The falling rain danced down the sidewalk without a sound.
A sentry walked the other side of the street, his shoulders rigid, his hands wrapped tightly around a rifle, his shoulders bowed against the wind.
Sand silently prayed the soldier would not cross over.
He looked like a boy in the harsh glare of the headlights.
He was some mother’s son.
He would still be alive come morning if he stayed where he was on his side of the street.
He would live to fight another day.
He would live to fight the cold of another day.
The sentry walked on past, staring straight ahead, and faded into the black hole of a misty night.
The sky was blurred against a backdrop of green and yellow neon lights, and the cold, wet streets of Odessa smelled like rotten oranges and the ragged remains of reefer joints lying lit and thrown back into a black, narrow alley that marked the seamier side of a night club where Pauline Bellerose sang the blues.
Roland Sand watched a lively stream of gentlemen and their ladies follow one damp raincoat after another through the doorway and into the dimly lit lobby of the Perron No. 7, noted for its exquisite collection of fine wines, hard whiskey, beautiful women, Russian nobility, and Pauline Bellerose.
Fine wines, hard whiskey, and beautiful women were not that difficult to find in Odessa.
But there was only one Pauline Bellerose.
Rainy Night 11
THE CROWD STOOD shoulder to shoulder inside the lobby of the nightclub, packed together like black sea sprats in a can of tomato sauce.
A collection of imported leathers and furs cloaked women’s shoulders, and the men were leaning on their black umbrellas as if they were swords, leaking blood instead of rain, after a hard fight.
The small rotunda was lit by four bulbs attached to a chandelier fashioned from the barrels of Mosin Nagant bolt-action rifles left behind by Russian soldiers after the Second World War.
The lights had a funereal glow.
They did not touch the floor.
A life-size, full-color, cardboard cutout of Pauline Bellerose had been placed beside the doorway that led into the lounge.
Since she looked as good in the flesh as she did in cardboard, Sand decided, there was little wonder why the jazz singer was the hottest ticket in Ukraine.
Tall and slender, she could have been a ballet dancer.
Her face was framed by black hair that glistened in the light and draped thickly upon her shoulders.
She was probably forty by now.
She looked ten years younger.
Painted by the right glow of a muted light, she would be young forever.
Her dark skin was unaffected by blemishes.
Sand smiled at the cardboard cutout.
Same face he knew so well.
Same beauty that had stolen his affections for a night.
Or was it a week?
He thought it might be forever.
Then the gunfire erupted.
Where had it been?
Egypt?
No.
Perhaps Morocco.
But somewhere in a black alley.
Always an alley.
He awoke three months later in a hospital.
Pauline Bellerose was gone.
She had vanished.
Sand thought the lady had been a dream.
But here she was.
Waiting.
But not for him.
He didn’t even know she sang.
Sand heard a piano hidden somewhere behind the stage curtain playing Gershwin’s “Oh, Lady, Be Good.”
It might as well be 1940 all over again.
A waitress in a short white dress with black lace stockings seated Sand at a small table beside the stage.
Reagan kept standing, smiling at the young lady, his hands tucked over hers.
She winked.
He sat down, straightened the wrinkles out of his coat, and whispered, “You never know what kind of table fifty dollars will get you these days.” He nodded to the stage. “Is this close enough for you to do your dirty work?”
“Nothing will happen in here.” Sand stared across the room. “It’s too cozy. A Russian general is seated on the other side of the stage. A Russian tank commander and at least two of his men occupy a table beside the door that leads back into the lobby. The Odessa police have guards at every exit and probably more behind the curtain. If you start any trouble in here, you’ll find yourself inside a pinball machine with bullets ricocheting off every wall, and have a feeling everybody will be shooting at us.”
Reagan frowned, and his eyes narrowed.
“How do you know all of that?”
Sand shrugged.
“That’s what I do.”
“I thought you were an assassin,” Reagan said.
“Finding our targets is the most important thing we do,” Sand said calmly. “Killing anyone is an afterthought.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We sip a little Yarpivo beer, sit back, and listen to the blues.”
“What about Pauline?” Reagan leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and ran his thumb and forefinger across his white mustache.
“It is my impression that your government, for reasons it hasn’t shared with anyone else, wants her smuggled out of Odessa alive.”
“That’s my order.”
“So let’s try to keep her alive.”
Reagan nodded. “How do you plan to do that?”
Sand grinned. “By not getting her killed.”
“Got a plan?”
“We don’t get ourselves killed first.”
“I’m definitely on board with your way of thinking.” Reagan folded his hands together on top of the table and stared at the stage, waiting for a glimpse of Pauline,
In Sand’s mind, the singer of the blues was no longer merely a woman, no matter how beautiful she might be.
She was cargo.
Plain.
And simple.
Pack her up.
Ship her out.
Don’t let anyone know she’s leaving until she’s gone.
Sand surveyed the room, paying careful attention to dark corners and blind spots and exit signs above doors that were probably locked.
“As I see it,” he said, “we will leave in one of two scenarios.”
“What would those be?” The light flickered in Reagan’s eyes.
“If the Russians haven’t yet figured out Pauline’s involvement in smuggling out secrets, we will simply hear her sing, go quietly to her dressing room, explain to her the predicament she’s in, and we all walk out of here as giddy as freshmen at a fraternity party.”
Reagan stared down at the table for a long time.
Sand let him wait.
Finally, the British operative looked up and asked softly, “What if the Russians already know about her?”
“We fight our way out of here.” Sand’s voice was flat, devoid of any emotion. “Whoever survives takes Pauline to Romania.”
“What happens if we don’t survive?”
“Then she’s somebody else’s problem.”
Sand motioned to the shapely young waitress in the short white dress with black lace stockings.
She worked her way through the tables and leaned down in front of him.
Her hair was not quite brown and not quite blonde.
It was bobbed around her neck.
Her eyes were hazel, the color of almonds.
They were too wide, and her pupils were dilated.
She would never remember seeing him when the drugs wore off.
Sand placed a hundred dollars in front of her.
“We would like to see Miss Bellerose before the show begins if you would be so kind as to lead us to her dressing room.” He smiled broadly. “She and I both come from the same home town,” he said.
“Paris?”
“Des Moines.”
The waitress stoo
d up and straightened her dress.
She looked away.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her lips were trembling. “If you came so far to see Miss Bellerose, I am afraid she is not singing tonight.”
Sand filed her words into the dark recesses of his mind.
“The sign out front says she sings every night.”
“She has not come yet tonight.” Fright spilled into the lady’s darting eyes. “We have not seen her. She is always here at six o’clock. Tonight, no.”
“Did she call?”
“She did not.”
“Has it happened before?” Sand felt his shoulders tense.
“Miss Bellerose has not missed a night in three years.”
“Could she be sick?”
The waitress sat down in the chair beside Reagan.
“I know her. She would have called.”
Sand had made a slight miscalculation.
He had overlooked a possible third scenario.
Pauline Bellerose was missing.
“Can you give me her home address?” he asked softly.
“It is against the rules we have in this place here.”
Sand placed a fifty dollar bill on top of the hundred.
The waitress looked down at the money.
She hesitated.
Her eyes wavered.
“Miss Pauline might be in danger,” Reagan said.
Sand cut him a sharp glance.
The waitress picked up the bills.
Her hands were shaking.
She took a pencil from behind her ear and scratched an address on a napkin, folded it, and slipped the note in Sand’s coat pocket.
He felt her fingers rub across his face.
He smiled.
The waitress had already gotten to her feet, turned away from him, and was walking on unsteady feet toward another table.
She fought to find the smile that made men tip so heavily.
Finally it creased her face.
Her eyes brightened.
Her lipstick remained cracked.
He did not see where she had hidden the money.
He would have loved to search for it.
But not tonight.
“What now?” Reagan asked as he stood.
“We discard the original plan and figure out another one,” Sand said.
He swept his eyes across the lounge and looked for the Russian general.
The general was still seated, a cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth, a dark-haired showgirl with thick legs on his lap, the dim light reflecting off the three rows of medals pinned to his chest.
The tank commander was gone.
Where?
That’s what concerned Sand.
“I didn’t know you had a plan,” Reagan said as they walked together toward the lobby.
“That’s why I never have one,” Sand said. “It never works out.”
The rain had picked up its intensity.
The sidewalk was empty.
The walkers had all moved inside.
Where?
For how long?
Were any of them carrying a gun?
Were any of them waiting for him?
Did any of them have the jazz singer?
Even the cat had stopped squalling.
Reagan stepped off the curb to hail a taxi.
“Don’t bother,” Sand said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want anyone to know where we’ve gone.”
Reagan wiped the rain off his face.
“He’s just a cab driver.”
Sand began walking through the rain.
The pellets peppering his face felt like ice.
“Cab drivers,” he said, “don’t make a lot of money collecting fares. Some of them become quite wealthy off the information they sell.”
“What about the waitress?”
“I imagined she’s doubled her money by now.”
Reagan hurried to keep abreast with Sand.
The rain had wilted his mustache.
His eyes were tired, streaked with webs of red lines, crooked and broken.
“But we’re just a couple of businessmen from out of town,” he said.
“That’s what makes us worth so much money.”
They turned down the street Sand hoped would lead them to the hotel.
A name.
That’s all he had.
A name and a room number.
No address.
The waitress probably figured that if he wanted to find Pauline Bellerose so badly he could certainly find the hotel.
Unless he was a fool on a rainy night, he would take a taxi.
For fools, it was a rainy night to die.
Sand glanced over his shoulder.
He had learned long ago not to take anything for granted.
No place was what it seemed to be.
No man was who he appeared to be.
Everyone was different.
But a cemetery would someday make them all equal.
A taxi cab slowly followed, a dark blur in the rain.
It was a block behind them, easing along next to the curb.
Its headlights had been turned off.
“Turn right on Krasnova Street and wait for me,” Sand told Reagan. “It’s about four blocks straight ahead of us.”
“What are you planning to do?”
The wind was blowing Reagan’s words out of his mouth.
“Catch a cab,” Sand said.
“I thought you said it was dangerous.”
“Only for the driver,” Sand said. “I hoped he told his wife he loved her before he left home this morning.”
“Maybe he’s not married.”
“Let’s hope he isn’t.”
Reagan turned to speak.
Sand had stepped into the rain and folded it around him.
Sand was gone.
Rainy Night 12
REAGAN TRUDGED FOUR more blocks, moving straight ahead, walking unsteadily on cracked pavement, his topcoat pulled over his head and his shoulders bending against the wind.
He held tightly onto the rails of an aging wrought-iron fence to keep from losing his balance.
Reagan felt as if he were adrift in no-man’s land.
Where had he been?
He didn’t really know.
It all seemed like a bizarre scene in a black and white movie with fingernail scratches across the film.
No one had spoken.
No one had run.
They just sat in the darkness and waited.
Were they waiting to die?
Were they waiting for him to die?
Where was he going?
Reagan did not have a clue.
His mission had been so simple.
Join the American.
Find the girl.
Go home.
Let the American worry about smuggling her out of Odessa.
How would Sand do it?
Sand would never let him know.
The less Alistair Reagan knew, the better.
He kept his back to the rain and felt a sudden chill as it streamed down the creases of his neck.
His jacket was soaked.
So was his skin.
His face had grown numb from the cold.
Reagan had never wanted to be a field agent, had never asked for a job that would take him away from the warm and peaceful confines of an office.
He was a man easily frightened, easily discombobulated.
He had held a gun once, a SIG Sauer P226.
He had fired it one.
Saw no reason to fire it again.
Didn’t like the noise.
Didn’t like the recoil against his elbow.
He wasn’t cut out for this cloak and dagger work in dangerous corners of a dangerous world where the success of an operation on foreign soil was most often decided by which country buried the fewest men.
He preferred his old and scarred desk in a small office at th
e end of the hall.
No worries.
No fears.
Make a mistake?
Straighten it out tomorrow.
Rain never ran down the back of his neck.
He hardly ever stayed after dark, not even when the days were short and the nights came early and before their time.
Those who died had the decency to wait until they got home.
An abrupt thought struck Reagan like a blow to the head that he didn’t see coming his way.
What if something had happened?
What if he never saw Roland Sand again?
What if the taxi driver had a gun?
What if he shot first?
What if Sand lay bleeding the street?
What if Sand was already dead?
What if the rain had swallowed him up and washed him down a drain at the end of the street?
What would Reagan tell his boss?
Don’t know what happened, sir.
No, I never heard from Sand again.
He said he had everything under control.
I had no reason to doubt him.
I left him with Pauline.
He was alive the last time I saw him.
He didn’t want me to get in his way.
He said it was time for me to leave.
I didn’t argue with him.
Sand operates best alone.
Yes, sir, that’s what he told me.
It was dark.
It was raining.
Sand and the girl were making a run out of Odessa.
I lost sight of them somewhere between the club and the sea.
Yes, sir, Miss Pauline, she was scared.
Yes, sir, Miss Pauline was ready to leave Odessa.
Yes, sir, she was a real fine looking woman.
A sudden noise startled him.
It sounded like footsteps.
They were running toward him, splashing through the rain that lay puddled on the sidewalk.
Police probably ran that way.
So did Russian guards.
It might even be an angry taxi driver.
When things got bad, Reagan figured, they always turned worse in a hurry.
He tensed his shoulders and closed his eyes.
He waited for the gunshot.
Would he hear it before the night turned darker than it already was?
He wondered if anyone would ever bother to find his remains and ship his body home, or if he would be tagged as an unknown and pitched into the shallow hole of a pauper’s grave.
“Let’s go.”
Reagan heard the voice.
It sounded familiar.
He turned around.
Sand had slowed to a walk.
Rainy Night To Die Page 6
