The Good Liar

The Good Liar

Laura Caldwell

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest appreciation to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, Maureen Walters and Amy Moore-Benson. Thank you to everyone at MIRA Books, including Donna Hayes, Dianne Moggy, Loriana Sacilotto, Craig Swinwood, Laura Morris, Stacy Widdrington, Pamela Laycock, Katherine Orr, Marleah Stout, Don Lucey, Gordy Goihl, Dave Carley, Erica Mohr, Darren Lizotte, Andi Richman, Kathy Lodge and Carolyn Flear.

Thanks also to everyone who read the book or offered counsel on it, especially Jason Billups, Dustin O’Regan, Clare Toohey, Trisha Woodson, Pam Carroll, Mary Jennings Dean, Morgan Hogerty, Ted McNabola, Joan Posch, Elizabeth Kaveny, Margaret Caldwell, William Caldwell, Kelly Harden, Karen Uhlman, Rob Kovell and Les Klinger.

Lastly, thanks to my panel of experts—Dr. Stuart Rice and Dr. Richard Feely for their medical counsel, Maria Fernanda Mazzuco for her Rio de Janeiro expertise, Dr. Roman Voytsekhovskiy and Peter Zavialoff for their insight into Russia, Gary LaVerne Crowell for his knowledge about the Phoenix Program and Vietnam and Rob Seibert for his special ops and weapons guidance.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

“O nly you can save your own life.”

Everyone told me this in one version or another, during the very bleak days after Scott and I fell apart. I took the advice to heart. I did everything I could to rescue myself.

I prayed to a divinity I couldn’t see or feel. I logged hours on the couch. I cleansed. I twisted my body into awkward positions intended to purify. I scribbled and scrawled in journals. I read Goethe. I slept and wept. I watched comedies and dramas. I swore off TV. I ate organically. I drank toxically. I took up gardening. I ran until my legs could hardly hold me.

Nothing helped. The problem was I no longer really wanted to save my own life. Someone had to do it for me. That someone was Liza.

But even Liza had no idea what it would take to save me.

1

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

R oger Leiland both hated and loved Brazil. On one hand, he’d grown up there professionally. The Trust, the organization he worked for, the one he was now in charge of, had planted him in Rio many years ago. He’d lived there under his alias, Paul Costa, posing as an American businessman selling vaccinations to the Brazilian government. Paul Costa had fallen in love with a woman named Marta and consequently had fallen in love with Brazil itself. But then Marta was gone, dead after a drive-by shooting on the Rodovia dos Lagos Highway. The shooting had left Paul Costa all but dead, too. The Trust had realized he was slipping and pulled him out. Sent him to Chicago, where he was like a walking corpse slowly coming back to life, strangely paralleling his research there—the Juliet Project. Eventually, he’d moved to New York where he took solace in the resilience of power instead of the tenuous comforts of love. He climbed the ladder at the Trust until he’d forged an entirely new existence at the top, all the while keeping his thumb squarely on the Juliet Project.

Now, his expertise was needed in Rio again. Technically, he could have sent someone else, but he wanted to prove to himself that he was at the apex of his game, that Rio no longer touched him. He had been back in Brazil for a few weeks, and while he had felt a flicker of longing for his old life, it was only that—a flicker. He was a different person now.

He had done his job while here. He’d gotten all the intel he required, and now he was meeting with Elena Mistow. Usually members of the Trust knew each other only by their aliases, and they’d been strictly trained to look no further. But even before he was a board member of the Trust, he knew Elena Mistow’s real name. Everyone did. Because Elena Mistow was royalty. Her father had founded the entire organization.

Now, he and the woman called Elena sat at an outdoor café in Santa Terese, a charming area set on a hillside in Old Rio. He tried not to be impressed by Elena. She was younger than he, after all, and his subordinate. But there was her lineage. And her beauty.

Elena was all business. “What do we know about Luiz Gustavo de Jardim? Will he show himself anytime soon?”

“Gustavo will appear in public in the next six months. He has to. He’s talking about running for office again, and he needs to thwart rumors that he’s already dead.”

“Wouldn’t that be convenient?”

They both laughed. Nothing was ever easy or convenient with the Trust. They were silent for a minute, sipping coffee that tasted nutty and somewhat ashy. To the many on the street, they probably looked like a couple enjoying a break from the day.

“He’ll pull the same stunt he always does,” Roger continued. “He’ll make his kids and wife surround him.”

“The bastard uses them as human shields,” Elena said bitterly, which amazed Roger. She still cared about who got hurt.

“It works for him,” Roger said. “He’s a small man. His wife is the same height. By now one of his sons will probably be taller.”

“Audacious,” she murmured. “And evil.”

“We might have to take out the shields.”

They exchanged a long look.

Roger broke the stare first, taking another sip of his coffee and gazing at passersby.

“We’ve never done that,” Elena said. “We’ve sworn not to.”

“It’s impossible to infiltrate Gustavo’s inner circle…so other measures have to be taken to eliminate him. And times are changing. You know that as well as I.”

“No collateral damage. That’s always been our rule.”

“Everything changes. Don’t hold on too tight. Just hold on to our mission. Taking out Gustavo, no matter what the cost, advances our end, and that’s still pure.”

Elena Mistow peered up at the gray-blue sky. She seemed to study something in the atmosphere. A minute passed, then another. “Jesus,” Elena said.

Roger stayed silent. He sensed the searching of her mind, the processing, the emotion. He hoped she would draw the conclusion he’d already made.

Finally, she nodded. “So we take out the shields as a last resort.”

Roger permitted himself the faintest of smiles before he raised his cup and took another sip.

2

One week later

Oakbrook, Illinois

I looked out my kitchen window. The Saturday afternoon sun was lighting the empty swing set and the bare winter ground. Another endless Saturday lay before me. I could remember, in a distant way, a time when my weekends were packed with activity and bursting with possibility.

I picked up the phone and called Liza’s cell phone. “It’s your sad, pathetic friend Kate,” I said when she answered.

“Don’t call yourself sad,” said Liza.

“Can I still call myself pathetic?”

“Absolutely.”

I laughed. Talking to Liza was about the only thing that got me laughing anymore.

“Are you back?” I asked.

“I was back, and I left again.”

“Where were you last week?”

“Montreal. And I got something for you.”

Liza Kingsley was always finding gifts for me on her travels. In Tokyo, she bought me a handbag in taupe-colored silk. I carried it for years until the lining began to shred. When Liza was in Budapest, she sent back a handwoven rug swirled with gold and celadon green. She was always going to London and bringing me packets of sweets from Harrods and, once, a cocktail dress in a chocolate brown, which she said would complement my eyes.

She was that kind of a friend. A great friend. Her friendship went beyond thoughtful gifts and a shared history. It was her phone calls and her visits and her cheerleading and her love that had propped me up and sustained me since Scott left.

And now this souvenir from Montreal.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I found you a man.”

I coughed. “What?”

“He’s amazing,” Liza said.

“I’m not ready to date.”

“Kate, it’s been ten months since he left. It’s time to dip your toe in the waters.” A pause. “And look, you’re not going to date. You’d just go on a date.”

Wind forced one of the swings into the air. A second later, it listed to a halt. “I don’t think so.”

“His name is Michael Waller.” She paused. “And he’s French.” Now she had a little goad in her voice.

“Don’t kid.”

“It’s true. Well, he’s American, but he’s of French descent, and he speaks the language fluently.”

“You’re taunting me.” Liza knew that French men, or at least men who could speak French, were my downfall. It was a trait uniquely embarrassing, because everyone I knew hated French men. Such men were thought pompous. Affected. Liza and I had grown up in Evanston, Illinois, but I’d spent six months after high school in a small town outside Paris, where I fell in love with a boy named Jacques. It was tragic. It was ridiculous. But I was hooked on the accent and the hooded eyes and the utter disdain French men carried for everyone, including themselves.

“It’s true,” Liza said again. “Of course, it’s just one of the six languages he knows.”

“Stop.” I turned away from the window and leaned against the stainless steel fridge.

“All true.”

“How old is he?”

She cleared her throat. “He’s a little older than you.”

“Spill it, Liza.”

“Michael is a very young fifty-five.”

“That’s seventeen years older than me!”

“I know, I know, but I wouldn’t recommend him if I didn’t think he was the perfect rebound man. Remember, this is just for fun.”

“But seventeen years?”

“Hey, Scott was our age, and that didn’t make a damn bit of difference, did it?”

I squeezed my eyes closed. It stung, yet Liza was absolutely right. The only thing that had made a difference was that I couldn’t have a child. Oh, I could get pregnant with a little medical assistance—and I did three times, in fact—but such pregnancies always ended in miscarriages. My body rejected the babies, and in return, Scott rejected me. Having a family was the most important thing in the world to him, even more important than his wife. And he was fiercely opposed to adoption. He wanted a baby who was his, he’d said over and over. Strangely, I didn’t think I even wanted children anymore. The quest had sucked me dry, left me with little maternal desire. So Michael’s age didn’t matter in that respect.

“You there?” Liza said.

“Unfortunately. I’m stuck in the house that Scott built.”

“Sell it.”

“I will. Soon. I just can’t take any more changes for a while.”

“What you need is a good night out with a nice, attractive man.”

“And that’s it? A night out?”

“That’s it. He lives in Vermont but he visits Chicago for business. It’s perfect.”

“How do you know him?”

“Work. He used to be at Presario. I haven’t seen him in years, but I ran into him in Montreal. And how fantastic is this? He’s opening a restaurant called the Twilight Club in St. Marabel. It’s outside Montreal.”

“Exactly how am I supposed to date a man who lives in Vermont and is opening a business in Canada?”

“Have you not heard me? I’m just talking about one date.”

“Why don’t you date him?”

She made a snorting sound. “He’s not my type, and I have no interest in the French thing, unlike you. So can I have him call you? He’s coming to Chicago to meet with investors for his restaurant. He’s staying at the Peninsula.”

“Expensive.”

“Well, he’s got money. I’m telling you, this guy has everything, Kate—looks, smarts, money, sense of humor.”

I stood away from the fridge and walked into the powder room just outside the kitchen. I flicked on the light and looked at myself in the mirror. “I’d need a haircut,” I said. My blond hair, which I normally wore to my chin, had become unruly over the past few months. The too-long bangs had to be pushed aside now and the ends were in desperate need of a trim.

“So get a haircut, for Christ’s sake,” Liza said. “Get some new clothes, get a massage, treat yourself. Head down to Michigan Avenue and do some Christmas shopping.”

“Maybe,” I said in a noncommittal way.

The truth was, I’d lacked motivation of any kind since Scott took off. For the first time in my adult life, I hadn’t even put up a Christmas tree. All I could manage was to drive to work every day, which was tough since I’d come to despise my job as an accountant at a medical-supply company. Before Scott and I got married, I used to work downtown at a big accounting agency, where we had major clients with interesting portfolios. Most people consider accounting boring, but I’ve always loved the order of it. My job seemed a challenging puzzle. But once I began working in medical supplies there were very few puzzles. Instead, I was crunching numbers about bedpans and catheters. The job was easier than my old one—and it was just a ten-minute drive from the house—but these things mattered only when Scott and I assumed we’d be having children. At least I hadn’t changed my name. My family’s name, Greenwood, was the one thing about my life that still felt like mine.

“God, I wish I was there to get you out of that house,” Liza said.

“Where are you now?”

“Copenhagen.”

Liza had an apartment in Chicago overlooking Lake Michigan, but as the head of international sales for Presario Pharmaceuticals, she was often globe-trotting.

“Your cell phone works in Copenhagen?”

“My cell phone works everywhere. And if it doesn’t I forward it to one that does.”

“How is Copenhagen?” I asked.

“Freaking freezing.”

“Are you having any fun?”

“When do I have time for fun?”

“Liza, you can’t work all the time.”

“Shut up, we’re talking about your pathetic life, remember? Let him take you to dinner.”

“You’re relentless.”

“Someone’s got to be. So what do you say?”

I groaned. And yet I felt buoyed just by talking to Liza. She had that effect on me. I glanced out the powder-room window at the lonely swing set. “All right. Have him call me.”

3

Thirty-seven years earlier

Fort Benning, Georgia

A t fifteen thousand feet, the door of the DC-47 was unceremoniously yanked open, letting in a roar Michael Waller could compare to nothing he’d heard before. A piercing, silvery morning light flooded the plane, and fierce winds stung his eyes.

“This is it!” his team leader shouted. “Hook up, check down, stand in the door.”

Michael adjusted the pack straps on his parachute, tightening them past the point that had been recommended.

“Waller! You’re up!” he heard, sending his heart rate into full gallop.

He walked toward the door, crouched low and hunched forward like a turtle with too heavy a shell on its back. He’d endured much in his specialized army training—jungle school at Holabird, where his group was forced to walk for days in jungle-like conditions, and enemy captivity training at Fort Polk, where they were put into metal lockers and buried underground—but nothing was as intense or terrifying for Michael as having to dive out of a plane.

He knew this was considered fun for most, and he’d told no one how scared he was. His fear of heights embarrassed him, almost as much as the reason for that fear. As the yawning door of the plane came closer, he saw his father’s face—handsome but cruel—as he stood on the high dive of their local pool, right before he picked up his five-year-old son and dangled him, headfirst, above the water, the glints of yellow sunlight thankfully blinding Michael’s eyes. His father had thought this stunt would make Michael tough. Unfortunately, it had had the opposite effect where heights were concerned, and that too mortified Michael. He’d always told his father in later years that the high-dive trick had worked. He wasn’t afraid of heights at all. But he’d lied.

If Michael’s son-of-a-bitch father could see him now, he’d be proud. Finally. The problem was, Michael hadn’t been able to tell anyone about the training they’d been put through. He’d volunteered for the army for the same reason a lot of guys did—boredom, literally a lack of anything better to do. He had checked Intelligence as his desired field, mostly because it sounded very James Bond.

He’d been put through testing and accepted for agent training and the intelligence corps. At Holabird, his schooling had been fun at first, as had the after-hours trips to downtown Baltimore. But the training had become more intense, and agents were weeded out. Michael knew he must have shown an aptitude for something to have been allowed to continue. Yet it was confusing, because no one knew what kind of program they were being brought into, or what, exactly, they were being trained to do.

And now this. Now he had to throw himself out of a goddamn plane.

“Waller, ready!” his team leader yelled as Michael reached the door.

He stood paralyzed, feeling the sting and scream of the wind on his face. He looked down and saw the land fifteen thousand feet beneath him, resembling a patchwork of emerald and dirt brown, while the sky’s powdery blue spread around him. No way, he said to himself. He turned his head, ready to call it off for the sake of survival, when again he saw his father’s face.

“Waller, ready!” his team leader yelled again.

This time he shouted back, “Waller, ready!” surprised at the heartiness of his voice.

He grasped the sides of the door, rocked himself three times and flung himself out. His body flipped head over toes. Over and over again. His brain fought every instinct and warning that his frantic nerves sent. He arched his chest and hips to the point of pain, forming a U shape, the way he’d been taught. Finally, the position of the body worked, and he was hovering facedown, flying through the blue, his cheeks flapping. There was no sensation of falling. He’d been told that but hadn’t believed it. He was simply suspended there, bouncing in the sky, above everything, above reason or fear now.

Too soon, he checked his altimeter and it was time to activate the chute.

In the hangar, as other unit members landed, Michael clapped them on the back and accepted their congratulations. They were all giddy and high. Michael marveled at the capacity of his mind to move from sheer fear to exuberant joy. It was a lesson he was grateful to learn.

The team leader walked up, and the unit automatically went silent.

“We have a special guest,” the team leader said. “Colonel Coleman Kingsley.”

He and the rest of his unit snapped to attention in full salute.

An arresting figure stepped through the doors of the hangar and paused. The sunlight flooded behind him so that Michael couldn’t see his face.

“At ease,” the colonel said, stepping closer. His voice was deep and calm, so different from the terse barks of Michael’s commanding officer.

Michael felt a thrill race through him. He’d never met someone of such high rank. And then there was the man’s imposing presence—the way he stood with a calm confidence that spoke of battle, and the way his eyes, the color of an exotic sea, assessed the unit with an all-knowing gaze.

“Gentlemen,” Colonel Kingsley said, “congratulations on your first jump. There will be others, I assure you, and there will be more training. Training that will test every fiber of your body, every cell of your mind. You will succeed in this training. You will do so because we have selected you carefully. When you complete this, you will join me.”

Colonel Kingsley paused then, his blue, blue eyes landing for a moment on Michael. And in that moment, Michael wanted to make the man proud. He wanted to succeed for him, in a way he’d never wanted to for his father. Michael raised his chin at the colonel, hoping the gesture would show he’d do anything, anything, he was asked to do.

4

Oakbrook, Illinois

T he goal of babymaking had sapped all my energy and focus for the last few years. It had taken all of Scott and me. And since he left, my goal had been to get some peace in my life, less focus, less intensity, more freedom. No more hormone shots. No more doctor visits or blood tests. And I got that peace, I suppose. It had been very peaceful in the house that Scott built. But I was ready for some excitement. So when Michael left a message five days after my talk with Liza, I didn’t play coy and count the prescribed, recommended amount of days to reply. I called him immediately. I was geared up for something new, some craziness perhaps, maybe just a touch of chaos.

“How did Liza convince you to call me?” I asked him.

“Liza is very persuasive.”

“That’s the truth.”

We both chuckled.

We launched into a long get-to-know-you discussion. The next night, he called again. And again a few days after that. They were easy conversations, filled with stories that required a new audience to be fresh and entertaining, stories my old friends had heard way too often.

Michael was charming and interesting. He talked of jazz and art and restaurants all over the world. His conversations were filled with anecdotes from the numerous jobs he’d held throughout his life—a photographer in Washington, D.C., a pharmaceuticals salesman in Boston, a winery owner in Napa.

“How did you get from taking pictures all the way to stomping grapes?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see. The winery thing happened because I was having a midlife crisis, and I wanted a legitimate reason to drink a lot.”