“Miss Rakovich? Cream or sugar?”
“Both, please,” Anastasia said. It was clear that Martya knew her preferences, she’d already been reaching for the tongs, but just as clear that you weren’t permitted to assume in this particular dance. Kacey suspected that at a later time, Anastasia was going to grade Martya on her performance.
Kacey realized as she watched that Anastasia never wasted a chance. Martya, who was “intelligent and quick at her studies” was being given an opportunity to hear English being used in casual dialogue and practice her social skills. And she and Tammie were being presented by a remarkably calm and well balanced teenager who was, nonetheless, a member of a fucking harem. Two birds, maybe more, with one stone. Talk about a fucking pro.
Then she really thought about it. Adams was the classic SEAL master chief, a total pro at “killing people and breaking things.” They didn’t have to “ooh-rah!” about their time in service; they just had to say “I’m a SEAL Master Chief.” Pro. The men she’d seen in uniform weren’t swaggering around with their guns. They were clearly on some mission with a purpose. They might not be pros, yet, but they were going there with a purpose. And “Jenkins”, if that was his real name, well he was a guy who had walked onto an island with over thirty armed terrorists holding it, walked off it having killed every one and survived the resulting nuclear blast. Pro.
She suddenly let out a mental breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She was dealing with professionals. Experts. Since she’d gotten out of the military, and most of the time in the Marines, she’d had so little opportunity to deal with really expert professionals she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it. And this harum-scarum hiring procedure had scared something deep in her soul, because it didn’t seem professional. But the whole movement had been greased. She and Tammie had moved from one prepared position to the other. She wasn’t even sure what the visa entry requirements were for Georgia; there had been a polite man at the airport who had whisked them past customs and into a car, driven by a polite and professional English-speaking driver that had the look of “distinguised persons protection” all over him. That driver had brought them to the bird which was flown by guys who, while not at her and Tammie’s level, were good, competent, bird drivers.
It also said something about their being hired. If that was the caliber of people that “Jenkins”, the “Kildar”, surrounded himself with, then he obviously considered them in the same league. That was actually a bit daunting, but she wouldn’t be a pilot if she really was challenged by it. She knew she was a fucking pro. And so was Tammie. It would be nice to work with competent people again.
The dying part would suck, admittedly, but she’d just have to make sure she didn’t.
“Now that we are settled,” Anastasia said, “I will tell you a bedtime story, yes? It is the story of how the Kildar came to be the Kildar.”
“I’d assumed he was knighted or something,” Tammie said, smiling at the small joke.
“No, he simply bought the farm,” Anastasia said, smiling in turn. “The idiom has been explained to me, yes? It is a euphemism for dying. What happened was that he got lost. Very simple, no? And he found the Valley of the Keldara. He was looking at possibly being caught here all winter; the snows are very bad and the roads… not so good. So he inquired about some place to stay. There were no rooms for let so it was suggested that he consider buying the farm of the Keldara. That was a large item, but he did so. I have never asked him why, but he bought the farm.”
“Which is?” Tammie asked. “I mean, how big is the farm?”
“The entire valley,” Anastasia answered, taking a sip of tea. “It is a very large farm.”
“I can actually guess where he got the money,” Kacey said, sarcastically. “It turns out we’ve met before. When he set off a nuke in the Caribbean.”
“I have heard something of this,” Anastasia said. “He is… quite extensively scarred. He does not flaunt them, you understand. But I sometimes ask ‘Where is this from?’ Sometimes he will tell me something. ‘That is from my Caribbean vacation. Fortunately the hair grew back.’ I later pick up that he was shot and a nuclear weapon was detonated. Others… he does not answer. Or he says ‘Here and there.’ Yes, he has made his money from ‘killing people and breaking things.’ Sometimes he finds someone that needs killing, something that needs breaking, and then he informs the appropriate government that their problem has been erased. And they pay him money for solving their problems. Sometimes governments tell him about a problem. And when he solves it for them, they pay him money. They do not tell him, ‘There is a man named Boris. He lives on such and such a street.’ Unless this Boris is such a bad man that he is worth millions of dollars and he is somewhere they cannot reach. What is the reach of the United States, yes? What is the reach of Russia? But the Kildar can reach where they cannot.”
“I get the picture,” Tammie said. “Freelance James Bond.”
“Including the women, yes?” Anastasia said and then really smiled. It turned out that she had dimples, the perfect bitch. “He has a harem, yes. But he could have a harem anywhere, I think. He is very much all man, but not stupid in bed. Very not stupid. I will explain about the harem in a bit, but I must add that recently, due to some other things I will not talk about without his specific permission, he had to find somewhere for a fairly large number of… call them ‘fallen women.’ He did so, a school in Argentina, and paid for them to go there and for their education. Since he had this school available he asked the girls who were in the hareem if they wished to leave. Two did, one who was younger than he was willing to broach and another who… well she did not have any interest in sex at all. I then, at the Kildar’s insistence, pressed the other girls for why they wanted to stay. And they were definite about wanting to stay. All of them said that they liked it here and ‘why should I go to some school where I will be forced to hide cucumbers from the kitchen when I have the Kildar?’ ”
“Gotcha,” Tammie said, chuckling.
“I tell you this not to… pander for the Kildar, you understand?” Anastasia said, for the first time hurriedly. “But so that you can feel more comfortable with the situation. The Kildar is… How was it said: Neither fish nor fowl nor red meat. He is in a condition, a situation, for which there is no American custom or rule. He has to find his own middle ground in everything. I think, had things not happened the way they did, he would have just used local prostitutes for his needs. But… ”
“He saved my life,” Martya said, quietly. “Perhaps I would not have died, but my life would have been gone. For that I owe him everything. But I would leave but for one thing: In one more year I can also have the Kildar. For that I would give much. Shana was barely thirteen, too long for her to wait. And she told me that she was scheming of ways to get back when her time was up.”
“Martya was part of a group of girls from the local farms and villages,” Anastasia said. “She and the others had been sold to, or in one case kidnapped by, the Chechens. They Chechens made the mistake of also stealing a Keldara girl. The Kildar killed them for their mistake. But he then had seven girls with no place to go. Their families did not want them back. So they had no where else to go. The Kildar was unable to find a school for them at the time so he brought them into his household as concubines. They are not whores, they serve only the Kildar. And in more ways than sex and fetching and carrying, but that is too complex a subject for today. Know that they are all volunteers and while your society considers them young, in this society they would mostly be already married. The fact that they were not was what caused them to be as the saying goes ‘sent to town.’ ”