He took one long stride toward me—and stopped, because Kostia was behind him. My partner, who had silently slid out of bed as I was speaking, angled himself to one side and moved the moment Alexei came at me. My husband froze. Kostia had never looked more like the old myth of Morozko, ice-silent winter standing frost-cold and naked, knife growing from his fist like an icicle, its razor tip resting gently over Alexei’s jugular.
My husband started forward. Kostia pressed the knife a millimeter deeper, and a trickle of blood slid down Alexei’s throat toward his snowy shirt collar. Alexei stopped, eyes moving from me to Kostia. “You know what?” he said. “Take her. Take her and choke on her.”
Maybe now he’d finally leave me alone. Now that he’d decided he was done with me. Whatever I’d decided up till this moment didn’t count, of course. Over the roaring in my ears I stretched out a foot toward the nearest discarded flower on the rug and kicked it toward him. “Get out, and take your cheap lousy bribe with you.”
But the door slammed behind him and left Kostia and me staring at each other, and the rage drained away to leave me cold and shaking. I wanted Alexei to leave, and he finally had. I wanted Kostia to stay . . . and I had no idea, looking at his closed face, if he would or not.
THE MARKSMAN FELT his luck returning when he saw Alexei Pavlichenko bang into the hotel bar and call for a double vodka in a tone barely above a snarl before he even sank down on the barstool. The marksman ambled over, sifting his fingers through the uncut diamonds rattling in his pockets. “Bad day?” he asked in his execrable Russian.
Alexei glanced over. “The journalist,” he said, visibly recalling their last conversation here. Nearly two months ago now, before the international student conference that had started all this off. “What’s your name?”
The marksman showed his falsified press credentials. He was back to the journalist identity again, the one he’d backed with extensive research and cover from above. “I never did get those pictures in the White House Rose Garden of you and your wife,” he said, just to be saying something. “You want to try again? The delegation’s getting one last dinner at the White House before leaving, right? A nice photograph of you and the wife for the Sunday edition . . .”
“If you think that bitch needs more flattering press—” the doctor paused, eyes suddenly sharpening. “I’ve seen you before.”
“Sure,” said the marksman amiably. “Right here, couple of months ago.”
“No. After that. Chicago, the sharpshooters’ club. You’re the one who was trailing after Mila like an idiot.” A long moment. “You’re Jonson.” Alexei Pavlichenko blinked.
“No, I’m not,” the marksman said, genuinely startled. The changes in his clothes, posture, hair, voice . . . he’d been so careful. He was good at disguises, damn it. He sank into each new cover like a bespoke suit. “Who’s Jonson?” he asked, swirling the ice in his lowball glass.
“You are.” The Russian doctor’s eyes were flicking rapidly over the marksman’s face. “Surgeons see bone and muscle, not hair color and posture. You’re him.”
And you’re good, thought the marksman in some dismay. Lady Death certainly hadn’t seen past William Jonson’s dark wig with its receding hairline, the honking upper-crust voice, the eager-to-please scurry that put her would-be suitor two inches in height under the tall, ginger-haired, mustachioed newsman who had tailed behind her at so many public functions. Then again, he’d taken care that Lyudmila Pavlichenko never saw the newsman except as one more form hunched behind a camera across the room.
But the doctor had put two and two together. The marksman rattled the ice in his glass again. Kill him, bribe him, or find a way to use him?
“So which one are you?” Alexei Pavlichenko demanded. “William Jonson or—”
“There is a William Jonson,” the marksman decided to acknowledge. A metallurgical businessman living as a near-total recluse in New York State. The man never went anywhere, he never met anyone, so his identity was useful whenever the marksman needed one that would come out both genuine and whistle-clean when investigated. A wig, a clean shave, and some expensive suits were all it took to match the out-of-date photograph.