The Russian nodded. “Embassy KGB.”
“But why…?”
Viktor turned in his seat to look directly at Jason. “They worry I detect.”
“Defect?”
“Da, defect. Last military attaché in Washington disappear, leave wife in Russia. I have no wife.”
Swell.
Here he was, driving along Rock Creek Parkway in his nation’s capital, to prove that grocery stores really existed to a man he had met only once while being shadowed by one of the world’s nastier intelligence agencies.
What next, encountering Dorothy and Toto at the store?
His attention was diverted by bright lights ahead.
He waited to make a turn. “Here we are, big as life: Food Lion.”
The car behind, a dark four-door Ford, pulled to the far end of the lot. Apparently, they were there for observation purposes only.
Viktor got out of the car and stared at the cars scattered about. “One must have automobile to be allowed into this store?”
“One must have automobile to get to this store.”
“Ha! Store is exclusive province of proletariat-oppressing bourgeois!”
Jason was beginning to detect what might, just might, be a touch of sarcasm in his new friend’s use of Marxist-Communist dogma. At least, he hoped it was sarcasm.
He took the Russian by the arm. “C’mon. It’s cold out here.”
For a full twenty minutes, he and Viktor prowled each aisle of the store, scrutinizing labels and prices. The Russian was clearly shaken by what he saw.
“Like GUM?” Jason asked.
The Russian shook his head at the reference to the high-end, for-tourist-and-ranking-party-members-only Moscow store where only foreign currency was accepted. “GUM never have eight brands of canned beans, four types frozen. No toilet paper claim softness. In Russia, toilet paper, how you say, rare?”
“A luxury?” Jason supplied.
“Luxury. Many people choose between Pravda and Isvestia based on softness.”
“We have a lot of newspapers best used that way, too.”
The Russian shook his head sadly. “A nation that can provide its people with eight types of canned beans, ceiling-high stack of soft toilet paper…”
“It’s called the capitalist system, free enterprise. Everyone is free to produce what he thinks will sell rather than what government tells him to.”
Viktor sighed deeply. “Berlin Wall come down, Soviet army ready to leave Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. All because of canned beans and toilet paper.”
It took Jason a moment to understand what he meant. “You mean the freedom to produce them.”
“Is same thing.”
Outside, the two headed for the Cherokee when three young black men blocked their path. Each wore the uniform of pants barely above buttocks and baseball caps either backward or askew. One of them held a small automatic pistol.
He extended the other hand. “Yo’ wallet, give it up, mu’fucker.”
“Is capitalist-type hooligan?” Viktor was more amused than frightened. “He not speak American?”
“My friend does not understand…” Jason was about to say “English” but realized that was not what the youth was speaking.
“Gimme yo’ watches, too.” The kid motioned with the gun as he glanced around nervously.
Jason had rather face an armed professional than a skittish kid with a Saturday-night special.
He and Viktor exchanged glances. The Russian’s nod was almost imperceptible.
Jason was reaching for his hip pocket. “Your money and your watch, he wants your money and watch.”
Viktor feigned comprehension, his hand going to his own pocket.
In anticipation of receiving what he had demanded, the kid with the gun stepped forward, hand outstretched.
The Russian moved almost too fast for the eye to follow. His hand came up not with money but a knife. His other hand grabbed the gun and swung the arm holding it upward as the blade sank into the would-be robber’s throat.
Snatching the pistol as the kid collapsed, Viktor pivoted and fired a single shot. The parking lot’s lights showed the neat, round hole in the forehead of one mugger.
The remaining thief had had enough. Feet slipping, he turned to run. Viktor took a standard two-handed target-range stance and let the kid take a couple of full steps before firing. There was a whine as the bullet ricocheted from a lamppost. From somewhere, a woman screamed.
Taking his time, the Russian fired another, and then another round. The last sent the young criminal sprawling.
As though only out for a stroll, Viktor walked over to the form facedown on the asphalt and extended the pistol.
“Drop it!”
The voice was mechanical, one transmitted through a bullhorn.
Spinning around, Jason saw two police cars, blue lights flashing. Behind one of them, two uniformed men had shotguns trained on the big Russian.
Viktor saw them at the same time. Dropping his weapon, he slowly raised his hands.
The final line: Viktor was released on diplomatic immunity grounds. Jason spent an uncomfortable night in the DC jail before being released. In Jason’s mind, the big Russian owed him once again.
“All you had to do,” Jason said with mild reprove, “was to show your ID as a foreign diplomat and you walked. I spent the night in the DC slammer on D Street before we got it sorted out.”
Air-conditioning made the room cold enough to be uncomfortable. Why Viktor fled the Russian winter only to re-create it in the tropics was incomprehensible. The two men had been sitting in cane-back rockers looking through a picture window at verdant hills tumbling into an azure sea. The view made Jason’s hands itch to get hold of paint palette and brush.
Two of the men from the beach bracketed the room’s entrance like sentries until Viktor shooed them away and closed the door. Jason supposed he should be flattered that Viktor trusted him enough to dismiss his bodyguards.
Viktor went to a refrigerator built into the rear wall. Next to it was a sofa upholstered in a garish Hawaiian pattern of palm trees. The motif was repeated in tropical-themed artwork that had its place among images of Elvis on black satin, coconut shell lamps, and glass bowls filled with seashells. The place could have been furnished by Daytona Beach street vendors.
Viktor was pouring from a frosty bottle of vodka. He held up the bottle in invitation.
“No thanks,” Jason declined. “But if you have a beer, I’d love it.”
There was a sibilant hiss as the Russian popped the top of a can of Carib and sat back beside Jason. “You did not come here to drink a beer, I think. Nor are you here into remind me I left you in church in Washington shopping mall.”
The beer stopped halfway to Jason’s lips. “Church?”
“Is not what Americans say? You leave someone in trouble, you leave in church, no?”
Jason had to think that one over while he took his first sip from the icy can. “Lurch. You leave them in the lurch.”
“Where is this ‘lurch’?”
Jason thought that over, too. “You’re right: I didn’t come here just to bust your chops about ancient history. But before we talk about why I’m here, give me an update. Last time I saw you, you were with the Russian military attaché in the Washington embassy. Now you have an estate of some of the world’s most expensive real estate here in Saint Barts—”
“Also in Aspen for skiing,” Viktor interrupted, adding proudly, “Also on Ibiza and on Fifth Avenue in New York.”
“You didn’t come by that on a soldier’s pay.”
Viktor emptied his glass and got up to refill it. “Not on soldier’s pay, no. Yekaterinburg big city, produce much steel like Pittsburgh. Or like Pittsburgh before Japanese make cheaper steel. Soviet Union collapse, no one run steel mills, workers not paid. My drook and I hire soldiers out of work also. We open steel mills, pay workers.”