“There!” yelled Luka, pointing. “Go there!”
I looked. A big, open doorway led to an indoor market. I aimed for it and then hit the brakes as soon as we were inside.
We came to a stop with the car half-covered in rugs and carpets and a guy yelling at us in Russian that we’d ruined his stall—but at least no one was hurt. Luka pulled me out and carried me through the crowd, then planted me down on my feet and grabbed my hand. By the time the other car caught up with us, we’d disappeared into the crowd.
“We have to change our appearance,” I told Luka. We’d left the market through a rear entrance and were moving through a maze of alleys.
He blinked at me. “You really are a spy.”
“I can talk in Russian, remember?” I said in Russian. “Less conspicuous.” Although my Russian accent wasn’t great. I’d only had to understand Russian, back in Langley, not speak it and convince people I was a local.
I was shutting out the panic and fear, now, and going step-by-step through what I’d learned in my basic training. All the stuff Nancy used every day, the stuff I’d never thought I’d need. Thank God for my memory.
Luka’s phone rang. He grabbed it and put it to his ear, pulling me into an alcove. I could feel the tension in his body….and then he relaxed. “My father is okay,” he said.
I let out a long breath. Given how pale Vasiliy had been, last time I saw him, I’d feared the worst. “Yuri got him to a doctor?”
“Yuri is the doctor.”
I stared at him.#p#分页标题#e#
“It’s fine. Yuri was a medic in the army.”
“At least tell me they went to a hospital?!”
He shook his head. “A safehouse.” He looked at my expression. “It’s fine. Yuri will have knocked him out with vodka and then dug the bullet out and stitched him up. It’s his third—no, fourth time.”
“Please say this hasn’t happened to you!”
“No. Well, only once. Bullet hit my leg. Hardly counts.”
I shook my head in disbelief. It was a miracle any of the Malakovs were still alive.
We found a department store that was open late and I led him through it, buying up clothes and make-up. Then we found the grottiest, seediest hotel we could, a place where they’d take cash and not ask questions.
A half hour later, I stepped out of our room’s tiny bathroom. Luka was sitting on the battered bed, his face lit up by the weak bulb in the bedside lamp. He came to attention when he saw me. “Wow,” he said.
What I’d done wasn’t subtle.
I’d based the look on the people I’d seen at the Underside of Heaven club. Rich and yet cheap and tacky. With everyone looking for us, trying to be inconspicuous wouldn’t work. We had to be so obvious and loud they’d look right past us.
I was in white knee boots with a towering heel and a ridiculous number of laces up the front. Fishnet stockings, then a tight dress in metallic blue made of some gleaming, sparkling fabric that had to stretch to allow me to walk. Over the top I had an ankle-length padded jacket in shiny black, like a latex fetishist’s sleeping bag. I’d gone heavy on the make-up, my lips a vivid red and my eyes dark and smoky. The crowning glory, though, was the wig.
It was gleaming, silky and blonde. Blonde like only one of Luka’s old girlfriends could do. Arrow-straight, the hair reached right down to my mid-back.
“Wow,” said Luka again.
I’d dressed him in expensive black pants and designer boots, with a flashy belt and an eggshell-blue sweater that matched his eyes. He’d drawn the line at a chunky chain around his neck but the effect still worked. We looked like a pair of rich kids out for a good time. Or, possibly, a hooker and her pimp. Fashion-wise, there wasn’t all that much difference.
He held out his arms to me and I climbed onto the bed. The springs squeaked—given the sort of hotel this was, they probably saw a lot of action. As if to back up my suspicions, a rhythmic banging started in the room next to us.
Despite everything, I laughed. “Who do you think they are? Two lovers, on their honeymoon?”
Luka snorted. “More likely boss and his secretary. Wife thinks he’s working late.” He looked at me. “Or hooker, with client.”
He kept looking at me and that familiar heat washed through me. I was kneeling up on the bed and I was very aware of how tight the dress was on my thighs. “Are you implying I look like a hooker?” I asked in my best I’m-really-offended tone.
“No,” he said. “You’re too beautiful to be a hooker.”