Women like Pam certainly were. I wished more than anything that I’d never heard of Bentley Cramer, but it was far too late now to take a mulligan. I didn’t know what to say.
“You’re behaving like a child,” I said. Brilliant!
She swung back around. The unshed tears in her eyes spilled over and started down her cheeks. Her face contorted. I stood there watching her, feeling stupid, helpless, and thoroughly disgusted with myself.
“Wow, you really are a student of human nature, aren’t you?” Her voice cracked on the last few words. She stood up. “Do us both a favor, and just take me home!”
I took her. It wasn’t far, which was good: there was enough pressure in the car’s atmosphere to blow out the windows. When I pulled up in front of her building, Pam had the door open and was out before we came to a complete stop. She ran up the walkway, up the stairs, and out of sight before I could think of anything to say. Based on my recent past performances, that was just as well. A few seconds later, I heard her apartment door slam shut with the crash of a sonic boom. My head buzzed in the ensuing silence, and I let out a long whoosh of breath that felt like I’d been holding it in for the last five minutes.
It didn’t help matters that when I got back home, the first thing I saw was Pam’s bowling bag on the living room floor.
Maybe I’d just mail it to her.
There was a great deal to do, and the next two weeks passed quickly. My boss at the Tribune was genuinely delighted for me, wishing me nothing but the best, and he gave me as much free time as I needed to put everything together. For the price of an extra month’s rent, my landlord was happy to accommodate me, too. It all helped, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was getting a lot more consideration than I deserved.
I found a modest (very modest) one-bedroom apartment in Forest Hills, the deposit and first month’s rent of which took almost all that was left of my checking account; and with one day to spare, I loaded what few possessions I had into a U-Haul and left East Lambert behind for what I felt sure would be forever.
Except for Pam—or maybe because of her—I wasn’t all that sorry about leaving. (I didn’t need to mail her the bowling bag, by the way. She came by the next morning, when she knew I would be at work, and picked it up. On the coffee table lay my duplicate apartment key, the one I’d given her some months before—on Valentine’s Day, to be precise. She didn’t leave a note, and she didn’t call. I couldn’t blame her, but I sure as hell already missed her.)
Thursday afternoon I spent unloading and returning the U-Haul; then I filled the gas tank and drove home. The inaugural meal for the new apartment consisted of White Castle hamburgers and Red Stripe beer, which I consumed while dusting off my foreign language skills with the help of a local Spanish-speaking news/talk radio station. Unlike the last two weeks of my life, it all made sense to me. That was something, I supposed.
I was back out at Cramer’s bright and early Friday morning. In the probably apocryphal words of Yogi Berra, it was déjà vu all over again. The guards at the gate and the door gave me the same careful scrutiny; the two beautiful secretaries were busy at work in their identical white and navy outfits; and at precisely 0930, the auburn-haired one told me that Mr. Cramer would see me now. The only difference was the music. This time, it was “And I Love Her” by the Beatles. 1964 again, I thought. Interesting. I took a deep breath and went through the door.
Cramer stepped out from behind his desk and met me halfway. We shook hands.
“Good morning, Paul. Ready to go to work?” he asked, smiling. His tone was far more genial than it had been during the interview, confirmation (as if I needed it) that Pam had been one hundred percent right about his doing a number on me. It was academic now: I was here, for better or worse. I felt a momentary twinge of something—anger, regret?—but then I smiled back at my new boss. What the hell. For a hundred four thousand dollars a year, I’d begin with the working hypothesis that it was all for the best.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.
“Excellent. How did they take your departure at the Tribune, by the way?”
“Just fine. They couldn’t have been nicer about it.”
“No trouble getting relocated?”
I shook my head. “No, everything’s all set. Got moved in last night.”
“Good. Very good. After you fill out all the proper forms, your first order of duty is to go home and enjoy a relaxing weekend on me. Put the dishes away, do some laundry, get the electricity turned on, that sort of thing. Is that agreeable?”
I grinned. “Most agreeable. I won’t argue with that.”
“Knew you’d be pleased.” He gestured toward the outer office. “Maria has all the paperwork.” I wondered briefly which one was Maria. Cramer made a quarter-turn away, then stopped and reversed it. He snapped his fingers. Even in that huge room, it sounded like the report of an M-16.
“Oh, by the way, Paul. I should have asked you this earlier, but is your passport up to date?”
I looked at him. “Yes.”
“Excellent. In that case, you may wish to pack a bag. You’re leaving for Russia Monday afternoon.”
Chapter Five
Elsewhere
Black Horse Pub
Fontanka Embankment, St. Petersburg, Russia
Wearing a too-large T-shirt tucked into too-tight jeans, the young waitress set two half-liter glasses of beer on the table at the back of the bar. Her customer, an attractive-looking young man in dark slacks and a white polo shirt, looked up from his newspaper without expression and nodded once at the three hundred-ruble notes that lay next to the beer, indicating she should keep the change.
The change would have easily bought a third beer. With no particular attempt at subtlety, the girl swiped at the table with a filthy dish towel and the money disappeared into the pocket of her apron. She looked up. Her “waitress” smile widened into a genuine one, but when she met the man’s eyes, the words of thanks she had planned stuck in her throat and her smile disintegrated.
There was nothing intrinsically ominous in the man’s gaze, yet its effect on her was indisputable. She turned away quickly. Her right foot clipped her left ankle and she stumbled, grabbing at the table to keep from falling. In doing so, her hand went down on the business end of a fork. The fork flipped into the air and clattered to the floor and a few drops of beer sloshed out of the glasses. She mumbled a quick apology, dabbed again at the table, then bent to retrieve the fallen utensil.
“Leave it,” the man said, using the “familiar” form of the Russian imperative, as one would with a small child or an animal. His voice was quiet, flat, and cold as dry ice. It was not a voice that invited further discussion.
The girl froze, more at the tone than at the actual words. She knew the man now had an unobstructed view of her breasts (she wasn’t wearing a bra), but she found herself unable to move, even to lift her eyes.
“But I—” she began.
“Leave it,” he repeated.
With a supreme effort of will, she straightened up. He held her in his gaze for a moment. Then he smiled.
“Thank you,” he said politely. “I am expecting a guest, but we shall not require any further service and I do not wish for us to be disturbed. Do you understand?”
The waitress bobbed her head once in quick assent, and took two careful steps back from the table before trusting herself to turn and walk away.
At the table, the man took a sip of beer and watched her retreat over the rim of his glass. The tight jeans showed the bottom half of her figure to good advantage. He’d seen the top half for himself just moments before; it too was well up to standard. He guessed she would be a superb bedmate (would her fear of him have an aphrodisiacal effect on her? Sometimes it worked that way), but his interest was purely theoretical.
He glanced down at his copy of Pravda. As he did, he caught sight of the fork on the floor and kicked it out of sight under the table, then smiled to himself, remembering the old superstiti
on: drop a fork, and a woman will come to visit. Well, that was right enough, anyway. He looked at his watch, then picked up the newspaper and pretended to read. His guest would know where to find him.
And less than a minute later, she did.
“Sasha?”
The man looked up in mock surprise. In fact, he had marked the woman from the moment she entered and watched her approach from over the top of his newspaper.
He wasn’t the only one. Every eye in the place—male and female—was on her, and for good reason. It had been an approach worth watching. Tall, blonde, and clad in a sleeveless green minidress, she walked with the easy grace and poise of a model or a professional athlete, though she was neither. Her legs—long and sleek, with calves just that little bit too muscular—were the most remarkable part of her remarkable body, and the minidress left nothing to anyone’s imagination. Probably, the man thought, she got the legs from skating. He carefully folded the newspaper and laid it to one side.
“Irina,” he said, smiling but not rising from his seat. “What a nice surprise. Will you join me?”
“Thank you.” She gave him a dazzling smile in return and slid into the other side of the booth. She immediately reached for the beer and took a long drink.
The man examined her with a concealed mixture of disdain and amusement…and, he admitted to himself, more than a little prurient interest. Behind the undisputed natural beauty of Irina’s face, whatever it was that caused her eyes to glitter and sparkle this way, it wasn’t intelligence. Greed, certainly; lust, probably; but nothing more complex. Irina’s psychological development began and ended with the id. Satisfy her basic desires and satisfy them now, he thought, and she was his to command.
Which was exactly what he needed.
He leaned forward, and she reciprocated, putting their faces only centimeters apart. Her scent filled his nostrils, and at this distance, it combined with her expectant smile to fill him with something else altogether. First things first, he told himself.
“I understand you are looking for a way to make some extra money,” he said.
Irina’s smile widened. “Always,” she said, her voice no more than a husky whisper.
“Good. Then listen carefully. The task is a simple one.” It would have to be, he thought, for her to carry it out.
The two of them began a hushed conversation across the table. To any casual observer, they would appear simply to be an ordinary couple engrossed in some intimate talk.
“Do you have any questions?” he asked when he had finished.
“We haven’t discussed the terms,” Irina said.
Of course. The bitch hasn’t taken in a word. But he smiled at her all the same. It was time to mix some pleasure in with his business.
“No,” the man said, “we haven’t. Perhaps this is not the place for such discussion. May I suggest we go somewhere more, ah, private, to deal with that aspect?”
Irina reached out and put her hand on his arm. Her lips parted and the pupils of her eyes were dilated.
“What did you have in mind…Sasha?” she asked.
He told her.
The man’s flat was located several kilometers away, on the other side of the city. Sitting with Irina in the back of the taxi, he reflected that strictly speaking, this was a breach of security, but it was of little practical importance. For one thing, he was the boss. For another, whatever “secrets” she might happen to stumble across would remain undisclosed, and even if they weren’t, none of it could ever be traced back to him. The flat wasn’t his, at least not permanently; for that matter, neither was his appearance, which he could and did change on very short notice and to good effect. And naturally, his name wasn’t Sasha or anything like it.
To the extent that anyone knew him at all—which was very slight indeed—he was known only as The Chameleon.
428 Bergisch Gladsbacherstrasse
Cologne, Germany
With the careful eye of an experienced international traveler, the woman looked over the contents of her two suitcases and the smaller black travel bag that contained uniforms, shoes, and other assorted tools of her trade.
Alles ist in Ordnung, she thought. There was no reason for it to be otherwise. She zipped the bags closed and, with a strength not readily apparent from her slight build, picked them up and carried them into the darkened living room. The only sound came from a loudly-ticking cuckoo clock on the wall. She put the bags down; then, without bothering to switch on any lights, she sat in a chair by the front window and watched for her taxi through a crack in the blinds. It would be here soon: the local firm operated with stereotypical Teutonic efficiency. As she waited, the sensation in her stomach continued to gnaw at her exactly as it had done, in varying degrees, every day for the last two weeks.
She tried to dismiss it as no more than the usual case of nerves she suffered from before any big event, but she couldn’t fool herself. There was more to it this time. In retrospect, she thought, she ought to have turned the man’s offer down; ought, too, to have reported the contact to the authorities.
That was the problem. Telling those pompous Schweine anything about what had happened was out of the question. They would have kept her at home, effectively punishing her for doing the right thing. And who was to say that the subsequent investigation might not implicate her anyway? They were easily stupid enough to do exactly that.
Option Two was to reject the offer and say nothing. That also had its risks. If her association with the man later came to light, the presumption of guilt would be strong against her. The responsibility for any anomalous results, no matter how honestly they had been arrived at, would be laid at her doorstep. That, too, was unacceptable.
There seemed to be only one way out. Accept the man’s proposition and do what he wanted her to do. If one was going to risk one’s career anyway, she reasoned, one might at least make some money out of the affair. And perhaps that was the safest course: he didn’t strike her as someone who would cheerfully take no for an answer.
Not that there was anything overtly intimidating about his manner or appearance when he approached her that night in Dortmund. He was a young man—certainly no more than thirty, she estimated—of average size or even a little less. He had dark green eyes and close-cropped blond hair that had been almost plastered to his scalp with some sort of styling gel. (The gel put her off; without it, she thought, he might have been rather good-looking.) He spoke quietly and well, with an accent that put her in mind of a Swiss professor she had studied under at university some years ago.
Neither was there anything all that startling about what he was offering, once the initial shock of the thing had worn off; in fact, he made it all sound quite reasonable. She was, he pointed out, not being asked to alter any results—merely to ensure that those results fell within certain parameters.
And there was the money: three thousand Euros in a simple white envelope that he had handed across the table to her as casually as if it were a letter of hers he had received by mistake. A down payment, the man told her, with more to come as the event progressed. Her face went pale when she saw the contents, and she automatically pushed the envelope away.
“No,” she said. “I cannot—”
His hands shot up and caught her by the wrists, stopping both her arms and her protests. His grip didn’t hurt, though it was enough to completely immobilize her. Then he smiled and gently, very gently, pushed back.
“Of course you can,” he said.
And that had been the end of it…
A horn honked outside and the woman jumped in her chair. The taxi. She stood and looked once more through the blinds to confirm it; then she picked up her bags and left, carefully locking the door behind her. She wondered vaguely whether she would ever return.
The ride to the airport was a short one, no more than twenty minutes. She spent the time gazing out the window at nothing and trying to convince herself yet again that everything would work out for the best. To some extent, she suc
ceeded. Having no choice in the matter made the situation much easier to accept. She wished that the encounter with the man had never taken place, but since it had, all she could do now was follow through. Because she knew instinctively that the fourth option—taking the money and then double-crossing him by playing it straight—came with consequences that were too horrendous to think about.
She couldn’t help thinking about them, though, and when she did, the man’s face—pale, bland, and expressionless—instantly filled the video screen of her imagination.
And the vision terrified her out of her wits.
Orsini di Napoli
30 Rockefeller Center, New York City
Co-workers, roommates, and best friends Maria Rakosi and Felicity Carter ordered the beef carpaccio for two and a bottle of Napa Valley cabernet from the upper third of the wine list. Then the two women sipped vodka martinis and talked of cabbages and kings while they waited.
They didn’t have to wait long. The service at Orsini’s was hit-or-miss at best, but Maria and Felicity had eaten dinner here every Monday and Friday for the last three years and never received anything but first-class food and drink, served to them with sublimely professional efficiency and courtesy.
[Except for the first time. That had been an unmitigated disaster. The pasta had the consistency of vulcanized rubber, the wine was off, the service intolerably slow, and the waitress, not satisfied merely with getting their order wrong, had been borderline insolent to boot. The women said nothing at the time—they simply wouldn’t come here again, they decided—but next morning, Felicity mentioned the experience to their boss, just in passing.
“I see,” he had said. “Where was this, again?”
Felicity exchanged a quick smile with Maria at the question—their employer never needed to be told anything twice—and told him.
“Go back tonight,” he said.
“But we—”
“Go back tonight,” he said.
They did, and confirmed something they already knew: there were distinct advantages in working for Bentley Livingston Cramer.]
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