No Way Back (11 page)

Then Nadya’s lips graze my ear, and I hear, “One time only. That interest you, Terry?”

I lose the rhythm instantly, but manage to paste a huge smile on my face. A couple of years ago, I’d have been panting at an offer special as that from a girl special as the one looking up at me, taking her wrist and leading her somewhere—a booth in the ladies’ room, the backseat of a car, anywhere we could get right down to it.

Not now. Not with Nadya.

It all breaks over me, like a rogue wave. The quick lurch of my heart when I walked into my room and saw her for the first time, the sense of deep contentment I’ve felt ever since just being near her, hearing her voice. The pulse-quickening but always suppressed feeling that this woman is my match, my mate, that we were born for each other—a range of emotion I’ve had only once or twice before in my life.

“No,” I say. “Don’t think it would be a good idea, pretty.”

“Just once, Terry? See how we feel about replays after this mission?”

“No, Nadya.” My smile’s still fixed, but my eyes slide away from hers. I’m afraid of what she might see in them.

“Whoops!” Nadya cries, pulling back and spinning as the tempo revs again. “We’re being watched.”

I glance at our table. Rob and Allison are there, looking.

“I don’t give up so easily,” Nadya says, when her spin brings her near me again. “Soon, Terry.”

“It’s impossible. You’re so lovely, but it’s impossible.”

“I’ll find a way.” She moves in as close as seems natural, dancing. “I’m a spy, remember?”

I laugh. So does Nadya. But for different reasons.

“And you claimed you didn’t dance, Terry,” Allison says when Nadya and I return to the table. The Stoli bottle’s more than half empty. Nadya picks it up, iceblock and all, takes a long swallow. Then she starts mussing up Rob’s hair. He ducks away, grinning.

“Hey, you got me up and moving,” I say to Allison.

“Up, maybe. But somebody else got you going.”

“Don’t be bitchy, dear,” Nadya says. “Hardly my fault Rob’s a spaz, is it?”

“Now you’ve really hurt me, Nadya,” Rob says.

“Oh, don’t be a twit, mate. Come try again, I’m just getting into form,” Nadya says, tugging Rob out of his chair and leading him back down to the floor.

Allison’s looking at me, not them.

“What?”

“Nothing much,” she says, sipping her vodka. “Having fun? Feeling good?”

“Are you?”

“Sure. Absolutely.”

“Not real convincing, Allison.”

“Now don’t go all cop on me, Terry. Do you always see shadows behind shadows? Can’t things sometimes be nothing beyond what they seem?”

“I think you have it reversed here. You’re the one trained to assume absolutely nothing is what it seems.”

“You are, too.”

“Wrong. And you know it. Christ, I’m not even a very good detective. I’m only a walking weapons system. You’re the one who’ll aim and fire me, if necessary.”

“Is that how you see all this?”

“Is there any other way of seeing it?”

“Shit, Terry. This is going the wrong way. I just wanted us to relax, have a good time.”

“I am. Nadya sure is. Don’t know about that Rob, but he could be. Just isn’t real demonstrative about it. But you?”

“Yeah? Well—”

“Let’s dance.”

We do. There’s less self-conscious hair-tossing this time. She doesn’t recoil when our bodies connect. She giggles when she makes a misstep. It’s almost genuine.

We leave two empty bottles of Stoly behind when we exit Matrix around two in the morning. I make Rob try to walk straight along the curb. He wobbles, falls after four steps. So I take the keys, drive his Volvo back to the spook house, following Allison’s slurred directions. Have to pull over once so Nadya can lean out the rear door and puke.

“She always does that,” Rob says, then sort of passes out. We have to help him into the house, stuff him into bed in one of the extra rooms. Nadya weaves her way into another.

“Stay tight, Terry. We’re almost good to go,” Allison says to me as she closes the door of her room. I hear the deadbolt click.

Three evenings after club night. Pizza in the library and a viewing of
Snatch
. The whole crew minus Westley. Then Allison drops the hammer.

“Pack tomorrow. We’ll take two cars to the Sheraton near Baltimore-Washington International about five in the afternoon. Rooms are reserved in your work names. Wake-up call at three forty-five in the morning. We’re going to California.”

ALLISON’S SITTING CROSS-LEGGED IN THE VERY MIDDLE
of my bed, watching me pack. She doesn’t seem to care that I’m fresh from a shower, wearing only my skivvies.

“Unusual set of scars,” she says.

“The best ones are invisible.”

She laughs. “God, Terry. What movie did you steal that line from? It had to be one where the girl instantly falls for the tough guy’s unexpected sensitivity. Straight to video.”

“Tough? I’m a pussy, everybody knows that.”

“Hey! Careful with the pants,” she says. “Alternate each pair, cuffs to waist, then fold all of them over the coats. We don’t want a lot of creases and wrinkles, do we?”

“Think I’ve got the method. You did demonstrate, remember?”

“Right. So look over here for a moment and I’ll demonstrate something else.”

“Nothing I’m likely to get off on,” I say, but I see her hold up a titanium wafer about the size of a Camel pack.

“You might. You cross-trained in communications as well as weapons specialist, no?” she says. In her other hand is the little Olympus digital memo recorder.

“I’ve been pondering possible memos ever since that thing showed up in my room, weeks and weeks ago,” I say.

“You wasted your time, then. Pay attention now,” she says. “This Olympus is a burst-transmitter. Yes, it will do memos, though I doubt you’ll use it that way. But if you have an urgent message, say it plainly into the recorder. No code necessary. Then press the play button twice, quick. It’ll send your message to a satellite in, oh, maybe a nanosecond. Too fast to be unscrambled in transit. Mostly never even detected. Satellite hides it, unscrambles, codes, microbursts it to one of our ground stations, which patches it through to my cool little magic box here.”

She puts the Olympus on the bed, holds up the key holder, which now seems to have acquired a key to a car I don’t have. “The center pad, the blue one, that’s the panic button. If it looks like you cannot get the package away, just tap it twice and keep on moving if you can. Some people will show up fast at your location, wherever you wind up, ’cause it’s a finder beacon, too.”

“And where will you be, Allison?”

“Oh, out there somewhere. Out of sight, out of mind. Unless you send a message or tap the panic button. What you should be asking is battery life, where the spares are.”

She gets up, comes over to where I’m packing. Takes a look at my efforts.

“It would save some space if you stuff a couple of pairs of socks into each shoe,” she says. “Batteries, the little round watch type, are in the heels, by the way.”

“Blown before I start, then. Won’t get past airport security shoe checks.”

“There won’t be any. We don’t fly commercial.”

We do take a commercial airport limo from the spook house, out along New York Avenue to the B-W Parkway. Rob and Nadya must have other arrangements, and Allison won’t say a word as we cruise up one of those lovely, old-fashioned highways built long before the six-and eight-lane interstates. Two lanes north, and you can’t see southbound traffic because the median’s a meticulously maintained park maybe a hundred meters wide, thick with poplars, oaks, pines, and maples planted to plan at least sixty years ago. The lanes follow the terrain, sinuous as a snake. Reminds me, in the gathering dusk, of so many roads taken so many times, me in the backseat of Papa’s big Chevy station wagon, cached amid suitcases, duffels, cardboard boxes that overflow the cargo space into the rear bench. Heading toward a new post, Papa always cheerful, teasing Mama, singing along when he finds a radio station that plays Motown sounds. And me glum and silent, for reasons I can’t explain. It was never as if I was leaving good friends behind—never made any, on any base. Still, there was always a vague sense of loss, of saddening departure. Papa looked forward to destinations; I looked back to places I hadn’t even liked much when I lived there.

Not this trip, though. I pull out of memory and into a pleasant anticipation; I want to go, go faster, go now. I want the action to hurry up and happen. I want to get into it, deep as I can.

The ride, the Sheraton check-in, watching my Terry Prentice Amex card swiped through the slot, being given a card key by the smiling redhead in a blue blazer and skirt—it’s all too slow.

Allison senses it. “Soon,” she says as we ride the elevator up to our rooms. “Pick you up in five minutes, we’ll go down for dinner, okay?”

It’s okay. I love airport hotel restaurants. Done by the numbers, always the same, no surprises. No ambient visual noise, a sort of blank in which the only thing that might matter—who’s there—stands out clearly. I order prime rib, usually as dependable as the decor, and quarter the room. A couple of middle-aged suits, worn-out salesmen is my guess, dining alone. A few couples in what still passes for flight uniform even now: upscale sweatsuits with brand names prominent, upscale runners. A couple of families in varied states of disarray and uproar, depending on how many kids, and how old. Small people going to small places, or they’d have had direct connections from their incoming and wouldn’t have to overnight it here, waiting for tomorrow’s flight.

When an old couple already dressed for Florida clear away from the salad bar, I spot Rob at the far side of the room. Alone. He’s done up like a photojournalist who’s never been in a war zone, pressed khaki safari jacket and olive cotton shirt, probably the kind with epaulets and two pockets too many. He’s concentrated on devouring a drumstick and thigh of fried chicken.

To my right, on our side of the salad bar, which is the epicenter of the room, I glimpse Nadya. Dressed rich urchin, sipping from a glass of wine, intent on conversation with a mousy-looking, fifty-something guy in a tweed sports coat and knit tie. An intelligence wonk, or maybe one of those fierce desk heroes who bay for war—so long as they’re safely ten thousand miles from the front.

“Like that pussy Wolfowitz,” I mutter.

“Stop looking at them. Look at me. Or that raw slab of heart attack fodder on your plate,” Allison says. “Feel free to keep muttering, though.”

“There ought to be a rule that civilian national security guys got to go in with the first wave on at least one major action before they’re allowed to bend the president’s ear,” I say. “So they can get sprayed with blood and brains when some kid grunt takes a round through the head. So they can see and hear and smell the troop whose abdominal wall has been sliced open by shrapnel, yards of intestines spilling out on the ground.”

“Jesus, Terry! I’m trying to eat here.”

“They always try to grab ’em, stuff ’em back in.”

“What?”

“The intestines. Dust and dirt all over them, but the guy tries to shove them back inside. Never works. Too slippery. But they try. Must be some kind of instinct.”

“Do
not
feel free to keep muttering,” Allison says, pushing her plate two inches away from her. “Just shut up, okay? I understand your dislike of the desk warriors, but must you share combat details over dinner?”

“I apologize. Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Some other time, if you care to tell me some things, I’ll be a good listener. I just have this small problem when I’m eating.”

“I think I’ve pretty much killed my own appetite.”

“Hey, you notice anything a little weird here?”

“No.”

“The Muzak? Somebody’s slipped in some Dave Matthews. God, he’d die if he knew.”

“No wonder you didn’t dig Matrix,” I say. “Dave Matthews fan! Should have guessed. Though his first CD’s the only one worth listening to more than once. Reminds you of college, does it?”

“Grad school. I’ve got some sweet memories, with the Matthews Band as background music.”

“Cryptic. How about providing some detail?”

“Hell no. My romantic interludes aren’t something I’d care to have you leer and drool over. You tell me about yours, instead.”

“Don’t know that I’ve had any.”

Allison practically hoots. “You are so full of it, Terry! I know every one of those poor girls’ names.”

“Close encounters only. Thought ‘romantic’ was the operative word here.”

“Poor you, then. If that’s true. But I don’t believe it.”

“Why not? You know so much about me, what I am. Can you feature any woman being in love with me? Or me with her?”

“Sure. There’s types and types. Like finds like. That’s how the world stays populated, isn’t it?”

“Haven’t done my share of that work, then,” I say.

“Slacker. After this is over, go back to Annie and get busy.” She grins at me like I’m a kid who’s misbehaved in some slightly amusing way. I’m stung. Badly. Try hard not to let anything show.

I look around when the waitress brings our coffee. Rob’s gone. Nadya’s still sipping wine with guy in tweed. Businesslike expressions on both their faces.

“So, Dave in the background,” I say, “singing that one where he asks the gravedigger to make his shallow, so he can feel the rain. Cheap nihilism you’d call it, if I said anything like that. But it’s okay, it’s a beautiful metaphor, from Dave. And I ask, ‘Allison, why are we really doing this job?’ And Allison looks into my eyes, truth on the tip of her tongue, and says…?”

“Sorry. Details are still need-to-know. You want the broader view, for lots of jobs? It’s pretty obvious. We got a new mandate, post-9/11. Go proactive again in major ways, after being reactive only after Vietnam and Iran and even Desert Storm. And not just us. All the agencies.
We’re going to sucker-punch anybody who even looks at us funny, not just sit there and take a hit first.”

“So you’re pulling in and using every guy like me you can dredge up.”

“For the moment. We’ve got more newbies than we’ve ever had, and training classes are twice, three times the size they were a few years ago, when I went through. Covert, black, even what they used to call ‘termination with extreme prejudice,’ all mandated again. The old guys are saying it’s like the sixties, pre-Carter seventies all over. They’re only pissed that they’re too creaky for the field now.”

“And that’s why kids like you are in charge of ops.”

“Kids? I’ve got six years in. Which is more than your military time, on or off the books.”

“God, I’m practically a rookie.”

“Yeah. So go get some rack time,” Allison says, signing the check Amanda something or other I can’t read upside down.

“Army jargon doesn’t suit you,” I say. “And it’s barely nine.”

“Who cares?” she says. “Wake-up’s at three forty-five, be down in the lobby ready to go at four-fifteen. Oh, and you might as well wear your tools.”

I hang up my suit and shirt, wallet and passport and money still in the pockets. Loosen the noose of my tie just enough to slip over my head and hang it too; don’t want to have to fumble around knotting it in the middle of the night. Don’t want to mess up my neat packing job either. So I leave the suitcase locked, figure I’ll wear what I came in. Take off my T and jockies, pull down the bed covers. Why do they always put too many blankets, comforters, and shams or whatever they call them
on hotel beds? Dump most of them on the carpet. I lie there in the dark, smoking, feeling more than hearing the occasional roar and rumble of big jets lifting off, beginning their climb.

What I hear, after two or three more Camels, is a quiet but sharp click as the door lock snaps to open. The XD’s in my right hand quick, and I flash the brilliant Z2 on the moment the door swings and someone slips in.

Nadya, jacklighted like a doe, freezes.

“Oh bugger, Terry. Turn that off and turn on the room lights. You bloody blinded me with that thing,” she says.

“How’d you get in?” I ask, doing what she’s asked.

“This.” She’s got one hand over her eyes. The other’s holding up a clear plastic wafer, credit-card size, that seems veined with copper circuitry. “It’ll open any card lock in any hotel in the world. Didn’t they give you one?”

“Guess they don’t trust me with one. What are you doing here?”

“Just wanted to ask what I asked when we danced: One time only? This is the last unbugged room we’re likely to be in for quite a while.”

Her eyes are bright under those black bangs.

“Nadya, please go back to your room. I don’t think I can do this.”

“Just relax, Terry, and let me do the thinking.”

“What about feelings? Can you feel for me, too? Please go now,” I say, moving to switch off the bedside lamp.

“Don’t, darling,” she smiles, swaying up to me, kicking off her shoes, slipping out of her skirt, pulling her top over her head. “I like to watch. I like to be watched.”

She bends, face close, her nose lightly brushing one cheek, pulling away a little, brushing the other, pulling away, brushing my lips, pulling away. Her incredible
eyes wide and locked to mine all the while. I’m gone, incapable of resistance. Then her lips, sweet and soft, meet mine lightly, withdraw, meet mine again and stay.

So very, very slow. So very, very sweet. I lose all sense of time. Her eyes never leave mine.

It’s like nothing I’ve known. It goes on forever.