She hugged Sascha andkissed his cheeks as well, but his heart was in no danger ofstopping.
Back aboard the Hawker,Anya could not take her eyes from the enormous diamond from the lab.
Veronica leanedforward. “Are you ready to learn more of the real stuff?” Anyanodded, still transfixed on the stone, and Veronica held out herhand. “Let me have the stone.”
Anya recoiled. No. Iwill not let you make it disappear.”
“Fine,” she said.“Give me the black-and-white glass fakes you were practicing with.”
She handed over thepainted glass and watched intently as the sorceress clamped the whiteone into a pair of tweezers. Veronica pretended to inspect theworthless piece of white painted glass through her loupe until shefaked a sneeze.
“Bless you,” Anyasaid as Veronica presented her with the tweezers that now containedthe black painted piece of glass.
“This is what we do,dear. We find stones of exceptional beauty, replicate them down tothe finest detail, and then make the swap. The dealer is none thewiser, and we then have possession of Mother Nature’s creationwhile the dealer tucks away one of Sascha and Shel’s masterpiecesof a quarter the value, but practically indistinguishable from theoriginal.”
Anya spent half an hourperfecting the motions of switching one stone for another whileclamped in a pair of tweezers.
The flight attendantmaterialized at her side with a terrified look on her face. “Ladies,I’m so sorry, but the pilots say we are experiencing a loss ofcabin pressure. I need for you to sit one person per row and fastenyour seatbelts securely.”
Veronica moved one rowforward while Anya stayed in place. She glanced to see Viktor pullinghis seatbelt tight across his lap. The flight attendant then producedoxygen masks from compartments beside each seat and assisted each ofthe three in properly fitting the masks to their faces.
When she’d finishedwith each passenger, the flight attendant took a seat of her own,fastened the belt, and pulled on the oxygen mask.
Anya focused herattention out the window and watched the frigid water of the NorthAtlantic grow ever closer as the pilots descended the jet fromaltitudes where oxygen was essential for survival. She felt the jetslow and watched the flaps deploy from the trailing edge of the wing.The whir of hydraulic pumps followed by a solid thud in the floor ofthe cabin told her the landing gear had been deployed. She peered outthe small window in search of the runway where the pilots obviouslyintended to land, but recoiled when one of the pilots, a husky,thick-armed man of perhaps thirty years old, emerged through thecockpit door.
They will surely nottry to land the airplane with only one pilot in the cockpit, Anyathought as the ocean drew ever nearer to the belly of the jet.
She watched in horroras the pilot released the long red handle securing the door. He letthe door open outward as the cabin filled with ice-cold air blowingin at whatever the airspeed of the plane was. The scene was utterchaos as everything that wasn’t tied down in the cabin becameairborne on the swirling, frigid wind.
The jet trembledviolently as it flew in a condition it was never designed toexperience. Suddenly, the muscled pilot drove a powerful fist intoVeronica’s face, rendering her immediately unconscious. Before Anyacould react, the man yanked the unconscious body from the seat andshoved her feetfirst out the door. Without watching her fall, hereached through the opening and forced the heavy door against theviolence of the wind until it was seated back in place, filling thehole in the side of the luxurious jet. With a gentle shove of themechanism, the door was sealed back in place, and the pilot returnedto the cockpit.
The flight attendantrose from her seat and returned the oxygen masks to their bins. “Thesituation has been remedied, but you may want to keep your seatbeltssecurely fastened until we land.”
Back in the hangar atTeterboro, Volkov took Anya’s elbow in his grip and spun her aroundas she moved to slide into the waiting car. “I trust you’velearned all you need to know to replace our previous partner withwhom we’ve, unfortunately, had a falling out.”
27
MEZHDUDVUMYA MIRAMI
(BETWEEN TWO WORLDS)
Gwynn met Anya at thedoor of the apartment as she was going out and the Russian was comingin. The look on the assassin’s face immediately changed AgentDavis’s plan. “What happened?”
Anya’s non-answerspun Gwynn around and sent her following her partner back inside theapartment.
“Where is AgentWhite?” Anya asked as she poured half a glass of vodka.
“He’s back in D.C.Why?”
“I made horriblemistake.”
Gwynn took the glassfrom her. “What did you do, Anya?”
“I tried to besomething I am not. I tried to be a normal person like you or AgentWhite or anyone we see on streets, but this is not what I can everbe.”
Gwynn let Anya reclaimher glass. “What are you talking about?”
Anya stared off intodistances Gwynn would never be able to fathom, remembering, in rapidsuccession, every training iteration, every press of the trigger, andevery slice of her blade. Suddenly, every soul she’d torn fromevery target she’d faced since the lethal skills melded with herbody and mind and consciousness flooded back to haunt and bewilderher.
As if speaking to noone and everyone simultaneously, she softly began. “I am killer.Ubiytsa. Assassin. I can never be less or more than thisanimal hiding inside this body of human.” She turned to Gwynn andswallowed half the vodka. “I am sorry. I have put you in gravedanger because I believed a lie of my own creation.”
Gwynn took her hand,but Anya jerked away. “I cannot.”
“Anya, you’re notmaking any sense. What happened today?”
“Today, I realized Ipainted picture of Viktor Volkov as loving uncle to innocent, younggirl. This picture I created gave to him wall to hide behind.”
She took anotherswallow of the distilled spirit of the home to which she could neverreturn. “He threw Veronica from airplane over ocean today.”
Gwynn leaned in. “Who’sVeronica?”
“The woman,Veronique, but this is not her name. She was Veronica, and theykilled her, and I could not stop them because I was pretending to benormal person.”
Gwynn squinted and heldup a hand. “You have to slow down and tell me what happened.”
She drained the glassand
