His Kind Of Trouble

by Vivian Leiber

  The crowd was thinner than expected—as Vlad stood at his shoulder, Austin knew his friend was looking for the American ambassador’s car, and he calculated that the ambassador’s absence was an ominous sign.

  Still, nearly three hundred guests crowded into the courtyard, waiting to be announced at the door. They were drawn by loyalty to the courtly Ambassador Vladimir Romanov, coupled with simple, nearly morbid, curiosity about the regime that was toppling halfway around the world.

  Austin turned away, letting the heavy curtain fall into place. He tugged at the too-tight collar of his starched white shirt.

  Though he wore black-tie often, he didn’t feel comfortable in anything but his favorite pair of blue jeans and one of the team jerseys from his college days.

  “You’re determined to do this?” he asked.

  But he already knew the answer, and in a very important way, if Vlad were more of a realist, their friendship could never have survived. Austin admired his friend’s adherence to his own code of honor—without it, Vlad was nothing. Austin grudgingly admitted that he’d have to live with his friend’s recklessness this evening.

  “I also have my engagement to announce,” Vlad said, unaware that his friend had stiffened. “When I give the traditional toast to Tarini, I would like you at our side.”

  Not on your life, Austin thought. I wouldn’t stand next to that…witch if my life depended on it.

  But it wasn’t his life. It was Vlad’s life and his country. And their friendship, which spanned nearly two decades and was closer than any two brothers’.

  No two-timing, scheming, lying woman was going to destroy their friendship, Austin vowed.

  “PERIMETER ONE, check,” Austin said softly toward the mike at his shoulder as he followed Vlad down the staircase from the private apartments of the mission.

  “Perimeter one, check,” came the reassurance at his ear.

  “Perimeter two, check,” Austin ordered.

  “Perimeter two, check,” replied one of his handpicked guards.

  Vlad and Austin passed through the second-floor gallery of treasures.

  “By the way, I received a telecommuniqué from the Belgian ambassador,” Vlad said. “He threatened an international incident if he has to send his daughter home to Brussels because of her infatuation with you.”

  “Perimeter three, check.”

  Austin glanced distractedly at Vlad, waiting for the reply at his ear that didn’t come.

  Belgian ambassador’s daughter?

  Then he remembered. She’d given him her phone number. He’d put it in his shirt pocket.

  Then he had lost the phone number. Just a few days ago. Hadn’t given it another thought.

  “Relieve the ambassador’s mind by telling him I only go for blondes,” Austin said, reminding himself that he had always had a preference for blondes.

  Tarini had been the exception. No more exceptions.

  “Perimeter three, check,” he repeated, tapping the tiny microphone.

  Vladimir took his position at the top of the winding marble staircase that opened to the ballroom. As he stood, the string quartet brought the Bach to a close and the guests looked up.

  “Austin?” Vlad said in a voice so like a child’s.

  “I’m here, buddy.”

  Vlad reared back his shoulders and raised his hand in a formal salute to his guests.

  “Perimeter three, check,” Austin said more urgently, touching Vlad’s sleeve as a warning not to walk down those stairs until he was sure of the safety check.

  But as his fingers touched the rich fabric of Vlad’s tuxedo, Austin caught sight of her.

  Tarini. Zipped into a white sequined sheath that puddled around her ankles, she was regally tall, with boyishly slim hips, voluptuous breasts and skin the color of palest café au lait. Her blue-black hair had been sleekly rolled into a chignon at her neck. Her eyes were the color of the rare tigereye emeralds that adorned the simple necklace she wore on her exposed neck.

  She had the striking allure of the sexiest lingeriecatalog model coupled with the sophistication of a Manhattan socialite.

  And she had a five-carat diamond on her left hand that made her strictly off-limits.

  Still, after all she had done to him, her eyes sought his. What was there? Was it scorn? Was it pride? Or did he detect regret? He met her gaze head-on.

  The moment caught him off balance. Vladimir slipped from reach. The guests burst into spontaneous applause as he took the hand of the British ambassador in greeting. The noise, reverberating off the cavernous ballroom ceiling, made it impossible to hear. “Perimeter three, check,” Austin repeated, pressing his transmitter tightly to his ear. “Charlie, are you there?”

  Nothing.

  Vladimir held out his arms to Tarini.

  Austin felt an exploding sense of foreboding.

  He ran down the stairs two at a time, tugging at his friend’s shoulder just as Vlad’s lips touched Tarini’s mouth.

  And then, with a roar of gunfire, all hell broke loose.

  AT THE FIRST SPRAY of gunfire, Tarini’s heart leaped to her throat and she reached for the gun that wasn’t there. Too late, she remembered how she had thought an ankle holster would ruin the line of her luxuriously body-skimming evening gown. And, besides, as immigration liaison, it wasn’t her job to provide security. That was Austin’s job.

  She looked up to the staircase and saw three masked gunmen flying down the steps, raking bullets over the heads of the stampeding guests. The crowd bolted through every available exit, one woman leaving a single pale pump teetering on the floor, another losing her purse in the melee. Someone toppled over a crystal balloon vase of lush flowers. White, astringent-smelling spray flew in an arc as a waiter dropped two champagne bottles. Broken glass, water and smashed hors d’oeuvres littered the ballroom floor.

  She looked around frantically for Vlad. He must be saved!

  “Get down, woman!”

  Someone shoved her to the ground so hard the air was knocked from her lungs. Sequins and delicate beads popped from her gown and scattered across the marble floor like confetti. The weight on top of her rammed her hips into the marble floor. She coughed, trying desperately to regain her breath. She tugged and cursed and shoved and then her eyes met those of the lead weight on top of her.

  Austin. He looked at her, eyes registering disgust, and then rolled off. He slipped a cartridge into his gun.

  “Don’t shoot anyone, Austin!” Vlad’s quavering voice pleaded.

  As Austin released her, Tarini tugged her skimpy strap into place. She looked up in horror at the staircase. Vlad stood surrounded by four assailants. A single rivulet of blood ran down his cheek.

  “Don’t shoot,” he repeated. “Austin, put down your gun. Otherwise, there will be carnage. It’s me they want.”

  Austin glanced at Tarini with devastating hatred. Tarini knew exactly what he was thinking—if he hadn’t squandered precious moments throwing her out of the line of fire, he could have done his job protecting the ambassador.

  “Please, Austin, put it down,” Vlad said, his voice regaining some of the dignity that had made him one of the most persuasive speakers in the United Nations council chambers. “These men are serious. They want me. Please, just ensure the safety of my fiancée.”

  Again, Austin looked disgustedly at Tarini.

  The room lapsed into tense silence. From beyond the closed mahogany door came the murmur of panicked guests. From outside the high, leaded-glass windows the sounds of sirens from a distance.

  The police. But they wouldn’t enter the mission without the direct invitation of the ambassador.

  Diplomatic posts—whether consulates, embassies or missions—are considered the exclusive and sacred lands of the country to which they belong. The New York City police would no more enter the United Nations Mission for Byleukrainia than they would invade France.

  “You’re going to have to give up your weapon, Austin,” Vlad said quietly. “They’re
going to shoot me if you don’t.”

  “I can take them.”

  “Not without an innocent life at risk,”

  Austin spared a dark look at Tarini.

  He obviously didn’t regard her as particularly innocent.

  “Austin, as the ambassador of this mission, I order you to relinquish your weapon.”

  With a wounded grunt of frustration, Austin slid his gun across the floor to the men at the staircase. He stood and sullenly held his hand out to help Tarini to her feet.

  Gripping his fingers, she teetered uncertainly, the heel of one of her pumps having broken off in the chaos.

  “You can’t get away with this,” she told the terrorists with lilting bravado. “I have worked as a special agent with the American government and I can assure you that the United States takes a hard line on—”

  “Oh, Tarini, shut up!” Austin snarled. “You’re not helping matters any.”

  Tarini glared at him.

  He ignored her.

  “What is it you guys want?” he demanded.

  “Just put your hands up,” one of the men said, gruffly. “And wait for further instructions.”

  Tarini obeyed quickly, but Austin hesitated. One of the men lifted his automatic to order compliance. Austin reached to a pocket on the right of his jacket. A staccato crackle as Austin fired. A masked terrorist fell three stairs to the floor. Austin had taken him out with a clean shot to the arm.

  Tarini tried to move, willing her legs to go, go, go—but, she was frozen with fear and shock.

  Lightning quick, another assailant leaped from the stairs and yanked her to the ground beneath him, hand clamped over her mouth. She couldn’t breathe, and she panicked, clutching at the man’s visor grip.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Austin grab Vlad, yanking him up from the floor and leveling his small handgun at the remaining gunman.

  Inwardly, Tarini cheered.

  Austin fired several shots but didn’t hit his target He hustled Vlad toward the door. With the last ounce of her strength, Tarini willed herself to squelch the desire for breath and instead concentrate on gripping her captor. She had to keep him down.

  Austin had to make it to the door!

  He had to get Vlad to safety!

  If she could hold on just one second longer, they would get out…

  “I’ve got her!” The man on top of Tarini screamed. “I’ve got the girl!”

  “Fine!” Austin cried out, shoving Vlad ahead of him toward the door. “Keep her!”

  But as Austin shoved the ambassador closer to the exit, Vlad pulled out from under his friend’s authoritative hand.

  “We can’t,” he said.

  The room was in an eerie standoff. Austin and Vlad poised at the door. Tarini held to the ground. Three gunmen—one wounded—uncertain what to do.

  “You want Tarini, you can have her!” the gunman holding Tarini cried out. “But you gotta give us the ambassador.”

  “No way!” Austin growled.

  “Don’t give him up, Austin!” Tarini cried.

  With great dignity Vlad walked to the staircase. Austin made to follow him, but the gunman on top of Tarini held his weapon to her forehead, the barrel pressed against her skin.

  “I’ll shoot her if I have to!” the man screamed so close to Tarini’s ear that her head throbbed with a sudden and terrific pain.

  She closed her eyes and tried to remember the words to the prayer to the saints that her mother had taught her.

  “Pity you have to die, babe,” the malicious voice said.

  “All right, all right,” Austin exclaimed. “Take the gun off her.”

  Austin threw his remaining handgun to the ground, but his blistering oath in Tarini’s direction made clear that he wasn’t at all happy.

  The weapon still grazing her hair, the gunman pulled his hands away from her mouth and nose. Tarini shivered and wiggled out from under him.

  At the foot of the stairs, the assailant who had taken Austin’s bullet moaned. The sirens seemed closer…

  And upstairs came a high-pitched squeal and then the tap-tap-tap of the ambassador’s fax machine.

  “Word from the capital!” Vlad cried out.

  “Won’t do you much good,” an assailant said, snickering.

  And then the machine fell silent.

  Someone was in the diplomatic apartments— their footsteps skittered overhead.

  Tarini gasped at the sight of the man who appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Andrei Karinolov, a hero who had fought the Communists and gained a large following in Byleukrainia, sauntered down the steps with the unconcerned, breezy air of a late-arriving but wellhonored guest. He was followed by three men who struggled to carry a large wooden-slated crate. On the crate was the Byleukrainian seal and the official stamps identifying the crate as the possession of the diplomatic courier.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Vlad demanded, retaining his supreme dignity.

  “You have been called back to your country, Ambassador Romanov,” Karinolov answered. He directed his men to open the crate. “Get inside.”

  “You can’t do this!” Austin shouted. He rose and punched the man to his left with a hard jab— the man crumpled to the ground with a grunt.

  On Karinolov’s direction, the three armed men leaped to overpower Austin, and shoved him onto the marble. One grabbed Austin’s hair, battering his face against the hard floor until Austin’s nose bled and an angry welt covered his forehead. He took the punishment without complaint, but when his eyes met Tarini’s, she could see the mixture of pain and humiliation that he couldn’t take them all on.

  Then his tormentors yanked up Austin by his shoulders for Karinolov’s appraisal. One eyelid was cut. His right arm hung at a funny angle.

  Tarini ached inside, fighting the urge to cry out for mercy for him.

  “Austin Smith, you are a very worthy opponent,” Karinolov said with mirthless laughter. “And I would dearly love to set you free on the mission’s grounds and track you like a dog. We could have such fun. Of course, you’d die.”

  “So do it. Set me loose, right here. I’ll take you on,” Austin challenged, sucking back the blood dripping from his mouth. “But do it like a man. One-on-one. You choose the weapons or lack of them. But without your goons.”

  “I’d love to. But when we finished, you’d still be a dead American. How touchy the State Department gets when a single, worthless citizen is harmed. So, tonight, you’ll just enjoy a little cocktail I’ve prepared for you so that I won’t have to deal with your primitive loyalty problem. We’ll meet again in other, more private circumstances where I can…play. But not tonight.”

  He pulled a hypodermic needle from his breast pocket, flicked a single air bubble from it and walked over to Austin.

  “Let him go,” Austin urged, spurting blood all over Karinolov’s shirt. “If you want, I’ll fight you for him. You and me. Winner takes Vlad.”

  “And the weapons?” Karinolov asked blandly, looking with distaste at the red splatter marks on his turtleneck.

  “Anything you choose.”

  “A charming offer, but I’m afraid I’ll have to decline,” Karinolov said. “Our country is being swept up in history and this Romanov is too important for me to game for him. Tonight was the only night we could get to him—your security arrangements are ordinarily so…thorough.”

  “I’ll take him away, I’ll make sure you never hear from him again,” Austin pleaded. “He’ll spend the rest of his life without a political thought in his head.”

  “Sorry, Austin, you’ll have to go on your own. Have a nice trip,” Karinolov said, shaking his head.

  He jabbed the needle into Austin’s forearm.

  “You’ll never get away with this!” Austin warned. “The State Department will bring you down. There’ll be retaliations. Killing an ambassador—”

  “I’m not killing him. I’m simply recalling him.”

  “In a crate?”r />
  Karinolov shrugged. “A lot of Royalist traitors to Byleukrainia have made him a cult figure. They might plan rallies at the airport, attempts to free him. We can’t have that. A crate eliminates so many unpleasant possibilities. We know he’ll reach his destination.”

  “He’s protected by the Vienna Convention as an ambassador.” Austin slurred his words, but valiantly grasped at straws. “You’ll be arrested. The police are on their way.”

  Karinolov laughed. “The police? The police can’t even give me a parking ticket.”

  “Why not?” Tarini asked.

  “Because they can’t touch me,” Karinolov replied easily. “I have the one thing that makes all this legal.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Diplomatic immunity.”

  “I am the only person in this room with diplomatic immunity,” Vlad said.

  Karinolov dropped a sheaf of papers at Vlad’s feet. “The military has taken over the capital, and the war hero—that’s me—has been chosen to plead our country’s various causes at the United Nations. I have a following, you know.” He paused before adding, “Not only do I have diplomatic immunity, but any package that bears my diplomatic seal cannot be opened by another country’s officials. It would be an act of war and America has no intention of going to war with the world’s biggest supplier of uranium.”

  Tarini closed her eyes to the horror of it, knowing full well that the diplomatic immunity of a United Nations ambassador covered everything from parking tickets to murder.

  And also knowing that Karinolov and the others of the military takeover did have a following, a large following who believed his hard-line rhetoric.

  Her own sister Tanya, for instance, kept a photograph of Karinolov in her bedroom and mooned over him as if he were a movie star.

  But, then, in public and on camera, Karinolov always seemed so charming and heroic.

  “Allow me to introduce myself more formally,” Karinolov continued. “I am the new ambassador to the United Nations for the Sovereignty of Byleukrainia.”

  Austin shuddered and slipped out of the arms of his captor. His body went limp. His facial muscles relaxed. He slumped to the floor and Karinolov gave him a sadistic kick on the head. Austin kept his eyes on Vlad, but his body had failed him.