David started to answer, then stopped. “I have no idea. But sitting here does nothing but make me nervous. This is my life we’re talking about. And it’s all collapsing around me.”
“You can’t, David. Your face is all over the news. Suppose someone notices you?”
“People don’t look for faces,” David said. “Nobody pays attention to those pictures unless they’re watching America’s Most Wanted.”
“But if they do?”
“Then they do and I go to jail. That’s not a whole hell of a lot different than where I am right now.”
“Except for the locks on the doors, and the absence of anal rape,” Becky said.
David scowled. “Where did the ironic sense of humor come from? You’ve never had an ironic sense of humor.”
She folded her arms, emphasizing her breasts. “You have no idea what I’ve had or haven’t had. I was invisible to you until last night.” The way she delivered the line, it sounded less like a shot than it probably was.
David let it go. “I’m going to visit and talk with him,” he said. “It feels like the right thing to do. Do you believe in karma?”
Becky laughed. “Oh, please,” she said. “Tell me that the cynical David Kirk is not going all woo-woo when the chips are down.”
“Things happen for a reason,” he insisted. “If Grayson went to the trouble of telling me about this guy, there has to be a reason for me to speak with him.”
Becky stared at him.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “You just continue to surprise me.”
David sighed. “So, are you coming with me?”
Her smile collapsed into a look of total shock. “You mean you’re really going? How are you going to get there? You don’t have a car.”
He shrugged. “They’ve got to have taxis, don’t they? Every place has taxis. And I have a pocket full of fresh money.”
“I have the drawings, Peter,” Jonathan said. “I know what your targets are. What I don’t have are the details of the how or the when.” Behind him, Vasily had fallen unconscious. The wetness of his breathing sounds told Jonathan that Arc Flash’s blows had caused one of the many broken bones to puncture the man’s lung. He sounded like he was drowning. Jonathan avoided looking at him.
Pyotr, on the other hand, kept staring, and as he did, he became increasingly unnerved. He said something in Russian that might have been a prayer.
“English,” Jonathan said.
Pyotr took his time answering, dividing the silence between Jonathan and Vasily. “You don’t understand,” he said, finally. “You don’t understand because you don’t want to understand.”
“Enlighten me,” Jonathan said.
“Americans are always focused on the wrong thing,” Pyotr said. His accent had grown thick enough that Jonathan had a hard time understanding what he was saying. “You determine that there is a single threat to your country, and then you focus all of your resources on that one thing. Even as the threat is weakened and ultimately destroyed, you refuse to look any further.”
“I’m not sure I understand what we’re talking about,” Jonathan said.
“We are talking about the downfall of the United States,” Pyotr said. “It is the thing upon which so much of the world is focused.” He allowed himself a smile. “You pretend that your enemies are religious enemies, and you fear only Muslims. You believe this even though those enemies die by the dozens under the rain of your bombs and the bullets of your secret killers.”
Vasily made a desperate choking sound that drew Jonathan’s attention. The man’s lips had turned a dull blue, and while his head bobbed as if asleep, his eyes remained open. Vasily was dying.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Jonathan said. “It’s a terrible way to die. But a brutal death is part of the deal we all make when we go into this line of work.” Jonathan cringed at his own words. Hearing a man die as the result of torture meted out in his presence had stolen something from his soul.
“Look at me, Peter,” Jonathan said. “Try to ignore Vasily. It’s clear that he’ll be dead soon.”
Hesitantly, Pyotr retuned his gaze.
“You say that we don’t understand what are the greatest threats against us, but then you don’t tell me what the real threats are.”
“But you already know” Pyotr said. “We are right here.”
Boxers said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed that you’re tied naked to a chair. I’m not feeling all that threatened.”
Sometimes, Jonathan wished that Boxers would keep his mouth shut.
“Ask any one of the passengers on that airplane in Chicago,” Pyotr said. “Americans are bullies. It’s not about your religion or about your so-called freedom. The world hates you for making war against peaceful people.”
Jonathan suppressed a sigh. With zealots, lectures all too often came as part of the package. Islamists were the worst of the lot, but former Communists came in a close second. He’d learned, though, that if you waited long enough, they’d abandon the bullshit and get around to the point.
“For Christ’s sake, Scorpion,” Arc Flash said, hefting his sledge.
Jonathan held out his hand to stop him, though he sensed that Horne was bluffing.
“Everybody benefits if you speed this along, Peter,” Jonathan said.
Horne said, “Screw this,” and he crashed the sledge down onto Vasily’s other shoulder, caving in that side, too. The blow elicited another shriek from the otherwise unconscious man.
“Screw you,” Boxers growled. He closed the distance to Arc Flash in three long, quick strides.
The little man tried to back up, but he couldn’t move fast enough.
Boxers ripped the sledge away with one hand, and drove Arc Flash into the back wall with the other. A shelf broke, raining torture tools onto the floor. When there was no place left to go, he pressed the sledge’s head under Horne’s jaw, at the spot where it met his neck, effectively cutting off his ability to breathe.
“No more,” the Big Guy said. His voice had turned raspy, a tell that Jonathan had come to recognize as the last station before Homicideville.
Jonathan considered intervening, but then decided that he didn’t care.
“Once more,” Boxers continued, “and I’ll gut shoot you and watch you bleed to death.”
Delivered by a different guy, those words might have sounded empty. Coming from Boxers, they sounded like a promise. As Horne’s face reddened, his eyes showed real terror.
His point made, Boxers pulled the sledge away and let the man breathe again.
Horne’s hands shot to his neck and he slid to the floor, gasping for air.
“Sit,” Boxers said. “Stay.” To Jonathan: “Sorry, Boss. He got on my last nerve.”
Big Guy recovered as quickly as he’d erupted, and Jonathan reminded himself for the millionth time how much better it was to have Boxers as a friend than an enemy.
Jonathan returned his attention to Pyotr. “They never did get along,” he said. “The good news is, for now Big Guy is on your side. He gets that you lost a friend — or will as soon as he dies of his injuries, but the fact remains that you are trying to blow up my country. In the process, you tried to kill the president’s wife. That’s bad juju, Pete.”
Pyotr scowled. “Jew?”
Jonathan laughed. “Juju,” he said. “Like voodoo.” The Russian still didn’t get it. “Never mind. The plan, Pete. What’s the plan?”
“Is already in play,” he said. He’d never sounded more Russian. “You cannot stop it.”
“Humor me.”
Pyotr looked down to his feet, a gesture of resolve to shut up. He’d said enough.
Jonathan inhaled noisily. “Please don’t make it go this way,” he said.
Pyotr continued to look at the floor.
“Hey Big Guy,” Jonathan said without shifting his gaze. “Do you still have the sledge?”