Critical Space

by Greg Rucka

  As I came around the north side of the restaurant, she ordered me to turn right and approach the Hudson and toss the Motorola into the water. I did, and when I turned back around, she was there, standing beneath the awning of the building, out of the shadow, and I realized I'd walked right past her and not even noticed.

  I thought she would leave some kind of distance between us, but she just walked right up to me, stopping only long enough to toss her Motorola into the river after mine. Once she did that, her hands appeared empty.

  Each time we'd been this close before, her face had been concealed. This time she hadn't bothered. Finally, the fear that had been absent on the dilapidated pier made itself known, and beneath my soaked shirt I swear I could feel my heartbeat trying to pound its way out. I closed and opened my hands, wishing they would stop shaking, and then I wished that I was someplace else, warm and dry and going to live.

  She was almost as I remembered her, and that surprised me. After describing her so many times I'd begun to think I was fabricating details I'd never actually known. She was just under my height, slender, though her shoulders were a little broad, hinting at upper-body strength. The clothes she wore were ordinary, jeans and a shirt and a fabric jacket that was either blue or black. Her hair had been cut very short, and when she turned her head, I could see it was almost shaved at the back of her neck.

  I waited for her to stop, but still she kept coming forward, and when she was close enough to touch me without needing to fully extend her arm, she did, pressing her left palm on my chest. Through the wet fabric, her touch seemed hot. The gesture itself was not hostile, but it terrified me, and I couldn't bring myself to move, to look away from her.

  We stared at each other.

  She had a full mouth, a narrow chin, a slender and small nose. Her eyes seemed large, and she didn't blink, and in the weak light I couldn't tell their color. Her ears were small, laid against the sides of her head, and she wore no jewelry. Her cheekbones were high, making all of the angles of her face that much sharper.

  "My name is Alena Cizkova," she said.

  I opened my mouth and heard my voice. I don't remember what I said.

  There was a tiny, hot pain from my left thigh, and I forced myself to look down, saw her withdrawing the needle, saw her drop the syringe. It was a thin plastic one, disposable, and the plunger had fallen all the way, and I watched as it hit the pavement beneath us, making a little splash in a puddle as it landed.

  I brought my eyes back up and said, "That's a stupid way to kill me."

  She blinked. The corner of her mouth moved, and her lips parted, and she tilted her head back, and she started to laugh. My mouth was filling with foam, and I told her that it wasn't funny, and I tried to grab hold of her, grabbing at her arm where her hand was still on my chest. She stepped back, and I tried to move forward some more, to grab her again, and my left leg understood but my right wanted to stay exactly where it was, and I ended up on the wet asphalt on one knee, then both, then on my hands.

  She laughed like my death was the funniest thing she'd ever seen.

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  There was a Doberman.

  The dog was a he, and he didn't have a collar, and he weighed at least sixty pounds, and his eyes, soulful dog eyes, seemed to be telling me that the jury was still out, and until it came back, I'd better be on my best behavior. A puffy scar ran along his neck, width-wise all across the throat, white-pink flesh that would never grow for again. He put his muzzle beneath my left hand, nudging it with his wet nose, and when I moved my fingers he turned away, his nails clicking on a hard floor.

  It was day and the sunlight was strange, washing out colors and already heavy with heat, and I tried to make some sense of my surroundings as best I could without my glasses. Mostly I was seeing hues, light green and blue, past the foot of the bed, broken by a rectangle that was an open door. To my right, the wall continued, though it was disrupted halfway along with a painting, a swirl of colors that blended together.

  The sheet across me was white, and there was no blanket. I lifted it and saw that my left leg was intact, and felt an enormous relief, so great that I fell back and just lay still, staring at the ceiling, at the fixture positioned high above me, at the blades of the fan as they whirred in silent rotation. There had been hallucinations, and there had been many of them, filled with people I'd known or still knew; the boy who'd beaten me up every day after school when I was ten; the drill sergeant who'd given me a faceful of Mace in AIT, then ordered me to run the obstacle course; the teacher who had humiliated me when I couldn't conjugate my Latin fast enough. All those people, faces I hadn't seen in decades, tormenting me each in different ways.

  And there had been the people I still knew, the ones I loved. Bridgett saying that unless I could stop her she'd go back on the junk, and then making me watch as she cooked up her heroin, injected it, all the while begging me to stop her. Scott Fowler with a folder of photographs, the Backroom Boys, Gracey and Bowles, standing behind him, and each photo was of Antonia, and each picture was worse than the first, her body bent, stripped, broken, torn. One snapshot had Her Ladyship facedown on a concrete floor, her face obviously missing, like Michael Ortez in a warehouse in Dallas.

  "That's what really happened," Fowler had said. "And why didn't you tell me?"

  Those weren't the worst, and thankfully, all were already sinking into lost memory. But in one I'd lost my left leg, the tiny puncture in my thigh growing alive with gangrene, until rotting flesh had invaded my lower body. Then Drama had come and told me not to worry, that it was to be expected, and when I'd looked again, the leg was gone and she was walking away, taking it with her.

  It had seemed real.

  Birds were singing, and I turned my head to the left and saw sky and the tops of trees, and the color of the sky was a solid, vivid blue, and there didn't look to be a cloud in it. I listened longer, and there were a lot of birds, and then, behind their calls, the constant white noise of surf meeting shore.

  There was a stand beside the bed on the left side, and on it were my glasses, a glass of water, and two tablets of Advil. I sat up and let the sheet fall and put the glasses on. Just that much movement left me breathless. My head felt swollen, and my mouth parched. My back was sore, the muscles along my neck and shoulder full of dull pressure, as if I'd held them in the same position for too long.

  I took the Advil dry, then contemplated the water before draining the glass. It was tepid, but tasted pure. I got to my feet, standing naked by the bed. The floor was cool, red and brown tile in an ornate star pattern that repeated over and over to the walls. The air was warm and a little moist. My legs felt steady.

  There was a square of gauze on the inside of my right arm at the elbow, held in place with a strip of cloth tape. I pulled it free, saw dried blood on the gauze, the bruising on my skin.

  A pair of pants, the color of wet sand, was draped over the end of the bed. They were baggy and a little long, and secured around the waist with a drawstring. As I pulled them on, the Doberman came back, stopping in the doorway to look at me.

  "Hi, dog," I said.

  The Doberman's nostrils flared. But for the scar, he probably would have been show-worthy, and as it was he was clearly healthy, clearly strong. Without blinking he watched me tie the drawstring, then followed me as I went to the veranda.

  I was on the second story of the house, and the house was atop a hill. It was constructed of concrete, painted a pale orange, and the veranda itself was open, twelve feet wide and long, closed to my right but open to the left where it stretched along the length of the house and turned a corner, out of sight. The ocean was perhaps half a mile away. The strip of beach was white, and the water was green near the shore, and then it turned the same blue of the sky as it stretched to meet the horizon. In the distance I could see a yacht with a white sail. The sun was behind me, blocked by the house, and it felt early in the morning. I knew the afternoon would be hot.

&nb
sp; The hillside down to the beach was covered with trees and plants, flowers in bloom, and the growth was so thick I couldn't make out a path. The trees were palm and cedar and bamboo and mahogany, and there were others I didn't recognize, including several that seemed to be bearing fruit. The foliage confirmed it as much as the bird that was perched nearby on the rail, eyeing me suspiciously. The bird was small, yellow-bellied, with an almost hummingbird-like narrow beak, marking it as a nectar feeder. I'd never seen a bird like it before.

  Not only was I no longer in New York, I wasn't certain if I was still in the same hemisphere.

  The Doberman was looking from me to the bird on the railing.

  "Wouldn't happen to know where I can find a phone, would you?" I asked him.

  He didn't answer, looking back at the bird, and then his ears pricked, and he turned and loped out of the room, his steps clicking on the tile. I looked for the little bird, discovered it had flown away, and then started along the veranda, around the side of the house. I knew I wasn't going to find a phone, and even if I did, I wasn't quite sure what good it would do me. Placing a call to New York would probably take time, and the first thing Natalie or Dale or Bridgett or Corry would demand to know would be a question I couldn't answer. "Maybe the Caribbean" wasn't going to get any of us far.

  The veranda ended around the corner, past another set of French doors, open, and another bedroom. The bed was a queen, unmade, and identical to the one I'd just left. In an open closet hung a small selection of clothes, most of them women's and some of them expensive. There were two more doors, and through one was a master bathroom with double sink, toilet, tub, and shower, that exited back into the room where I'd started. The other door led to a hall and a flight of stairs. The Doberman was nowhere to be seen, and was apparently staying quiet.

  The stairs ended in a square, central room with a high gabled ceiling. The roof beams were exposed, dark varnished wood that was maybe teak. Two more sets of French doors were open to the left, leading out to a covered patio and another view of the water. Since I was now looking in the opposite direction I had been above, it struck me that if we were on an island, it was a small one. I headed out the door.

  Drama was sitting in a white wicker chair at a glass-topped table. The Doberman lay at her feet. On the table was a pitcher, and a French press of coffee, two mugs, and two glasses. A plate of fruit was by her arm, mangoes, green oranges, grapefruit, and papaya, and on another plate were four muffins. By her left hand was a Walther P88 semiautomatic pistol. She was wearing shorts over a black one-piece bathing suit, a no-nonsense Speedo. In the sunlight, the hair I had once thought was brown or black was now almost copper. Her arms and legs were tanned, and along her left bicep, curling just inside of the elbow and then around and up to her shoulder, disappearing beneath the bathing suit, was a hard white scar. Other scars crisscrossed her forearms, signs of cuts and tears, and on her leg was a starburst discoloration, where a bullet once had found its way inside.

  She lowered a book to watch me approach, marking her place with a finger. Her eyes were almost drowsy.

  The book she was reading was Drama: A Window into the World of Protection and Assassination.

  She let me finish looking over the table, then said, "The coffee was just brewed," and turned her attention back to the book.

  Feeling hungry, I took a seat. The juice was fresh, pineapple mixed with orange, and I drained one glass and finished half of another before I reached for the coffee. When I went for the plate of fruit, my hand was less than five inches from the Walther. She didn't seem to mind, or care; she just turned a page.

  There was a slight breeze rustling leaves, and the scent of salt water was in it. A flight of six steps ran from the patio to a driveway, and the driveway curved into a gravel road. There was no sign of a car, but a blue bicycle leaned against the railing at the bottom of the stairs, and a large Honda dirt bike was parked beneath an overhang a little farther down.

  The coffee was hot and strong, and I drank it looking at the pistol on the table and tried to figure out what it meant. She had gone to a lot of trouble to get me here alone, and I didn't think she'd have made the effort just to shoot me over breakfast. If she needed the gun for self-defense, I was flattered, but she was overrating me, and that wasn't something she'd ever done before. If she was expecting someone besides me who might need shooting, she wasn't acting like it.

  Which left one thing.

  I picked up the gun. The Walther P88 is a very nice, very expensive semiautomatic pistol that was originally designed to be a potential replacement for the M1911 Colt, the tried-and-true sidearm of the U.S. Army. It did quite well in its trials but failed the adverse-conditions test, where the military likes to bury, freeze, burn, drop, crush, and otherwise torture equipment. Even so, the Walther's considered by many a pistol aficionado as one of the finest combat pistols ever produced. It's a fully ambidextrous gun, meaning that the magazine release and decocking levers are mirrored on both sides.

  The magazine was full. I slipped it back into place and racked the slide, putting a round into the breech. Then I raised the gun.

  "I wouldn't," she said, lowering the book.

  "Sure you would."

  She gestured off to her left, my right. "You'll have to kill him, too."

  I glanced down, saw that the Doberman had moved soundlessly to my side, and was now in a crouch, prepared to spring. His lips were back, and his fur was up, and he should have been growling but he wasn't, and the scar at his throat finally made sense.

  "Call him off," I said.

  "Or what?"

  "It's a double-action. I don't even have to cock it. Call him off."

  She used the flap of the book jacket to mark her place, then set the book beside her empty coffee cup. As she poured from the French press, she said softly, "Miata, tovarisch."

  The Doberman's lips fell back around his teeth, and he moved back to her seat, then lay down once more beneath the table.

  She picked up her cup. "You haven't tried the muffins."

  "I'm not certain I trust your food."

  "But you trust the drink."

  "No. I was thirsty."

  The corner of her mouth curled gently.

  "What did you spike my OJ with, by the way?" I asked.

  "Interferon."

  "Made me good and sick."

  "I wanted to slow you down, then. I don't now. I left the gun out so you would not be afraid."

  "It's working," I told her. "Where are we?"

  "This is my home."

  So we were in the Caribbean. It had been one of the last things she'd said before trying to kill Pugh, her voice calling through the barricaded door, where Dale and I had retreated with our principal, trying to buy time for Natalie and the others to arrive. Drama had used an explosive, set it against the wall in a final attempt to blow us up. Just before she'd armed the device, she'd talked of pineapple muffins and Bequia.

  I indicated the muffins with my chin. "These the ones you were talking about?"

  It pleased her that I had remembered. I didn't tell her I'd searched through two atlases before I'd found Bequia on a map. It was part of the island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, nine miles south of St. Vincent itself, about a hundred miles west of Barbados, and I'd never heard of it until she'd mentioned it that day. I'd had a hell of a time finding out anything more about the island other than the location. Settled by the English and the French, it had been an independent member of the British Commonwealth since 1979. It was off the major tourist track, and its main industries were fishing and boatbuilding. Mostly the harbor served visiting yachts. Apparently there was a regatta of some sort every Easter.

  "You never told them," she said.

  "No."

  "I thought that perhaps you'd forgotten, or misunderstood."

  "I understood." My arm was getting tired, and I couldn't see myself shooting her in the next few minutes, so I set the Walther down on the table but kept my hand on it.
>
  I asked, "How long was I out?"

  "Five days. I injected you with Ketalar, then used an IV to keep you nourished and hydrated during the journey. The hallucinations only occurred when you were regaining consciousness, which you did twice before we got here." She put her elbows on the table and crossed her hands under her chin, and I realized she wanted to keep talking, that there probably weren't that many people she got to tell about her work. "Would you like to know how I moved you?"

  "Oh, absolutely."

  "I had a boat waiting up the Hudson. When you lost consciousness, I moved you aboard and took you to Brooklyn, where I transferred you to another boat, a 38 Scarab AVS. Then we went down the coast. We stopped to refuel in Virginia Beach, Charleston, Nassau, Cockburn Harbour -- in the Turks and Caicos -- then again in Tortola in the U.K. Virgin Islands, before reaching Kingstown in St. Vincent. The journey took just over four days."

  "You manned the boat yourself?"

  "No, you had to be monitored, the boat had to be controlled, and I had to sleep."

  "Was it Dan? Danilov?"

  She nodded.

  "Did you kill him?"

  Her chin came off her hands and she sat back, and either she really was indignant or she was damn good at faking it, because she looked both hurt and appalled. "Dan is my friend. There was no need to kill him."

  "You let him come all the way here?"

  That clarified the question for her, and she nodded, understanding me. "You and I left him in Kingstown, with the boat. No one knows I am in this place."

  "But me."

  "But you."

  I felt the gun under my hand, the grip beneath my fingertips. There's a gag used in the military a lot, so much so that it's worked into the popular culture, as a way of evading an uncomfortable question, a way to avoid divulging a secret.

  I could tell you, I thought, but then I'd have to kill you.

  So maybe the gun was to be used on me, after all.