There was a very good reason why those clouds of grackles wheeling over Allandale House had made me nervous.
Lensky dropped the garlic paste into the deep iron skillet, stirred for a moment, and poured white wine over it. After adding sliced onions, chopped parsley and diced tomatoes he pushed the skillet to the back of the stove and filled two stemless wine glasses with generous splashes of the white wine. I inhaled appreciatively.
“You’d done most of the work before I got here. Sorry about that.”
“Just as well, this time. After seeing what you did to a head of garlic I’d be afraid to turn you loose on an innocent bunch of parsley.”
“Unfortunately, a chef’s knife isn’t much use against an annoyance of grackles.”
Lensky gave the simmering sauce another stir, pulled out a kitchen chair for himself, and drew me down to sit on his lap. “I'd bet on the Mathematical Mafia against the Master of Ravens any day,” he said, “and don't forget, you've got me for backup. And more, if you need; I can call in some old favors back at the home office.” He set his wine glass on the table, then took mine and set it beside his. He liked to secure all spillable items before starting anything.
With dinner simmering and the wine out of the way, he wrapped his arms around me and nuzzled the back of my neck. “If I run into anybody calling himself Maître Corbeau or Señor Cuervo I'll be sure to let you know.” He nibbled very delicately along the edge of an earlobe and I shivered.
Then his lips moved on down to the side of my neck, and the last practical thing I said for some time was, “Should we turn down the heat under that skillet?”
“Might as well,” he murmured into my neck, “I don’t want to put in the shrimp until five minutes before we eat.”
“Oh, is this going to take more than five minutes?”
Over a very late dinner – we hadn’t thrown in the shrimp or started the pasta until the last minute - he said thoughtfully, “Speaking of loose ends, I’ve got permission to tell you why I’m so worried about Blondie. I still can’t tell you everything, but at least I can go over my personal history with him.”
“Blondie,” real name unknown, was a demolitions specialist who'd come to the attention of the intelligence community after a series of terrorist bombings of large buildings that all had the same “signature.” Lensky's three-letter agency had discovered last fall that Blondie had entered the US illegally across the southern border. They'd tracked him as far as a luxury Riverwalk hotel in San Antonio and then Lensky had enlisted my help in finding out which of the three possible targets was the real “Blondie.” The op had been semi-successful. The 'successful' part was that an unauthorized peek in the targets' room safes had made it easy to identify him, and as long as we were snooping Lensky had taken snapshots of the papers in Blondie's safe which he sent back to the home office for translation and analysis.
The 'semi' part was that I had needed to be physically close to Blondie's room safe to transfer the papers back into it, and while we were standing outside his suite he'd opened his door and gotten a glimpse of Lensky and me before I teleported us out of there.
Lensky's bosses had felt that the information gleaned from Blondie's papers was useful enough to balance the fact that he'd been alerted to the surveillance, so we hadn't taken too much grief from above about the unplanned ending of the op. And we hadn't seen or heard from Blondie again, discounting one very odd night when he'd been spotted mingling with the guests at a high-dollar shindig right here in Austin, so he had rather faded from my mind.
“For one thing, there's been some chatter linking him to this area.”
“From last October?” That had been the time of the peculiar party incident.
“No. Just this week, actually. The other thing is, some of what our analysts turned up may explain how he happened to show up at that party. They think he’s a Romanian national.”
“So?” That did surprise me a little, given the number of notes in Arabic that we’d extracted from his safe. But not that much, given that he was tall and very blond.
“Remember my saying he looked vaguely familiar? After the San Antonio incident?”
“No… but we were both somewhat, um, distracted after I teleported us out of there to your condo.”
“I remember. You passed out and scared the dickens out of me. Hell of a time to do that, too.”
“That was a long jump. I didn’t realize how much I’d need to refuel. Anyway, I made it up to you later, didn’t I?”
He smiled. “Oh, yes. I love being with you when you’ve just come skidding and slithering out of the ‘in-between.’”
“And I love being with you when you’ve just been shot at and missed,” I said to remind him that I hadn’t been the only enthusiastic participant in that little episode.
Lensky cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. I was stationed in Romania for a couple of years.”
“You never mentioned that.”
“It was some time ago… Because they believe in making maximum use of our existing skills, and because I’m fluent in Polish, the agency naturally wanted to send me to Eastern Europe. But because it’s still a government agency, they put me in Bucharest rather than Warsaw.”
“Oh well, at least you already knew one Slavic language.”
“Romanian is a Latin language. I’d have been more effective practically anywhere else in Eastern Europe. Anyway, while I was there we had a massive security breach. Not my doing; an idiot at the Embassy failed to follow protocols. But I was burned and so were two other people. They whisked us out of there and into other posts immediately. But you see, I think I did encounter Blondie there, if only briefly. And he’d have known who I was and where I worked. When he saw us in San Antonio, he might have remembered that connection. It wouldn’t have taken much digging among his contacts to find out that I was currently stationed in Austin, with the Center for Applied Topology. That much could have led him to the Moore Foundation party. Where he would have seen you again. With me again. And now one of my agents may have spotted him here in Austin just this week. It may be nothing, but - keep your eyes open?”
“Sure,” I promised, and then thought I had a chance to make a point. “Now aren't you glad you asked me to help in San Antonio?”
“Why?”
“If I hadn't been with you then, I wouldn't know what he looks like and I wouldn't be able to help you watch for him.”
“If I hadn't taken you with me,” Lensky said gloomily, “he wouldn't know what you look like and I would be much happier about this entire situation.”
Well, that was another way to look at it.
4. The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Turtle
“You want to talk to me.”
“I don’t recall issuing an invitation.”
“I heard.”
“From whom?”
“Around. That’s not the important question. The question is, ‘How much?’”
“How… mercenary.”
“Yes, that’s what I am. Tell me the size of the job and I’ll tell you what my fee will be.”
The tall, lithe man dressed in black nearly faded into the shadows of his host’s room, save for his short blond, almost white hair. The other man, short and dark with a five o’clock shadow, was physically less impressive, but was attended by a crackling sense of power that would have intimidated anyone but Blondie.
“Let’s not discuss fees for the moment. I prefer to think of this as an opportunity for mutual support, rather than a crass commercial transaction.”
“Crass and commercial is how I rock.”
“Give it a moment… I believe we have some enemies in common. Are you familiar with the Center for Applied Technology?”
Blondie’s body stiffened. “That bastard Lensky uses them for cover. And his little bitch girlfriend is involved somehow too. It’s damn near impossible to find out more than that.”
“For you, possibly. I… have other resources.” The speaker raised one smooth hand and his rin
gs flashed despite the shadows. An oversized grackle fluttered out of the curtains and landed on his arm with a screech. Strange pet to have in a hotel.
“My friends have been paying particular attention to this Center for some time. It appears to be flourishing; from a dubious beginning with just three researchers under a doddering old professor, it now employs four and a half researchers and three support staff. The “little bitch” you mentioned is one of the researchers.”
“How do you hire half a person?”
“Intern. Never mind, just listen. The Center also has the use of Bradislav Lensky, with his special connections, although he is paid directly by the agency that placed him there rather than by the Center. Possibly a distinction without a difference, since that agency also funds the Center, passing money through a research foundation to preserve their anonymity.”
The bejeweled hand stroked the grackle’s iridescent black feathers.
“Look,” Blondie said, “if you want to pretend you’re getting information from birds, fine, play it like that. I don’t need to know all that about funding and staff support, I don’t care about bringing down the Center. I just want to have a conversation with the two people who interfered with a multi-job deal that I was setting up last fall. They cost me a lot; I want to make them pay for it.”
“My sentiments exactly, except that I am more ambitious than you. I want to see the entire Center pay for what they did to me.”
“Which was?”
“You don’t need to know. All you need concern yourself with is that I am in a position to offer material support and inside information… if you take out the entire Center.”
“You want every employee dead? I charge by the item for hit jobs.”
“What would you call your plans for Lensky and his girl?”
“Personal satisfaction.”
“Very well then. My personal satisfaction would lie in seeing this Center lose all power and credibility and be so damaged that it could never be revived. I don’t need any particular deaths if the goal can be achieved without them, but I won’t object to a certain amount of collateral damage. Focus on Lensky if you like, but ultimately I want the whole structure brought down.”
“And….?”
The dark man raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“My clients make a down payment of half the total fee before I start work.”
“Since I will be paying you with support and information, that’s a bit tricky to arrange. However…”
The bejeweled hand stroked the grackle again. “Lamashtu, may I trouble you for one of your feathers?”
Rings flashed in the light as the dark man dexterously twitched a long black feather free and offered it to Blondie. “Consider this a down payment. With it, you will be able to understand the speech of my servants. You may go now.”
Blondie started to laugh, but grackles whirred down from all the curtains and ceiling corners and surrounded him, and when they dispersed he was standing in the shade of a live oak, outside the building. He shook his head. That had been some crazy dream. Too bad he hadn’t dreamed anything actually useful, like how to get at his targets without endangering himself.
As he was walking back to his car, an oversized grackle dove to the sidewalk just in front of him. “I can watch… GRAK.”
In his shock, he had let go of the grackle feather in his hand. The large bird grabbed the feather in its beak, flew up clumsily and pecked at his empty hand. When his fingers touched the feather, the squawking turned comprehensible again. “Fool. Did I give up a feather only for you to lose it? Be more careful.” The grackle departed with a derisive flick of its wings.
Tucked under one of the windshield wipers of his car was a card with only two lines printed on it.”Shani Chayyaputra,” read the name, printed in a flowing script with extremely shiny black ink. Below that was a telephone number.
The Blessed Prakash wasn’t due to start at the Center until Monday, and that was fine with me. Lensky usually visited his sister-in-law and niece on Friday nights, and I – unless I had a really good excuse – presented myself at my parents’ house for the weekly family dinner with a side of bullying and disappointment. It wasn’t all bad; Mom cooked the best Greek food in Texas and her baklava was to die for. And since I’d casually mentioned Ben and Annelise’s apartment-warming party on Saturday, she had probably made an extra tray of baklava for me to take to that party.
It was just the conversation that could be hard to take.
This night was particularly difficult, because my oldest brother and his wife were out of town and my second-oldest brother had claimed sickness. That left just Andros and me to take incoming fire.
Mom led off with lamentations about my letting Ben ‘get away,’ while Dad inserted sour comments to the effect that he’d known all along I wouldn’t be able to keep a man interested. Okay, I’d kind of bought that. For the last couple of years I’d deflected some of the “marry-and-reproduce” pressure by letting them believe that Ben and I had a thing. It wasn’t difficult; it would have been much harder to convince Dad that a man and a woman could be colleagues and best friends without remotely wishing for any kind of romantic connection. Even Lensky had struggled to accept that Ben was my best friend, and he was at least living in the twentieth century, if not the twenty-first. My father, who is just short of certifiably insane, still has his head in a back-country Greek village and applies those standards to every situation he encounters in modern America.
And using Ben had made it easier for me to conceal Lensky from them.
So I had to endure a certain amount of Mom’s moaning about how I let a perfectly good man get away and you’re not getting any younger Thalia, while Dad surmised that Annelise was prettier than me (absolutely true) and younger (by a couple of years) and a better cook (I don’t know anything about her cooking skills, but if she could boil water without reading the instructions she was better than I was).
At least he didn’t mention that she was taller. Since Dad’s not exactly a giant himself, he can accept that I’m only five foot three. Or maybe it’s just that “tall” isn’t on the list of desirable qualities for a Greek village bride.
Andros, on the other hand, had been shooting up over the last year. At sixteen he was already a head taller than Dad, and his broad shoulders and general appearance were a testament to Mom’s cooking and American orange juice. Also, he had evidently received all of the good Greek genes in our genetic lottery: tall like Mom, smooth olive skin, curly black hair and lots of it. Me, I got the hair but not the height, for which I tried not to blame Dad. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a grown man already,” I commented to him during a brief pause in the criticism.
“Hah! What makes a man is acting like a man, not shooting up tall like a weed.” Dad hadn’t minded Stevie and Yanni growing up to be taller than him, but Andros getting there well before eighteen did irritate him. I don’t think his patriarchal self-image included being shorter and scrawnier than all his sons.
You’d think he would appreciate me more. I’m not taller than anybody.
But no, he had to continue his self-imposed mission of cutting Andros down. “Andros is still a schoolboy and if he doesn’t shape up he’ll never be anything more.”
“Seems to me a sixteen-year-old should be a schoolboy,” I snapped.
Andros twitched in his seat. “Please, Thalia,” he said in a very low voice. “He just gets worse if you argue back.”
Yes. I knew that for myself, it was why I hunkered down and let Dad’s criticism roll over me. Now, as he launched into a diatribe about Andros’ failings, I mentally slapped myself. Why couldn’t I be as smart for Andros as I was for myself?
Later, over the dishes, I tried to apologize to him. (Dad, of course, was never to be seen in the kitchen unless he wanted another beer and Mom wasn’t around to bring it to him. While we washed and dried, he was in the living room watching the late news.)
“It’s all right, Thalia,”
Andros said, but his hunched shoulders told me it was very far from all right.
“Just hang in there,” I told him. “When you’re eighteen I’ll help you get out.” I might need to get a better paying job to put Andros through university, but that was a bridge I’d burn when I got there.
He didn’t look any happier. “Thalia, I’m not a brain like you. I probably won’t even get into the university. Besides…”
“Silly boy thinks he wants to be a soldier and get killed!” Mom announced.
“Well. That should be achievable. Becoming a soldier, I mean, not the getting killed part. You can enlist when you’re eighteen, can’t you?”
Andros seemed to shrink in on himself. “I want to join the Marines,” he almost whispered. “But Dad says they’ll never take me.”
“Dad is…” Mom caught my eye and I substituted, “not an expert on military standards,” for what I’d been about to say. “I think the Marines or any other branch of the military would be overjoyed to get someone like you. Tall, fit, good grades – what’s not to like?”
Andros looked even unhappier but said nothing.
“I made baklava for that party of yours,” Mom said, pulling off a length of plastic wrap and swathing a large tray in it. “Not that I think it’s anything to celebrate, but at least that Mr. Southlands will see what he’s losing in you!”
Dr. Verrick, of course, didn’t show up at the party. He had muttered that in his day young people got married first and then moved in together, and given the general incompetence of his research staff he shouldn’t be surprised that they got things backwards now. Then he arranged for a set of champagne flutes and several bottles of chilled champagne to be delivered on Saturday night, and informed the staff of the Center that we were to deliver ourselves at the appropriate time to the apartment-warming party.
An Annoyance of Grackles (Applied Topology Book 3) Page 3