He smiled. “Lunch. Are you hungry?”
She nodded. She was still young enough to be bribed with the offer of food, particularly after her very busy morning.
“Good. My name is Mulvaney.”
He closed the book, and she saw the title. She didn’t realize the significance until much, much later. He was reading Invisible Man.
44
It was an unlikely friendship, but every mentor needed a protégée, every master needed an apprentice, every Svengali needed an acolyte, so Mulvaney told her.
She stayed the hour on his veranda, listening to him talk while they ate olives and bread and cheese and drank wine. He gave her a glass of limoncello when they were finished, and by then she was hooked, and maybe a little drunk.
Mulvaney was rich, and bored. He was also best known for his alliance with some French nationals involved in a failed attempt to assassinate Fran?ois Mitterrand, and so was in a kind of pseudo-retirement on Capri until the hubbub died down. Being known, being recognized, was anathema to his purposes. This was his home base, the place he brought no one. No one but Kitsune.
He told her he needed a partner, and a female of her tender years, with a lovely face and figure, would be perfect for what he had in mind—namely, to distract the guards of a Russian industrialist while he went into the man’s crude computer and moved his files onto a computer disk, then made his escape.
Was she interested? He’d asked her in fluent Russian. She said yes, in fluent Russian. When his eyes flew open in shock, she casually told him languages came easily to her. He clapped his hands together and laughed.
“I had a feeling about you. Standing there, spitting like an angry cat, caught in the act, the ring in your hand—you did manage to keep it, didn’t you?”
She fished the ring from her pocket and set it on the table.
He nodded, and she caught the tone of respect when he said, “Very good, Kitsune. You kept your priorities straight.” The smile on his face made her feel warm and happy. It had been a very long time since anyone approved of anything about her. Her parents had been shocked when she’d stolen a watch at the tender age of nine. Ah, well, they were gone, had been for three years now. And she’d been off on her adventures, she liked to call them.
At the end of the meal and drink, they made a bargain. She’d help him with the Russian job, and if they were successful, she would stay on, learn what he could teach, and he would send her out as his replacement until it was safe for him to return to France.
Her role was to steal what she was hired to steal, do it cleanly, present the prize to the client, and return to him. And if she must, to kill. Whatever she had to do to complete the job.
In return, he would keep her safe and pay her handsomely.
She asked him why he called her Kitsune. He’d said simply, “Because you are as quick as a little fox, filled with cunning and guile, and you have the look of your ancestors, though few would be able to identify your family as being of Japanese descent. You have Indian in you, too. No matter, it is a good name for you. Together we will make it a legend.”