Page 74 of Assassin Anonymous

She waves a hand, showing off the room. “You are free to make me an offer. Though there is not much in this world I do not already have.”

“I give a pretty mean foot rub,” I tell her.

“Do you know who I am?” she responds, playful.

“Ulyana Semenova,” I tell her, and when I say that, her façade drops for a second, delivered in the form of a fluttering eyebrow; most people probably don’t know her real name. “You were an intelligence officer. A headhunter. You sought out and trained agents, won some American agents over to the Soviet cause. Story goes, you were a major player in Operation Horizon, back in the 1960s. Exposed more than a hundred foreign agents in the USSR and had them expelled from the country. Big victory for Khrushchev, bigger victory for the KGB. You were good at what you did. I suspect you did that until one day you decided you wanted to be rich. And now you’re here. The Zmeya.”

She picks up a box of Russian-brand cigarettes, plucks one out, and places it between her lips but doesn’t light it. “And how do you know this?”

“You know who I am,” the Pale Horse says. “It pays to be a student of geopolitics.”

My experience thus far has been that every time I lean into my real voice, it strikes fear into the heart of whoever hears it.

She just smiles, plucks the cigarette from her lips, and gestures with it like a laser pointer. “In my restaurant, too. What an honor. There are a few people here tonight who would like very much to end your life. They would not do so unless I granted them the permission. Lucky for you, I am in a good mood. But you should be careful on the walk home.”

Well. Looks like I overplayed my hand.

“So, this man,” she says. “I will tell you who he is. Because now I have decided what it is I want from you.” She pauses for effect. “A favor. To be decided upon at my leisure.”

My heart drops into my lower intestine. She sees it happen and just smiles wider. There’s a water glass on the table that looks untouched. I pick it up and drink, hoping it will loosen my throat. “What kind of favor?”

“I cannot tell you,” she says. “I may ask you to kill someone. It is what you do. But I may become curious to know if what you say is true, and ask you to rub my tired feet one night. It will depend on my needs.”

She puts the cigarette back in her mouth and lights it.

“I have money,” I tell her.

“I have more,” she says.

“What else would you consider?”

“Please,” she says. “What is one more life to the Pale Horse?”

“It could put me in conflict with my employers,” I tell her.

She shrugs. “Nothing in life is free.”

“Fine,” I tell her. “You get one favor. But I get veto power.”

She takes a thoughtful drag.

“One time.”

I think that’s the best I’m going to do.

“Deal,” I tell her.

She snaps her fingers, and a man appears with a chef’s knife, a wineglass, and an open bottle of wine, which he places down on the table between us. She drags the knife softly against her papery skin, creating a shallow cut about an inch long on the meaty part of her forearm, and lets a few drops of blood fall into the glass. She wipes the knife with a clean napkin and hands it to me, handle first. I do the same. She then pours a small portion of wine into the glass and drinks before passing it to me.

This right here is why I don’t like to deal with the Russians.

Lunatics.

I take a sip, potentially ruining everything I’ve worked for.

“Viktor Kozlov,” she says. “He is known as the Beast. It is a slightly long story of which I’m not sure all the details are pertinent, but he did spend time in prison. Orenburg Oblast, near the border of Kazakhstan.”

“The Black Dolphin.”