by Kim Fielding
“I’ll tell you later.”
“We better not get killed before you do. I’d end up a really pissed-off ghost.”
Reid ignored him.
A few blocks later, they reached the part of the city built under Austro-Hungarian rule. The structures were blocky and gray, with crumbling plaster exposing the concrete-and-wood walls beneath. The majority of the few streetlights were burned out, but the moon was almost full. As he walked down the sidewalks, sticking close to the walls, Reid seemed to be searching for something. Almost all the buildings had large courtyards in the center, most of them blocked by wooden or chain-link gates. But Reid found one of the wooden gates ajar, and he and Jaxon slipped inside.
Lights from the surrounding windows illuminated the courtyard, revealing cracked pavement littered with crumpled paper and broken bits of plastic and metal—the remains of toys and machines. But several large pots were growing vegetables, and laundry hung on long rope lines. Reid spent some time inspecting the hanging clothes before selecting a plain yellow polo shirt and a pair of gray tracksuit pants. He brought them over and handed them to Jaxon. “Put these on,” he ordered quietly.
Although the clothing wasn’t exactly Jaxon’s style, he didn’t argue, and the stolen clothes fit well. He felt bad for whomever they belonged to and hoped his Grammy suit, abandoned in the courtyard, would compensate for the loss.
But Reid wasn’t satisfied. “Those damn boots,” he said, staring at Jaxon’s feet.
“I don’t think anyone has shoes hanging on a clothesline.”
“No.” Reid ditched his jacket and tie. In plain slacks and a white button-down, he’d blend in reasonably well with the locals.
“How come I don’t hear sirens?” Jaxon asked as they made their way back to the street. “Aren’t they after us?”
“Yes, but they’ll want to keep it low-key, at least for now. And they’ll be confident we won’t get far.”
“Are they right about that?”
Reid looked grim. “I don’t know.”
Not reassuring. Yet Jaxon followed him in spite of having no clue where they were heading. If it hadn’t been for glimpses of the hill with the ruined castle, he would have been completely lost. After about twenty minutes, they arrived in a somewhat affluent neighborhood—by Vasnytsian standards—at the base of the hill. Two- and three-story houses squatted among apartment buildings, all in reasonably good condition, and modest shops lined a few of the streets. Reid paused in front of a window that displayed men’s shoes and clothing.
Jaxon realized what was going on. “Oh no, you’re not—”
“Shh!” After a quick look around, Reid took them down an alley to the back of the building. He stopped at a door, took an object from his pocket, and did something to the lock. Jaxon couldn’t see the details in the dark, but within seconds the lock opened with a quiet click and Reid opened the door.
“What if there’s an alarm?” Jaxon whispered.
“Isn’t. No alarms here.”
Reid closed the door as soon as they were inside. While he ventured deeper into the store, Jaxon remained near the wall, having a flashback to when he was eight and stole a package of gum from Neth’s Pharmacy. His mother had discovered the wrappers in his bedroom and had marched him to Neth’s to confess and apologize, and his father had yelled at him and grounded him for a month. He suspected the consequences of being caught burglarizing this shop would be rather more dire.
It didn’t take long for Reid to find a cheap pair of running shoes and a lightweight jacket to fit Jaxon. They threw his boots into a garbage bin a few blocks away. “Now where?” Jaxon asked.
“Quiet. I’m thinking.” But judging from his expression, Reid was fresh out of ideas. He kept rubbing his forehead.
As they turned a corner, a small cat dashed in front of them, squeezed through a tiny window at sidewalk level, and disappeared into a basement. Jaxon stopped in his tracks. “The Black Cat.”
Reid waved distractedly at him. “It was white.”
“With black spots. But I wasn’t talking about the actual cat.”
“I’m trying to save our asses here. Could you just—”
“Remember when we went to the potato kitchen?”
“Yes.” Reid scowled at him.
“A guy told me about this place called the Black Cat, where—”
“What guy?”
Before Jaxon could answer, loud male voices sounded from somewhere close by. They might have been just drunks heading home from a bar, but maybe not. Reid took off running with Jaxon at his side. They ducked into the next open courtyard gate they came to and huddled under the building’s archway.
Reid picked up the conversation where he’d dropped it. “What guy?”
“One of the other customers. We exchanged a few words when I stopped to tie my shoe.”
“Jesus, Jax. He could’ve gone to prison for that.”
“He spoke with me first,” said Jaxon, who didn’t appreciate being scolded like a child. “And he said he and his friends listen to my music all the time at a place called the Black Cat. Maybe someone there…?”
Reid was staring at him. “Cherna Koshka.”
“What?”
“It means black cat. Mariya mentioned it to me. She said the people there were sympathetic.”
“To what?”
“Us,” Reid said grimly.
“So let’s go there!”
“Sure, great, except I don’t know where the hell it is.” After a moment of forehead rubbing, Reid acquired a determined expression. “Okay. Come with me.”
It seemed logical to ask where they were going if Reid didn’t know how to find the Black Cat, but Jaxon kept his mouth shut, figuring he’d find out eventually. By the time they’d walked over a mile and had begun to climb the hill, he was regretting his discretion. “No way the Black Cat’s in Talmirov’s backyard.”
“That’s not where we’re going. Hurry up.”
They didn’t quite run, but they went at a good clip, keeping to the heavy greenery at the side of the road. Twice they heard cars coming uphill; both times they ducked into the bushes and the cars passed without incident. Almost an hour later, they reached the top of the hill, where the abandoned castle ruins sprawled in the moonlight.
“Why?” asked Jaxon, looking around in bewilderment.
“It’s late and things are going to be really hot for a few hours. We’re going to hide out here until morning, when I hope the authorities will have cooled a little, and then I’ll try to track down Cherna Koshka.”
It made rough sense, and Jaxon certainly didn’t have a better plan, so he trailed Reid into the thick woods beside the ruins. In most of the United States, those woods would have been littered with beer cans, used condoms, and maybe hypodermic needles, but here they seemed pristine—at least as far as he could tell in the dark.
At the bottom of a tiny valley, under the thick cover of tree boughs, Reid stopped and collapsed elegantly onto the ground, where he sat with his knees bent. For the first time, Jaxon sensed something like despair coming from him.
“What’s wrong?” Jaxon asked as he sat close beside him.
“What’s wrong? Albina’s dead. Mariya’s possibly dead too, or at least in prison. I have no idea how the hell I’m going to get out of this mess. And I’ve managed to drag you into it. You were just my ticket to Vasnytsia. You were supposed to stay safe.”
“Safe is overrated.”
Reid simply grunted.
After several minutes, Jaxon leaned against him. “Will you explain now what’s going on? What’s our secret mission?”
“It’s my mission. You’re—”
“The ticket. Yeah, yeah. Why did you need a ticket?”
Without answering, Reid unbuttoned and removed his shirt, keeping his undershirt on. “I needed this,” he said, patting his left bicep.
“A bandage?”
“Mariya injected me with a microchip.”
“So the dogcatch
er can find your owners if you get lost?”
“What? No! Jax, this is—”
“Not a game.” Jaxon sighed. “Don’t you have a sense of humor at all?”
“Not when lives are at stake.”
Jaxon shrugged. It seemed to him that a bit of levity was especially useful in a crisis. But he didn’t say so. “So there’s a chip?” he prompted.
“It contains classified documents. Some of them implicate Talmirov in corruption. We’ve known for years that he’s been stealing from the government and stashing the money overseas, but this is the proof we needed.”
Jaxon thought about that for a few moments. “So if those documents get into the right hands….”
“Talmirov’s opponents here would probably find enough support to feel comfortable turning on him. There would be a coup—a peaceful one, if we’re lucky.”
“What if the opponents are assholes too?”
“We—the intelligence community, I mean—have been vetting them. We’re prepared to provide assistance to the right ones.”
Under other circumstances, Jaxon would have been critical of the United States attempting to influence a foreign government. It didn’t seem right—and similar policies had turned out disastrously elsewhere. But he’d seen the kind of life Vasnytsians had to endure, and he knew they’d been stuck that way for decades. Maybe some intervention wasn’t a bad thing.
“So you’re carrying the info that could bring Talmirov down,” Jaxon said.
“Yes, but there’s more. Possibly even more important documents. I don’t even know all the details on this part, just the bare bones. Moscow apparently has its eyes on more than just Crimea. There are several other former Soviet territories they’d like to bring back into the fold. Talmirov’s apparently agreed to give the Russians a cozy western base of operations for some of these efforts.”
“In exchange for more zillions for his overseas bank accounts?”
“Bingo.” Reid turned to face him, although he couldn’t have seen well. “Explain to me why someone who’s already incredibly wealthy would be so eager for more. Do the millions lose their meaning after a while?”
“Yes,” Jaxon answered immediately. He wasn’t evil-dictator rich, but he had plenty. And he remembered how ecstatic he’d been when, not too long out of Nebraska, he got a gig that paid a couple of thousand a month. Nowadays he’d drop several grand without even thinking about it. Hell, those boots now sitting in a Starograd garbage can had cost over three thousand dollars. And he’d just casually thrown them away.
“What happens if people find out what Talmirov and the Russians have been up to?” Jaxon asked.
“At the very least, sanctions against Russia. But quite likely more. The international stage is a complicated place right now, and anything Russia does casts wide ripples.”
Ignoring the mixed metaphor, Jaxon nodded. “Okay. So you need to get that chip into the right hands.” But then another thought struck him. “Why was Mariya involved with the chip?”
“She’s—well she was—one of our assets. She had access to all sorts of information, mostly through her father. Deputy minister of defense.”
Right. She’d mentioned something about that. “But she’s not a Talmirov fan?”
“No. A lot of people here are against him. But it’s terribly risky to speak out.”
That reminded Jaxon that Reid had come very close to dying earlier that night. Shuddering, he draped an arm around Reid’s shoulders, as if that would keep him safe.
“Cold?” asked Reid.
“Yes,” Jaxon lied.
They sat like that for a long time, Jaxon imagining the weight of responsibility that rested on Reid’s broad shoulders. Nobody had ever counted on Jaxon like that. If he fucked up a song, nobody died. Countries wouldn’t rise or fall because of it.
After a while and still without speaking, Jaxon and Reid lay down on the ground, which was soft with shed pine needles. They huddled close together for comfort and warmth and listened to the small night sounds.
“Not quite a five-star hotel.” Reid sounded sleepy.
“Reminds me of camping when I was a kid.”
“Boy Scouts?”
“Nah. Parents. We’d go to Big Mac—Lake McConaughy—or up into the Black Hills and spend a week living in a tent and driving one another crazy. S’mores. Fishing. Swimming. Mosquitoes.” He yawned hugely. “We used to sing together around the campfire. Totally hokey.”
“It sounds like fun.”
Those getaways were among his happiest childhood memories, the rare times when his parents had relaxed and they’d all enjoyed one another’s company. “How about you? Did you camp when you were a kid?”
Reid didn’t reply for several moments, and when he did, he sounded faraway. “No. First time I ever slept outside was in the Army.” He shifted slightly in Jaxon’s arms. “We need to sleep now. I’d really like to keep you alive tomorrow.”
Jaxon drifted off to the sound of Reid’s steady breaths.
Chapter Ten
SLEEPING on the ground was a lot easier on a ten-year-old body than one in its late thirties. Jaxon woke up sore and disoriented, with pine needles in his hair and, most likely, bugs in his clothes. He’d been missing his guitar, but now he missed his toothbrush even more.
Reid sat next to him, watching.
“What?” Jaxon demanded as he sat up and stretched.
“You sing in your sleep.”
“I do not!”
“You do. Just a few words here and there. Sometimes you hum.”
That was too weird to contemplate. Jaxon looked around and saw nothing but the sun’s morning rays sneaking through the branches, creating designs on the ground. “I guess we’re lucky the weather’s good.”
Still seated, Reid looked at him gravely. “You can still go back. Tell them you were scared and ran after me, and I kidnapped you.”
Jaxon snorted his dismissal of the idea. “Does the State Department know we’re missing?”
“I don’t know. Mariya wasn’t our only asset, but getting information out of the country is dangerous and difficult.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter anyway. They can’t get anyone in here to extract me. Us.”
“So we go to the Black Cat….”
“And hope like hell your fans are dedicated enough to hide us while I find a way out.”
Thinking of some of the things people had sent him over the years, Jaxon grinned. Engagement rings. Lots and lots of fan art. Piles of underwear. And thousands of letters and emails expressing undying devotion. Buzz kept the more disturbing stuff away from him, but Jaxon still had a decent idea of how deep some people’s adoration could go.
Comforted as he was by his supportive fans, another notion unsettled him. “If those people help us, they could get in deep trouble. Or dead.” He shuddered as he remembered Albina’s dying gasps.
“Yes,” Reid said.
Yet if Jaxon and Reid didn’t ask for help, their prospects were dim. Not to mention the fact that Talmirov’s corruption would continue unchecked, and Russia would have help invading places, and…. Shit. Musicians rarely had to make life-and-death decisions.
“Let’s go find that cat,” Jaxon said.
Reid stood and brushed debris from his clothes. Even after sleeping on the ground, he looked tidy. Maybe the State Department issued special dirt- and wrinkle-proof clothing to its operatives.
“You stay here,” he said.
“No! I’m coming—”
“Do you really think it’s such a great idea for you to walk the streets of Starograd? People will recognize you.”
Oh. Yeah. If Jaxon couldn’t manage anonymity while jogging through the wonderful diversity of San Francisco, he probably couldn’t pull it off while wandering here. “Can you blend in with the locals?”
“Better than you. Stay here. I’ll find out where Cherna Koshka is and come back, and we’ll both go there tonight.”
The plan made sense, but that didn’t
mean Jaxon was happy about it. “What am I supposed to do here?”
“Nothing. Lay low. You should be able to hear if anyone approaches, in which case head in the other direction and hide. The woods are surprisingly thick up here. Just don’t get lost—I need to find you when I return.”
“What if you don’t return?” Jaxon asked it quietly, hoping he sounded calm.
Reid worked his jaw. “If I don’t come back, it’s because I can’t. I won’t willingly abandon you. If… if they catch me, I’m going to confess to forcing you to run away with me. So if I’m not back by tonight, head back to the hotel.”
Jaxon was going to protest, but Reid stopped him with a raised hand. “Don’t be stupid, Jax. It’ll be your best chance of surviving. If you get caught trying to escape on your own—and you will get caught—it’s not going to help anyone.”
All Jaxon could do was nod.
Then suddenly Reid had his arms around Jaxon, holding him tight, his lips a whisper away from Jaxon’s ear. “You are an interesting man,” Reid said before kissing him with a desperate hunger Jaxon had only imagined before.
Jaxon was just as ravenous, and for a few moments he forgot about spies and cyanide and dictators and microchips. For a too-brief pulse of time, it was just Reid and him under the trees, their passion as weighty as the earth beneath them.
Reid pulled slightly away and traced a thumb across Jaxon’s lip. “I will come back for you if I can.”
Jaxon believed him.
THE hours passed slowly. Jaxon’s stomach burned from hunger and anxiety, his mouth was parched, and despite his worry, he was totally and profoundly bored. For someone who’d been craving isolation, the reality proved a disappointment. He was used to conversation around him, to a world full of amusements at his fingertips. Now he didn’t even have a phone to play games on; he’d left it in his hotel room before the banquet.
He desperately wanted his guitar.
He ended up sitting on the soft ground, listening to the music of the forest—tree branches whispering, insects rustling among leaves, birds calling to one another. It was a sort of symphony, really, and he was the only audience. Eventually a new tune wound its way through his brain, a tune inspired by what he heard around him, and he made up some lyrics that seemed to fit. He had no way to write anything down, so he hoped he’d remember it later. Assuming he ever got his hands on a guitar again and didn’t spend the rest of his life in a Vasnytsian prison. Or end up drinking cyanide for dinner.
