Page 25 of Gamma
“He’s not a good person?”
“What does that even mean?” Duke asks, meaning it rhetorically. “I can rely on him to get me transportation in a pinch, he doesn’t ask questions and he doesn’t run his mouth. His rides are reliable, as in you’re not gonna find yourself on an eighty-year-old Cessna with a leaky piston. But is hegood? Shit, I’m not even sure ifI’mgood, sweetheart. Yates has wandering eyes, wandering hands, and a wandering dick, and you’re a damn beautiful woman. Being my plus-one is your protection against his inevitable advances—he knows if he so much as looks at you crossways, I’ll gut him like a fresh-caught trout.”
“Oh.”
He pats my shoulder with a heavy hand. “You’re formidable as hell, in a boardroom. And I got a lot of respect for you, just in general. Takes guts and smarts to do what you’ve done with that outer space rocket-building business, and you’ve done it on your own with damn fierce opposition. But this here is a whole different world, Rin. It ain’t a boardroom. In a boardroom, saying someone is cutthroat just means they won’t hesitate to fuck you over in business. In my world, saying someone is cutthroat is a literal statement—that person will actually cut your throat. I guess my point is I classify people differently than some others might. Good, bad…not my concern. Threat or not a threat, that’s the real question. And then, if you’re not a threat, the question is how far I can trust you. And the answer to that, with most everyone, is not far at all.”
“Next topic. Should we let Anselm know the plan?”
Duke shakes his head. “Nope. Like I said earlier, he’ll find us, if and when he wants to connect with us. My guess is once we figure out where the fuck your boyfriend is being held, Anselm will be there too, ready to party.”
“Wouldn’t it be more effective if we shared our information?”
“No, because Anselm’s sources won’t do me any good. They’re not my sources. He could tell me what he’s hearing, what he’s finding out, but until he hears something actionable, it’s all just rumors and hearsay. When he does find out something concrete, he’ll move on it, and if he needs us or thinks we need to know what he’s learned, he’ll get ahold of me or he’ll find us.” He waves a hand, sighing. “You don’t really understand Anselm, not as an operative. To you, he’s your uncle Anselm. The nice guy who held you on his lap and liked to spoil you with Selah’s fucking amazing gingersnap cookies. But that’s not who he is, out here.”
“You said he’s what the boogeyman has nightmares about.”
“Out here, he’s…I dunno how to put it. He’s no one. A shadow. And then, suddenly, you’re dead. But he can also find anyone. You know how Lear can do just about anything with a computer? Anselm is like that when it comes to hunting people down—finding them.”
“What about you?”
“Me?” He laughs. “I’m good at wrecking shit.” He shrugs. “I do okay with this whole following leads and asking questions bullshit, but I’m best when shit hits the fan. That’s why I’m here, with you. When we find Apollo, he’ll be well guarded, which means it’s gonna be a fight and a half getting him and the girl out in one piece. That’s where I come in.”
“What if there’s a lot of them?”
Duke just grins. “That’s half the fun, babe.”
“And what about me?”
“You won’t like the answer to that.”
I huff. “Meaning I should have stayed home and let you do your job without getting in the way.”
“But you’re here now, and we’ll make it work. Just do as I say, and everything will work out.”
The next severalhours are uneventful—there’s a meeting under a bridge, where we get into a sixty-year-old Range Rover, which takes us to the charter flight section of the Lisbon airport. We board a small charter jet, where the flight attendant greets us as “Mr. and Ms. Callahan,” and serves us chilled wine and a charcuterie. We land on Malta after a three-hour flight, where a Mercedes S-class is waiting.
“My guy Yates came through, huh?” Duke remarks as the driver drives us away from the airport without asking a destination—which turns out to be a five-star hotel, with a penthouse reserved and paid for under the name Callahan.
Duke had sent Alexei a message when we landed, and we’re scheduled to rendezvous with him later this afternoon.
We have some time to kill before our meeting with Alexei, and I use it to have a new outfit brought to me by a personal shopper, charged to the room. I get a pair of stretchy jeans with a wide brown leather belt, sturdy boots, a maroon T-shirt, and a gray, lightweight jacket to cover my holster. I feel less like the boardroom brawler and more like…well, a badass about to find my man, I guess. How badass I am outside the boardroom remains to be seen.
Alexei meetsus in the hotel bar. Of an age with Duke and the rest, in his mid- to late-fifties, he’s tall and broad-shouldered, with graying dark hair that’s a little too long and a little too unwashed, and an unkempt, shaggy beard. His eyes are brown, hard, and speak of world-weary cynicism. Despite the unkempt beard, he’s a devastatingly handsome man, and his body is hard and tight, rippling with muscle—he wears board shorts with some kind of slip-on boat shoes and a plain white short-sleeve button-down. Everything about him says “man on vacation”…unless you really look at him. And then you’d see the set of his shoulders, the coiled intensity, the pantherish grace in his walk, and you’d realize this was no average tourist. And then, of course, there’s the old scar running from his forehead to his chin, pulling down the corner of his lip and barely missing his eye; a gnarled, ropy scar like that can only come from a knife, and it gives him a scary, dangerous look, even just sitting and looking inconspicuous.
He’s sitting in a corner booth of the hotel bar, sipping an amber beer and munching on French fries, which he dips in ranch dressing. He rises to his feet as we approached, and he and Duke do the manly embrace thing, where they clap each other on the back so hard a lesser man would have cracked ribs.
“DukefuckinkSilver,” Alexei growls, his voice deep, bear-like, and hoarse. “My god, man, you’ve gotten fat.”
Duke just laughs. “Fat? You damn Ruski. I’ll snap you like a twig.”
“Am from fuckink Georgia,” Alexei snapped, his eyes twinkling. “You think you would know this after twenty-some years.” His eyes go to me. “You are Corinna Roth, daughter of the great man himself,da?”
“I thought you were Georgian?”
He shrugs. “Da, but I learn Russian the same as learn Georgian, and then I join the Russian army and speak Georgian almost not at all. So now Russian is more of my primary language, along with English.”
We sit down with him, and Duke fills Alexei in on the situation.