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 security of the peninsula in exchange for guarantees that the Russian soldiers would be repatriated.
Livadia was a village less than two miles west of Yalta where the czars had begun building summer palaces in the 1860s and where Nicholas II had erected his summer residence in 1912. That sprawling, luxurious building, known as the White Palace, had been the site of the famous ― the infamous, rather ― Yalta Conference of February, 1945, where Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin had carved up postwar Europe and unwittingly launched the Cold War that followed. It was here that yet another era of Russian history was to be inaugurated, as General Boychenko turned over the Crimean Military District to UN control.
A stage had been erected in the broad, level park in front of the White Palace, with plenty of chairs for the various UN and Russian officials and a massive wooden podium already arrayed with dozens of microphones of various types, their cables snaking off through the grass. A large number of people were in attendance, standing in front of the stage in a large, milling throng; though most were civilians from Yalta, the crowd included a generous number of reporters as well. As Tombstone climbed the three wooden steps to take his seat on the stage, he caught sight of Pamela and her cameraman there. He felt a pang as he caught her eye and saw the coldness there, but he pretended not to notice and kept walking. His helmet, the regulation helmet painted baby blue to identify him as a member of the UN contingent, chafed uncomfortably where the canvas circle inside rubbed against his head.
He still felt stunned by Pamela’s change of heart. Not for it suddenness; now that he looked back on it, he realized he should have seen this coming since last summer, or even before. But he’d been so delighted at the chance to see her here… and it seemed a kind of betrayal that a romantic dinner in an exotic setting should turn into the end of their relationship.
In a way, he supposed, it was amusing. Aboard the Jefferson, one of the most common problems among the enlisted personnel, especially the younger kids, was the Dear John letter, the dread correspondence from home explaining that the Stateside partner couldn’t continue this way, that she’d found someone else, that “it” ― whether marriage, relationship, or affair ― was over. Revelations like that could be deadly when the guy was far away from home, alone, vulnerable, unable even to make a phone call to straighten things out. It was, Tombstone knew, one of the problems most frequently encountered by the ship chaplain’s department, as well as by the XOS of both the Jefferson and of the various squadrons.
As he found his seat, a folding metal chair in a line behind the podium, he thought of Brewer, the new XO of the Vipers, and wondered how she coped with the kids who must be coming to her with problems like his every day. Or … He frowned, puzzled. Were they? Admitting that your girlfriend or wife thought you were a jerk and was leaving you didn’t exactly match up with the calculated macho image that most guys tried to present to the women stationed with them aboard ship. He made a mental note to talk with Brewer about that, to see if she needed a hand.
One common way of helping sailors who’d been blind-sided that way ― a technique first employed at the two Navy recruit training centers where new sailors were first separated from the outside world ― was the Dear John board, a large bulletin board in some prominent, public place where those who’d received such letters could post them if they wished. Jefferson kept one in the enlisted recreation lounge aft; there was, Tombstone thought, no better way to find out that you were not alone, that you weren’t the only one who’d had to face this particular problem, as you found space to pin up your own letter amid the forest of similar letters already there.
The other participants in the morning’s UN ceremony were assembling, both on the stage, in the area roped off for the crowd, and beyond, where both Russian and UN troops patrolled the park’s perimeter. Admiral Tarrant and some more members of his staff had flown in from the Jefferson early that morning, and he’d already briefed the admiral on what he’d seen so far in Yalta… especially the crime. UN peacekeepers, whatever their nationality, were going to have their hands full when Boychenko’s people relinquished control.
Tombstone could hear a faint, far-off thunder ― aircraft. Jefferson had put up a CAP of Tomcats, just in case the Ukrainians or anyone else decided to try to break up the proceedings.