his feet.Lighting emanated from the ceiling, from small lamps set back in the stone.It was assumed there were cameras behind the lights.Timers dimmed and brightened the tiny lights throughout the day so the ocular muscles would move, allowing the stiffs to blink occasiona
Sony Boy was sitting in the gold lame chair, dressed in blue sequins and six-inch heels.She wore her hair piled in twirls on top of her head like some cotton-candy courtesan in the court of Louis XIV.Dinkleberry liked to think of Sonny Boy’s style as Gaudy Chic.She always said the fuchsia streaks in her long black hair were a leftover from her days of turning tricks on the streets of
Yeo went to the intercom and discovered that Chuck Maitland was waiting downstairs to take him to dinner.They walked over Fifth Avenue.It was a balmy New York evening and everyone was out on the streets.They walked downtown to Chinatown.
Yeo had been living as a homeless man for several months.He slept in shelters.He slept on sidewalks.He slept in parks.He ate at charity dining rooms.
Deep 6 was in a deep state of upheaval.The entire operation was ordered to focus on one problem that threatened international security.The problem was that no one in Deep 6 could determine what the problem was or where it originated, let alone who was responsible for it.Thirty floors of stone, somewhere in the desert, contained one hundred and eighty people who were running around like chic
At first, the global media did not identify Yeo’s good deeds as a coordinated concept.They were seen as isolated incidents.Many went unreported, for fear of public embarrassment.And then the stories began to emerge.Before long, tha
Things began to happen quickly when Yeo returned to New York.Ilna had taken an apartment off Central Park.She began painting again.It was her quiet way of coping with it all.But the Yeo she knew now was not the man she had known before.
Dink stayed clean for three days.He did his work and thought about Adriana.She was so captivating—the high cheekbones, the oriental eyes, the blood red hair, the tawny skin.He controlled himself not to rush back to her.That w
Yeo and Ilna were sitting in a café that rested on a barge that was moored to the bank along the Vltalva River in Prague.People were enjoying paddleboats in the afternoon sun in the river.Party boats passed up and down the river.To one side of the river, Yeo could see the small island that still held the youth hostel where Roland was murdered.
Yeo met up with Bill Clinton in Biskek.The president of Kyrgizstan was a half-hour late.Clinton and Yeo enjoyed coffee in the presidential suite, giving Yeo just enough time to give Clinton a picture of his plan.Launched in 2005, Clinton established the Clinton Global Initiative to bring leaders from different backgrounds together to ta
Chuck came down the stairs of the basement bar.He stopped halfway until he saw Yeo at the small bar.American expats gathered in groups, telling stories of their travels further East.Chuck joined Yeo at the bar.They kissed each other on the cheeks, as was
Yeo was sitting in the back of a basement bar, off Old Town Square, waiting for Chuck to arrive.The bar was five hundred years old.During the winter, basements were considered warm places in this part of the world, long before electrical heating.He had been married the night before.