Columbus

by Derek Haas

  Svoboda and I are nothing alike. We may have the same job, but we perform it in two different worlds. I thought he was better at this business than me, but now I know that simply isn’t true. He might have skills and courage, but the skills are reckless and the courage is fueled by some sort of tortured madness. He can be beaten. I’m sure of it.

  I devour the file, reading it and re-reading it until I have every page memorized. Archibald has outdone himself again. The file is as thorough as any I’ve been given. And all the information leads to one conclusion: Tomas Petr Kolar, also known as Svoboda, wants to work in close so he can kill me with his bare hands.

  I think I’ll let him try.

  I know the question before it is asked. Why would I go see her? Why am I so heartless, so depraved, so selfish, that I would put her in harm’s way, at this moment, when a killer who lusts for blood is hunting me, has already killed in front of me? A killer who I know likes to rack up as many bodies as possible, who actually thrives on leaving a mess?

  She is in the middle of a sale when I enter Zodelli on the Via Poli. Risina’s face lights up as soon as she spots me, her cheeks flushing with blood. If it’s possible, she’s grown even more radiant since I last saw her, like the recent sunny days have knocked out the underlying sadness and brought her beauty right to the surface.

  I take a seat in a stuffed leather chair and watch her work.

  “. . . a five-volume first edition we will only sell as a set. It contains 367 hand-colored folio lithographs, all produced by Joseph Wolf, who was the leading ornithological artist at the time. You see? Gould personally selected him. Beautiful.”

  The man she is speaking with is the size of a bear and has a thick Russian accent. “Remind me about the binding?”

  “Of course. Contemporary full green levant morocco, with elaborate decorated spines . . . yes? Marvelous. They contain raised bands, marbled endpapers, and as you can see, all the edges are gilt.”

  “The price is still one-fifty euro?”

  “Yes, Mr. Bembatov.”

  “Hmmph. Thank you.”

  He turns, measures me for a moment, then shuffles toward the door like one of those old weeble-wobbles, like his weight needs to list side to side before it can move forward.

  The bell above the door is still jingling when she crosses the room and is in my lap, in my arms.

  “One-fifty?” I say, eyebrows raised.

  “Thousand. It is one of the finest book sets we own. This is the fourth time Mr. Bembatov has been in to look at the complete set. He asks the same questions each time. But I’m beginning to think he’s a fish who won’t bite.”

  “Oh, then I’ll buy the set first. Would you like a credit card or . . . ?”

  She slaps my chest playfully, then kisses my neck, my cheek, my head, my lips. Finally, she rests her forehead against mine.

  “I don’t like this, Jack. Not at all. I don’t like it when you’re away and I can’t talk to you. I envision the worst. And if something were to happen to you, I would never know. No one would come tell me.”

  “I won’t put you through this much longer.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “I didn’t mean it to be. I told you I was looking to make a change.”

  She untangles herself from me and stands, a smile on her face. “I choose to still believe you. I do think you mean it.”

  “I do. I mean it.”

  Her face abruptly changes, like she just remembered something disheartening.

  “I have some disappointing news. I’m sorry, I just thought of it . . . ”

  “Oh?”

  “I consulted all over regarding your story, the one of the boy in the silver wagon. I even contacted three people in the United States who specialize in children’s literature. But no one has knowledge of this book.”

  I nod, and for some inexplicable reason, this saddens me. I guess it shows on my face.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know who else to contact. . . . ”

  “Forget it. Like I said, I’m not sure where I read it. For all I know, someone may have made it up and told it to me as a child. I spent some time in some rough places. Maybe somebody told me the story as a form of escape. I don’t know why, but it stuck with me.”

  “If you had the author’s name or knew one of the character’s names. . . . ”

  “I wish I did. I just . . . don’t.”

  She looks chagrined.

  “Honestly, don’t worry about it.”

  She nods, and then her face brightens, like she’s glad the bad news is out of the way. “How long will you be in Rome?”

  “For a while. Let’s have dinner tonight.”

  “Yes! Where should we go?”

  “Do you know a place that is quiet, dark? A place where no tourists go?”

  “Yes, a block from my building. A restaurant with four tables. It is called Dar Filettaro a Santa Barbara. Should I write that down?”

  I laugh. “No, I can remember it.”

  “I’m off work at six. Please tell me you’ll be there at six fifteen.”

  “I’ll be there at six fifteen.”

  “I missed you, Jack.”

  “I missed you too, Risina. More than you realize.”

  He can be beaten, I tell myself on the way out the door. I’m sure of it.

  She is dressed in a soft green gown, the color of mint leaves, and her hair is up, tied in the back, so her shoulders are exposed. I notice a freckle there I hadn’t noticed before, and I think there is still so much to discover.

  “You must order the fried baccala. It is their specialty. The best in Italy.”

  “I will. Thank you for the recommendation.”

  I have my back to the wall in the corner, and a glance over Risina’s shoulder gives me an unobstructed view of the door. We are the only ones in the restaurant at this hour.

  She leans forward, a glass of wine in her hand flirting with the candlelight.

  “You told me that when you returned, Jack, you’d tell me your story. You’d tell me everything.”

  “I plan to.”

  “I won’t force it out of you.”

  “I will tell you. But not yet. I need a few days to arrange some things. Then I promise I’ll lay everything out for you.”

  “Ahhh. . . . ”

  “You should know . . . my story . . . it’s not pretty. It’s not tidy.”

  “The best stories are rarely symmetrical.”

  “I’m not sure you’ll like it.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t make a judgment as to what I will or won’t like.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s just say I’m not sure my story has a happy ending.”

  She grimaces and, for a moment, doesn’t reply. I have a feeling there have been very few happy endings for Risina. “Does this mean you’ll be leaving Rome again?”

  My eyes don’t leave her face, but she senses my hesitation. She leans back, takes a sip of the wine.

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Let’s enjoy your time here.”

  “Risina. . . . ”

  “I told you I would not judge you, Jack. I won’t.”

  The waiter emerges from the kitchen and takes our order and Risina looks down at the table. If she is biting back emotion, she won’t show it to me.

  He can be beaten, I think again. I know I can beat him.

  “The arrangements I have to make . . . are for both of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is going to come across . . . truth is, I don’t know how this is going to come across.” I stop, chewing over what I want to say before plowing forward. “What I do . . . I was serious when I said I don’t want to do it any more. I want to escape it. I want to get out and never look back.

  “My father . . . I know this is coming out of left field . . . but my father thought there was only one way out for him. I’m sure it seemed like an easy way out, but it never is. For a long time, I believed that route was the way for me too. But since I
met you, Risina . . . since I met you, my thinking changed. I want to escape and live. I choose to escape. But I don’t want to do it alone. I want to escape with you.”

  Before she can respond, I press on, locking my eyes on hers. “I have money, enough money so neither of us would ever have to work again. We can live on a beach somewhere. Or the woods if you prefer it. Or a farm. Or a hut in Africa for all I care. I know it’s not fair to ask, I know you barely know me, but I know this is right. Maybe for the first time in my life, I know what is right.”

  She hesitates, making sure I am finished, and in that moment’s hesitation, I think I’ve lost. I played my cards, my best hand, and I came up short. But then she utters one word packed with hope.

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “And where would we go?”

  “Wherever you want, as long as it’s away. Away from congestion and traffic and people.”

  “And I would leave everything behind? Say no good-byes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And we would be together?”

  “Yes.”

  She looks up and her eyes shine, though no moisture spills out from the lids, no tears fall down her cheeks.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yes. Okay.” She reaches across the table and takes my hand. Hers is trembling. She is barely breathing.

  “If after a week, a month, a year you decide this is no life for you, that I’m not the man you thought I was, I’ll never stop you from returning. But I promise to you, Risina, I’ll do my best to be the man you want me to be.”

  The food arrives, but after nudging it with her fork, she looks up at me. “Do you mind if we go to my apartment? Forget dinner and we just . . . you just hold me?”

  I can beat him. I know I can. I can beat him.

  “Let’s go.”

  For three nights we meet after the bookstore closes, at various small restaurants near her apartment. For three nights, we leave without eating and lie in her bed, holding on to each other as if we are afraid to let go, afraid if we loosen our grip, the other will vanish like smoke. For three nights, we say very little. For three nights, we live, and breathe, and love.

  On the fourth night, Svoboda comes.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IF I WERE SVOBODA, HERE’S HOW I WOULD GET INSIDE. I WOULD SCOUT COLUMBUS BEFORE HE DISAPPEARS INTO THAT BASEMENT RESTAURANT IN SIENA, AND I WOULD WATCH AFTER HE LEAVES TO SEE WHO ELSE COMES OUT.

  Then I would follow the black girl, the other assassin, out of the building to see where she is headed. I would watch her, excited, as she waits around town instead of leaving. I would instinctively know she wants to meet with my target once more, that she has some unfinished business she wants to get off her chest. I would read it all over her face.

  When she makes contact with my mark, I would jump at the chance to shoot her from a distance. My goal is not just to kill my target, because where is the satisfaction, the inherent thrill in that? No, my real aim is to make my target suffer before I end his life. Before I make him look me in the eye while I destroy him with my hands.

  I’ve done it before. I’ve killed those close to my mark. My contracts are supposed to be for men like me, but these men are nothing. They are weak. The first rule of being an assassin is that a professional hit man cannot afford relationships of any kind. These relationships can and will be exploited. It is the staple of our business: to hit the target where he or she is weakest.

  So I have. I followed one to his mistress. I shot the whore first, causing my mark to lose his edge, to give in to anger, to come at me wildly. I used his rage against him, kept him off balance until I was able to force him down, force his hands behind his back, force his wrists into restraints. From there, I filled his bathtub with water and watched him drown a hundred miles away from any ocean.

  So many of these men, these debasers of my profession, I’ve found to have chinks in their armor, found to have an affinity for the opposite sex. I’ve taken pleasure in proving to them just how foolish they are, how selfish, how infantile their decisions are to bring women into their lives. These men are not unlike my father, my stupid fool of a father, who couldn’t see a life for himself after his own wife passed away. Who stared out a window for two weeks before blowing his head into the wall. How weak he was! How dumb! How goddamn selfish and stupid and sad.

  Imagine my surprise when this target, the one called Columbus, did not hesitate after I shot the black woman. How he immediately abandoned her. How he only cared for himself. I thought he might double back to help the woman, at least hesitate when her head exploded, but I was wrong.

  Here, finally, is a formidable opponent. Here, finally, is a man like me, a Silver Bear, a man who puts his profession, his own life, first. I take his motorcycle and ride off with no helmet because I want to feel like him, to become Columbus. I turn and face him in the street like a gladiator, like a warrior, and only when I realize I have no more bullets, my reloaded clip is empty, do I retreat.

  If I were Svoboda, in the hold of the motorcycle I would find a curious book, a four-centuries-old text by Izaak Walton titled The Compleat Angler. An ancient fucking book about fishing, of all goddamn things. Why this worthy opponent would choose this book, why he would leave an object like this behind, would be beyond me.

  And then my fingers would alight on something maybe the owner didn’t realize was there. Maybe the person from whom Columbus bought the rare book had tucked it in there without his knowledge, or maybe he had used it as a bookmark and forgotten about it. For inside the book, tucked between the last page and the cover, is a business card. It reads: Zodelli Rare Books, with an address on the Via Poli in Rome. And a name is printed underneath the embossed logo for the store: Risina Lorenzana, Chief Acquisitions Agent.

  If I were Svoboda, I would flip the card over on the back and read Risina’s home phone number, printed in black ink with a steady feminine hand.

  If I were Svoboda, I would steer the motorcycle toward Rome. I would find this bookstore, locate this Risina Lorenzana, and wait.

  I am sure Svoboda was disappointed to find that I, after all he’d heard and witnessed, was like so many of the others he had killed. That I had a relationship with a woman. That the black woman he shot in Siena was only an unfortunate associate while the real prize waited in Rome.

  At the same time, I’m sure he was thrilled to have another chance to wound me, to make me suffer before he got his hands around my throat.

  He must’ve been watching. Either that first night, or the second, or the third, he watched us meet at a public restaurant, and he watched us leave without eating, and he watched us walk the short distance to Risina’s apartment. He marked the building and the window that lit up on the second floor shortly after we entered.

  On the fourth night, he must’ve slipped inside her building and waited for us to come home.

  I hold Risina’s hand, her fingers locked in mine. We’re feeling more comfortable now, like the idea has settled in and we’re actually going to do this, going to just leave and not tell anyone where we’re headed.

  We’ve decided on a tropical location in a country where few people speak English. It’s remote, but not so isolated it doesn’t have Internet service, doesn’t have a way for Risina to receive Italian-language books. I think her trepidation has given way to excitement, that what four days ago seemed so foreign now seems attainable.

  We enter her building and head inside the elevator. It is barely large enough to fit both of us, and she leans into me as it rises, her back to my front. Her hair is right under my nose and it smells like cedar.

  There have been no warning signs, no bad omens. I haven’t lost my wallet or had coffee spilled in my lap or bumped my shin into a bench. We ate dinner without incident and talked warmly throughout the meal. And now we stand in the elevator, fitting together perfectly, two halves of the same circle, like we’ve done this all our lives.

  She opens
her apartment door, scoops up the mail, and moves to her sofa, taking a seat on one end, tucking her feet underneath her as she starts to sort through the envelopes.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” I say and head through a small door just off the main room.

  There are three things I’m sure Svoboda doesn’t know. One, I’m sure he doesn’t know that I’ve marked the doors and windows with tape, similar to the way I marked my crawl space in Positano. If an outsider entered the apartment, I’d be able to tell in the first three seconds I’m in the room with just a casual sweep of my eyes.

  Two, I’m sure he doesn’t know that the bathroom I am moving toward has a second door, one that leads back around through the bedroom and enters the living room from the opposite side.

  And three, I’m sure he didn’t read The Compleat Angler carefully, if at all. Otherwise, he might have come across a passage in the fifth chapter. A passage I read over and over. A passage I memorized. It reads: “for you are to know that a dead worm is but a dead bait, and like to catch nothing, compared to a lively, quick stirring worm.”

  Risina looks up to see Svoboda coming at her with his gun out, his finger on the trigger. He has his free hand with his index finger covering his lips, signaling not to make a sound. On his face is a grim satisfaction, the look of a fisherman who first feels a tug on his line.

  “Tomas Kolar!” I scream from his left, where he’s not expecting me, and he stutters for just a moment, the surprise of that name and the surprise that I know it and the surprise of where I’m coming from all combine to provide a half second’s hesitation. He pulls the trigger, just as I launch at him, and the shot goes off wildly, plugging into the opposite side of the sofa from where Risina is perched.

  Now she does scream as I take him down to the floor and pound his gun hand into the wood, once, twice, and he gives it up, letting it go while swinging his elbow around in an attempt to shift the leverage.

  I should’ve shot this fucker when I rounded the corner and saw him with his gun hand out and up but I couldn’t be sure I’d force him to miss unless I took out his arm with my bare hands.

  He wallops me in the cheek with that loose elbow, and this is the fighting in which Archibald’s report said he excels, close-contact grappling, and again he smashes me in the ribs. Before I can get my hands around him, he sees an opening and flips me over onto my back and in seconds, I can feel his teeth breaking through the skin of my neck. He’s a street fighter, a dirty fucking lunatic, and everything is fair game.