Delgado finished her breakfast, announced that she was going for a swim, and proceeded to strip off all her clothes and jump into the pool. She didn't give any indication that she wanted MacFarland to join her and for the most part ignored him for the next half hour or so. He watched her swimming back and forth across the pool. As he stared at her nude body gliding through the water, he wondered what he wanted from her. She was not the first woman he had ever been intimate with. That had been an overly-enthusiastic red-haired cheerleader in high school. But she was clearly the first woman he had ever developed strong feelings for that went beyond a desire for sex. She had fascinated him, both with her total disregard for almost all forms of authority, and her totally unique definition of what it meant to be a woman. It wasn't that she flaunted convention. While she was in Albania, she followed all the local customs, almost to a fault. Yet she never allowed herself to be in a subjugated role.
Was that what bothered him about her relationship with Alejandro Gil? It seemed to him that she allowed Gil to boss her around, and that was so totally alien to her nature that seeing her around Gil really bothered him.
Was she still seeing him? She had insisted that her relationship with Gil was over, but MacFarland didn't get that impression from what he saw at lunch. Not from their body language, nor the way Gil had touched her. Was Gil trying to communicate that Delgado belonged to him, and that MacFarland should keep his distance? Did Gil even know about the history that existed between Delgado and him in Albania?
MacFarland's phone buzzed. He stared at it a moment, wondering who could be calling him in Mexico? Then he saw Pierson's name in the caller identification window. He picked up the phone.
"Cyn, what's up?"
"Mac, what kind of trouble are you getting into down there?"
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"I ran the descriptions you gave me of the two men. I made the assumption that they were the same men I had seen around Denver, and I was able to identify one of them, a man called Jarda Stojanović. As soon as I ran his name, lights started flashing all over the place. You won't believe how many people are interested in this guy."
"Who's interested in him? Who is he?"
"The first person who got back to me is your old friend, Grey Wilson."
"The FBI is interested in Stojanović?"
"Not just the FBI. Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA. Even Interpol wants him. He is wanted by police in half a dozen countries."
"What's going on with him?"
"Wilson tells me that he, and his partner, Derek Molnar, who I guess is the other guy, though no one has any picture of him, are Serbian nationals who work freelance. Usually for the Russians, though they don't know if that's who they're working for now."
"Why would Serbs be following me?"
"No one in the FBI knows. Or if they do know, they aren't telling me. Wilson says to stay away from these guys. Stojanović allegedly has killed a dozen or so men. He’s a regular psychopath."
"I suspect one of them already tried to kill me. Does Wilson think this has anything to do with the Mason kidnapping or maybe with drugs?"
Pierson laughed. "Not hardly. These guys are more into arms dealing and terrorism than drugs. They’ve done some work for the Russians in the past. He's hoping that whatever reason they followed you to Mexico allows the US to pick them up if they come back into the country. Have you seen them since they tried to shoot you?"
"No, I haven't. Thank God. What do you know about a book?"
"A book? I have no idea what you're talking about."
"They wanted to know if I had a book. I don't know what book they're talking about either. The only book I have is a Ken Follet paperback I picked up at the airport. I hardly think that is the book they're looking for."
"Well, Mac, what can I tell you? I'm just one of the mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed a lot of bull crap. No one has mentioned anything about a book to me. I'll ask Wilson about it. Maybe it's part of what they aren't telling me."
MacFarland laughed. "Good luck on that, Cyn. And thanks for checking into that for me. I owe you."
"More than you can imagine," she said, as the phone went dead.