by Tom Abrahams
I let go of his face and pick up the gun, pressing the hot end of the barrel into his forehead. “Котрі ви працюєте?” I repeat. Who is your boss? Who sent you?
He coughs again, spitting more blood onto the street, before the cough morphs into a laugh, a cackle almost, as he writhes in pain.
I walk back to the car to get my bag from the trunk and head back to meet Bella at the car.
“Зло,” the dying man calls out as I pass him. Bella is already in the driver’s seat of the car in the intersection. She’s waving at me to hurry up. I stop and kneel down.
“What did you say?” I ask him. “Що ви сказали?”
“Liho,” he laughs. “I work for Liho.”
Liho, I remember, is not only the name of the man against whom we are competing, the man who apparently wants us dead. Liho is Ukrainian for the word evil.
***
“What did you say to him?” Bella asks. She’s sitting in the driver’s seat of what, close up, looks more like a small tank than a car. The back of it is emblazoned with the word Kombat. The engine sounds like a garbage truck.
“I asked him who he worked for.” I climb into the front passenger seat. There’s not much leg room with the large control console sitting mid-dash. “He reluctantly told me.”
“He spoke English?” Bella’s door is still open. The sirens are coming from maybe a street or two away now.
“We need to get out of here, Bella.” I slam shut what must be a heavily armored door. “Close your door and drive.”
She grabs the door and heaves it closed.
“Don’t worry about it. Go!” The reflection of blue and red lights are bouncing off of the building to our right as she puts the Kombat in gear and accelerates into the fog.
“Where is the Bristol Hotel?” she asks. “We need to get off the streets.”
“Agreed. We can’t go to the Bristol though. They’ll know we’re coming. Turn right.”
Bella spins the wheel to the right and the Kombat lumbers around the curve, its wheels squealing against the worn pavement. “How did they know we were here?”
“I’m guessing that they knew we were coming because of your plane.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your pilot had to register a flight plan, right?” I explain. “Given that the goons in South Dakota knew we’d be coming here, it’s not much of a stretch to figure out that they were waiting on us.” My revolver is in one of the large cup holders between us. I grab it and pop open the cylinder. It’s empty.
Bella’s hands are shaking against the wheel, her arms twitching. The adrenaline’s beginning to wear off. “I get that. They had someone at the airport tipping them off. Then they followed us.”
“Probably.” The violent rush leaks from my body and a wave of nausea hits me. “Turn left here.”
The mini-tank rumbles past an appliance store with its interior lights on.
“That’s why we can’t go to the hotel. They’ve probably got a team there. This is not what I thought it was going to be.” I gulp against the bile rising in my throat and take a deep breath before reaching between us into the back seat for my pack. It’s got three, maybe four bullet holes in it. Bella’s bag, sitting next to it, is riddled. From my pack, I pull ammunition for the revolver and the Tec-9, then I reach around until I find the barrel of the machine pistol and pull it into my lap.
“What did that guy say to you?” Bella questions.
“He worked for Liho Blogis.” I snap closed the cylinder and spin it. “This gun will be yours for now. It’s got shot shell in it. You don’t have to be accurate. It’ll spray like a shotgun, okay?”
“Like it did back there?”
“Yes.” Up ahead I can tell the lights are from the port of Odessa. They’re coming from cranes and ships lit for early morning on and offloading. “Up ahead, there’s going to be a statue. It’s in the middle of a roundabout. Make a right and then go a couple of blocks. Then stop in front of a blue sign that says Londonskaya.”
“Okay.” She nods. “You didn’t tell me, Jackson. The guy back there, he spoke English?”
I shake my head. The lighted statue is about fifty yards ahead of us, and beyond that the Black Sea. She slows to enter the roundabout.
“He didn’t speak English,” I say. The back of the statue slides by her window. “Take this first right.”
“So...what?” She makes the turn. “You speak Ukrainian?”
“Pull up to the curb over here,” I say, pointing to an empty spot underneath a glowing blue neon sign that screams the name of the hotel. “Yes, I spoke to him in his own language.”
She puts the Kombat into park. “Well aren’t you full of surprises. Why the hell did I need a translator if you speak the language?”
“You didn’t ask, Bella.” I sling my bag from the backseat and climb out of the tank. “Let’s get a room.”
***
It appeared that the last time the Londonskaya Hotel lobby was updated was circa 1920. It smells the same as it did the last time I was here, a mix of cigarette smoke and potpourri. The expansive green carpet leads to a grand staircase opposite the entrance. Several large crystal ballroom chandeliers hang from the decorative tray ceiling, casting a dim glow. To either side of the lobby are large rosewood counters. There’s a young girl standing behind the one to the left, smiling as we approach her. She’s tall and thin, her ash blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her cheekbones are dusted pink, her eyeshadow blue. She looks like a cross between a high fashion model and a Russian call girl.
“Hello,” I lean on the counter with my elbows. “How are you?”
“I am fine, thank you,” she says in thickly accented English. “Welcome to the Londonskaya. Do you have reservations?”
“No. Is that a problem? Do you have any rooms?”
She looks down at a ledger, running her finger along one edge. “We are very full today. And check-in is not until three o’clock in the afternoon.”
The large clock on the wall behind the counter reads before five o’clock in the morning. We have three hours before our meeting with the scientist, assuming that still happens.
“What’s the chance that we could get a couple of rooms for a few hours? We need two or three of hours of sleep, a shower, you know. We landed only an hour ago, flying all night to get here.”
“I am not sure I am able to do that because we don’t let rooms by the hour, sir.”
“I understand that,” I reply, a little more forcefully. “Would a generous gratuity help you find a couple of rooms until, say, eight o’clock?”
She looks up from the ledger and checks a computer screen. “I am thinking that maybe I have one room for you. The hotel is full. There is a room with two beds.”
“Deal.”
“I’ll just need your passports and credit card please.” She fakes a smile, her gray smoker’s teeth distracting from an otherwise pleasant face.
“Passport, no problem.” I fish into my bullet riddled pack and find my passport. “But I’ll be paying for the room in cash. If that’s okay with you.”
“U.S. dollars?” she asks with more than a hint of suggestion.
“Звичайно,” I say. “Of course.”
Her fake smile melts into a real one, her otherwise whey-faced cheeks glowing pinker than the blush she’s generously applied. “Я буду повернутися!”
“Я зачекаю,” I call after her as she giggles into a room behind the reception desk and disappears.
“She’ll be right back,” I translate to Bella as she socks me in the shoulder. “Hey! What’s that for?”
“Flirting?” she says. “You’re incorrigible. We almost died for the second time in twenty-four hours and you’re picking up desk clerks.”
“Flirting?” I rub the sore spot where she frogged me. “You’re kidding, right? I’m trying to get us off of the street and into a place where we can regroup. Sheesh.”
“R
ight,” she says. “What did you say to her?”
“I told her we’d be waiting for her.” The truth. “Remind me the next time we start dating.”
“What does that mean?”
“All I’m saying is that you seem awfully preoccupied with my social behavior given that we hardly know each other.”
“My preoccupation is solely about finding the pieces of the process and staying alive. I want your attention focused on the task at hand. Nothing more. As if...” she huffs.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” I mumble, passively aggressive.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I smile. “Gotcha. I’ll stay focused.”
“MacBeth, Jackson?” she shakes her head. “Lame.”
“It’s Hamlet,” I correct her with a quick grin. “Act three, scene two.”
Bella shoots me a look deadly enough that it would have been helpful twenty minutes ago.
“This is the room key for you, Mister,” the desk looks down at the passports, “Rick Grimes and Miss Jane Smith.”
“Дякую.” I take the key and the passport. “Thank you. And your name?”
“Akalena,” she says with another genuine smile. “Your room is on the third floor. Please remember that the checkout is at eleven in the morning.”
“Дякую, Akalena.” I slide five one hundred dollar bills across the counter, adjust my pack on my shoulder and start walking for the elevator. “You coming, Jane?”
“Right behind you, Rick,” she says. “Aren’t you forgetting something important?”
“What?”
She’s dangling a key from her hand like a dog treat. “The car. It’s parked right in front of the hotel, and it kinda stands out a little bit, right?”
“Good point.” I stop at the elevator, push the UP button, and the doors slide open. “Here’s the key to the room. Go ahead and get settled. I’ll ditch the car.”
She hands me the key to the Kombat urban assault vehicle and slips past me into the elevator. “Hurry up.” The doors slide shut.
***
Bella opens the door wearing a dark blue tank top and some gray cargo pants. Her hair is wet, her face freshly washed. “You’ve been gone for a while, so I assume you ditched it. I expected you back here, like, thirty minutes ago.”
“Well, hello to you too, Bella.” I step past her into the large room and toss my pack onto one of the two sagging twin beds. I rub the back of my neck and crank it to the right to crack it. “Nice room, by the way.” It’s decorated much like the lobby; unnecessarily ornate in some ways and completely utilitarian. The furniture is worn, the hardwood floors scuffed and scratched, but the room itself looks clean.
“It’s after six o’clock, Jackson,” she shuffles to a cherry, clawfoot writing desk opposite the beds. Her laptop is open. “We’re running out of time before we meet our contact.”
“I ditched it at a church about three blocks from here.” I drop onto the edge of a bed, bouncing with the give of the mattress. “It’s parked around the back, in a cobblestone alley. The keys are in a collection box at the back door.”
“Then what took so long?” She’s leaning against the edge of the desk, facing me with her arms folded in front of her. There’s a nasty bruise on her right shoulder.
“Sorry. I did what I had to do. I needed to make sure that nobody saw me dump the tank and then follow me back here. So I took a...circuitous route.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, ever the Grand Inquisitor.
“It means that I didn’t walk straight back here. I went out of my way to get back here without running into any problems. I know what I’m doing.”
“Why say it like that?”
“Nothing.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, exhaling. “What’s with you? Twenty questions? I’m not Sal Pimiento.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“What I mean is that you’re grilling me for keeping us safe, which is my job, and yet I’m really the one who should be asking the questions.”
She runs her hand through her hair and then rubs it on her thigh. “I don’t follow.”
“One second, you’re this arrogant CEO in cahoots with as shady a guy as there is. The next you seem completely out of your league. Then you’re Goldfinger, interrogating Pimiento, threatening him like a professional spook. Next thing I know, you’re shaking with fear after we get ambushed. Now, you’re acting like a jealous girlfriend who forgot to put a tracker on my car.”
Her jaw tightens.
“You seem a little bipolar, I guess.”
“Why did you call me a jealous girlfriend who forgot to track you?”
“Because that’s how it feels,” I say. “To paraphrase Jay-Z, we’ve got ninety-nine problems, and making sure I don’t get tailed isn’t one of them.”
“I mean the tracking part, specifically,” she snaps. “Why would you say that?”
“It was a metaphor, Bella.”
“Oh.”
“Why fixate on that?” I press. “I called you Sybil and you zero in on that?”
“Um...” she runs her hand through her hair again, “it got me thinking. Maybe they were tracking us. Maybe that’s how they ambushed us.”
“Okay. Still, what’s with you?”
“I’m not used to this action adventure stuff, Jackson,” she says. “You’ve lived it for months now. You’re accustomed to the adrenaline, the close calls, the bullets flying past you, your life flashing in front of your eyes. I’m not. One minute we’re in control. The next, not so much. I worry about your focus. I don’t know you well enough to know what you’re thinking or what you’re capable of doing. When you were gone, I worried what was going on. If that’s bipolar, then that’s me, I guess.” She puts a hand over her mouth and closes her eyes. When they open again, tears are pooling.
“Fair enough.” I push myself from the bed and walk over to her. “But let me tell you something,” I’m five inches from her face, looking straight into her blinking eyes. “You never get accustomed to this. Ever. You just...”
“What?” She swallows past the tears. Her eyes are dancing back and forth, but never lose sight of mine.
“You just go numb.” I put my hands on her shoulders, careful to avoid her bruise, and pull her into my chest, sliding my hands onto her back. She unfolds her arms and slides her hands up my back, gripping my shirt. Her heart is pounding, her breaths are short and rapid.
Her hair smells like cheap hotel shampoo, thinly fragrant. It’s damp against my face. Her right hand lets go of my shirt, moves to the back my head, her fingers running through my hair.
Neither of us speak for what feels like forever, but it’s not long enough.
This is the first time I’ve felt human in months.
***
You feel better now?” Bella’s sitting in the high back chair at the desk when I emerge from the bathroom. “Sometimes a hot shower can change everything.”
“Or a cold one,” I laugh and sit on the bed to put on my Merrells, pulling up the cuffs of my black surplus pants. I do feel better. I’ve cleaned, sterilized, and put a bandage on the flesh wound at my hip.
“Whatever.” Bella rolls her eyes and turns back to her laptop. “I’ve made contact, finally, with our friend.”
“Are you on hotel Wi-Fi?” I look up from double-knotting the nylon laces on the shoes.
“Yes,” she says without turning around. “Why?”
“Is that safe?”
“My email program is encrypted. It’s fine.”
I stand up and untuck the last clean t-shirt I have with me. It’s a Lyle Lovett concert shirt with a hamburger drawn on the front. It reads, Hello? Here I am. “What’s the plan?”
“Half an hour,” she says. “We meet him in the park right outside the hotel. Nice shirt.”
“Thanks,” I tug on it again. “Is that safe?” I step over to her and lean against the desk. “Out in the open?”
“Now who’s the one
with twenty questions?” she smirks.
“It’s hard to control that situation,” I explain. “You know, outside, a couple of blocks from where I ditched our would-be-assassins’ tank car.”
“You said nobody followed you.”
“Right,” I say.
“The truth is, we’re not safe anywhere, Jackson. If Liho Blogis wants to try to kill us, it doesn’t matter where we are, right?”
“I guess.” I still don’t like it.
“Okay then,” she closes the laptop. “It’s set.”
“Has he been contacted by Blogis yet? What does he know?”
“He didn’t say.”
“We need to be careful with this guy. Does he know I’m with you or does he think you’re alone?”
“I didn’t tell him you were with me, but my messages referred to we and us. So I’m certain he doesn’t think I’m meeting him alone. Why?”
“You said we couldn’t trust this guy,” I remind her.
“What I said,” she corrects, “was that I don’t think we can trust anyone. What’s the problem?”
“He’ll be worried if it’s two against one, so to speak. He may be less forthcoming. He doesn’t know me from Adam. If he thinks there’s a potential threat, after Wolf got killed working in your lab, he may have eyes elsewhere.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“You go alone.”
“What?” Her eyes widen.
“Look, it’ll be fine.” I move to the window, which overlooks the park and, beyond that, the Black Sea. “Come here.”
Bella joins me, peeks out at the tree lined, crushed granite path below.
“See that bench?” I point to a long bench, a man with a book sitting on one end. “That’s your meeting point. I’ll give you a phone. You’ll be on speaker. I’ll hear everything you talk about. I’ve got a thermal camera that acts like binoculars. I’ll be your eyes from up here. Anything looks the least bit off and I can get you out of there.”
“How do you warn me? I won’t be able to hear you.”
“I’ll call you from another phone if there’s a problem. It’ll buzz in. You’ll feel the buzz in your hand, and that’s your signal to bolt.”
