No harm, no foul, right?
Fortunately, in all the years he'd been married, all such thoughts had died before they had gotten more than a few steps from wonder toward action. He didn't think of himself as particularly righteous — he'd sowed a fair number of wild oats as a young soldier before he got married — but he'd put all that aside when he'd said "I do." Maybe he was luckier than most; he hadn't slipped since. But he had known a lot of men who had chosen to go and sin some more. He'd seen plenty of these men standing next to women they pretended not to know as well as they did know them.
He couldn't have sworn to it on a Bible in a court of law, but that little exchange between Michaels and Cooper told Howard something he'd just as soon not know, too: These two had something going on together. And more than that, from how she acted, Toni Fiorella didn't know it.
Oh, boy. All of a sudden, Howard was very glad he was not Alex Michaels. Very glad.
Ruzhyo saw the shooter the second he opened his car door.
It was good luck, really; he'd just happened to be right next to the car and looking that way as he walked along twelve or thirteen meters behind Peel. If he hadn't looked at just that instant, it might have been too late, but he had seen the glint of sunlight on stainless steel as the man pulled his jacket shut to hide the handgun tucked into his waistband on his right side. Half a second later, he'd have missed that and not known for sure the shooter was anything other than just another pedestrian hurrying to a late appointment or to pick up something before the shops closed.
The shooter came out only a meter or so behind Ruzhyo, who just kept walking, drifting to his right slightly, as if window-shopping at a hat store. The shooter, a tallish man with thinning, sandy hair, dressed in a windbreaker over a tan polo shirt, khaki slacks, and running shoes, walked past, intent on his target.
Ruzhyo glanced around. He didn't see a backup man. He moved away from the window and onto the shooter's tail, hurrying his pace. He reached down to where his mobile phone was clipped to his belt and tapped the "send" button.
The number was preprogrammed, one of two Peel had given him, and the mobile phone on Peel's belt would now be vibrating with the call. Nobody else had the number, Peel had told him, and if it vibrated, that meant Ruzhyo had spotted a deadly threat too close to use the other number to call and talk about it.
Peel made an immediate right turn and into the door of the closest shop. A bookstore.
The shooter angled that way to follow.
Ruzhyo speeded up so that he reached the bookstore's door half a meter behind the shooter. It would be easy enough to blast the shooter and put him down and out, but they wanted to keep him alive long enough to find out who had sent him. That might be a little trickier on the street, but inside a shop, with fewer witnesses, it should be easier.
Peel knew what was needed, and he quickly led his would-be assassin down an empty aisle bounded by tall shelves of musty books. Before the shooter could get to his weapon, Ruzhyo got to him. He shoved the little Beretta into the shooter's spine and said, "Move and you die."
The shooter was a pro. He froze.
"Clear," Ruzhyo said.
Peel turned around, his hand under his sport coat at the right hip. He smiled. "Henry? I thought you retired? "
The sandy-haired man said, "I should have, so it seems."
"Bit late now," Peel said. "Let's go somewhere and have a little chat, shall we?"
"That won't do, Terry, you know that."
"You can't win, Henry. My man there is ex-Spetsnaz. He can make you a paraplegic and we still get to have our talk. Why don't we keep it civilized? We might even be able to work something out so that nobody has to feed the worms."
"Really, Terry, I hoped you'd think better of me than that—
With that, Henry leaped to the side, a move unexpected enough so that Ruzhyo's shot missed his spine and punched a small hole over the man's left kidney. The blast was loud, channeled by the books and shelves so that it lapped back over the three men. They had a few seconds left to finish this at most.
"Alive!" Peel shouted, pulling his own gun.
Ruzhyo tracked Henry's right hand, knowing that was the one closest to his hidden pistol. He would shoot for the hand, and if he missed, an abdominal shot with a.22 wouldn't be immediately fatal.
Maybe Henry realized he couldn't get his own pistol out fast enough to outshoot them. He didn't even try. Instead, he shoved his left wrist to his mouth and bit down on his watch band. Ruzhyo knew what the move meant, and apparently, so did Peel, who said, "Bugger all!"
Ruzhyo put his pistol back into his pocket, turned, and headed for the exit at a fast walk. Peel was right behind him. People, even bookworms, would come to see what the noise was about.
Whatever poison pill Henry had just bitten into was undoubtedly fast-acting, and there was no way to torture information from a man who would rather kill himself than reveal it. A pro, all right. Henry would probably be dead before any medical help could reach him, and beyond help in any event. Ruzhyo respected a man who died well. If you knew your time was up, it was better go out the way you elected to leave. You lost the war, but if you could cheat your enemy of anything at that point, you could carry some small satisfaction with you to your grave.
Outside, on the sidewalk again and moving moderately fast but not running, Peel gained past Ruzhyo and headed for his car. He said, "I rather liked old Henry. A shame."
As he followed him, Ruzhyo considered how he was going to rid himself of the Beretta. He would have to lose it somewhere as soon as possible. A man was dead in a bookstore, and it would be poison that caused his demise, but even a hollowpoint sometimes retained enough of itself to be matched ballistically to the gun that had fired it. And a gun that could be connected to a dead man was a bad talisman to have around.
Chapter 31
Jay brought Saji a glass of water, shook his head, and said, "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"
Seated in the overstuffed chair, she smiled. "More than I should, yes."
He went to sit on the beat-up gray leather couch he'd bought at a garage sale. There was a faint smell of patchouli in the air. Her perfume? Residue from incense clinging to her hair? God, she was gorgeous. "I should know better after all my years on the net, but I didn't expect this."
"Does it bother you that much?"
He thought about it for a second. "No. Not really. It's the mind that matters, not the body."
"That's to your credit, Jay. You really believe it. If I had known that when we met, I wouldn't have bothered with the disguise."
"So satisfy my curiosity — why did you?"
She swirled the ice cubes in her glass. "You want the quick answer or the lecture?"
"Oh, go for the lecture. Condensed books are usually boring."
She smiled. "All right. Buddhism is like a lot of traditional religions in that, for a long time, virtually all of the ranking practitioners were men. Oh, there have always been nuns and women laity who walked the path as well as any man, but for a lot of folks even now, there is a gender bias. And in most traditional holy books — the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, and most Buddhist literature — when women are referred to at all, it is with a paternalistic and condescending tone, even while supposedly singing their praises: Women are the keepers of life, the bearers of children, the weaker, needs-to-be-protected-from-the-harsh-world sex. Blah, blah, blah. Most old-style religions see women more as property than as people. A man has a farm, goats, cattle, and a wife. Women have had the vote in this country for less than a hundred years. You still with me?"