Maggie glanced down at her digital watch. Calculating the time difference, she estimated that Nate should be arriving at the Karistani camp about now.
Sternly she repressed a fervent wish that she could exchange places with him right now.
Chapter 4
As Nate rode beside Alexandra into the sprawling city of black goathair tents that constituted Karistan’s movable capital, he decided that the average age of the male half of the population must hover around sixty. Or higher.
Eyes narrowed, he skimmed the crowd gathering in the camp to greet their leader. It seemed to consist mostly of bent, scarred veterans even more ancient than Dimitri. Only after they’d drawn nearer did Nate see a scattering of children and women among the men.
Most of the women wore ankle-length black robes and dark shawls draped over their heads. A few were in the embroidered blouses and bright, colorful skirts Nate associated with the traditional dress in this part of the world. Whatever their age or dress, however, the women all seemed to greet his arrival with startled surprise and a flurry of whispered comments behind raised hands.
As the riders approached, one of the women stepped out of the crowd and sauntered forward. Although shorter and far more generously endowed than Alexandra, the girl had a dramatic widow’s peak and confident air that told Nate the two women had to be related.
Alexandra drew to a halt a few yards from the younger woman and swung out of the saddle. Nate followed suit, hiding his quick stab of amusement as the girl looked him over from head to toe with the thoroughness of a bull rider checking out his draw before he climbed into the chute.
She asked a question that made Alexandra’s lips tighten. Flashing the girl a warning look, the older woman indicated Nate with a little nod.
“Out of courtesy to our guest, you must use the English you learned during your year at the university, Katerina. This is Mr. Sloan…”
“Nate,” he reminded her lazily.
Alexandra wasn’t too pleased with the idea of his getting on a first-name basis with Katerina, if her quick frown was any indication, but she didn’t make an issue of it.
“He brings the horse we were told of,” she continued, “the one from the president of the United States. He only visits with us for a short time.”
The well-rounded beauty’s brows rose at the unmistakable emphasis. “Do we… Do we…”
She paused, searching what Nate guessed was a limited and long-unused English vocabulary. Triumph sparkled in her dark eyes when she found the words she sought.
“Do we…give him much comfort, my cousin, per-perhaps he will visit longer.”
Comfort sounded more like koom-foot, and Nate had to struggle a bit with wheez-it, but he caught her drift. Seeing as how she tossed in a curving, seductive smile for good measure, he could hardly miss it. His answering grin made Alexandra’s sable brows snap into a straight line.
Katerina sashayed forward, ignoring her cousin’s frown. “Come, Amerikanski, I will—how you say?—take you the camp.”
Nate was tempted. Lord, he was tempted. The little baggage had the most inviting eyes and beguiling lips he’d stumbled across in many a day. As accommodating as she appeared to be, he figured it would take him about three minutes, max, to extract whatever she knew of the decoder. Among other things.
Too bad he hadn’t yet reached the point of seducing young women to accomplish his mission, he thought with a flicker of regret. Still, he wasn’t about to let a potential source like Katerina slip through his fingers entirely.
“That’s real friendly of you, miss,” he replied, smiling down at her. “Maybe you can, ah, take me the camp later. Right now, I’d better see that Three Bars Red here gets tended to.”
Her full lips pursed in a pretty fair imitation of a pout. “The men, they can do this.”
“I’m sure they can,” Nate replied easily, “but I don’t plan to let them. I’m responsible for this animal…until your ataman decides if she’s going to accept him.”
Alexandra’s eyes narrowed at his use of her title, but she said nothing. Katerina, on the other hand, didn’t bother to hide her displeasure at coming in second to a horse.
“So! Perhaps do I take you the camp later. Perhaps do I not.” Tossing her head, she walked off.
Yep, the two women were definitely related, Nate decided.
At her cousin’s abrupt departure, Alexandra gestured one of the watching men forward.
“This is Petr Borodín.”
The way she pronounced the name, Pey-tar Bor-o-deen, with a little drumroll at the end, sounded to Nate like a sort of musical poetry.
“He is a mighty warrior of the steppes who served in two wars,” she added.
Nate didn’t doubt it for an instant. This bald scarecrow of a man with baggy pouches under his eyes and an empty, pinned-up left sleeve sported three rows of tarnished medals on his thin chest. Among them were the French Croix de Guerre and the World War II medal the U.S. had struck to honor an elite multinational corps of saboteurs. These fearless sappers had destroyed vital enemy supply depots and, incidentally, guided over a hundred downed U.S. airmen to safety.
“Petr will show you where you will stay,” Alexandra continued, in the rolling, formal phrases that intrigued Nate so. “And where you may take the horse.”
He thought he saw a shadow of a smile in the glance she gave Ole Red, who was watching the proceedings with sleepy-eyed interest. A sudden, inexplicable desire to keep that smile on her face for longer than a tenth of a second curled through Nate.
Surprised by the sensation, he tucked it away for further examination and stood quietly while Alexandra issued quick instructions to this Petr fellow. When she finished, he gave her a nod and gathered Red’s reins.
“I’ve never been in these parts before,” he offered as he fell in beside his new guide, testing the man’s English and value as a possible information source. “What say we take a ride after I drop off my gear, and you show me the lay of the land?”
“No!”
Alexandra’s sharp exclamation halted both men in their tracks. She stepped forward as they swung around, and shot a quick order to the Karistani before facing Nate.
“The steppes can be treacherous, if you don’t know them. You mustn’t leave this camp, except as I direct.”
Nate let his gaze drift over her face. “Guess we’d better talk about that a bit. Much as I wouldn’t mind lazing around for a few days, Ole Red here will need exercise.”
“You’ll stay in camp unless I say otherwise,” she snapped. “And even in camp, you will stay with your escort. Our ways are different. You may give offense without knowing it, or…” She circled a hand in the air. “Or go where you’re not permitted.”
Nate didn’t so much as blink, but the pulse in the side of his neck began a slow tattoo. “So you’re saying certain parts of the camp are off-limits? You want to be more specific? Just so I don’t give offense, you understand.”
Her chin lifted at his sarcasm. “To be specific, I suggest you stay away from the women’s quarters, and from Katerina.”
Now that was hitting just a little below the belt. Nate hadn’t exactly invited the girl to swish her skirts at him the way she had. What was more, he fully intended to enter the women’s quarters at the first opportunity. At the moment, though, the thought of searching Alexandra’s belongings didn’t hold nearly as much appeal as the thought of searching Alexandra herself. The unfriendlier the woman got, the more Nate found himself wanting to pierce her hard shell.
“Do you hold all men in such low regard?” he drawled. “Or maybe just me in particular?”
She sent him an icy stare. “That, Mr. Sloan, is none…”
“Nate.”
“…of your business. All you need to know is that I’m responsible for what happens in this camp. Everything that happens. For your own safety, I won’t have you wandering around unescorted. As long as you’re here, you’ll respect my wishes in this and in all other matters.”
Not quite all, Nate amended silently as she spun on one heel. He had a few wishes of his own to consider. One had to do with a certain decoder. Another, he decided, watching her trim bottom as she walked away, just might have to do with discovering Alexandra Jordan’s answer to the second part of his question.
Petr Borodín took his chief’s orders to heart and stuck to Nate like cockleburs to a saddle blanket for the rest of the afternoon. After showing the Amerikanski to a tent where he could dump his gear, the aged warrior helped unsaddle and curry Red with a skill that belied his lack of one arm. That done, he led the way to the pasturage.
A dozen or so geldings and a shaggy roan that Nate guessed was the band’s alpha mare were hobbled in a stretch of prairie at the rear of the camp. Another dozen mares, and several yearlings, grazed around them. Evidently none of the females were in season, since neither Red nor the feisty little stallion tethered some distance away showed much interest in them. They did, however, take immediate exception to each other. For all his gregarious nature and easy disposition, Red recognized the competition when he saw it.
After a prolonged display of flat ears, snaked necks and pawed ground, Nate decided to keep the quarter horse away from the band until Alexandra made up her mind about him. No use letting Red chase off the smaller stallion if he wasn’t going to be allowed to claim the mares.
Peter the Great, as Nate christened the veteran—much to his delight when he understood the reference—tethered Red to the side of their tent. Once fed a mixture of prairie grass and the oats Nate had brought along to help him adjust to the change in his diet, the stallion was once again his usual placid self.
Placid, at least, until he got a whiff of the candy bar Nate stuck in his shirt pocket before he scooped a bucket of water from the sluggish stream behind the camp. By the time Red had satisfied his sweet tooth, both man and horse were soaked.
Ducking under the tent flap to change his shirt, Nate surveyed the dim interior. Dust pushed under the sides by the wind drifted on air scented by old boots, musty furs, and a faint, lingering hint of incense. The tent’s interior was larger than some of the crew quarters Nate had occupied in the air force, and a good deal cleaner than some of the dives he’d shared while riding the rodeo circuit.
While Nate sat on a low, ingeniously constructed folding cot piled high with rough blankets and a thick, shaggy wolf pelt to strip off his shirt, Peter the Great rummaged through a low chest.
“Wodka!” he announced, holding up a bottle half filled with cloudy liquid.
Nate answered the man’s gap-toothed grin with one of his own. “Well, now, I don’t mind if I do.”
A stiff drink would be more than welcome after the chill of his unexpected bath. And, he reasoned, it just might loosen up his appointed guardian enough to allow some serious intelligence-gathering.
Several hours later, Nate leaned back against a high, sheepskin-covered saddle. Smoke from a half-dozen campfires curled into the star-studded sky and competed with the lingering aroma of the beef slathered in garlic that had constituted the main course at the evening meal. In the background, the small portable gas generators that provided the camp with electricity hummed. It was a foreign sound in a night that belonged to flickering fires and a star-filled sky.
Low murmurs and laughter from the men beside Nate told him they were engaged in the age-old pastime of cowboys around the world—sharing exaggerated tales of their prowess in the saddle. Or out of it. He smiled as one mustachioed individual in a yellowed sheepskin hat broke into a deep, raucous belly laugh. Pushing his impatience to the back of his mind, Nate took a cautious sip of vodka.
So he hadn’t been able to shake Peter the Great this afternoon, not even for a trip to the communal latrine that served the camp. So Dimitri, when he took over guard duty from his cohort, had shrugged off all but the most casual questions. The afternoon still hadn’t been a total loss. In the preceding hours, Nate had memorized the layout of the camp, cataloged in exact detail the Karistani’s eclectic collection of weapons, and done an exterior surveillance of the tent Alexandra and the other unattached women slept in.
Nate was turning over in his mind several possible scenarios for gaining access to that tent, some of which involved Alex’s cooperation, some of which didn’t, when the rustle of heavy skirts stirred the air behind him.
Katerina plopped down beside him, a hand-thrown pottery jug in hand. Nate could tell by the sultry smile on her full lips that she’d decided to forgive him for declining her invitation this afternoon.
“You wish…more wodka?”
He glanced down at the tin cup in his hand. It was still full of the throat-searing liquid, which the little minx could see as plain as tar paper. His lips curved as he tipped some of the potent mixture into the dirt and held up his cup.
“Sure.”
With a look of pure mischief on her face, Katerina leaned forward to refill his cup. The cloaklike red wrap she’d donned against the night air gaped open, revealing full breasts that spilled just about clear out of her low-necked blouse.
Nate imagined Alex’s reaction if she knew her cousin was pressing those generous breasts against his arm right now. He considered the implications of said reaction to his mission. He even reminded himself that Katerina looked to become something of a problem if he didn’t rein her in soon. All the while, of course, he enjoyed the view.
Not that he could’ve avoided it, even if he’d wanted to. Katerina made sure of that. She dipped even lower to set the jug on the ground beside him, and Nate’s brow skittered upward.
“Are you…cowboy?” Katerina asked softly.
The hairs on the back of Nate’s neck rose. Years of intense survival training and his own iron control kept his muscles from coiling as she leaned even closer.
“Cowboy, like in films I see at university?” she cooed. “Like the men of the steppes?”
Air snuck back into Nate’s lungs. “Sort of.”
“So do I think.” A smug little smile traced her mouth. “You walk, you ride the same. Like all this, you own.”
Her sweeping gesture encompassed the vast, rolling prairie, the inky black sky, and the waterfall of stars tumbling out of the heavens. From that gesture, Nate gathered that the men of the steppes swaggered a bit when they walked, and rode as though they and their ponies were alone in the universe. Much like their Wyoming counterparts, he decided with an inner smile.
“Do you have the land, in Amerika?”
“A little.”
She slid one hand up his arm, then edged it toward his chest. “How much it is, this little?”
Grinning, Nate caught her hand before her fingers slipped inside his denim jacket. “Where I come from, a lady doesn’t ask a man the size of his spread. It tends to get him real nervous…or real interested.”
Keeping her wrist in a light hold, he rose and pulled her up with him. “Being of the nervous type myself, I’d better walk you back to your campfire.”
Clearly, Katerina had no idea what he was talking about, but she didn’t seem the least averse to taking a stroll with him. She tucked her hand in his arm and tipped him a look that warned Nate he’d better keep to the well-lighted areas.
“Have you the woman in Amerika? The…um…wife?”
On reflection, Nate decided that handling Katerina might just be a bit trickier than he’d anticipated. The girl had the tenacity of a bull terrier and the subtlety of the rodeo clowns who whacked a rampaging bull up side the head to get its attention.
“No, no wife,” he answered, then firmly shifted the conversation to what he hoped might eventually lead to little black boxes. “So, what about you? Have you always lived here, on the steppes?”
“Always.” The single word held a wealth of emotion. Pride. Bitterness. Frustration. “Except for the year I go to university, always do I live here.”
“What university?”
She gave a little shrug. “The institute of technology. In Lvov. My grandfather wished
for me to learn the science.”
“That so? What kind of science?”
“Pah! You would not believe! Such courses he wished me to take. The…the mathematik. The physik. I have perhaps the head, but not the heart for such—”
“Katerina!”
At the sharp admonition, the girl whipped her hand free of Nate’s arm and spun around. He turned more leisurely, his senses leaping at the sight of the woman who strode toward them.
A long khaki coat covered her from shoulder to boot top. One of her own designs, Nate guessed. Only someone as talented as Maggie said Alexandra Jordan was could’ve fashioned that particular model. Similar to the long, open-fronted frock coats favored by the men of the camp, the semifitted military-style garment showed off her slender figure to perfection and swirled about her ankles seductively when she walked. With some interest, Nate noted the tassels banded in colored yarn that decorated the yoke of the garment.
Damned if those horsetail thingamabobs weren’t starting to strike his fancy.
What didn’t strike any fancy, however, was the braided horsetail whip looped about Alexandra’s wrist. It cracked ominously against her boot top with each step.
Katerina’s lower lip jutted out as her cousin strode toward them. Obviously deciding to take the offensive, she rattled off something in Karistani that earned a sharp retort.
The two women faced each other, one softly rounded and flushed, the other rigid and unyielding in her authority. After a short, terse exchange, Katerina evidently came out the loser. Her eyes snapping, she faced Nate.
“God keep you until the dawn,” she muttered. She flounced away, then added defiantly over her shoulder, “I will see you then.”
Dangerous to Hold Page 26