MadetoBeBroken

by Lyra Byrnes

  “I so hoped I would hear from you after Kaminsky’s murder. I must admit, I feared the worst.”

  “I did not kill him.”

  “So I gathered, dear. Who absconded with you and, if I’m not mistaken, put something nasty in your left leg?”

  “It was the girl. Coco.” The name sounded strange and ugly in his mouth. “She shot me.”

  “The OSO is known for its thuggery. I’m relieved I thought to obtain the full set of dossiers on OSO operatives upon your arrival. The Americans are not ones to let such an opportunity pass. Has it occurred to you that they are the ones who whacked Kaminsky?”

  “Doesn’t matter who.”

  She sighed. “I suppose not, but as a lover of mystery, I always want to know whodunit. So what can I do for you, Alexi? Papers, credit cards, an airline ticket, plastic surgery?”

  He let out a short, gruff laugh. “And ruin this beautiful face?”

  “There are some who would protest if you went under the knife, it’s true,” she said contemplatively as a sullen, dark-haired girl slunk into the parlor and helped herself to a slug of whiskey. “Kat, darling, look who’s here.”

  Katarina did not smile, but sidled up to the seated Alexi, her full bosom filling his vision. She smelled like cigarette smoke and strawberries.

  “Sexy Lexi,” she drawled. If her mother’s voice carried an admonishment, the daughter’s sported an outright sneer. She licked her full lips and dropped her eyes to half-mast. The wild, wildly beautiful Katarina Wilkinson was the most exciting thing to happen to British tabloids since the invention of ink. “Wanna go play in my room? I have toys.”

  “Run along, dear. We’re busy,” said Elena crisply. Katarina sauntered off, hips rolling in her jeans. She swiped a decanter and banged shut the door. “I’d have the little bitch committed if it wouldn’t set my fans to howling. Now, where were we?”

  “Everything—documents, passport, travel papers, a vehicle.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Such urgency. And all over the murder of one wee embassy operative?”

  “No, no.” He shook his head. “I tried to work for peace, but is not the way, Yelena. We have to go back to the old way.”

  “The old way is in full effect, dear. I arranged for that shipment of Semtex you wanted smuggled in from Ossetia. Not even a thank-you card from your man Umarov.”

  “That was for protection, not war.”

  “War? Alexi¼” She took his hands in hers. She had bright, blue eyes that beamed with kindness, eyes she had given to her best-selling detective, busybody, unlucky-in-love antiques dealer Jane Rowland.

  “We have a chance only if we strike first, Yelena. There is no time.”

  “I know, dear. We have long dreamed of this day, when we could reclaim our homeland from those brutes. It will take manpower, money, strategy and loads of stealth. I want this as much as you do, but I must ask you—is now the time? Are we ready?”

  “If I had a choice, I would not ask.”

  She squeezed his hands and sat back. “Done then. You will fly out tonight on one of my planes, and my heart goes with you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Where am I?”

  Rod Templeton loomed over her, his thick, gelled hair not moving a millimeter as his grotesquely smiling face peered down at her.

  “Back in jolly old London, ho ho ho!”

  “Blow it out your ass, Santa,” she moaned. Her head was pounding, her mouth dry. She was naked but for a scratchy blanket. Rod had not used the gun. He’d grabbed her by the fleshy part of the upper arm, jabbed her with a needle, and the next thing she knew, she was waking up to the woozy vision of his big, shining face grinning into hers. “I say I’m happy to see you and you stick a gun in my face and tranq me? What the hell?”

  “You’ll want to be nicer to me, Agent Fiori,” he sneered. “Neat trick, destroying your phone.”

  “I didn’t. Ale—Maksimov did. He overpowered me and smashed my phone, took my gun.”

  “But not before you shot him.”

  It cost her pain and effort, but she sat up on her elbows. They were in a hotel room, clean, sterile and anonymous. “How did you know that?”

  “We’re Western Ops, sugarbuns. We have people everywhere. Word got back that you went native. I had to take all necessary precautions, hence the gun. Remember what happens when you don’t?”

  “I think I’ve paid in full for that mistake,” she retorted. “And you sure didn’t have people backing up my sorry ass. This was the shoddiest operation I’ve ever been asked to run.”

  “Yeah, about that, you’re off the case.”

  “I did my job, Rod. We have to find him, stop him!”

  “Please. Allow your main source of communication to be destroyed, spend two days getting zero information out of the most dangerous man in Eastern Europe, then allow him to escape—yeah, I wouldn’t call that doing your job. The black suit or the gray one? I’m thinking a windowpane check is a bit too much.” He held up two laden hangers.

  “Dammit, Rod, listen! Maksimov isn’t the guy you want. He’s been working with the Russians to negotiate for peace. You morons in Western Ops are the ones with bad intel.”

  Rod flitted about the room, inspecting cufflinks and pulling neat pairs of shoes out of cloth bags like a girl prepping for her first school dance. “You know, when I was a senior in high school, I got a job working in one of our senator’s offices—filing, auto-signing his letters and junk like that.”

  “You don’t fucking listen, do you?”

  “One of the pages told me that the office had already hired enough students. I was extra. I wondered why the other guys didn’t seem to like me. Turns out it was a favor to my mom. My aunt Jackie was banging the old dude, can you believe that?”

  “They didn’t like you because you’re a dick.”

  “The point is, sometimes a cool state capitol job is a way of getting a lazy kid out of the house, Coco. And sometimes creating a fake position in ‘shadow diplomacy’ is a way of tying up a dangerous war criminal.”

  She gaped. It was true what Alexi had said—that they were both nothing but pawns in a game that was vastly more complex than either understood. She had to find him and tell him he’d been betrayed, if it was not too late.

  “He’s on the loose, Rod. Who knows what might happen next?”

  “Yup. It’s all going great.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ll see tonight.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m heading back to DC tonight.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re going to be my date for a party. There’s a dress for you in the closet.”

  “What the—?” She rose unsteadily and walked toward the blinding white plasterboard of the closet door. The carpet felt slick and synthetic after spending days barefoot on warm wooden floors and springy grass. The gown was lightweight ivory silk, splashed with beads that thickened near the hem, held up by the slimmest of straps. She pressed it to her chest.

  “Damn. Sometimes I forget how tasty you are.” He shook his head. “Okay, red tie or blue? Notice the faint stripe on the red one.”

  When I’m done with this, she told herself, remind me never to work for Western Oops again.

  “Look, I lost him and I’m sorry about that, but I got you what we needed. If we mobilize, Maksimov can’t do any harm. Do you have any idea where he is now?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that, Coco.” He shook his head with that purse-lipped look that made her see red with rage. “He’s right where we want him. Get dressed.”

  *

  She refused Rod’s hand as she exited the Town Car and emerged onto a dark street paved with tricky cobblestones. It looked like Jack the Ripper territory, minus the fog, except that dozens of similar limousines were clustered in the narrow passageway, shining like black beetles.

  “We have to go in the back way,” Rod explained. “They didn’t want this to look like a public deal. How’s my hair?”


  “Immobile,” she muttered.

  Coco lifted a handful of the shimmering fabric to her hip and navigated the stairs carefully. All around them, men in suits and women in evening gowns swarmed the tiny entrance. They entered a grand rotunda, but Rod promptly led her up a curving staircase and into a room packed with people. Red silk cloth swathed the high, round tables, topped with flower arrangements in muted shades of gold. A chamber orchestra sawed away manfully in one corner.

  “I can’t believe you’re wasting my time with this,” she said.

  “Suck it up, buttercup. Ooh there’s caviar!”

  She picked up a glass of champagne and surveyed the crowd. It didn’t look like the usual OSO people. In fact, she didn’t recognize a single person, except for one dark-haired man whom she glimpsed from the back. There was something off about the people—not off exactly, but vaguely foreign. Some faces reminded her of Alexi’s, the same high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, but none had his magnetism, or the sense of power and purpose he exuded. Alexi¼of course¼

  “This is a goddamn Russian spy party!” she hissed, furious.

  “It’s an embassy ’do, Coco, and try to talk like a lady for one night,” he answered, his mouth full.

  “At least tell me you have custody of Maksimov’s man on the ground, Umarov.”

  “Umarov’s dead. Let me introduce you around.”

  Before she could ask any more questions, he wheeled her away from the table, bringing her face-to-face with a man whose face was not a pleasant sight up close.

  “Boris Luganov, meet Constance Fiori.”

  “We have met,” said the pockmarked man gravely. A tightly rolled umbrella was hooked over one arm. “More than once. Did you find the man you were looking for?”

  “I did, thank you.”

  Rod slid away on the trail of a waiter carrying a tray of potato puffs.

  “You killed Kaminsky,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice.

  A nerve twitched in his jaw. “The instrument is not important. What is important is who suffers for the pain it inflicts.”

  “I think we both know that. Why did you come looking for him at the safe house?”

  “To make sure he was safe, of course. I admit I did not recognize you without your hair visible. But his I know. Dark hair in the bathtub trap.”

  She could have kicked herself. Another great job securing the location. “You chose the wrong man to make a fool of,” she said stoutly. “Your enemy has vastly more resources than you have accounted for.”

  “My enemy?” His black eyebrows rose. “This is a very exclusive gathering, Miss Fiori, or is it LeBlanc? Only our closest friends and allies are invited.”

  Rod slung his arm around Coco’s shoulders. “This salmon is spectacular. Something about your cold rivers, huh, Boris?”

  Luganov bowed and excused himself.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” she demanded. “That guy came sniffing around the safe house looking for Ale—Maksimov. How did he know we were there?”

  “Coco, sweetcheeks, we told them, of course. I hadn’t heard from you, so someone had to make sure that he was still alive and giving you information.”

  “Wait—you’re working with them?”

  “We are. You think the US has nukes pointed at that craphole they call an independent state? We have wars in important places to deal with, places with oil, places that can nuke us back. Your job was to find out when his forces were going to strike. And when I got that message—whew! I tried not to act too excited about it, did you notice? Passed that puppy on to the Russkis here, and they’re going to take care of it. Win-win.”

  Her mouth went dry. “What are you saying?”

  “Maksimov’s precious homeland is about to be bombed into a pile of rubble. You started a war, honey. You’re a regular Helen of Troy. Champagne?”

  No words came; the room seemed to go silent. Coco’s head was filled with a muffled buzzing, her brain scrambled. Rubble¼and all her fault. She had to get word to him somehow.

  Rod reached across her toward a tray of glasses. It was a good thing he wore such well-cut suits.

  She slipped out a side door and glanced back—no one had followed her. On the wall at the landing, John the Baptist’s head dripped luridly, triumph shining in the eyes of the young Salome. Finally something had broken in her favor. She was in the National Gallery. If only she could remember the way.

  *

  A chilly fog rolled in as Alexi approached the small private hangar behind Glasgow airport. The fat-bellied plane hunched on the tarmac as if warming itself against the weather. He pressed the sat phone closer to his ear.

  “What do you mean, Umarov is dead?” he demanded of Yelena.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “He was shot in what used to be the public square. We are rather running out of warm bodies, aren’t we? Well, chin up, General, we’ve had setbacks before. I shall be watching the news tomorrow morning. Fight the good fight, Alexi.”

  He clicked off. So the Americans had killed his man, which meant they likely knew of his plans. The little red bird had betrayed him after all. Once he was finished with this war, he would travel to her country and strangle her with his bare hands.

  Of course his fight was nothing she could understand. All Americans traveled alone, like balloons, untethered to the earth. He had been a fool to think he could make the Russians see that, and an even bigger fool to try to convince her. There was no time to lose. He mounted the slick metal steps.

  Krahsniy, he thought, where are you now? Back in the arms of your lover and boss, laughing with him at a scarred, angry wolf, at his secrets and dreams of home?

  The phone lit up again.

  “Do not delay me, Yelena,” he muttered, glancing at the screen. But it was not a phone call. Instead, an image bloomed on the tiny screen—a dark landscape, craggy mountains encroaching on a lake, its trees wild. The image faded and a word replaced it.

  Home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rod was halfway up the stairs as she descended. She smoothed her long red mane and tried to smile.

  “Ah, there you are. What were you doing up there anyway?”

  His cell phone had barely fit in the tiny evening purse he’d provided her, but with any luck, he wouldn’t look for it before she could slip it back into his jacket pocket. “Just catching my breath,” she answered. “It’s a¼lot to take in.”

  “Trust me, the free world is better off without those bastards.”

  “Sure, I get it. But did you ever think that maybe there’s still time to stop this? I mean, there might have been a little bit of speculation in my message.”

  “Don’t overthink things, Coco. I told you you were off the case. We would have liked to hear from you sooner, but hey—if wishes were horses, right? Come on, the dancing’s just started, and after that, there’s gonna be an announcement you’ll want to hear.”

  He led her into the center of the room, where couples were making a gallant go of a waltz. As there were vastly more men than women, the dance floor was sparsely populated.

  “I don’t dance.”

  “Really? The things I never knew about you, Coco. If you can count to three, you can waltz.” He wrapped a hand around her scarred side, sending a shudder down her spine. “Like this.”

  It wasn’t too difficult. She counted in her head until the steps came naturally. The feel of Rod’s hand made her sick—the last time anyone without a medical degree had touched her there had been tender and reassuring. A strange way to characterize a vicious warlord, but she didn’t think of Alexi that way anymore. He’d tried to kill her, threatened her, hurt her, yes, but had she behaved much better? Every violent passage of their time together had been a necessity of their jobs, both of them paying off a debt owed to something bigger than themselves.

  Is your answer to everything, he had said. He was right. All she had ever known was the lie of compromise, the threat of coercion,
and finally, the aggression that punished those who didn’t come along quietly. But it worked, she told herself miserably. The world is a more free, more peaceful place because I hurt a lot of people to make it so. He saw her for what she was the moment they met—she and Alexi were in the same business, it brought them together and ripped them apart. Coco thought back to the morning by the lake, looking at Alexi, warm and golden and naked in the sunlight, wondering what she would do if they were just a normal man and woman.

  But normal was only a dream. In high school, she shopped at the mall like everyone else, but she was always a trend or two behind. She learned the rules of American football but couldn’t get the hang of Spanish with a tongue trained on Thai and Malaysian. Joining the OSO was a way of becoming so normal that she was America, and what did it get her? A life in the shadows, another way of disappearing, a rootless existence lived out of a suitcase.

  The music thrummed in her head, its lilt driving her feet. Maybe Alexi is not the one chasing an illusion. Maybe I am. Maybe he would see the snapshot of the painting and know that she was done running after a chimera.

  “You were always a lousy listener,” Rod was saying. “Earth to Coco.”

  “What?”

  “I was saying that we have to know if you’ll get with the program.”

  “It’s a little late for that. The fact that we have an alliance with another country in this matter is something that could have been brought to my attention, like, days ago.”

  “I couldn’t risk you spilling the beans to Maksimov. The OSO is extra careful about its female operatives. They get chatty.”

  “God, you guys are assholes.”

  “Hey, it’s about to start.”

  The chamber orchestra lowered their bows and the room rustled with silk and wool as the dancers dispersed into a crescent. They clapped politely for a portly, red-faced man, who beamed with a gap-toothed smile.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” he started with a nod to the crowd. He was heavily accented and not a little bit drunk. “I am a man who needs no introduction, I am sure.”

  “Who is that?” Coco whispered.