A Date You Can't Refuse (31 page)

“In what way?” I wrapped my arms around my Kevlar vest. Had Yuri seen the DVD pop out? No, he would've been outside when it happened, coming to rescue me.

“This attraction of yours. Is it to just me? Or have you a yearning to explore your own shadow? To use psychological terms. Does my extensive cache of guns and toys, my state-of-the-art playroom attract you? Do you have a desire to play here?”

“Well …”

One eyebrow went up. “Or is it something else altogether?”

“No, that's it,” I said. “Shooting, I mean. Is that what you mean? Yes. Shooting. I have a fascination with it.” A horrified fascination. “This is a seminal moment for me.”

He looked at me appraisingly Was he buying it, or was he about to say, “Oh, horse pucky”?

After a long moment, he said, “Fair enough.” I exhaled slowly.

Yuri turned to the big gun and and loaded it. “Vlad gave you a visceral demonstration of the need for self-defense skills. Did he also teach you the four rules of gun safety?”

“We didn't get that far.”

“So I surmised. Pay attention. Number one, all guns are always loaded. Even if you are certain they are not, you treat them as though they are.”

“Okay.”

“Number two, never point your gun at what you are not willing to kill. Number—”

“Whoa,” I said. “Back up. Number two. What about bluffing?”

“No bluffing. This isn't poker. Number three, keep your finger off the trigger until you have the target in your sights. Number four, you are responsible for the terminal resting place of all projectiles fired. Any questions?”

“Yes. That last one in English, please.”

He smiled. “I have taught it in six languages. Blood and bone and skin
are not enough to stop a bullet. Who is standing behind the person you're aiming at? Because you're responsible for him too. Who is behind the wall? Are you willing to kill her too?”

If I'd ever wanted to fire a gun, I was having second and third and fourth thoughts now.
The only way out is through
, said the voice in my head. “Okay let's shoot!” I said.

He held up a hand. “In good time. Repeat the four rules, please.”

“All guns are loaded, don't pick it up unless you're willing to kill, see your target before your finger's on the trigger, pay attention to what's behind the door—target, I mean.”

“Well done.” He walked over to the second gun cupboard and pulled out two headset things. “So. You like the big guns? Then we will start with the big guns. Not the way I'd ordinarily train a shooter, but you are an unusual girl, aren't you?”

“I've been told so, yes.”

“This,” he said, picking up the big gun, “is an H & K MP5 sub machine gun, utilizing a thirty-round magazine.”

“Thirty rounds. Huh.”

“Used by Navy SEALs in close-quarter combat and by special reaction teams all over.”

“How wonderful.” I was having a special reaction myself to all this, and reminded myself to focus on the details, for Bennett Graham. “How many of these do you have?”

“Down here? One hundred and fifty. Feel it. Nice and lightweight.”

What did anyone need with a hundred and fifty of these things? And did this mean he had more stashed elsewhere? Before I could frame the question, Yuri was putting on a headset. He handed the other one to me, calling it a pair of earmuffs. The big spongy protective bagel-shaped things were unexpectedly disturbing, implying that now my hearing was at stake too. The earmuffs had an isolating effect, but this was offset by Yuri's hands on my arms and shoulders, adjusting my posture and grip. The gun was lighter than it looked, given the scary parts of it jutting out all over the place.

Yuri's touch was businesslike rather than sexual, but it was still intimate and I was still carrying the DVD. Thank God for the camouflage
vest. I thought of the men whose hands had touched me in the last twelve hours, starting with Simon's that afternoon. Not to mention his other body parts. Did I still carry his scent? All I could smell was guns.

And then, after Yuri yammered on about thirty or forty more things I couldn't focus on, I closed my eyes and fired my first shot.

I had no idea where it landed, nor did I care. What I noticed was that even with the earmuffs on, it was excruciatingly loud. It made me think of being at the dentist with the drill going full blast in your mouth. Not painful—assuming there's Novocain involved—but not a lot of fun either. And with the whole posture-and-grip thing, trying to remember to breathe, relax, and not scrunch up one's face, it was as tedious as a golf lesson, which some former boyfriend had once talked me into. I could imagine that if one were the type of person who loves firecrackers, this might be a good time. I wasn't, and this wasn't.

But Yuri was patient and, in spite of myself, I was pleased to see my aim improve. Yuri took pride in my progress, and that too was strangely gratifying.

I kept shooting until the gun was empty, which seemed to take half my life, then handed it to Yuri and removed my earmuffs before he could reload. “What an amazing experience!” I said. “Got anything else?”

“Yes, I think you'll enjoy the Beretta Cx4 Storm, which, like the MP5, uses nine-millimeter rounds, like the handguns, giving us an ammunition compatibility factor.”

“How handy,” I said. “How many of those do you have?”

“Seventy-five. Next time on the MP5, I'll teach you the double-tap. Two shots to the center mass and, if your target's still upright, another one to the head. After a few sessions of that, you'll be ready to burst-fire the weapon.”

“Something to live for!” I said brightly and made mental notes of everything he'd just said, for Bennett Graham's edification. “What's the story with compatibility factor? Are certain people more compatible with certain bullets? Kind of like astrological signs?”

Yuri smiled. “Not bullets: cartridges. Or loads. Or ammunition. In case of warfare,” he said, reloading the gun, “one often fights alongside
other factions. Allies. Allies may not share a common language, or even a reason for fighting, but in a gunfight what matters is that they can share ammunition. Also vital for you when you're carrying multiple weapons.”

“How many wars have you fought in, Yuri?” I asked.

“That is not an easy question to answer,” he said. “In a sense it is all one war, whatever the battleground.”

“And what's that one called?”

“Come,” he said. “Put your earmuffs back on. I want your body to have some muscle memory of tonight's work.”

Eventually I got used to the little orange explosion and a certain Raggedy Ann feeling for just a second afterward as the gun threw me off balance. After that, we shot the Cx4 and the Glock, the names and numbers of which I kept repeating to myself, for Bennett Graham. A teeth-gritting half hour later, Yuri looked at his watch. “My friends across the ocean are waking now,” he said. “I must make telephone calls. We will do this again, very soon.”

Over my dead body
, I thought. Aloud, I said, “Fabulous. It's a date.”

He smiled and removed the earmuffs from my ears, at which point I realized I'd been screaming my enthusiasm for firearms.

“Yes, it is an addictive hobby.” He took the gun from me, then pressed a button that made the targets return to us on the conveyor belt apparatus. “Look,” he said, showing me my Target Guy, full of holes in his chest. “You have more talent for this hobby than you know. And more courage than I suspected.”

“It didn't take much courage.” If I had real courage, I'd press the issue and discover what was going on here. Instead of calling it a day and feeling lucky that I'd survived it.

“This time, I saved you from Vlad,” Yuri said, checking the gun chambers. “Next time there is a Vlad, you will save yourself. I have just taught you how.”

It was true. And against my will, I had learned. Did I want this knowledge? I pressed my fingers against my temples and rubbed, closing my eyes. When I opened my eyes, Yuri was looking at me.

“What is the secret you're keeping, Wollie?” he asked softly.

Which one? The bug in my pocket, the stolen DVD under my flak jacket? The knowledge I had of the corpse found rotting in the canyon? “I don't know what you're—”

“Candor,” he said softly, “ends paranoia.”

I blinked. “Allen Ginsberg?”

“‘Cosmopolitan Greetings.’”

“I love Allen Ginsberg.”

“I stood with one hundred thousand Czechs and cheered him.” His eyes grew dreamlike. “As he challenged the dictatorship. Prague, 1965. Kral Majales. ‘Stand up against governments, against God—’”

“‘—Stay irresponsible.’” I was shaken. If a guy knew Allen Ginsberg by heart, how bad could he be? “Yuri,” I said, taking the plunge. “You don't have to trust me with the knowledge of why you have several hundred machine guns or assault rifles or whatever they call themselves, not to mention the matching costumes, but you have to know I'm not stupid enough to think you're stupid enough to think that I'm too stupid to notice.” I stopped. The look on his face stopped me.

Okay, maybe I was a little stupid.

Yuri's eyes had lost their dreamlike quality. They flickered up to the surveillance camera, then back to me. “Take off the vest,” he said. “We're going for a walk.”

“I
don't consider you stupid,” Yuri said, walking ahead of me in the dark. “I consider Vlad careless. He should never have shown you the guns. I thought I could distract you with a shooting lesson, but your interest isn't mere curiosity it's something more dangerous. You have a conscience.” He led me up a path that led to the canyon, illuminating the way with a flashlight he'd taken from the gun room.

“It's not that well developed a conscience,” I said quickly. “And it's possible I'll forget it all by morning, everything I just saw. It could happen. I'm absentminded.” In fact, I was scared. “Anyway guns. Big deal. Some of my best friends are gun nuts. Second Amendment. Free country.”

“Don't second-guess yourself. You asked me a serious question, deserving of an answer.”

“Yes, but if this is one of those ‘I'll tell you but then I'll have to kill you’ situations, I'd rather not know.” My nose was running now too. First my mouth, then my nose. I stumbled, and then I stopped. “Yuri? I'm at the end of the road. I'm done. It's been a long and frankly dreadful day, enlivened by only a few bright moments, and I can't walk anymore. I'm cold, it's dark, I'm tired, I'm scared.”

Yuri had stopped too and turned, and now he walked back to me.

“Take my jacket. No one is killing anyone, certainly not you. Just a bit farther. Come.”

I let myself be persuaded, I let him hand me his jacket, some thin Gore-Tex thing still warm from his body that raised my own temperature instantly. My fear subsided, but not my misgivings. So he gave me his jacket. That didn't mean he wasn't a murderer. This guy was full of paradoxes. However, since my chances of outrunning him were slim— he had twenty years on me, but he was also twice the athlete I was—I figured I'd trust him. I wanted to trust him. Was wanting to trust the same as trusting? Was trust like lust, something that just came over you, or was trust a matter of choice? This was a question for Uncle Theo.

We reached a stone bench in a clearing that looked out over the canyon. Lights dotted the darkness below us like stars in an upside-down sky.

“Sit,” Yuri said, and waited until I did. “I am creating an intelligence agency.”

I blinked. “You're kidding. Like the FBI?”

“A combination FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Homeland Security is more accurate.”

“That sounds—large. Do we need another agency?”

“It's not for the United States.”

“Who's it for?”

“A very small country.”

“Which one?”

He hesitated. “We'll save that for another day. I'm doing nothing anti-American, believe me—quite the contrary. I am a patriot when it comes to my adopted country.”

“So this is legal, what you're doing?”

He smiled. The moonlight looked good on him. “Technically.”

“How technical?”

“California Penal Code 11460 prohibits the training of paramilitary groups, but we are not, by definition, a paramilitary group. Although our equipment and training would suggest that we are. The difference has to do with our intention.”

“Which is what?”

“To provide support for a new government, which will come about through legal, nonviolent means.”

“In this small unnamed country.”

“Yes.”

“Yuri, I gotta say, when you talk about a nonparamilitary paramilitary group training on American soil, I start thinking—”

“Terrorist.” He looked at me. “Wollie, my money is invested in the American stock market, I made sure my son was born here, I sent him to American schools, I own land and businesses here, I can recite to you forty-four American presidents and their vice presidents. Would you like me to?”

“No, I feel ignorant enough.”

“I am a Slav. I do not embrace every Western value, but your democratic ideal is my own. My life's work is the creation of open societies in former Communist countries.”

“Wow.”

“Yes, wow. And so I do business with men like Vlad, and worse than Vlad, as does everyone operating in that part of Europe. But here I respect the letter of the law. I love the judicial system. Why do you suppose I went to court rather than settle with Miss Lemon? My insurance would have paid. I am the farthest thing from a terrorist that you could imagine. I am a believer.”

And I believed him. Which made ridiculous the idea that this guy was involved in film piracy; whatever DVD scam was going on at the compound didn't include Yuri. I was now sure of it. “If this spy training program isn't illegal,” I said, “why all the secrecy?”

“I'm going to have a cigar. Do you mind?”

“No.”

He reached into the pocket of the Gore-Tex jacket I wore and removed a cigar and lighter. “Don't tell Kimberly Or Nell. Or Donatella, or Grusha, or Parashie.” He removed the cigar wrapper. “Why the secrecy? Proving our legal right to exist would create unwanted publicity. Staying under the radar of local law enforcement protects our friends.”

“What friends?”

“Don't worry, they're your friends too. Your country gives aid to
people like me who promote democracy. Quietly. The aid might be in the form of money or arms, or a spirit of cooperation, but there is al ways an outcry when the relationships come to light. Think of Nicaragua, Angola, the Iraqi exiles, the financial scandal in Little Havana over the Cuban exiles and some misspent funds. I like to take care of my friends, not cause them trouble.”