No Way Back Read Online Free PDF Page A

have a patent on, because I’ve never seen one on any other woman that made me want her so much. “Swear you’re not going off elsewhere, into something truly stupid?”
    “Absolutely. All I want is some peace and quiet. Maybe I’ll have some fun. If I can get past missing you.”
    She laughs. “You’re so full of it sometimes.”
    “Am I?”
    “Yeah. We’ve been seeing each other every day for years and it never got in the way of all the fun you managed with a half-dozen pretty young things, most of whose names I can’t remember.”
    “Substitutes, Annie.”
    “I think maybe you’ve convinced yourself at some level you want something you wouldn’t really like that much if you got it. Self-delusion, Luther. We’re good as we are.”
    “You go right on thinking I’m deluded, if you like. Just let me go on being sure I’m not.”
    “Haven’t I always done that? Or, more accurately, haven’t I always failed in my efforts to disabuse you of your whacked notions?” Annie laughs. “But we’ll keep dealing with that when you get back. Right now, I just want some more reassurance that you really are just going beach-bumming and will be back.”
    “No problem. Hey, I won’t even be carrying. Don’t want to wind up in some south-of-the-border jail I won’t be able to bribe my way out of, on a stupid weapons charge.”
    “Go carefully.” Annie kisses me on both cheeks. “You’ll have your cell?”
    “Won’t work in the Yucatán. I’ll be calling you, though.”
    The grin vanishes. Her eyes narrow.
    “You’re lying, Luther.” She stares at me for a long minute, then says, “If I thought there was even a slight hope it’d make a difference, I’d ask you not to go.”
    When I’m out on the porch, she searches my eyes for a moment, then turns and quietly closes her door.
    I don’t sleep that night. Next morning I drive the TT to an address in Washington. I go in, disappear into another world. One of Westley’s young men goes out, takes my car, and makes it vanish, too.

four
    WESTLEY AND HIS SPOOK HOUSE. FOUR STORIES, DARK stone, absolutely identical to every other house lining the block just off Dupont Circle, like a platoon of Marines in dress-blue parade formation. Even has six buzzers beside the front door, names and apartment numbers beside each, since all the other rowhouses have long ago been chopped into apartments, home to young GS mid-grades, lobbyists, Hill assistants, law-firm associates doing their years-long boot camp of eighty-hour weeks, dreaming of making partner. Clever touch, the buzzers. They’ll account for all the people coming and going.
    I’ve just put my duffel down on the foyer floor when Westley appears. First thing he says is “Lose the hair.” I haven’t cut it in maybe two years, it’s well past my shoulders. He scans my baggy cargoes, the long-sleeve waffle knit with a Billabong T worn over it. Second thing he says isn’t to me. “Get him some decent clothes, too,” he tells a young woman I haven’t even noticed, who’s leaning against a sideboard on the other end of the foyer. Third’s a question: “Your Russian up to speed?” When I admit it’srusty as hell, he says he’ll have a tutor from Langley come over to work me out for a couple of hours every afternoon. Then he goes back into the room from which he emerged.
    “Well? You ready?” the girl asks me, smiling. She’s about my height, slim, with a clean-featured face, straight dark brows above amber eyes, but hair a golden brown. Like toast. Very tidy, at ease in her standard-issue officewear.
    “What? I don’t quite fit in, fashion-wise?”
    “Something like that,” she says. “You look like every other plainclothes drug cop I’ve ever seen. Never seen one on this block, though. You guys get your clothes from some specialized catalog or something?”
    “Oh yeah. It’s called Narcstyle, very limited mailing list. Cool street looks, plus professional discounts and stuff.”
    “Thought