“John?” the American said. “One of the ghosts?”
“John Henry,” Stewart murmured. “Jackie asked Doc and him to go scout out the opposition.” His attention was rapt on empty space just inside the door. Jackie was looking at the same spot, nodding his head slightly, as if he were listening very hard.
“What’s he saying?” the American asked.
Jackie held up a hand—
wait a moment
—and Stewart rolled his eyes. “This is going to be a pain in the ass of biblical proportions.” He stepped forward, interjecting himself physically into the conversation. “Mr. Henry, would you do me the honor of allowing me to play your horse for an hour?”
The Russian brought his lips to his partner’s ear and whispered, “Horse? Voodoo? Loas?”
“I think so. Nothing we haven’t seen before.”
“I didn’t know these ghosts could do that.”
The American bumped him with a shoulder. “There seems to be a lot we don’t know.”
“Shhh,” the Russian said. “I’m listening.”
He could see the exact instant that the ghost of John Henry possessed Stewart’s body. Stewart was slight, blue-eyed, with a tendency to slouch and slump. The Russian had seen his share of people brainwashed, mind-controlled, or performing a role, and he was a fair hand at disguise himself. The ghost’s presence transformed Stewart just as assuredly; his spine straightened, his shoulders squared, and his lids half-hooded his eyes, transforming Stewart’s bright-eyed mockery into patient contemplation.
“There,” Jackie said, hitching his behind onto the railing between the beds and the sunken living room as Tribute flipped the channel again. “Please, John. Start it over, from the top.”
John Henry folded Stewart’s arms one over the other, took a deep, leveling breath, and said, “The assassin isn’t just working with Angel.”
Jackie, who must have heard it already, leaned further back against the railing and crossed his legs. “Keep going, John. You stayed away from Angel, right?”
“Yeah,” Stewart said in the drillman’s tones. “I figured if these two couldn’t see me, then probably the other one wouldn’t either, but Angel”—a big, expressive shrug—“well, you know.”
“Yeah,” Tribute said. He’d turned his head, but the remote still dangled from his fingers like a smoker’s forgotten cigarette. “Where’s Doc?”
“Mister Holliday stayed behind to keep an eye on things—”
“The assassin.” Jackie’s voice was gentle, his tone soft and level. It surprised the Russian. Left him guessing.
“I didn’t find Angel,” John Henry said. “But I picked up the assassin. I can kinda . . . there’s a flavor to ’em, once you’ve met ’em. The media ghosts. They . . . taste like something.” He shot an apologetic glance at the Russian and the American.
The Russian folded his arms over his chest. The American tilted his head and shrugged, eyebrow lifted, to all appearances frivolously amused.
“You followed him.”
“Yeah. Mister Holliday and me.”
The Russian stepped back, carefully. If his partner had been conducting the interrogation, he would have arranged himself behind the American’s chair, glowering silently, so that every time the subject looked away from the American he would have to meet the Russian’s eyes. But John Henry wasn’t blocking them; he just wasn’t used to talking much, and intimidation wouldn’t help get the words out of him any faster.
“He met somebody, John?”
John Henry made a broad, helpless gesture with Stewart’s hands. “We followed him from Fremont Street to Caesars. He met up with a white fellow, maybe fifty, fifty-five, with a tailored suit of clothes and a silver necktie. Mister Holliday said the clothes and the shoes cost a pretty penny.”
“I bet,” the American said, frowning. “Mr. Henry, did you hear what they talked about?”
“Enough to get a picture. The assassin was telling him more or less everything, and not just about us—about Angel too. Including that Stewart got away, and Angel was still, well, he said ‘well under control.’ Whatever that means . . . ”
“Go on, Mr. Henry—”
“They were pretty damn pleased with themselves, Mister . . . er, Mister. ’Specially after the assassin told the other guy he had a new plan. Even though Stewart got away.” John Henry followed the statement with an apologetic shrug.
“So your friend’s serving two masters,” Jackie said, raising one eyebrow at the American.
The American glanced down at his hands and self-consciously shot his cuffs, one at a time. His tone was arch. “It could be an MI-6 contact. Though that sounds like a pretty pricey suit for a government type. Unless he’s got family money.”
John Henry’s smile was big and broad, and six times too wide for Stewart’s head. Stewart’s cheeks stretched trying to keep up with it. “Mister Holliday got his name off the card he used to pay for their dinner.”
“Damn,” Jackie said, quietly. “
Hot
damn. What was it?”
“Felix Luray.”
The Russian had never heard of him. Judging by the quick sideways glance he shared with the American, neither had his partner, and Jackie looked to be drawing a blank as well. “Well, that’s no help. Did the card have a name on it, John? Besides his, I mean. Like a company name?”
“It had some kind of a design. You’d have to ask Mister Holliday what it said.”
Because John couldn’t read it, of course. “Thanks, John,” Jackie said. “I guess that will be all.” And Stewart abruptly was Stewart again.
The hotel room fell silent except for the barely-audible click of Tribute flipping stations on the 36-inch television set. “No help,” he said, swiveling to sit up and gesturing at the TV. “But amusing.”
On the screen, a dark-haired man was being chased down a steel-railed walkway by a giant with glinting metal teeth. The Russian squinted at it; Tribute’s amusement made no sense to him at all, but Jackie was snorting laughter, and, as John Henry released him, Stewart suddenly was as well.
Oh
, the Russian thought, a few seconds after realization dawned across the American’s mobile face. He reached under his coat and calmly brought his pistol out, checked the loads, and began screwing the silencer and flash suppressor onto the barrel.
The American cleared his throat. “Ah, that’s not—”
“Indeed it is,” Tribute said, lifting the remote control preparatory to changing the channel again.
“Doesn’t look a thing like him,” the Russian said, and calmly shot the picture tube out of the television.
Jackie and Stewart both jumped, Stewart making a grab for the Russian’s hand that failed because the Russian was already dis-assembling his gun. “What’d you do that for?”
Tribute burst out laughing, dropped the remote, and pushed himself to his feet, still shaking his head. “Because it’s
fun
,” he answered, before the Russian had decided if he meant to trouble himself to explain.
The American cut through the following silence, suddenly all abrupt and focused business. “Well, as long as we know where to find them, let’s get this show on the road, shall we? Stewart, take off your clothes.”
The Russian almost caught his partner blushing when Stewart glanced up at him through his eyelashes and purred. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Fortunately, he was well-versed in keeping his sense of humor to himself, and peeled off his own slacks and sweater without cracking a smile—although from the way the American was watching him, the Russian suspected
he
wanted to.
The Russian slipped into Stewart’s clothes, which fit nearly as well as his own, and got the genius to fix his hair for him. It involved a blow-dryer, and palmfuls of goop even stickier than the Brylcreem the American smeared into his hair, and the end result was actually brittle to the touch. The American, of course, stood there and laughed.
Stewart gave him a pair of dark glasses and turned the collar of his borrowed coat up to hide the line of his jaw. “Not bad,” he said, considering.
“We won’t stand under any streetlights,” Jackie said.
The Russian stood studying his changed appearance in the full-length mirror while Stewart adjusted the Russian’s clothes on his own body, washed his hair quickly in the bathroom sink, and borrowed the Russian’s frumpy tinted glasses. He stiffened his posture, shoulders back, head up—
“—limp,” the Russian ordered, without looking away from the mirror. “No, not so heavily. From the hip. Yes, like that—”
“How did you hurt yourself?”
“A motorcycle accident,” he said. “Not very glamorous. Show me again how you cross your legs.”
He was conscious of pulling Stewart’s persona over his own, conscious of how it paralleled John Henry settling over Stewart like an overlarge coat—and how it differed, as well. It fit comfortably, though—gestures softer, posture looser, gaze a little more flirtatious, a little less direct.
“Damn,” Jackie said, when he looked away from the mirror at last. Tribute said nothing, but his eyebrow arched.
The American was grinning like a proud father, an expression that warmed the Russian’s heart. “Good, isn’t he?”
“Damn,” Jackie said, again, and shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “I guess that’s us, then. Let’s go.”
The Russian fell into step beside him and took his arm, boldly, as if it were the most natural thing on earth. The weight of his pistol was comforting in his armpit. The American leaned close to say, “Watch out for Rupert of Hentzau.”
The Russian snorted. Jackie’s and Tribute’s blank looks only made it worse. Leaning on Jackie’s arm, his mouth twisting with the effort of biting back laughter, he followed the genius of Las Vegas into the hallway, and from there to the heat of the evening outside.
One-Eyed Jack and the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.
Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.
The most disconcerting part of squiring the Russian around was that, between the borrowed clothes and the hair gel, he even
smelled
like Stewart. But he didn’t sound like Stewart, and he didn’t feel like Stewart. I don’t know how else to put it; the pressure of his hand on my arm was wrong, and the way he filled up the space beside me, and it took a conscious effort of acting so I didn’t lean away from him, stiff and uncomfortable.
“You’re doing fine,” he said, as if he could read my mind, and squeezed my forearm in a hand that should have belonged to Joe Fraser. “Can you still see your ghost?”
I nodded. John Henry was just in front of us, glancing back anxiously over his shoulder as he paused at the corner of Carson and Casino Center to make sure he hadn’t lost us. “He’s right ahead.”
The Russian nodded, thinking. You could see the wheels spin. “How do the ghosts find people, Jackie?”
“Well, they can find other ghosts. Media ghosts, little ghosts, whatever. Like calls to like, I guess—”
His next question floored me. “Why can’t they find genii?”
“Because genii were real people once,” I said, and shrugged. “I’ll explain it to you sometime, as much as I understand it.”
“May we all live so long,” the Russian answered, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have said it sounded like a prayer.
I had to agree; I didn’t think too much of our plan myself, but it was the best we had on short notice, and the American seemed to think that its very audacious ridiculousness would work in our favor. “
Play to the genre
,” he’d said, and his partner had backed him up.
And let’s be honest. Strategy is not my fucking forte, okay? I just hoped the spies were as good at their jobs as I had told Stewart they were. Because if everything had gone properly, Stewart, the widow, and the American were boarding a plane at McCarran right now—although the American had assured me that they would not be on the plane when it lifted, through some trickery he declined to explain.
I was getting used to that about the spies. They were all, to put it mildly, entranced with their own cleverness. And I couldn’t hold it against them.
After all, they were written that way.
Case in point, the beautiful blue-eyed Russian leaning on my left arm. A distraction and a half, and I knew better than to try anything, on him or his partner, for all the American sent my gaydar into overdrive and Stewart and I have what you might call an understanding. ’Cause if you think the seven year itch is bad, try the seven-decade itch.
But they’re from before Stonewall.
So I leaned on his arm and kept walking, hoping our backup wasn’t on the way to New York City.
The American(s) in Paris.
Somewhere in Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.
The American had to admit, the gadgets had gotten better in the last thirty-eight years. Specifically, he’d need more fingers than he had to count the number of times he would have given his left nut for something like the GPS system upon which he and the athlete were tracking their co-operatives’ progress through the streets of Las Vegas. And the GPS system wasn’t even the best of it. Both the Russian and Jackie wore miniature wireless cameras that did a remarkable job of relaying at least a general picture of their surroundings to the American and the athlete, who could keep an eye on their progress without ever leaving the air-conditioned comfort of a room in the Paris, Las Vegas Hotel/Casino/Resort—an edifice in and of itself almost sufficient to make the American understand his partner’s reservations about unbridled capitalism, and without even the redeeming feature of decent pain au chocolate.
The earwire headsets were far more subtle than communicators, the astoundingly light and durable body armor that the Russian and Jackie were both wearing practically science fiction. Yes, the toys were very good indeed. And they didn’t stop the American from pacing in circles until the athlete looked up from the monitors and offered to remove his feet if he kept at it.
“Sorry.” He paused, and frowned at the wall. “I don’t suppose you play chess?”
The athlete gave him the same look that the Russian did, when the Russian was holding one half of a set of headphones to one ear and ignoring the American with the other. And then he smiled, abruptly, very sweetly, and said, “Try me and find out.”
The American grinned back. “Ah, I think I will, then.”