“There’s a rumor going around here that you proposed marriage to her. To my wife.” Alexei was still looking at him as if waiting for the final punch line of a prank. “Was that a joke or—”
“I needed an excuse to follow the tour. Journalists don’t typically follow even a presidential entourage all the way across the country, and ordinary citizens are liable to get asked some hard questions if they keep turning up.” Even with all the backroom handwaving from Pocket Square’s employers, making sure the First Lady’s security passed the marksman without question onto any necessary lists, he’d wanted additional cover . . . and nobody looked as harmless as a lovestruck idiot who picked up more than his share of restaurant bills. Especially a lovestruck idiot who popped the question. “Besides,” the marksman said with complete honesty, “I wanted a closer look at Lady Death.” Squeezing that small hand with its trigger calluses, seeing the annoyance masked in those big brown eyes. Thinking how those eyes would flare in fear if they realized what was going on behind William Jonson’s earnest pop-eyed stare. Thinking: You have no idea, you Red bitch.
Yes, the marksman thought—he had definitely let curiosity get the better of strict professionalism on this job. A bad thing, considering it was the biggest target of his career . . . Yet somehow he wasn’t dismayed. This turn of events was going somewhere, he could feel it. Weeks of dead ends and failed plans were all leading here.
Alexei Pavlichenko sat back on his stool now, tilting the vodka in his glass. Sudden calculations going through that handsome head, without a doubt. “And why did you need to follow my whore wife?”
“Just looking to make a little trouble for America’s Soviet sweetheart.” The marksman leaned closer, still speaking in his bad Russian, feeling the pulse quicken. “Not everyone here wants her to go home a heroine, you know.”
The doctor’s gaze sharpened. “Really.”
There it is, thought the marksman. And leaned closer.
Chapter 31
The headline: THE GIRL SNIPER AND HER COMPATRIOTS RETURN TO THE WHITE HOUSE FOR A FAREWELL DINNER AND PRESS APPEARANCE WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT BEFORE DEPARTING OUR FAIR SHORES TOMORROW MORNING . . .
The truth: My last trip to the White House was not quite that uneventful.
THE WIND WAS blustering outside as the delegation gathered in the hotel court in black tie and evening finery: our final night in America. “Pretty fitting weather for Halloween, eh?” the concierge said.
“What’s Halloween?” I asked, distracted by the delegation baggage piling up behind the front desk. Most of our things were already packed, ready for our flight to Halifax tomorrow morning. There was nothing left to do in this country but say our goodbyes to the President and the First Lady at tonight’s White House dinner. Krasavchenko and the other men were already joking about getting a bottle or two of vodka here at the hotel afterward, since we’d have a long flight to Canada to sleep off any hangovers. I searched among them—Yuri, Pchelintsev, a glowering Alexei—but I didn’t see Kostia.
“Mila.”
I turned. My partner looked rumpled, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, a dark shadow of stubble on his jaw. “You’re not dressed for dinner,” I said inadequately.
“I begged off,” he said. “They have plenty of interpreters . . . I’m going for a walk.”
Are you coming back? I thought, stepping closer. I couldn’t read his face. I knew him so well and I couldn’t read his face. “Take a coat,” I said instead. “It’s cold.”
“Not to a Siberian.” His eyes went over me like a kiss. I was back in my yellow satin dress, and I hadn’t flinched when the elevator operator gasped at my scars.
“Will I see you later?” I meant my room—I wondered if he’d come to me after I was back from the White House dinner. Maybe if we were pressed skin to skin I could say all the things through our blood-bonded silence that I couldn’t voice aloud . . . But as soon as the words were out, I realized it sounded like, Will I see you tomorrow morning? Would he be here, waiting for the embassy car to take us to the airfield, or would he be . . . gone? Here we were the night before departure, and I still didn’t know. I knew he was avoiding me. I knew I couldn’t beg. Beyond that—