"Including the regularity of his bowel movements?"
He sat watching her, his feral eyes glittering, not moving, not blinking. They were seated at a cafe in Campione d'Italia, the picturesque Italian tax haven tucked away in the Swiss Alps. The tiny municipality rose steeply off the glassy ultramarine-blue surface of a clear mountain lake, studded with vessels of all sizes from rowboats to multimillion-dollar yachts, complete with the helipads, the copters, and, on the largest of these, the females to go with them.
For the five minutes before she had arrived, Arkadin had been watching an obscenely large yacht on which two long-stemmed models preened as if for paparazzi. They had the kind of perfectly bronzed skin only the kept woman knows how to acquire. As he sipped a small cup of espresso, which was all but lost in his large, square hand, he thought, It's good to be the king. Then he saw the naked hairy back of this particular king and turned away in disgust. You can take the man out of hell but you can't take hell out of the man. This was the operative phrase for Arkadin.
Then Tracy had shown up and he forgot the hell of Nizhny Tagil that plagued him like a recurring nightmare. Nizhny Tagil was where he had been born and raised, where he'd lost three toes to rats when his mother had locked him in a closet, where he had killed and was almost killed so many times he'd lost count. Nizhny Tagil was where he had lost everything, where, one could say, he had died.
He had ordered Tracy an espresso with sambuca, which was what she liked. As he stared into her beautiful face, he continued to be confounded by his conflicting feelings. He was drawn to her, intensely, but he also hated her. He hated her erudition, her vast knowledge. Every time she opened her mouth she reminded him of how little formal education he'd had. And to make matters much worse, he learned something valuable every time he was with her. How often do we despise our teachers, who lord it over us with their superior knowledge, who throw that knowledge and their experience in our faces. Every time he learned something, he was reminded of how inexorably tied to her he was, how much he needed her. Which was why he treated her as a bipolar might. He loved her, rewarded her with more and more money at the completion of each assignment, showered her with gifts between assignments.
She had never slept with him. He hadn't tried to seduce her, fearing that in the throes of passion his iron control might weaken, that he would grab her by the throat and throttle her until her tongue poked out and her eyes rolled up in her head. He would regret her death. Over the years she had proved indispensable. With the inside knowledge she had given him, he'd been able to blackmail her wealthy art clients, and those he chose not to suborn he used as patsies, delivering drugs all over the world secreted in the crates that held their precious artwork.
Tracy ran the crescent of lemon rind around the rim of her cup. "What's so special about Don Fernando?"
"Drink your espresso."
She stared down at her cup but didn't touch it.
"What's the matter?" he said at last.
"Let's skip him, shall we?"
He waited a moment, quietly. Then, suddenly leaning forward, he grasped her knee beneath the table in an agonizing grip. Her head snapped up, her eyes engaged with his.
"You know the rules," he said with soft menace. "You don't question assignments, you take them."
"Not this one."
"All of them."
"I like this man."
"All. Of. Them."
She stared at him, unblinking.
He despised most of all when she got like this, that enigmatic mask that came down over her face, making him feel like a dim-witted child who had failed to learn how to read properly. "Have you forgotten the damaging evidence I have on you? Do you want me to go to your client and tell him how you accommodated your brother when he stole your client's painting to cover his debts? Do you really want to spend the next twenty years of your life in prison? It's more terrible than you can imagine, believe me."
"I want out," she said in a strangled voice.
He had laughed. "God, you're a stupid cow." Once, just once, he thought, I'd like to make you cry. "There is no out. You signed on, a contract in blood, metaphorically