Limbo Man

by Blair Bancroft

  “Is there any possibility of ice?” Vee asked with the wistful, deprecating note of someone who knows her request is hopeless.

  “We are not the English,” Misha informed her, straight-faced, as he opened a door on what appeared to be a freezer . . . with an ice-making machine. With the dramatic hand-waving technique of a magician, he added ice cubes to both their glasses.

  Vee dropped her fascinated gaze, smiling at the silver samovar. The Zhukov brothers were a matched set. A class act. Intelligent and charming, with a ready dry humor that survived, however dire the problems thrown their way.

  The major handed Vee her drink, then sat back down at the tea table. “You ask what happens next,” he said, “and a very good question it is. Certainly, we must take the situation seriously. You and Sergei have told us the same story, and intelligence from other sources confirms it. The threat appears to be real, and I agree that my brother is the best person to put a stop to it. He has spent the last twelve years of his life getting close to these people. So . . . in the morning we will send you on your way, anywhere Seryozha wishes to go. And we, like your own people, will stand ready to help when the need arises.”

  Relief was so powerful Vee choked up, unable to say a word. Obstacles removed, they were back to the hunt. Hope surged.

  She hid her emotion behind a long swallow of scotch. “Tell me, major,” she said at last, “where did you and Sergei learn such perfect English?”

  His green eyes regarded her from under sinfully long lashes. “It is Misha, Valentina. And I do not speak English, I speak American.”

  Chuckling, Vee shook her head. “Clever, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “My apologies, but you must ask Seryozha.”

  “Why?”

  Misha leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the black void outside the window. “Because he must decide if he wishes to share this history. It is . . . complicated, and something you may not like. I understand his caution.”

  “Caution? He’s a clam!”

  Misha laughed. “Ah, da. A good description, clam. I did not know this idiom.”

  Great, Vee grumbled to herself. She needed information, and the slippery GRU major seemed to be caught up in savoring the word clam as applied to his baby brother. Truth was, he might not have answered her question, but so far she’d gleaned far more from him than she ever had from Seryozha.

  She might as well make another stab at it.

  “Misha,” Vee said, slipping into coaxing feminine mode, “Seryozha had to be a child when these bombs went missing. Why on earth would he hare off on a will-o-the-wisp chase of obsolete bombs? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Abruptly, Misha pushed back his chair and strode to the drinks cabinet. Ice chinked, scotch gurgled. He gulped it down—no water, no soda—before slowly walking back to the table. He slumped sideways into his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him.

  Vee waited, hoping . . .

  “That, too, you must ask Seryozha,” he said. “Some of the story brings shame, so it is not easy to admit to ourselves, let alone someone else. Sergei must tell you, if and when he wishes.”

  She’d hit a nerve, a more sensitive one than she’d anticipated. And now, when she and Seryozha needed to get out of this place, was not the time to provoke the Russian bear into an argument. “Of course,” Vee murmured. “I understand.” Even though she didn’t.

  In an obvious effort to lighten the somber mood, Misha suddenly scorched Vee with one of his salacious appraisals, even as his eyes danced with amusement. “I am delighted to discover my brother has developed a taste for something more than hunting bombs.”

  “I swear you are worse than he is,” Vee muttered.

  “But of course. I am older. I have had more practice.” Misha picked up a brass-handled bell, etched in an oriental design, and rang it. “And besides,” he added more softly, “though I am married and four times a father, I can still enjoy the sight of a beautiful blonde American. I would have to be dead, Ms Frost, not to appreciate my brother’s companion.”

  “And you will be dead if you take this conversation one step farther,” rumbled a voice from the doorway.

  “Seryozha!” Vee held out her hand. Was it the dim light, or was she suddenly seeing what she should have seen before? Sergei was nearly healed, his resemblance to the major remarkably clear. The bandages were gone, his hair coming in, the scar on his cheek not so livid. The contours of his face, the curve of his lips unmarred by cuts or swelling. Rough-cut, not as strikingly handsome as his brother Mikhail, but close enough.

  Or was she simply unable to see him as a monster any more?

  They ate a long, leisurely, perfectly cooked meal at a table set up by the windows overlooking the lake. Below, moonlight skittered over gentle waves and a scattering of lights marked the shore, outlining the curved southern end of the world’s largest and deepest lake. Sergei rested his fork on his plate, appreciating the surreal moment. There had been a lot of them lately. Waking up in the hospital in New York. The sight of Vee in that hooker outfit she was wearing the day they met. His memory somersault on the plane to Wyoming. Sitting in the cave-like cocktail bar with Uncle Arkadi, who might or might not have been among those who wanted to kill him.

  Sex with Vee.

  Making love with Vee. A moment out of time with no encore. Robey’s bullet to the brain, traveling half-way round the world only to end up in the hands of the GRU left no time for romance. Nor room for distractions. He’d found the old man, but his mind echoed, Too late, too late, too late. He’d never find the bomb before it could spread a poison even worse than its radioactive cloud. Before it could destroy the precarious peace between Russia and the U.S. Before it set off a world-wide holocaust from which there was no return.

  How many nuclear bombs were poised, waiting for the spark to ignite the countdown to total annihilation? How many missiles armed and ready? He’d stood behind Mikoyan’s snow-dusted dacha and seen the end of the world. And known that Sergei Tokarev’s carefully orchestrated sting had set off Armageddon.

  The walk back to the front of the dacha had been the longest he’d ever made. Like a condemned killer walking a concrete corridor toward his execution. But a killer had only the burden of the person he’d killed on his shoulders. Sergei Ivanovich Zhukov would have to bear responsibility for the death of the world.

  He’d had to restrain himself from dragging the taxi driver into a bear hug. The man’s waving arm and pointing finger was the most beautiful sight Sergei had ever seen. Even his lovely Valentina couldn’t compete. Sergei wasn’t much of a believer, but he could only think, God smiled. He’s giving us another chance. The human race had come that close, and dodged the bullet.

  At least for the moment.

  “Uncle Arkadi?”

  Oh-oh. Sergei slid back into the moment to find Vee glaring at him. Very stupid not to have been paying attention to the conversation she and Misha seemed to be enjoying. “Sorry, what was that?”

  “Misha has just informed me that ‘Uncle Arkadi’ was one of his sources of information.” Vee’s glare intensified. “You failed to mention the head of the East Coast Organizatsiya is a close relative.”

  Sergei shrugged. “How else could I have been undercover for twelve years without getting caught?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Vee murmured, steepling her fingers under her chin and assuming an expression of wide-eyed innocence. “Misha is a major in the GRU, your uncle is a mob boss, and you are some kind of independent knight errant hellbent on finding lost nukes.”

  Sergei made a show of considering her summary, cocking his head to one side while noticing that Misha was mimicking his move, almost as if they’d rehearsed it. “Ah, da, but my mother is also GRU, and our sister is FSB. That’s the Federal Security Service.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He was in the military,” Misha interjected swiftly.

  “A general,” Sergei spat out. “We do not speak
of him.” So sensible, his Valentina. Other women would have pressed the issue, but Vee merely turned her eyes toward the window, signaling she was smart enough to know when not to press. “Someday, when this is over, I will explain,” he promised. She was a good woman, the little Frost. She deserved so much better than what was ahead of them.

  “If we’re still around,” Vee murmured.

  “I am as determined you will survive as I am that the bombs not go off,” he assured her. “If I do not survive, Misha has my permission to tell you.”

  “And I am determined to stick with you,” Vee shot back. “So I guess that leaves me where I’ve been ever since I met you. Totally fubared.”

  Sergei grabbed her hand, finding fingers that shot a surge of heat through him. Bozhe moi, but the woman was hot in every sense of the word. “Then I will have Misha keep you here.”

  “No!” Vee’s other hand came down hard on top of his. “We’re Siamese twins, Seryozha. Where you go, I go.”

  “I will not see you die.”

  “Then keep us both alive. You. Me. We’re a team. We can do far more together than you can alone. And, besides, you need all the back-up I have, just as you need Misha and company, whether you like it or not.” Vee raised her hand to touch his cheek. “Face it, Sergei Ivanovich, there are times when independence sucks.”

  Silence.

  “So . . .” Misha breathed, “that is settled. Now, brother, tell me where you wish to go next.”

  Sergei told him. Appalled, Vee and Misha stared, mouths hanging open in shock.

  Chapter 20

  “You can’t!” Vee hissed at Seryozha as he closed the bedroom door behind them. “Idiót! You really are out of your mind. Have you forgotten you’re in a world where news travels at the speed of light? You can’t just waltz into Iran, smile sweetly, and say, ‘Look, guys, here I am. Sergei Tokarev, arms broker extraordinaire. Just forget all those tales you heard about what happened in New York.”

  Green eyes gleamed with lofty pride. “But I can claim twelve years of reliable arms delivery, dushenka. I have a reputation Boris Leonov can never match.” He stretched his hands out to his sides, palms up. “Better yet, I have U-236 in one hand and the little old bomb maker in the other. They need me.”

  “Dammit, you don’t know that!” If only she was strong enough to take him by the scruff of the neck and shake some sense into him!

  “Yes, I do.”

  Vee crossed her arms and gave him the skeptical eye.

  “I remember the smoke bomb in New York. The subway, the island, your aunt’s house. I’m ninety-nine percent certain I hid the U-236. And I didn’t tell them where.”

  “But you’re not absolutely certain, are you?”

  Sergei’s determined insouciance faded. “Some chances a man has to take, Valentina. I have no choice but to follow my contacts. You must admit that so far they have not failed?”

  “It’s suicide,” Vee retorted. “And there I’ll be, trailing behind you, shrouded in black. Meek, mild, eyes downcast, straight into the jaws of Hell.”

  “Meek, mild, downcast, and carrying enough arms under your shroud to take out a regiment.”

  Vee sat down hard on the bed, hands fisting the flowered bedcovering. They were approaching the valley of death at ramming speed. Steady, Frost, steady.

  “As I have said,” Sergei added when she didn’t respond, “you do not have to come with me. Misha will arrange a flight home for you in the morning.”

  He sounded so stiff, so brittle, that Vee could easily picture his words shattering like sheets of glass, each syllable falling onto the ruby red carpet, winking back at her like a thousand accusing eyes.

  As if she’d actually let him go alone. “Asked and answered,” she murmured, eyes closed in a moment of inner resolution. “We’re a team.”

  She felt the bed sag as he eased himself down beside her. “Is good we make the best of every moment, no?” he asked in Tokarev’s heaviest, most insinuating accent.

  Vee managed a hard right to his shoulder before he had her flat on the bed, pinned by both wrists and the weight of his body. His lips swooped down to brush against hers. “Do you really wish to waste the night fighting, dushenka? Or shall we find something better to do?”

  Vee’s conflicting emotions coalesced into a tight knot, shrank rapidly to nothing but the moment. Here. Now. Seryozha and Valentina on the edge of the abyss. He might be a tad crazy, but so was she to stick with him—to want to stick with him to what could be the ultimate end. By his side was the only place she wanted to be. For whatever reason, Sergei Zhukov had given his whole life to a cause, and now—for what she hoped was a good deal more than getting help from Homeland Security—he was letting her into his lonely world.

  More than enough incentive for a woman to follow the path of whither-thou-goest, no matter how rocky it got. If this was all they would ever have, then so be it. Theirs was a love story that wasn’t likely to have a happy ending.

  Love story?

  The cold, tight-lipped Sergei in Colorado would have killed her with no more than a twinge of regret if she got in his way. Yet even then she’d been drawn to him, though why a weak, battered wreck of a man could hold her heartstrings in a death grip she would never understand.

  The same old haunting questions—was she being played? Would he still kill her if she came between him and his goal?

  She couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it. In Colorado he’d been a man in Limbo, desperate to find himself. A man whose character had been shaped by twelve years as a ruthless arms smuggler . . .

  Enough! Seryozha was what he was. The classic Russian enigma. If what made her blood sing was all a façade . . . if he was destined to break her heart, what it did it matter? Very likely they’d both be dead before then.

  But at this particular moment he was nibbling on her neck, working his way up to her ear. Hot breath blowing, curling her toes. His hand slid down over her breast, reaching unerringly for her belt buckle. Frenzy crashed over them. Hands scrambled, bodies twisted, clothes flew. Sexual heat transformed the cool Siberian night to incandescent. Shutting out tomorrow, they came together in a clash of flesh, in a surge of need and want that wouldn’t wait for the finer nuances of love. Wave after wave of exquisite pleasure surged through them, promising tomorrow and tomorrow. Even as their saner selves knew this might be all they would ever have.

  In a well-appointed hotel room in a city that prided itself on architectural beauty, Vee made the big switch. She had been to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, before and allowed herself a few fleeting moments to wish she was here to enjoy the city that had artfully dodged the ugliness of Stalin architecture during its years of subjugation to the USSR. To wish that she and Seryozha could take a run south to Samarkand, basking in dreams of the days when Marco Polo spearheaded a trade route from East to West.

  But, no. She and everything she was, every scrap of identity, had to disappear under the voluminous black tent of a burqa. At least Misha’s people had provided her with the Saudi version—a long cloak that fell from her shoulders and a separate veil that dropped over her head. The advantage of the Saudi-style burqa was clear. Her sky blue eyes were shadowed by a thin strip of sheer black that covered the veil’s rectangular eye opening. Sergei had assured her he was not going to attempt to pass her off as anything but his Russian companion, but no point in flaunting blue eyes when they were already skating on such a slippery slope.

  Vee scowled at her reflection in the mirror. At the moment their weapons were packed in their luggage, but it was plain to see the trousers of her rosy pink shalwar kameez would be a tight fit over her ankle gun. Her burqa, however, was extra long, adequately covering her new Glock, and hopefully no proper Muslim male was going to cop a peek at her ankles. And, fortunately, the tunic had sufficient pockets for extra ammunition. She could even hide an AK-47 under the burqa if the occasion warranted it. So maybe the big black tent wasn’t so bad after all.

  But walking four paces behind her lord a
nd master? And keeping her mouth shut? That was going to be tough.

  Vee stifled the sound of her yawn as she rejoined Seryozha, hoping he wouldn’t notice how tired she was. What were all those layers of black cotton for if a girl couldn’t use them to keep a few secrets? He, miserable man, was full of boundless energy, totally focused on the next link in their quest, while she thought longingly of their one good night’s sleep at the hotel in Irkutsk. They certainly hadn’t gotten much last night. Seryozha might still have a few scars and tender muscles, but his stamina had returned with a vengeance.

  Under the all-encompassing veil, Vee smiled. Sergei had picked up some interesting moves in his eastern travels, evidently carrying an illustrated Kama Sutra around in his head. As long as he didn’t try one of those maneuvers where an anatomically overendowed male managed to pleasure three girls at once, Vee was happy to accommodate his creativity. To quote Seryozha as dawn rose, “Bozhe moi, what a night!”

  A-men.

  Burqas could also hide blushes. Vee could feel her flush all the way down to her toes. Wait a minute! Her blue eyes went wide. “Where’s your outfit?” she demanded.

  “I’m wearing it,” Sergei told her, spreading his hands wide to flaunt the black ensemble they’d bought at the mall on the way to Atlantic City. “I am Sergei Tokarev, Russian arms dealer. This is what they expect.”

  “Then why do I have—”

  “You think I’m going to take a blonde bombshell into a country loaded with Muslim fanatics?”

  “But it’s okay to drag your whore along?” Vee shot back.

  Sergei’s stern features took on the exaggerated innocence of a six-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Ah . . . did I not tell you Misha provided us with new papers? I am Tokarev again, and you are my newly wed Russian wife. And business associate. Being a wise man, I wish to respect the customs of the country and, not just incidentally, protect my lovely bride from prying eyes.” Sergei favored her with a “gotcha” smile.

  Through a jaw so tight the words barely escaped her lips, Vee said, “I cannot be your business partner if you never tell me anything! I cannot be your business partner if I must follow four steps behind like a dog at heel—”