But then a dark bit of nervous energy suddenly chimed into Tom’s head. The conditions, he reminded himself, don’t forget to tell him the conditions. “Oh, there is one other thing,” Tom said, trying to pull Rodriguez’s attention away from the document he’d just handed him. “I’d really appreciate it, sir, if we could not tell my brother about this meeting—about my solving the code, I mean. Things have been a bit tense between us right now, with me entering the Agency and such, and… if it’s all right with you, I’d very much like for Oliver never to know who solved this thing…. Sir?”
Rodriguez finally shot his head back up for a moment. “Hm?” he grunted, reaching for his phone. “Yes, of course, Moore, of course. No worries. Hello, Lowy? Rodriguez. Is Guinsberg there?… Guinsberg? Rodriguez. Listen, I’ve got the solution.” He paused, smiling at Tom. “Yes, the solution. The master algorithm. You’ll need to see this. One of my agents cracked it.”
Tom was suddenly tempted to repeat himself—to remind Rodriguez to keep his identity as the code breaker a secret. But Rodriguez was rising to his feet, the phone clamped to his ear, peering at Tom’s piece of paper.
“Agent Rodriguez—”
Rodriguez finally looked at him. “Tom, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to bring this over to cryptography.” He had come around the table—now he clapped Tom on the shoulder appreciatively. “A fantastic job, Moore. You’ve certainly hit the ground running.”
“Well—thank you, sir. I’m looking forward to hearing what Oliver’s next assignment will be.”
“You can see yourself out, can’t you, Tom?” Rodriguez said. “I’ve got to go.”
Tom stood there, under the bright fluorescent lights, holding his new CIA badge and feeling rather proud of himself.
He could already picture his brother thanking him—somewhere, someday in the very, very distant future—for freeing him from the shackles of that code. He could picture the day when all their little stresses and misunderstandings had blown over and they could laugh about such trivialities. In fact, he was quite confident that those days were just around the corner.
Bad Idea
WHAT COULD HE DO TO FEEL LONELIER? That was Oliver’s question as he sat stooped over the bar at Chumley’s… their “place.” His and Katia’s. Could you even have a “place” with someone who didn’t love you? Probably not, Oliver thought as he swigged down the remaining scotch in his glass. So what could he do?
He had come here to “their place” so that he could feel her all around him, knowing she was out on her date right this very moment with his brother. All Oliver wanted was to feel lonelier—to drown himself so deep in it that maybe he might finally overload, like an overdriven engine, and then, finally, maybe… he’d shut down. That’s what he needed right now. To shut down completely. To feel nothing, and think nothing, and most of all, God knew, most of all, to want nothing.
Because he wanted her so badly right now. More than he ever had before. More than the first night he’d seen her singing. More than any of those endless nights in the last month when he’d walked her to her door and received his peck on the cheek, starving to know what it was to really kiss her, and to be really kissed by her, and to be on the other side of that door after midnight. Maybe if he had just gotten on the other side of that door once…
Oh, please, he scolded himself, actually slapping himself on the back of the head. It was something he and his brother had developed, a quick way to shake off guilt and ill will and demons, just a nice hard smack to your own mismanaged head. But it was no use. The more he thought about himself on the wrong side of that door, the more he thought about his brother on the right side of it, touching her the way he never could, the way…
“It’s the woman, uh?”
The deep voice was just behind Oliver’s right ear. He brought his head up from his drink and peered behind him. The man was standing behind his shoulder with an odd, knowing smile.
“Huh?” Oliver grunted. It was the first time he’d actually spoken in the last two hours at the bar. And only now, when he heard himself grunt like a frustrated ape, did he realize how ridiculously drunk he was yet again. Maybe he could make it as a drunk? One could always hope….
“Only a woman can make a man look this way.” the man said in a deep Russian accent.
“A woman,” Oliver admitted, raising his glass enthusiastically, trying to slug back the entire glass of scotch. He couldn’t quite manage it and was forced to spit a little back in the glass. He placed the glass back down on the bar and wiped a few of the driblets from his chin.
“It is pure injustice,” the Russian man said, sitting down on the stool next to Oliver’s and ordering himself two shots of vodka. “We both want her,” he said, downing the first shot, “and we both can’t have her.”
“Her?” Oliver asked.
The man turned to him and looked deeper in his eyes. “You don’t recognize me?” he asked, each word being swallowed up by his accent.
Oliver tried to bring his vision into better focus. He studied the man’s features: his bright red hair, his long, crooked nose, his dark tweed jacket…. He’d definitely seen the man before, but apparently tonight he was just a little too drunk. His impeccable instincts as an agent had suffered pretty severely after all that time cooped up in a cramped sublevel office with no windows, staring at miles and miles of numbers every day under horrid fluorescent lighting.
“At the Bitter End,” the man said. “I’ve seen you at almost all the shows, at the front table, uh? Lucky man. Very lucky man. Me, I sit all the way at the back, you know. But still, she is something, yes. This Katia. She is something.”
Finally a touch of the cloud lifted from Oliver’s head long enough for him to recognize the man. That smiling redhead from the club. The one who gave Katia the creeps. “Indeed she is,” Oliver agreed, raising his glass to the man. “She is most definitely something.” They clinked glasses and Oliver finished his drink, signaling for his next refill.
“Nikolai,” the man said, extending his hand for a shake.
“Oliver,” he replied, giving a nice firm handshake.
“A bottle of Stolichnaya,” Nicolai said to the bartender. “Two glasses.”
The bartender brought the bottle and the glasses, and Nikolai dropped a fifty-dollar bill down on the table. Friendly and quite a tipper.
“We drink, maybe we eat, we talk about Katia.”
Oliver couldn’t imagine a better offer. He clinked glasses with Nikolai.
“Nostrovya,” Nikolai said as they both downed their shots of vodka.
Oliver felt the sting of it going down his throat. And almost immediately he felt a little warmer and a little less depressed.
“You know, Oliver,” Nikolai said, pouring them more drinks, “I must admit, I’m a little jealous of you.”
“Of me?” Oliver scoffed, knowing full well that there was only one Moore brother to be envied right now.
“Yes, you,” Nikolai said. “You’ve gotten to spend so much time with her. I’ve watched you two having drinks after her shows, walking through the club arm in arm. I could never get this close to her, you know? I’ve tried to talk to her, but I could not even get her to say two kind words to me… not even two unkind words!”
“Yeah, well… we’re in the same boat now, Nikolai,” Oliver said, trying to match him drink for drink.
“How is that?” Nikolai asked.
“I’m out of the picture,” Oliver said, feeling a momentary hitch in his throat when he said it. “She’s moved on to… someone else.”
“I don’t understand,” Nikolai said, giving Oliver a stern glance. “You speak as if this is a permanent state of affairs. As if you will not win her back. Where is your confidence, boy?”
“No,” Oliver said. “You don’t understand. She never even loved me.”
“Well, how do you know this?” Nikolai asked, again with that same stern, almost fatherly expression on his face.
“I know it,” Oliver assured h
im, swerving slightly from side to side now and not minding it so much. “I know it because they never love me, Nikolai. They never—”
Nikolai slapped Oliver on the back, stopping him midsentence, and nearly sending his head straight into the table. “Now, you listen to me, Oliver,” he said with a new intensity in his voice. “That girl. Our Katia… she is a very special girl.”
“Oh God, yes,” Oliver slurred, nodding emphatically as Nikolai handed him another drink. “She’s as special as they come. She’s like a moon goddess on a faraway starry—”
“No, no.” Nikolai laughed, giving Oliver another hard slap on the back. “I mean, yes, of course, she is special, but this is not what I mean. I mean she is a very special person to some very special people. Katia. She is the reason I am in the States right now, you see?”
Oliver tried to understand, but what exactly was there to understand here? “Um… no,” he uttered slowly.
Nikolai blew out a slight sigh of frustration. “Listen to me,” he said. “I think that you and I might be able to help each other. We both want her, Oliver. We just want her for very different reasons. But if we worked together…” Nikolai’s grin grew to its largest size yet. “If we worked together, there is no way we wouldn’t win her back, do you understand?”
Oliver sat there for a moment, with Nikolai’s arm now wrapped around his shoulders and the room spinning in circles. He’d listened very intently to every single word Nikolai had to say, and ultimately, he could come to only one conclusion.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, staring blankly into Nikolai’s eyes.
Snow Turtle
KATIA AND TOM HAD BEEN WALKING and talking for what must have been hours. Since Tom was already somewhat acquainted with Katia’s professional pursuits (or in her case, semiprofessional), they spent much of the time discussing Tom’s work.
Katia wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about the CIA. Since he hadn’t actually started yet, his job hadn’t been defined. He could end up doing anything, from working at a desk from nine to five, to embarking on dangerous missions. It was too soon to tell. Right now all she knew was how much the job meant to Tom and that she’d secretly cross her fingers and pray for the desk job. And in all honesty, that she was freezing her butt off, which was making it hard for her to think about anything else.
It’s your own fault that you’re cold, she told herself. Deal with it, you chicken.
Yes, it was entirely her fault that she was now shivering rather heavily under her thin coat, fighting to keep her teeth from audibly chattering. Not because she’d never put together the money to buy a decent coat or a pair of gloves. Not because she’d been so damn distracted before the date that she’d neglected to bring her scarf. But for the simple fact that he could have been keeping her warm. He could have been holding her. If she could just bring herself to touch him. To let him touch her.
Yes, this “untouchable” problem had most definitely gotten out of hand. And Tom was so inhumanly respectful that he was obviously trying to honor her wishes by keeping his hands in his own pockets as they laughed and stumbled their way down the street, revolving around each other, nearly dancing around each other, aching to get closer, like two armless people in love.
In love… Was she definitely in love with—? Oh, shut up. You fell in love with him the second he opened that door. Before he had even opened his gorgeous mouth.
Of course this revelation wasn’t without its downside. It meant that Katia had, at least on some level, known about her feelings all along, which meant that for the past month she had been giving Oliver the wrong idea.
Tom had told her that Oliver took the news of their date poorly. And who could blame him? Since the day they met, Katia had spent almost every minute with him and made no effort to be completely honest with him. Because she didn’t want to hurt him. Perhaps even because she didn’t want to lose him. But also because honesty could be so difficult sometimes.
Take now, for instance. If honesty had factored into Katia’s behavior, she would have touched Tom by this point. Or at least allowed him to touch her. Yet every time he so much as brushed against her, she turned to stone, sending him the wrong message again and again, pounding it in with each retracted reach and awkwardly careful passage through a door.
All she knew was that it had something to do with trust. Yes, Katia did not like to admit it to herself, but after everything she had been through back home, trusting men had become a rather complicated issue.
“Do you want to sit?” Tom asked, offering her a spot on a bench that looked out on the dark, moonlit water. Now that they were in Battery Park, they’d pretty much reached the end of the city and could walk no farther.
Katia nodded and sat down, pushing herself up against the steel arm of the wooden bench, keeping her hands in her pockets and trying to duck her head a little farther into her coat.
Tom sat down next to her, looking healthy and red faced from the icy wind as he leaned his elbows on his knees and looked out at the view. The Statue of Liberty was hovering over the water, lit to perfection, the torch shining with a warm amber hue. To the right were the majestic turrets of Ellis Island, wrapped in untended trees, glowing slightly in dark thanks to the rather bright moon.
She could no longer be sure why she was nearly convulsing with shivers. It could have been the freezing cold. It could have been all the gorgeous images of freedom spanning out ahead of her. Or it could have been the mere act of sitting next to him… even if she was being absurdly careful not to let her leg even graze against his.
“Oh God, I’m such an idiot,” Tom said, suddenly looking back at her. “You’re freezing. Do you want my coat?” He shot up from the bench and began ripping off his overcoat.
“No,” she assured him, speaking through the turned-up collar of her coat. “I’m fine. Keep that on; it’s too cold.”
Tom held his coat in his hand and looked down at her with a raised eyebrow. “You’re telling me you’re not freezing right now?”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, hoping he couldn’t hear her teeth chatter when she spoke.
“Fine?” he repeated doubtfully. “You’re trying to hibernate inside your coat. You look like a snow turtle.”
Katia looked up at him from inside her coat. “Is there such a thing as a snow turtle?”
“I don’t know.” Tom groaned. “Just take the coat.”
“There’s no such thing as a snow turtle,” she insisted.
“We can talk about it after you put on the coat… up!” he ordered, laughing.
Katia finally rose from the bench, standing too close to him again, with her hands now dug deep under her arms and her eyes locked with his. Tom opened up the coat and draped it behind her shoulders, but as he closed it around her, his hands brushed up under her chin. He snapped them away awkwardly. “Sorry,” he uttered quietly, shoving his hands back in his pockets.
“What were you sorry about?” Katia asked.
“Oh—well…” he stammered. “Nothing, I just didn’t mean to… you know…”
“To what?”
“To…” Tom broke eye contact for a moment, turning out uncomfortably toward the water before turning back to her.
“Okay, this has been one of the greatest nights of my life….” Hearing it made her want to duck farther under the coat and grin like a baby. “I’ve just,” he went on, “I’ve just gotten this feeling… even that first day at the bookstore—that… you don’t want to be touched. Or, you know… you don’t want to touch me.”
And now she felt thoroughly sick. Vomit-level, in-bed-for-days, high-fever-type sick. At least he was as perceptive as she thought he was.
“Which is fine,” he added quickly. “I respect that—”
“No,” she interrupted him, shaking her head over and over. “No, no, it’s not that, Tom. I’m so sorry. I should have said something hours ago; I should have said something.” She was talking to herself more than him now and absently
slapping herself on the head.
“Whoa,” he said with a laugh, clamping his strong hand around her wrist before she could get in another shot.
It was the first time he had touched her. The one touch released some nameless chemical through her veins that made the cold simply disappear altogether. And then, just as quickly, he let go.
“Sorry,” he said awkwardly. “That was just a reflex.”
“No, it’s okay,” she assured him. “This is my fault, Tom. I can explain it. It’s not—”
“No,” he said quickly, “you don’t have to explain it; you don’t—”
“No, I want to explain it,” she insisted. “I… are you familiar with the principles of ‘untouchability’?”
“What?”
“No, never mind that,” she said, looking down at her feet for a moment. Explaining to him that he was too perfect to touch was out of the question. Besides, she’d realized already that it ran a little deeper than that. All those trust problems…
Maybe you should tell him. Tell him what happened back home. Tell him what you’re running from.
“I…” she began slowly, avoiding eye contact. “I think maybe… I don’t trust so easily, Tom.”
“Well, sure,” he said, “I understand.”
“No,” she assured him, forcing herself to make eye contact again. “No, you don’t understand. Because I haven’t explained.” The wind flew between their faces, whipping her hair against her cheek and her lips.
“Look,” she continued. “There are some things… back home in Russia. Some things I had to get away from…”
Tom dug his gaze into hers. “Things?” he asked. “Or people?”
“Both,” she answered honestly, as she watched the wind snap his short locks of hair back and forth. “And those things… and those people,” she went on, counting on his steely eyes to carry her through this deeply uncomfortable confession, “they have kind of made me… lose faith, you know? So when something is so perfect…” No, that’s not what you mean. Say what you mean, Katia. “When you are so perfect,” she said, “well, then I don’t want to touch you. To touch something is to believe it’s real, and then, you know, then one day you find out it isn’t.”
Before Gaia Page 9
