“Business associate.”
Whipping off her head veil, Vee glared at her alleged husband, who continued in an unyielding tone that escalated her anger to the breaking point. “Argument is not becoming to a woman, Valentina. You will kindly be quiet and assume your role as my companion. In whatever capacity my contacts assume you to be.”
“Go to hell!”
“As always, I have no problem continuing my journey alone.” The ice in his voice was enough to make her shiver. He meant it. He would walk into the lion’s den alone and leave her to return home with her tail between her legs. Whipped, defeated. And incompetent. No way, no how. Sergei Tokarev wasn’t going to scare her off from doing her job. No matter how hard he tried.
After struggling to get her hands out from under the enveloping folds of the burqa, Vee put her palms together and sketched a salaam. “Yes, my lord and master. But if we get through this,” she added softly, “I’m going to make you pay.”
Vee had to give the Muslims credit for surrounding themselves with beauty. After appreciating the Moorish influence on Tashkent’s buildings and parks, she should have expected Tehran’s beauty. Yet so much hatred spewed from Iran’s capital city that somehow she had expected the city to match the rhetoric. Far from it. Nestled in a valley below the Alborz Mountains, Tehran was a treasure trove of beautiful buildings, green parks, and landscaping designed by those with an eye for the exquisite. As in all cities, there were structures on the outskirts of town designed for utility, but most of their taxi ride into the city was breath-taking, with the mountains growing ever larger as they approached the center of town. Vee longed to tear off her veil so her view wasn’t tainted by the black shadow over her eyes. Someday, surely, she wouldn’t be here in disguise—an enemy undercover, literally and figuratively—in a hostile land. Someday she would be free to enjoy the wonders of the ancient land of Persia.
But for now she was a Russian bride on a business trip with her husband. To complete the illusion, they had spoken nothing but Russian since leaving the Eisenhower dacha at Lake Baikal. As the door of their hotel suite closed behind them, Sergei raised a finger to his lips in warning, waving his other hand in a circle of the room.
Bugged? Of course it was. Vee stripped off the hated black burqa, then stood in the middle of the room, posing in her rosy tunic and pants for whatever camera eye was trained on them. Hey, voyeur, I hope you have a secret passion for blondes. Eat your heart out.
“Valentina!” Sergei’s sharp reprimand cut through her smirk.
Vee stalked into the luxurious bathroom and shut the door. If there was a camera in here, she really, really didn’t want to know about it. Time for some serious contemplation.
Okay, she had to admit she was using bravado to disguise her terror. She was in one of the mostly rabidly anti-American countries in the world, a country on the verge of developing nukes of its own. A country where just being an American could get her killed. Sergei, their combined wits, and the miserable black burqa were all that stood between her and annihilation.
No matter how scared she was, Sergei’s mission was righteous, and the last thing he needed was grief from his traveling companion. Business associate. Wife. Well, hell . . .
Mentally, Vee executed Special Agent Frost and resurrected herself as Valentina Tokareva, clever and competent assistant to one of the world’s best-known arms smugglers. Item by item, she re-arranged her head, acknowledging what had been a fact since the night Sergei Zhukov had taken on Wade Tingley in Wyoming. Sergei was boss. She was his bodyguard, handmaiden, lover. Any damn incarnation he wanted in order to get the job done.
If that meant sacrificing their lives, then so be it.
Vee flushed the toilet, willing her American arrogance down the drain. As fresh water poured in, she shut her eyes, trying to conjure up an attitude that would blend with the culture around her. All she saw was burning bridges.
Okay, so American arrogance, particularly Frost arrogance, was hard to lose.
Vee stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Eyes and mouth narrowed to grim slits, she adjusted the white hijab that lay about her shoulders, pulling it up over her head, hiding every blonde hair, back under her chin and over her shoulder. Shit! She had to do it three times before she got it right. There might be a bit of leeway for a Russian female in Iran, but some of the stories she’d heard about religious fanatics were terrifying. She wasn’t the one who was going to get them both killed. There. She’d done it. Made the adjustment to proper Muslim female. Well, almost. The next time she put on her burqa, she was going to be armed and dangerous.
When Vee opened the bathroom door, Sergei was standing by the sitting room’s panel of windows, talking on his brand new Russian satellite phone. She crossed the room, slid her arms around his waist, fitted her head to his chest, and hung on tight.
Her commitment. Her man.
“I must go out,” Sergei said as darkness approached. “You will stay here. No argument. Women do not go where I am going.”
“Get me boy’s clothes!”
He paused mid-stride, delivering a leisurely once-over from her white head scarf to the tips of her slippers. “Very funny. They would think I had brought them a peace offering, a present to be shared before being discarded for more important business.”
“I will dirty my face. They will never guess.”
Sergei raised an eyebrow. “Did I say they would penetrate your disguise?”
“No, but—” Breaking off, Vee gaped at him, horror dawning in those so-lovely blue eyes.
“Surely you are aware that sex is more—shall we say, flexible?—in the Middle East. A beautiful boy is an exquisite delight.”
Vee bit her lip, slumping back down on the couch. Not for the first time Sergei cursed the tunnel vision that placed his mission higher than anything else in life. But what more could he do? He had given Vee her passport, her plane ticket back to Tashkent. Money. If he did not come back, she would be safe. Or would she?
Sergei plunged back into the tunnel. The tunnel he understood. The pinprick of light at the far end was a goal he’d lived with since his teens. Love was an unknown. He didn’t deserve to go there.
“Valentina, there is no way I can take you where I am going. And I am certain our listeners are enjoying our conversation,” he pointed out more calmly than he felt.
Chagrin swept her face. She bit her lip.
“I regret leaving you to nothing but television in Farsi, dushenka,” he purred, digging deeper into his role as a newly wed arms dealer. “But I will make it up to you when I return. Vee poneemaiyu?
Vee turned the full wattage of a doting smile in his direction. “Of course I understand, dushenko. And I look forward to returning the favor.”
Ouch. Her claws were out, yet he could feel the fear beneath the false smile. She was nearly certain he was walking into an ambush. That he would be unable to mend fences shattered half a world way.
And maybe she was right.
Vee heaved an elaborate sigh. “Well, then, I guess I might as well see if this hotel has a boutique. I shall enjoy spending your money.”
Startled, Sergei stared at her, attempting to read the message she was tossing his way. “Fine,” he mumbled, “we can go down together.”
“Just give me a moment,” Vee called, grabbing up her burqa and using its folds to disguise what she was removing from her suitcase, for “bugging” also suggested the possibility of video cameras. When she returned from a visit to the bathroom, her shoulder holster was well-concealed under flowing black cotton whose hem flirted with the slight bulge of the ankle holster under the rosy pants of her shalwar kameez. Armed and dangerous. Without a doubt, he was in trouble.
“No!” Sergei barked the moment they were in the hallway. “Absolutely no.”
“Having me along will show your good intentions. No man would bring his bride to a potential firefight. I know I’ll be parked in another room with the women, but they know I’m Russian. Maybe someon
e will translate, maybe we’ll get by on sign language. It doesn’t matter. I’m part of your camouflage. You need me!”
Sergei longed to grab and shake her, but there were cameras in the corridor. He could only hope there weren’t any lurking microphones. “I won’t risk you!”
“Idiót! It’s my job.”
They had reached the elevator. The doors slid open and two men exited, both wearing elegant western clothing, but speaking Farsi. They couldn’t quite hide their surprise at seeing a female in the ultra conservative burqa—not a common sight in the capital city of Tehran, where a stylish black head scarf and tunic-length black overcoat were the accepted mode for sophisticated city females. Sergei was almost certain that, beneath her veil, Vee made a face at the men’s retreating backs.
And then they were alone on the elevator while Sergei fought out the pros and cons of Vee’s argument.
“Kiss me,” she hissed, sweeping her veil up over her head.
“Dammit, Vee—”
She grabbed him around the neck, stretching on tiptoe to press her lips to hers. His anger wavered, fighting the hot desire that flooded through him every time they were close. No matter how many reservations he had. No matter how unwise.
He shoved her away, jerked down her veil, just as the elevator doors opened onto the lobby and three people waiting to get on. Sergei stifled a wince and stalked off, leaving Vee to follow behind. She quickly caught up, hissing into his ear. “If you don’t take me, I’ll follow you. Every step. I’m your bodyguard, remember?”
He kept on moving, straight out the front door to a private car. The driver whipped open the rear door, Sergei climbed in. Vee climbed right in after him.
He should have tossed her back out, but he knew she wasn’t bluffing. She would grab the next taxi and follow him straight to the vipers’ nest of terrorists.
Staring straight ahead, Sergei watched as the driver put the elderly Peugeot into gear and moved away from the safety of the hotel onto the tightrope of international terrorism.
Chapter 21
Vee put her mouth to his ear. “We’re going to a rendezvous with terrorists in a taxi?”
He gave her the superior male look that never failed to make her grind her teeth. “Here, my naive blossom, everyone is our enemy. Fanatics are heros. You might even call them superstars. Some might not agree, but there’s no way they’re going to say so. Trust me, we can taxi to terrorists.”
Twenty minutes later, Sergei’s determined insouciance faltered. That kiss in the elevator might have been their last. The men crowded into the small second-story room in a not-so-beautiful part of Tehran looked ready to deliver on a promise of kiss-your-ass-goodbye. Openly hostile, they were carrying enough weapons to pulverize flesh and bone, along with the entire room next door—the room where he’d abandoned Vee to the tender mercies of the terrorists’ female relatives. Govnó! Not that he hadn’t known he would need every ounce of Tokarev’s charm and bravado, but for the first time he seriously doubted if that would be enough.
His Farsi didn’t come close to his command of English, but it would have to do. Three of the ten men crowded into the small room were known to him. Sergei dismissed the others as lower echelon or sheer intimidation, addressing his words to the men he knew. Fight fire with fire. He offered a quizzical smile. “Good evening, my friends. A rather warm reception for the man who holds the key to your project’s success or failure, is it not?”
The eyes of the leader, known only as Heydar, Lion of Iran, shone with the light of the true fanatic, his cause righteous, his soul certain of its place at Mohammad’s right hand. His forty virgins forever young and nubile. But his earthbound soul, filled with hatred, kept its feet firmly to the ground. He sloughed off Sergei’s charm as Eve should have done with the snake. “You are a madman, Tokarev. You betray us, yet you dare come here.”
Sergei responded with the well-polished smile of expert salesmen from auto showrooms to the souk. As long as he wasn’t dead yet, there was still hope. Let the games begin.
Vee stood, a flowing black statue, just inside the door of a modest-sized room that swarmed with women and children. Children. She hadn’t expected children.
Stoo-pid. You should have. And, of course, since they were inside, no one else was wearing a burqa. She should have anticipated that too. But she’d charged into Sergei’s meet with the terrorists like the proverbial bull into a china shop, insisting on upholding her role as bodyguard. . . even if it killed them both.
Too late for regrets. A woman’s fingers flicked over her head, her veil disappeared. A general gasp at the blonde hair that had evaded the confines of her hijab. Oddly, the old crone in the corner smiled. Vee’s voluminous black cloak vanished next, with what seemed like the dexterity of a skillful magician. This time, heavy silence from the women; a single Oo-oo from one of the children at the sight of her leather belt and holstered gun incongruously wrapped around the rose-colored tunic. Vee sucked up her fear, stoically waiting for the scream that would call the men from the room next door.
The old crone, whose wizened face was nearly lost under the folds of a black hijab, chuckled. “Ah! A woman of the people,” she declared in Russian. “My grandmother fought the tsar’s troops. My mother fought the Germans. And now, in my old age, God has granted me an opportunity to fight the Americans. Life is good. Allah be praised.”
The other women, evidently recognizing the old woman’s last phrase, echoed her words in Farsi.
“You are Russian?” Vee asked.
“Fifty years ago, before I traveled with a student group to study ancient Persian sites and met a dashing, dark-eyed tour guide named Javeed.” The old woman winked. “But I have not forgotten Mother Russia nor the language of my birth. Sit down, sit down, child. We are used to guns here. You there, Nazilla,” she said to a girl who appeared to be no more than fourteen, “give the Russian your seat.”
Sergei drew himself up to his full height, a head taller than most of the men around him. He crossed his arms, assumed his most arrogant stance. “Ignore anything Boris Leonov has told you. He is a greedy, self-serving bastard who thinks only of keeping all your money for himself. When I heard he planned to take the U-236, then kill me, I hid it. The man who created the isotope is dead, a suicide in America. Which makes me the only person in the world who knows where it is. I also have in my control the only man who knows how to arm the bombs, a man who worked on them when they were new.”
Sergei could almost swear Heydar’s black curls bristled under his gray kufi. Certainly, his mouth between his mustache and beard thinned to a straight line. “How else would I dare come among you?” Sergei continued. “I would be mad to come here if I had truly betrayed you. I am Sergei Tokarev, arms dealer. That is what I do. I stay in business only as long as I can deliver what I have promised.” He slowed his barrage of words, emphasizing each syllable. “Leonov cannot deliver. I can.”
Heydar’s face remained grim, but a general murmur swept the room around him. Approval?
“We have the isotope here.” The words, like small explosions, silenced the room. Something close to a smug smile tugged at the terrorist leader’s lips. “Our ancient land is forging a new path. We have friends here at home who can help us. We no longer need you.”
Sergei swallowed his profane reaction, ignored the death knell ringing in his ears. “When?” he demanded. “Next month, next year, five years from now? And what will you do with the isotope when you’ve got it? Do you know how to remove the spent U-236, replace it with the new? Or will your people fuck up, immolating Tehran instead of Washington?”
“You will be quiet!”
Keeping his arms crossed, Sergei widened the stance of his feet to parade-rest, and waited while the three terrorist leaders huddled. This was it, the moment that decided whether his gamble paid off. Whether he lived or died.
Whether the world, as he knew it, lived or died.
Bozhe moi, but he was tired, so very tired . . .
�
��The U-236 is in America?” Heydar asked. “Enough for both bombs?”
“Yes.”
“And only you know where it is?”
“Yes.”
“And the bomb technician—”
“Is waiting for his orders. You have only to tell me where you wish him to go.” Sergei kept Tokarev’s confident bonhomie plastered on his face, determined not to reveal he was holding his breath. Where, Godammit, where?
Heydar turned back to his advisors. Sergei had not been brought up to say his prayers, but it seemed an appropriate moment to make a fumbling attempt to speak to an entity he’d been assured did not exist. Yet at the very height of the Cold War, even Nikita Kruschev had publicly exclaimed, “Bozhe moi!” My God.
Well, hell, why not? Surely God still spoke Russian. So no harm in asking Him to save the world from idiocy. And if Sergei Zhukov died here—please God—let Valentina live.
In front of him three heads were nodding. As well as the heads of those close enough to overhear the verdict. Sergei maintained his determined stance. Locking an unwavering gaze onto Heydar the Lion, he waited.
Vee had drunk two cups of tea, served in round, handleless bowls that looked like the ones used for rice in a Chinese restaurant. She had admired the children, smiled, traded a few remarks via their elderly translator, and eaten her way through enough sweet pastry to jar her teeth. Though the women were obviously wary of the stranger in their midst, they were polite, with no overt signs of hostility. So far, there hadn’t been a sound from the room next door. No shouts, no raised voices. No shots.
Vee accepted a second bowl of tea, willing the pads of her fingers to accept the heat and not disgrace her Russian persona in front of women more accustomed to handling hot earthenware. She caught a gleam or two in teenage eyes that appeared to be wishing she would douse herself with a waterfall of hot tea. Too bad, kids. Ain’t gonna happen.
Limbo Man Page 21