Bad Russian 02.04 ivy

by May Ball, Alice

  Again she listens.

  “No. Not my apartment. No, I…”

  The Director hung up. I can see it. I think Saskia knows what it means.

  She looks back up into my face.

  Gently I ask her, “You still trust the Director?”

  Her face is pale and hollow as she shakes her head.

  “She insisted on meeting at your apartment?”

  She nods. “She said that on my home territory, I would have all of the advantage.”

  “You believe her?”

  Her head shakes again. “She said she’s on her way there now, and she’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “How long would it take to drive straight there from the State Department Annex?”

  “Five minutes in heavy traffic. It really is just a walk.”

  “You must live in a nice part of town.”

  “Yeah. It’s not because of the great salary. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  I like her saying that. It means that she sees us working in co-operation. As a team. That she sees that we are in this thing together. Even better, she is looking at the future and seeing us together.

  Maybe only an hour or two into the future, but that is still important. It means that she’s not thinking about how to get away. Trust is the most important asset in the intelligence game. You have to grow it from a tiny seed. You have to tend it carefully.

  Sometimes you have to grow it very fast. Not this fast, I have to admit. Even with my skills, building real trust this quickly is a challenge.

  I tell her, “We’ll go.” Her eyes widen and light up with alarm. “Don’t worry.” I take her hand. She relaxes. “Everything will be fine. You’ve got me looking after you.” She smiles. “But still, we’ll give the Director forty minutes or so. Maybe an hour.”

  She blinks as she nods.

  She wants to trust me, and, incredibly, she’s beginning to. It means we can have an extraordinary bond.

  “I’ll get us out of the glare of these lights. Before we go, though, I have to give your traitor his medicine.”

  I hop out and around to the back of the van.

  There’s no sound from inside the box as I pop the rear door up. When I open the front of the box, the captive bursts out. He leaps at me, pushing with all the force he can summon. I move to the side. He falls, in a few awkward stages, out of the van all the way to the ground. That’s going to mess up his nice suit.

  He scrambles to his feet. I stand square in front of him as he swings a wide roundhouse punch at me. I jam my forearm up to block him and deflect his arm.

  Naturally, that punch was supposed to be a distraction. He’s got a thin blade of some sort. He turns his weight to stab toward my kidney. Not a bad plan for an attack, in theory. His execution is weak, though. I catch his wrist and use his momentum to pull his hand past me and down. Then I haul his hand up and back as I press down against his neck with my forearm.

  When I bend back his wrist, the blade falls. It’s a spy-shop type of a knife, shaped like a credit card, but it’s actually a folding blade. Effective in the right hands, I expect. He did well to keep it concealed.

  Using his arm as a lever, I push his face down toward the ground.

  As I ask him, “Got any other tricks you’d like to try?” I catch sight of Saskia inside the van. Her eyes are wide and her face is shining.

  Chapter Ten

  Her

  I didn’t know a man could make me feel this way. This feels like it has been the biggest fifteen minutes of my life.

  When Henry, my manager answered the call, he sounded concerned. So did the Director. Or at least, she did at first. “You must be shaken. I know this must all be worrying for you.” Her voice was soft. Maternal. “Come on in, Saskia. We’ll get this all figured out, and we’ll keep you safe.”

  She called me ‘Ms Keene’ before. Not ‘Saskia.’

  Then, when I told her I would meet her somewhere public, she told me quickly, “We’ll come to your apartment. Are you on the way there now?” Then she corrected herself, “I will. I’ll come to you, and I’ll come alone. Right away, okay, Saskia? Twenty minutes. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  She hung up before I had a chance to say anything.

  And that’s when I knew for certain.

  She sounded genuine. There was concern and reassurance in her voice. And it was like all of my instinct and intuition, all the subtle senses that I drowned out and ignored all my life, suddenly they were all clear. I knew that I should absolutely not trust her.

  Was it because she said too much, or because she was clearly acting a part? I couldn’t say. But when she cut off the call before she had to, she lost any chance she had to trace the location.

  Then, telling me that I didn’t need to be afraid, it was like I heard the low echo of a distant bell.

  I don’t want to believe it but I know without a doubt that my instinct with her is right.

  I had no time to think. Straight after that, Arkady went to the back of the van to dose the Deputy Secretary. When he opened the box, the Deputy Secretary exploded out at him. He was a captive. Like a caged animal. He fought for his freedom with everything he had. It’s understandable.

  What stopped my breath was watching Arkady. It was like he was half bullfighter, half ballet dancer. He seemed to move in slow motion. On his face was only interest and amusement. Until the end.

  I hate violence in any form and at any time but watching him overpower Richard Drinkwater, it was like I was in a dream. He was so much in command. So graceful. The echoes of how it stirred me up inside still jangle through me. I have shudders in my arms and my chest. All up and down my thighs.

  I’m breathing hard. Calmly, slowly, as he holds the man’s face to the pavement, he draws the syringe from his pocket. For just a flash, his eyes a shine with cruel satisfaction as he rams the needle into the back of the Deputy Secretary’s neck. He holds his victim still as he falls limp.

  Then Arcady lifts him and drops him like a garbage bag back into the box. He shuts the cage and this time he locks it before he closes and locks the box.

  When he slides back into the driver’s seat, he’s relaxed like nothing at all happened. His eyes find me in the mirror.

  “Are you okay, Saskia?” His voice is so strong and reassuring, it wraps around me like a blanket.

  “Can I come and sit up front with you?”

  His eyes make a sad tilt. Playfully. He has the most expressive eyes, I realize now.

  “That’s the downside of using a taxicab for camouflage.” He says, “It would be out of character for you to sit up front with the driver.”

  “You’re right. Concerned citizens might call the police.”

  His eyes twinkle. “We really don’t want that.”

  I feel an edge in the playfulness now.

  My throat is dry.

  He says, “Are you hungry? Would you like to get something to eat or to drink while we wait the forty minutes or so?”

  I nod. “Just a coffee.”

  “Not hungry?”

  He knows that I’m too jumpy to eat. I know he does.

  After starting the engine, he turns to look at me. I’m starting to be afraid of the power in his dark eyes. I remember a teacher telling me once that a person can only have the power that you give them.

  I’m afraid of him and I like it. I want to give him all of the power.

  He hasn’t driven off and he’s still looking at me.

  He blinks, “You know you’re going to have to tell me.”

  “What?”

  “Where you live.”

  “Oh!”

  I give him directions. On the way he stops at a nice mom and pop diner. Before we get out of the van, I ask him if our passenger is going to be okay. He holds my eyes with his at that. It takes a moment, but I realize what it was got his attention. When I said ‘our.’

  It means something. I know.

  He nods. “He’ll be fine.” and he stand
s by the door of the van to help me out. A real old-school gentleman. He holds the door to the little diner open for me, too.

  We don’t talk over coffee. He watches me. I kind of don’t mind. And I kind of do.

  All the conversation is when I ask him, “Arkady what?”

  He studies me for a moment. “Arkady Pasternak.”

  I feel privileged that he told me.

  It’s just a few blocks drive to Rhianna’s apartment. On the way, a firetruck speeds past us. I get a deep sense of unease, like this is a scene I’ve watched play out in too many movies.

  As soon as we turn into the street, I tell him, “Stop.”

  The apartment is three blocks away. I can’t see clearly enough to pick out the windows for sure. I just know they’re the ones with firetrucks underneath and the smoke billowing out.

  Arkady makes the next turn and parks in the middle of a dark street. He hands me a gun, a small automatic. I’m startled, but I take it. He looks in my eyes as he presses a key fob for the van into my hand.

  “I won’t be long.”

  I nod. He gets out and I lock the doors as I watch him walk away. Hunched in the back of the cab, I shiver.

  Chapter Eleven

  Him

  All I want now is to get her back to the safe house. First I need to make sure that she really is going to be safe. I want to know that the State Department or the CIA or whoever organized this are out of the way.

  I get talking to the fire chief. Tell him I’m a neighbor. He’s got a services background. That makes it straightforward and easy for me and him to bond. I ask about casualties. He shakes his head no. I see that it’s a relief for him.

  I ask him, “Seat of the fire in the kitchen?” He shakes his head. “No. That’s pretty strange.”

  I tell him I know the girl who lives there. I say that I’m an investigator. It’s a risky play, I know, but I sense that we’re getting on well enough. He won’t ask what kind of an investigator. He knows what I want. He says, “We never met,” before he gives me a nod and turns his head to look away. We understand each other.

  Her apartment is on the third floor. I know that from the smoke. The door to the building isn’t shut. I slip by the firefighters. The cops haven’t even arrived yet. I don’t know her apartment number, but I figure I’m going to be able to find it without any trouble.

  The door is charred. Smoke still drifts out into the hallway. The carbon in the air makes me choke. I have to be quick here. Inside, the pattern of the soot and char marks show that a big blaze spread fast from the entrance. It burned hot through most of the apartment.

  Now the smoke is drifting and just starting to clear. When he comes back up, the fire chief is going to see that right away, too.

  He may not know the smell, though. The chemical odor like a thin, oily perfume is definitely one I recognize. We used it in the FSB to make fires spread, fast and hot. I take a quick look through the apartment. There’s not much here to be salvaged. I’m about to leave when I spot the chain that I remember her wearing. It’s hanging on a door handle.

  On the way back to the van, I quietly tell the fire chief the combination of acetone and alcohol that I smelled in the apartment. His eyes widen. I raise my hand.

  “We never met,” I tell him.

  He shakes my hand, “Never saw you in my life.”

  I hurry back to Saskia. She’s pale, huddled deep in the corner of the van. She’s holding on to the gun. If it comforts her, she can keep it.

  I’m determined not to let her see how anxious I am to get her back to the safe house. For safety, I take a number of detours on the way.

  I try to keep some small talk going to keep her spirits up as we drive, but it’s not something I can easily do. I never understood it. When there’s something to talk about, I’ll talk. When there isn’t, I don’t. I do all that I can, but I don’t think I’ve distracted her.

  Her voice is small from the back of the van. “It wasn’t some freak accident, was it?”

  I shake my head. “No. The fire was started deliberately.”

  “If I’d been inside…”

  “You would have been very lucky to get out.”

  I know that it’s a hard shock for her. She’s been betrayed by her Director.

  All she says is, “Why?”

  “You saw something you shouldn’t have.”

  “You told me that he’s a traitor.”

  “It’s true. He’s the reason I’m here. He’s been spying for the Chinese.”

  “Why would the State Department want to shut me up about that?”

  “No security service ever wants word to get out that they’ve been penetrated.” Although that’s certainly true, I know of another possible explanation.

  All of the way on the drive to the safe house, I can feel how tense she is, wound up tight in the corner of the back of the van.

  The safe house has a parking space inside. With the garage door shut, I take her into the kitchen. When I take the gun from her, she’s surprised. She obviously forgot that she was holding it.

  “There’s food.” I tell her, “Some, anyway. Drinks, I’m sure. Help yourself. I’m going to settle our guest.”

  “Do you have a room made up for him?”

  “There’s always a room ready in the basement for guests like him.”

  “What about guests like me?”

  “There aren’t any guests like you.”

  I pull Saskia close and hold her. I feel her shake. A melody of trembles. She keeps herself strong. I adore that.

  The warm smell of her hair inflames me. I tell her quietly, “You’ve had some big shocks.” Her life is never going to be the same way again. Not in any way. “I’m here to protect you.”

  “Is it going to be all right, Arkady?”

  Her voice is small. Fearful. I hold her to look into her face.

  “Yes, Saskia. Everything is going to be all right. Better than all right. I will keep you safe. It’s all going to be perfect.”

  I pull her closer. Her body awakens, heats up like she’s been switched on. She stretches up, and her breasts, her hips mold onto me. Her lips are near to mine. I can’t resist the taste of her breath. My mouth closes on hers, and she flows against me like a sea.

  Chapter Twelve

  Him

  She hugs tight to me. The nearness of her, the scent inflames me. It’s hard for me to control myself with her. I know that I have to if everything is going to be perfect. And it is. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I will. Whatever it takes. I will make certain that she is safe, and that she will be completely ready to be mine forever.

  I have to rip myself away from her to get the Deputy Secretary into the basement room. I would rather he was still sedated when I handle him. Right now, I’m too pumped and too much focused on Saskia.