The Whole Truth by David Baldacci Page A

his head with the dent in the back from where he’d been shot at close range with a nine-millimeter SIG Sauer sporting custom grips. Shaw knew these intimate details because he’d been the one who’d shot Frank.
    “We have a lot of work to do. The world is a very dangerous place.”
    “Yeah, because of people like you.”
    “It’s noble what we do, Shaw. It’s a matter of honor.”
    “Save the babble for the rookies.”
    Shaw heard the squeak of the chair as Frank sat up straighter. Okay, here it comes.
    Frank’s voice was tight and hard as cement. “And where exactly are you going to retire to , you prick? A supermax facility?”
    “The deal was for five years, Frank. I’ve hung on for almost six.”
    “You nearly killed me.”
    “You had a gun pointed at me. And you didn’t show your badge. I thought you were just one more goon looking to shoot me in the back.”
    “So if I’d flashed my badge you’re telling me you wouldn’t have shot me in the frigging head?”
    “I did take you to the closest hospital. Otherwise you would have bled to death.”
    “Hospital!” Frank roared. “You left me holding what seemed like half my brain in the parking lot of a human chop shop in the middle of Istanbul.”
    “You really think it was just half?”
    “Look—”
    But Shaw cut in. “I shot you in self-defense, but when your guys showed up in Greece a month later they obviously didn’t see it that way. So we made a deal and I lived up to it. There’s nothing else to talk about.” They did have a deal, Shaw knew. In return for not spending the rest of his life at hard labor in some hellhole in Siberia that Frank would’ve gleefully arranged once he’d recovered from the large-caliber hole in his head, Shaw had spent nearly six years running around the world risking his life so, as Frank quaintly put it, others could live in peace and security. Well, Shaw wanted a little peace and security in his life and he wanted it right now. With Anna.
    Yet arrangements with men like Frank were sort of like hanging off the Golden Gate Bridge by your pinkies while high winds kicked off the bay. And Shaw couldn’t exactly grab a lawyer off the street and sue in open court for his contractual freedom. That was why he’d agreed to spend an extra year getting nearly shot, stabbed, poisoned, and even blown up. When he’d implied that tangling with the Amsterdam Islamic nuke squad was a cakewalk, he’d meant it.
    “But for your special ‘skills’ I wouldn’t have offered you anything except a prison cell.”
    This was news to Shaw. “So you were the one? Why?”
    “After my brains got put back in my head I realized anybody who could almost take me out was somebody we needed on our side.”
    “Then you should understand that I’ve done my duty.”
    Frank said slowly, “I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to my people about that. Maybe I could bring myself to cutting you loose, but I don’t think they’ll be too happy about it.”
    Shaw had never been able to go over, around, or through Frank. The burly baldy had stood his ground like a stone wall.
    I should have shot him between the eyes.
    “I don’t care if they’re happy! Just tell ’em what I said.”
    “In the meantime I need you in Edinburgh and then Germany, Heidelberg. You don’t come through on that you can forget me talking to anybody except your new warden.”
    Shaw was silent for a few moments, trying to get his anger under control. “This is the last time, Frank. This is it! You can tell your people whatever the hell you want. Understood?”
    “Instructions the usual way. Two days. Enjoy Dublin. And your friend.”
    “You really don’t want to go there.”
    “Just making an observation.” The line went dead.
    “I hate your guts, Frank,” Shaw whispered to the empty air.

CHAPTER 14
    S HAW SLIPPED INTO the small bathroom. Most European baths were small; these folks apparently required far less space to relieve and bathe themselves than the