Blowback (11 page)

“You don't like?” called a female voice from the bar.

Vanessa looked over to see a sulking Anya, kohl eyeliner beginning to run. She guessed the edgy but wilting teenager was coming down from something—cocaine or ecstasy?

“I like,” she said, swallowing half the shot, breathing in the velvety taste before she set it on the closest empty pool table.
And I need to keep a clear head.

She took more than a few moments to study the lineup—long enough that Sergei began to fidget.
Good.

Then she stretched across the table cushion consciously revealing a little cleavage—once again taking her time—to make the break shot. As a young teen, in Air Force rec facilities, she'd witnessed countless games between Marshall and anybody he could con into losing a few bucks. With his easy looks and charm, he was a born pool shark. Every once in a while, her cocky brother had relented and played Vanessa—and she had learned the hard way to keep up with him—by losing. Until she finally won. Not often, but sometimes.

Three balls bounced soundly off cushions while the fourth, her six ball, found its way into the pocket. But on her next shot the ball missed the pocket and jumped the cushion. Vanessa let her shoulders sink, and she shook her head, faking a half-giggle. “Oops.”

Now the Russian stepped up to the table with his well-used cue stick. He barely gave Vanessa a look—just leaned in and began the play. Two stripes, then three, and in a matter of minutes, he cleared the stripes and pocketed the eight ball. “I win,” he said.

“One more?” Vanessa prompted, still pretending to be flustered.

Sergei grunted, but he waited while she racked the balls, and then he made the break shot. He called solids again, and he'd pocketed five when he lined up for a shot that would demand shooting past the eight ball. He took his time, surveying possible angles. And when she thought he was on the verge, Vanessa leaned forward to whisper two terse and pointed questions in his ear. Striking where she gauged he was most vulnerable.

His ball went wide and the eight ball fell into the pocket. A foul.

He glared at her, visibly enraged. Olaf closed in, but Sergei regained control. He took a drink of his vodka, and Vanessa joined him, taking another sip from hers. Now it was her turn.

She took her shot, neatly pocketing two stripes and opening the table. And then, methodically and with obvious ease, she sank every stripe and followed up by sinking the eight ball.

Sergei downed his drink.

Vanessa walked slowly over to the Russian banker. She pushed the cue stick into his free hand. Their eyes met, and she held his dark gaze. For an instant his lips flicked up at the corners, then just as quickly his lips turned down into his customary scowl. But Vanessa held her smile and she let it reach her eyes.

She leaned close to his ear and simply said, “Make the next meeting.”

•   •   •

As she wound
her way back through the throng upstairs, a new song started, the beat louder, vibrating, and she picked up her pace, striding toward the exit. She couldn't wait to escape through the gilded doors.

She passed more security, tipped the valet, and slid behind the wheel of her Renault. After the encounter with Sergei, she had to shake off the adrenaline. He'd made her play games. Fine. She'd played him, whispering questions:
Where's Valentin tonight? How do you plan to keep your twins alive?

For a moment she felt hollow—duty done. Then something faint and obsessive surged inside her. Even though Chris had punished her, she was still in the game.

She kicked off her heels and touched her bare foot to the accelerator. Then she sucked in a breath, easing back her energy. She had at least two hours of driving before she reached her home in Nicosia—this was not a time to push the limits.

Aware of headlights in her rearview mirror, she merged with the traffic just as full darkness blanketed the island. She was definitely on edge. Had she picked up some of Sergei's fear?

Pauk couldn't quite believe
his eyes when the woman from Vienna strutted out of the private party at the Russian's trendy beach restaurant. He'd been watching from the street, and somehow he'd missed her entrance but not her exit. It didn't matter that she was blond this time, because he recognized the fluid and athletic way she moved. He'd studied her on the YouTube video again and again.

But he wasn't expecting to see her, especially not there.

So now his plan had changed. Instead of following the Russian to see if he could take his kill shot tonight, he made an instant decision to track the mysterious woman wherever she was headed.

Because he knew absolutely: She was bad luck.

Pauk kept his Fiat 500 at a good distance from her convertible so he wouldn't spook her. As soon as her Renault eased into the merging lane for the A1, he moved to exit, too, but maintaining the space, not pushing.

And so he followed, staying well back for now.

•   •   •

Vanessa turned
off the A1 ten kilometers outside Larnaca. Two cars almost immediately followed, and she slowed so they both passed her by—a Citroen and a Fiat. She executed a series of sharp turns on surface streets until, after about fifteen minutes, she headed north again, but this time using the old road to Nicosia. The old road wasn't well maintained, but traffic was light and that made it easier to know if she had unwelcome company. With the top down and leaving behind the infrequent highway lights, she had the sensation of burrowing through a velvety darkness.

•   •   •

As soon as
he'd exited the A1, Pauk was forced to pass her Renault—now she'd marked his Fiat. Cursing, he followed surface streets. She'd pulled the same detection move he often used, and unless he switched vehicles, he had to let her go. He couldn't risk trying to pick up her trail again—too much chance she'd make his Fiat. He cut back toward the A1, resigned but still angry. As he pulled up at a side-street stop sign, a sleek gray Renault convertible raced through the intersection. Hers.

•   •   •

As Vanessa gained
on a slow truck, she pulled right into the oncoming lane and passed easily. Since leaving Larnaca, she'd traveled without incident for thirty minutes, and her hands had steadied on the wheel. She leaned into the winding descent on the lonely road, the Mediterranean at her back, Troodos Mountains ahead. For an instant she closed her eyes and replayed Sergei's reaction to her questions—fury, deep fear, and a flash of relief. He was arrogant, and he would be a challenging asset, but she had the feeling he might prove valuable. She blinked open to the arid, stubbled landscape racing past. Cool air whipped at her hair. Her bare foot nudged the pedal, and the engine surged.

The road wasn't well lit, so she found herself braking abruptly behind a van with only one faint red taillight. She pulled out to pass and noticed a new vehicle—light-colored—now passing the truck in her wake. She couldn't identify the vehicle model, not yet, but when it stayed behind the barely lit van for another eight kilometers, she began to relax again. Except she realized that the van was going slow. And the light-colored car had passed the truck with ease. Why would it stay back now?

She accelerated, driving up hard on the rear of another truck. She pulled out to the right to pass but swerved back into the left lane as two oncoming cars raced by. She tried again, and this time had plenty of open road on which to pass.

She tracked the distant light-colored car in her rearview mirror as it pulled out and passed the slow van. She tensed, and her heartbeat kicked up. Cyprus had recently suffered a rash of car hijackings and highway robberies, courtesy of local criminals and gangs. No way she planned to become the latest victim.

She had another thirty kilometers until she reached the outskirts of Nicosia. From there she'd only be minutes from the soldiers manning the border crossing if she needed them. But it was thirty kilometers of remote road, rough in some stretches, very dark in others, no houses, no farms.

She felt herself settling deeper in the seat, hunkering down for the rest of the drive.

Her Renault had played point car for several minutes, and now the truck behind her turned onto a side road and there was no other vehicle between hers and the light-colored car. At which point the driver switched on his high beams—an obviously hostile move—so Vanessa had to squint into her rear- and sideview mirrors.

Now the driver closed the distance until the other car remained approximately seventy meters behind her Renault whether she accelerated to 125 kph or slowed to 85 kph.

Tracking her, playing with her, psyching her out?

Twice in one goddamn night.
She thought she'd left the games behind with Sergei.

Earlier she'd welcomed the night air and the clarity it delivered. But now the ceaseless rush of night air shook loose images, some of the worst from the past weeks.

A dark heat filled the pit of her stomach, rising through her until she tasted her own rage—for a few wild seconds, the dangerous emotion fueled her before she regained control.

After several minutes, she caught the lights and shape of a battered VW just ahead and felt a fleeting rush of relief as she sped past at 150 kph. She checked her mirror, blinking through the glare as her pursuer passed the VW, too, matching her moves and her speed.

Maybe twenty kilometers, ten to fifteen minutes, now until she reached the outskirts of Nicosia. No traffic from either direction except the two of them and the fading VW in their wake. Was he going to make a move? Did he have a partner waiting somewhere just ahead? Did he want a fight? She could give him one. She ran through her memory of the last stretch of road ahead, frustrated by her inability to recall specific details.

Until she passed a landmark—a long-ago-abandoned truck—and she remembered the old bypass road. Efforts to repair and widen the highway had been abandoned at some point. But the road still existed and ran parallel with the highway for roughly ten kilometers. She was coming up on the turnoff.

She pressed down hard again on the accelerator and at the same time cut the Renault's lights.

Almost instantly she panicked at the abrupt onslaught of darkness and the sensation of speeding into a black vortex. But she breathed through the cold sweat, kept the wheel steady, and felt the first swell of the highway as it passed over a series of rises and dips.

Her eyes adjusted just enough to the dark to catch a visual of the undulating highway ahead, and she counted—one rise, one dip . . . and two . . . and three . . . and four.

At the lowest point of the fourth dip she cut left, the Renault swerving off the road to pass between metal guard posts, so close she thought she heard one steel post scrape her paint. But she was on the old bypass road, sheltered half the time by long-abandoned mounds of road construction debris, the gravel road finally straightening more or less to run on a parallel trajectory with the highway. Now she tracked the other car and she could finally identify it as a Fiat 500. It alternately sped up and braked as the driver tried to figure out where she'd gone.
How the hell was a Fiat 500 keeping up with her Renault? He might have an advantage on a curvy mountain road, but not here on the flat.
She turned the wheel sharply but couldn't avoid some road debris so the Renault jerked and slid while Vanessa weighed her next move.

Brake hard and wait and pray he didn't spot her waiting?

Keep moving but let him get ahead?

Catch as much speed as she could, so she'd cut him off as she merged back onto the main road—then run flat out for the last ten kilometers before civilization?

Just then he cut his headlights.

Both of them traveling on parallel roads in darkness.

And instinct told her he'd spotted her. So it was door number three.

She pushed the accelerator all the way down, fishtailing for the next fifty meters before she regained control.

He was accelerating, too, and gaining. She wouldn't be able to go much faster.

She crested a rise, where the roads converged, positive at that moment she would slam into his Fiat. But her tires hit asphalt just a few meters ahead of him, so her car barely clipped his.

The Renault lurched, and so did the Fiat as it swerved off the road. The world spun wildly until Vanessa slammed against the driver's-side door as her tires got traction one more time.

She sped up again, not sure if she was headed south or north, but then the Fiat's headlights filled her rearview mirror and she switched the Renault's lights back on.

The glow of Nicosia warmed the sky in the distance, so she felt safety ahead and she was ready to accelerate into the last stretch. But then the Renault's headlights illuminated a pale wave flowing across the highway—a herd of animals? Vanessa cut the wheel, and now the Renault spun 180 degrees before it stuttered ten meters to a halt. Dust and tiny specks of straw swirled around her. She was facing the stopped Fiat, fifty or so meters between them filled with the blinding beams of their headlamps. Seconds passed, and she was aware of her own ragged breath and the Renault's engine ticking as she squinted into the glare.

She hadn't stalled out the Renault. It would drive. But where? Should she make a U-turn and race the last stretch to Nicosia? She didn't know if the road had cleared behind her, and she wanted the Fiat's driver to make the first move.

What the hell was he waiting for? Was he going to try to drag her from the car? Or try to shoot her?

If he tried anything, she'd do her best to run him down.

But after what seemed like an eternity, the Fiat began moving slowly. Backing away. Then into a U-turn, too far away for her to see the plates. And then the Fiat disappeared into darkness. At first Vanessa didn't move—couldn't move—

What the hell was that about? A long, elaborate game of chicken?
Did the idea of the border crossing scare him off? What if he wasn't a local and there was something she'd missed?

But then into the new silence rose an irritable bleating, and a high-pitched whistle filled the air. Vanessa unclipped her seat belt and managed to turn gingerly in the driver's seat to see the source of the noise.

Shit
. She'd almost slammed into a herd of bearded goats. She blinked as the herder stepped into view. She went a little rubbery in her limbs. Adrenaline aftermath. She raised her hand.
Hello
,
sorry—“Signommi.”
He stared at her for a moment before hoisting his staff in return. As he shambled across the road, his whistled call rose shrilly over the pallid sea of animals, one indecipherable from the other. Her father's voice echoed sharply inside her from childhood:
Stay present, stay alive.

•   •   •

Ninety minutes after he left
the woman from the video, Pauk sat in the idling Fiat outside airport parking in Larnaca. Undecided. She couldn't have missed the fact that the car chasing her was a light-colored Fiat 500. But there were hundreds of cars similar to his on Cyprus. He'd thought about ditching the Fiat and stealing a car from the long-term parking area. But that created new problems—in case the car was reported stolen before he left the island tomorrow. He could rent a car under his current identity, because his cover was solid. But rental cars could not be driven from the Greek side of the island to the Turkish side. So in the end, he decided to keep his Fiat. He was taking a risk, but it was small—and he was attached to his vehicle and its customizations, which he'd personally overseen.

As he began the drive back to Limassol and the “borrowed” condo that provided an unobscured view of the Russian's penthouse, he replayed the chase toward Nicosia.

He'd already notified his mentor of the woman's reappearance and sent a text of the Renault's license plate. Not that he believed that would lead back to her. He now assumed the plate was registered to a front company. She'd handled the Renault like a professional. And when she'd faced him off in her car, for once, he'd been uncertain how to proceed, what moves to make, whether to eliminate her or let her go. He hated the sense of no ground beneath his feet, as if he stood on a precipice, one foot out over thin air.