Page 15 of The Atlas Maneuver

He stood and opened the door, gesturing for her to leave.

She approached him but hesitated a moment. “You’re an odd fellow.”

He tossed her a thin smile. “You have no idea.”

She walked back toward the front of the building and the main foyer. None of the men with guns were around. She left from thefront door and soaked in the midday sun. Historically, Switzerland had been a favorite sparring ring for diplomats, the birthplace of grandiose schemes to achieve world peace and prosperity, a place that had always inspired people to settle their differences with reason instead of blood. But it was also a place of secrets. Many, many secrets. Like a wine vault that wasn’t a wine vault?

The repository sat at the end of a busy commercial boulevard at the edge of Geneva’s financial district. Koger had dropped her off earlier, and she saw his car parked fifty meters away. He apparently saw her and pulled away from the curb, heading straight for her. When he stopped, she opened the door and climbed inside. She assumed the people inside the repository were watching.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

She slammed the door.

“Drive and I’ll explain. But you’re not going to like it.”

CHAPTER 10

COTTON STEPPED UP ON THE COVERED PORCH AND ENTERED THE WHITEclapboard house. He never knocked. No need. Suzy always left the door unlocked. Their affair was in its sixth month. He was a young navy lieutenant, fresh out of law school, beginning what would surely be the next twenty years as a JAG lawyer. He’d wanted to fly fighter jets and had made top marks in flight school, but other people, older and supposedly wiser, friends of his dead father, had different ideas for his life and he ended up at Georgetown law school. Now he was less than a year into his first assignment at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. There he’d met another twenty-six-year-old. A petite blonde who worked in the data storage facility. Computers were becoming more and more important and people who understood how to use them were likewise valuable. Suzy Baldwin, “with a ‘y’” as she liked to say, was one of those people. Smart, cute, sassy. They’d hit it off immediately. She lived a few miles from the base in a small subdivision typical for the Florida panhandle. He lived on base, behind the fences, which made this the perfect place for their regular trysts.

She stepped from the bedroom wearing a short sundress stretched tautly over her curves, the legs that emerged beneath beautifully tapered. She had high cheekbones with a sprinkle offreckles over a delicate upturned nose. Her hair cascaded past her shoulders in long, soft curls, just the way he liked it. She was from a small town in southern Illinois, born into a middle-class family, just like himself. Their entire relationship had played itself out here, within these walls. Never had they been out in public.

And for good reason.

He was married.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

Hard.

She never dilly-dallied much when it came to lovemaking. Both of them seemed anxious for the experience, though he’d become less and less enthralled.

Thanks to the guilt.

Which was why he’d come over today.

“We need to end this,” he said.

He could still see her puzzled face, baffled by the declaration. Only it was not the same one he was now staring at. “What happened to you?”

She smiled. “You don’t like what you see?”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. It’s just that you look completely different.”

“A lot happened to me since Pensacola,” she said.

Obviously.

“What do you mean, end this?” she asked him.

“I can’t come here anymore. I have a wife.”

“Yes, you do. Her name is Pam. Who you’ve cared little to nothing about these past few months.”

That hurt. But it was true.

“You seemed to enjoy climbing into my bed,” she said. “I haven’t heard a complaint.”

“This is not about you.”