Wondered, but didn’t ask.
“I’m looking forward to the lessons,” Alex said.
It was that most unusual of statements for her: an outright lie.
THIRTEEN
At 8:00 that evening, Alex presented herself to Colosimo’s. She checked in with her federal permit and waited for her turn on the firing range. She had not used her weapon for several months. She purchased a new box of nine-millimeter ammunition. She had a respectful relationship with firearms-she had drawn her weapon many times but had never had to fire one against another human being. She prayed that she never would.
But she knew she could, if necessary. Her possession of a weapon in the line of duty for the FBI had been a professional necessity. She might have been dead without it. And tonight, she just plain felt like blasting away at some paper targets.
At half past the hour, in a heavy white UCLA sweatshirt, her new basketball sneakers, and a pair of red Umbro soccer shorts, she took her place on a firing line. Trim, twenty-nine, and with long legs that seemed chiseled from all the workouts, she drew the usual set of approving and admiring glances from the predominantly male clientele.
Though flattered, she ignored it. She also made sure she also had her goggles and an anti-noise headset. An agent she knew had once practiced on a range without the ear protection and been cursed with permanent ringing in the ears from then on. Heaven knew there was no apparel sexier than those two items.
She opted for bull’s eye targets, the old-fashioned ones with concentric circles, rather than a man-shaped target. The target was twenty-five yards away. Before shooting, she fiddled with the two adjusting screws across the top sight until they appeared to be fixed just right.
The range was warm. She ditched the sweatshirt and was down to a blue and gold UCLA T-shirt. Much more comfortable.
She hadn’t held the Glock for several weeks. It felt different in her hand, as if it were ready to fight her. She adopted the ungainly squat ting position that had been standard for shooters for the past several decades, raised the pistol in both hands, held it forward, and focused on the sights with her right eye; she didn’t close the left, but paid no attention to what it saw, not that anyone ever can aim a pistol in a quick draw combat situation.
Front sight. Front sight.
That was the key, one FBI instructor had told her once, the rock upon which the Church of Almighty Handguns was built. A shooter had to see the front sight and let the target remain hazy in the background.
Otherwise, might as well call in an air strike.
So, front sight, front sight.
In the notch of the rear sight, a frame, she saw the bull’s eye of the target.
Her hand was steady. She squeezed the trigger, fighting the temptation to flinch. Even under the headset, the blast of the weapon was frightful. The recoil was less than expected, however, and her aim had been near perfect on the first shot. Not bad after a long layoff.
She fired six more rounds quickly and succinctly.
She brought the target forward.
Wow! She was pleased. Pretty good for a chick who hadn’t fired a shot in many weeks. Three hits right in the center. The others were off by less than an inch. She should do this for a living.
She sent the target back and reloaded, firing another seven rounds. Even better. One shot on the perimeter of the smallest circle, the others within it.
A real life shootout didn’t usually allow the luxury of a studied methodical aim, so she quickly graduated to a more challenging shooting pattern. She would raise the weapon quickly, no time to aim, and try to hit the center of the target.
This she did with great skill as well.
She had, in fact, forgotten how good she was at this. She continued on the range for another twenty minutes. Her skills were in excellent shape, she decided. She was more than pleased.
She went through two boxes of ammunition. Seventy-two shots, then stopped. She didn’t want her wrist to be sore the next day. She had done enough. She turned.
An even larger group of guys was watching her, their jaws open in admiration. Must have been a dozen of them. When she caught them looking, she was at first slightly resentful, then almost embarrassed.
Then they gave her an impromptu round of applause and a couple of “good ol’ boy” whoops of approval. She was their type of female, at least for the moment. She shook her head, laughed, and accepted the compliments.
“Beginner’s luck,” she said, carefully locking her weapon in its case.
“Yeah. Some beginner,” one of the younger guys said knowingly.
“Do they all shoot like that at UCLA?” another one asked.
“Only on the basketball court. Have a good evening, boys,” she said.
And she disappeared.
FOURTEEN
She phoned Robert from her car. He was home, following a difficult shift at the White House. Some wacko had breached the security at one of the side fences by climbing over and making a run for the Rose Garden.
The nut case hadn’t gotten more than twenty feet when he was tackled. But such occurrences always ramped up the anxiety level of the entire Presidential Protection Detail. And of course, investigations had to follow and the breach needed to be studied. One never knew whether one small incident was a prelude to something larger. In the post-9/11 world, acute paranoia was the new normal.
“So I’ll bring dinner over. How’s that?” she asked Robert. “We’ll have dinner; then I have to scoot. I have this Ukrainian stuff to study and a final FBI report to read.”
“Dinner would be great,” he said.
She picked up some Thai takeout for dinner after leaving Colosimo’s.
Robert lived at a big apartment complex on Dupont Circle, a building known as the Bang Bang Hotel because there were so many well-armed government security people living there and so many single women. It was two blocks away from the Iraqi consulate.
They split dinner. They lingered together for a while afterward, but Alex was back at her place by midnight.
She showered and spent half an hour looking at her Ukrainian books and working with one of Olga’s CDs. What an unforgiving language. Not like French with its charm, English with its complexities, Italian with its musicality, or Spanish with its history. But the tough parts-the existence of “perfective” and “imperfective” and the whole tangle relating to verbs of motion-were the same as in Russian, so at least Alex wasn’t starting cold.
To ingratiate herself with her teacher, she made a point of memorizing several phrases in the fifth chapter. She found that she could concoct a primitive conversation with reasonable ease.
Ja vpershe u vashij krajini. I’m in your country for the first time.
Ne serdytesja na mene. Please, don’t be angry with me.
Toward 1:00 a.m., she thought she heard a sound at her front door, almost like someone trying the knob. Cautiously, she went to the door and looked through the peephole. She relaxed. It was her neighbor, Don Tomas, the retired diplomat, wandering in, a little tipsy, humming a Lucero tune, his keys clicking against his own door.
She rechecked her own locks. She brewed a decaf cup of tea. She settled down at her kitchen table, positioning herself where she could see the door.
There was one final task at hand for the evening. She needed to read the final file she had been given, the FBI
