Handsome Rob Assassin

by Blaze Ward

  About as dangerous as the first time he’d ever laid eyes on her.

  Alicia smiled and left without saying a word, so apparently there had been a briefing while he was in the shower. Rob took his glass and piled all the pillows up on the bed.

  He checked that Alicia’s snooper-killer device was active on the side table and not showing any bugs or cameras transmitting.

  Mac slid over and curled up against him, grabbing his glass and taking a sip.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Everyone handled stress differently.

  “I will be,” she said as she leaned herself against him.

  Rob put one arm around her and squeezed. Didn’t feel like a night to take her off-line with multiple orgasms, so he just waited for her to have words.

  “Is it always like this?” she asked.

  “The violence or the aftermath?” he asked, trying to split the Gordian knot here before he got in over his head. Mac did that to him.

  “All of it,” she said. “How do you deal?”

  “I’m not a complete sociopath, nor a narcissist,” he offered quietly. “But both show up in my psych profile as tendencies I’m told. It helps me just drop everything and move on.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Those punks don’t even rate names,” Rob said. “Let alone guilt or worry. They had it coming, because any one of them could have been home with the wife or girlfriend tonight instead of looking for victims.”

  “Handsome Rob, knight errant?” she actually grinned a little now.

  “If I didn’t think I was making the galaxy a better place, I wouldn’t be able to do this job,” he grimaced now. “At some point, there will be a high-powered rifle with a telescopic, gyro-stabilized, ballistic computer attached, my eyeball on the lens, and a dead person walking at the other end. I’ve been able to destroy a number of organizations before now, but others did all of the killing when I was around.”

  “Not how I was raised,” Mac growled quietly.

  “Understood, but something you’ll have to deal with from time to time as an agent,” Rob smiled. “And constantly, if you decide you want to become an assassin someday. We’re mean bastards.”

  “I’ve noticed,” she chuckled now, pressed up against him as if for warmth.

  “So what do you need?” Rob asked.

  “Maybe my own glass and the lights low as I meditate,” Mac offered. “Will I keep you awake?”

  “No, but I probably will wake up when you finally come to bed and snuggle up against me.”

  She nodded and Rob drank about half his glass, letting that fantastic caramelized smoke flavor fill him.

  Triple lives. We all lead them in the Service.

  Was it going to be necessary for him to create a fourth, just him and Mac?

  He’d burn that bridge when he got there.

  13

  Rob woke early and worked out, both in the suite with yoga and then downstairs, swimming laps as the sun was just threatening to wake everybody else up.

  A resort like this never actually slept. Various restaurants went off duty for a while to clean and let the crew sleep, but someplace else was always in motion. Rob shared the lift back up to the room with a group that had been out dancing all night from the smell of sweat and adrenaline in the air. He tried not to drip on any of them.

  Now breakfast. The most dangerous meal of the day, because that was when nobody tended to bother him and Rob could get some thinky thoughts done. Lunches tended to be working. Dinners were generally a seduction of some kind: emotional, social, moral, or literal. Sometimes more than one.

  Coffee. Lots of it. He’d asked and since he was the only customer right now, the waitress had filled a carafe and just left it on the table for him. Made her job easier and Rob had already slipped her fifty Cedis as a pre-tip.

  Always be nice to the total strangers who you might never see again. Keeps you from turning into an asshole, and they might become contacts at some point if you do want to approach them about things they see.

  Wait staff saw everything. Heard most of it. Generally only gossiped within their own circles, but…

  The resort had newspapers delivered from the mainland. It was a quaint, archaic touch, when Rob was used to his handheld, even the sanitized one he had on this mission instead of the upgraded monster Nigel had let him use.

  Rob was reading the political news, but mostly looking to see if he’d made some sort of local crime report on page D-36 or something. He doubted it.

  If the Syndicates like Bergier that owned this place didn’t want honest cops, they sure as hell weren’t interested in aggressive newsies digging. Plus, you don’t want to possibly scare off high rollers with suggestions that they might be less than perfectly safe.

  We can’t help those weirdoes from Aquitaine that might have a violence fetish, Sri.

  Rob grinned. Nothing whatsoever about five men getting beaten up by a victim. Maybe he should leak it himself, just to see how fast an editor might spike such a sensational story.

  A shadow approached. Rob was tracking everyone around him, few as they were, and it wasn’t his waitress.

  Rob looked up as the man stopped a respectful distance away. Generally tall and lean, with hands that didn’t look soft enough to be a middleman. His suit was a step up from the simple slacks and reasonable dress shirt Rob was wearing this morning, suggesting someone on the way to a meeting with his broker.

  Handsome Rob would have worn a different tie, more subdued rather than that riot of red and purple, if he was going to meet the bankers for a loan.

  Rob put on his helpful but slightly dim smile.

  “Sri?”

  The man gestured expansively at the room, seventy tables currently empty save this one.

  “Rather than both of us eat alone, I wondered if you might welcome some company this morning,” the stranger said.

  His accent suggested Corynthe, rather than Salonnia, but nobody was actually born on this planet.

  We’re all from somewhere else, with our own sad stories to tell.

  But Rob was on a mission. Mac’s mission, but she needed a rapid assault option, because in a few days someone was going to arrive with news from Ramsey and the locals would tighten up their security and start paying attention to tourists coming in.

  Looking for cops, not spies, but looking nonetheless. Best to be part of the background by then.

  Rob smiled vacuously and gestured the man to join him.

  The waitress materialized with a fresh carafe of coffee and menus as soon as the gentleman’s butt hit the chair, but he knew they’d been paying attention. Rob hadn’t even ordered breakfast yet, working his way through coffee and news first.

  “Rob Obregon,” Handsome introduced himself, holding out a hand.

  The stranger reached across the table to shake.

  “Eugen Tanaka,” he said, pronouncing it “OY-gen” like they did in Corynthe.

  They settled and ordered food. Rob folded up the newspaper and concentrated on his new friend.

  White Russian genotype with Japanese elements, to use the ancient classifications still around. It was there in the way the eyes had just a hint of a fold at the corner, and how the face seemed all flat planes welded together and only lightly sanded afterwards. Most common in the pirate kingdom, but not unheard of elsewhere.

  The accent was a giveaway.

  “What brings you to Shravishtha Prime, Sri Obregon?” Tanaka asked, pouring himself coffee.

  “Oh, the mistress was tired of Anameleck Prime,” Rob lied facilely, citing the biggest, loudest, and craziest planet in Aquitaine, as long as you were off of a naval reservation and its immediate environs. “Salonnia seemed to offer the most interesting new sights, and with everyone at peace now, this looked like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, unless she wanted to sneak across some border quietly.”

  Rob kept his eyes big and innocent, like a dumb boyfriend, watching the other man’s hands as he peppered the co
nversation with certain keywords that wouldn’t mean much to a law abiding citizen, but might trigger emotional associations in a smuggler.

  Most people don’t pay attention to their hands, except poker players. Tanaka wasn’t into cards, it seemed. Rob kept that in mind.

  “Quietly,” Tanaka noted dryly, hitting on the wrong word in that meaningful salad. “I’m given to understand from rumors circulating that you had a little excitement last night.”

  He just dangled it out there, all innocent and stuff, like the little glowy thing on the bitey end of an anglerfish.

  Rob shrugged. It had been just over nine hours ago. But he wasn’t supposed to be smart enough to realize that.

  “The mistress wanted to walk around after dinner, see?” Rob let his voice get a little defensive. Punk without the backbone to stand up to his meal ticket when she was about to do something dangerous and stupid. At least for normal tourists. “So we walked. Couple of local punk kids got a little mouthy.”

  Rob left it at that. A man not given to braggadocio, as it were.

  “Really?” Tanaka smiled. “I heard there were five of them. With knives. And you took them all out by yourself with fists and a stun pistol.”

  Again, Rob shrugged, screwing his face and his shoulders a little sideways as if embarrassed. Jorge’s method acting classes made it relatively easy. At least for a guy like Rob.

  You had to start out by not really liking people. Conning them or seducing them got a lot easier at that point.

  “I’ve studied close combat martial forms for a long time,” Rob offered. “Keeps you in shape even better than dancing. The stunner was just a little something I picked up on Ladaux. Nobody would have ever known about it otherwise.”

  “So you snuck it past customs?” Tanaka seemed taken a little aback, but he shouldn’t have been.

  Above a certain financial level, you entered a whole other legal system that was generally designed to protect you from the little people. As one wag had once said, What was the use of being rich if you had to obey the same laws as poor people?

  Rob made an obvious point of looking over both shoulders, but nobody was awake this early except him, Tanaka, and the staff.

  “Not that hard to do,” Rob murmured. “Got some friends who set it up in our gear.”

  He would need to find a way to innocently discover later and raise a fuss when someone snuck into their room. Probably when Alicia joined them for dinner for exactly that opening. For now, Rob had moved a few things into the hotel safe, and left the really good stuff back at the ship, which would sound a monster alarm nobody could turn off until Alicia got there.

  “I see,” Tanaka said.

  Food arrived quickly, since the cooks had nobody else to entertain this early. And they might have been showing off a little, but that was why Rob bribed them early.

  Good food. Good service. Watchful eyes if he wanted to recruit them later.

  They ate in companionable silence. Rob hadn’t gone heavy today, because he was expecting another day lounging around the pool. Tanaka would need time to dig, if he was representing Lonelyman around here.

  Rob rated it fifty/fifty at this point. Not many people would have the connections and need to talk to the cops under the table.

  Or an interest in illicit arms.

  More coffee in a fresh carafe as the plates got cheerfully cleared. One other person had come into the restaurant now, and gotten seated WAY over there in someone else’s section.

  Rob figured the place was about thirty minutes from the start of the morning rush.

  “I was more interested in the pistol you brought,” Tanaka offered in his own sideways kind of voice. “I have some friends at the police station, and they’d never seen anything like it.”

  Rob brightened up like a proud papa.

  “Class one heavy pulse stunner,” he announced quietly. “Nasty piece of work in the right circumstances.”

  Like say, in the hands of someone who’s more dangerous than he appears at first glance? Who can beat up a team of muggers who had thought that they were the predators on that equation?

  More than just another pretty face, my friend?

  “That’s what they said,” Tanaka seemed intrigued. “Wherever did you get it?”

  “Oh, I had it custom made by some friends who own a small armory,” Rob beamed. “They did me a run of them, so if I never get that one back from the cops, I’m not that sad.”

  “You have more?” Tanaka leaned forward now, strong, hard hands wrapped around his coffee mug and clenching unconsciously. “Here on Shravishtha Prime?”

  “Uh huh,” Rob nodded vigorously. “One up in the room and a couple on the ship. Plus I can always tell the boys where we’re going next and have a crate shipped. Customs usually doesn’t inspect dental equipment.”

  Tanaka chuckled on an offhand, knowing way.

  “No, they don’t, do they?” he smiled. “You are a man of unexpected talents, Rob. May I call you Rob?”

  “Please,” Rob smiled and shrugged like he wasn’t paying much attention. “The mistress can be quite demanding, so it requires a man to run like an iceberg, ninety percent submerged most of the time.”

  “Indeed,” Tanaka nodded. “If you might be amenable, I would like to invite you to bring your little stunner to a weapons range I own. I’d like to see it in action and maybe talk about licensing the design from your friends, with a finder’s fee for you, of course.”

  Rob waved a hand nonchalantly, as if money was the least of his problems.

  Technically, that was true. The Service paid him more money than he could generally spend, plus hazard bonuses for things like this, and they were picking up all his expenses until two days after he landed on Ramsey again.

  It all got salted away in a retirement account he didn’t figure he’d live long enough to enjoy.

  “Let me check in with the mistress and see when she might be able to spare me,” Rob said in a bright, shiny, useless sort of way he had learned from some barristers.

  The waitress arrived just then with two checks, but Tanaka picked both up and waved Rob off when he tried to pay for his.

  “I think we’ll be able to do business in the future, Rob,” the man said. “So this is something of a strategic investment for me.”

  “Well, thank you,” Rob replied, pulling out another fifty Cedi note for the wait staff.

  They rose and shook hands, exchanging business cards with all the local communications protocols. Rob watched the older man depart with a vacuous smile pasted on his face and picked up his newspaper.

  He gave Tanaka a head start and then set out.

  It felt like things were in motion, but he didn’t know who was the lure and who was the hunter yet.

  14

  Alicia studied the screen, just to be sure, and then looked up at the other two. The field agents.

  “Spelled EE-EW-GEE-EE-EN?” she asked, just because this was a business of triple checking things.

  “That’s how it’s written on the business card,” Handsome said. “It’s just pronounced OY-gen. Got anything?”

  “Big time player,” Alicia caught Esme’s eye. “There’s a note here in the hotel’s system that he has a permanent condo, but spends at least a quarter of the year elsewhere.”

  “Makes sense,” the boss lady nodded. “If this is the man’s base of operations and he needs to visit various fronts and dealers, deeper into Salonnia.”

  Alicia watched Esme turn to Handsome now.

  “Are you sure?”

  The man shrugged, but Alicia already knew he was smarter than he let on. Way less wrapped up in his masculine superiority or crap like that.

  “Gut feeling,” Rob said. “Nothing he said disqualifies him, and the number of folks with the resources, need, and interest in exotic weapons narrows us way the hell down. If it is not him, I would expect that your target runs in those same circles, so this gets us in the door.”

  Alicia liked the way Handsome
deferred to Esme, too. She was only a field agent, and he was an assassin, so he outranked her, but it was still her case.

  Miguel and Dillon had approached Alicia with this mission, but made it obvious that if things worked out, she might want to consider more time in the field. JumpSpace made communications impossible in times less than weeks, when an agent needed something out in the field. She could be the manager of a whole network of spies and assassins, if she wanted to.

  Most spies had access to safe houses and embassies, where they could find other spies, but Handsome Rob, the top Cowboy on Three, was part of the special operations folks. The weirdoes you sent in when everyone else had bounced off.

  “Alicia?” Esme asked now, the two of them apparently willing to run with it.

  Thin, but all leads were this early in a case. Something stood out and you pulled at it like a thread until you found where it was attached.

  Same as it was in databases and secured cores.

  “Big spender,” Alicia repeated the details out loud, so she would have them permanently in memory. “Corynthe accent, but no bio details available. Good tipper from the notes. Known for strange meetings in his condo occasionally and also rents a larger conference space twice a year for what are listed as private corporate events. As Handsome said, nothing disqualifies him and we don’t have much to go on.”

  “Okay,” Esme said. “I can work with this. Rob, you let him know that Alicia and I are going shopping this afternoon, up on the mainland but in a nicer district, and you are at loose ends. See if he’ll bite. Alicia, expect the suite to be turned over politely while we’re gone, so take whatever needs to be unseen and either put it in the hotel safe or on the ship or keep it with you. Same for you, Rob. Be prepared to have to explain things to hostile strangers if we mess up, so maybe we’ll swing by the ship and make sure everything is topped up there in case we need to run. Am I missing anything?”

  Nobody spoke. Alicia smiled. Esme was far more than just a field agent. She had her shit together with professional welds.