The Woman From Prague

by Rob Hart

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” I ask. “I have a concussion.”

  Her voice takes on a high, mocking tone. “Ooh, I have a concussion. Don’t be a pussy. You’re no use to me or your mother that way. Now get up. And give me your phone.”

  I stand, pull it from my pocket, and hand it to her. “I don’t like you very much.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” she says, and she wings the phone hard against the wall. It shatters in an explosion of plastic, the pieces skittering across the hardwood floor.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because as long as it’s on, you may as well be wearing a big red neon sign that says, ‘I am right here and also a giant dumbass’,” she says. “Phones can be tracked. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

  I step into the kitchen, grab a broom and dustbin from the closet, and go to clean up the shards.

  Samantha asks, “Really?”

  “This is my job.”

  “You’re a janitor?”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  It’s quick work. I get the remains together and dump them in the trash under the sink.

  We gather our stuff in the foyer. Sam has a designer backpack, gray cloth with a leather bottom. It looks heavy. She cinches it tight to her back. Mine, in comparison, looks like it was fished out of the trash—an olive green off-brand pack left behind in an apartment by someone who was done with it.

  “So, you got any cool spy toys in that backpack of yours?” I ask.

  “Shut up,” she says. “Get dressed.”

  Kaz left my coat hanging on the towel radiator in the bathroom. It’s dry but also a little stiff and smells funny. I’m going to need a new one. I reach into the pockets, out of habit, and come out with both my key fob and another small disc, the size of a dime. Samantha takes the disc out of my hand and sticks it in her pocket.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “What is that?”

  “How do you think I found you? I slipped it into your coat on the bridge.”

  As I’m fastening the buttons on the jacket, there’s a knock on the door. Samantha puts one hand on the back of my neck and the other on my mouth. Once she’s sure I’m paying attention, she lets go and looks at me, pressing a finger to her lips and pointing at the peephole, gesturing that I should take a look.

  It might be Kaz. He did say that he was coming back. I lean forward slowly and take a look, careful to not make a noise or throw light under the crack of the door that might indicate there’s someone here.

  It’s empty hallway on the other side, and I wonder if maybe someone had the wrong door, but then a figure strolls past the peephole, his features fish-eyed. Looks like he’s pacing back and forth.

  In profile, I can’t really tell who it is, but when the figure stops and leans forward, peering into the peephole like he knows I’m there, I recognize him as Top Knot.

  Samantha steps back into the apartment and waves for me to follow her.

  Once we’re in the living room, she whispers, “Who the fuck is that?”

  “I don’t know who he is, but he was following me earlier.”

  “Are those locks secure?”

  “He got through one like it. So did you, right? I guess they’re not secure at all.”

  “I didn’t come through the door.”

  She turns to the window and pushes it open. I already know what she’s going for. The window leads out to the inner courtyard. There’s no ledge and no fire escape, but there is an elevator tacked onto the outside of the building. It looks like a child’s erector set, clearly added on long after the building was constructed, and long enough ago I prefer to take the stairs whenever I come by this apartment.

  It’s so close you can almost reach out and touch it.

  And a few times in the past I thought it would be fun to scale the side of it and slip into the window. But I haven’t done that because I am not a crazy person.

  “Are you sure about this?” I ask. “It’s two against one.”

  “Moscow rule,” she says. “Pick the time and place for action.”

  And with that, she plants a foot on the windowsill, stands up, and steps forward into space, grabbing onto the outside of the elevator. She climbs up like it’s no big deal. Like this is a normal thing for normal people to do.

  There’s a sound like metal rattling from the front of the apartment.

  I could stay.

  That guy isn’t very big. I’m sure I could take him.

  Or maybe not. I’m not running on a full tank right now. And anyway, apparently there is some kind of Russian super assassin trying to kill me. He can’t be working for the Cherna Dyra because he was following me before I was on her radar.

  But still, this is all bad.

  If I’m going to take sides here, Samantha strikes me as a better bet than this guy. I don’t really know what I’m basing that on. If I slip and fall out this window and splat on the concrete, I don’t think she would give a shit.

  The straps of my backpack are a little loose so I tighten them and climb onto the window ledge, look back into the apartment, and feel a little wave of nausea that, mercifully, passes quickly.

  And I step over to the elevator.

  As I do, the entire world spins sideways.

  I reach for what I think is a metal pipe, but when I close my hand, there’s nothing there. I fall forward into the empty space and my knee bangs into something. I throw my arms out, manage to hook them around a support beam. The metal is slick and cold and digs into my palms. I hang there for a moment, wait for my vision to steady.

  Samantha is up at the top, already swinging her leg over.

  It’s not like I’ve got a fear of heights, but still, I don’t look down. Jumping between buildings yesterday may have been dumb, but it was over in a second. My back is to the window and I hope this guy doesn’t have a gun, coupled with any interest in shooting me. I steal a glance over my shoulder to make sure he’s not in the window, but it’s clear.

  And I climb. Careful I don’t knock my vision into a tailspin again.

  Once I get to the top and make it over the ledge, I fall to my knees. Find myself out of breath. I give myself a moment and stand to find Samantha with her arms crossed and her lips pursed, like I was making her wait while I got dressed to go on a date.

  “Can we go now?” she asks.

  I look down into the apartment. The lights aren’t on, and I can barely make out Top Knot at the window. He’s looking up at the elevator. Considering it. But he can’t see us given where we are and the darkness of the night sky framing us. After a minute, he disappears into the apartment.

  Samantha hits me on the shoulder, a little harder than she needs to. “C’mon, let’s find a way down.”

  Once we’re safely a few blocks away, power walking down an empty street, she stops and pulls me into a darkened doorway. We’re in a deep pool of shadow that you could walk by and maybe not notice us.

  “So he followed you earlier today?” she asks. “And you have no idea who he is?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m surprised you even noticed him.”

  “Hey. You know what? I get it. You’re hardcore. But I’ve seen some shit, too. I walked away from a brawl with someone you’re scared shitless of. So how about you cut me a little slack.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “You tripped and stumbled out of the way of a speeding train,” she says, her voice low. “You’re circling the arena of a very deadly game right now, so you need to dissuade yourself of the notion that you’ve got what it takes to hang. You’re a little league pitcher and this is the majors. You get stupid and you get yourself killed. Maybe me, too. Which is why you will shut the fuck up and do what I tell you. Understood?”

  She raises an eyebrow at me, waiting, maybe goading me into saying something.

  I kind of want to, but also I am pretty sure if I do, she will punch me in the face.

/>   And I think I need her more than she needs me.

  “So, what’s it going to be, tough guy?” she asks. “In or out?”

  “I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  “I know a place near here. Do you like Indian?”

  My stomach roars in recognition of the word and that’s enough to get me to stay in her company.

  The host is an overweight man in a half-tucked white shirt. He tries to seat us near the window but Samantha points to the line of booths in the back. He shrugs and pivots, leads us over to the one closest to the kitchen. He very clearly wants to look at my face but doesn’t want to make it obvious, which makes me wonder how badly I’ve been beaten. I haven’t even looked in a mirror yet, purposely avoiding it in the bathroom back at the apartment.

  Samantha takes the gunslinger seat—back closest to the wall, facing the front door—and the host puts down the menus and walks off. There’s one other couple on the far side of the restaurant and they seem to have no interest in us.

  After a few minutes of awkward silence, the two of us scanning the menus, an emaciated waiter with a gleaming bald head comes out of the kitchen and takes our order. When he’s out of earshot, I ask, “So is your real name Samantha?”

  “Call me Sam.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s the best you’re going to get.”

  “Okay, Sam. What happened on the bridge?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  We both stop as the waiter appears and pours glasses of water for us from a heavy pitcher, his hand shaking as he tries to keep it steady, splashing droplets of water on the white tablecloth. When he’s gone, I say to Sam. “Seems dumb to meet in the middle of the night like that. During the day, there are thousands of people walking back and forth across that bridge. I would have done it during the day.”

  “I didn’t set the parameters of the meeting.”

  “Okay, so you’re there to get something. I’m coming from one direction. Crazy Russian killer lady is coming from the other. Neither of us is supposed to be there. So I guess the person you were supposed to meet never showed, or got scared off.”

  Sam looks at me and shrugs.

  “So the thing you were supposed to receive must be pretty important if the Cherna Dyra wants it,” I say. “I assume she doesn’t come off the bench for just anything. She’s not a market-rate goon.”

  Sam keeps staring at me, hard and flat.

  “So it’s big and important and probably related to Hemera Global,” I tell her. “So if you’re CIA and you’re a spy, that’s your cover. You’re working at the bank because it’s related to the job you’re doing.”

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I’m bored. And you’re a shitty conversationalist.”

  “I’m not here to entertain you.”

  “Fine.” This is like talking to a brick wall. I get up and head for the bathroom. It’s small and cold and sterile with white tile from the floor up to the ceiling. I stand in front of the mirror and put my hands on the sink and look.

  I do not like what I see.

  There’s a piece of bloodstained tape over my nose and nasty bruises the color of eggplant bloomed around both eyes. I poke at the bruises and there isn’t much give before my nerves wake up and make a ruckus. I am not at my prettiest. I wash my hands a few times, like that might help things, but it doesn’t.

  When I exit the bathroom, the waiter is walking to the table with a big stack of plates. I sit and he puts them down in front of us—tandoori chicken for her, lamb curry for me, a big pile of naan and a shared plate of rice.

  “Oh, thank god,” Sam says.

  “What?”

  “You can’t talk if you’re eating.”

  The two of us eat in silence. She must be hungry, too, because she’s putting the food away fast and furious. She has a hell of an appetite for a small girl. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she ate a couple of bones in the course of destroying her chicken. She also reaches over and spears a piece of lamb off my plate and pops it in her mouth without asking or even acknowledging me.

  This is the first thing she does that makes me attracted to her.

  Which makes me think two things.

  One, what the hell is wrong with me?

  Two, best keep that to myself.

  Halfway through my own plate, I get a little queasy. I know I’m hungry but my body doesn’t want me to go much further. But I figure I need the energy, so I push a little bit past where I’m comfortable.

  Once the plates are mostly clear and Sam is nibbling at a piece of naan, I ask, “So if the Chernya Dyra is coming to kill me, then why keep me around?”

  She snaps back to attention. “What?”

  “This woman is dangerous. You said that. You also said you were only keeping me around as long as I wasn’t a danger to you. But I’m a big walking target right now. So why keep me around?”

  “I’ve got a bad habit,” she says, putting down the naan. “I move around a lot. I don’t think there’s any harm in acknowledging that. Do you know what the weirdest thing is that I carry with me everywhere?”

  “What?”

  “A Ziploc bag full of little shards of soap. You know those pieces that are too small to use once you’ve run the bar down? One day when I have some free time, I’ll go online and figure out how to melt all those pieces into a new bar. Seems wasteful to throw them out. But I never find the time, so the bag gets bigger. Sometimes I dump out a few, but I can never toss the whole thing.” She picks up the naan and takes a bite, chews a bit. She points the bread at me. “That’s why you’re here. You’re a shard of soap. Possibly useful. If not, I’ll toss you.”

  I stare at her. She smiles a little at this, but only because she senses a challenge. Which I offer when I tell her, “You think you’re so fucking cool, don’t you?”

  “I do, yeah.”

  “You know what I think?”

  We’re interrupted by the waiter, who clears our plates and replaces them with little tin plates of ice cream—a single scoop in each one. I bet it’s mango. It’s always mango. I take a bite and confirm it is, and look up at Sam, who hasn’t touched her ice cream. She’s just looking at me.

  I finish my ice cream and put down the spoon. “There’s a lot about you I can’t tell. Your accent makes me think you’re American, from the South. Not deep South. Maybe Virginia or Tennessee. The way you dress, the way you carry yourself, I got nothing. But this whole tough-girl routine, it’s a defense mechanism. That’s obvious. That’s so obvious I don’t deserve any credit. But I do think the reason is Ginger Rogers. About how the Chernya Dyra needed to be ten times tougher than the guys to be taken seriously. You’ve got to constantly prove your worth. The fact that you’re so aggressive about it means you’re still trying to prove yourself.”

  Sam’s expression doesn’t change, but a storm cloud passes over her face. She holds my eyes for a couple of seconds and looks down at her ice cream, picks up the spoon, and takes a bite.

  When she looks back up, the cloud is gone.

  That’s what I thought.

  After we’re done, Sam takes out her phone and taps at the face of it. I take that as an opportunity to check my laptop. I need to make contact with my mom to let her know my phone is out of commission. I send her an email, telling her I dropped it in a toilet, but I’m not in a rush to buy another since I might be going to a new country soon.

  I write a note to Kaz, too, minus the toilet excuse, just so he knows I’m alive and knows not to go back to the apartment.

  Once I’ve got the emails off, Samantha whistles at me and I look up and she’s handing me a small plastic phone.

  “A burner,” she says. “Just in case. There’s only one number programmed into it. Mine. You tell anyone else the number and I’ll cut you into little pieces, like soap.”

  “You’re pretty paranoid.”

  “Paranoid is a virtue in this game.”
/>   “You’re full of little gems, aren’t you?”

  She exhales and takes the laptop away from me, places it on the table in front of her, pokes at the keyboard, and hands it back. It’s open to a Wikipedia page. There’s a list she’s highlighted with the cursor.

  Assume nothing.

  Never go against your gut.

  Everyone is potentially under opposition control.

  Don’t look back; you are never completely alone.

  Go with the flow, blend in.

  Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.

  Lull them into a sense of complacency.

  Don’t harass the opposition.

  Pick the time and place for action.

  Keep your options open.

  “The Moscow rules,” she says.

  “Right,” I tell her. “You said something about them in the apartment. What are they, exactly?”

  “Rules of thumb said to be developed in Moscow during the Cold War, when literally every single person you met stood a fifty-fifty shot of being a spy,” she says. “Memorize them. Practical for anything.”

  I look up at her and she shakes her head in disbelief and raises her hand to the computer monitor.

  “I said memorize them.”

  I read them over a couple of times and then look up, but Sam isn’t looking at me. She’s looking across the room, at the host, who is at the stand by the front door and writing something down.

  “What?” I ask.

  “The guy at the front took a call and glanced our way.”

  “Could be someone was asking if there were any free seats.”

  “No, he looked at us.”

  “No one knows we’re here.”

  “Do you have a phone?” she asks. “Another one, besides the one I gave you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anything else…” She stops herself. “Damn it. Do you have anything on that laptop that’s really important? Like end of the world if you lose it important?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good. Not that I really cared anyway.” She stands up, picks up her half-empty glass of water, and pours it over the laptop. For a few seconds nothing happens, and then it sputters and the screen wavers and blacks out. She picks it up and cracks it in half backwards over her knee, little pieces of plastic shooting into the air. The host really is looking at us now.