Eric Lustbader - The Testament

She ran her nail across the stubble of his cheek, as if tracing out a scar. "Poor baby. If you have to ask, you'll never understand."

He grew angry then, which is what she wanted, his eyes blazing, his reflexes animal sharp. When he made to grab her, she danced lithely away. But she didn't laugh at him. With each of her men she knew where to draw the line, and she never transgressed. That was her secret. She had failed only once, with Dexter Shaw-not that Cornadoro would ever find out.

"Alors, you have the Husqvarna," she said, referring to the sniper's rifle. "It's time to take it to the rooftops."

They stood facing each other: Bravo and Jenny, amid the bustling, noisy, anonymous street. No one in their view paid them the slightest attention, but there were others, hidden from them, who were very much interested in what they said and did.

"I said if I saw you again I'd kill you," Bravo said.

Jenny spread her hands. "Here I am." She had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. How on earth was she going to make him understand?

"Are you armed?"

She laughed, a bitter sound she immediately wanted to spit out like the white under-rind of a lemon. "Do you imagine I'd shoot you?"

"You shot Uncle Tony-"

"Because he was the mole, he was the traitor-"

"You slashed Father Damaskinos's throat after you set fire to his face."

"What?" Her eyes opened wide. "What did you say?"

He came toward her, hating her and at the same time marveling at the naturalness of her performance. "Where is it?"

"If Father Damaskinos is dead you can be sure I had nothing to do with it," she said with a good deal of alarm.

"I'm no longer sure of anything." He'd had enough of her feigned innocence. "The push-dagger-where is it?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I want it!"

"You're crazy! I don't know-"

Taking her by the wrist, he pulled her out of the dust and the grit into the shadows beneath a dilapidated awning. They appeared to be a couple in the middle of a minor dispute, that was all.

"Let go of me," she said quietly, balefully. Despite her best efforts, her anger at what she saw as his obtuseness was getting the better of her. What was the use of trying to explain what had happened to her? One look at his stony, closed-down face told her that he'd never believe her. He didn't want to. And it was this last realization that spun her down into the lowest depths of despair.

"Listen, you," Bravo said, "Mikhail Kartli-surely you know who he is-wants you dead. He had sent one of his men to shoot you for being a traitor to the Order-"

"I'm not a traitor-"

"Shut up!" He jerked her around and she nearly tripped a portly Turk negotiating hotly to buy a copper kettle. He ignored the Turk's brief alarm, ignored, also, the deep circles under Jenny's eyes, the unnatural pallor of her cheeks, as if the pith of her was disintegrating, as if something had devastated her from the inside out. Which was difficult, because it meant ignoring the painful lurch the sight of her gave his heart-despite her lying, her deceit, her murderous treachery he felt… God help him. Again, his heart contracted, and he wondered whether he could forgive himself for loving her still. "The only reason you're still alive is that I told Kartli I'd talk to you-that I'd get out of you whether there are any more moles inside the Order."

"I have no idea. You'd have to ask Anthony-"

Rule's name became a scream as he dragged her back into the street. It was his love, he realized with a shock that literally sickened him, that bore his rage on high. His hatred of her was not a professional hatred-he was ignoring Uncle Tony's admonition to disinvolve himself personally, to keep his head well above the rising tide of the Voire Dei's toxic sludge. He loved her and she was evil. How on earth could that be?

"It's to be the hard way, then," he said with exaggerated grimness. "I'll take you to Kartli. He has all manner of articulated interrogation in mind to make you talk." Her eyes found his, and the part of himself that loved her still shied away from her challenge, disengaging at the last instant, so that a stranger with his mouth said: "In other words, torture."

Jenny was stricken, felled as if by a bolt of lightning. "How can you-? God in heaven, how can you even contemplate such a monstrous thing? I'll fight you tooth and nail right here, you know that."

Something buzzed past her cheek, soft as a moth, causing her to gasp, take an involuntary step back. Just beyond her reach, the portly Turk lost control of the kettle, his arms splayed out, pitching forward into the copper merchant as the bullet caught him between the shoulder blades.

Instantly, the market erupted into a tsunami of shouts, gesticulations and pounding feet. People ran in every direction. The melee flung Bravo and Jenny apart, and Jenny took the opportunity to sprint away into the crowd. There was no point in attempting to follow her, for she was soon lost to his sight and he was borne away on the rising tide of panic.

"You told me-"

"I am a man of my word," Mikhail Kartli said firmly.

"And yet one of your men tried to kill her."

The Georgian stood with his arms crossed. A tattoo of a hawk with open wings showed on the inside of one wrist, a controlled burst of colors on the brown flesh. "Correction. Not one of my men."

"Then who?" Bravo demanded.

"You're doubting me?"

"I'm simply asking."

Kartli's brows gathered darkly and there was a hitherto unknown thickness in his voice. "No, you're accusing."

"That's your interpretation, not an accurate one."

Adem Khalif tried to extricate Bravo, to spirit him away from the rising peril. But Bravo shook Khalif off, stood his ground.

The three men formed a triangle at the entrance to the Georgian's shop. Around them were Mikhail Kartli's offspring-four adult sons, built like their father and no less muscular-and the daughter Khalif had spoken to on their way in. There was a different kind of tension now from the one Bravo had observed earlier. Kartli's clients were gone, the ones still needing to do business hustled away moments ago by the eldest son to whom Kartli had given one of his cell phones.

"Irema, your place is at home with your mother," Kartli said to his daughter.

"But, Father-"

Her protestation was cut short as one of her brothers cuffed her on the side of her head. She uttered no sound, but bit her lip until the blood flowed.

Kartli did not reprimand his son. Instead he said to Irema, "Go this instant. You will be punished, but not as severely as if you force me to send your brother as escort."

Irema glared at the brother who had struck her, and then with naked curiosity, momentarily turned her gaze on Bravo. A moment later, avoiding her father's murderous stare, she fled into the maze of the bazaar.

There was red dust in the street. It coated their shoes and the bottoms of their trousers. It had sunk darkly into the creases of their palms, mimicking dried blood. A kind of animal musk was rising with the dust and the tension, the scent of a pair of mountain goats about to lock horns. In the end, only one of them would be left standing, and they both knew it. This was the end that Adem Khalif was working mightily to avoid.

"Obviously, there has been a miscommunication, a misunderstanding," Khalif said in Georgian. "This is not the time to quibble over such trivial matters and, in any event, Mikhail, wouldn't it be wiser to take the discussion inside?"

No one paid him any mind.

"I could have gotten her to talk," Bravo said. "Instead, an attempt was made on her life and now she's lost to us-the opportunity is lost. I don't consider that trivial."

"She was lost through your inexperience," Kartli said imperiously. "You were the one with her in the field."