by Greg Rucka
"There's our answer," I said.
She nodded slightly. "I did consider that. That someone in the White House is someone I did a job for might be motive enough. Before he died, Agent Fowler, you, and I had a long conversation about what I did and who I did it for. If he reported that information back to his superiors, if he was, perhaps, not as discreet as he should have been, it is possible that whoever our adversary is took alarm, saw that potentially his or her relationship with me was in danger of being exposed. Wishing to protect himself or herself, they have taken steps to silence both of us."
"Don't say that," I said.
"What?"
"It's not Scott's fault," I said. "Don't blame the dead man."
"I'm not insulting the memory of your friend," Alena said, carefully. "Simply stating a fact, however unpleasant it may be to hear. What matters is not how the information reached our adversary in the White House; what matters is that once it did, he or she deemed us a threat that needed to be addressed, immediately and completely."
"Which means we're being hunted for something you know that you don't know you know."
"Yes."
"Maybe you should try to remember."
"I have been."
"Maybe you should try harder."
Alena took another sip of her tea, then set the mug down and moved the two steps required to stand in front of me. She put her hands on my forearms, her expression serious, meeting my eyes.
"There are other ways to do this, Atticus," she said, gently. "We can leave here right now, and the passport application will have done no more harm than has been done already with the death of Illya. We can withdraw, try to find another way."
"No," I said. "We really can't."
"It is a big planet. There are many places to hide."
"I don't want to hide anymore."
Her grip on my arms tightened slightly, almost imperceptibly. "And what if they do not wish to question you? What if we are mistaken, and their desire to find me is not more powerful than their desire to silence you?"
"Then you'll keep me alive," I said.
The fear was easy to miss, just a flash in her eyes, hinting at her doubt and the pain that it brought. It wasn't much at all. In Kobuleti, when I'd angered her or annoyed her or delighted her, she'd been willing to show it, though it was still something she was learning to allow herself. Since our return to the U.S., that had begun to fade. The professional emerging to subsume the personal.
Except the problem here, the problem for both of us, was that they were the same. Nothing was personal, and everything was. Every move we made had to be as professionals, and yet the motives behind them were anything but. We could have argued that what we were doing was for self-defense and survival, nothing more, and maybe for Alena, that would even have been true. But it wasn't for me, and we both understood that; it was about the future as much as the past, about the home we had made for ourselves in Kobuleti as much as about what had happened three years earlier in Cold Spring on a New England autumn's dawn.
"It has to be answered," I told her. "And if the way to find out who needs to answer is by bringing them to me, then that's what I'll do."
Her hands moved up my arms, then stopped, fell away, and I could read the conflict in each movement, the struggle she was having. Then she stepped past me, leaving the kitchen to disappear further into the house.
"I have to pack," Alena said. We made love that night, and it was all need, cathartic and hungry, and when we were finished we clung to each other as we had during our passion. The night was utterly silent, the quiet of the snow broken only by the hiss of the forced air trying vainly to keep the chill from the house.
Her lips against my cheek, Alena said, "They will hurt you."
"I know."
"I will come as soon as I can."
"I know."
"I will come for you."
I kissed her.
"I know," I told her. She was gone in the morning. I made the surveillance four days later. Two days after that, as the last of the sunlight slid away from Big Mountain to the north and the valley was turning to darkness, there was a knock at the door. I'd built a fire in the fireplace, half to stave off the chill, half to stave off the apprehension and loneliness I was feeling. I'd been reading a book of Kurt Vonnegut essays that I'd bought in town, and they had done nothing to improve my mood.
Then the knock at the door, three quick raps, no doorbell to follow, and I knew it was time. I marked the book and set it on the coffee table beside one of the guns from the Burien cache, a Walther that was resting there. For a moment, I considered taking the weapon up, carrying it with me, but then I thought that the last thing I really wanted to do was give them another reason to shoot first and ask questions later.
If they were knocking on the front door, it meant that there was a team already in position at the back. I hadn't heard any glass breaking, hadn't felt a shift in the air inside the house in answer to a sudden draught. So no penetration, not yet, which meant they were covering the perimeter; they'd wait to enter until they were certain I wasn't going to try to bolt in their direction.
Assuming, of course, that the object of their exercise was to capture and not to kill.
There was a second set of raps on the front door, this a little brisker.
I left the gun where it was, and went to answer the door.
Three men stood waiting for me on the porch outside, none of them obviously presenting weapons, but if two of them hadn't come heavy, it was because they'd been ordered not to. Those two wore blue jeans, boots, and bulky down parkas, flanking the third on either side. The third one broke the mold, in a suit and overcoat and gloves.
Of the three, I recognized two, one of them immediately. One took a second to place, and it wasn't his appearance so much as the shared recognition that came from his eyes when they met mine. The last time I'd seen him, he'd worn a black watch cap and been flat on his back in a Citgo lot.
"Sean," I said, surprising myself that I could recall his name so easily, and he started, possibly just as stunned by my use of it. "How's the shoulder?"
Then Matthew Bowles, in his navy blue suit and black overcoat, stepped forward and looked me up and down, as if checking stock in a back room.
"Son of a bitch," Bowles said. "It really is you."
"It really is," I said.
Bowles smiled at me, and it was the same strained, thin-lipped smile I remembered him using when Scott Fowler and I had seen him last, three and a half years earlier. It was the smile he'd produced while listening to us explain everything we knew about Oxford. It was the same smile he'd used when he'd picked up the phone, and given the order to cut Oxford loose. It was the kind of smile smug in its assurance that he knew more than you, that all of your assumptions were incorrect, and that he'd be there to see it when you learned so yourself.
I hated that fucking smile.
I hated it all the more when Bowles said, "Take him."
Sean and the other one came forward, and I heard a crack, then a crash, from inside the house, and I didn't resist, just raised my arms to my sides. I thought they'd go for cuffs, but it turned out that was naive of me, and Sean eagerly set me straight with a punch to my left side, just beneath my ribs. It came hard and mean, but I'd like to think I could have shaken it off if I'd wanted to.
Then the other one got in on the act, and I went down on my knees on the porch. From behind me I could hear movement, voices, the perimeter team reaching us. Someone put a boot in, and then a second one followed the first, and another fist, or maybe a baton, and my vision flared and the familiar taste of my own blood came into my mouth, and then there was nothing else but the cold of the snow that had settled in drifts on my front porch.
CHAPTER
TWO
"Patriot," Bowles said. "How's that for a fucking irony?"
I used my tongue to probe the inside of my mouth. All of my teeth seemed to be intact and in place, though blood still leaked from what
felt like a good-sized tear on the inside of my right cheek. I spat what had gathered onto the floor, and discovered in the process that my lower lip was numb, and consequently it wasn't so much a spit as a dribble. The floor was wood, finished planks, rustic and shiny. My blood and saliva shone where it landed.
Matthew Bowles moved into the seat opposite where I'd been positioned at the table, unloading his laptop from its black nylon case and setting the machine beside him. He always had a laptop; it was his security blanket. It chimed as he switched it on, began to hum into the boot cycle.
I looked around the room. My vision was clear, and I was mildly surprised to discover that my contacts hadn't been knocked free in the beat down. The beat down, as much as I could recall of it, had been sincere, and I suspected there'd been a few extra free shots added as a bonus after I'd lost consciousness. Most of me ached, and I was pretty sure that the parts of me that didn't only declined to do so because, like my lower lip, they'd gone numb. That said, I didn't think anything had been broken. At least, not yet.
The room itself wasn't much to look at, ill furnished, walls finished with knotted pine planks and a floor that hadn't known care. Not much in the way of furniture, a couch with upholstery that had started as red and had since faded to a pinkish brown, a couple of wooden craftsman chairs, and the rickety table I was seated at now. Sconces were set irregularly on the wall, their dusty glass in the shape of large candle flames, the wattage of the bulbs weak. To my left were two small windows, curtains drawn, and through the gaps in the fabric I could see nothing beyond. Presumably it was night outside, though I supposed the windows could have been painted over. Opposite me, to the right of the couch, what was either the front or back door to the cabin.
Sitting on the couch were the two who'd been with Bowles when I'd answered the door, Sean and the other one. Both had their jackets off, and each wore a holster with a pistol at his hip, and against Sean's side of the couch had been propped a shotgun. Of them, Sean had the clean seniority, both in age and manner. When my eyes ran over them, the eyefucking I received from each in return was severe.
I continued to look around as Bowles continued to tap on his keyboard. A moth-eaten Indian rug hung on the wall over the fireplace, its colors faded. There were no tools for the fire, and I wondered if that was because they'd been moved, or because they'd simply never been. That was it for the decor.
Off to my right ran a short hallway, carpeted in a thick orange and brown shag, doors along either side. There was a kitchen down that way; I could make out the sounds of movement, the scrape of a pan on a stove. The scent of frying bacon reached me, mixing with the weaker scent of dust and disuse. Behind it all lurked the cloying musk of mold, probably from the carpet.
The cabin was, in its own way, oddly reminiscent of the one to which we'd taken Illya in Sunriver, and that made sense to me. Far easier to keep me in Montana, perhaps to move south, further from the Canadian border. Certainly deeper into the woods, to someplace secluded, and God knew there were plenty enough places like that to be found. In the steady throb of pain, I couldn't discern anything that felt like a narcotic trying to wash out of me. So I hadn't been drugged, which made it more likely that we hadn't left Whitefish that far behind.
"So," said Bowles, still focused on the laptop. "Are you? Are you a patriot?"
One of the doors on the hall opened, and two men emerged, both apparently acquired from the same supplier who had delivered the two on the couch. The variations were cosmetic. They were zipping closed their down parkas, and one already had a watch cap on his head. Both were armed, another shotgun and an AR-15. They passed the table without sparing me a glance, moving straight to Sean, who was getting to his feet. There was a brief exchange, kept to whispering so I couldn't overhear, and then Sean led them to the door. When he opened it, a puff of snow blew inside, driven by the icy air. He let the two out, closed the door once more, and resumed his seat.
Bowles, who had turned to watch, brought his attention back to me, explaining, "Perimeter."
I didn't say anything.
He slid the laptop aside and set an elbow on the table, leaning forward and resting his chin in his hand, grinning. He'd removed his overcoat and suit jacket, but the knot on his necktie was as tight and perfectly centered as ever. He was roughly my age, perhaps a year or two older, with straight black hair combed neatly back, and a pale face that was so smooth as to appear almost prepubescent. His eyes were so dark I could barely discern his pupils against the irises.
"Nothing to say for yourself?"
My hands were in my lap, and I brought them up slowly, felt pain stabbing through my fingers. They'd been bound with black Flexi-Cuffs, and whoever had done the binding had pulled them tighter than they needed to be; I could see the plastic biting into my skin, slowly killing my circulation. When my hands were at eye level, I showed them to him.
"You're kidding, right?" he asked.
I set my hands on the table, sighed, then said, "How about something to drink?" When I spoke, I could feel the dried blood at my mouth and lips crack.
He considered. "Water."
"That would be fine," I said.
Bowles half turned in his seat to the two on the couch, and the one who wasn't Sean got to his feet with a grunt. I watched him go, disappearing into the kitchen out of sight. There was murmured conversation, the words lost to the distance, but I was making out at least three voices.
So seven of them, then, including Bowles and his buddy Sean and the two on patrol. Maybe a couple more lurking someplace, but I doubted it; the cabin didn't look like it could hold many more people.
Still, seven, and if I was correct in assuming that Bowles had limited combat experience, that still left six of them who knew what they were about, and probably knew it quite well. If these were contractors-and Sean's presence all but confirmed that they were-they'd come with a pedigree, with years in the Army or Marines backing them up, maybe even some time with Special Forces. An awful lot for Alena to handle alone and in the cold and with a leg that, despite everything, still wasn't what it should be.
"So, where you been hiding?" Bowles asked me.
"Oh, you know," I said, turning my attention back to him. "Here and there."
"I'm guessing Eastern Europe. Maybe some time in Africa."
I shrugged.
He checked the laptop screen, clicking one of the keys a few times. "You have gotten around, though. Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Tokyo. Quito…huh. What were you doing in Ecuador, Atticus?"
"Someone's got to pick all those coffee beans."
Bowles smirked, nodded, tapped, and I wondered if he knew that, in fact, I'd never been to any of the four cities he'd just listed. If he did, this was gamesmanship, but to what end, I didn't know. If he didn't, I had no desire to correct him.
The one who wasn't Sean returned from the kitchen, setting a paper cup of water on the table by my hands. I took the cup in both hands, sipped at the water. It was so cold it hurt my teeth.
"Patriot," Bowles said for the third time, and I felt a flicker of annoyance. "You never answered my question. Are you a patriot, Atticus?"
"Probably not the way you or Sean, there, would define it."
On the couch, Sean's eyefuck dialed up to eleven.
"Don't you love your country?" Bowles asked.
I met his eyes with a look that, hopefully, told him just what I thought of people who asked that kind of question. It was a stupid question, it was a rhetorical question, it was the kind of question asked by people trying to establish their moral superiority. It was a question used to identify enemies, not to make friends. It was an all-or-nothing question, and there was never a right answer. It was a question that had nothing to do with place or history or current affairs or society. It was a question that asked only one thing: Are you with us or against us?-and us were always the people posing the question in the first place.
It was a question that, from the first time it had ever been uttered outside the Garden of E
den, was a justification to violence. Cain, I was sure, had asked Abel if he loved his country.
Bowles held the look, and his smile grew, and then he made a soft laugh and said, "Patriot," once more. Then he turned the laptop so I could see what he'd been looking at on its screen.
It was the Interpol file on Alena, except in it she was called Drama. The header dated the file from the winter of the last year, only four months earlier, identified the document as a law enforcement briefing-slash-update. According to the same header, it contained the latest intelligence for distribution on The Ten. It put "The Ten" in quotations.
With a gentle nudge, Bowles moved the laptop closer, so I could have access to the trackpad and keyboard. I scrolled down. There was a small file photograph, grainy and ill-focused. I'd seen the photo many times before, and it was now well out-of-date, almost five years old, taken when she'd been spotted in New York, trying to kill a man that I'd been trying to protect. I was only vaguely surprised that, since then, no one had managed to acquire a better one.
There were lines for her vitals: gender, height, weight, hair color, eye color. Country of origin. Aliases. Distinguishing marks. Characteristics. Methodology. Where the information was known, it had been filled in, which meant more lines about her had been left blank than had been completed, and much of what was there was incorrect. They'd gotten her gender right, that was about all.
I scanned the document, careful to limit the curiosity on my face to that alone and nothing else. There was a section on group affiliations, another on contacts, another for her known associates. Scant and theoretical biographical information followed, mostly surmising that she had been trained by the Soviets, specifically the GRU, prior to the end of the Cold War. Several pages were devoted to cataloguing her list of crimes, either those that had been definitively attributed to her, or those she was suspected of committing. The section ended with an analysis of the quality of this intelligence, and what could be reasonably concluded from it.
