by Cap Daniels
The instant the name Anastasia escaped my lips, her pupils exploded, and she swallowed hard. I had guessed her name. I showed no reaction, and I awaited her answer.
She shook her head in extremely abbreviated movements. “What? What did you say?”
I asked again, “Why are you trying to kill me, Anastasia?”
She spoke with remarkable confidence. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have driven my knife into your back in water back there. I do not want you dead . . . not yet. I have questions before killing you. And do not call me that name again . . . not ever!”
I took a sip of my tea. “Well then, in that case, thank you for not killing me yet. And what shall I call you if I’m forbidden from using your name?”
With an icy look that only Russians seem to pull off, she said, “You will call me Anya, but never again Anastasia.”
She tilted her mug to her lips, and for the first time since our kiss, she closed her eyes. She seemed to embrace and savor the taste and feel of the hot tea on her tongue.
With my tongue looking like a grapefruit turned inside out, I couldn’t taste anything, but I enjoyed the warmth of the tea on my throat.
“How’s your foot?” I asked.
“Is painful. I would like aspirin, please.”
There was no way this woman was going to swallow any pill I handed her. She was far too smart for that. That was basic tradecraft—never ingest anything the enemy offers unless the enemy ingests it first. That’s precisely why she’d made sure the honey went into my tea as well as hers. She knew that if I’d poisoned the honey, I would never have allowed her to put it in my tea. The aspirin would be a very good chance to test my trust theory.
I reopened the med kit, poured two Motrin pills into the palm of my hand, and grabbed an unopened bottle of ibuprofen. I resealed the kit, sat the unopened bottle on the seat beside her, and offered the two white pills from my palm.
“Here, these are eight hundred milligram Motrin. They’ll help very quickly without making you drowsy. If you’d like, I have some morphine, but I remember you saying how much you dislike your mind being soft. The morphine will soften more than just your mind, but if you don’t want these, there’s a new bottle of ibuprofen. You may have whatever your little heart desires.”
My speech was a carefully structured psychological experiment. There was no way she was going to take the Motrin from my palm. She hadn’t seen the bottle, nor were there any markings on the pills to validate my claim that they were Motrin. She was clearly in extreme pain, no matter how hard she tried to hide it, but I couldn’t imagine her accepting the morphine. I expected her to take the sealed bottle of ibuprofen and swallow a handful of the two hundred milligram capsules.
She stared through my eyes and into my soul. “Give me your word you will not kill me while I sleep.”
Curiosity bounced off the inside of my skull like a rubber ball. I shook my head. “I’m not going to kill you. I have no reason to kill you.”
She swallowed another mouthful of tea. “I will have morphine, please. It hurts badly.”
My heart sank. I had overestimated her ability to deal with extreme pain. I knew she was in agony, but for her to ask for morphine that would render her completely defenseless was either the boldest display of trust imaginable, or it was just another step toward gaining my cooperation. At that point, I honestly didn’t care which. I was just glad she was willing to accept some relief from the pain.
I pulled a vial and syringe from the kit and drew out enough morphine to not only ease her pain, but to also ensure that she would have the best eight hours of sleep of her life. She turned slightly in the seat, offering me the delicate, smooth skin of her hip. I made the injection quickly but deeply enough for the drug to find its way into her tissue as fast as possible.
She didn’t flinch. She simply placed her palm against my cheek and said, “Spasibo.” She kissed me softly at the corner of my mouth, then pressed the two white pills into my palm. “I am sorry for tongue. You have Motrin.”
She was testing my Motrin claim. I quickly tossed the two horse pills into my mouth and swallowed them with my tea, demonstrating to her that the pills I’d offered were exactly what I said they were.
I held her delicate face in my hands and looked deeply into her hypnotic blue-gray eyes. “There will be things I can never tell you, but I will never lie to you, Anya . . . never.”
“Take me to bed, Chase. For now, I will trust you. But only for now.”
I lifted her into my arms and carried her down the companionway and into my berth. I watched as she closed her eyes. I’ll never forget how she looked and how I longed for both of us to have normal lives. I wondered what it might be like if she were a school teacher and I was a banker, but no such reality would ever exist for us. We were assassins and vagabonds.
I returned to the cockpit and began searching my chart for someplace to anchor. I was too tired to stay at the helm and watch for other boats all night. I needed to sleep, and I could only sleep when we were at anchor. I found a small island, not much more than a rock in the middle of the ocean. It was less than an hour away, so I set my course. I hoped there would be some shallow water on its leeward side where we could drop the hook for a few hours until I was refreshed enough to sail on.
Thankfully, I found eleven feet of water in a small, protected cove on the northeast side of the island that turned out to be larger than it looked on the chart. I set the anchor and extinguished every light on the boat, although I was supposed to burn the anchor light at the top of the mast. I didn’t want any attention. We were running, and we were hiding, neither of which was easy to do in a slow, lumbering sailboat. I stood in the doorway of my berth for several minutes, watching her sleep. I was mesmerized by her apparent innocence and almost childlike beauty as she lay there, breathing deeply, and making soft, gentle sleeping sounds. I wanted so badly to lie behind her and hold her in my arms, but instead, I chose to sleep in the main salon. It wasn’t as comfortable as my berth, but it was adequate, and most importantly, I didn’t disturb her much needed sleep.
When I awoke, I started a pot of coffee, scrambled some eggs, and cut up a melon that was only a day or two from being fish food. I stood again in the doorway to my berth and listened to the sounds of her breathing. I couldn’t believe that this woman, this breathtaking woman, was asleep in my bed, on my boat, in the middle of the Caribbean. In spite of my efforts to remain silent, I must’ve made a sound that she heard, or perhaps sensed. She opened her eyes, looked up at me, and smiled. I didn’t expect her to smile. It was a simple gesture that made my heart sing with delight. I expected her to be cold, and perhaps even cruel when she awoke, but thankfully, I was wrong.
In a raspy, but soft voice, she said, “Dobroye utro.”
“Good morning to you, too, Anya. How do you feel?”
“Am okay,” she breathed. “Thank you for not killing me in sleep.”
“You’re welcome. I made breakfast. How do you take your coffee?”
She lifted her head from the pillow and looked into the galley. “You cook and sew.” She pointed toward her bandaged foot. “How is it you have no wife?”
“I’m terrible in bed. That must be it.”
Before she could respond, I headed back to the galley to make a plate for each of us. I chuckled quietly as I heard her fumbling with the head. “It’s not like a regular toilet,” I said. “You have to flip the black switch to the left, then pump the handle three times. That will fill the bowl. Then, flip the switch back to the right and pump again. That will empty it.”
Based on the absence of cursing in either Russian or English, I assumed she had overcome the mysteries of the marine head.
“Life on a boat is not like life ashore,” I said. “It takes some getting used to.”
She arrived in the galley wearing my shirt, and her long hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail. She picked a piece of melon from a bowl and placed it on her tongue. I couldn’t tell if she was tr
ying to be seductive or if she just really liked melon. I placed our plates on the table and poured two cups of coffee. We ate in silence. I’m not sure that either of us knew what to say. There we were, two assassins from two different worlds, having breakfast together, miles from anywhere. I hoped it was the first of many breakfasts we would share, but at that moment, neither of us knew what lay ahead.
“How’s the foot?” I asked.
“It hurts,” she said, “but is better. I cannot believe you shot me.”
“You were trying to kill me,” I reminded her. “I had to do something to get you off my back and get some air in my lungs.”
She scoffed, “I told you. If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead. I let you live so we could talk . . . and maybe so you would make breakfast.”
We laughed perhaps a little uncomfortably. I suppose that was the only thing that either of us knew to do at that moment. We spoke very little while we ate, but we caught each other staring too many times to count. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but my mind was exploding with a billion questions and I had no idea how to proceed.
I’d never really been trained to flip a foreign operative, but I had been trained to resist when one tried to flip me. Every time I looked at her, I feared more and more that I would never be able to resist her.
When we finished breakfast, she gathered the plates, silverware, and mugs, and twisted her body past me toward the galley sink. Suddenly, it felt as if we were playing house.
“I’ll take care of those. You sit and rest your foot.”
She looked at me with that stern look of hers and demanded, “You sit. I will do this. You cook. I clean.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I pulled my coffee mug back from her hand. “But I want another cup of coffee.”
She continued the stern stare as I poured another cup and gestured the pot toward her, offering her another cup. She turned away without a response. I climbed partially up the stairs toward the cockpit and sat in the companionway while she cleaned the dishes. Only twelve hours before, she and I had taken turns trying to kill each other, and now she was washing my dishes aboard my boat while wearing one of my shirts.
What a strange existence, this cloak-and-dagger life.
When she finished, she dried her hands on the small towel and limped toward me. She seemed to disapprove of me sitting in the companionway, or perhaps she didn’t like being watched. As she drew nearer, I reached for her in the hope of holding her in my arms, if only for a moment, before our peaceful morning turned into whatever the day was to become. But to my astonishment and great disappointment, she forcefully pushed my hands away and stepped back.
“Do not do that!” she scolded.
“I’m sorry. I only wanted to touch you. I didn’t mean to—”
She interrupted before I could finish stumbling through my apology. “I like how you touch me, but not here. Not in doorway. Doorway is for going or coming. Nothing more.”
I had a great deal to learn about the world, but I’d never met anyone who felt so strongly about doorways. My analytical mind tore into that one like a bulldog into a T-bone. I couldn’t wrap my head around why she would be so insistent on not hugging me in the companionway. I tucked that one away with a plan to explore it more thoroughly later.
I finished the last of my coffee and stepped down into the galley to wash my mug. Before I reached the sink, she stepped in front of me, reached up, and slid her hands around my neck. I carelessly let my mug fall into the sink as I embraced her, timidly at first, but soon I was holding her tightly against my body and listening to her breathe. She loosened her embrace, then she pulled slightly away. Just as she had done in the lagoon the night before, she tilted her head and seductively licked her lips. When our lips met, the world disappeared. We could’ve been on top of the Eiffel Tower or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and I wouldn’t have known the difference. The feeling of her lips on mine, and our bodies pressed together, made me forget everything in the world except how she felt.
Just when I thought our kiss was going to become something more, she sighed and opened her eyes. “I think we should go.”
She was correct. We definitely should’ve gone, but all I wanted to do was continue with what was happening between us. I hoped there would be plenty of time for that later.
“You’re right, but this is a lot more fun,” I said, then I turned and climbed into the cockpit.
There was almost no wind where we were anchored, but I could see ripples on the water around both ends of the small island. That meant the wind was definitely blowing outside the lee of the rock under which I had chosen to hide. I started the engine, then methodically eased the boat forward and engaged the windlass to haul the anchor from the sandy bottom. The anchor gave way and began to rise, so I pulled the transmission into reverse, locked the wheel, and bounded up on deck to clean the anchor as it came aboard. As it turned out, there was no reason to clean it. The sandy bottom had left no residue on the anchor, so I kept it slowly ascending until it was seated firmly in its rest.
What I saw when I turned back toward the cockpit stopped my heart. Anya was standing at the helm with my pistol in one hand and my satellite phone in the other. I was terrified. She had that icy Russian look on her face again. I had yet to learn what that face meant, but so far, it was the one thing about her I hated.
She walked up on deck toward me, never taking her eyes from mine. Her graceful gait had been temporarily replaced by an obviously painful limp. It was clear that she was about to do one of two things. She was either going to call whoever she worked for with my sat-phone, then hold me at gunpoint until they arrived to either capture or kill me, or she was going to kill me first and then make the call. I couldn’t decide which fate I preferred.
The boat was still idling in reverse and making less than one knot. If I could delay her call for only thirty more seconds, Aegis would be in the wind, and we would start to turn and even roll in the gentle waves. Hopefully, her injured foot would make it impossible for her to stand on a rolling deck. I desperately needed time to speed up. I needed her to stumble. I could close the ten feet that separated us in less than three strides, but I would never survive the first stride if she were solidly on her feet. What she did next was the last thing I would’ve ever expected.
She turned gracefully and tossed the sat-phone through the air and over the starboard side. As the phone reached its zenith and began to fall toward the water, I heard the report of the pistol as she squeezed off one round.
The muzzle velocity on that particular pistol is well over the speed of sound, so if she had fired at me, I would’ve been dead before the sound reached my ears. I would’ve never heard the shot that killed me. Instead of a hollow-point round tearing through my chest, it tore through the plastic case of the falling sat-phone, tearing the phone into tiny pieces of electronics and plastic.
I watched the pieces rain down into the water before I cast my gaze back to her. In the time it had taken for me to redirect my gaze from the destroyed phone to her face, she had fieldstripped the pistol into two pieces. She held the slide in her right hand and the frame in her left. Still staring through me like a stalking cat, she tossed the slide toward me in a gentle arc. Instinctively, I caught the slide and stood mesmerized.
Before I could ask what was happening, she said, “I can shoot. I choose mostly not to shoot. We should talk now.”
25
Monkey’s Ear
I wiped the sweat from my brow and followed her back to the cockpit. I hoisted the sails and got us underway, cruising at just over seven knots in the fresh morning breeze. When I joined Anya on the seat, she had removed the bandage from her foot and was inspecting the wound.
“It doesn’t look infected,” I said, “but I have some antibiotics if you’d like to take them.”
She just smiled, so I took that to mean, “Thank you.”
I broke out the med kit again and handed her a yellow bottle of penicillin.
&nb
sp; Instead of taking the bottle from my hand, she wrapped both of her hands around mine. “Thank you, Chase. You will give me one every day, yes?”
I wanted to believe that her request meant she was going to stay with me aboard Aegis for at least several more days, but I feared that it meant she was either going to leave soon and didn’t want to take my only bottle of antibiotics, or she was simply trying to make me believe that she was staying.
I was tired of second-guessing every word she spoke and every action she made. I wanted so badly to trust her. I’d told her that I wouldn’t lie to her, but she hadn’t made the same promise to me. With that in mind, I went fishing—fishing for a promise of honesty.
“Listen, Anya. This whole situation is bizarre to me. Perhaps you’re better at this than I am, but I’m still confused. I want to reassure you that I have no intention of lying to you about anything. I will honestly tell you everything that you want to know as long as it doesn’t violate the vow I made to my country. I will not desert my country, but I also will not lie to you. If I can’t tell you the truth, I simply won’t answer your question. That’s fair. Don’t you think?”
“It is fair. You want same, yes?”
I agreed.
Her smile dissolved into a thin, sharp line. “If I promise to tell only truth, but I have plan to lie, even my promise would be lie. So, you cannot know if I am telling truth or lie. You know I am smarter than you. More than smart. I have been doing this longer. That means I have experience you do not have. You have some skills. Very good stamina, strong, and smart. And almost smart enough to leave Cuba with not being followed.”
Ouch.
That stung a little, but she was right. I didn’t have her skill set, her experience, nor her amazing ability to track someone for thousands of miles through the ocean without being detected.
She looked at me with a stare that could cut steel. Her eyes were the most unique blue-gray color I’d ever seen. They could appear as cold as ice one moment and as warm and welcoming as the sky the next. Something about her eyes was so familiar and yet so new. Everything about her was a study in extreme dichotomy. She was physically striking, but also deadly. She was intensely strong, but could also be incredibly gentle and delicate. She was, without question, the most uniquely fascinating person imaginable. I feared her, adored her, and loved her all at the same time. It was impossible to separate the three emotions. They were intertwined like the silken strands of a spider’s deadly web.
