Medics with City of Sidonia orange public safety patches slapped on electric blue shirts bounced Nicky on a stretcher up concrete steps and away into the white glare of police spotlights.
Umeko watched them go, wide-eyed.
For the final time tonight the club's overhead light panels came up, revealing a human leg shingled with dried blood. The limb protruded from the corner of a teak island bar amid broken glass, blood spatter, and splintered wood. It was an awful place to stand but this was where the homeland security officer got in Umeko's path. With his gorilla fist on her arm, the officer prevented her from chasing Nicky's stretcher, Nicky's bodyguard Henri, and the public safety medics. When she moved he tightened his grip and his sneer.
Umeko became still. The corpse behind the bar no longer registered. The interminable span between the life she knew and this moment had ground to a halt inside her mind. Nicky her lover had gone with his bodyguard and the medics, limp as the dead man behind the bar. What did it matter if she was in the Warehouse another second or another hour? Where was she going?
* * *
"You're naïve, Miss Pryce," Henri kids Umeko. It is close to midnight.
Umeko uh-hums and gazes with parted lips through the Escalade's tinted backseat window at the concert hall crowd. The Escalade is moving. Onlookers at the curb are on the balls of their feet, waving. Umeko wants to wave back but she does not understand why the people are waving at her. So many people, a cross-section of humanity shrouded eerily in the sooty darkness that attends inner city side streets behind large theaters. She knows none of them. Strangers. Should she mind that they are strangers?
"You're A-list now, Miss Pryce," Henri suggests from the front passenger seat of the Escalade. "You should be careful."
Umeko is not A-list, although she adores Henri's heavy and uninformed brand of optimism. Smiling ruefully, she angles a glance at the Balisarda Concert Hall. The Escalade has taken the corner onto Olympia. She enjoys the gala strobes and the massive marquee grandly flashing The Balisarda Welcomes The Sidonia International Film Festival. Her chest clenches, unexpectedly. It's not like her to become unsettled. Taking all in stride, she has welcomed the press, photographers, and red carpet interviewers. Umeko is a former runway queen, six-even with straight black hair, slightly canted blue eyes, and legs that go on forever. She was sixteen the first time she strolled under the lights to applause. At twenty-six, she is quite addicted. She admits to Henri she is infatuated with the crowd, always has been. But Henri won't let her play anymore with strangers. Henri, Nicky's security marshal, says it is not safe.
Umeko cell phone chimes. She looks patiently at Henri, who answers. With a roll of his eyes, Henri hands over the cell.
It is Umeko's manager. "Yes," she sighs. "Yes, we are just ahead of you." She looks away. "Yes, Roy, of course. Yes. At the Warehouse, yes." She hands the cell phone to Henri.
"What did he want?" Nicky asks, voice low. He is beside her in the back of the Escalade.
"To know if you're with me." Umeko takes a long breath.
Nicky cruised the Lake District, took a nap, did whatever he wanted except join her inside the concert hall while her film played to a full house. Well, he did whatever he wanted.
"What did you tell him?" he asks.
"I told him you were with me, what could I tell him? It's obvious I got into the SUV because Henri said you were waiting." She looks at him sharply.
Nicky meets her glare. "Hush, don't get upset. It is all right. How was the premiere?"
Umeko doesn't answer. She thinks Nicky has got balls to ask.
"Where are we going?" Nicky solicitously slides a shoulder toward her.
Umeko will not say. Why should she? He knows they are going to the Warehouse.
Playing the snooping older brother, Henri chuckles softly. Henri is the candid, impolitic sort, ex-Erembourgi military, or so Nicky says, with special training in urban ops, whatever that means. Nicky and Henri come together, a package deal. Henri is forty-something, handsome in the pedestrian, leathery way of career athletes. His hair with its graying temples is cut in an unflattering bush. His handmade suits are always black.
The Escalade jerks. Umeko looks quickly ahead, blinking at the dizzying play of street lamps on the windshield.
"Sorry, Miss Pryce," murmurs the driver. "There is no turn off Avenue Olympia near Lake Pensee. I'd forgotten."
"It's all right, Oliver." Umeko feels the Escalade floating over the cable car rails. They are alone on six-lane Olympia Avenue.
Umeko's cell phone chimes.
Nicky says, "Don't answer it."
Henri hands Umeko the cell.
"Yes, Roy," she says.
Nicky looks long at Henri, who shrugs.
"Yes, Roy," Umeko repeats. "At the Warehouse I'll get into the limo. Please, don't worry." Umeko sighs, glances at Nicky. "He wants to know if you are coming with me."
Nicky says, "Of course not. We talked about this."
Umeko says, "Roy, of course not. We've talked about this. Good-bye." She folds the cell inside tight fingers, throws back her head.
"Let's go back to the Gardens," Nicky suggests, straightening his frame. The Gardens is his pet name for his sister's city estate on Pensee Park.
Umeko murmurs under her breath. "You are redundant." She cuts a glance at her lover's profile, curious to know if he will show irritation. He is rarely visibly put out.
Predictably, Nicky smiles. A Nicky Borodin smile means anything from This wine is satisfactory to I hate you. "Trite. Ridiculous," he insists.
"Selfish prick," she whispers.
"Yes," he agrees, scooping up her hand. "I am." He places a kiss inside her palm. For a man who climbs mountains in summer his mouth is quite soft. "I love you," he says.
Umeko is not falling for that. "Be good," she warns.
Nicky smiles again, looks away.
He detests crowds. Henri is partly to blame, and that dusty artifact, the uncle who isn't really an uncle, whom Nicky keeps around managing the family interests. However, she will not hold tonight against Nicky's guardian, the "uncle," and Henri, Nicky's lead security man. Nicky is too picky about open venues when the public has some sort of expectation he will appear.
It is reckless, he says.
Qualify that, Umeko has challenged.
He won't. Well, he might say, "If your parents were murdered, you would realize."
Umeko could argue his mother was not murdered. A car accident took Evelyn Charlebois Borodin from her son. The accident was quite public and well-investigated. Nicky's father and younger brother were murdered, their deaths just as public and well-investigated, so why have the conversation? Is this a conversation she wishes to have tonight? Her lover is the product of generations of privilege, a beautiful snob turned rootless wanderer who prefers the relative solitude of rock climbs and off-roading to the company of outsiders. When he is forced to deal with people, he chooses social contacts based on a rulebook printed in the last century and a convoluted system of obligation invented for his family by a country that no longer wants his family alive.
If not for his familiarity with the film festival, Nicky would have stayed in California. He would have bargained away a holiday in Erembourg for the surety of palatial grounds, a loyal staff, and the best electronic surveillance money buys. Alas, his mother was an Erembourgi national, hailing from the duchy of Albracca. His sister is married to Lord Thomas Hamilton of the Davignons from the famous Erembourgi wine center in Fantina Province. The Erembourgi capitol of Sidonia, which annually hosts the Sidonia Film Festival, was briefly home to Nicky. These things are important to note, as Nicky has abandoned appreciation of the unknown. He survives on caution and prohibition. Contrastingly, the less the world sees of his symmetrical blue-eyed face, the more the world wants of it.
There will be a lot of photographers at the Warehouse.
"Quaint," Umeko says about the nineteenth-century brick buildings. This is her first glimpse of the Lake's north end. They have entered the Warehouse District, a daytime tourist attraction. The street lamps are wrought iron and prolific but there are no pedestrians making use of the lovely brick sidewalks.
Umeko glances at the caller ID on her cell, which chimes. Her mother. There is no time to answer. She gives the cell to Henri.
The Escalade slips to the curb beside a large security booth and a pair of regal iron gates. Although Umeko is not watching, she knows the Escalade in front of their Escalade, the limousine behind, and the Escalade behind the limousine have matched her Escalade's movement like little toy cars on a track.
"Promise," she says, looking at Nicky, "that you will do what you said." His dark hair curls a little on top, near the broad forehead, suggesting boyish charm. If only his eyes were not so serious, so inviolate. Sometimes she is afraid of his eyes, what is in them.
Nicky nods and shrugs. This is not the commitment Umeko hopes for. Everyone wants Nicky at the Warehouse tonight, her publicist, her manager. Her publicist fears tabloid speculation Nicky is about to eject her from his Palo Alto sanctuary.
"Promise," Umeko says again.
"I am always there for you, darling," Nicky says.
As though calculating the value of his statement, Umeko hesitates. Nicky faces away, smiling. The smile, she notes, is obvious, and it is obviously charming.
Umeko relents. The Escalade's door opens and she climbs down. She arranges the skirt of a pale blue Lorraine Chizoni dress, seizes Henri's hand. Henri beams, proud of her. He conducts her to the limo, which is already opening, eager to claim her. She will glide inside the chilly box of its back seat, join Roy her manager and her costar Ryan Kirkwood, ride along the brick thoroughfare behind a security gate to the club entrance in warmthless style. There will be cameras at the entrance, a controlled gauntlet of journalists. If she arrived on Nicky's arm the press would forget her, ignore her, and devour him, it adores him so. But this is her night, her hour, so Nicky will give her the hour, perhaps an hour and a half. And if he does not come to her, here, tonight, then she will have his skin. Not a threat Nicky Borodin is likely to take lightly.
* * *
When he stopped thinking of her as a child, that was when he fell for her. She was ridiculously young. Forget her years, the span of them, the fresh, healthy number of them. Her age was irrelevant, like the number of raindrops in a fishpond. When he met her she was unbruised. He could not love that, only admire it, nurture it. But love, no, never. He had wasted so much, he would not waste love too. When he met her she was a little girl. Then she wasn't. And he fell in love.
Umeko was a friend of a friend, slightly removed from his world, like a ship in orbit, sometimes smudged into the background by the sharp light of immediate matters. He saw her occasionally on the cover of things. Everyone he knew knew her. Marshal, his writer friend, was to blame for this, having nursed beyond every acceptable limit an obsession for the statuesque, blue-eyed, quarter-Asian Umeko.
With Umeko, it was all smoke and mirrors. The hint of sexuality. A body juvenile in dimensions, straight, athletic, perky. Made one wonder why men able to grow beards were reduced to monosyllabic fiends in her presence. This was a good girl. The mother was involved in her daughter's career, the father ran a modestly successful business. Divorced, the parents remained part of the daughter's life. There was nothing scandalous behind the scenes. No siblings. The mother's affairs were uninteresting. The father was rumored gay but discrete. Nothing the tabloids wanted to touch.
Umeko dated Marshal, gave in to Marshal, when she was only nineteen. Her career had precluded the complication of boyfriends. She was a globetrotter of the first order, curious and bouncy, a billboard dream girl, the face of a perfume promotional campaign, the half-clad teen in a jeans advertisement, the lean, loose-jointed girl in the car commercial whose black hair drifted silkily over her long porcelain cheek. When Nicky was formally introduced to Umeko, she was hanging rather precariously on Marshal's arm. He saw her inexperience, raw and half-wild, provocative in some way, shining behind the well-photographed eyes. And he despised Marshal and what Marshal would do with that, and befriended her.
Friendship, for Nicolas Borodin, was in its way unconditional. Though he was frequently inaccessible, his assets were not. It was not unusual to have acquaintances swimming in Palo Alto or water-skiing at Clifton Bay while Nicky, their host, holidayed in Erembourg or rock-climbed the desert giants of Asklepios. Nicky never quibbled with deadbeats, many of whom he met through Marshal. He paid the bills because he could, and because he detested unpleasantness. After the war in his native country the globe shrank dramatically for Nicky. Survival zones defined his world. In North America he had friends. There was a faction among American policy-makers that rued anti-western sentiment in Nicky's native land. Nicky was welcome at the White House. He was wealthy. Rich and connected, Marshal liked to say. Otherwise Nicky would never have met Umeko.
It was Marshal who telephoned asking if Umeko could have a room in Palo Alto for a few weeks. Marshal was breaking it off, Umeko was inconsolable, and needed rescue from the paparazzi. Nicky was in Washington on his way by private jet to Erembourg. He was curt to Marshal, polite to Umeko, whom he called to extend the requisite invitation. "Stay as long as you like," he told her.
He was surprised to hear the model was still in residence a month later. Got on the jet to look in on her. Found her at the pool --it was late summer, dry and warm-- burning her gorgeous skin. She'd been taking sleeping pills. Combined with alcohol, the pills had softened her judgment. She was off her exercise and diet. Her manicure was old. She wasn't nineteen, the way he remembered her. In fact, she was twenty-four. Marshal had taken his time with her, wearing away the secret places, burning the corners of her, singing the butterfly wings.
Nicky sat on the lounge, watched Umeko sleeping in the sun, watched and watched. A sprinkler whirred, waking him to himself. The drugged model reminded him of someone else, or something else. He had been several years and a continent off reality. He woke her and guided her to her room, put her to bed. On impulse, he found her pills and wasted them. If he had thought about it, he would have left them to her. Because he had been rash, he asked his physician and dietician to come in. Nothing would reach the outside world, he assured her. Thus began the private story of Nicky and Umeko. His physician was the one who told her she was pregnant. She told Nicky. In that hour-- it was seven or so on a Thursday evening in 2003, the sun low over the west garden but ninety minutes from setting --he felt the need to breathe against her skin, a need that came with such force he was afraid of it. Later, she told him he had seemed angry with her. If she had not found him near midnight in the salon-- she too was unable to sleep-- that would have been the end of it. She had already called her mother. A first-class plane ticket to London was waiting. But in the salon he was vulnerable. Of course he was. He had loved before. He knew what it felt like. He knew what was ahead.
"What are you going to do about the child?" he asked.
"I don't know. I'm not Catholic."
"I am."
She murmured, "Are you? I thought you would be something else." She lowered her eyes to meet his. "I'm sorry but I can never remember the name of your country."
He sat on the leather sofa. He was drinking, he remembered that, but he was not drunk.
"The name of my country," he said with a robust exhalation and an upward tilt of his face that showed he had both winced and smiled, "is Pruzany-Cerjenevo."
She sat beside him, arranged her long white legs, and looked at her toes. "What's that accent? I don't recognize that accent. You changed it. Normally you sound French. When you have an accent it usually sounds French."
"I was born speaking Pruzan and French, French in my mother's presence, Pruzan everywhere else. My mother was Erembourgi. French was her native tongue. She raised me until I was ten, then I had what you might call a very public upbringing. I am comfortable in either language."
"And English?"
"English also."
"What else do you speak?"
"I speak German and Russian and a little Spanish."
"What's your country near?"
"Hungary is to the north away over the Juga Mountains. In the foothills of the Juga we have the city of Sorna. It is in the province of Stanovia and well known, in the region, for the Grand Church of the Virgin. Have you heard of the Church of the Virgin? It is a cathedral hundreds of years old. Above Sorna there is a beautiful chain of hills, mountains that-- never mind. It is not important. I could go on, forgive me."
Umeko seemed now to hesitate. Nicky turned to hold her gaze. She was more beautiful next to him on the sofa with her sunburn and her frayed and tangled hair than on any magazine cover.
He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.
She asked, "Do you plan on going back?"
"No. I can't."
"Why not? You sound homesick."
"I am sick for my home but it cannot be worked out. If I go back, there will be conflict. It is an impossible situation."
"Are you serious?"
"It is complicated. See, I am a figurehead. The war in my country, it has not properly ended. There is still war in my country. They say it is my fault."
"You're only thirty, how can it be your fault?"
"How do you know how old I am?" He smiled and sighed. "How do I explain? We were a monarchy in a country where the king both reigned and ruled. In my land power is hereditary. My father was the king of Pruzany-Cerjenevo."
"Prince Nicolas."
"Yes," he said, "all right. Prince Nicolas. Except I am just Nicky now. Never call me anything else. Pruzany isn't my country, you see. Pruzany belongs to itself."
"How sad for you."
"How sad for me." He caught her hand firmly in his and kissed her on the forehead.
Forget the plane to London. She never moves out. Marshal is ill-mannered about the pregnancy. His current fling is a pristine, illegal seventeen. Marshal isn't into downgrading for on the job training in domesticity and responsibility.
Nicky and Umeko.
The buzz on In Search of the Warm Earth, Umeko's film, is Umeko's name may be heard at Oscar time. After five years with Marshal, she is a champion weeper. She photographs well. She is the little actress who was an actress before she learned to walk. She is a woman in every sense and Nicky loves her.
Henri, ready to bound from the Escalade, has just asked, "What are we doing here, boss?"
They are outside the Warehouse. It is 2:00 AM or close to it. A solitary and sleepy television camera crew stirs, alarmed and exhilarated its vigilance has paid off.
"She wants it," Nicky says.
Henri flies out of the Escalade, opens his door. There are doors opening along the curb. In six seconds, five dark-suited, unsmiling ex-military types take charge of the walkway. Henri glances at Nicky.
Nicky approaches the television crew, which has been joined by photojournalists. He is used to incessantly flashing bulbs and continues without a hitch to the woman with the microphone.
There are a few warm-up questions. Nicky is patient. She keeps to questions relevant to Umeko, which is admirable. It is over quickly. Nicky waves and descends through a doorway past a security guard into an air-conditioned, smoke-filled dimness.
Roy Downes, Umeko's manager, intercepts Nicky as he clears the velvet rope, steers him through the press of shimmering bodies, grinners, glassy-eyed well-wishers, and back-slappers. There is Umeko. She seems tireless, fresh, in spite of the hour, a gift they share. Nicky greets her with a brief kiss. Normally, he would brush her cheek but there is some tabloid nonsense they are about to call it off and Umeko needs the public display of affection.
Nicky is happy to assist. He links hands with her, leans in, smiling, smiling in the dimness as though it's all good. There are cameras. There are always cameras. Someone is speaking to him. He replies in his usual way, selecting from a repertoire of public responses. He can keep this up forever plus one day. It is a lesson of early childhood. No one can be as aloof and charmingly insincere as Nicolas Borodin. Ryan Kirkwood drifts over, eyes Nicky with sterile neutrality. Kirkwood does not like to be upstaged. He is sought-after, a prince of sorts in his profession, and he is not one of Nicky's friends.
Umeko leads Nicky around, chats up one of the producers and the director Foster Taylor, whose early work Nicky has sampled. Occasionally Nicky spies Henri, sans suit jacket, mingling. It is not easy to tell Henri is a bodyguard. The others, Michel, Oliver, Carlos, Eliot, and Javier are closer, but none, Nicky has been made to understand, will ever be close enough if an attacker is willing to be caught or killed. In a world percolating with suicidal warriors, the realization is heady stuff, like ice vapor, and paralyzing. It means at any moment Nicky is in danger of death and the choice and chance to avoid danger is not his, not really. Only the casual killer and the pro will be deterred by Henri and the men. The other kind ...
Someone brings a drink. Nicky takes the drink, smiling, smiling as he wonders what it is, and that is when the noise begins. Someone told him long ago, when he thought his future was settled, the hour of its demise is knowable to each human soul. Nicky's thoughts flit randomly as he does his best for Umeko's benefit. He does not need to focus to keep up his end. What is this drink? he thinks. And he is thinking about Henri and the casual warrior, and he is thinking about the other kind of warrior. Not dwelling on either, just letting his thoughts travel the thorny country such ideation creates. He will not idle long, but he has wondered before. What if it is to be now? What if it happens tonight?
And so, a breath of a second before there is gunfire, he tightens his fingers on Umeko's hand. As he is watching, Michel, his bodyguard of seven years, stiffens. The gunfire cracks along nerve endings extending beyond Nicky's ear, rattling his spine so violently it is possible, in his mind, he too has been shot. The wicked little flash that sizzles in the close darkness of the club is the last Nicky sees of Michel. But there is a second flash behind the empty place Michel used to occupy. Oliver throws up an arm and disappears. The shots vibrate like mini-cannons, terrible and terrifying. They cannot be anything but what they seem, like-takers, life-enders.
There is a surge and swell of movement. This is mindless, the result of panic. Screams now beat inside Nicky's mind. Caught in the rush, he pins Umeko to his body. Her heeled sandals are not sensible. If she falls, she will be crushed. Over the bobbing, swaying heads an exit looms.
Something blocks the doorway ahead. It is a man dressed heavily in black. A man who fires an automatic shoulder weapon into the ceiling. The noise is arresting, powerful. Bits of plaster crash down, creating a backward wave among the Warehouse patrons that pins Nicky with some seventy others now struggling for a secondary exit.
The gunman's exhibition is repeated at the fire exit on the south end of the building, eight seconds of bullets hammering a ceiling, collapsing debris. There are cries to God. The rush for exits has been defeated. The hostages gather in a sweaty, frightened huddle.
There is more gunfire, isolated and dreadful. Executions. The gunmen, clad tidily in black attire and nylon masks, are murdering the security staff. Among the dead lie his own men, the ex-military urban commandos. They fall easily, shot a close range. The Warehouse floor contains the sum of their lives, totaled without resistance. Nicky cannot believe it. Jaw slack, he holds Umeko with both arms.
He winces when the club lights go up. Squinting, he looks into the faces of his neighbors. The smell of urine surprises him.
A man has begun organizing the fringes of the crowd, directing patrons to surrender billfolds and purses and line up against the north wall. Another gunman forces the processed patrons into ranks, treating the dazed and desperate party-goers like soldiers in formation. He yells at a woman who weeps uncontrollably. She is gathered in and hushed by a big man in a white shirt. Henri. Henri is alive.
A cell phone emits a musical number.
"Anyone who touches his cell phone will be shot," a deep-voiced gunman roars.
Nicky swallows and wonders how many cell phones are in the Warehouse. A goodly number. And cell phones can be activated without much hand movement. Several patrons have hands-free devices, small boom mikes with slender ear pieces. Nicky looks around. If he had his cell, he would click to emergency services and leave the phone open. Maybe someone will do it. He counts the exits. There are three bona fide exits, including the main one with its broad double doors. The emergency exits are shut. Gunmen are taping the doors. He pauses to watch the work. The gunman are taping something to the doors.
Oh God, he thinks.
The crowd is thinning to the front. He loosens his arms around Umeko, bends his lips to her ear. "If we are separated," he whispers, "promise you won't make a fuss."
"No, we should stay together."
Nearby someone grunts, "Please, be quiet."
Nicky whispers, "Don't make a fuss, darling. Promise me."
Then someone is in front of him, demanding his wallet. He lets go of Umeko, who holds out her matching Lorraine Chizoni clutch purse. Nicky says, "I haven't one."
"Give 'em your wallet, mate," insists the man behind Nicky.
Nicky spreads his arms, inviting the gunman to commit the inevitable violation. While the gunman pokes around his pockets Nicky studies what is in front of him. The gunman is young, pale-skinned, blue-eyed. They will all be young, he is certain, with one or two exceptions. He has counted eleven gunmen, no women. They are dressed in heavy black. Their ballistic vests are bulky. They are wearing explosives, all but one.
Umeko, ushered away after surrendering her clutch, looks at Nicky anxiously.
A second gunman strolls to Nicky. "What is the matter?"
The first answers. "He's got no ID."
The second gunman is older. He is the one without a vest of explosives. He eyes Nicky momentarily. "Send him over, it's all right."
Nicky goes to stand beside Umeko.
The Warehouse has quieted to just a few wretched sounds. The crunch of military boots on bits of plaster. The gurgling of a wounded man. The labored breathing of an elderly prisoner. The curt dialogue between the gunmen.
When the hostages have surrendered wallets and purses and lined up along the north wall, the older gunman climbs onto the island bar in the center of the Warehouse. "Listen to me," he demands in heavily accented English. "There isn't much time and I need your cooperation. I said, listen to me! I want all the people over sixty to line up over there. Please make this quick."
There is a fresh surge, disorderly, desperate. And then there is a shot. A man falls. The shockwave of horror causes screams. Everyone presses back.
The gunman on the bar hollers into this fresh chaos: "Shut up! I said, shut up! Do I have to kill someone else?"
The executed man sprawls on the floor as a small puddle of blood gathers under his skull. Who is he? Nicky does not know. No one calls his name, no one tries to reach him.
The older gunman hollers. "If you do not look sixty I will have you shot! Do not fuck with us! Now, go, if you are over sixty, and get in line!"
No one moves.
The gunman curses. "How much time do you think you have, people?"
There is some nudging in the crowd, neighbors urging the elderly forward. Soon, there are seven men and women hunched and trembling in line.
"Out the front door," barks the gunman. "Hurry. Now."
They line moves tentatively. A gunman calls to them menacingly. The elderly pick up the pace, escape into the night.
The older gunman calls, "You ladies, ladies, you are next. Make a line over there."
Women shuffle toward the corpse of the executed hostage.
"Not so fast!" yells the gunman on the bar.
The ladies freeze like broken clockwork.
"Pryce, Umeko Pryce," he calls.
Umeko, who has not moved, does not move now but goes stiff as a board. Nicky sweeps a hand through the back of her hair, shaking his head. He leans down. "They are here for me, it will be all right."
Umeko looks up at him. "How is that possible? How do you know?"
"When they speak to each other, they are speaking Pruzan."
Umeko raises her voice. "I am Umeko Pryce."
"Stay where you are. Everyone else, you ladies, line up over there."
Nicky whispers, "I am sorry."
"Stop saying that."
He has not noticed he has been saying he is sorry. Nervously, he dabs at his upper lip, wipes his brow.
The ladies (without Umeko) are filing out the main door. One trips on the stairs. There is whimpering. Then the main doors shut.
The gunmen remove the nylon masks. Duct tape appears, unrolling over the doors like silver ribbon.
The prisoners groan. While the patrons watch, transfixed, the gunmen affix explosives to the locked doors. Wires extend along the wall. A hasty operation.
Nicky says, "I am so sorry."
Umeko: "Hush."
"I am sorry."
The older gunman has leapt from the bar. "You can use your cell phones now. Call whomever you wish. Feel free."
This is met by stunned horror. It resonates of September 11, the airline passengers who were permitted to call home.
"Sit down. Sit down now."
The slain are being dragged behind the main bar. The gunmen handle the corpses matter-of-factly.
Nicky sees Carlos disappear around the corner of the teak bar, his eyes glazed, his skull a clot of blood. Then he sits beside Umeko, rubs her back, and gradually, as he looks up and around, he realizes the men near her have crawled or hitched away. A span of three or more meters separates Umeko and the nearest patron, a Hollywood producer who will not meet Nicky's eyes.
Umeko is pale. Nicky wills his strength into her, wants to give his warmth to her.
Even so, Umeko starts to shiver. "Is there a phone I might borrow?"
No one answers. A few hostages have initiated calls, are actually talking away. At least one person is communicating with police services.
Nicky throws a look in Henri's direction. Henri has Umeko's cell.
Henri shakes his head once.
Umeko, meanwhile, turns to the nearest hostage. "Please, I need to call my daughter." Her daughter is barely one year.
The man, an entertainment editor, averts his face.
Nicky says, "Darling, nothing is going to happen to you."
Umeko stares at the floor, breathes deeply. "You don't know that."
"They are going to ask me to do something I will not want to do and that is why you are here, to make sure I do it. Nothing is going to happen to you."
A gunman strolls toward them.
Nicky's heart kicks his ribs. He touches his brow to Umeko's hair. He inhales. "No fuss now, sweetheart, promise me. Be good. I love you."
The gunman stops a meter away, looks down his nose at Nicky. "Come with me."
Nicky gets up right away. "Yes, of course." He is surprised by the strength in his legs. He credits Umeko, the need to put on a show for her.
The gunman grabs his arm, which is unexpected. Nicky battles the urge to pull away. It's so unnecessary. The gunman conveys him past the central bar, past the corpses of Carlos, Eliot, Oliver, and Javier. They pass the main door with its macabre wire job, a footlocker laden with bricks of C-4. Nicky has held C-4 before, even seen a C-4 detonation. The footlocker holds more C-4 than is needed. There is some kind of control panel beside the footlocker. The panel is tended by a rather nervous-looking boy with long oily curls. He wears a vest of explosives, the uniform of a suicidal warrior. Certainly, the boy is suicidal. If the footlocker explodes, the environment within the Warehouse will become hazardous to life and health. The force and fire will in fact be lethal. Anyone who survives the blast will burn.
Past the footlocker is a tight intersection, tiled corridors meeting outside the public hall. In one direction, the restrooms. The other corridor leads to a VIP lounge and an office.
The older gunman, holding court in the management office, occupies the club manager's executive leather chair. The chair swivels behind a narrow brass and glass desk. On the table is a laptop. Nicky gazes at the laptop, perplexed.
His escort releases his arm.
"Sit down, your highness." The older gunman speaks Pruzan.
Nicky answers in kind, "I am honored that you know me. However, no one addresses me that way. It is hardly appropriate."
"Do you tell that to rebel marauders?" wonders the gunman. "Do you tell that to the terrorists who work out of your back pocket? The royalists are the real killers of my country. Sit."
Nicky sits carefully in the armchair. He glances at the laptop computer, a Sony Notebook. Softly clears his throat. "What do you want?"
The gunman says, "I am Anton Dushan."
"I cannot say I am pleased to meet you, Anton Dushan. You tell your name as though you have no fear I will live to identify you."
"I plan to kill you."
Not completely surprised yet profoundly disappointed, Nicky studies his lap. In a moment, he leans back, crosses his legs. He massages the damp, tired skin under and over his eyes.
Dushan settles his elbows on the glass table. "You have three bank accounts that do not close when your anti-extortion protocols are activated. Do you know the accounts I am referring to?"
Nicky lowers his hands to his thighs. "What interest would I have in bank accounts, given what you have just told me?"
"The balance in the accounts will save someone's life."
"You have imported C-4 explosives."
"Yes, so?"
He holds Dushan's eye. "You did not buy your American C-4 on the black market just to transport your explosives on a freighter from Pruzany to Erembourg. May I be frank?"
Dushan looks between thirty-five and forty. He is wiry in the way of men who work with the hands. His face is waxy and pocked, with a narrow red slash of a mouth.
"Yes, of course. Be frank."
Nicky raises and lowers his hand. "You requisitioned your explosives from a supply depot on a Pruzan army base, flew the C-4 across western Europe in a leased jet, and landed your explosives in Erembourg on a diplomatic clearance. Your accent is from Txomin Province. Most Txomin military men became militia. But not you. You are a nationalist. A patriot. Before special branch signed you on, were you regular ADU? Are you also a realist? You cannot spend what they offered. You are going to die here, like the rest of your squad. Did they tell you they would bring your wife, your children, your parents to Amburg? Did they promise a flat in Fourth District where the electricity runs twenty out of twenty-four hours a day and there is enough oil for a hot water bath? Do you know how much money is in my Cayman accounts?"
"They told me."
"It is enough to set you up in comfort for the rest of your life."
"It is not enough to buy your life."
"How much would be enough?"
"We are going about this the wrong way."
"Of course we are." Nicky sighs and waits.
"Transfer the accounts or I will make you watch your actress die."
"The patriot. Christ forgive me for asking but where is your allegiance to the army code of conduct?"
"I am here because you are a terrorist. It is your fault our war came to this place, this building. Do not preach to me about the code of conduct. After tonight, the evil of the Borodins ends. Hundreds, maybe thousands of lives will be saved. I am confessed. I'll go to heaven."
"You will go to heaven. Yes, well. I have your assurance ... Do I have your word you will release these people when I do what you have asked?"
"I assure you, if you do not cooperate, your whore will be shot. There is your assurance. Come now," moans Dushan. He squeezes his chin. "Is the money so important?"
"Who gets the money?"
"The victims of your war crimes."
"Thorbert Gotzen, you mean, and the generals. Or do you really believe what they are telling you? Tell me, do you know what three point four million dollars US comes to in converted Pruzan forints?"
Dushan actually chuckles. "A good effort but now it is time to stop your delaying. The emergency services teams are on the way, I know this. Unless they have a reason not to, they will turn off electricity and jam our communication. Without power, there is no light and the cameras are useless. That will be unfortunate, you see, because in the event we cannot show everyone the war criminal Nicolas Borodin, we will have to kill the hostages. Now, call up your Cayman accounts, the big fat ones you use for the emergency or to impress your actress and show them to me. And do not tell me it's the others who do this for you. I know that you are taught to reach the accounts in the event you must run away."
The Notebook is open. A screen invites Nicky to enter his name and access key. Nicky places his feet on the polished floorboards, leans forward. He logs in, then raises his eyes quietly to the gunman.
"I am not a war criminal. You can kill me but you cannot make Thorbert Gotzen's lies into truth."
Dushan stares.
The Notebook. A confirmation is requested. Nicky confirms with his personal code. Then he puts in the numbers that represent the first account.
He sits back, pushes the Notebook toward the gunman. "I assume you know where the money will go."
The gunman slides the computer back to Nicky, draws a card from his pocket and slides that over as well. "Here."
Nicky studies the card. An address, numbers, a password. He glances at the gunman, a brief look. Stupid fool.
Nicky completes the transfers one at a time. Dushan watches Nicky, not his fingers. On the last account, in the appropriate place, Nicky enters the additional digits, a duress code.
He eases the Notebook around to Dushan, lets him see the balance in the receiving account. The gunman studies the figure, then bobs his head sharply.
"That is your walk-around money, of course. Nothing to the stocks and other investment interests, what you have in stones and art treasures. I am right?"
"You think you are, and so."
The gunman says, "There is just this one more thing." Next to his hand is a folder. He pushes it across the table.
"What is this?" Nicky asks.
The gunman suggests Nicky take a look.
Nicky picks up the folder, opens it, and scans a typed document drafted in the first person. He is through the first three lines when his stomach shifts. "You must be joking."
"It is no joke."
"I am sorry, but is there a real expectation I will sign this?"
"If you were a true Pruzan man, perhaps not. But you are a rich playboy who speaks his native tongue like his French mother or worse, like a westerner who learned in a professor's office Pruzan for his second language, who even now sits before me in his rich shoes and rich clothes." The gunman shows his teeth. "I bet you think the broken sewer pipes the children play under were cracked from the winter cold."
Nicky knows that in areas inside Pruzany's rural provinces of Solvegrenica and Cerjenevo sewer pipes run above ground. "They were hit by the shells of ADU guns pointed at one another."
Dushan snorts. Not the answer he is looking for. "Your shoes are worth a lot of money, I bet." He starts to take a look, then jabs a thumb at Nicky's chest. "In America, what do you drive while the children of your country play under the broken sewer pipes?"
"I cannot sign this."
"Rolex, your watch, isn't it?"
"I will not sign this."
Dushan points with his chin at his colleague. "Go and bring back that pretty actress."
Nicky puts the folder on the glass and very slowly laces his fingers. "It does not matter that you are threatening a woman and a mother? What has she to do with our war? You are a murderer. You have already committed murder in cold blood."
"This is a military action. I am authorized to incur casualties."
"Dear God. I can't be bothered to prolong this. When I sign your paper, what happens? You will shoot me?"
"No."
"Who is going to do it?"
"You do not deserve a bullet. I am going to use a Cerjen Kiss to execute you. I see you have heard of the Cerjen Kiss."
Nicky stares, unmoving, barely breathing, until the back of his skull begins to tingle. Then he says, because he must say something, anything, to move the knot of fear out of his lungs: "Yes, I have heard of the Cerjen Kiss. I hope you are good at it."
Dushan smiles a little, as though impressed by Nicky's bravado. "We may find out, we may not. If the lights go out before this is over, your highness, everyone in this building will die. How much time do you think we have? I need your signature."
"I am not confessed."
"You will confess to the world."
Nicky looks quickly over his shoulder. He is thinking about the cameras resting on the floor in the big hall. His chest constricts. "Ah," he says.
Dushan extends a pen in a large hand. "Sign please."
Nicky signs the document in the folder. He lays the pen on the glass, dries his palms on his slacks. "What will you do with this piece of fiction? How do you intend to get this document to Thorbert Gotzen?"
"The printer"-- Dushan gestures to a narrow closet --"in there has also a fax."
"The police, they will trace it."
"They can trace whatever they want. I am following my orders."
Nicky swallows. "Do your orders say you can let the hostages go home now?"
"The police commandos will come inside when I kill you. If the police are competent, they won't shoot too many hostages."
"Those people ... those people out there ..." Nicky nods as though a suspicion is confirmed. "How can you think God will have anything to do with you if something happens to those people?"
"I am a warrior for God."
"Of course you are. I cannot believe after all these years I still must listen to this. I think we have talked enough, don't you?"
Dushan stands. "You are right, the time is getting away from us. Remove your jacket, please." He snaps his fingers at his young colleague. "Bind the hands of our prince, will you, Vidor?"
* * *
The first time he said I love you Umeko lay fully clothed on their bed in the master suite. Miranda slept in the curve of her body, a lump of pink flesh in bright balloon-patterned cloth.
The baby, five weeks old, was a sweet and perfect little tyrant whose demand for food summoned Umeko around the clock. The baby's sleep cycle was unbearably inconstant and Umeko's hormones were in a flux. "Sleep when she sleeps," Nicky said, which of course Umeko had been told by everyone, including her parents, at one time or another.
Nicky demonstrated by giving massages. His hobbies strapped his body and particularly his hands with muscle. He was, too, sensitive to the kinks under her skin, exploring her back and shoulders with the efficacy of a surgeon. He made love with the same attentiveness. Used to the in-and-out, rolling games of a boyfriend who preferred inexperienced partners, Umeko had been pleasantly elated by Nicky's lovemaking. He and Marshal were even in age, yet Nicky was leaps ahead of Marshal in many ways. Nicky was better looking, available, and mild enough that Umeko's tendency to invite drama was satisfied without stirring discontent. Too bad Nicky was not Marshal.
Marshal had not merely dented her soul, he had invaded it, stripped and absconded with its tender parts. Her life absent Marshal was the equivalent of a textureless plain. It was like being on a diet. No sugar highs, no crashes. She had grown accustomed to the twisted landscape of love with a demented partner, the 1:00 AM vigils knowing Marshal was diddling some underage girl in the back of his Jag, that he would only half-clean up, that she would find out. She had learned the art of negotiating the prickly turns and dips of domestic battle, shouting at the top of her lungs, losing her voice, burning her eyes and cheeks with salt. It wasn't that she missed the panic, the anger. She was addicted to Marshal the flatterer, the fawner, the teacher. The electric, unpredictable Marshal. The spiral downward into helpless attraction. The dizzying loss of control. And, yes, what came after, when she thought they had connected beneath the skin, when she could not grasp the man she loved did not exist.
Nicky would tire of her. He must. Initially, she saw him as so much older. He was a big brother, a friendly cousin. She was thirty or so days from Marshal's bed, pregnant with Marshal's child. Going on about Marshal was exquisite agony. Her favorite pastime. She revisited every aspect of their relationship over apple juice at dinner, in the library, on the patio. When she and Nicky redecorated her room, she launched a litany against Marshal's taste in furnishings. Nicky smiled. What a perfect smile. He always smiled.
At the beginning of her second trimester, she was inexplicably aroused. Nicky was a desirable specimen. Women signaled him on his rare forays in public. He changed cell phone numbers regularly to discourage partners who became overly attached. His encounters were rumored few and brief. He himself did not discuss them.
She seduced him. Thought she did. A clumsy effort, she understood. Nearly rape. Everything about him was so different from Marshal. He must tire of her, she realized. Compared to the professional and politically connected, socially active women who inhabited his world she was a bit of fluff. If he never again let her into his room, she would not have blamed him.
While she was pregnant she had sex with Nicky eight times. Each time was a feast of many courses, and was she exaggerating, no, she was not, because she thought about sex with Nicky more than she thought about anything else with Nicky, did not understand how a man could be so good at something he only did as a favor, to relieve the tension of pregnancy, reset the hormonal balance, so to speak. If afterwards she spoke about Marshal, Nicky smiled. He only stopped smiling when she slipped his hand over her belly, let him feel the heel of the baby's foot, her elbow, the curve of Miranda's head.
She was still waiting for Nicky to grow weary of her when she met the artifact of a caretaker, the uncle who was not an uncle, Boyan Babin. Who has a name like that? His skin had the texture of a pressed leaf but it was pale as stone. His gray liquid eyes were oddly familiar, striking and troubling. He came in from Greenwich, where Nicky put him up, and where Nicky visited on business trips. Boyan Babin regarded her as a spider regarded prey, taking her in, the mound of her belly most of all, before clicking the heels of spotless leather shoes, and swishing away. She had been musing with Annette in the big downstairs kitchen, eating peanut butter (her current craving) from a spoon. She was not supposed to eat peanut butter, she was due to start filming In Search of the Warm Earth, in which her pregnancy was well featured. Babin made her feel as though she was not supposed to breathe either.
"He's been with me a long time," Nicky told her later. Babin had not stayed for dinner. Umeko and Nicky ate alone in the small dining room off the kitchen. "He looks after me. He was sent from Pruzany as a mentor of sorts by my father."
"You're kidding me? He's European, that man? Pruzan?"
"Yes, he came with me in 1990 when Father put me out."
Umeko, hearing something she was sure she never heard before, allowed a suitable pause. She knew the Pruzan-Cerjen revolution, the civil war, began in 1997. For a while Nicky's father and younger brother were refugees inside their country. Their allies failed a number of times to get them out. When they were captured, they were held a year in a prison called Levushka. Nicky would not talk about Levushka and there was nothing online or in the libraries about Pruzany's prisons. However, the topic disturbed him. There was eventually a trial. The international community protested. Nicky's father, anointed king at a time when communism threatened much of Eastern Europe, carried some fame in the west. The charges against him were reduced to anecdotes on the Internet, something about genocide, nothing specific, testimony from shell-shocked witnesses generally considered unverifiable by western officials, if you relied on the web. (Umeko must rely on the web, for Nicky evaded this too with long silences followed by the slow, sad smile that meant his thoughts were-- for good or ill --private.) The present government of Pruzany and Cerjenevo (two countries, actually, if you read the history) was a ragged assembly of military types held together by a timid congress and a larger-than-life labor party leader, one Thorbert Gotzen, who had been imprisoned by Nicky's father in the early 90s. The nation's highest court, the Federal Justiciary, for three years put Nicky's father and brother through a trial that confounded and eventually bored the international community. Ironically, fallout from September 11 globally and locally buried the verdict, which was rendered by a panel of judges in 2001 on September 23. Nicky's father and brother were sentenced to hanging. A week later, as international speculation over the wrath of the United States in a post-September 11 world whipped to froth, the sentences of Andrea and Edward Borodin were commuted to execution by firing squad. The commutation was reckoned merciful. While firefighters and engineers at ground zero pulled at the rubble of the Twin Towers, the last king of Pruzany and his son, who had reached twenty-five years in a cell at an air base called Marsinek, were shot to death.
Umeko moved zucchini around on her plate. "I didn't realize you left the country before the war."
Nicky lifted his wine. "I've mentioned it. Yes, a few years before, actually."
If he had mentioned it, she would have remembered. The fact altered everything she understood-- and did not understand --about Nicky and the Pruzan-Cerjen civil war.
"Seven years is not a few years, Nicky. You would have been a child."
"I was seventeen."
"That's high school."
"At seventeen I was attending Harvard, actually, and home for holiday to see a girl. A woman. Someone I knew. It was--" He stopped.
Umeko was riveted. It was not like him to jabber.
He looked at her. "How do you think I came by the scar, the one on my torso?"
Umeko gave him a look. It was a wound of war, a reminder of the need for caution and security. He had said so. When did it happen, this penetration by a jacketed rifle slug of royal flesh, if not after the royals in Pruzany became fair game?
"It was a war of sorts," he answered, "but it happened in 1990. There was a woman." Again, he stopped.
Umeko waited, rapt.
He looked down and up at her. "A woman I loved."
She sighed. The way he spoke. The way his face altered, and his eyes-- they were like that Babin person's eyes ordinarily, that was what struck her as queerly familiar in Babin. Now his eyes softened.
"Who is this woman?" she asked.
Nicky studied his lap. "There was a rally in our principal city. The University of Amburg was a place of anti-regime activists, young and old. A place of new ideas. This woman attended university but I had known her from ten years of age. She was the daughter of a professor at the Troeme. I met her when I studied at the Troeme."
"The what?"
"It is a private academy for certain types of boys, the sons of wealthy men and politicians. It is a military school."
"How did she get to go to this school?"
"She lived at the school with her father, who was a professor of mathematics." Nicky tapped his skull, glancing up at Umeko. "She was something of a genius but she could never be-- how do you say it? She was not a geek. She was very, very lovely."
"That's enough about her. What happened at the rally?"
"It was in a square, a very big square, where my father, uh, where he had a statue."
Umeko gave him a look, like, Are you serious?
Nicky waved the look aside. "The rally was there. I went. I should not have but I was in love with this woman. And it was dangerous for her. She didn't care about the danger but I cared. The riots were uncomfortable for my government. The army was unsettled. Anything could happen. Because it was dangerous, that is why I went. I did not go to protest. That is something Father never understood."
Umeko sipped water, saying nothing.
Nicky slid his plate aside, folded his hands at the edge of the table. "There was shooting. Each side said the other shot first. It was the municipals, what we call our city police, and the army did the shooting. And possibly the Special Police. The specials operate nationally, like the American FBI. I recognized the specials among the crowd and believe me they were never allowed off their leashes except to make trouble. The students had no guns. We had no guns."
"They shot you, they didn't recognize you?"
"I was just another boy standing with a girl."
"No Henri, no bodyguard?"
"I had not met Henri, no. And my security detail, they were specials. I lost them as I always did when I met this woman. They reported on me. I did not like that."
"Your country's military opened fired on unarmed students, people just standing around?"
"The students were shouting ideas. Making noises the government didn't want to hear. For their trouble there were over ninety casualties. Over one hundred and fifty of us took wounds. The archivists say ninety-seven children of Pruzany and Cerjenevo lost their lives. It is possible. The Lilia Square, now called Plaza Freedom, was a ... it was a pool of blood. The blood belonged to students. You can imagine what my father thought of me when the soldiers pulled me out."
Umeko could not, actually. She was bewildered. "You lost this person, your college sweetheart?"
Nicky said, "We lost each other but that is another story. And she was not my college sweetheart. Do you honestly think I was permitted to have affairs? I did not have girlfriends. I was expected to form alliances and marry in accordance with the laws governing Pruzan royal marriages. It was a difficult time for me on a number of levels. I was surprised to survive it. After he had his words with me, Father might have had me disappeared but instead let me have medical treatment. When I could travel he put me out of the country. Count that a small blessing. He put me out of the line of succession, so I did not know what to do with myself. That, in a way, was more of the same but without hope, if you know what I mean. No, I suppose you don't. He put me out of the family, so my little brother Edward could not write or speak to me. We never spoke. My sister Helene, she was at university in Erembourg, she was proud to disobey Father. We are close. When our brother died, he was a stranger. Anyway, darling, my father sent along Boyan to look after me. Boyan is very loyal but he thinks for himself. You'll get used to him faster than he will get used to you. He believes you are carrying my child. No assertion to the contrary will dissuade him. He has," and now Nicky smiled, "ideas about my character. But, no, I was not living in Pruzany when civil war began. I would not be breathing if I were. They would have taken my life too."
"Hurt you? Whatever for?"
"We really are getting into this. All right. But after I am done, you must accept it is over now, so we must let it be over. For my country's problems, I was not responsible." He raised his hand. "Well, of course, if you read the work of Philip Adzo, you may say that I was. If a man knows about a thing and does nothing, does nothing at all, then he and that thing are married, they are one. But I was a boy. So, yes, my father and the Pruzan leadership fought the riots with extermination squads. Do not look at me that way, sweetheart. I was-- what did you call me? I was a child and attending university at Harvard. And when my father became afraid of the world, he became afraid of me. But I was only in love. I had loved this woman all my life. God help me if I never met her. But I did meet her. She filled my mind and my heart with everything that mattered to her. What you see, tonight, is what she made me. But it is not enough, when people are dying, to think and feel a certain way. You must act. I never did."
"You never had time."
"I never had time. Yes, well, it is over now, so we will let it be over."
The first time Nicky said he loved her she lay on the bed with Miranda. It was late afternoon. She was drifting toward sleep. Nicky came in quietly, as he always did, and stood watching by the bedpost. She was used to him now. Used to his step, so soft and measured, like the movement of an actor or a dancer. She was used to the perfect posture, the way he crossed his legs. Used to his smiles. She could read his smiles now, most of them. She was used to his silence, used to the way his eyes followed her. They were warm now, his eyes, when he looked at her. She saw herself in them, the good things, beneath the surface. The months without Marshal had become something fine and full and irreplaceable.
Nicky lay on the bed, covered her arms with his big rock-climber hands. He was erect for her, she could feel him growing against the swell of her buttocks, but he would not move in while the baby was sleeping. Maybe later, after Miranda fed, if Katrina took the baby for a while, he might touch her swollen breasts, reach between her knees. On the bed Nicky lifted from her cheek the heavy curtain of her hair and said, "I love you." The first time.
Thereafter he would say it often.
* * *
The risk analysis, besides overestimating the paparazzi factor, did not take into account the suicidal warrior. Henri's fault. Erembourg is not a venue that registers on Henri's radar as a terrorist attraction. And this is his country. Boyan Babin, the old dog, believes the hounds are ever after Nicolas Borodin, ever on the trail. Sometimes, Babin knows things. Not this time. Henri skipped the Erembourg homeland security office briefing, left the defense ministry check-in to Oliver Sorrell.
The butt of his small-frame .40 caliber Glock in its crotch holster digs in. It's the way he's sitting, the way he keeps his leg up. He can't risk the gunmen spotting the bulge. The Glock has eight rounds. That's all. Figure in multiple targets. Competing priorities, not least of which is staying alive. Henri passes a glance around the room. The gunmen pace in short, straight lines, automatic rifles pointed at the floor. They appear disciplined, focused. A palpable funk hovers around the north wall, muting the voices of hostages whispering into cell phones. The overheads burn cruelly over blood pools, some of which belong to friends.
This is what happened. Henri gave the outside team to Pierpone. The outside team had nine men, their only job to keep an eye on the perimeter and report to Henri. They were in the parking lot, between the buildings, on the street. If one of them had survived to transmit his duress code, Henri and his inside men would have bowled Nicky out of the door down one of four emergency escape routes, all of which led to a nearby street and a back-up armor-reinforced SUV. If tonight Henri had ordered a counter-surveillance team to watch the surveillance team, there would have been a duress code and his biggest problem right now would be keeping Nicky off his neck for leaving Umeko behind. How many times had Nicky said, "You forget me, do you understand? If something happens, take care of her. Do you hear me?"
Good thing Henri does not have to review simple math with Nicolas Borodin. Nicky Borodin does not write checks. It's Boyan Babin pays the bills. Henri is paid well.
Not worth thinking about now.
Boyan Babin is the first person Henri calls. The conversation is surreal.
Henri says, "We are inside a night club called the Warehouse. We are hostages."
Babin wastes no time with hysterics, which is admirable, for Boyan Babin loves Nicky Borodin with singular and unequivocal fierceness.
"Describe the perpetrators to me," Babin demands.
Henri obliges.
"And they have let you make phone calls."
Henri says, "They're suicide bombers, enough C-4 to bring down the roof."
"C-4. What language do they speak?"
"Pruzan."
"Paramilitary. They came in under diplomatic clearances. They are not mercenaries. Which us why you are still alive. They are too stupid to care about you. Is Nicky with you?"
"They isolated him."
"There will be some sort of photography equipment. Do you see anything like that?"
"I am surrounded by cameras. Some of the hostages are media. Professional cameramen."
"It is a tactic."
"A what?"
"They are going to extract him. If they try, you must not interfere. They will kill him otherwise."
"No one is leaving here alive. The doors are wired with explosives. The police are already outside. The police will not allow terrorists to leave with a hostage."
"Nicky is worth billions to Thorbert Gotzen's regime but only if he is alive. And only if he is in Pruzany."
"They can raid his Cayman accounts--"
"They already have. I am seeing the confirmation now. Yes, well. Miss Umeko is there?"
"Yes."
"I will get the papers and arrange a flight to Pruzany. Please do not interfere with the extraction. It will be a complex operation. I have the necessary papers to address Thorbert Gotzen's regime, the inevitable inquiries, the high court. Let Nicky know he will be protected if he cooperates."
Henri looks quizzically at the cell phone. Maybe the old man has slipped reality. "You are flying to Pruzany?"
"I will try to arrive before him."
"They will arrest you, old man."
"It is essential that they do." Babin, the strategist, exhales wearily. "Gotzen is too clever to arrange a martyrdom at this stage. Nicky has his lovely souvenir from Lilia Plaza and the acrimony of an infamous sire, which is public record. Do you think you know Thorbert Gotzen? You do not know him as I do. This is an extraction. Since we have here only choice A and choice B, let's not muck up. Control Miss Umeko, will you?"
Bewildered but reconciled, Henri collects Umeko, settles her in the bend of his arm. Lets her use the cell phone. For such a young thing, a civilian, Umeko is brave on the phone, chatting across the ocean with the nurse Katrina, her voice sweet as honey. Henri can hear the women, mother and nurse, discussing the baby. Umeko charms the nurse into taking the phone to her baby girl. Umeko whispers a song in the sleeping child's ear. She rasps, "I love you, Mommy loves you."
"What time is it there?" Katrina wonders. "Isn't it the middle of the night?"
Umeko smashes tears into her cheek. Henri feels a twinge of pity. The actress's bones rattle, vibrations extending from her belly. Her fingers clamp the little phone.
"We're just coming in, it's been an amazing night," Umeko breathes huskily in Katrina's ear. "I have to go now."
Henri pries the shiny diminutive cell phone from Umeko's diminutive palm, ends the call. "You're doing fine," he insists.
"Oh yeah?"
When she is in distress Umeko favors the emotionally spirited antics of her American divorcee mother. Henri is a study of Umeko Pryce. He is a fan, so to speak, of domestic disruption. The pleasant summer storms, he calls them. The young woman embodies breathy turmoil. The life of Nicky Borodin, antiseptic, tightly and perfectly controlled by Boyan Babin, was, in Henri's opinion, saved by the complication of beautiful, black-haired Umeko but right now the former model's panicked look makes Henri nervous. She is a woman. She is a woman in love. "What are they doing to him?"
Here we go, thinks Henri. "They are talking to him."
"They're torturing him?"
Henri squeezes her forearm, rubs the goosed skin. "Do me a favor? Keep your voice down. No, they don't need to torture him." That is probably not true. They might enjoy a spot of cruelty, these types. "They want to ask him to do something. He will refuse. They will say your name. He will do what they ask. It will be over soon."
"What will be over soon?"
"Miss Pryce? Do you know me? You know me, Miss Pryce." Henri wills her to look at him. Her mind flashes in a dozen directions. He can see this in the twitching of her muscles. "I'm going to do what the boss wants me to do," he whispers. "This is what he wants me to do. He wants me to protect you."
"I'm fine. Protect him."
"Miss Pryce, whatever I do from here, for him, will draw fire to this end of the room. And he will not want that. He will not. Do you understand?"
Umeko looks across a swath a shadow at the taped doors.
"Miss Pryce, do you understand? I need you to understand."
"Everyone is dead."
Oh Christ, Henri thinks. "Everyone is not dead. He is not dead. You are not dead. Listen to me--" There is movement near the lounge and the restrooms.
Three gunmen surround Nicky, who walks between his captors with hands flex-cuffed behind his back. Umeko makes a soft squeal. Henri sighs. Gradually Henri notices his fellow hostages have abandoned their cell phones and each other. The hostages face ahead, queued to the opening of the curtain, the arrival of the actors, the beginning of the show.
Nicky, who is taller than the gunmen, who has been trained from boyhood to stand, walk, and sit a certain way, now turns toward the north wall. About three meters separate the hostages and Nicky Borodin. The gunmen with their awkward vests and pale, stiffened faces draw out two cameramen, who are at first frightened. As the gunmen explain an opportunity to record history the mood changes. There are other cameras lying about, not just the television studio juggernauts. There are at first two or three flashes. The gunmen encourage this behavior. Meanwhile, the cameramen, lugging their machines forward, make adjustments with sweaty hands. A Sidonian TV entertainment newsman sets up his microphone, determinedly and desperately avoiding eye contact with Nicky.
Nicky sees none of them. Has drifted beyond it all. There is (but only for an instant) a slight, poignant tilt of his head to Umeko and Henri. When he first turns to the north wall. After that there is no light in the face of Nicky Borodin. The terrorists have taken Nicky's jacket. His white shirt clings damply to his torso. Cut close to his neck and temples but heavy on top, Nicky's dark hair falls across his brow. No sign of physical abuse. No bruises, no blood. But there is something. There is certainty of extinction. The slow but inexorable letting go of one's life.
Henri shakes his head. For once Boyan Babin, the tireless manipulator, perpetuator of the Pruzan royalist movement, is wrong. This is where it ends. The cameras of entertainment reporters will record it. The fanatics will have their execution live, since the cameras, some of them, were beaming to public stations on twenty-four hour standby for festival happenings. Nicky understands this. Of course he does. Look at the way he stands, waiting for it.
It is in this moment that Henri leaves behind Boyan Babin for the tug of his heart. Adrenaline, cortisol, these are the chemicals of distress and the enemy of reason. Like the woman beside him, Henri slips to an edge. His heart jerks, acknowledging he may do something stupid. Meanwhile time runs down to nothing. Time runs out.
"What are they--" Umeko.
"Hush," Henri says. "Don't make any sudden noises or movements." Staring at Nicky, Henri grips Umeko's hand. "Let him have peace."
The gunman leader positions himself in front of a camera. He gives the date, consults his watch, and speaks the time in Pruzany. "Today a regime of terror falls into dust. Today an era of tranquility begins for my people. Here is the Pruzan criminal Nicolas Andrej Mikhail Borodin, who hides in exile in the west amid his hoard of illegal Pruzan treasures while the people of my country starve. From his palace in Disneyland he funds a network of terrorists who call for his return while tossing bombs under the busses of schoolchildren. The world will witness. This is the face of evil." The gunman turns slowly. "Confess and have it done," he addresses Nicky. "Tell the people of Pruzany and Cerjenevo you are a fraud."
Nicky briefly closes his eyes. There is a frown stitched in his brow soft as the wince of a child nursing a headache. Then he looks at his captor. "Everything you say, whatever you say, it is true." His gaze lingers, hard at the edges but indefinably sad.
The gunman leader frowns. Perhaps it is because Nicky's words, pushed out by rote, are in essence unsatisfying. Does the gunman realize it is not the words but the face of Nicky Borodin, taut but fragile in preparation of the inevitable, that the world will recall?
"Where is the money you stole from my country?"
Nicky says, "I cannot pay more than I already have. There is no access from here. I am sorry."
The gunman blinks. Not the answer he needs. "Confess to running your terrorist network from America for the pleasure of westerners who want, still, to possess my country."
"I confess."
The gunman blinks again. Nicky's pitch is perfect. His words though deliberate are simple, unassuming. He stares into the face of his tormenter. There is no expression yet this, too, the absence of anger, hope, even fear, speaks to the cameras and to the witnesses. It says, What more do you want of me?
"Get on your knees," the gunman answers.
Nicky shifts his eyes to look into the rows of hostages but he does not follow the order. He says, "Are we finished? Is it over?"
The gunman lifts a pistol and points the pistol in Umeko's direction.
The hostages gasp.
Nicky folds his legs. The cameras pull back as their operators flinch. The gunman swivels his arm. As he aims the pistol at Nicky's head, Umeko shrieks.
Henri coils his arms around her. "Look away, look away."
The older gunman shoves his pistol under his belt and draws a menacing knife with a matte finish. The blade is easily seven inches. He moves behind Nicky and with the efficacy of a soldier seizes Nicky by the hair.
Umeko surges against Henri's arms. He feels her nails, he feels her teeth. He has clamped her mouth to save her, and to save himself, but also to save Nicky. It will be hard enough without the keening of a woman following Nicky into the dark.
The blade moves against Nicky's windpipe, where it hovers.
Henri's vision narrows.
There is no tension in the gunman's frame. A throat slashing, no matter how routine, requires a certain amount of focus. There is, so to speak, an art to it. The draw across, without the right amount of force, may not do the job. There is the stab in and pull method, which is slower than the full-arm slash, but only by thirty or so seconds of the victim's time. A slitting is messier than a stab. Nevertheless, the acts are violence incarnate and not for the faint-hearted.
He is waiting, then, this gunman, but not to cut a throat.
"Get down, get down," Henri hisses. Meanwhile, he pushes Umeko to the floor and covers her with his body.
Impeccable timing. The doors splinter, all exits. Simultaneously. Blown to bits, flaming. The overheads spark and fizzle out. One might think the explosions damaged them. Henri knows it is the assault teams. They have cut power. When the flames settle the riflemen will shoot into the shadows. And shoot.
An Erembourgi assault team does not idle on standby while the son of Lady Evelyn Charlebois kneels for execution. The would-be throat-cutter knew this.
Boyan Babin was right.
Bullets slap the walls, the bars, smash into teak and debris-strewn floorboards. Into flesh.
The locker of C-4, wired to the doors, does not go off. Of course not. Listening for the slowing of gunfire, familiar commands, Henri holds down the head of Umeko Pryce. Boyan Babin, the old dog. Is there anyone better? Henri can almost picture Babin on his private phone rasping through the encrypted line into Gotzen's ear: "You can have him. C-4, for God's sake? Four billion dollars, Thorbert. I'll let you take him but harm a hair on his head and with the full power of his estate I will scorch the very air you breathe."
* * *
Nicky's stomach is raw, and his mouth, a moment ago dry as sandpaper, burns with acid. He doesn't want to vomit, so he breathes roughly against the sharpness under his ribs. His fingers tingle. Under the overhead lamps he can see every centimeter of the Warehouse and every centimeter of every person in it.
The Cerjen Kiss, thusly named after an action in Cerjenevo some hundred years ago, does not (in modern times) specify cruelty so much as contempt. The impoverished Cerjen Muslims who committed the massacre were in actuality executing the remnants of a detachment of renegade Christian Pruzan nationals. The Cerjens were out of bullets, so the victims were forced to kneel and one at a time have their throats slit. Provincial militia and particularly the Pruzan army adopted the Cerjen Kiss in much the same way Native Americans took to scalping. It is doubtful Dushan comprehends the history of the action he intends to prosecute.
Dushan, who is neither Muslim nor Cerjen, places himself behind Nicky's kneeling body.
Nicky imagines he will feel nothing. Nothing, that is, but the urgency to breathe. But shock will come quickly. Meanwhile, he will spasm and he will gurgle. This distresses him, the involuntary protest of mortal flesh documented for posterity. Like tapes of hostage beheadings by terrorists in the Middle East, somehow, the footage of his death will get out. The ultimate assault on his dignity, as if dying this way is not enough. He wishes he could appeal to Dushan to make a deal. I am worth much more alive than murdered. But is this really true? And is he overestimating the impact of his murder on the royalist cells active in Stanovia, Txomin, and Solvegrenica? Elements he has never controlled, has in fact failed to pacify, even though he has denied and denied willingness to accept the crown in the unlikely event the vicious tactics of these terrorists prevail.
The flat of Dushan's blade brushes Nicky's throat. What a bastard, to prolong this. Umeko, he hears Umeko. Nicky snaps his glance upward. Help me God, please help me--
Correspondingly the lights to which he pleads wink out. God has answered. The flooding darkness, sought after, yes, is nevertheless perplexing, so much so that his brain interprets the shock of lightlessness as death. Then he feels the weight of a large body bearing him to the floor. Aware that there is a great deal of noise surrounding him, Nicky understands, too, that he is deaf to the explosion of bullets, the thump of rounds hitting flesh, the grunts of men surprised by pain and heat and numbness. Sounds and sensations Nicky knows too well to experience with the intimacy of his senses fully engaged. Dushan, still alive, speaks gruffly into Nicky's ear. "Don't move." The words, thin and angry, are followed by a stab in the neck.
Nicky jerks away, feels his skin tear. Feels, too, something withdraw. A needle, not a knife. Dushan begins to pray. "Our Father, who is in heaven, praise be to thy name ..."
Nicky moves his lips. " ... thy kingdom come, thy will be done ..." His limbs are numb. His brain, cottony. He is, he realizes, slipping out to sea.
Dushan continues praying. " ... forgive us our sins as we forgive ..." Dushan sags, abruptly silent.
Nicky feels the man being pulled from his back. Hears Henri call his name. Nicky reaches out, not to Henri, but for the silent Dushan, encounters air, nothing, as (finally) Nicky tumbles into darkness.
* * *
Henri feels over Nicky, looking for a wound. He sees only a trickle of blood at the neck, nothing to explain Nicky's unconscious state. He hauls his charge onto his back, careful to establish an airway, and conducts a second, extensive pat down for injury. An Erembourgi policeman, shadowed by a hawk-faced man in a black suit (homeland security), kneels beside Nicky to help. He talks anxiously into a radio.
"He's got a pulse but it's slow. His breathing is good," the policeman announces.
Henri looks across Nicky's body to Umeko, who quietly and bravely holds Nicky's hand.
The policeman says, "We'll let the paramedics in right away."
Before the scene is actually safe, he means.
Henri looks around, surveys the carnage, looks briefly into Umeko's eyes, and winces. "He's all right. It's over."
Umeko shakes her head. "No it's not. It's never over. Why do you and he keep saying that?"
Henri gestures. "Let the paramedics have room, dear. Please." He is up and heading around to lift Umeko away from Nicky. Holding her gently against bruises she has given him, Henri watches while emergency rescue workers perform the primary examination.
There are moans throughout the building, the wounded calling out, and only one medic team. The medics, focused, create an IV line, use a backboard to transfer Nicky from the floor to a stretcher.
Henri says, "I'm going with you. I'm his security marshal."
"I'm going too," adds Umeko.
Henri makes it past the homeland security agent, Umeko does not. Henri does not help her but continues up the concrete steps into the glare of the police beacons.
The ambulance waits. Henri leaps into the back with one of the medics. The ambulance swings away from the curb trailed by a marked police car and unmarked homeland security sedan.
Henri is Erembourgi, a Sidonian. The ambulance is only two blocks from the Warehouse when he feels the route is wrong. He flicks a look at the medic, who looks back at him. There is no emotion in the medic's face, only the stiffness and gravity of a soldier. Henri's hand twitches, anxious to feel in it the Glock he used to kill Dushan.
The medic says, flatly, "Henri Rainger?"
Henri cocks his head. He is assessing the angles of fire, the distances, the apparent quickness of the medic, the likelihood of getting Nicky shot.
"Yes, I am Henri Rainger."
"Henri Rainger, our destination is a private air strip in Pensee. If you will, you may use your phone to confirm with Boyan Babin. Mr. Nicolas Borodin has been administered an anesthetic. When he recovers, we will be over Germany. You may choose not to cooperate. In that case, one or two of us will be shot tonight. But even that unfortunate circumstance will not stop us. The vehicles following us are Erembourgi but the men driving them are private soldiers, well trained and well paid to effect the extraction."
"You were not hired by Boyan Babin."
"That is correct. Boyan Babin has, however, brokered a deal with our liaison. The deal stipulates cooperation. In exchange for your cooperation, Mr. Rainger, you may accompany our charge, Mr. Nicolas Borodin, to his destination."
Henri curses, averts his gaze.
The medic (who is not a medic) shrugs. "Have you been to Pruzany in September, Mr. Rainger? The weather is quite charming."
In Search of the Warm Earth will continue with Part II ...
0 comments:
Post a Comment