"You're lucky I love this spot," Vance said, gazing out over the city. "Nothing else on the planet could have got me up this early in the morning."
"It's the one place I thought I could persuade you to meet me." The bearded man sighed, his dark eyes grim. The accent was Russian, the English flawless. "I have a problem, a very big problem."
"The Cold War's over, Alex, or maybe you hadn't heard." He strolled on, tugging his trench coat tighter. "What have we got left to talk about?"
"Please. We both did what we had to."
"I still do. Life's too short for anything else." He turned back. "Now how about telling me what's on your mind."
Vance was firm-muscled and lean, with the leathery skin of a man who drank his tequila straight and preferred spending his days in the sun, two habits that also had bestowed a network of threadlike smile lines at the corners of his sea-blue eyes. Aleksei Ilyich Novosty had phoned him at the Athenaeum Inter-Continental half an hour earlier, begging to meet him, saying it was of the utmost importance. A cab was downstairs. The driver had taken him to the old flea market at Monastiraki Square, where Alex's own black limo waited. But now Novosty was playing games, and the days for KGB games were supposed to be in the distant past. What did the man want?
"My friend, give me a moment. . . ." Novosty wiped his brow, manicured nails glistening, then looked up and pointed. "By the way, I've always believed that one is the most exquisite female in the world. That one there. What do you think?"
