Those two weren’t making any attempt to blend in, just sitting and radiating pissed-off contempt for their surroundings, along with vibrations of extreme danger. Which was Anjali Guha and Jack Farmer to the life, both among his favorite blunt instruments. They were in denim jeans and laced hiking boots and expensive if slightly battered oiled-cotton jackets, the type with lots of pockets and brass snaps and leather patches on their elbows.
She had an oval face with skin the color of milk chocolate and eyes so black the pupils disappeared in the iris, and was fine-boned without looking the least fragile. Her hair was clubbed at the back of her neck, with a few strands escaping as if she’d done something energetic lately, and it was that raven’s-wing black that has bluish highlights. The locals flinched when she looked up from her glass at them.
Her companion had American-and specifically Upper Midwest-written all over him, blond crew cut, pale-blue eyes, face like a pug-nosed clenched fist and the build of someone who’d be stocky if he hadn’t also exercised fanatically. Both of them could have been anywhere between tired mid-twenties and fit early middle age; the man had a frosting of light stubble on his face.
The woman spoke, her voice flavored with the slight mellifluous sing-song of a native Hindi speaker who’d grown up with an old-fashioned dialect of British English as her second language, before spending many years in the United States:
“I am thinking: Why do I spend so much of my life dealing with troglodyte sexist banchuts in places like this? Defending them from fates worse than death. Risking my life to do so when I could be in La Jolla throwing treats to the cormorants? It is a wonderment.”
“You gave that one a toe-cap vasectomy, so he probably won’t be breeding any more of ’em. And hey, usually we’re in more civilized parts of the world,” the man said. “Don’t you love to travel?”
“With you?” she asked snidely.
“Hey, I’m not a sexist troglodyte banchut!”
“Not a sexist. Full stop.”
Harvey waited until they were both looking at the front door and pulled nothing-here around himself as he sidled in, hooked a chair over with one foot, and sat down at their table. They were both naturally stronger with the Power than he was; that was just a matter of the genes. But his technique was perfect, which also mattered, and the don’t-notice-thistrick was his best. Good enough that he hadn’t died forty-odd years ago, on his first op against a real adept. He held the coach gun below the level of the table, tapping the barrels once on the underside for emphasis when he let them see him.
Neither started when they recognized him, or at the equally distinctive sound of the stubby gun knocking on rough wood. Instead their hands moved smoothly towards their own weapons and he sensed preset Wreakings welling up towards the surface of their minds, like smooth fanged shapes rippling the surface of still black water. Harvey showed his teeth.
“Now y’all don’t have to get unfriendly, and it would be a pity to go throwing Wreakings around in this fine scenic example of Turkish peasant authenticity because anything they built to replace this shitheap would be even worse,” he said. “’sides, I got a barrel for each of you. At this range…”
At this range, the sixteen pea-sized silvered shot in the smoothbore weapon would spatter bits of skin, bone, intestines and blood back a dozen paces, and both the Brotherhood operatives had seen more than once how swiftly he could react in a hard place. Plus there was something illogical but primal about having a weapon pointed at your crotch. They froze, and then returned their hands to the table, keeping them carefully in sight. Their eyes rested on his, unwinking as snakes. They were shielded well, but he could feel their taut readiness. And a curious relief, as if they realistically feared deadly violence and welcomed the prospect as well.
Don’t you love life in the Brotherhood? he thought whimsically. Eventually your head becomes a bad neighborhood you don’t want to go into by yourself. You need more of the stuff that fucked you up to distract you from how badly you’re fucked up.
The four remaining locals all put away their backgammon games, got up and walked out into the night, talking loudly among themselves about the local football-soccer-team’s chances. Possibly they were going to go to the town cop, but Harvey Ledbetter didn’t think so, not from his read of their auras. Certainly the man he’d seen being helped out earlier wouldn’t be. Pigs would strap on jet-packs before a highland Turk or a Kurd complained to the authorities about getting slammed in the nuts by a female tourist. Bursting back in behind an AK on rock-and-roll was more likely, and still not very high on his list of worries right now.
With his left hand he picked up a glass of a milk-like fluid and sipped. It was raki, which for some reason colored up like that when mixed with chilled water. There were plates of meze on the table: beyaz peynir goat cheese, sliced ripe melon, hot pepper paste with walnuts, yoghurt, stuffed bell peppers, and kÖfte lamb meatballs.
He scooped some up with a piece of the lavash flatbread; using his left hand was mildly impolite hereabouts, but nobody would expect better from a Frenk, and he wasn’t going to take his right index finger too far from the trigger just yet.
“Anjali,” he said, nodding to the woman. She stared back expressionlessly. “Mighty nice meze for a three-hole-privy town like this; I was somewhat peckish. Long time since that kebab stand. I heard you was messed up pretty bad. Didn’t expect you back on your feet this quick.”
She nodded. “Accelerated healing. Adrian did the Wreakings,” she said.
Laying on of hands actually worked reliably with someone at Adrian’s level; it was sort of like transferring his own biochemical luck. Unfortunately the cost was high.
“Always was a good sort. How’s it hanging in Iowa, Jack?”
“I’m from Wisconsin, you dumb Hill Country shitkicker!”
Harvey grinned at the other man’s snarl. “Charmin’ as ever, Jack. That was your little cross-country number still smoking a bit out there about three klicks back, right? Someone got their blessings an’ curses and ever-filled purses crossed, or did they just not give a damn about you being downrange of the muzzle?”
Jack Farmer was favoring his left hand and there was a spot on one cheek that looked a little reddish, which was consistent with putting up the arm to shield his face as he plunged through a growing wall of flames. Both of them smelled a little singed at close range.
“Let me count the ways you cowboying away with a fucking nuke has nearly gotten us killed-” Farmer started.
Harvey chuckled. “Hell, you two helped me get it. Don’t recall you being too behind-hand doing the down-and-dirty boogie when we had that little black flag party in Veracruz with our late buddy Dhul Fiqar. Or thinking it was a bad idea to hit the Council meeting in Tbilisi whether or not we had official permission from the Brotherhood’s not-so-omniscient committee of bickering. I can’t see you two getting’ all weepy about collateral damage the way Adrian would. How’d he talk you around into stopping me?”
“We helped you before we-” Anjali said.
“Before you learned Adrienne was alive and was manipulatin’ us all from behind the curtain like the Great and Powerful Oz?” Harvey asked genially. “Great and Powerful Ozzette? Ozma? Whatever.”
They both started this time, and looked at each other. He laughed, scooped up a few of the meatballs, and chewed. When he’d swallowed:
“You thought I didn’t know? Or that I had some sort of Wreaking planted in my brain? Hell, you can tell from this distance that ain’t so. Check on it, I won’t bite. Just be careful ’cause it would be truly tragic if this gun went off.”