Black Widow (9 page)

"Yes?"

"Do you think that man will bring us our guns?"

Taburova didn't hesitate in answering. "Yes. Pasternak is no fool. He's just greedy. Greed can be adjusted. More than being rich, he wants to live." He paused. "We'll get our weapons."

Leicester, England

"Ajza, you're going to grow old with that broom in your hands."

Startled by the voice, Ajza looked up from sweeping the floor of her parents' shop.

A slim young man about her age stood in one of the aisles. He held a soccer ball under one arm and an energy drink in the other. He wore a windbreaker over his soccer uniform.

Ajza searched her memory for the man's name but came up empty. She hadn't really known him, and the neighborhood was large, filled with lots of families.

"You don't remember me." The man showed her a petulant, mildly disappointed smile.

"I do," Ajza said. His name was there at the tip of her tongue. He'd been one of Ilyas's friends. They had played sports together from childhood through their college years.

"Razool."

"Of course." Ajza smiled a little when she heard his name and realized it fit. Still, paranoia crept into her mind and stayed there. She hadn't seen Razool in a long time. The part of her that remained ever vigilant wondered what he was doing here now. "It has been a while," she said.

"It has. I've been away. Boston." Razool hesitated. "That's in the United States."

"I know where Boston is."

"Of course you do. You were always so smart. I remember that about you. I also remember how I always saw you sweeping the floor here before and after school."

Ajza had gotten lost in that remembering, as well. Her parents had worked hard to buy the shop in Haymarket Centre because of the location, and they'd worked the family even harder to make the business successful. She'd never really dreaded the work when she was younger, and now she was surprised at the solace it offered. It was simple work, comfortable and familiar. She didn't have to decide to trust the floor before she swept it. Nor did she have to lie to it.

The aisles and refrigeration units offered her a familiar world that promised never to change. Only it did, of course. Ilyas would never again walk through the doors and complain about their father's to-do list; even when they'd come to visit, they were expected to help with the work.

"I don't think I swept the floors all the time," Ajza protested.

Razool cocked an eyebrow. "You swept the floors a lot. I used to watch you."

The statement was meant to be flirtatious. Ajza enjoyed it for a moment, and the events of only a few days ago seemed even farther away.

"Now I remember you even better," she said. "You were one of the layabouts my father had to run off from the store so often."

Razool covered his heart with his energy drink. "You wound me."

"I doubt that. So now you're laying about in Boston?"

"I'm a professor, actually. Computer science."

"Helping design space launches?"

"Teaching college students to design video games. That's all they want to learn these days."

In spite of the tension caused by her brother's absence hanging over the shop, Ajza laughed. "You came back to play football?"

"No. I came back because my mother had heart bypass surgery."

That sobered Ajza. So many of the faces she remembered from her childhood were older these days. And too many of them were missing. "Is your mother well?"

"On the mend. Thank you. She'll outlive me, and through it all she'll continue to harangue me for grandchildren. Of course, she would like to see me married first, but I'm beginning to think that might be negotiable. So what about you? What are you doing?"

"I'm a translator for an international investments broker. Financial documents." That was the cover MI-6 had provided her, and she worked at that job enough to keep it bulletproof.

Razool grimaced. "Oh, and I acted the proper world-traveling lout, didn't I?"

She grinned good-naturedly at his embarrassment. "Most of my work is in London. But I get out now and again."

"Good. You should see the world while you're young." Razool looked over Ajza's shoulder and lowered his voice. "That's your father at the counter, isn't it?"

Ajza checked the circular mirror in the corner of the store. Her father was a compact man with nut-brown skin. A fringe of gray hair framed his head. Glasses covered hazel eyes. He rarely smiled even on good days, but he was always courteous.

"Yes," Ajza replied.

"He's giving me one
of those
looks."

"And what kind of look would that be?"

"The kind that tells me he doesn't like me talking to his daughter."

Ajza laughed. Her father had cowed all the young men who had taken an interest in her when she was growing up. That ability had often left her irritated with him because few of the young men had been brave enough to ask her out. And Ilyas had chased away most of those.

"My father hasn't changed much," she said.

"I suppose not." Razool looked at her. "I'm going to be in town for another couple of weeks. To make sure my mother gets squared away properly."

"That's very thoughtful."

"It's going to be misery, I promise you. But maybe you could help."

"Me?"

"Mum's doing astonishingly well. If I told her I was having tea with a pretty young woman, it would do her heart good."

"I'm flattered, but..."

"It would also give me an excuse to get away from her for a short time. As I said, she's doing absolutely brill." Razool glanced over Ajza's shoulder again. "Besides, I think going out to tea with me might just flummox your father. If you're not too grown up for that."

You're good, Ajza thought. I'll bet you do just fine for yourself in Boston.

"Let me give you a card." Razool took a business card from his pocket and scrawled a phone number across the back. "That's my mum's phone number. If you'd like tea — when you get through sweeping."

Aware that her father was watching her with the same disapproval he'd shown in her childhood, grateful that she could somehow feel like a rebellious teen again, Ajza accepted the card.

"This doesn't mean I'll call," she cautioned.

"Then I'll come by again. Ciao." Razool waved at her and walked to the counter. "Good morning, Mr. Manaev. How are you?"

Her father scowled at Razool and quoted the price. Razool grinned, thanked him, nodded to Ajza and left the shop. The bell over the door rang.

Her father snorted in displeasure and folded his arms across his thin chest. "He is still a wastrel and a no-account."

"He's a college professor," Ajza replied, and instantly couldn't believe how quickly she'd stepped back into that old battle of wills. Her father was a good man. She wouldn't allow anyone to ever say otherwise. But he could be controlling, too.

"Then why isn't he working?" her father demanded.

"He works in Boston." Ajza swept the debris she'd collected into a dustpan. "He's here because his mother just had surgery."

"He left his mother here while he moved away?" Her father shook his head in disapproval. "What kind of son is that?"

Ajza knew better than to touch that. The fact that Ilyas didn't show any inclination to take over the shop had bothered their father. After all, he had worked hard to provide the business for them.

"I think he's very handsome." Ajza's mother put fresh bread out on the racks. Over the years, she'd gained a little weight and was now bigger than her skinny husband. She wore a nice dress and scarf to cover her head, a nod toward traditional dress.

Ajza didn't hold with cultural attire. That was another sore point between her and her father. And her mother didn't insist that Ajza wear any of it. Her father waved away the comment. "Handsome. You don't want a handsome man. You want a man who will work. That's what you want."

"At this point," her mother said, "I would be pleased to see her taking an interest in
any
man. Even a wastrel and a no-account. At least then I would know there was a chance for grandchildren before I am dead."

For a moment Ajza wondered why she'd bothered to take leave and come back for a visit. She had known what the time here would be like. Her father would worry about the business, her mother would worry about Ajza's lack of a man in her life, and no one would say anything about Ilyas.

But the earlier events had gotten too close. Every time she came out of a deep-cover assignment, she always felt the need to go home again. There was nowhere else she could go that would allow her to be herself again.

She carried the broom and dustpan to the back room. While she was there, she looked at the small space and thought of all the hurried and secret conversations she'd had with Ilyas when they'd conspired against their parents to go out on dates or to school parties. She missed her brother.

Without warning a pair of strong arms wrapped around her. For a moment Ajza almost broke free of them and fired an elbow backward. She caught herself just in time from smashing her mother's face.

"I know," her mother said. "I know."

Without a word, Ajza turned and settled into her mother's embrace. Her mother's callused hands stroked her back and patted her as if she was a child. The tears came then, and so did the old frustration.

They deserved to know what had happened to Ilyas. The government owed them that.

"I'm sorry, Mum," Ajza whispered. "I try to be strong."

"Some days are easier than others," her mother replied. "But we still have each other. That's what we need to concentrate on."

"I will." Ajza held her mother fiercely. "I will."

"Give me the money and you won't get hurt, old man."

The harsh threat in the young male voice drew Ajza's attention at once from the street outside the shop. She'd been watching the two intent and quiet young men who had set up camp there in a MINI Cooper.

Ajza glanced at the mirrored disk in the corner of the shop. Two boys — they weren't men by any stretch of the imagination — confronted her father at the counter. They looked like street urchins, dressed in ragged jeans and patched football shirts. They didn't even belong to the same team.

The boy who'd spoken looked as tall as her father, and he weighed more, but Ajza doubted he was even fourteen. His face had the softness of youth, though the eyes were bitter hard. He was very pale, his blond hair dyed blue at the spiked tips.

"Are you deaf?" the boy demanded.

Her father kept his hands folded over his chest and locked gazes with the boy. "I'm not deaf."

"Then what are you bloody waiting for?"

Her father shook his head. "I'm not giving you any money. If you want money, go out and get your own. Or go ask your parents."

The young man drew a switchblade from his pants pocket. The blade
snikked
as it opened. "I'm going to take yours."

Her father scowled at him. "You are a bad boy. You should be ashamed."

Quietly Ajza strode forward. Her father wouldn't allow himself to be robbed. He never had. In the past he'd beaten would-be robbers with the baseball bat he kept behind the counter. Twice he'd ended up in surgery, once with a cranial fracture and the second time with a gunshot wound. But he didn't seem to acknowledge the threat before him.

From the corner of her eye, Ajza knew that the two men across the street in the MINI Cooper had noticed what was going on. As closely as they'd been watching the building — though they'd tried to act like that wasn't what they were doing — they couldn't have missed the robbery attempt.

"If you don't give me the money," the boy threatened, "I'm going to cut it out of your arse."

"I'm going to call the police." Her father reached for the handset on the counter.

Immediately the boy vaulted onto the counter. At the same time, one of the men across the street launched himself into a run, threading through the traffic and setting off a wave of bleating horns.

"Give me the money!" The youth brandished his knife. "Now, and you won't get hurt."

"Do it." The second boy let a length of bicycle chain spill out of his fist to the floor.

Without a word, Ajza stepped forward and delivered a snap-kick to the face of the second boy. He flew backward toward the entrance.

"What are you doing?" her father demanded.

Ajza didn't reply. She couldn't believe her father was remonstrating with her when the two boys had come there to rob him.

The first boy swung around with his knife, then stabbed at Ajza's face. She dodged to the left, shoved her right arm on the outside of the boy's right arm, wrapped her hand over and caught him under the armpit. The knife was turned away from her, blocked by her body as she held on. Before the boy could set himself, Ajza yanked him from the counter.

The boy wheeled through the air as Ajza maintained her hold. He thudded against the floor on his back, the wind blasted from his lungs. Ajza twisted his wrist with her other hand, then plucked the weapon from his fingers.

"Stop!" Her father rushed around the corner and knelt by the boy. "Stop it now! Do not hurt him!"

Angry, still fueled by adrenaline, Ajza barely held back a scathing retort. Her father was more worried about the boy than he was about her.

The boy tried to get up. Ajza didn't even have to restrain him. He was too weak to rise from the floor. The other boy got to his feet, took a look at his partner, then made a mad dash from the shop.

The man who'd been watching from the MINI Cooper seized the robber by the throat and smashed him up against the door frame.

"Stay," he ordered.

The boy nodded. Tears flooded his eyes as he tried to recover.

The knife wielder erupted in a torrent of curses. He struggled against Ajza's grip but couldn't break free.

"Do not hurt him," her father ordered.

"I won't," Ajza replied.

"I will call the police." He went back to the counter.

"What is going on?" Ajza's mother stood in the doorway drying her hands on a towel.

"They tried to rob the store," Ajza said.