“It’s horrible.” Lily sniffed.
“I followed them a bit,” said Dotty. “Just out front, but they didn’t get in a cab. They turned left like they were going out for a walk on the strip.”
“Bless you. I am so grateful,” said Lily. “I shall come back later. Perhaps we shall make more business together?”
“Whatever you need. Guys like him get my goat, but it’s kinda, well, fun. Gotta scoot.” She hung up.
“All right, Hot Shot,” Lily snapped as she stripped off her coat. “Let’s see how fast you can fly.”
* * * *
Enver Lukacs could not have felt better. He had been to many of the world’s gaudiest playgrounds, but Las Vegas was second only to Macau as the height of imperial, self-indulgent, capitalist-pig lust. The casinos were absurdly ornate and enormous, hunched one after the other like bloated tics. The nighttime shows were ridiculous, the meals disgustingly wasteful, the show girls caricatures of cartoon harlots. The weather was hot, the bikinis tiny, and the liquor flowed like the Volga.
Such a shame it was only a stopover.
He strode east along Tropicana Boulevard, wearing a white cashmere turtleneck and brown linen slacks—his silver-blond hair freshly combed back from his high forehead, and his Ray-Bans making him think he looked like a star. He’d been up till three, but he’d left the tables with ten thousand more than his nut, and he’d stayed up till dawn making a Colombian prostitute beg for more. Then it was breakfast at noon, a steaming bath, and now nothing more than a stroll. He was hoping the signal would come tomorrow so he’d have one more night to play.
“I do not understand these Americans,” Lukacs remarked in Czech to the man on his left. “They gorge themselves on fast food and drink like Russian sailors, but the scent of tobacco sends them into a frenzy.”
“It is a sign of a collapsing empire,” the other man said. He was bald, with a face like a pale rat, and he was wearing a plaid beret. “When everything is a criminal enterprise, you focus on the one harmless vice.”
“You are quite the philosopher, Stanislaw,” said Lukacs as he tapped a fresh pack of Marlboros into his palm. “Considering that your only real talent is killing.”
Stanislaw laughed. His gold front tooth gleamed in the Nevada sunlight. The man on Lukacs’s right said nothing. He was North Korean and didn’t understand Czech, but his job was only to keep Lukacs alive, so the social repartee didn’t matter.
The three men continued along the sidewalk, where it passed the MGM’s four-story parking structure off to the left. Straight ahead, it widened into a parklike area with a manicured grass oval resembling a golf course green with a canopy of desert cedars. It seemed a good place to steal a smoke in the shade.
“And so, if I may ask,” Stanislaw said. “What now?”
“We shall soon be in the final phase,” Lukacs said as he plucked up a cigarette with his thin lips. “Collins has duped their best agent, and now he has the codes.”
“And after that?”
Lukacs stopped beneath a large tree and lit up with a silver Zippo. “After that, we collect our fees and go home.” He glanced at his surroundings, seeing no one but waddling tourists. “In the meantime, Stanislaw, do your job.”
Stanislaw nodded, cocked his head at the Korean, and the two moved away from Lukacs to take up positions higher up on the green, facing out. Lukacs squinted off toward the corner of Tropicana and Koval, where a pair of large men in gym clothes were rounding the bend in an easy jog, laughing at some joke.
Lukacs turned back toward the boulevard, dragging on his smoke and squinting across the street at the old Tropicana Hotel. It was there, he recalled from his tour book, that Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack had spent many a night indulging their fame, wealth, and lust. Apparently, you could even book Sinatra’s old suite.
I think I shall do that tonight, he thought. And I shall have sex with an American blonde on his couch.
That pleasant thought was interrupted when a white Mercedes van pulled up very close, blocking his view. And then, from behind, he heard a muffled shout. He spun around to see a man who looked like a young Sylvester Stallone pummeling Stanislaw’s face. To the right, the North Korean, whose name he still could not pronounce, was spinning in a blurring Tae Kwon Do roundhouse kick. But his leg was instantly trapped by a huge bald black man who slammed his chin with an uppercut. Lukacs heard the crack of knuckles on bone.
His cigarette fell from his gaping mouth as he spun around to run. But the white van’s door had slid open and a woman was striding toward him. She looked just like...
Oh no.
Lily kicked him, her foot whipping up into his balls. And she was wearing boots. Rockets of lightning shot into his eyes as he howled and dropped to his knees.
She bent down until her blazing green eyes were boring into his now-bloodshot ones. “That’s for Seoul,” she said. Then she brought her right hand up to her left collarbone and sliced her bladed palm into his temple. “And that’s for China,” she said as he keeled over.
She bent over his writhing form, dragged him up by his hair and said. “And this one’s for Prague and that C-4 strap-on I didn’t fancy very much.” She kneed him straight in the nose, and his nostrils gushed blood.
At that point, Chilly was leaning out of the van, arms outstretched, and yelling, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
Lily stepped back from Lukacs as Tony and Slam came hurdling toward her like linebackers. They hauled Lukacs up like an errant toddler, ran for the van, and threw him facedown on the floor.
Like champion rodeo riders, Scott straddled Lukacs’s spine while Chilly grabbed his ankles and folded them up. Tony and Slam leapt inside to the
