Free Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) by Thomas Caplan Page B

new Russia.” Philip sighed. “What can I say?”
    â€œAnd where there’s money at stake . . .” Andrej’s voice trailed off. “Where is the seal, by the way? Do you have it?”
    Philip shrugged off Andrej’s impertinence. “Of course I have it. It’s in my left coat pocket. I’ve been fidgeting with it all afternoon.”
    â€œLet’s wrap things up, then. It’s already dark, and I’d like to get back to my room, run a hot bath, change my clothes and pour myself a drink.”
    â€œYou’re entitled to do that,” Philip said. “You’ve worked hard, done a fine job, too. But tell me, what will you do tomorrow, and the day after?”
    Andrej hesitated, then shot Philip a sly smile. “Forget,” he said with all the reassurance he could summon. “And you?”
    â€œI’ll anticipate,” Philip told him. “That’s the business I’m in.”

Chapter Five
    Gripping the lime green two-by-four rail that ran, hip-high, along the precipice, Ty Hunter stared south across the Mediterranean. It was late morning and the May sun was almost overhead. The sky was absent of clouds. Was it any wonder that this place had been named the Côte d’Azur?
    â€œLike a shot rubber band,” he explained into the mouthpiece of his phone’s headset. “That’s how I feel, to tell you the truth.”
    â€œIs it any wonder?” Greg Logan, on the other end of the connection, agreed.
    â€œNot really,” Ty said, “after four pictures in three years, two of them, as you know, very long shoots.” To his right lay the Golfe-Juan
,
and beyond the far promontory that defined it, sat Cannes. It was the Film Festival he had come for—not because he had another blockbuster in competition or about to open, but because of the cameo role he’d taken, for scale, in
Something to Look Forward To,
which promised to be Greg Logan’s comeback picture. It was Greg who had discovered him in the rehab center at Walter Reed seven years before. Newly photogenic after the sequence of surgeries that had followed the fiery crash of the armored personnel carrier in which, as the intelligence officer of a tactical infantry unit of the Third Army, he’d been traveling on maneuvers, Ty was then only weeks away from discharge from the hospital. Greg, who was still doing commercial films, had trained his camera on Ty’s smile and, even before the half-hour promotional piece had wrapped, given the young soldier his card.
    Now, as Ty watched motor yachts exit and enter the harbors on either side of the lush Hôtel du Cap, he thought that he could hardly have wished for better luck. With no specific job to go to once he left the army, he had decided to take a flier, called Greg, then bought the cheapest flight he could find to Los Angeles. He’d given himself three months to find his footing, but it hadn’t taken that long, and he’d still had a reasonable portion of his savings in the bank when his first paycheck arrived. In a manner of speaking, he’d caught a wave, he realized, having appeared in Hollywood just as Greg had begun casting his first feature, a road movie called
The Boy Who Understood Women.
Although Ty had no idea from what reservoir of experience or imagination he’d summoned his portrayal of a young drifter who trades his life for his lover’s, he had won an Oscar nomination for it, then, quickly in its aftermath, the roles that had made him the number-one box-office star in the world. Greg’s own fortunes had fared less well over the same period, his projects becoming smaller, more personal and subtle in a marketplace that craved just the opposite. Everyone, however, had agreed that the script for
Something to Look Forward To
was brilliant and, if only there were stars attached, exactly right for a director of Greg Logan’s sensibility. So Ty had repaid his