by Cap Daniels
We found my car, and Grace immediately wanted to know what I’d learned from Shepherd. “What did he say?” Her impatience seemed to be running a close second to my own.
Trying in vain to get Anya out of my mind, I forced myself to focus on Grace. “He said the prints on the bill belong to a bounty hunter named Boris Novikoff. Does that name ring any agency bells for you?”
She tilted her head, obviously thumbing through her mental Rolodex. “No, I don’t think so. Should it?”
“No, probably not. He’s here looking for an SVR agent who works for Dmitri Barkov.”
“What’s his name?”
“What’s whose name?”
“Damn it, Chase, focus. What’s the name of the SVR agent Novikoff is chasing?”
“The agent’s name is Anastasia, and she’s a very long story. I’ll explain later. What you need to know is that we can’t let Novikoff find her before we do. Actually, we aren’t going to find her. She’ll find us. That’s sort of her thing.”
Grace sat in the passenger seat of my BMW, watching the mangroves pass by at sixty miles per hour. I had to tell her about Anya, but I wasn’t looking forward to confessing how I’d fallen in love with a Russian assassin. If there was a rule that came before rule number one in the spy handbook, it would be to never fall in love with the enemy. Perhaps I wasn’t suffering from a lack of judgment. Perhaps I had a perception problem. I just couldn’t let myself see Anya as my enemy. I was going to need a drink before opening that can of worms with my new partner.
I broke the silence as we turned onto Card Sound Road. “I live on a boat, you know. I had my boat moved up to the Ocean Reef Club. The security there’s a little tighter, and it’ll be better than being out in the open, so that’s where we’re headed.”
As if she were bored, Grace mumbled, “Okay.”
“I have a lot to tell you when we get to the boat.”
“I know,” she said.
* * *
I welcomed her aboard Aegis and poured cocktails for each of us. I silently wrestled with myself, trying to decide if I should tell Grace everything, or leave out the part about Anya and me getting a little cozier than we should have.
Grace took my glass and went into the cabin. While she was below, I scanned the horizon for anything that didn’t look like it should be there. I was actually looking for anything that looked like a blonde Russian, but there was nothing to see except mangroves and seagulls.
Grace stumbled back on deck with my glass nearly full. She was a long way from finding her sea legs, but she didn’t spill a drop. When she handed me the tumbler, her delicate hand lingered against mine a little longer than it should have. As Aegis unexpectedly rolled ever so slightly to starboard, Grace stumbled again and almost fell into my lap. Her hand landed firmly on my shoulder, and I found her face only inches from mine. I didn’t move, but after the briefest hesitation, she did. She pressed her lips to mine, slid her hand across my shoulder, and let it come to rest on the back of my neck. Her embrace was firm but tender, and her kiss was powerfully passionate. It was impossible to avoid being attracted to her. She was stunning and smart, but I wouldn’t surrender. I placed my glass on the seat beside me and leaned back. I pulled my lips from hers and held her face in my hands.
“We can’t do this, Grace. I can’t do this. You’re fascinating, but there’s a lot you don’t know yet.” I breathed the words more than spoke them as I tried to imagine what caused the boat to make that little roll. It must’ve been a manatee brushing against the hull.
Grace didn’t show the signs I expected a woman to after being rejected. She sat down next to me and took a drink. “Okay, Chase. Tell me about her.”
I swallowed half of the scotch in my tumbler and felt my heart race a bit. I had put it off long enough. It was time for confession.
“So you know about the op in Cuba, but before that op, I was on a job in New York at Belmont Park where I watched a sniper shoot a horse.”
I saw the disbelief in Grace’s eyes.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. She didn’t really shoot a horse. She flashed a laser in its eye. But that’s not important. What’s important is I watched her do it and I’m the only one who saw it. She got away, but that’s also not particularly important. After I killed Suslik in Cuba, I ran like hell and wound up on St. Thomas where I found Dutch. Do you know about Dutch?”
Her look of disbelief was replaced by intrigue. She was now hanging on my every word. “Yes, yes, I know about Dutch. Go on.”
I tried to reign in my rambling narrative. “I found Dutch, or more accurately, he found me. The sniper was there, too. She was chasing me. You see, she works for Dmitri Barkov and she was there to find out who sent me to kill him. It took me a long time to make her understand that I hadn’t been sent for Barkov. It’s a very long story, but she cut my tongue in half, killed Dutch, cut a tracker out of my neck, and I shot off one of her toes while she was trying to drown me in a lagoon.” I realized how ridiculous my story sounded, and I paused for another drink.
Grace looked lost. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I know. I’m going to try to put it all together for you, but this is where it really gets weird.”
She stood up. “Now I’m the one who needs another drink. If it’s just getting to the weird part, I’m not sure I can handle the rest of this story without more alcohol.”
I once again scanned the water around Aegis in the hope of seeing Anya approaching, but there was nothing except a coast guard patrol boat doing whatever it is they do.
Grace returned with her drink, but instead of sitting beside me, she sat across from me in the cockpit and waited for me to continue my ridiculous story. I glanced over her shoulder at the patrol boat making its way out to sea. For a moment, I wished I was aboard that boat.
I wasn’t looking forward to telling the rest of my story, but I was in too deeply to stop. “I know none of this is making sense yet, but for you to understand what happened next, you have to know the history. After all of that, the sniper and I wound up on my boat . . . this boat . . . and, well, I really don’t know how to explain what happened next.”
“Damn it, Chase. Stop stalling. Just tell me what happened.”
She left me no choice but to continue.
“I’m in love with her!” The words exploded from my mouth before I knew I’d said them. The admission was an enormous weight lifted from my chest. I didn’t know how Grace would react, but I didn’t care. Nothing she could say would change how I felt about Anya.
Instead of explaining how dangerous, reckless, irresponsible, and stupid it was to fall for a Russian SVR agent, she knelt at my feet, crossed her hands over my knees, and placed her chin atop her hands. She looked up at me. “I understand. Let’s get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll decide how to find and eliminate your gopher . . . or gopheri.”
Grace slept in the aft cabin and I spent the night tossing and turning in my bed in the forward berth. My brain didn’t want to sleep. It wanted to think about Anya and wonder when and where she would show up.
I thumbed the radio on and stretched my arms above my head, trying to wake myself from what little sleep I had. As the radio came to life, I heard, “. . . and in a bizarre story from Key Largo, the bodies of two Russian nationals were discovered early this morning in their motel room at the Seaside Motor Lodge. The two had apparently been bound with piano wire prior to their deaths. Police suspect drug trafficking to be at the core of this brutal murder, but as of yet, they have no suspects in this gruesome crime. Up next is the day’s weather with Heather and sports with Garcia Murano . . . .”
The instant my feet hit the deck beside my bed, a forceful hand landed firmly below my throat and drove me backward onto my bed. Before my head came to rest against the mattress, out of pure instinct, I retrieved and raised my pistol between me and my attacker. I was halfway through my trigger squeeze when the attacker’s left hand grasped the slide of my
Makarov, and with practiced dexterity, thumbed the safety into place. As my mind exploded in an effort to identify my aggressor and devise a plan to foil the attack, Anya’s long blonde hair fell across my face, and her body rested on mine. The kiss that followed was more passionate than any we’d shared before.
As we parted, I opened my eyes and started to tell her how much I missed her, but she pressed her finger to my lips. “Who the hell is woman sleeping on our boat?”
34
Tree Pee
“That’s a long story,” I said. “Her name is Grace. She’s CIA, and she’s going to help me find Suslik.”
“See? I told you Suslik was not dead but you did not believe me.”
“Yes, Anya, you told me, but you weren’t completely correct. Suslik isn’t just one man. You and everyone else on Earth kept telling me he was a ghost, but that’s not true either. He’s a twin, at least, and probably a triplet. That’s why he can be in several places at once, like a ghost.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “I think American saying is, ‘You are late to party.’ Of course Suslik is three.”
It was my turn to ask some questions. “When did you get here? Where have you been? How did you get aboard? Did you kill Boris and his buddy?”
She smiled that wry smile that was so uniquely hers. “Slow down, Chasechka. I like kissing you with tongue healed. I am here three days. I was in water last night when CIA woman kissed you and you made her stop. Good boy. Very good boy. I kicked, uh, I do not know, rul’ napravleniya, to make you look into water, but you did not look.”
I smiled, recognizing the Russian word for rudder. “That was you?”
“Yes, was me. You are getting, uh, nebrezhnyy. I am still better than you.”
I laughed. “You may be better at sneaking up on me, but your English is getting nebrezhnyy. The word you’re looking for is sloppy.”
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against me. We kissed while the first rays of the morning sun beamed through the portlights. Anya turned and looked from my cabin into the main salon. “I am to meet your CIA agent now.”
I knew Anya was declaring rather than asking, so I pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of swim trunks just before she tugged me through the cabin doorway. Anya stomped her foot firmly onto the cabin sole and watched for Grace to stir. When she didn’t, Anya dropped a small skillet into the stainless-steel sink, sending a clanging racket through the cabin. That did the trick. Grace opened her eyes abruptly and tried to focus on the figures standing only a few feet away.
Uncertain what was about to happen, I took control of the moment. “Grace, this is Anya. Anya, this is Grace.”
Grace rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Hi. When did you get here?”
In Russian, Anya said to me, “She has pig nose and her eyes are too close together. She is not beautiful. And she does not speak Russian or she would have tried to shoot me with her unloaded gun when I said she had pig nose.”
I tried not to laugh. I saw the bullets from Grace’s pistol standing on their ends and neatly arranged like little soldiers on the first companionway step.
Before I could speak, Anya turned to Grace and said in English, “Is nice to meet you. I am Chase’s—” Anya paused, obviously trying to think of the correct English word to describe what she was to me. Instead of finding the word, she said, “Yes, I am Chase’s.”
Grace didn’t show any reaction to Anya’s declaration, so I broke the silence. “I told you she’d find us.”
Women, in some ways, are like wild animals. Animals will urinate on trees to mark their territory. Anya, in doing a little tree peeing of her own, took my hand and led me back into my cabin. She made no effort to muffle her expressions of ecstasy, making certain that the remaining occupant of our boat could hear every sigh.
* * *
When we emerged from my cabin, we found Grace in the cockpit sipping a cup of coffee. My bottle of twelve-year-old scotch, with its lid suspiciously missing, was resting on the countertop just beside the coffee maker.
I went to work making a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. Anya returned from the shower and quickly made herself at home, devouring the contents of her plate. Grace sat across from Anya and me at the small table. I wondered who would be the first to speak. The psychologist in me was intrigued, but the man in me was terrified.
It was Grace who spoke first. “So, Anya, forgive me, but aren’t you an SVR officer?”
Anya swallowed a healthy mouthful of coffee and looked at me mischievously. “No,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”
I tried to appear calm, but my curiosity prevailed. “What do you mean, not anymore?”
“I want to work with you to find Susliki and then do what you said we could do: disappear together forever.” Her words were crisp and her English was good.
I was speechless and Grace seemed flabbergasted.
From my days as a catcher on the baseball field, my mind could digest a great volume of information and process it down to the most important elements. That’s what was happening at that moment. I was absorbing an overwhelming statement from Anya, and processing how it would mesh with the remainder of my life, but one thought kept pouring to the forefront of my churning mind: I had to talk to Dr. Richter.
“There’s someone you have to meet,” I said. “He’s my mentor and the closest thing I have to a father. Anya, you have to meet him today.”
I looked at Grace, trying to make her understand what was unfolding. “Stay here, Grace. Stay here on the boat. We’ll be back tomorrow or the next day, and we’ll go from there, but don’t leave. We need you. You’re crucial to what comes next.”
She agreed.
With Anya by my side and Grace organizing the operation, we could not only find every Suslik on Earth, but we could also drive them into the ground in shattered pieces.
“Anya,” I said, “you and I have a little trip to make. Have you ever been to Georgia?”
“Which one?”
“The American one.”
“Not yet,” she admitted, “but I will go with you anywhere.”
I believed her, but I wondered if she’d feel the same after Dr. Richter spent the afternoon trying to talk us out of . . . everything.
35
Reunion
I had befriended Hank, the manager at the private airport at the Ocean Reef Club. As fate would have it, he’d flown with Dr. Richter in the war and still considered him a brother-in-arms. He owned a Bonanza that he could no longer fly because of his failing health and what he called “that damned flight surgeon.”
Hank essentially handed me the keys to the Bonanza to fly anytime I wanted. He believed that “watching her die on the ramp was just too much to swallow.” I didn’t abuse his generosity, but I flew the airplane enough to keep her from dying on the ramp.
I introduced Anya to Hank and asked if he’d mind if we took the Bonanza to Athens to see his old friend. Anya’s accent made Hank raise an eyebrow and glance at me with a knowing wink.
“Sure, you can take my airplane any time you want, Chase. You know that. Consider it yours. Just don’t let that old bastard, Rocket Richter, fly her. There’s no telling what he’d do to the old girl. It’s nice to meet you, Anya. Good luck with this one. He’s a pistol.”
Once we were in the air and climbing out over the Everglades into the brilliant blue sky, Anya said, “I did not know you could fly airplane, and why did that man call you a pistol?”
“It’s just an American saying. I think he likes you.”
She smiled. “Yes, of course he likes me. Everybody likes me until I kill them.”
I smiled at her and she blinked sweetly, reminding me that underneath the exterior of that deadly killing machine lay a heart of tenderness yearning to be loved.
We reached our cruising altitude, and I offered the controls to Anya. “Put your hand on the yoke like this,” I said, demonstrating how to hold the controls lightly. “Good. Now turn left and right just like
driving a car.”
She made some gentle turns, and I watched her initial reluctance give way to excitement and sheer pleasure. She laughed as she guided the plane through ever-increasing turns. I showed her how to coordinate the turns with the rudder pedals and to change altitude with a gentle push or pull of the yoke and minor throttle adjustments. Soon, she was handling the Bonanza as if she’d been flying for years.
After half an hour, I took back the controls. “Anya, I want to tell you about the man we’re going to meet.”
She reluctantly surrendered the controls and turned to face me.
“Dr. Richter was one of my psychology professors at the University of Georgia where I went to school. He’s an amazing teacher, but he’s so much more than that. He’s also a pilot and flew during the war. After the war, he went to work for the government, and he knew my parents. He’s a very important man to me, Anya. He’s much like a father to me now that my parents are gone. He actually recruited me into this work, so if I’d never met him, I would’ve never met you. I know you’ll like him. And he’ll love you.”
I leaned toward her, but instead of the gentle kiss I’d anticipated, our microphones bumped into each other and pressed into our lips. We laughed, pushed the mics out of the way, and pecked at each other’s lips playfully.
“Your Dr. Richter sounds wonderful. I must thank him for sending you to me.”
As we flew our approach into the Athens airport, I clenched my teeth with anxiety. I was determined to grease the landing, and I couldn’t have Anya laughing at me for bouncing.
I taxied the Bonanza to the transient line and parked her in a well-marked spot. The lineman helped me tie her down and asked if we needed fuel and how long we’d be staying. I asked him to top off the tanks and told him we’d be leaving in a day or two.
“I have never been to this Georgia. It does not look like Georgia I know in Soviet Union.” She looked like a tourist as she spun around on the tarmac, taking in the scenery of endless pine trees.
