In for a Ruble (18 page)

I pulled at the towel once more. This time she let it fall away as she came into my arms. She was damp and warm all over and hot and wet where it counted. She gave a little cry and sank teeth into my shoulder as I lifted her behind and planted her against the wall to find my way inside. The cry melted to moan.

“Make me one promise,” she said.

Uh-oh. “I won’t lie to you again,” I said.

“You don’t have to lie. Just tell me you won’t let me leave, like you did last time.”

I laughed and said, “That’s the easiest promise I can make.”

“You’ve got me right where you want me—in every possible way. Take me like you mean it.”

*   *   *

We ate a long, large, leisurely meal, desire sated for the moment, each of us unsure how to start the conversation we both wanted to have. The departure—breakup—six months before had been abrupt. She’d walked out of my apartment, willing me to do something, anything to try to stop her—and I hadn’t moved a muscle. I’d wanted to, I’d been desperate, every part of my body was trying. I do learn from my mistakes. Some wise person once said you get to make three or four big decisions in life—try to get more than half of them right. I’d fucked up my first couple, paid the price for decades, and was still digging myself out of that hole with Aleksei. So as much as I’d wanted to stop her, I’d let her walk. To do otherwise was to send my son to his execution.

Now we were back at the very same kitchen counter, each of us wanting to explain our actions, tell the other how we felt, why we did what we did. We both knew there was no question of incrimination—bygones were already bygones. Forgiveness, to the extent any was necessary, had been granted in an instant last night. The need to explain is one of the most basic human desires. We all want to be loved—we also need to be understood. So the question at the moment, as we chewed bacon, scrambled eggs (with Tabasco), and English muffins, was how to get started.

I said, “Where did you go?”

“Several places. Home to Louisiana. Not much left there for me now, since my mom died. Then my sister in Miami. She’s got breast cancer. Double mastectomy. That’ll give you some perspective.”

“How is she?”

“They think they got it all. She’s doing okay, except her husband, who’s some kind of oceanic consultant, ran off with a hot Cuban babe from his firm. Apparently she’s something in a wet suit. Seems he’s been banging her for the last year, including the whole time my sister’s been sick. Men can be real bastards.”

I didn’t disagree. There was no point. Besides, she was right.

“Once Louisa went back to work, I went out to West Texas. Town called Marathon. Spent the last month there, thinking things over. I wanted solitude, and it’s pretty damned lonely.”

“Beautiful, though,” I said. “Gage Hotel?”

“Goddammit! How in the hell do you know everything I do? He told you, didn’t he? He and that computer serpent-thing…”

“Nobody told me anything. The Gage is the only hotel in Marathon. About the only thing in Marathon, period. You can cut the atmosphere with a knife. Great restaurant.”

“
You’ve been there?
”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shit. Momma taught me lots of things. But she never said, ‘Don’t date a spy.’”

I told her the story of trying to outrun the Basilisk. I’d spent a week at the Gage, where they put a package of earplugs by your bed, as if they’re going to be any help against the mile-long freight trains that rumble through town at 3:00
A.M.
—fifty yards from your room.

We traded notes about West Texas. Solitude and loneliness don’t begin to describe it. Neither do awe-inspiring or beauty. Her favorite spot was the McDonald Observatory outside Fort Davis, where from an altitude of almost seven thousand feet, you can see the stars and planets through high-powered telescopes with virtually no interference from ambient light on the ground. Mine is Donald Judd’s Mecca of minimalist art in Marfa, which he built on an old army base he’d bought from the government—where he’d been stationed as a teenager. Not unlike Muhammad’s epicenter, visiting requires a pilgrimage—the closest airport is El Paso, three and a half hours away. In a way I think Judd understood, it makes getting there half the fun.

Victoria had visited
Chinati,
as Judd called his desert creation, and not to my surprise, didn’t think much of it. “Art my ass. Concrete rectangles. Steel boxes. Neon lights. That’s not art.”

Minimalism is like my shaved head, people like it or they don’t. Victoria was forcefully in the latter camp on the art question. There’d be time enough to argue that later.

“I listened to a lot of Tom Russell while I was out there.”

“
Now
you’re talking. Bet he doesn’t have any more use for those antelope shacks than I do.”

Antelope shacks are what the locals, most of whom agree with Victoria, call the concrete structures Judd placed in a field alongside Route 67.

“What did you do, while I was away?” she said.

“Nothing much. Series of one-night stands.”

“What?! You son of a…!”

The right hand came flying across the counter. I resolved to take my punishment like a man and waited for the sting of the slap. She stopped before she got there.

“You really are a bastard.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Hard for a virile Russian male in the prime of virile Russian maleness to admit he’s been rendered feeble and helpless by a capitalist vixen.”

“Spare the socialist horseshit. Did you miss me?”

“I spent most of the time moping, you want to know the truth. Didn’t do much of anything. Foos can confirm that. He wouldn’t let me use the Basilisk to find you, which made it worse because I knew how easy it would be. I drank too much. That just made me think more about you. Tried to break out of it by going to Moscow. Saw Aleksei. First time I’ve spent with him since he was a baby.”

“How’d that go?”

“Not great, about as well as can be expected, I suppose. Not easy, starting again after almost thirty years. Worse than starting from scratch, really, because there’s the baggage. Why’d I leave? Why didn’t I let him know where I was? Why did I lie to his mother? Underlying all those questions, of course, is the unspoken premise—why were you only thinking of yourself? And why should I believe you’re any different now? Then there’s my career with the Cheka, not to mention the family connections, which are a huge issue for him. He’s borderline irrational on the subject, not that I blame him. Hard to get past how much damage we did—and the number of people we did it to. Also hard to explain when it all happened in another time, another place, another world really.”

“Even harder when you’re too scared to tell him the truth, right?”

I looked across, stunned. How the hell could she know about Beria?

“Hey, what’s wrong? What did I say?”

I could hear Lavrenty Pavlovich chuckling in the background. I waited for him to appear, but he stayed away. Then I realized she was talking about the story I’d told her of my upbringing—my birthplace, my mother’s death, the orphanage, being sent back to the Gulag. She was the first person I’d ever told—she had no reason to judge and condemn a
zek,
she barely knew what one was. She was assuming I’d be scared to tell Aleksei, terrified of what his reaction would be, as indeed I had been. Before a bigger terror reared his head. Beria chuckled again.

“Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine, but who’s the real bastard now?” I said.

“Hey! I didn’t mean it that way. I meant to say, I understand.”

“I know that,” I said gently. “Truth hurts, as someone once pointed out.”

It hurt even more if it involved Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. I wasn’t ready to tell Victoria—or anyone—about that.

“Does he blame you—for his mother?”

“He says he doesn’t and I believe him. But he needs time to process everything that happened. I’m glad I went but it was probably too soon to start rebuilding.”

“You going back?”

“Maybe in a month or two.” Or sooner, if I could figure a way to reestablish Sasha’s access to the Cheka archives.

The green eyes stared straight at me. Almost anyone would have asked again what happened that night at JFK. Aleksei had saved my life, but in the process, he’d dispatched Iakov Barsukov and his murdering henchman to reunite with Lenin, Stalin, and, certainly, Beria, south of the last terrestrial border. Since Iakov was second only to Putin in assuring the Cheka’s continuing ascension in post-Soviet Russia, Aleksei’s life expectancy would be measured in minutes the day the organization found out he was anywhere near the airport that night. I will never breathe a word, not even to her. She recognized that, and the fact that she didn’t ask made me think we really did have a chance.

She said, “Did you really spend all that time moping? Over me?”

“Like I said, ask Foos. He got me the job I’m working on because he was tired of my hanging around bothering him.”

“I believe you. Mostly, I believed you last night and in the bathroom this morning. But don’t think I won’t ask. Just to be sure.”

“Good to be trusted. They teach you this in law school?”

“I learned trust in reform school, remember?”

I did. She’d done time in a juvenile detention center as a teenager when she stole her stepfather’s car—her escape after he tried to rape her.

“Speaking of law school, you going back to work?”

“Never fully left. Telecommuted part time.”

“How’d you explain so much time away?” It can’t have been that simple telecommuting to a U.S. attorney position.

“Told them I had some female medical issues to deal with. You work mainly with men, nobody wants to ask too many questions. Then my sister had them for real, so I was covered. I’m looking forward to the office. We’ve got a big case building, that’s the other reason I’m back.”

“Not just me?”

“Sorry, shug. I love you, I think, and I love my job. Don’t ask the order.”

I was willing to accept whatever order she stated. We held hands across the counter.

She said, “Do you know why I left?”

“You said you would. You gave me fair warning. That’s one reason I didn’t try to stop you.”

“I wouldn’t bring that up—not a point in your favor.”

Honesty’s not always the best policy, I guess. “You told me if I fooled around with the law, you’d stop fooling around with me—or words to that effect. Your job and career were too important, and I had to respect that. I heard you loud and clear. It’s just … Fate is hard to explain.”

“Don’t give me that fate bs. You’re pigheaded and there’s an adage about old pigs and new tricks. But that’s not the reason—or the whole reason.”

She was watching me, waiting for the answer she seemed certain I knew. Except I didn’t. I’d taken her threat—or promise—at face value. When she followed through I blamed only myself—and fate.

She watched and waited another few moments before she shook her head. “Men are just too obtuse for words. I was scared to death you were going to get hurt—or worse. I still am. That kind of fear was new to me. I couldn’t live with it. So I ran away. There—I’ve said it.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. I stroked the back of her fingers.

“What changed?”

“I spent most of the last month thinking. Every day, by the pool at the Gage Hotel. I’d go out there to read, swim, sleep, but mostly I just thought things over. I figured out two things. I love my job and I love you, like I said. I couldn’t telecommute forever, so, if I stayed away, I’d be unemployed, lonely, and still in love. That prospect didn’t have a lot to recommend it. If I came back, I could get back to the office, see you, and work on trying to overcome the fear. I was hoping against hope that maybe you’d help. Then I saw your recent set of bruises. So much for that idea.”

“I told you, I didn’t go looking for them.”

“But they found you. They’re always going to find you. I’m still not a hundred percent sure I can deal with that, but I’m going to give it my best try.”

“I couldn’t be happier. I mean that. I’ll try too. But…”

“But what?”

“I’ve still got to finish this job Foos got me into. And the guy who gave me the bruises is still out there. I saw him last night, in Queens, just before I came home. He’s circling around the Leitz family—that’s Foos’s friend.”

“And you can’t leave it alone, of course.”

“I told Leitz I’d help. He’s got more problems than maybe he knows. I’d be leaving him hanging. Foos too. And there’s the not insubstantial matter of my fee.”

“I told you before, only two things men care about—sex and money. How much fee?”

“Million dollars.”

I thought I could surprise her, and I did. “A million dollars?! You’re kidding, right?”

“No joke. Plus use of a painting, four months a year. A Malevich.”

“Who’s Malevich?”

“You’re not going to like him. Russian. The guy who got those Marfa steel boxes and neon lights rolling—fifty years earlier.”

“You’re right about not liking him.”

“The painting in question cost Leitz eighty million.”

“This guy owns a painting worth eighty million dollars?”

“One of many.”

“Jesus. Who is he?”

“Financial rocket scientist. Hedge fund manager.”

“And why is he willing to pay you a million dollars?”

“To find the guys who are trying to derail a big deal he’s put together, or that’s what he thinks. It’s worth sixty or seventy billion. My fee gets lost in the rounding.”

“Sixty or seventy billion?! Wait a minute—is that the TV deal? It’s been all over the papers.”

“That’s right.

“Well dammit, shug, what are we doing sitting here? Let’s get working.”

“I thought sex and money only got men’s attention.”

“Us country girls have a deep-rooted respect for cash.”

“What about the trouble? Nosferatu might be downstairs now, for all I know.”

“The guy who beat you up?”

I nodded.

“For a million bucks, I’ll take the chance. But…”

“Having second thoughts?”

“Not on your life. Just you go down first.”

CHAPTER
17

Nosferatu was nowhere to be seen, and we walked to the office hand in hand. A clear, cold day, with a whipping wind. Halfway there, Victoria shivered and I put my arm around her. She burrowed in close and stayed there until we reached the lobby.