The Beauty of Bucharest

by S. J. Varengo

  “Thank you, Nicole Porter,” she said. Nicole smiled at her. Smiling back, Ana continued, “And thank you, Oscar Meyer wiener.”

  “What?” Dan said.

  “I’ll explain later. Come on!”

  They ran out of the room, down the hallway to the still open door that led back to the basement. Dan went first, and Nicole pulled the door closed behind her.

  “There may be more guards running around in the service tunnels,” Nicole warned as they moved quickly down the flight of early 1900s stairs.

  “I only have three shots left,” Dan said.

  Nicole, who had managed to retrieve the duffle bag as they dashed out of Grigorescu’s office, reached into it and brought out the other P-30. “Here, take this,” she said. Dan held it in his right hand, shifting the .357 to his left.

  “Look at you, Two-Guns. By the way,” she said as they reached the bottom of the stairs, “that was pretty badass back there. You called her a very nasty name, though.”

  “Yeah, I know you’re not fond of the ‘c-word.’”

  “I really don’t care for it, no. But you know what?”

  Dan opened the door and they moved into the service tunnels. He knew that the passage with the ladder to the manhole was actually very close and turned in that direction. “What?” he asked.

  “She was a cunt.”

  Dan, who had not remained clean in the bloodbath; Dan, who was a week separated from knowing nothing about this world; Dan, who now held a gun in each of his hands as he scanned the horizon for men looking to kill them, broke into full-throated laughter. “Damn, I love you, woman!” he said.

  “I love you too, hero. You’ve saved my ass twice on this mission.”

  They were moving quickly but cautiously toward the entrance to the park, and so far had not encountered any resistance. “You know, this is a pretty fucked-up existence, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be ‘okay’ with it. But damn it, no one is going to hurt my wife if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Well, you may have more to say about it in the future. I don’t know that I’ll be able to bring you on every assignment, but I won’t be reluctant to do so if I can. You’re quite a bit less of a liability than Wally predicted you’d be.”

  They spotted the turn to the passage that would lead them to the park, but heard voices coming from behind them.

  “Think you’ve got one more shootout in you?” Nicole asked, raising her weapon.

  Dan held both guns up and nodded, poised to rush around the corner.

  “Wait!” Nicole said suddenly. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask but have been a little to busy to get around to.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How did you figure out there would be a second door, and how did you find it?”

  “Video game layout, as far as guessing it was there. There is always another way in.”

  “Okay, so how did you find it?”

  “Man-map, baby. One hundred percent man-map.”

  “Ana was right. You are a wiener.”

  They rushed into the first corridor they’d entered and ran to the ladder. They began to climb. As they looked up, they saw that the cover had already been pushed aside. Nicole hoped that didn’t indicate that there would be any authorities on the scene when they climbed out, but poking her head out of the manhole, she saw that was not the case. Behind them, the sound of the men was growing closer

  Dan followed Nicole out. He was still bare from the waist up after having surrendered his shirt to the nude captive, and after the exertion of the last hour or so, the cold hit his sweating body especially intensely, felt glorious for a moment, then painful. By the time he was out, Nicole had stuffed her gun back in the duffle, and held it open to Dan, who did the same. She began to zip it shut, then stopped. She could hear the voices at the base of the ladder now. She reached back into the bag and extracted one of the grenades.

  Dan’s eyes widened as she prepared to pull the pin. “Cole!”

  “Your mom taught you to close doors behind you. Didn’t she also teach you that to waste was sinful?” She yanked the pin and dropped the hand-held bomb in the manhole, quickly pulling the cover shut with her uninjured arm. A few seconds later, she heard a muffled explosion and felt the cover vibrate beneath her hand.

  “Look. Closed it behind me.”

  Dan wanted to be appalled at the use of the grenade, but part of him realized they were far past that stage now.

  “Mom would be so proud,” he said.

  He helped her use the gym bag as a makeshift sling, and they began to walk back toward their hotel, hearing the sirens only a few hundred yards away from them, as the emergency vehicles began to converge on the Palace. As Nicole had anticipated, they were dispatched to the main entrance (probably intercepting the fleeing young man that they’d allowed to escape), and not only was the building between them and the action, but they were already among the trees in the park, out of sight.

  Their condition when they arrived at the hotel caused a few raised eyebrows, but they ignored the faces of the desk clerk and concierge (who Nicole was now certain was an associate of the late Ileana Gabor). As they were waiting for the elevator to open, Nicole saw Razvan pull his cell phone from his pocket. The doors split and Dan walked on. In Romanian, Nicole said, “You can call her, Razvan, but I don’t expect Ileana will be taking your calls anymore.” She followed Dan onto the elevator, and then turned toward the ashen-faced concierge as the doors began to slide shut.

  “Don’t be here when we come back down, asshole.”

  16

  Headlines

  Things happened fairly quickly once they reached their room. Dan tended to Nicole’s bullet wound, both finding to their great relief that it had passed through her bicep. It hurt like hell, and she didn’t think she wanted to take another bullet any time soon, but she was positive that it hadn’t struck any bones, and they cleaned and bandaged it quickly.

  Dan then ran to the shower, grateful to wash the blood from his chest and arms. While he was getting clean, Nicole was dialing a number at the airport that was not listed in any directories, and two people were immediately bumped from their first-class seats to Munich, Germany in favor of Sylvester and Marion Daniels from Canton, Ohio, USA. This was a little perk that Clean Up Crew had in place in just about every major airport. It was expensive to maintain a contact in so many cities, but it was essential that Nicole and her fellow cleaners could get out of town fast, using their second set of credentials, once the mission was done.

  After she completed the call, she flicked on the TV and turned to local news, which was already showing the scene outside Crețulescu Palace, as flashing lights bathed the scene in blue and red, and the scrolling text across the bottom of the scene read “Missing Supermodel Found, Wounded but Alive. Tales of Human Trafficking In Downtown Bucharest. Bloody Scene at Crețulescu Palace…”

  Nicole waited until Dan came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. She knew that if she’d joined him in the shower, they would have missed their flight. She’d already hinted that Dan’s heroism had been a turn-on, and in spite of her damaged arm, a shared shower would have involved much more than getting clean.

  So for now, she settled for a quick kiss as she brushed past him and took her turn, letting the steaming hot water wash away hers as well as Ana’s blood, her own sweat, and the overall pall of the entire mission. Even as the dirt and blood ran down into the drain, Nicole was once again faced with the enigma that was her own life, her own soul. Because whenever she finished a mission, there was a definite sense of needing to be thoroughly scrubbed, both outside and in.

  She’d worked very hard to explain to Dan the importance of what the Clean Up Crew did, but she knew even as she, Wally, and Darlene had patiently walked him through all the rationalizations and moral tightrope-walking, it always helped her to hear it spelled out in such concise and persuasive verbiage as well. Because intellectually, she understood every
one of Dan’s reservations and objections, and still sometimes felt one creep into her mind as well.

  But ultimately, what she did was not really an intellectual exercise. For though she’d revealed to Dan as much as she felt safe telling, there was in fact so much more to the story. However, she didn’t think… no, she was certain that he wasn’t ready to plumb the depths of what truly made Nicole tick, what made doing what she did not only bearable, but also often pleasurable. And she definitely could not tell him the degree to which seeing him shoot Gabor point-blank had aroused her, how as she lay on the floor bleeding, her nipples had instantly hardened, the space between her legs had become warm and wet. He was not ready to know the secrets of her deep past that had not only led her to her chosen career path, but had caused her body to learn the response it had shown as Ileana Gabor’s brains had painted the carpet.

  Finally, he was certainly not ready to learn about the one man Nicole was still waiting for the opportunity to clean. For all she’d revealed to him, there was far more that he might never know.

  So she fought the urge to reach between her legs and give herself the relief she needed. She turned off the water and wrapped herself, unfulfilled, into a warm towel.

  They dressed and packed and vacated the room with an efficiency born out of the need to become former visitors before anyone in an official capacity even knew they’d been in Romania.

  When they arrived in the lobby, there was a scene of restrained chaos in play, as various staff talked nervously among themselves. Most did not realize the American woman’s proficiency in their language, so they talked perhaps a little longer than they should about the sudden and unexplained resignation of the concierge before stopping to politely address them.

  “Are you leaving us, Mr. and Mrs. Pruitt?”

  Dan smiled. “Yes, alas, it is time to return to the land of Laverne and Shirley.”

  “Well, if you see those brave ladies,” said the very young male desk clerk, “give them our blessings from Bucharest. Especially Miss Feeney.” He made an obnoxious feline noise, no doubt intended to express his ardor for Cindy Williams, who he clearly didn’t understand was now seventy years old.

  “Oh, yes,” said Nicole, signing the offered papers to finalize their bill, “you’re just her type.”

  The awkward clerk stood a little straighter and ran a hand through the unruly mop that was his hair. “Really? You think so?”

  “Without a doubt,” said Dan, sliding him a generous tip.

  By a bizarre twist of fate, the same cab driver who had brought them from the airport was on hand to drive them back. “Ah! My miliardarilor americani!” he said warmly, clearly recognizing them as he opened the trunk for them.

  “Yes,” said Dan, smiling as he remembered what Nicole had told him that meant. “Your American billionaires return to you at last. Can you take us on your magic route back to the airport?”

  “No magic, my friend. Just skill and daring!” To punctuate the point, he narrowly missed sideswiping a white Dacia and ignoring the other driver’s colorful language and universally recognizable hand gestures, darted into the lane, and sped to the airport. Dan doubled the tip he’d given him when they arrived, and much to his shock, the huge man poured himself from the cab and helped them remove their luggage from the trunk.

  As they walked to their terminal, Dan whispered to Nicole, “So you’re comfortable with the disposal of the duffel bag?”

  “Yes. It’s another plus to the somewhat less cutting edge features of many hotels in Bucharest. There is still a trash chute that leads straight to an incinerator. I took out the bullets and wrapped them in some nasty garbage in the can near the vending machine and disarmed the remaining grenades before putting them into another can. We’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Gotta tell ya, I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get to use all the grenades.”

  Nicole smiled, remembering his final look of shock when he realized she’d be using any of them at all. She patted him on the cheek. “Maybe next time, Killer.”

  “Yikes. I don’t think I’m comfortable with that nickname!” Dan protested.

  “Okay. We’ll think of a less aggressive one for you. Got any ideas?”

  “Mmm,” Dan pondered before adopting an impish grin. “How about ‘Two-Guns’?”

  Nicole laughed. “Perfect. But we’ll spell it with a ‘z,’ so if anyone asks, we can tell them it’s your rapper-name… ‘Two-Gunzzzzz.’” She verbally drew out the z sound to accentuate it.

  “You’re crazy,” Dan said.

  An hour later, they were in the sky. Once they’d been given permission to turn their electronic devices back on, Nicole looked at her phone. “J.J. texted. She’s home, and Tony’s due in tonight. We’ll be all together for Christmas.”

  “Tell them we can’t wait to see them,” Dan said, already starting to feel drowsy, as he did whenever he flew.

  “I will,” Nicole said. But before answering her daughter, she composed a text to Wally that read:

  All cleaned here. In the air.

  She then dashed off a quick response to J.J. A moment later, her phone vibrated again, and she saw that it was Wally messaging her back. The text consisted of a single word:

  Dan?

  She smiled. You won’t even believe it.

  With that, she laid the phone on the counter beside her spacious seat, and drew in a deep breath. As she slowly let it out, she visualized the last ashes of Bucharest floating away in a cool December breeze.

  Then she thought about Christmas shopping.

  Then she thought about the next time her phone vibrated with the words Clean up needed in… wherever.

  Then she looked at her sleeping husband and thought about what she was going to do to him as soon as the jet lag was behind them.

  Then, without wanting to, she thought about that long awaited cleaning, the cleaning of a man named Conrad Barker. And her fists clenched.

  About the Author

  S.J. Varengo is a married father of two adult children, living in Upstate New York. He has written a volume of short fiction (Welcome Home), in addition to the Cerah of Quadar series (A Dark Clock and Many Hidden Rooms). He has also co-written several installments of the SpyCo espionage thriller series with Craig A. Hart.