Palace of Treason (59 page)

Bat wings of black unlimbered behind Zyuganov’s head—no gargoyle on the cornices of nearby Notre Dame could match these—as Dominika walked up to Zyuganov, slowly sliding her hand with the lipstick out of her pocket.

Marta and Udranka were on the riverbank, like two Rusalki mermaids, singing. Over the sound of her pounding heart, she heard Hannah behind her.

Dominika raised the lipstick tube, her arm straight and tense, pointed at his chest, and pushed the plunger. Zyuganov flinched and ducked. Then the world slowed, the stars froze in their orbits, the river stopped flowing. All that came out of the lipstick was a faint musical ping, as if a spring had snapped in a pocket watch. Misfire. Faulty electrical primer. Cracked component.

There was no time to dig around for the second lipstick tube. In a singular circular motion, Dominika threw the dud lipstick into the river, stepped slightly to Zyuganov’s left, and grabbed his sleeve. He pulled back, and she continued stepping into him, swinging his arm in the direction he wanted to go, then suddenly back in an arc toward her, bringing her other arm up and across his neck. Before she could strike, Zyuganov somehow blocked her arm and stepped away from her. He moved with speed and skill. They stood looking at each other—black fog came out of his eyes and mouth, and he snarled at her. She would trap an arm and deliver another strike to the head, then fish out the second lipstick gun.

Zyuganov came at her in a strange loping gait, and Dominika stepped into him to use his momentum, but he put one arm around her neck and bared his teeth. Was the little cannibal going to bite her? Dominika pulled her head back and hit him twice, very fast, under his nose, aiming for a
spot two inches inside his skull. Zyuganov’s head went back and his eyes blurred, but he kept his claw around Dominika’s neck, and with a jerk drew her to him, mashing her breasts against his chest. He smelled like vinegar and night soil.

Zyuganov’s free hand brought up the eight-inch Sabatier fillet knife he had taken from his mother’s kitchen and stuck it into Dominika’s side, down low, just above her hip bone. The curved blade was thin and murderously sharp, but it flexed—as boning knives are predisposed to do—as it tore through Dominika’s tough outer jacket and only three inches of the blade penetrated her body. Dominika felt a flash of fire in her side that radiated around her waist and up her stomach. She dug thumbnails into Zyuganov’s eyes—got one but missed the other—as he shook his head in pain.

Zyuganov knew what flesh felt like and he pulled the blade out and stabbed back in, trying to get inside the coat, and this time felt sweater wool against his knuckles, but Dominika’s hand clamped down on his wrist and he could get only an inch of the blade in. Wrenching the knife away, Zyuganov stabbed again, then again, reaching around to her lower back, trying for kidneys or the lower lobe of her liver. Zyuganov looked up at her face with one good eye—the other was blurred and weeping—and saw the bitch’s mouth was open and she was panting, those blue eyes blinking rapidly, and her body trembled a little as she started sliding down the front of him; he let go of her neck and she sat down with a bump on the stones, leaning a little and holding her side.

Dominika was aware only of a belt of intense pain around her waist and the feel of the cobblestones as she lay down on her good side and the wet grittiness on her cheek. Zyuganov was close, enveloped in black, and he pushed her on her back—rolling was an agony because something inside her was adrift, hot and liquid. She heard a man’s voice—
Nathaniel help me,
she thought—but Zyuganov screamed and brandished the knife and the voice—a night watchman’s,
not Nathaniel’s
—faded away. Zyuganov straddled her and sat heavily, causing more pain. He greatly regretted that he could not spend hours with Egorova, but this would have to do. That meddlesome watchman would call the police—he had a minute or two to spare.

The night glow of the City of Light filled her vision. The pain in her guts was rising in waves to her jaw, and the hand clamped over the first wound was sticky. She opened her eyes and saw Zyuganov leaning forward, silhouetted
against the lights of the city, bat wings extended. She felt cold air on her belly and breasts, and realized Zyuganov had pulled her sweater up to her chin.
Not like him, the little asexual bug.
She then felt cold, questing fingers running along her rib cage, cold beetle fingers feeling for the space between the fourth and fifth ribs where he could shiver the knife in to fillet her heart and lungs.

He hadn’t been flirting. His fingers stopped moving—he had found the hollow between her ribs, exactly where he could start the tip of the blade into her. Zyuganov leaned over Dominika—one of his eyes was swollen shut—and breathed into her face. Then he placed one hand behind her neck and lifted her head, as if he were about to spoon soup into a sick relative. He hoarsely spoke in Russian.

“A person can never know exactly when and where he will die, but you can know this now, Egorova: midnight in Paris, on a stinking embankment, tasting blood on your tongue, and smelling blood in your nose. I will cut off your clothes and roll you into the Seine so your American friends can find you downstream, swollen and splitting, with the river in your mouth, and it will be
pizdets,
an ending, for you.” Dominika’s eyelids fluttered, and she whispered softly. Zyuganov frowned and put his ear close to her mouth. He relished the dying declarations of people in pain, especially when he had personally administered the pain.

“Do you know when you will die,
svinya,
pig?” said Dominika. Zyuganov looked into her blue eyes—they were flat and dull from the shock. He smiled and shook her head side to side a little, chidingly, while whispering.

“Little Sparrow, you will not be—”

Dominika put the lipstick tube under Zyuganov’s chin and pushed the plunger. The distinctive
click
was barely audible, followed by a wet melon-against-the-wall sound. Zyuganov’s undamaged eye was open as he fell to one side, and his head hit the stones with a flat slap. One of his legs was lying across Dominika’s stomach, and his face was pointed away from her. The back of his head—there was no aura around it—was a furry candy dish empty down to the start of his teeth. The night air stirred strands of his hair around the shattered rim of his skull.

With a shaking backhand toss, Dominika threw the lipstick tube over Zyuganov and into the river. The motion caused her great pain in her stomach and she tried pushing Zyuganov’s leg off her. Her arms weren’t working very well and her hands were numb. That further movement brought
a fresh wave of pain in her chest and a rushing noise in her ears, which blanked out the rumble of the river, so she did not hear the running footsteps and was surprised to see a young face in an orange jacket lean over her. She could smell his aftershave. He was very handsome, not as lovely as her Nate, but he smiled and said,
Ne bouge pas,
don’t move, and she heard the word “plasma” and she felt him lift her sweater and apply pressure to the stab wounds, and wondered whether they would release her body into the river, because there she could swim and sing with Marta and Udranka, and there was the whiff of alcohol and a pinch in her arm and she took Hannah’s hand as they lifted her onto the gurney and carried her up the stairs away from the river, the night glow fading in her eyes.

Lights flashed off the façades of the buildings. There was a small crowd of gawkers, those already moving at this early-morning hour, and Nate pushed through them. He ran up to a policeman in boots and a helmet who turned with extended arms to stop him. Nate could think of nothing to say in French except
ma femme,
my wife, the irony of which almost made him choke with emotion. The policeman nodded and Nate walked a few feet and stopped at the top of the steps. The cobbled terrace looked like an invasion beach: Discarded medical packaging and two clumps of red-soaked gauze were strewn around amid two substantial puddles of black treacle—by lamplight blood appeared quite shiny and black—and Nate could see a knife on the ground, the gore on its blade in lacy streaks. Dominika did not have a knife. It must have been Zyuganov’s. And the blood on the blade must be hers.

There was another policeman standing beside a body on the ground with a rubber sheet over it with more blood showing from underneath. An ambulance team was unzipping a body bag. A second policeman in coveralls and a garrison cap was writing on a clipboard. The cop signaled the medical personnel with a wave and they laid the bag next to the figure and dragged the rubber sheet off the body. Nate held his breath.

It was Zyuganov without the top of his head.
Lipstick gun,
thought Nate. Where was Dominika? Was she stabbed?
God, the river.
Nate imagined Dominika, having blown the dwarf’s head off, clutching herself and trailing intestines, staggering blindly and pitching headfirst into the water. The
gurney with Zyuganov’s bagged body came up the stairs, the two policemen following.
Cremate the little bastard,
thought Nate.
Otherwise he’ll crawl out of the crypt during the next full moon.

The first cop signaled that Nate had to leave. Nate tried to ask a question, but his brain was stuck in Russian. All he could get out was
Ma femme?
again and the cop shrugged and said,
Hôpital
several times, then,
Elle était mourante,
and Nate got enough of it, and he could feel the blood drain from his face and he stammered,
Mort?
dead? but the impatient cop repeated,
Elle était mourante,
which Nate guessed meant not dead but dying. The cop looked at him with interest.

Nate sat down on a bench in the shadows and closed his eyes, his hands shaking, his clothes still dripping. Phone it in.
Encrypted cell phone, but be careful.

Gable answered after the first ring. “What?” he said.

“We saw them on the island. I went after TRITON.”

“You get him? Tell me you got him,” said Gable.

There was buzzing and a thump. “Nash?” said Benford. “You’re on speaker. What happened?”

“Simon, listen, your mole is dead; he fell in when we fought and was run down by a riverboat. The prop took his head off. I saw it. By now he’s bumping against the flood walls along the Île aux Cygnes, the Isle of Swans, downstream from the Eiffel Tower.”

“Where’s sweet pea?” said Gable.

“She went after her boss, chased him to the end of the island.”

“What the fuck were you two doing out of the hotel?” said Gable.

“We went out for dinner and were walking back. You can fire me later,” said Nate.

“Never mind that,” said Benford. “What happened? Where is the dwarf?”

“Missing half his skull. She did it, but Jesus, Simon, it looks like he stuck her; there’s blood, a lot of it, and the medics took her away before I got there. I think the cop said she was dying.”

“Maybe it was his blood,” said Benford.

“There was a bloody fillet knife on the ground. The cop kept saying ‘hospital.’ ”

“Did he say where?” said Benford.

“I don’t know what hospital, but I’m going to find out and go.”

“Negative, Nash. Stand down,” said Benford.

“What do you mean stand down? She’s fucking dying.”

“Nash, did she have her dip passport with her?” asked Benford.

“Yeah,” said Nate, holding his head.

“The hospital authorities will inform her embassy. When they hear her name, there will be a diplomat, a consular officer, and two security men in her room within thirty minutes.”

“We don’t know that,” said Nate.

“Hey, dumbass,” said Gable. “You see where this is going? You want to go visit her with a handful of daisies and bump into half her embassy?”

“We can’t just leave her,” said Nate, rocking back and forth.

“Stop talking and start thinking,” said Gable. “She did what she was supposed to do; she completed her mission. She’s a frigging hero.”

“Maybe a dead hero,” said Nate.

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Gable. “Think it through.”

“So we’re withdrawing and letting her go through this alone?”

“And we hope for the best and we wait till we hear from her back inside,” said Benford quietly.

“What do you mean hope for the best? What if she dies? She won’t be around to answer her messages.”

“If she comes through this her bona fides will be unassailable. Anyone who could hurt her now is gone. It’s perfect,” said Benford.

“Simon, listen to yourself,” said Nate. “She’s all torn up and you’re talking about her cover?”

“I am concerned for her as much as you are,” said Benford. “But she has excelled in the service of the State. She’ll be untouchable.”

“If she doesn’t die in one of their shitty clinics,” said Nate.

“Nash, I want to see you in twenty minutes at the hotel,” said Gable. “I’ll help you check out.”

“Sure,
Bratok
,” said Nate. “Some big brother.”

“That’s right,” said Gable. “I’ll do anything, no matter how difficult, to keep her safe.”

“Abandoning her is your way to keep her safe?” said Nate, gripping the phone.
It’s probably best we aren’t face-to-face,
he thought.