One-Eyed Jack (3 page)

The American looked up at him and grinned and shook his head, obviously not understanding the conversation. Which was acceptable. He was only an American, after all.

The Russian took the dishes into the kitchen when they finished their tea. He poured vodka into two glasses and brought one to the American, turned off the television, found an LP of
Monk’s Dream
, and laid it on the turntable. Vigorous, intricate music: perhaps a little too intricate to support conversation, but the Russian did not think that tonight was a night for dreamy, drifting jazz.

He turned the lights up before he settled on the sofa, glass cupped in broad fingers, one knee drawn up. “Would you like to play chess?”

The American held his own glass between the flats of his palms and smiled. “Actually,” he said, “you benefit by more than a dinner companion tonight.
I
am the proud possessor of a pair of tickets to
Fiddler on the Roof.”

“
Fiddler on the Roof
?” The Russian couldn’t stop the corners of his lips from curving this time.

“At the Imperial Theatre,” the American said triumphantly. “On Broadway.”

“I know where the Imperial Theatre is.”

The American grimaced as he tasted his drink. “Go get your dinner jacket on.”

They walked shoulder to shoulder through the weekending crowds, two handsome men, incongruous on foot in their mirror-bright shoes and velvety bowties. The American grinned at the women who turned to examine them more closely; the Russian pretended ignorance, but that smile wouldn’t stop playing at the corner of his mouth. He laughed at the musical more than he had expected, and found the Rabbi’s blessing for the Tsar particularly quotable, even as they left the theatre. “I don’t suppose that will work on, say, some of our opposite numbers, do you think?”

“May God bless and keep all counter-agents—far away from me?” The American held the door for the Russian, chuckling low in his throat. “I’m not ready to go home yet. I don’t suppose you’re hungry.”

“I’m always hungry,” the Russian answered. “Make me a match with a gyro, and we’ll talk.”

“I don’t suppose you know an all-night Greek deli?”

The Russian grinned. “Of course I do.”

“I do not believe there was a conspiracy,” the Russian said later, cupping a piece of lamb-stuffed flatbread in one hand, considering it more than he was eating it. He kept half his attention over the American’s shoulder, and knew his partner was performing the same office for him. “I think Oswald acted alone.”

The American laughed, swirling the dregs in his coffee cup. “Come on,” he said. “The KGB made you say that—”

“No, no. You see, I met Oswald.”

The American blinked. The Russian found it gratifying. “Met—” His voice trailed off. He tried again. “You
met
Lee Harvey Oswald?”

“In Moscow in 1962, when he planned to defect.” The Russian shrugged. “He was unimportant. I was one of the officers assigned, because of my English. We spent a fair amount of time together.” He took a bite of his sandwich, cucumber squeaking between his teeth, and chewed contentedly. “He was deemed . . . unsuitable for use.”

The American had that look again, the half-curious, half-uncomfortable one he got whenever something reminded him that there had been a Russian before there was a partnership. Before there was the Russian and the American, inseparable. “Unsuitable.
Really
.”

The Russian grinned, and let the hand that wasn’t folded around the gyro describe a lazy circle by his temple. “You have no idea. They sent him to Minsk, so he’d be out of the way. He tried to kill himself, because the KGB
wasn’t paying him enough attention
. Is that insane enough for you?”

“It does indicate a certain, ah,
lack
of the self-preservation instinct.” Pause, chewing. “Still, do you think he could have made that shot?”

The Russian shrugged and finished his gyro, licking his fingers for the last bit of sauce. “I could have.” He enjoyed his partner’s slow, thoughtful blink. “Come on,” he said, standing. “I’ll walk you home.”

The American stood too, dropping money on the table. The Russian took his elbow to steer him out of the restaurant. “Walk me home?” Their eyes met. The American smiled, suppressed cleverness dancing in his hazel eyes. The Russian blinked and almost let go of his arm.
Oh, clever Russian
.
This time you outsmarted yourself.

“There wasn’t any date, was there?”

“Not one that stood me up, no.”

“Oh.” The Russian chewed that over for a little while as they walked homeward. This time, he did let his hand fall. He stole a quick glance sideways. The American’s untied bowtie flopped lightly in the breeze. “If you wanted to spend the evening with me,” he said, shrugging, “you only had to ask. Save the elaborate charades for those who are not—”

“My partner?”

“I was going to say—your friend—” The Russian looked up before they paused at the street corner. Force of habit; the American scanned the left half of the arc and the Russian scanned the right. Something glittered, halfway up the side of a brownstone, in a window that was both dark and open. The Russian’s heart kicked hard in his chest—“
Duck!”

He lunged against his partner’s side, knocking the American sideways, trusting his partner to anticipate his action and to break their fall. Something sharp stung the forearm that the Russian threw up in front of his eyes; stung, not burned. He heard the ricochet whine and strike metal, and a split second later the flat report of the gunshot, followed first by silence and then shouts and running feet as the few remaining pedestrians caught on and vacated the scene.
No silencer, of course. He wouldn’t want to sacrifice accuracy—

They hit hard and rolled, the Russian lunging into a crouch, the cool crosshatched grip of his modified Walther P-38 heavy in his hand before he was even quite steady on his feet. The American sprawled in the gutter, using the curb for cover, his own automatic readied as well.

“Did you see him?”

“Window,” the Russian hissed, crouched behind a blue steel postal box. He jerked his head, pointing with his eyes, ignoring the thin, warm trickle of blood across his hand. The sleeve of his dinner jacket was shredded. Concrete was chipped from the lampost base; the fresh gouge shone in the streetlight. “Any bystanders hurt? Any down?”

“I don’t see any,” the American answered. “I caught a glimpse of him hightailing up the fire escape when you took me down. He was aiming for you.”

The Russian nodded, adrenaline like a blow to the throat. Feeling his partner beside him like a paired identity, left hand and right, two bodies but one animal. As if he knew what the American would say, how he would move before he did it. “He missed.”

The American lifted his head from the gutter and glared at the bullet gouge, his luminous amber eyes narrowed as if it had done him a personal offense. He pushed himself to his knees under the cover of a Cadillac, sparing a moment of rue for the state of his dinner jacket before he settled into a runner’s crouch. “You moved. That would have drilled your head. Think Oswald could have made
that
shot?”

“I could have,” the Russian growled. “You didn’t return fire?”

“With a
handgun
?”

“Good point. He’ll be across the rooftop by now. Let’s
move
. Go on go—”

“Go!”

He didn’t wait; the American would be right behind him. He ran for the brownstone, scurrying crooked as a rat, and prayed the one with his name on it wasn’t already in the air, moving faster than the sound of its own firing. He flattened himself against the wall—small overhang, smell of pavement and soot.

“You’re hit,” the American said, slapping stone beside him.

“A scratch.”

“You lying?”

“Not this time. You said you caught a glimpse—”

“Tall,” the American said. “Three, four inches on me, maybe—” the American was five-foot-ten, and the Russian knew he would have measured the opposition against the flights of the fire escape. “Slender. Cat blacks, dark hair, not so well-groomed as some.” He patted his own forelock by way of example. “Nasty scar on the right cheek,” the American continued as the Russian turned, brows rising, eyes intentionally cold. “A mean-looking scowl. Gray eyes, bit of a squint—”

“I recognize the description, but I must say, your eyesight is certainly acute—”

“
I’m
not the one too vain to wear his glasses except for reading.”

“I’m farsighted,” the Russian answered, holstering his gun as a few over-bold civilians began to emerge from doorways and under cars. “You noticed all this from several hundred yards, at night, my friend?”

“No.” The American pressed his own pistol into the swing of his dinner jacket rather than put it away. “He’s hard to misidentify. Even from a distance. But the question remains.”

“Yes, my clever American?”

“What would an MI-6 assassin be doing gunning for a couple of lowly international law enforcement types on our side of the puddle, partner mine?”

The Russian swallowed, and raked both hands through his own bright hair. “Well,” he said, as dryly as he could manage, “we know he has a taste for shooting smart Russians, neh?”

The Assassin on the Run.

New York City, 1964.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d missed, and now he’d done it twice in a row.

There was a reason for it, of course. He reminded himself of that as he scrambled up the fire escape—but reasons were not excuses, and his failure to kill both the English widow and the Russian secret agent would complicate matters, later.

Still, he hadn’t expected them to be so hard to kill. Certainly not as hard to kill as
he
was.

Apparently he’d been wrong, and there was enough of their legends left to afford them a certain amount of protection. Plot immunity; the hazard of taking on a hero the world hadn’t quite forgotten. At least it worked in his favor as well.

Which meant he would have to get closer, next time. But for the nonce, it meant he needed to lose them, because he had an appointment in Las Vegas, thirty-six years from now.

Tribute and the Witch Sycorax.

San Diego, Summer, 2002.

Sycorax smiled at me through the mantilla shadowing her eyes, eyes untouched by that smile. She lolled against a wrought-iron railing, one narrow hip thrust out, dyed red hair tumbling out of the black spider web of her shawl, looking like a Mac Rebenak song come to life.

The dead quickly grow thin.

She licked her lips with a long pale tongue and even the semblance of amusement fell away. “You’re white, Tribute. No coup tonight?”

“Nothing appealed.” Tribute wasn’t my real name any more than Sycorax was hers.

She leaned into me, pressed a hand to my throat. Her flesh lay like ice against the chill of my skin. “I told you to hunt.”

“I hunted.” Backing away, red nails trailing down my chest. I hunted. Hunted and returned empty-handed. It’s as much how you hear the orders as how they’re given.

“If you wasn’t a coward,” Jesse said in my ear, “you’d do a bit more than not followin’ orders. Even if you couldn’t take
her
out, you’d take yourself out of the picture.”

Suicide is a sin
, I told the ghost of my conscience.

He snorted. Sycorax couldn’t hear him, of course. “So’s murder. And eatin’ people.”

She followed close on my steps, driving me before her. Ragged chiffon clung and drifted around her calves; she reached up to lace china fingers in the fine hairs at the nape of my neck. Her face against my throat was waxen: too long unfed. “You weaken me on purpose, Tribute. Give me what you have.”

“Pansy,” Jesse said.

Jesse, go away.

I still had the force of will to make him listen, as Sycorax pressed close. He went, growling. Somewhere down the alley, glass shattered. He was in a mood.

She needed me, needed me to feed. Old as she was, she had to have the blood more often and she couldn’t take it straight from a human anymore. She needed someone like me to purge the little taints and poisons from it first—and even then, I had to be careful what I brought home. So sensitive, the old.

She caught at my collar, pulled it open with fumbling hands. I leaned down to her—chattel, blood of her blood, no more able to resist her will than her own right hand, commanded to protect and feed her. At least this time, I knew what sort of predator I served, although I had less choice about it.

I figured things out too late, again.

Sycorax curled cold lips back from fangs like a row of perfect icicles. Her jaw distended, unhinged like a snake’s, and she sank her teeth into my flaccid vein and tried to drink. All that pain and desire spiked through me—every time like the first time—and on its heels hollowness. Sycorax hissed, drew back. She turned her head and spat transparent fluid on the cobbles. I smiled, spreading my hands like Jesus on a hilltop, still backing slowly away. I had made very sure that I had nothing to feed her.

Petty, I know. And she’d make me pay for it before dawn.

Down the narrow lane, a club’s red door swung open and I turned with a predator’s eye, attracted to the movement. Spill of light cut like a slice of cake, booted feet crunching on glittering glass. Girls. Laughing, young, drunk. I remembered what that felt like.

I raked a hand through my forelock and looked away, making the mistake of catching Sycorax’s china-blue eye.

“Those,” she said, jerking her chin.

I shook my head. “Too easy, baby. Let me get you something more challenging.” I used to have an accent—down home Mississippi. Faded by the years, just like everything else I worked so hard to lose, thank you very much. I suspected I sounded pan-European now, like Sycorax. Her lips, painted pale to match china white skin, curled into a sulk.

“Tribute. After a quarter of a century, you ought to know I mean what I say.”

I tugged my collar, glancing down.

“Them.” Sycorax twisted a stiletto-heeled boot, crushing the litter of cracked glass against the bricks.