“Yes. I also knew the battle group was coming to the Crimea. I guess I just, well… I just didn’t expect you to come ashore.”
“You don’t sound that happy to see me.”
“Of course I am.” But the look in her eyes said otherwise. “You just caught me by surprise, is all.” She looked at her watch. “Listen, I’ve got a meeting to attend, but maybe we can get together a little later, huh?”
“Certainly.” Why was she being so cool? Was she still mad at him? It wasn’t like her to hold a grudge. He knew that everything wasn’t right between them, but right now he had the impression she’d have rather he’d not shown up at all. “Dinner, maybe?”
“That would be nice. Meet you here in the lobby? About six?”
“Eighteen hundred hours.”
She made a face at the militarism. “Whatever.”
He was pretty sure that she was still upset about his staying in the Navy. Damn it, why couldn’t she see that he had a career, just as she had? They’d had this argument over and over again during the past three or four years, and it seemed like she could never see his side of things. He never squawked when she went gallivanting all over the world gathering news stories. Why couldn’t she just accept the fact that he had the same kind of dedication and drive, the same kind of responsibility?
Tomboy stepped up next to him as Pamela walked off. “You know her?”
“Pamela Drake? Yeah, I’ve known her for, oh, four years, I guess. Met her when the Jeff was in Thailand.”
Her dark eyes widened. “Oh, that was that Pamela! I never made the connection.”
Tombstone chuckled. “I have trouble with that too. Connecting the woman I see when I get back off a deployment with the face on the evening news. Yes, that’s Pamela.” He’d told Joyce about the love of his life, back when they’d been flying together. Aviators and RIOS often shared more or less intimate details during long flights ― or during the longer watches in the ready room.
“An ACN anchor, yet,” she said. “I’m impressed.”
“Nothing to be impressed about. She’s got a job. Just like the rest of us.”
Tomboy glanced in the direction in which Pamela had gone. “Well, flyboy, it looks to me like you’ve been stood up.” She jerked her head toward the lobby entrance. “Want me to show you the town?”
Tombstone considered the offer, then grinned. “Why not?” He offered her his arm. “Let’s see the sights.”
As they started out the front door of the hotel, however, a lanky, swarthy-skinned man with black curly hair and a closely trimmed mustache almost collided with them. “You like guide? See city?”
Tombstone looked the man over. He might just be an eager entrepreneur, but there was something about him, a sharpness of character, a focus behind those liquid brown eyes, that suggested he was also a watchdog.
Possibly he was only on someone’s payroll, Tombstone thought. More likely, he was working for either the FBS or for military intelligence ― the GRU. In any case, both he and Tomboy were wearing their dress Navy uniforms, making them somewhat conspicuous. Tombstone decided he would actually feel safer wandering the town with someone who belonged here. “How much?”
The man broke into a toothy smile. “For you, ten dollars American, each day! I have car, A-okay!”
Their guide’s name was Abdulhalik, and it turned out to be a remarkably pleasant afternoon. They ignored his car for the time being in favor of a stroll along the waterfront.
It was a bit disconcerting, walking through the town with Joyce at his side. He was remembering when he’d first started falling in love with Pamela … while walking with her through the streets of Bangkok, seeing the sights of Thailand’s exotic capital, and exploring Thonburi’s floating markets.
Yalta was not as glamorous as Bangkok had been. The climate might have been like southern California, but the town itself reminded him of the more depressing and concrete-clad parts of Atlantic City, without as much in the way of advertising or gambling casinos. There were occasional surprises. Many of the buildings showed a distinct Turkish flavor, especially on the western side of town, and in some areas it was almost possible to forget that they were in the former Soviet Union, but for the most part the buildings were drab, Stalinist-utilitarian and in a depressing state of decay. There was a boardwalk, of sorts, along the waterfront ― though there were no boards in sight. Instead, the strip between highway and water had been paved over, an endless expanse of sterile concrete… sterile in the aesthetic sense, at least. The uncollected garbage had attracted clouds of flies; in the full heat of summer, Tombstone thought, the stink must be atrocious. From time to time, he relieved his eyes by looking up at the Crimean Mountains, bulging huge against the horizon northwest of the town. Some of the tallest peaks there reached to over fifteen hundred meters, and the breeze coming down off their slopes was fresh and pleasantly cool. Tramlines were in place to take tourists up to the top of the mountain overlooking the town, but the queues were impossibly long.
“So why’d you join the Navy, Captain?” Tomboy asked.
He made a face. “Not “Captain,’ please. Or “CAG.’ Not when we’re out like this, just you and me.”
“Tombstone, then?”
“Or “Stoney.’ Or “Matt.’”
“I like Matt. And I’m Joyce. If that doesn’t bend the regs too far.”
Official Navy protocol required personnel to call one another by their last names only, a regulation that was rarely followed outside of the strict limits of duty. “Oh, I think the regs can stand that. Joyce.”
“So how come?”
“How come what?”
“How come you joined the Navy?”
He grinned. “Because I always wanted to fly jets. As far back as I can remember, I wanted to fly.”
“So why not the Air Force? They do jets.”
“Well, I had some relatives that wouldn’t have let me forget that.”
“Ah. Your uncle, the admiral.”
“Navy family,” he said, nodding. “Going way back. I guess I was just continuing the tradition.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it, though.”
“How come?”
He glanced around at their “guide.” Abdulhalik was trailing behind them along the promenade, keeping them in sight but granting them privacy. When they had a question, he was right there with an answer, but the rest of the time he kept his distance. A nice guy, Tombstone decided, whatever his true colors.
“I guess I’ve always felt a need to make some kind of a difference,” he admitted after a moment.
“I’d say you have,” she said. She took his arm and snuggled up to him as they walked. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”
He looked down at her sharply, but she wasn’t even looking at him. She’d said it in a simple, matter-of-fact way, no coyness, no hidden messages.
“Well, if it hadn’t been for me, you might not have ended up sitting on the tundra in the Kola Peninsula with a busted leg in the first place. And you shot the guy first, as I recall.”
She glanced up at him and grinned. “Yeah, but you distracted him. How many times did you shoot at him and miss?”
“Hell, I lost count,” Tombstone admitted. He grinned back. It was funny … now. It hadn’t been funny then, though, as he’d tried to shoot a Russian soldier with a pistol while running flat out across a field ― definitely a no-good way to practice marksmanship. It worked in the movies, all right, but in the real world, handguns were appallingly inaccurate in anything other than a static, proper stance on a target range. “And you took him down after I slowed him up a bit, as I recall.”
“Teamwork.” She snuggled a bit closer. “Teamwork,” she agreed.
CHAPTER 15