The guard took his own halting step in BC’s direction, but it was clear that his injured leg wasn’t going to hold his weight. For a moment the two men just stared each other down. Then the guard shrugged and reached into his jacket and pulled out a long knife.
He smiled, not so much wickedly as triumphantly, as he raised it above his head to throw.
Before he could, however, a shot rang out, and he pitched forward. BC looked up the stairs as Naz descended. There was a spot of blood on her lip, but otherwise she seemed unhurt. Unhurt, but exhausted. She clutched the banister, and on the penultimate step she stumbled. If BC hadn’t stepped forward to catch her—the pain in his ribs was as bad as when the guard had kicked him—she would have fallen to the floor. For three long breaths she leaned heavily on him, then recovered enough to stand on her own.
“That—upstairs,” BC said, taking the gun from her trembling fingers. “Is that what happened at Millbrook? To Eddie Logan?”
Again he felt that sudden connection, not of sex or rage this time, but an empty sorrow, as of a bucket striking the bottom of a well whose water has long since dried up.
“Everyone who knows me ends up dead or gone,” Naz said in a muted voice. “My parents, Agent Logan, Chandler. I hope you fare better, Mr. Querrey.”
BC did his best to smile. “I have something for you.” He reached into his pocket for the ring he’d been carrying around for the past ten days, then stopped when Naz’s eyes went wide with horror. She grabbed BC’s arm and pulled herself right next to him.
“Tell Chandler,” she hissed just before BC’s head exploded in a shower of sparks. “I’m pregnant.”
Pavel Semyonovitch Ivelitsch exchanged the brass lamp he’d hit BC with for a pen he pulled from his pocket, which, when uncapped, revealed not a nib but a needle.
“Everyone seems quite interested in you,” he said, pressing the needle against Naz’s suddenly pliant arm. “I think it’s time we found out how interested.”
Washington, DC
November 14–15, 1963
“I don’t understand how you let this happen!”
Melchior’s growl practically rattled the paintings off the walls of Song’s office. Although maybe it was just his feet: the shoes he’d taken from Rip came down so heavily on the small Persian carpet that it seemed he was trying to grind it to dust.
Song sat at her desk, rubbing a knot on the side of her head. Melchior could tell from her pout that she was pressing hard enough for it to hurt.
“I suspected the man was KGB. Now I know.”
“And this one’s FBI.” Melchior jerked a thumb at BC. “I thought you said your establishment was secure, yet somehow you’ve managed to run afoul of the three largest intelligence and law-enforcement agencies in the world in the space of a single night.”
“Maybe if you’d told me what I was dealing with—”
“A mentally unstable twenty-three-year-old prostitute with a drinking problem? I thought you were supposed to be able to handle things like that.”
“Nancy—”
“Naz.” BC spoke for the first time since Melchior had shown up. He lifted his head slowly, a lump the size of a dumpling visible through his high-and-tight. “Her name is Naz.”
“Another thing you didn’t tell me,” Song said to Melchior.
“What other thing?” Melchior demanded again. “What didn’t I tell you?”
“She … did something. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Yes, you do,” BC said.
Song and Melchior both turned to him.
“She made you feel bad,” BC said. “So bad you wanted to kill yourself.” BC looked up at Melchior. “Just like Eddie Logan did.”
“Who’s Eddie Logan?” Song asked.
“He was a CIA agent,” BC said.
“If you don’t shut your fucking mouth, I’m going to—” Melchior broke off, walked the two steps to BC’s chair, and backhanded him across his bruised skull. “Shut up.”
“You sent a fugitive from CIA here without telling me? Good God. I almost set her up with Drew Everton. It’s amazing KGB got her before the entire Company came down on this place. What the hell were you thinking?”
Melchior glared at BC for a moment before turning back to Song.
“I was thinking …” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking. My stateside contacts are thin. You were all I had.”
“I don’t mind that you turned to me. I mind that you didn’t fill me in. Do you think I would have let her out of the residence if I’d known CIA was looking for her, let alone KGB?” She paused. “Melchior, you have to tell me what you’re doing. Not just with Naz.” Her eyes burned into his. “With Orpheus.”
Song’s face was inscrutable. Was she trying to help him, Melchior wondered, or herself? He didn’t know. And what did he want from her anyway? Assistance, or something more?
What the hell was he doing? Risking his life to squirrel Orpheus away from the Company, and then Cuba, too. If only Chandler hadn’t disappeared. If only it hadn’t been Rip the Company sent after him. If only KGB hadn’t entered the fray. He could have handled one thing at a time: Song, or Naz, or Chandler, or Cuba. But all of them, all at once. It was too much.
“Melchior,” Song said again. “Are you going—?”
“Don’t say it!” He jerked a thumb at BC. “We have to get rid of this one first.”
Song’s eyebrows flicked, just once. “Killing FBI agents? You have come a long way since the last time I saw you.”
“Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like to do more than drill Beau here through the eyes, but that’s the kind of heat I don’t need on top of everything else. But don’t worry, there are other ways to take care of him—ways he’ll enjoy a lot less than death.” He pulled a vial from his pocket. “How’s Garrison’s head? Can he work a camera?”
Song paused a moment, then smiled. “I think he can manage.”
An hour later, Song and Melchior stood in the open archway between Lee Anne’s sitting room and bedroom. The only sound in the suite was the clicking of a camera shutter and a faint, confused moaning.
On the bed a headless, naked male torso and a pair of well-muscled legs stuck out from beneath Lee Anne’s large firm buttocks and wild mane of hair. BC’s skin seemed even whiter against Lee Anne’s chocolate brownness, and his moans echoed out from her nether regions.
“What did you give him?”
“A combination of things. LSD, coupled with methamphetamine to keep him awake, and six shots of Scotch to make sure his breath smells extra sweet when the cops find him.”
“I hope you didn’t raid my private supply. It costs fifty dollars a bottle.”
“It costs someone fifty dollars a bottle. I doubt it’s you.”
“The LSD seems to have had a suppressing effect on him.”
Melchior chuckled. “Somehow I don’t think it’s the drugs that’re keeping BC’s little soldier down.”
“How’s this?” Lee Anne’s back was arched so that her ass peeked out from beneath the feathered hem of her negligee, and her breasts sat atop her brassiere as though on a shelf.
“You look great, baby,” Melchior said, “but we gotta see his face. Scoot down his chest a bit.”
“Naz?” BC said when his mouth was uncovered. His hands fumbled at Lee Anne’s breasts. “I’m sorry, they’re just so”—he shook one up and down—“bouncy.”
Song stiffened at the mention of Naz. “There’s something about that girl.”