Nightshade

by M. L. Huie

  “You lied to me. All of it lies. Wasn’t it?” He chewed the words. Flung them at her. Saliva hit her face. His hands pressed her body into the bed.

  “Yuri, you’re hurting me. Please. I had no idea about any of that. I’ve not seen her for years.”

  Kostin grabbed her jaw, sending a shockwave of pain through her cheek and into her skull. For a moment Livy thought she might black out. She bit her lip hard. It brought her back. Kept her there.

  “You did it so well. Yes, you were very good, my love. My darling.” He snarled the endearments. “You thought you could give me your body, and I would be blind, yes?”

  “Yuri, no, that’s not—”

  He squeezed her jaw hard. God, that hurts.

  The Russian lowered his face to hers. His breath foul. Eyes dark and burning. His body felt hot, feverish even, on tops of hers.

  Kostin leaned to her ear. He whispered, “I believed you. Do you hear? Shh, shh, don’t try to move, moya lyubov. You won. You made me … love you.” His lips grazed her ear. He kissed it, softly along the ridge. Down to the lobe. “My love,” he said again. So soft. His lips tender on her skin. One hand still pressing her head into the mattress, the other kept a vise grip on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. The intention in his voice sent a jolt through her.

  It was fight or die.

  Her body pulsed against his, pushing up. Too heavy to move. She tried to lift her right knee into his groin, but his legs, anticipating the blow, squeezed hers tighter. Livy flailed and squirmed and kicked. Her whole body electrified. But nothing moved him. Maybe an inch or two. No more. He had her.

  She couldn’t escape. Couldn’t move.

  His right hand released her jaw and moved down to her throat. His thumb pressing along her Adam’s apple. Gently. He squeezed. She felt her throat constrict. Her breath struggled to clear the windpipe. She slammed the edge of her right hand hard into his throat. Again. Again. She may as well have hit a brick wall. Kostin barely flinched.

  He brought his left hand to her neck. Two hands now crushed her throat. She arched her back, her hips and legs thrashing under him.

  Livy knew she had a minute. Maybe less. She fought to keep her eyes open. Blacking out would mean it was over.

  She pounded him with both hands, trying to reach his face. Kostin’s teeth were bared, but the anger had left his brow. Tears ran down his cheeks. The wetness dripping down as he set about trying to finish her. Livy grabbed for his eyes. The fingernails of her left hand dug into his cheek. They clung there, raking. She broke the skin, felt his blood run down her fingers. But he didn’t stop. Kostin wrenched her fingers away. Her hand hit the pillows.

  And something hard.

  On the verge of going dark, the nerves in Livy’s body jolted. She knew what she’d touched. Her fingers scraped the bed.

  Let it be there. Please.

  One finger in the trigger guard, another along the barrel. Her left hand gripped the Colt. Livy ripped it out from under the pillow and into Kostin’s bleeding face.

  Not enough power. She had so little strength. Her throat. God. The bones and muscle felt on the point of collapse. She tried to hit him but couldn’t lift her arm. Seconds now. She was fading. So quickly.

  His stomach pushed against hers. She felt his skin for a moment. Somehow she knew. Just enough consciousness. To put the barrel on his skin. She felt the contact. Somewhere, deep in her brain, a final scream of survival.

  Squeeze, it said. Goddamn it! Now!

  She pulled the trigger.

  The relief was immediate. His grip slackened. One hand to his ribs. She saw blood. He reached again for her throat. She gasped and coughed. Her lungs screamed. Air! Life! Make it stop!

  She pulled the trigger over and over. Even after she heard the metallic clack. Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!

  Then, nothing. She could move, though; the pressure gone now.

  Livy tried to sit up. Her throat still felt his hands. The force of Kostin’s grip. Her lungs trying to reacclimate. She willed herself to sit up. Her eyes refocused. She was alive. The pain assured her of that.

  Blood was everywhere. It pooled thick on her blouse, sticking to her stomach. There was even more of it on the carpet. So much more.

  Her vision sharper now, she looked down. Kostin lay on his back, his arms at either side. Head at an angle. His mouth open. Red soaked his shirt and jacket. The holes in his body still bled.

  Livy steadied herself against the bed. The gun in her hand. Kostin’s face was frozen in what looked like shock, his eyes open and wide. She felt the urge to reach down and close them.

  The sound of footsteps clattered up the stairs. Running.

  Nadia in the doorway. The Russian woman gasped and covered her mouth. She looked at Kostin’s body as if trying to verify what she saw.

  They made eye contact. Livy leveled the gun at Nadia’s head.

  “Don’t you fucking move.”

  The words came out rough, guttural. Unclear. Livy said it again.

  Nadia stood still. Her eyes held a mix of fear and hate.

  Livy wondered if she knew the gun was empty. She stood, stepped over Kostin’s body.

  Nadia rushed her. One hand clawed at Livy’s face, the other went for the gun. The attack threw Livy. She could barely put up a fight now. Nadia screamed as her hand ripped at Livy’s face and battered throat. Livy staggered back, on the defensive, and her heels crashed into something hard. She turned. It was Kostin’s body. Livy never thought it would end like this. But it had and she still had a job to do. Only Nadia stood in her way of getting out now. Livy whipped her hand out of the Russian’s grip and smashed the gun against the side of Nadia’s face, sending the younger woman staggering back into the doorway. Livy moved quickly. She slammed the butt of the revolver down on the back of Nadia’s head. It was the hardest blow she could manage, and it was enough. The Russian woman crumbled forward. She lay in the doorway, moaning.

  Livy wanted to hit her again. And again. But her body wasn’t ready for more. She had to get out.

  With deliberate calm, she knelt beside Kostin and dug into his coat pocket for the keys to the Dodge. Keys in hand, she stepped over the expanding pool of red and picked up her handbag from the nightstand. Throwing open the closet, she searched for something that might cover the blood on her blouse. A navy jumper would do.

  A coughing spasm convulsed her lungs and chest. She stopped in the doorway on her way out. No time to reflect. The end of the job was in sight. She stepped over Nadia and ran downstairs, leaving the room and her captors behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Livy plugged the key into the ignition and started the car. She spun the Dodge around and turned left out of the drive, away from the house. It took her about hundred yards to realize she was driving in the left lane. She swerved into the right.

  She was a foreign woman driving a car in a foreign country—for the first time—and she had no idea where the hell she was going.

  Livy took it slow despite the urgency she felt to get away from the house and all the death. Her body needed time to heal, but she didn’t have that luxury. The clutch popped a few times. She found the brakes spongy and almost slammed into a DeSoto at a stop sign.

  Afterward, she glanced in the rearview mirror to assess the damage. The right side of her face looked like it had gone ten rounds with a wall. Purple splotches bloomed across her throat.

  The sharp scream of a car horn from behind brought her back to the moment. She ground the gear and lurched the car forward.

  Livy had no idea how to get where she was going. The roads all looked the same. Houses. Pavement. Big cars everywhere. She drove on, assuming that when the traffic picked up, the city would be near.

  But a few wrong turns took her deeper into tree-lined streets with well-kept gardens. She tried another direction, keeping the speed of the car slow enough not to attract the attention of the police.

  She considered stopping for p
etrol and asking for directions but figured her appearance might cause more concern and create questions she had no time to answer.

  The car smelled like Kostin. The scent of his cologne, as well as the vodka he must have drunk this morning, seemed to have fused with the leather seats. As her breathing began to normalize and the pain in her throat eased the slightest bit, the drive lent the morning a transcendent feeling of normalcy, but then the car would hit a pothole, and the hurt and urgency of the moment returned in a flash.

  Nadia would be making calls by now. She’d tell the Soviet Embassy what had happened. She’d report the car. Soon, they’d be looking for her. If the police or the FBI found her first, that would be one thing. If the Russians found her, she’d be dead.

  It took almost an hour, but eventually she found herself driving along a road near a busy highway.

  Up ahead she saw a plain, brick building with ten or more floors. It looked like so many of the office towers Livy’d seen across the district. Across the street, cabs dropped businessmen off in front of a large restaurant. The normal world was going about life and it was lunchtime.

  Livy pulled the car into the flat parking lot that sprawled across the front of the building. Turning into the drive, she spotted a guardhouse up ahead, hidden under a copse of pine trees. A guard in a crisp gray uniform stepped out, a smile on his face. Livy cleared her throat, hoping she had a voice. She slowed down as the guard came up to her window.

  His expression told her all she needed to know about how she looked.

  “Can I … are you all right, ma’am?”

  Livy lurched forward and rested her head against the wheel for a moment. “I had an accident at home,” she said slowly. She didn’t know what else to say.

  “I can call the police if you gimme a—”

  “No! No, look, I’m just here to see my husband. He’s having lunch across the street. He’ll know what to do. About everything.”

  The guard looked skeptical but seemed uneasy about inserting himself between a husband and wife.

  “Let me just get you a day pass then,” he said, turning away.

  Livy sighed and shifted her eyes to the rearview. God, proper Bride of Frankenstein material, that’s what she was.

  The gun! Dammit! Sloppy. Livy scanned the seat for the Colt .32. She pushed aside her handbag. Nothing. Had she thrown it in the back seat? She looked up. The guard, paper in hand, headed back to the Dodge. There! In the passenger floorboard. She leaned down, pushed it under the seat, and sat back up.

  “Just put that on your dashboard,” the guard said, handing her the pass. “You take care of yourself now, ma’am.”

  Livy thanked him and eased the car into the lot. She found a space as far away from the other cars as possible. She parked and grabbed a pencil out of her purse. Reaching into the waistband of her skirt, she retrieved the folded piece of notepaper. She placed it against the steering wheel and wrote more. When finished, she looked it over. The code was strictly old Firm. She didn’t know any others. Livy just needed time to get it into the right hands.

  She refolded the paper, with Margot’s picture inside, and replaced it in her skirt. The gun was a problem. The car as well. She had no idea of the protocol for the murder of a spy in a foreign country, but it was quite possible Nadia might call the police. The neighbors might have even heard the shots. All six of them. They might have seen her peeling out of the driveway. Honestly, being arrested for murder was one of her least concerns at this point. The investigation—if there was one—would take days. She decided to take the pistol.

  Livy felt oddly vulnerable as she walked across the street to the Capital Steakhouse. The jumper covered the stain on her blouse well enough, but the marks on her face would bring unwanted attention.

  It took her about five minutes—and enduring the stares of a couple of businessmen on their way to lunch—to hail a cab in front of the restaurant. Fortunately the cabbie, a young man wearing a shirt decorated with palm trees, didn’t seem to notice.

  She gave him the address of the British Embassy on Massachusetts. As the car moved away from the curb, Livy allowed herself a deep sigh.

  The moment gave her time to think about what Kostin had told her. Could Margot actually be a Russian spy? A double agent for the Soviets? She tried to align that thought with her memories of her friend during training. They’d both been so young and naive then. The war changed people. For some, it was a complete metamorphosis. God knows it had changed Livy. Still, Margot didn’t seem the type to betray her country, but who did? It’d been four years since they’d seen each other, and so much had happened in the intervening years.

  Livy’s heart felt heavy. Emotion threatened to steam over like an unwatched kettle. She wiped a tear from one eye.

  Truth be told, Livy’d never had many friends. People often disappointed her. She found the day-to-day pursuits of most women her age silly and pointless. Maybe she just didn’t fit in.

  But Margot had felt like a kindred spirit. They shared so much, from their sense of humor to their bilingual upbringing. That’s why Livy had come this far and sacrificed so much because no matter how many years it had been, Margot Dupont was still that very rare commodity in the life of Livy Nash: a friend.

  But people change. The phrase ticker-taped again through her mind. It didn’t make sense though. Why the wireless signals now if she was a Russian spy? After all this time?

  The cab made several quick turns, and Livy began to recognize the distinctive architecture of the district. Soon, they would be on Massachusetts Avenue. She slipped the paper from the lining of her skirt.

  She looked out the back window. Cars littered the street behind them. They could be back there, she thought. The American, the Russians, the police.

  Soon, it would be out of her hands. The decisions left to someone in London.

  Up ahead Livy could see the distinctive brick facade of the British Embassy compound.

  “Can you stop just in front there?” she said to the driver. “I have to drop something off, and then I’ll come back.”

  Livy looked both ways on the sidewalk before opening the cab door. Foot traffic felt about right for this time of day. No one stood out. But then, they wouldn’t.

  She had about twenty-five yards to cover to get to the uniformed man who stood guard outside the brick and iron enclosure that ran around the perimeter of the building. Livy shut the door, walking slowly. She braced herself for whatever might come. Had the Russians had enough time to track her down? Would she be grabbed from behind?

  Closer to the guard now, she recognized the uniform. He wore the navy coat and peaked hat that marked him as an officer of the DC Police. A leather strap across his chest connected to the holster around his waist.

  She reached into her purse and removed her passport. Her hand perspired around the rolled notes.

  Twenty feet to go.

  Up ahead two men in dark suits, both wearing fedoras tilted back on their heads, moved toward her. Both looked to be in their mid-thirties, with military-style haircuts. Black suits on another humid summer day.

  She calculated the distance between her and the guard against the speed of the two approaching men. They’d arrive at just about the same time. Her breath quickened. She had to force herself not to run. The two men were just feet away from the guard. She looked at her passport. The notes, the picture of Margot flat between the pages.

  Five feet now. She put her head down, wishing she’d thought to look for a hat in the closet before she left the Russian safe house.

  The two men moved with purpose. No smiles. No small talk.

  She reached the guard, put her hand on his shoulder as the two other men arrived.

  “Excuse us,” the taller of the two men said, his eyes on Livy. Then, to the guard, “There a burger joint around here?”

  The guard pointed in the opposite direction. “Left on Florida, near the Colombian Embassy. It’s a walk, but worth it.”

  The tall man thanke
d the guard and tipped his hat to Livy. He and his companion headed back the way they’d come.

  No more time to waste.

  “I found this,” she said, pushing the passport into the guard’s hand. “Someone must have lost it. There’s a young woman who works here. Alice. Alice Dawson. You probably know her. Would you make sure she gets this? If someone lost their passport, they’ll be very worried.”

  “Sure,” the guard said. “You could take it in yourself, you know.”

  But Livy had already turned, heading back to the cab. She collapsed into the back seat. Sweat mixed with the bloodstain on her blouse. She wanted to sleep for a week. Maybe the chance would present itself soon. No matter though—her job was done for now.

  “Statler Hotel, please,” she said. “I’ll give you a dollar if you can make it in ten minutes.”

  * * *

  Nine minutes later, the cab pulled up in front of the big hotel on Sixteenth. Livy felt as if she’d arrived at mecca. She fished around in her handbag for a moment, to find enough change to pay the driver a full dollar for the ride. The young man nodded, eyes wide. She must look like hell. She certainly felt like it.

  Smelling of blood and three-day-old clothes, Livy allowed herself to think about the bath in her room, the welcoming respite of the mattress, the softness of the sheets. She tried to remember the room service menu as she walked slowly to the front doors. They had ice cream—not as many flavors as Howard Johnson’s, but the thought of the cold dessert sliding down her damaged throat lifted her spirits for a moment.

  She stepped up on the curb. The doorman gaped. Livy gave a little mock bow. The air-conditioned lobby felt like an oasis. The bath, the bed, a sumptuous meal with ice cream, and uninterrupted sleep all part of the fantasy she allowed herself to create. Livy knew it was a mirage, but she didn’t care.

  Three men stood at the front desk. Gray suits, not black. Laurel and Hardy—the two FBI men who’d greeted her on her arrival—stood beside a DC police officer. Just more men coming to get her. They all looked the same by now.