The Good Liar. Laura Caldwell

shook the thoughts of Aleksei from her brain. Enough, she said to herself. She checked her watch: 10:45 a.m. She looked at the villa to her right. She had fifteen minutes.

      She stood, readjusted her black tank bathing suit and opened the straw bag on the chair next to her. She checked that the yellow tube that read Caprilano Sunscreen was tucked in the inside pocket.

      Caprilano Sunscreen was sold only in two places—Barneys New York and a store in the Galleria Alberto Sordi in Rome. This tube, however, had not been purchased at either store. Instead, it was a replica. Likewise, the contents inside looked exactly like the white Caprilano sunblock and had been designed to bear its faint, citrusy scent.

      Liza adjusted her earbud and put on her large, floppy beach hat. One side of the hat drooped almost to Liza’s jaw and had a tiny mike sewn into its cotton folds.

      “Tucker,” she said into the mike. “Ready?”

      “Confirmed,” came the reply in her earbud.

      She went to the edge of her balcony and leaned over the railing. A hundred feet off shore, the multicolored sails of a Hobie Cat flapped prettily as it tacked back and forth across the water.

      Liza called the front desk, gave the name Elena Mistow and checked out of her room over the phone. She asked for a bellman to collect her bags, which she put outside her front door, and requested that a cab be called. She left the room, walked downstairs and made her way to the beach’s edge.

      Once there, she didn’t step into the sand immediately. Instead, she looked at the villa to her right. She glanced at her watch again. Any minute now. She waited patiently in her bathing suit, her straw bag in one hand, her hat firmly on her head, hiding her auburn hair. As she stood there, some of the resort’s guests began to filter down to the beach, throwing towels over the plush chaise longues and settling in with books or stacks of magazines.

      Liza envied those people. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone on a real vacation or simply sat on a beach and read.

      She turned her attention back to the villa. Five minutes later, she saw the French doors open and, as they had every morning for the last five days, the members of the Naponi family began to make their way to the beach. As usual, Angelo Naponi was the last to cross the threshold.

      Angelo Naponi was the president of a wealthy family company that owned waste-disposal facilities around the world. Liza and the Trust had no problem with Naponi’s company and the work they did. What they had a problem with was how he spent some of his money. Lately, Naponi had been funding a militant Muslim organization that had its sights on a large-scale bombing in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Naponi himself was Roman Catholic, and was unsympathetic to the Muslims, but such a bombing would wreak havoc in Vilnius where Naponi had been trying to get a foothold for years. Once such havoc occurred, outside companies, just like Naponi’s, would be called upon to help clear the wreckage.