Professional. I do not belong to myself. I belong to a code. To a world of thieves. I have no family but them.” Below the star, a church with multiple domes. “And here. Each dome a trip to the Zone.” He shed his jacket, his finger jabbing into a tattoo on his shoulder: a hand holding a tulip wrapped three times in barbed wire. “Convicted underage for robbery. Three years spent. Each barb on the wire one month. And this”-a cross and shackles with numbers and Cyrillic lettering-“second trip. Corrective Labor Colony Number Six. Here, isolation cell, Block Seven.”
Nate said, “Look-”
The sudden rage severed the words in Nate’s throat.
Pavlo indicated a tattoo of a wolf with a bare-toothed scowl. “My promise to avenge those who put me inside.” He tore his shirt off altogether, pointed to a gnarl of scar tissue in his side. “Derybasivska Street in Odessa. Stabbed.” He translated a Cyrillic scroll across his ribs. “‘Mother, do not cry for me any longer. Let me be dead to you.’” He turned around. Two eyes on his back required no explanation, but he indicated an eagle on his shoulder blade. “This shows escape from Vorkuta Camp. And this”-a quarter-size patch of shiny skin-“assassination try in Kiev.”
Nate risked a glance around the restaurant. Everyone eating and talking, dutifully ignoring what was happening in plain sight. Dozens of witnesses, none of whom would see a thing. He moved to rise, but a vise grip crushed his shoulders, sinking him back into the chair. The bouncer, breathing down on him.
Pavlo slammed his hands on the place mat in front of Nate, silverware and glasses jumping on the starched white tablecloth. Nate strained to lean back, but the pressure on his shoulders was unrelenting. Pavlo pointed at the fingers of one hand, ticking off each ring tattoo. An asterisk in a circle. “Fatherless. I become thief because of broken home.” A white cross on a dark rectangle. “I survive the crosses. Solitary.” A skull within a diamond, split by bars. “I serve in prison for violent criminals only.”
Leaning forward, he gave off a waft of spicy cologne and old-fashioned shaving cream, the smell of a man from another era. His face inches from Nate’s. His eyes fluttered closed. Words tattooed on his lids. “‘Do not rouse me.’ For this the pricker insert a spoon beneath eyelid to firm it for needle.” Pavlo straightened. One loafer hit the floor, then another. Shackle tattoos on his ankles, words on the insteps. He translated: “‘They drag me under armed guard.’” Pavlo tore at his belt violently. His pants fell, exposing boxer shorts of a blue that matched the ink decorating his flesh. His kneecaps sported stars. “I kneel before no man. And last.”
With dread, Nate watched Pavlo’s hands move to his boxers. Tattooed thumbs hooked the band and slid them down to midthigh. Nate shoved back violently in the chair, but the man whose seat he occupied stepped in to help the bouncer hold him in place.
He flushed, skin on fire. He felt like a child, utterly and comprehensively overpowered. The stink of the herring on the table was making him queasy. In the background he could hear the clink of silverware against plates, no one daring to stop eating.
Pavlo fisted Nate’s hair with both hands and forced his face toward his bare thighs, toward the private smells of musk and talcum powder. The swollen bud of his head nudged out from a nest of gray wire. Cyrillic lettering low beneath his belly button. Pavlo leaned over, teeth clenched as he hissed the translation:
Anger burned in Nate’s chest, evaporating any panic. He braced a foot against one of the table legs and shoved with all his might. The table skidded a foot or so, plates and glasses jumping, and the two men holding him down lost their grip. Nate twisted up and away from Pavlo’s grasp, but then the bouncer palmed his head and slammed it to the table. A cool ring of steel pressed against his temple, and he heard the soft click of the gun cocking.
“You want to do it?” Nate said. “Then
A view of Pavlo, offset by forty-five degrees. Nate felt as though his skull might collapse from the pressure of the giant hand. One finger smashed his nose, another smeared his lips to one side. Vodka glugged unevenly from the toppled bottle.
Pavlo studied him calmly as he looped his belt, buttoned his coat.
The spilled alcohol was making Nate’s eyes water. “Pull the trigger,” he said, “or get off me.”
The Georgian had barely moved. Overflowing his chair, now displaced from the shoved table, he uttered his first words in broken, barely intelligible English. “Take him into kitchen. I will haff cleaned up.”
But Pavlo gave a small shake of his head, the ring of steel lifted, and the pressure came off Nate’s temple. He straightened up.
“You are as crazy as Chechen nigger,” Pavlo said. “I have seen many men in many circumstances. And you, my friend, are not correct in your head.”
“We will see if you are still wise enough to fear.” Though his pants were now buckled again, Pavlo set a hand above his groin where the slogan was tattooed.
“If you want any chance at getting what’s in that safe-deposit box,” Nate said, “then keep out of my way. And stay clear of my family.”
“I will give you and family space if you obey. But we will be watching. You have four days. And then”-Pavlo made a quick slashing gesture across his stomach with the blade of his hand-
He pointed toward the door and sat down again at the strewn table.
Nate felt all eyes on his back as he threaded through the tables, his step quickening as he neared the big oak door and the fresh nighttime air beyond.
Chapter 21
Nate faced Janie across the kitchen counter, her hands cupped around a mug of chamomile tea. She’d drawn all the curtains, he’d checked all the rooms, and for the moment it was just them again in their old house, their daughter upstairs. But now, he realized, it was probably time for him to leave.
He got up from the barstool, withdrew the Beretta from the waist of his jeans, and set it carefully on the counter. “If they come again. You’re here with Cielle.”
“Is this real?” Janie’s eyes were unfocused, dazed.
“What?”
“All of it. Your dying. The death threat on Cielle. Pete leaving.”
“I’ll make sure Cielle’s safe and you’re safe, too, and then Pete can come back and you and he can work it out, start over.”
“How about you?” she asked. “The ALS?”
He smiled. “That I can’t fix.”
She reached across, slid the Beretta back to him. “I don’t want the gun.”
He made no move toward it. “I know you don’t.”
Her eyes went from the gun to his face. “Will you stay with it?”
He looked down, embarrassed that she’d see what this meant to him. He picked up the gun, tucked it in his jeans again. “I’ll sleep down here on the couch. Keep watch.”
“Talk to your daughter first. She needs you. Whether she knows it or not.” Janie turned to wash out her cup and he looked at her back for a moment before starting for the stairs. Casper rose from his slumber to follow him up.
He confronted Cielle’s bedroom door a moment before tapping. “Honey? It’s me.”
“What do you want?”
“I just want to see your face.”
A long silence. Then she said, “I heard Pete say to Mom, ‘I am not cleaning up his mess again.’ Is that what I was to him? A mess?”
“Oh, honey. No.” He leaned against the closed door. “He was talking about me and what I got us all into. Pete loves you.”
