Joe Schreiber - Perry's killer playlist

“Forget it,” I said. “Not my business.”

“When I first came here, my life had been torn apart by what happened to my sister.” The smile slipped away. “I was consumed by rage and grief. Erich taught me many things.”

“Okay.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You should not ask questions, Perry, if you do not want answers.”

“Whatever.”

“You are jealous.”

“Please.” I felt the tips of my ears glowing hot, a feeling that I hated, especially because I knew it was obvious to anyone looking at me that I was blushing. “You and me-”

“Are you still virgin, yes?”

“Okay,” I said, “ so not a relevant topic of conversation at this point.”

“That woman Paula. All the time that you were together, you and she did not ever-”

“She wasn’t the one,” I blurted out. I don’t know where that came from. I certainly didn’t intend on telling Gobi any more than I already had about my own life, and up till that moment, I’d never really thought about why Paula and I hadn’t had sex. I’d just assumed it was my hang-up, virginal inertia, fear of the unknown, whatever it was, and dealt with it in private, on my own. Yet here we were in the middle of Switzerland, dissecting the whole thing under bright lights like the squirming toad that it was.

“You are looking for the quiet type?” she asked.

“Actually,” I said, “at this point I’d settle for the not-actively-trying-to-kill-me type.”

“I read all those e-mails you sent, Perry. Every last one.” Now she was sitting directly in front of me, so close that I could hear her breathing. “You know how hard it was for me not to answer? To not tell you where I was?”

“Yeah, well, you did the right thing,” I said. “I mean, we can’t even share the same continent without somebody turning up dead.”

She made a mock frown. “Is deal-breaker then?”

“What?”

“Me and you.”

“Is bigtime deal-breaker, yeah.”

“Well, whoever she is”-Gobi smiled again and picked up the dishes, putting them in the sink-“I hope you find her before you get yourself killed.”

After a late breakfast I lay down on Erich’s couch, propped my head on the armrest, and let my eyelids sink shut. I’d only intended to rest for a minute, but last night’s trip must have completely sandbagged me, because when I finally opened my eyes, long shadows had filled the studio, and it felt like evening.

“What time is it?” I sat up, disoriented, trying to make sense of the room around me. “How long have I been asleep?”

Erich looked down at me. “Most of the day.”

“You didn’t wake me up?”

“You looked like you could use the rest.” He was wearing a white judogi with a thick belt and heavy weave that I only recognized because I’d taken a year of judo back when I was nine.

“What’s going on? What did I miss?”

“Erich?” Gobi’s voice came from the doorway. She was looking at Erich’s white martial arts uniform, an expression of pure, childlike pleasure on her face. “Can we?”

“You must promise,” Erich said. “Not full strength.”

Gobi nodded. “I will show mercy on you.”

“I meant for your sake.”

“I know what you meant,” she said, and followed him into the gym.

Twenty minutes later, after Gobi had grabbed Erich and flipped him over her shoulder onto a pile of gym mats, I watched him walk over to where I was standing-okay, cowering-in the corner by the gun rack. He was sweating and breathing hard, rubbing his elbow and grinning ruefully.

“I’d hate to see full strength,” I said.

He didn’t answer right away. On the other side of the gym, Gobi stood barefoot, emptying a bottle of water over her head, shaking the droplets off her hair. She was wearing a matching judogi to Erich’s, and it fit her curves perfectly, as if it had been custom-made and waiting here for her to come back.

In the sparring ring, she and Erich had moved together like two people who knew each other’s bodies on an intimate level, striking and spinning and taking hold of each other with a level of familiarity, even pleasure, that told me everything I could’ve already guessed about their former relationship. Watching them had made me feel like a voyeur, as if I were spying on something private.

After they’d finished, I looked around at the other bags and sparring gear, then back at Erich, and said the words I thought I’d never speak.

“Teach me to fight.”

Erich looked at me out of the corner of his eye, bemused. “I do not think so.”

“I do think so.” I stood up. “Come on, right now, let’s go.”

“Perry, I spent three years training Zusane.”

“Her name’s Gobi,” I said.

“Regardless. The conditioning alone takes a lifetime of discipline.”

“Oh yeah?” Already the logical side of my brain realized that of course he was right. What I wanted was the equivalent of that scene in The Matrix where Neo needs to be able to fly a helicopter and just plugs the information instantaneously into his brain. “We’ll just see about that.”

“Why do you suddenly want to learn how to fight?”

“Self-defense.”

“Against…?”

“You know, whoever.”

Erich looked at me thoughtfully. The clear, nearly colorless disks of his eyes seemed to take my full measure, and as much as it irritated me, I felt like what he was seeing was probably an accurate indication of who I was at that moment-desperate, way out of my league, the emotional equivalent of a naked mole rat.

“You do not need to worry about her.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, wondering if he had any idea of what she’d put me through so far.

Erich just shook his head. “She will always have your back. Simply say to her, As tave myliu .”

“What’s that mean?”

He smiled again, faintly. “Just some conversational Lithuanian.”

“Perry?” Gobi had ambled over, her hair and uniform soaked and, I couldn’t help but notice, semi-transparent, clinging to her skin with the water she’d dumped over it. She offered me her hand. “Do you want to play?”

We started with judo. It was also where we ended. Gobi said she’d show me a basic two-armed shoulder throw, as simple as it got. Then she stuck her elbow under my arm and before I knew it I was upside down on the floor, my spine feeling like it was shattered like a discarded jigsaw puzzle.

“Perry?” Her face and Erich’s appeared above me, looking down, neither of them looking especially concerned. “You are okay?”

I tried to say no. But talking involved breathing, and I still hadn’t figured out how to do that. After a moment I heard Gobi say something about hitting the shower, and I discovered that, left alone, I could probably crawl back to my feet.

“She is not well,” Erich said as the two of us walked back into the living quarters.

“Her?” I managed, trying to ignore the cracked-open feeling across my sternum, as if someone had done open-heart surgery on me without putting me to sleep first. “What about me?”

“She told me that she failed to complete her mission in Venice.”

“Armitage? Believe me, she didn’t fail.”

“The first target,” Erich said. “The man disguised as a priest. It was the first time that ever happened.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I thought of the bald guy in the steamer trunk opening his eyes in the canal, and looked back at Gobi in the gym. “But she seems okay now.”

“The corticosteroids that I gave her stopped the bleeding and restored her strength temporarily, but…” Erich shook his head. “I am not a doctor. My medical skills are limited to emergency field trauma techniques that I learned in the Swiss army, and also what I have picked up over the years here. But since I saw her last, her condition has worsened considerably.”