Take Me for a Ride

by Karen Kendall

  She hesitated.

  “I swear. Scout’s honor,” he said, deliberately invoking a group that claimed St. George as its patron saint. None of them needed to know that he’d been unceremoniously kicked out of the Boy Scouts at age thirteen, on account of a girl and a bottle of tequila. “We’ll meet up again at the Savoy later tonight.”

  “Nonnie,” Natalie urged, “you can trust this man. He came all the way to Moscow with me. He’s prevented two attacks on me.”

  Mrs. Ciccoli fingered the little St. George around her neck.

  “Nonnie, you said yourself that Eric was sent by St. George. Please, take off the necklace and give it to him,” Natalie begged. “It’s not worth our lives!”

  “All right. Help me.” She turned her back to Natalie, who fumbled with the clasp. Selia Markovic had done a good job repairing it. Finally Natalie got it open and lifted the heavy piece from her grandmother’s chest.

  Natalie shoved it at McDougal, her hands shaking.“Be careful, Eric. Please. Come back to me this evening.”

  He closed his hand around the necklace. Then he nodded and stood up.

  “Promise?”

  He bent down and kissed her lips. “I promise. Now, stay hidden.”

  Thirty

  Avy changed quickly into a nurse’s uniform, and then she and Liam sat in the ambulance with their “repossessed” Nazi and the rest of the enterprising faux medical team. Liam’s expression grew thunderous. “Double? You want us to pay double? Sod you pickpockets! You bloody den of thieves, you.”

  The irony of the situation seemed to escape him entirely, and Avy was hard-pressed not to laugh. “Trenton, just give them the money. We’re hardly in a position to argue. We have a plane to catch.”

  “Just give them the money, she says! Let me tell you, love, finances aren’t what they once were, what with this retirement business. I used to be able to nick a bauble or two when times got tough. But I’m just a regular working stiff now—”

  “Trenton, you’ll never be a regular anything. And besides, my company is going to hire you. You’ll work on commission, do what you love, and be paid well.”

  “You neglected to mention my prospective employment, love.”

  “I wasn’t sure you could go straight. I’m still not. You’ll be on probation for a lo-o-o-ong time.”

  “Double or nothing,” the faux medic broke in.

  “So pay the man already, darling,” said Avy.

  Grumbling, Liam pulled out his wallet and forked over more rubles. This worked miracles in terms of getting the ambulance to move, and within thirty minutes or so they arrived at a small private airfield to the west of Moscow’s city center.

  The driver pulled the ambulance up to what looked like a pile of junk with a propeller stuck on as an afterthought. Two men dressed in coveralls stood leaning against it, looking bored.

  “Li—uh, Trenton, what is that?” Avy asked, pointing to the pile of scrap metal.

  “That, my love, is an Antonov 72, an old Russian military cargo plane.”

  “An Antonov 72. Of course.”

  “She’s no beauty, but she’s still serviceable.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as I can be, poppet, without taking her up and testing her out. We’ll know in about twenty minutes.” He grinned cheerfully, opened the doors of the ambulance, and jumped out.

  Avy followed but pulled up short when she heard a deep rumble. It sounded like a cross between McDougal’s Kawasaki Ninja and a wood chipper, and it emanated from the interior of the plane.

  Liam had gone around the nose to the back, which opened like a hatch, and stood peering inside. He took a step back as the rumble came again, stroked his fake beard, and cast a quick, wary glance at her.

  Avy’s eyes narrowed as she walked over. The first thing she saw was a very large crate. From the crate wafted a ripe odor that she couldn’t quite place. Mangy, earthy, ammonia tinged. Hide crossed with horse barn.

  Three more steps brought her face-to-face with the largest cat she’d ever seen. It was at least the size of a Volkswagen and had teeth like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And it clearly wanted to gnaw on her skull.

  Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  “Genus panthera,” Liam noted. “Species, p. tigris; subspecies, p. tigris altaica. Latin aside, my darling, it’s a Siberian tiger and it looks quite charmed to make your acquaintance.”

  “No.” She turned on her heel and walked back around the side of the plane. The faux medics were just climbing back into the ambulance after unloading their still-unconscious “patient.”

  “What do you mean, no?” Liam queried, trotting after her.

  “No.”

  “In this case, I’m afraid that ‘no’ must mean ‘yes,’ Avy, darling. I have contracted, as a private pilot, to fly this sweet pussycat from here to a zoo in the U.S., so that he can live a hedonistic life of leisure and produce cubs with a lovely striped lady of similar Siberian distinction.”

  Avy shook her head. “Too bad.”

  “But, my darling, you know as well as I do that our friend on the stretcher won’t leave the country voluntarily. He’s got to be smuggled, and that’s utterly impossible to do on a commercial airliner.”

  “Under no circumstances, Liam, am I going to get into a flying can with you, a Nazi, and a Siberian friggin’ tiger! Have you lost your mind?”

  “Perhaps, but it always returns after a pleasant jaunt abroad. Now, do be reasonable, poppet.”

  “Don’t call me poppet,” she said through her teeth.

  “Right. Stricken from the list of acceptable endearments: poppet. Gone. Vanished. Finito.”

  The ambulance’s engine turned over, and Avy spun as it pulled away and picked up speed. “Wait! Stop!” she yelled, running toward it. Neither of the men inside even acknowledged her.

  She turned back to Liam, enraged. “You deliberately told them to leave.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Not even by ESP, I assure you. Now, come along, love, while I talk to these gentlemen with the clipboards, sign the paperwork, and complete our flight check.”

  “Hallo there, fine fellows,” Liam said to the two men with clipboards. “Let me sign those documents, and then we’ll be off, eh?”

  They looked at each other, then at him, then back at each other. They shrugged, mystified. Clearly they didn’t understand a word of what Liam had said.

  Fortunately another man in similar garb emerged from a small office trailer and walked toward the plane. “Er, sprechen Zie English?” Liam called.

  “Yes, I speak English. Are you the pilot?”

  “I am indeed.” He glanced at Avy. “And this is my worthy copilot.”

  “Well, I hope you have accommodations at a decent hotel, because you’re not going anywhere with this animal right now.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We have suspicions that the tiger has been poached from its natural habitat.”

  “Poached? As in stolen or kidnapped? How shocking,” Liam exclaimed, furtively looking at the unconscious Nazi on the stretcher. “I’m sure you’re mistaken. All the paperwork for this tiger is in order.”

  “Paperwork can be faked.”

  “You don’t say? But why would anyone go to the trouble of forging paperwork for a Siberian tiger?”

  “They’re an endangered species, very rare. Only a few hundred of them may exist in the wild at this time, but that doesn’t stop certain obsessed hunters from wishing to add them to their collection of kills.”

  “That’s awful,” Avy said.

  “Yes. This one may have been ordered up by a bored multimillionaire. In any case, you’re not leaving here with it until we’re absolutely sure.”

  Liam and Avy exchanged glances, just as a groan came from the stretcher.

  “Bloody hell,” said Liam.

  “Excuse me,” said Avy. She walked over to the stretcher, where the Nazi lay fumbling with the oxygen mask, his old blue eyes open and confused. “
Leave that alone,” she said. “And don’t make a noise, or you’re going into the crate with the hungry, cranky, six-hundred-pound kitty.” She adjusted the stretcher so that he had a clear view of the tiger, and, conversely, the tiger had a clear view of him.

  It roared.

  The old Nazi shook with fear.

  “We know exactly who and what you are, and frankly it would give us great pleasure for that creature to gnaw on your femur. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Excellent.” Avy walked back over to Liam and the official. She folded her arms. “Well, Trenton, it appears that we have three options. One, we can ignore everything these gentlemen have to say, leave them tied up in the trailer office, and take off.” She said this drolly, and the official laughed, having no idea that she was serious. She laughed, too. Finally Liam laughed.

  “Two,” she continued, “we can take off without the tiger, which makes the most sense to me.”

  “Sorry, love. I gave my word on the tiger.”

  “To whom? And why?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Avy glared at him. “Or three, we can have my colleague pick us up—assuming that he’s still in Moscow—and we can all have a pajama party with our friend over there.”

  “What is wrong with him?” the official asked.

  “Bad case of schizophrenia. And he’s having paranoid delusions.” She tapped her temple with her index finger. “So don’t worry if he says anything strange.”

  “Help!” screamed the Nazi. “They’re trying to kill me!”

  “Oh, dear.” Avy raised her hands, palms up, and then lowered them as if to say, “What can you do?” Then she walked back over to the man. “We’re not trying to kill you, Oleg. Why would we have brought you here in an ambulance, with medics attending you?”

  “It was fake! The ambulance was a fake . . . These people have kidnapped me! Help!”

  Liam shook his head sadly. “The poor fellow. He has no idea what he’s saying.” He turned in Avy’s direction. “I fear you’re going to have to sedate him again, love.”

  “Oh, gosh. I hate to do that, but he is a little out of control.”

  “No!” yelled Litsky, as she pulled a second syringe out of her pocket. “No, no, no—”

  Avy injected him in the arm as he was trying to shield his neck. Then he fell silent again.

  The official looked on dubiously but seemed reassured at the special care she took in tucking Litsky under the blankets again and the gentle way she took his pulse.

  “All right, I suppose we should call your colleague,” Liam said. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to take off. In the meantime, what are you going to do with this tiger, my good man? Feed it a bowl of borscht? Toss it a dog or two?”

  “Trenton! That’s horrible,” Avy said.

  “Only joking, love. I promise.”

  The tiger chose this moment to roar again.

  The official gulped. He said something in Russian to the other two men in coveralls. “They will stay with the animal overnight.”

  “How cozy,” Liam remarked. “Well, then,” he said to Avy. “Ring up McDougal on your mobile, won’t you? I don’t know about you, but I’m a mite peckish and could do with some dinner.”

  McDougal needed to distract the three men inside the cathedral so that he could make it to the south portal, the door they’d entered by and the one most likely to not have another man with a gun outside it.

  His eyes went to one of the elaborate chandeliers, and he made his decision. The Glock wasn’t the most accurate weapon, especially when he screwed his silencer onto it, but he’d hit at least one of the crystals. It was better than putting a bullet through a sacred icon.

  He attached the silencer, said a brief apology to God for firing a gun in a church, and then discharged his weapon into the mass of crystal. He took advantage of the men’s surprise to take cover behind one of the huge columns. A hail of bullets hit his previous location.

  McDougal waited a few beats, then fired again and ran for the next column. But the men had split up, and one was circling in his direction to cut off the access to the south portal. Eric was an incredibly lapsed Catholic, but that didn’t mean he wanted to kill a man in a church. So he aimed at the guy’s feet, wincing as the Russian screamed and went down.

  McDougal sprinted for the Monomakh throne and took cover once again. When the ensuing shots stopped, he yelled, “I have what you want! The necklace.” He held it out so that it was visible.

  “Give it to us,” one of the men said in rough English, “or we will find your friends and execute them.”

  “They’re not my friends, you idiots. They’re my marks. I couldn’t care less what you do to them.” Please, Natalie, don’t hear this. “I’ve been hunting this damned thing since before it left New York. And now I have it. So if you want it, you’ll stop shooting at me and go back to your boss. Tell him that I want my standard ten percent commission, plus another ten percent for my trouble.” He waited to see whether they’d take him seriously. C’mon, c’mon . . . go for it and get off my back.

  The Russian told him to do something anatomically impossible.

  Damn. But McDougal chose to ignore that. “You tell your boss to get that money to a dead drop of my choice. Once I have it, I’ll leave the necklace at another dead drop. Got it?”

  “No dead drops. Let’s make a different deal: You drop dead. We kill you and take the necklace now.”

  Well, aren’t you the wordsmith? Ha-ha. “Not interested. No upside for yours truly.”

  Eric took down the man trying to creep up on him with a single shot to the left thigh.Then he made a mighty dive for the south doors, skidding on his belly. He threw himself out and rolled down the steps, just as more men burst through the main doors of the cathedral.

  Darkness had blessedly fallen outside, giving him more cover than he would have had by day. Across the square stood the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, and he tore over to it, rounding it and dodging into the trees to his immediate right.

  The men pursued him, but he’d gotten a crucial ten-yard lead, and now he widened that. McDougal silently went up the tree closest to the bell tower and made a risky jump from a limb to a middle balustrade, landing awkwardly. Pain shot through his ankle, but he ignored it as he flattened himself so that he couldn’t be seen from the ground. Floodlights lit the building for tourists, but they also cast deep shadows that were convenient for a man in his predicament.

  When the Russians rounded the corner, there was no sign of him at all. His lungs were close to bursting with adrenaline, and his breathing would have been ragged if he’d let it be. Instead he pushed his face into his forearm and forced himself to take in air quietly, from his nose only.

  The men walked around below him, peering into the trees and debating whether he’d run for the Kremlin wall and simply gone over it. One of them did suggest that he’d gone into the bell tower, but another pointed out that it was locked at night. They went off to double-check that, while McDougal lay pressed against the cold stone, hidden by the architecture of the balustrade.

  Then, unbelievably, his cell phone rang. He almost smashed it in his haste to mute the thing, and hung up on the caller. It was Avy. With the phone safely on vibrate, he held his breath and listened carefully to see whether anyone on the ground had heard it. Nothing stirred, thank God.

  She called back.

  “Avy,” he hissed, “I can’t talk right now!”

  “Good,” she said. “Neither can I. But I need you to get hold of a car and come pick up me, Liam, and an unconscious guy out at the Bykovo Airport.”

  “Not going to happen for a couple of hours,” he said.

  “Listen, McDougal. You’re here on the company dime, and this is a serious situation. I really need your help.”

  “Yeah? Well, as soon as I get away from the people who are shooting at me, I’ll be glad to play taxi. Until then, I’m a little tied up.”

  “People are sho
oting at you?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “Why?”

  “I really don’t have time to go into it.”

  “You need backup?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Whatever you say. Explain when you pick us up. Can you bring me enough cash for a hefty bribe? And by the way, do you know what tigers eat?”

  “Come again?”

  “Tiger. Fierce orange and black creature with really big teeth.”

  “I did hear you right.”

  “What do they eat?”

  “Deer. Bears.”

  “Well, dang. I’m fresh out of bear meat this evening. So when you come, can you bring the Russian equivalent of Meow Mix or something? And I mean a lot of it.”

  Thirty-one

  Natalie, Nonnie, and the colonel stayed bellies down on the cold cathedral floor for a solid hour of silence before they dared to move. For most of that time, Natalie reassured herself that what Eric had shouted to the men in the cathedral was a cover story.

  They’re not my friends, you idiots. They’re my marks. I couldn’t care less what you do to them. I’ve been hunting this damned thing since before it left New York . . .

  No, it wasn’t possible. She could sense Eric’s decency, his sincerity. But . . .

  Okay, he’d admitted that he was here with her partially because of something to do with the Russians who were after them. He’d hinted at government work. So maybe he was trying to bust an international smuggling ring. That made sense.

  She forced herself to take three deep breaths, exhaling slowly.

  It made total sense. Didn’t it?

  Yes, it did.

  Her grandmother began to shiver uncontrollably, and Nat took off her coat and slipped it over Nonnie’s shoulders. Then she got to her feet, slipped off her boots, and tiptoed out of the alcove in her stocking feet. She went down the corridor and stopped at the arch that led back out to the main nave of the cathedral.

  The chandeliers were still lit, casting a warm glow over the deep, rich, multihued murals, and a solitary woman knelt in prayer toward the front of the nave.