Korcinski walked toward her, Rourke beside him. Korcinski stopped, saying, “This young woman has a personal message for you, Mr. Rourke.” As Korcinski started to turn away, Rourke looked at him, whispering, “What’s to stop me from killing both of you?” Korcinski, half-turned away, looked at Rourke across his left shoulder, “You are not a murderer or an assassin—and, were you to do such a rash thing, or attempt to take one or the other of us hostage, all your men—or whose men they are—would be executed.” “I’m not a murderer, but you are?”
“Something like that, if you chose to think of it that way,” Korcinski said, turning the rest of the way around and walking away.
Rourke looked at the woman. She was tall and young, as he had thought. “Who are—”
“I am instructed to tell you only this. I am General Ishmael Varakov’s personal secretary. He asked that I give you this note, then you return the note to me after you have read it.” Rourke took the square envelope, broke the red wax seal on the flap, removed and unfolded the note. He bent toward the light from the headlights to read it: “Rourke—You have impressed me with your singular competence and daring. The contents of this note are to be held in the strictest confidence. I will assume that I have your word as a gentleman on that. And it is an affair of gentlemen I discuss here. My niece, Natalia, the wife of Vladmir Karamatsov, is quite fond of you, and I understand though nothing actually transpired between you, that you both became close as friends. Her husband has quite recently beaten her severely, almost killing her toward the end, compelling her to defend herself. She is a faithful wife in her fashion, and would likely return to Karamatsov sooner or later. I fear, as her uncle, that Karamatsov will attack her again, this time permanently injuring her or perhaps killing her. Because of political problems, I cannot kill Karamatsov with my bare hands as I would like.
“I ask that you do this for me, however you wish—I have enclosed his projected itinerary for tomorrow. If you do this thing, all your comrades will be freed, the head of the American KGB will have been liquidated—surely something you can count as a benefit—and, more important to both of us, Natalia’s future safety will be secured. I ask this as one man of honor to another—despite our political differences. I will not consider myself indebted to you for this other than personally.
“Karamatsov is a madman and for all our sakes must be destroyed.”
The letter was signed with a large letter V.
Rourke folded the letter, then handed it back to the woman, squinting at her eyes in the harsh illumination of the headlights.
She asked in the good enough English, “I am instructed to ask you for a yes or no answer.”
“Why me?”
“I know nothing about the letter. The General speaks excellent English and wrote it personally.” “Yes,” Rourke said slowly.
“Here,” she said, handing Rourke a small envelope. He opened it: it was an agenda for the next day, detailing Karamatsov’s movements.
“All right,” Rourke said. He folded the paper again, and placed it in the breast pocket of his shirt. “Anything else?” “The General said if you said ‘yes’ I was to say, ‘good luck’.”
Rourke looked at her a moment. “You’re wearing your skirt too long. And thanks for the good wishes.”
Chapter 36
Vladmir Karamatsov opened his eyes and looked through the motel balcony door—the motel was now the transient and bachelor officers quarters. It was light, but rising from the bed and going toward the floor to ceiling glass, he opened the curtains wider and saw the fog. He slipped the window open to his left and smelled at it: the fog seemed rank and foul and was cool—cold almost.
He closed the window, leaving the top-floor drapes open, staring in the gray light at the woman on the bed. She was moving slightly, turning into the covers, cold apparently.
He stared at her, walking across the room. He didn’t exactly know why, but he had slapped her several times; there was a bruise on her left cheek as she rolled toward the window, then back away from it. Unlike Natalia, she had liked the brutality. It was a side of himself to which he was yet unaccustomed; he liked the brutality almost more than the sex afterward.
Karamatsov walked into the bathroom, urinated, then looked at his face in the mirror. There were still bruises from where Natalia had struck him when she had so suddenly decided to defend herself. He walked back into the bedroom and looked at the blond-haired woman sleeping there. He wondered, almost absently, what it would be like to kill Natalia. He shook his head to clear the thought away.
Returning to the bathroom, he lathered his face and began to shave. He had picked up the Hoffritz razor at an exclusive shop in Rio. His face hurt where the bruises were as he grimaced in order to smooth the skin to shave closer. He made a mental note to inquire about the noise of explosions that previous morning. He had been out of the city, interrogating some of the former university personnel at the detention center, trying to learn the whereabouts of the former astronaut, Jim Colfax. He had thought, too, that faintly in the distance the previous night he had heard gunfire. There was a time he would have run to the sound, he thought. But he had been busy, playing the games with the woman on the bed, making her feel pain, which she seemed so to delight in.
He brushed his teeth, carefully visually inspecting them in the bathroom mirror, the four stainless-steel teeth that made a permanent bridge in the lower right side of his mouth. They were new and still uncomfortable. Before the war, when his primary duties had been to pose as anyone but a Russian, he would never have allowed the stainless-steel teeth—only Soviet dentists used them. Buttons stitched in a cross shape showed you had a European tailor, keeping your fork in your left hand when you ate showed you were not American. There had been so many little things under which to submerge one’s own personality, Karamatsov thought.
He started the water in the shower; he liked American plumbing. He washed his body, washed his hair, then rinsed under cold water for several minutes, thinking. After stepping out of the water and toweling himself dry, he began to dress. Civilian clothes again today, he thought: American blue jeans and a knit shirt, dark blue. He slipped on the shoulder holster for the Smith & Wesson Model 59. Since Natalia had taken his little revolver he had found a replacement, slipping that into its belt holster and sliding the holster in place. He liked the revolver best, but the double-column 9mm Model 59 had firepower, and that was sometimes needed.
He pulled a lined windbreaker from the closet and slipped it over the shirt and shoulder holster, then a baseball cap that read “Cat” on the front and advertised some sort of tractor. There was still the desire to look like the enemy, he thought, smiling at his American image in the mirror.
