"Nine," she said. "I remember all of them."
She held a military rank, she told me, at least she had until she'd gone independent. But before she struck out on her own, she said, she was a major in the GRU, and had been decorated many times for service to the U.S.S.R. In the course of six years, she had traveled all over Europe and Asia, had been to the United States twice. She told me she was partial to the U.S., that she liked working there.
Then she turned twenty-one, and, as she put it, "The war ended and I lost my job."
The decision was motivated by two things: greed and self-preservation. When the Wall came down, when the East opened itself to the rest of the world, the money dried up instantly. The perks and benefits she had known most of her life vanished. Work came less and less.
What made it worse was the "new openness," the information now being swapped freely in the intelligence community. Secrets were suddenly being shared with former enemies, or secrets were leaking, or secrets were simply being sold.
"If I stayed, there would be another job. And that job would fail, and I would be blown, and I would end up arrested or dead."
It was the memory of that first night in the police station, the memory of Magadan, that motivated her. She wasn't ever going to allow that to happen again. She would never be a captive.
It was then, too, that she discovered she was afraid to die.
She made preparations.
And the job came, just as she had anticipated, and she left for Amsterdam as directed, and as soon as she arrived she took another flight to Paris, and then another to Rome, then Malta, then New York, and, finally, Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv she put word in the proper ears that she could contact someone who could arrange death, if the price was right. She built an elaborate protocol for those who wanted to hire such a service, pretending that she had a partner, an employer. She used classified ads and answering services and dead drops, and then, later, the Internet, all the tradecraft she had been taught.
It took eight months, and she was nearly broke before the first job came. She investigated the source, investigated the mark, and decided it was a job she could do successfully. She spent another seven weeks preparing for it, and when she believed everything was right, she flew to London and killed a very wealthy man's wife, and made it look like the woman had stroked-out while standing in line at Harrods.
She'd earned just under three million dollars for her efforts, and never looked back.
When I pressed her, she told me that she had murdered nine men and two women for money. I rephrased the question.
"How many people have died at your hands?" I asked.
She didn't want to answer. She took her time. Then she said, "Thirty-seven."
But only eleven had been for money, she added.
She thought it was ironic that, since going independent, she'd actually committed less murder than before.
I told her that I thought it was ironic, too.
Then I told her that, while all of this was very interesting and deeply disturbing, it still didn't explain what the hell I was doing with her on Bequia.
"I want to hire you, Atticus. Someone is trying to kill me."
Chapter 3
Miata circled ahead of us as we followed a dirt footpath beneath the trees. The sand was fine and hot beneath my feet, and the sun had risen to almost directly above us. We sat on the beach.
She had put on a pair of sunglasses. I'd taken the Walther with me, holding it in my hand, but now, as she sat watching the water and talked, it seemed a both ridiculous and obscene thing to be carrying around.
"You are fucking out of your mind," I told her.
"I do not want to die." Her eyes tracked Miata's movement, as the dog played in the surf. "Why is that insane?"
"There are too many places to begin, but for a start, I don't believe you…"
"I am telling you the truth."
"…and even if someone is trying to kill you, you sure as hell don't need my help to keep you alive. You've got to be one of the most dangerous people in the world, and I mean physically, lethally, dangerous. I don't even like sitting this close to you, and I've got a goddamn gun in my hand."
Her mouth twitched. "Thank you."
"It's not a compliment. Even if I accept everything you've told me – and I'm not saying that I do – you have in your head more knowledge about death, about causing it, about preventing it, than any person I've ever met. And I've met some very skilled killers in my time."
She removed the sunglasses, squinting at the water. "The man after me… he is one of The Ten."
Oh, I should have seen that coming, I thought. I should have seen the headlights on that one a mile away, coming through the tunnel and making straight for me.
"Oxford?" I asked, but it was rhetorical, and even as I said it, I hoped she wouldn't answer.
"You know of Oxford?"
"I was briefed on him four days before you snatched Lady Ainsley-Hunter. Told he was coming to New York."
"He is searching for me." Miata came trotting back up the beach, sand stuck to his paws. She scratched his ears, then brushed his coat clean. When she glanced at me, she saw that I was staring at her, and she read the suspicion in my face. "What?"
"I'm trying to figure out if Miata's for show."
"He is my dog. He relies on me."
"Is that why you cut out his voice box?"
She was up and shouting down at me so quickly it made me remember just how true everything I'd said about her, thought about her, was. In her anger, she'd turned the sunglasses in her fist, now holding them like they could double as a knife. In her hands, they could.
"Poshol v pizdu!" she spat at me. "You think I would do that? You think I would do that to an animal, to a dog, to something that cannot even understand? Nu tebya k chortu!"
The gun was still in my hand and I thought I could bring it up and maybe save my life, but she had already turned away, was striding down to the water. Miata looked at me accusingly, then followed her.
Like she cares about a dog as anything other than a tool.
Like she really needs help, anyone's help, and mine specifically.
She'd stopped at the edge of the water, letting the foam splash over her feet, and I watched as she swiped sand from the seat of her shorts, then crossed her arms over her chest. Miata was pawing at some driftwood that had washed up on the shore nearby.
I went down to join her.
She stood watching the ocean, where a boat had stopped about a mile out, at the edge of the cove. Small figures wearing snorkeling gear were preparing to dive.
"I did not cut his throat," she said. "A man in Miami did that, and he is dead now, and yes, I did kill him, and yes, I was paid to do it. But I would have killed him for free."
One of the skin divers, a woman, went over the edge of the boat. There was a small splash.
"Do you know why Miata's throat was cut?" she asked. "The man I killed, he had houses where he kept drugs, and in them he had men and dogs on guard. He set traps in the houses, grenades screwed into light sockets so that when the switches were thrown the grenades would detonate. He made pits, cut holes in his floors and then filled his basement with sharp metal and broken glass.
"And he cut the throats of his dogs so the police would not hear the animals coming. He took their voices because it would make them crazy and silent and savage. I had been paid by his competition to shut down his businesses. His guards, his men, they fled when I killed him. But the dogs did not, they were mad and they were loyal, and I had to kill them to save my own life. Miata, he was still alive when it was over, and I took him away with me."