The Miko - 02 (59 page)

Protorov had always done better than Lev, academically and socially. Protorov knew how to speak to people, knew how to take exams, knew in his own mind what he wanted to be. Lev was always the dreamer, unsure of which fork to take in a road, in which direction to turn his life. He had always been afraid of making a mistake.

He had made a mistake that dark, snowfilled afternoon. Even while notification of Minck’s capture was being relayed to Protorov by the despicably unreliable wire system, Lev went into Lubyanka to interrogate the spy himself. He wanted, no doubt, to prove to his younger brother that there was something he could do as well—and on his own.

He failed. Somehow Minck was able to overpower him and, using him as hostage, break free. Then he killed Lev, slaughtered him in the snow like a butcher.

They left him there in the storm, terrified to touch him before Protorov arrived. There was little blood for him to see when, hours later, he returned to Moscow; the cold had congealed it, cauterizing the wound. Still there was a gaping hole in Lev’s left temple where the bullet had torn through the skull. Protorov did not want to look at the damage inflicted on the back of the head, knowing that the devastation would be far worse at the egress point. Quite deliberately he turned Lev’s body over and stared at the carnage. Snowflakes caught on his lids making vision difficult. Still he persevered even as he ordered the manhunt for Minck and his fellow escapee, Tanya Vladimova.

Perhaps it was then that Protorov thought for the first time that there was too much pain to be borne in having a family. Perhaps it was at that moment that he decided not to have one of his own. For the sense of utter isolation, of a terrible vulnerability, was overwhelming. He found himself hating the American named Minck far more than he had ever thought he could hate another human being.

Six months later he had awakened an important sleeper in order to kill Minck’s wife, sleeping alone and vulnerable in their bed in rural Maryland. One shot from a pistol Protorov—and Minck—knew well at close range through the left temple.

Still it had not been enough. So the war went on. And on.

Protorov sighed now, alone in his inner sanctum. He pushed his glasses up onto the dome of his forehead, scrubbed at his face with a palm. He found that he had been sweating. Though Tengu, his second agent within the Tenshin Shoden Katori
ryu
, had been killed, his backup—the last agent Protorov had in that field—was making progress.

At that moment, the compact cipher machine began to buzz, preparatory to decoding an Alpha-three. His satellite was about to whisper in his ear once again.

Croaker grabbed Alix’s slim wrist and jerked hard, hearing her short, high scream of surprise and pain as he used his strength to roll her across to the far side of the bed and out of harm’s way.

At the same time, his hand snaked beneath the bed to where the gun lay and, without aiming fully, shot out the lamplight in the room.

Now only the oblong of illumination filtering in through the open doorway to the hall pushed back the darkness. And in its midst, the shadow rushed into the room.

He’s a goddamned bull, Croaker thought, as he pushed Alix’s inquisitive head down to the carpeting and rose at the instant he felt the shadow at its closest.

He lifted his arm, brought the muzzle of the pistol down in a vicious slash across the shadow’s cheekbone, felt the contact with pleasure, the split of skin, flesh, and the pressured scrape against bone.

But despite the blow, the shadow’s momentum was enough to keep him coming on. And such was his strength that he slammed full tilt into Croaker, knocking the pistol from his grip. It skidded across the floor in the darkness, lost.

Oh, Christ, Croaker thought, we’re in for it now. He felt a heavy blow land on his shoulder, twisting him, and blindly he kicked upward, missing once, his knee connecting with the shadow’s thigh bone, adjusting his aim accordingly and plowing into the shadow’s groin.

He heard the whoosh of air and a groan, and the weight and pressure on him eased sufficiently for him to squirm out from under.

“Come on!” he yelled at Alix, fumbling for her hand and half dragging her from the room, down the blindingly lit hallway to the exit door and the stairs.

Down the metal and concrete staircase they ran until at last they burst out into the soft-skinned night. The car would have been the best bet, but Croaker had left the keys back in the room.

He took a quick look around. There were few people about except at the entrance of the hotel where locals were drawing up as they went into the disco in the lobby, one of the only nightspots in the area. Croaker took them that way though they were certainly not dressed for the occasion. People in dinner dress watched their approach with more amusement than alarm. But he saw it was going to be no go right away. They stood out like beggars at a masked ball, so he veered them away, rushing down the sloped scimitar drive toward Highway 70, dodging the slowly approaching line of cars, pushing Alix out of the illumination of the headlights.

He did not turn his head to see if the Blue Monster was after them; he assumed the worst. If he had been dogged enough—and, Croaker had to admit to himself, smart enough—to follow them all the way from Key West, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to lose them now.

He rushed them across the six-lane highway on the amber with the traffic already beginning to pile up and move, jockeying for position for turns.

“Christ!” Alix breathed. “Where are we going?”

Croaker made no reply. He thought it wiser to let her believe that he knew what he was doing. Ahead of them loomed the darkened mass of the shopping mall, all angles and black shadows, a silent, deserted city in the heart of the darkness.

Croaker took them down an exit ramp and they were plunged into the wide, spotless avenues of the arcades. Their footfalls made no sound on the stone flooring and Croaker was grateful at least that he had his topsiders on. But Alix was barefoot and though from an aural point of view that was good, still with all the running they were doing he was fearful of sharp objects she might inadvertently step on. Well, he thought, there’s no help for it now. We have to go on.

Deep inside the mall he stopped them. Though they were both in reasonably good shape, a breather was nevertheless called for. Alix’s chest heaved with exertion and fear. She stared around her, wide-eyed. Shoe stores, clothing boutiques, a local Sears, endless rows of glass-paneled windows featuring a bewildering variety of wares crouched on either side of them, closed and unhelpful.

“What are we go—”

Croaker put his palm quickly over her mouth and said in her ear, “No, talking. The sound will carry and bring him to us like a beacon. Okay?” She nodded her head vigorously and he took his hand away.

He wiped the sweat from his face with his shirtsleeve, straining his ears for some semblance of sound, but he heard nothing above the soft susurrus of the faraway traffic on Highway 70.

Dim light filtered across their shoulders in thick swatches from the interiors of the shops along the arcade. But patches of deep shadow remained all about them like impenetrable stands of trees. They were in a forest of metal and glass.

Alix grabbed his shoulder and leaned her lips against his ear. “What are we waiting here for?” she whispered. “Let’s go out of here before he finds us.”

Croaker debated with himself whether to tell her the truth. He knew it would probably be better to keep her in the dark as long as possible. But on the other hand she was in this as deeply as he was and it was unfair to keep her ignorant about such a thing. Besides, if she did not know, she might do something stupid at the last minute and screw things up.

He put his mouth to her ear and said softly, “I’ve got news for you. Your former keeper’s followed us this far, he’s not gonna stop now. Even assuming we could find a car and I could boost it, we wouldn’t lose him. Not now.”

Her large clear eyes stared into his for the moment it took her to put it together. “No!” she said. “There’s been one killing already.”

“Yeah,” Croaker sighed, “and there’ll be a lot more unless he’s stopped.” He looked at her. “It has to be done, Alix. You know it does.”

After a time her eyes slid away from him. Her cheeks were wet and he heard her whisper, “I wish now he’d never saved me. I wish I’d drowned that day in Key West.”

“You don’t mean that,” he said automatically.

“The hell I don’t!” she flared, her eyes bright. “What kind of life is this I’m living? Can you tell me th—”

Croaker shoved her hard, sending her spinning flat on her back across the cool stone flooring as the whine turned into the
spang!
of a ricochet. He saw the place where the bullet had gouged out chips of stone and dived after her, pulling her up onto her knees, then to her feet, dragging her after him down the arcade, turning right, then right again, pushing her into a darkened doorway where they both crouched. Alix was sweating and shivering all at once.

Croaker looked both ways before he reached again for her hand. But Alix was shaking her head. “No,” she said, “I can’t go on. It’s useless. Like you said, wherever we run, he’ll find us.”

“Get up!” he said fiercely.

She shook her head again, her spun-gold hair obscuring her face. “It’s no good. I haven’t got the strength.”

“Well, for the love of God find some!” he hissed at her, bending over and hauling her to her feet.

“I’m tired, Lew.” Her eyes were hooded. “I just want to sleep.”

He saw the lassitude flooding her body and wondered if this was how she had felt in the moments before she had hurled her body into the turquoise ocean that day aboard her boat.

He grabbed her cheeks in the pincer of his thumb and massed fingers. “Listen, you,” he said, his face close to hers, “you’ll sleep when I tell you to and not a minute before.”

“Christ!” she cried, teary-eyed, “you’re a goddamned knight without a lady. Can’t you see that I just don’t care anymore?”

“But I do!” He jerked at her. “Now come on!” He skidded them to the left as another bullet whined into the stone just behind them and to the right.

“What’s the use,” she said as they ran. “He’s got the gun.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“I hate guns,” she said.

And Croaker had to laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too. Especially when I don’t have one.” But the fact was that she was right. The Blue Monster had an edge Croaker could not possibly overcome. A gun against nothing, not a particularly fair fight. But then nothing much was fair in life anyway.

As he ran he recalled Nicholas telling him that he had never used a gun. Yet Croaker knew his friend to be one of the most dangerous men on earth. What, then, was his secret? When he had asked Nicholas that question he had merely smiled enigmatically and said, “There are ways.”

Now what the hell did he mean by that? Croaker wondered. I sure could use one of those secrets now. As the third shot rang out, barely missing him, he berated himself, Think! Use the brain your old man bequeathed you!

There was nothing around them but stone, metal, and glass. What could he…Ah! He had it! There was no time to think of whether or not it was a good idea; it was the only one he had and the Blue Monster was right behind them, closing in for the kill.

He ducked them around a corner, dropped Alix’s hand, and sprinted ahead. Just around another right-angle turn, he slid to a stop and pulled his shirt over his head. Wrapping it around his left hand, he shot the swathed fist forward into a sheet of glass.

Alix gasped at the sound as she came hurtling around the corner. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Get back there!” he said, waving her behind him. “As far as you can without losing sight of me.” Alix did as she was bade and he knelt down, searching among the glitter of glass shards. Somewhere in the dim recesses of the store a ringing was sounding and he knew that this was strictly shut-ended now because as soon as he had tripped the alarm by breaking the window, a new element had been added: the police. And he had as much stake in keeping them out of this as the Blue Monster had.

Croaker found what he needed, both pieces, one a narrow, long strip, the second a shorter, jagged one. With extreme care, he placed the smaller piece in his right hand, keeping the razor-sharp edges away from the web of his hand. Now he took up the larger piece in his wrapped left hand.

He moved to the inner edge of the corner, keeping his body flat against the column and away from the bright fingers of shattered glass still in the windowframe.

Now came the moment of truth. He could stick his head out to see where the Blue Monster was like all the cops on TV did. But then he’d probably get his head shot off; the Blue Monster wasn’t firing blanks. Real life presented problems Hollywood scriptwriters never seemed to address.

“Hey, buddy!” he called from his place of concealment. “It’s all over. The cops’ll be here any minute! You’d better be six miles away from here by then!”

“You ’n’ me both,” came the voice from around the corner and Croaker thought, I’ve got him!, using the aural fix and bringing his left hand back in a tensed arc, the muscles quivering with the strain of anticipating the hairtrigger release, the forebrain acknowledging the existence of only one chance.

Then Croaker was holding his breath, striding his left leg forward in a blur, shooting his upper torso forward, closing his mind to the thought of himself as a target and the forearm already coming forward with rocketing speed, the swathed fingers releasing their burden at the far apex of the arc when momentum combined with Croaker’s own strength to turn the shard of glass into a glittering missile.

“That’s what you think, buddy!” Let it all out in a harsh rush, providing twin stimuli for the Blue Monster’s brain to chew on during this moment of extreme stress.

He saw a blurred glimpse of the Blue Monster jerking back at the sight and sound, the glass shard already upon him, cracking in two across the bridge of his nose.

Croaker had no time to wish that his aim had been more accurate. Blood was streaming from the Blue Monster’s face and both his hands were up, trying to free his vision.