by P A Duncan
Duly hired, he studied the convention center’s layout and the company’s operational manual and developed a security plan for the gun show. That impressed the company so much, the CEO offered Alexei a six-figure salary to stay in Pueblo. Alexei demurred, citing the Colorado winters and the unseen wife’s mysterious malady. He got, however, exactly what he wanted: the ability to walk around the convention center in a uniform most people ignored. Much like a maid or a janitor, a security guard became part of the background. He’d cut his hair to a less noticeable length and dyed it a mousy brown with some streaks of gray. Muddy brown contact lenses disguised his eyes, and dental putty gave him a lantern jaw.
The payoff? The satisfaction of having Mai walk past him without recognizing him.
Or had she and not let on?
No. Despite the fact he’d taught her how to spot a bad guy or pick up a tail as good as he, he still had some secrets.
He watched the exchange between Mai and Carroll and followed them as they exited. To see which car they used, he patrolled the near-empty parking lot in a company car. Carroll’s battered Chevy was the choice, and Alexei tailed long enough to see where they headed, a busy restaurant not far from the convention center.
Alexei returned to the convention center, put the most senior man on the night shift in charge, changed clothes, and explained he had to take his wife to a local clinic. After that, he returned to the restaurant and went inside to conduct some surveillance.
16
Scars and Tattoos
After dinner, John Carroll stayed silent driving back to the convention center, debating with himself if it were time to make a move on Siobhan. He didn’t know why he hadn’t already, except things were comfortable. She’d come all the way to see him, and he didn’t want to push his luck. She wasn’t like women his age. With them you knew right away if you were going to get lucky or not. Siobhan didn’t play games, though. His history with women he wanted wasn’t good, his success limited to strangers who’d wanted the same thing: a good fuck and a goodbye.
He pulled into a parking space two away from a small sedan Siobhan had indicated was her rental. He doused his lights and put the car in park, watching her in his periphery. In the illumination from the nearest parking lot light, her face was all angles and shadows. She had a hint of a smile but not a mocking one. He’d received enough of them to know. She’d removed her leather jacket in the warm evening, and he was definitely impressed by the tank top she wore beneath it. His sister wore stuff like that, but Maryann had no tits to speak of. Siobhan filled her tank top more than good. His eyes were drawn to what flesh he could see. He wanted to see more soon. He liked her muscle tone. She was strong but feminine. The splash of freckles on her face extended to her chest and arms. Below her right collarbone there was an old scar, lighter against her skin and almost a perfect circle.
She shifted in her seat to turn to him, and he made sure his eyes were on her face.
“I’m sorry about all that trouble in Arkansas,” she said, her voice low, barely above a whisper, a tone he imagined people who slept together used. An intimate tone.
His eyes went back to the scar. “I was mad as hell at the time, but I’m over it.”
The windows were down because the air conditioning was broken. A breeze passed through the car, ruffling her hair. A strand clung to her cheek, and before he could control himself, he brushed it back behind her ear. He let his fingers trace her jaw. She didn’t flinch, didn’t react at all. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t want to fuck things up.
“You, uh, remember my bud L.D.?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“He’s getting married next month in Las Vegas. About time. Their kid is, like, two. I’m his best man. Do they have that in Irish weddings?”
“Best men? They do, indeed.”
“I went to the library to look up what I’m supposed to do. Hang onto the rings and make a toast at the reception. I think I can manage.” He smiled, and she smiled back.
“Congratulations to your friend,” she said.
“So, uh, I thought… I mean, if you can’t, that’s okay, but I, uh, need a date. I don’t see why except Sharon—that’s L.D.’s old lady—said I had to have a date or she’d fix me up, which she’s done and was that ever a disaster.” He waited for her answer, but her face was unreadable. Idiot, he thought, you didn’t actually ask her.
“Are you asking me?” she said.
“Yeah, I am. Sorry for not being clear. If you’ve got other things to do, like speeches and stuff… But I was hoping…”
“When is it?”
“Three weeks from today. That’s not enough notice, is it?”
“I can work it out.”
Carroll blinked, stunned. He’d expected to her refuse. “Really?”
“I liked Las Vegas when I went to the MW convention last year. A far cry from Belfast. What should I get for a present?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m giving them free babysitting for their honeymoon, and, wow, thanks, Siobhan. You’re…” He didn’t know how to say it. Any other woman who hadn’t pushed for sex by now, he’d have moved on, but this was different.
“I’m what?”
“Amazing.”
Her laugh was warm and inviting. “Keep saying things like that, and you’ll turn my head, you will.”
A car cruised down the road adjacent to the parking lot, and Siobhan watched it until it was out of sight, turning to her right to do so. Almost opposite the scar below her collarbone was another scar above her shoulder blade. It was larger, star-shaped. He remembered some guys wounded in Desert Storm. Their scars looked like Siobhan’s, an entry and an exit wound from a high-powered round.
His mouth went dry. Had a British soldier shot her?
He spotted something else on her left shoulder. A tattoo. That was cool. And arousing. A skull outlined in black and shaded white and gray. The skull was impaled through the eyeholes on the sickle portion of a hammer and sickle. Blood dripped from the blade to form red letters beneath the skull: CMEPTb.
She turned back and saw his scrutiny, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
“That’s, uh, an unusual tat,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”
Her eyes narrowed at him, but she said nothing.
“Siobhan, I mean, that’s a wicked tat. It’s like ones I’ve seen on spec ops guys when I was in the Army. What’s it mean?”
“You know what the KGB was?”
“Old Soviet state security.”
“They advised revolutionary groups around the world.”
“Like the IRA?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that got to do with your tattoo?”
“There’s a tradition among Soviet special forces assassins. They get a tattoo after their first kill. The KGB officer who worked with me was a former assassin.”
“But why did you…” When the realization hit him, it aroused him even more. “Oh,” he said, but it was more a croak. He swallowed to try to lubricate his throat. “What does the word mean?”
“It’s the Russian word for death. Smyert’.”
He hoped the dark hid his erection. He didn’t want her to think he was a nut job who got off on death.
“So, what are you going to do now, lad? Run away or ask me about each one?”
“No, no. It’s… God, Siobhan, how you’ve had to live. I saw the scar on your other shoulder. That’s from a gunshot wound, right?”
“Yes.”
“The worst shit that came my way in Desert Storm was over so quickly, I didn’t even get a shrapnel wound. You’ve had to battle every day of your life. That’s…well, shitty. I wish I could make it go away. Jesus. That was lame. Sorry.”
“It wasn’t lame, lad. It was kind.”
Their eyes met, and he knew, a man knew, if he went for it, she’d fuck him right here in the car. He was surprised when he realized that wasn’t how he wanted it to happen. Las Vegas. After the wedding. They’d have tim
e.
“I, uh… The show opens at 0900 tomorrow, and since L.D.’s not with me I, uh, better go.”
She smiled at him, and warmth filled his body. “I’ll head back in the morning myself. I’ll get that generous donation back ASAP, and I’ll convince the boss I need a few days off for that wedding.”
“I’ll call and leave the details.”
“Good, and thanks for dinner. Good night, then.”
“Good night, Siobhan.”
She kissed him on his mouth, a light touch, lips barely parted. Before he could react and pull her in for a better one, she was out of the car.
He now looked forward to that wedding more than ever.
As usual, Alexei’s timing was perfect. Mai had no sooner shut and secured the door to her hotel room when the phone rang.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Did you make me?” Alexei asked.
“No. I suspected one of the janitors, but he was too short.”
“I was in the restaurant, too.”
“No surprise there. What did you learn from all that covert scrutiny?”
“He’s up to something.”
“Do you read minds now?”
“You’re not the only one with intuition. He seemed different,” Alexei said. “Relaxed. No, perhaps resolved.”
She didn’t want to admit he was right, but she’d sensed the same thing. Carroll had seemed confident and, yes, resolved, even joyful. But about what?
“He seemed like a man,” Alexei continued, “who’d come to a conclusion or a decision and was happy with it. What did you two talk about?”
“He told me about what happened at the Addams farm, but I suspect he altered the details. I don’t know anyone who’d be so nonchalant about being cheated out of five thousand dollars. Oh, and there’s a couple weeks of missing time he didn’t cover.” She paraphrased their conversation and the sequence of events Carroll had related. “I tried to bring him back around to it a few times but didn’t want to raise his suspicions. I’ll have another meet soon. His friend Duval is getting married in Las Vegas. Carroll’s best man, and I’m his date.”
A pause from Alexei, then, “That will be a good situation for seeing him interact with more of his circle.”
“You won’t be able to come with me. Natalia will be getting ready for her visit with her father, and you know how that goes.”
“I get the mood swings to myself. Again.”
“Alexei, you’ve faced down the toughest spies from the Communist Bloc. She’s a child.”
“She’s now a teenager. There’s a difference. I expect a lot of sweaty sex in compensation.”
“I’d never object to that. Where are you now?”
“In the room next to yours, and I have a present for you.”
“You are not, and what is it?”
“I saw you almost drooling over that .32 caliber Beretta, and I bought it for you. What will I get in return?”
“Get your ass in here and find out.”
The connecting door opened, and Alexei stood in the doorway. Well, a disguised Alexei.
“Hello, Siobhan,” he said. “My name is Sam the Security Guard.”
17
Vegas Redux
Las Vegas, Nevada
Less than a day in Las Vegas, and the heat, noise, and crass commercialism had given Mai a headache. However, it made a good excuse to skip the pre-wedding minutia for a bride she’d only observed during surveillance. The evening rehearsal dinner—Carroll’s gift to the couple—was something she couldn’t beg off, but she’d convinced Carroll to come get her at the last moment, so she could adjust to the time change, she’d explained.
She’d spent part of the afternoon on the phone with Alexei and Natalia attempting to mediate from 2,400 miles away. Mai tried to sound sympathetic with Alexei, but she recalled how many times he’d escaped to his workshop and allowed Mai the full brunt of a pre-adolescent temper tantrum. About time he got some of the flak.
With Natalia temporarily ameliorated, she and Alexei talked shop.
“I’m about to head to an Arlington Library,” he said. “Analysis learned a couple of low-level mercenaries hang out at one of the branches. I’ll wade in, see if any of them has a line on Patriot City.”
“You mean, you’re escaping the teenaged drama queen,” she replied. To forestall “she got it from you,” she was quick to add, “If you meet with mercenaries, be careful.”
“I usually say that to you.”
Precisely why I beat you to it, she thought.
“Check in with me tonight?” he asked.
There was no escaping the protectiveness. “It’ll be late your time.”
“I’ll sleep better knowing you’re safely ensconced in your lonely hotel room. I’m off to skulk in the library. Take care. I love you.”
“I will. Me, too.”
After Alexei rang off, Mai dressed for the casual dinner. “More a picnic,” Carroll had said. Jeans and a plain white tee shirt, some eye shadow and mascara, and she was ready.
The knock on the door had to be Carroll, but she checked the peep hole anyway. She looked around the room to make sure she’d left nothing suspicious out, like her top-of-the-line Directorate laptop, and opened the door.
“Hey,” he said, smiling. “How’s your head?”
“Better. The heat takes some getting used to.”
“You look great.” There came the endearing blush. “You ready?”
She stuffed some cash in a jeans pocket, along with her room key and a credit card. The Beretta .32 Alexei had gifted her after Pueblo was in an ankle holster hidden by the boot-cut jeans.
“All set,” she said.
Mai put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door knob and followed Carroll to his car.
“Glad you felt like coming to the store with me,” he said, once they were in the car and negotiating traffic. “It’ll be the only time we can talk, the two of us. I’m really, really glad you came.”
“I’m glad as well. It’s good to get away and not have work hanging over me.”
“What would happen if you quit?”
“I’d lose my protection from deportation.”
“That sucks. Sounds like it’s no better than what you had in Ireland.”
“Perhaps, but it’s a place to sleep, some cash in my pocket, and work that helps my country, in a roundabout way.”
He pulled into a grocery store parking lot. “I… I worry about you.”
“That’s kind of you, lad, but I can look after myself.”
“I don’t doubt that, but it’s like you’ve gotten the shit end of the stick everywhere, and because I…you’re my friend, it bothers me.”
So much for right-wingers all being Neanderthals, she thought. “Thanks for the concern, lad. It means a lot.”
He looked at her, chin up in a challenge. “Does it?”
“Of course it does. Since I met you, I can deal with the work knowing there’s someone who cares what happens to me. To the charity people, I’m a commodity to be exploited. To you, I’m a person. Yes, it means a lot, lad.”
And I’ll be leaving that out of the next conversation with Alexei, she thought. He’d only laugh.
His eyes dipped away from her, and the blush returned. She wondered how she’d pegged him as a potential terrorist.
As he pushed the grocery cart among the aisles, John Carroll looked around. Lots of couples shopping, like him and Siobhan. When he was a kid, his mother did the shopping, with him and his sisters along. After she left, his dad shopped big once every couple of weeks and made days’ worth of meals to freeze, things Carroll could reheat while his dad worked the night shift. When Carroll got his driver’s license, he did the shopping.
This experience of buying groceries with a woman was unusual and exciting. The casual chatter about which tomatoes to buy or the brand of spaghetti made the crap he’d been through recede.
Siobhan chatted about how all she could do was “heat up a mean can
of soup.”
“When I finally get a place, when you visit, I’ll teach you how to cook,” he said.
That made her smile.
They shopped, and joked, and talked; Carroll hadn’t felt so relaxed in years.
18
Mercenaries
Columbia Pike Branch Library
Arlington, Virginia
Alexei browsed the stacks in the library and peeked into the various meeting rooms and congregating areas. No one meeting his definition of a mercenary in sight. Yet, Grace’s analysts were rarely wrong.
Patience, Alexei, he told himself.
In the Periodicals Room he picked up the latest copy of Mercenary World and sat at a table to thumb through it. Who had gifted the library with this subscription? Was one of the librarians a closet reactionary?
He skimmed the fictionalized articles on various conflicts around the world and ended up at the classified ads, always interesting. The ads used code phrases and euphemisms for the more unusual services rendered and wanted. That had become magazine policy after a large pay-out to a the family of a woman whose husband took out an ad for a hitman to kill his wife.
A few of the ads might be linked to the elusive Patriot City. Alexei took a notepad and pen from his inside jacket pocket and jotted down the particulars. To kill more time, he thumbed through the issue again.
He wasn’t alone.
A man standing by the rack of magazines kept stealing glances Alexei’s way. Late thirties, a shade under six feet, close to 255 pounds. The well-defined muscles of his arms and torso showed he worked out. He wore a tight black, long-sleeved Henley shirt and jeans worn through at the knees. The well-used combat boots had almost separated from the soles, and a sloppy crew cut and two-day growth of beard fulfilled the image of a mercenary wannabe on hard times. The fleshy, mottled face indicated he was a month or so from going to seed.
