The Lie Read Free Page B

together. The fourth soldier quickly followed.
    “Get their pistols,” Paulie told Tutsikov. “Be careful. Don’t get between them and my gun.”
    Paulie watched as Tutsikov did as instructed. Every one of these soldiers more than half expected a bullet in the back of
     his head.
    I hope they don’t make me kill them
.
    He waited until Stefan Tutsikov had collected all the guards’ weapons. Then, moving swiftly, he reversed his machine gun and
     swung its butt against the back of each of the four heads lined up on the floor.
    Paulie checked. They were all unconscious. No great joy, but better than dead.
    “Let’s go,” he told Tutsikov.
    Outside, Paulie stopped to rip the phone out of the staff car. The three parked rigs were still quiet. Moments later the two
     men were on the road and picking up speed.
    Stefan Tutsikov kept looking behind them.
    “You don’t have to worry,” said Paulie, speaking English now. “I cut their tires before I went in.”
    Tutsikov spoke for the first time. “I was sure you were going to kill them.”
    “I didn’t have to.”
    “
They
would have killed
you
. And worse.”
    “I know.”
    Tutsikov stared at Paulie Walters. “Who
are
you?”
    “One of your American admirers.”
    The political leader gazed off at the growing lightness of the sky. “I know what you saved me from. I’m grateful.”
    Paulie drove in silence.
    “Would you have shot me if you couldn’t get me away from them?”
    “Of course.”
    “I thank you for that, too.”
    Less than an hour later, in response to a coded signal from Paulie’s radio phone, an unmarked helicopter picked them up in
     a small clearing not far from the Serbian town of Kula.
    Four hours after that, Stefan Tutsikov was aboard a U.S. Air Force flight from Rome to Washington.
    Paulie Walters, after being dropped off in Naples and reporting to Tommy Cortlandt by secure telephone, headed home to Ravello
     along the Amalfi coast. Nearing Positano in the early afternoon he turned off the main road to stop at his parents’ house
     for a brief visit.
    Paulie had been born and raised in the house, a white, flat-roofed, Moorish-style villa in the green mountains overlooking
     the Bay of Salerno.
    Waking in the morning, his first sight of the day for much of his life had been Ulysses’ fabled Rocks of the Sirens, rising
     out of the water about a mile offshore. He had painted the scene many times. This afternoon, the rocks stood golden and shining
     in a glassy sea.
    Paulie saw the two cars in the parking area, so he knew that both his parents were home. Climbing the long, steep path through
     the rock garden, he felt the more than thirty-six hours he had gone without sleep.
    When no one answered his knock, Paulie Walters opened the door with his own key and went in.
    “Anyone home?”
    He called out first in English, then in Italian.
    Entering his father’s studio, he saw the current canvas on an easel. No paint-filled brushes were in sight, which meant his
     father had not been painting today.
    Paulie was curious, not concerned. Nothing appeared out of order. Friends sometimes stopped by to pick up his parents for
     a day out on their boat or whatever. More than anything, he was disappointed at their not being home to greet him.
    He took a cold beer from the refrigerator and sat down with it at the kitchen table.
    His day and a half without sleep suddenly hit him again, and he knew he was not about to get behind the wheel for another
     hour of driving to Ravello.
    Pushing out of his chair, Paulie Walters started up the stairs. The idea of a nap in his old bed seemed very appealing.
    The thought never got further than that.
    All he saw at first were his father’s bare arms.
    They were on the floor.
    Reaching.
    Paulie breathed the coppery smell of blood.
    He entered his parents’ room and saw it all, saw it in that mix of color and black and white that happens in only the worst
     of nightmares.
    Eyes closed, he knelt on the floor hugging