there was nothing that said that husband and wife had to always agree on things, when the things they disagreed about affected their daily lives… Well, it was just another indication of how this relationship would not, could not work.
“Matt,” she said, looking across at him and then quickly down at her plate. She’d been avoiding this all evening. She couldn’t put it off any longer. “Look, Matt,” she said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you left last time. I just… I just don’t think it’s going to work out for us.”
He said nothing, and when she looked up and met his eyes, she saw only a carefully maintained mask, with no emotion whatsoever. “I am not Navy-wife material,” she continued. “I need a relationship, not an occasional house-guest. I need a person, not letters that leave me wondering if I’m ever going to see you again. I need someone who’s there for me, not some guy who just shows up on my doorstep once every six or eight months for a quick bang and maybe breakfast the next morning.” She stopped, breathing hard, her fists clenched. Now that she’d started letting out the anger and the hurt and the gnawing frustration, it was almost more than she could do to hold the flood in check. Damn, she hadn’t realized there was so much bitterness penned up inside of her!
“I never thought that what we had was just a ‘quick bang,’ Pamela.” He sounded hurt. There was no petulance there, but she could hear a coldness, a hardness that she’d never heard in his voice before.
“How do you think it is for me? You’re home for maybe six months. I’m just getting used to having you around, and then I blink twice and poof! You’re gone. For six months. Maybe nine months. Damn it, Matt, I can’t live like that!”
“Pamela, I-“
“A friend of mine, Mike Berrens, did a human-interest story last spring when your battle group got back from the Kola. On the wives and sweethearts waiting at home. And on what a hell their lives were, particularly the wives, trying to run their homes, trying to keep their families together, when their men were gone half the time or more. I took another look at that story after you left, and that’s when I knew I could never live like that.”
“But, Pamela, it’s different with us-” He put up a hand as she started to continue. “Damn it, let me get a word in! I know most Navy wives have a really hard time. Coyote’s marriage is pretty rocky right now, and for just the reasons you’ve been talking about. I was best man at his wedding, and it really hurts to see things falling apart for them.
“But, look, you’re different from Julie. I mean, she’s a wonderful woman, but she has nothing outside her family. You have a career, and you’re damned good at what you do. I would never ask you to give that up, you know that. Yet you expect me to be willing to give up my career for you!”
His voice was rising as he spoke, and growing more and more angry. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d been bottling things up.
She shook her head, the worst of her own anger already drained. “I’m beyond that, Matt. I know you won’t give up the Navy. It’s a part of you, and you wouldn’t be who you are, wouldn’t be the… be the man I love, if you were the kind of guy who could give it up easily. But it’s one of the things that just makes us completely incompatible.”
He looked up sharply, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “You still love me?
Then…”
Pamela took his hand and held it for a brief moment. “Sometimes…
sometimes love just isn’t enough, Matt.”
She released his hand and sat back. “Matt, I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other while you’re here in Yalta, but I really think it best if we not see each other… that way again. It’s… it really has been wonderful knowing you, and I’m sorry it has to end this way. But it does have to end. Now.”
The rest of the dinner was completed in an uncomfortable near-silence and was cut short before dessert or the obligatory after-dinner tea.
All the way back to the hotel, she could feel the tension winding up inside of him.
Tombstone was still digesting what had passed between him and Pamela that evening. He didn’t know what to say, was afraid to say anything for fear that either he or she would explode.
He’d known she was hurt by his frequent absences, knew she didn’t like them, knew she’d rather he left the Navy… but he’d never imagined it coming to this.
“Good night, Pamela,” he told her in the hotel lobby. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, sailor,” she said with something approaching her old twinkle. “It has been fun. At least until recently.”
“Yeah.”
She turned and walked away toward the elevator.
Tombstone turned and started for the stairwell, less because he still mistrusted Russian elevators than because the thought of riding up several floors in close proximity to Pamela was suddenly unendurable. The prostitutes were gone, at least, he was relieved to see.
As he started up the first flight, however, he was aware of a sudden movement at his back.
“Stoy! Nee sheeveleetes!”
Tombstone turned, looking down at a young man ? he probably wasn’t out of his teens ? with long, wildly disheveled hair and a knife held threateningly in his right hand.
“Rukee wayrh!” His right hand held the knife, weaving it back and forth at Tombstone’s throat. The left was extended, palm up. “Ya hachu den’gee!”
“I don’t speak Russian,” Tombstone told the youth, keeping his voice cold and level. “Understand? La plaha, uh, ya plaha gavaryu!”
“Money!” the boy repeated, and he rubbed the fingers of his left hand together in a universal sign. “Money! Dollar! You give!”
It was almost ridiculously easy, given that he was already on the first step of the stairway, and the kid was waving the knife carelessly less than a foot away, well inside Tombstone’s reach. Had it been a pistol the kid was waving, Tombstone would not have considered doing what he did next. He was neither a brawler nor a practitioner of martial arts, but he outweighed the kid by at least thirty pounds, and his reflexes were those of an aviator.
Besides, he was in no mood to be pushed around.
“Da,” he said, nodding and reaching up with his left hand to open the front of his jacket. “Da. I give.”
The kid’s eyes gleamed and he stepped closer as if to grab the expected wallet from the inside jacket pocket himself. Instead, Tombstone lashed up and across with his left forearm, blocking the knife hand and smashing it aside; he pivoted left with the movement, shooting his right fist up and hard against the underside of the kid’s jaw.
The blow smashed the would-be mugger backward and into a cement-block wall. Tombstone was on him an instant later, slamming him twice more against the cement, hard, as the knife clattered to the floor. He threw another punch and the kid’s head lolled to the side.
He let him slide to the floor then, face bloody. Tombstone picked up the knife, rammed the tip hard into a crevice between two concrete blocks, then applied pressure until the blade snapped with a sharp, metallic report.
He dropped the useless hilt on the unconscious kid’s chest. “Sorry, fella,” he said. “But I’ve had a really bad day.”
CHAPTER 16
Tombstone had to admit that there was a tremendously rich symbolism in Boychenko’s choice of a meeting place for the surrender ceremony. The welcome ceremony, he corrected himself wryly. The Russians weren’t thinking of this as a surrender, but as a simple transaction, with the United Nations taking responsibility for the
