Rob Thurman - Chimera

He shook his head slowly at the question. “No . . . no. I’ll wear them.” Slipping them on, he raised both eyebrows. “How do they look?”

“You’re practically a movie star there—Brad Pitt all the way.” The glasses did work well enough at obscuring the differing color of his eyes, making them both appear an indistinct color, maybe brown, maybe hazel, maybe gray. “Just keep them on. Hey, we could always dye your hair again. There’s a whole rainbow of colors out there we haven’t touched on.”

He promptly retreated back into the blankets. “And let’s keep it that way.”

“No guts, no glory, kid.” The car had warmed up and I plowed it through the drifting snow. Not only would Lev be glad to see me, but he would feed us breakfast as well. It had been just over a week since I’d tasted home-cooked food, but it felt like years. I was looking forward to eating off china instead of from a paper bag.

By the time we swept through the wrought-iron gates that guarded Uncle Lev’s house, we were fairly presentable courtesy of the now-familiar gas-station-bathroom sponge bath. Michael was in jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt, the dressiest thing we’d managed to pick up for him along the way. I’d put on a black shirt and a pair of gray slacks that were miraculously unwrinkled from a week in a duffel bag. We weren’t exactly suave by any means, but neither did we look like we were living out of our car with nothing but a ferret and a half-empty jar of peanut butter.

I didn’t recognize the guy at the guard shack, and he fixed me with a suspicious glower until he received the all clear from the house. I was unimpressed. From the size of his gun, he had something to prove; at least Michael would have said so.

Parking the car on the rosy brick drive that circled before the front of the house, I climbed out into the lazy drizzle of snow. I shoved my chilled hands into my jacket pockets and started around the car. Michael joined me and stood looking up at the house with a slightly awed expression. It was something to see; there was no doubt about that. Three stories high with a multitude of leaded glass windows and masses of winter-brown ivy, it could’ve been shipped stone by stone from jolly old England. There were even miniature gargoyles on the roof that spouted water nonstop during the rainy season. It was a testament to the overblown, and Uncle Lev through and through.

As we stood at the door, I gave Michael a last once-over. “You ready? Comfortable with the story?”

He didn’t appear nervous, but considering the past ten years of his life, this was definitely small stuff and not to be sweated. “Nephew of the girlfriend you don’t have. Fairly simple. And if I forget, I’ve written it on my hand.”

I almost looked at the palm he overturned, but caught myself at the last minute. “To think I took a bullet for you,” I snorted as I pressed the doorbell. “And this is the thanks I get. Lip from a snot-nosed kid.”

Looking over at me, he haughtily pushed up the glasses with one meticulous finger. “The privilege is all yours.”

I swallowed the automatic groan that came to my lips as the door was thrown open by Uncle Lev himself. “Stefan, krestnik . My absent godson come home to roost,” he crowed as he pounced on me. Well, pounced can be a relative term when it’s applied to a man just shy of three hundred pounds. Pudgy hands seized me and patted me vigorously on the back before giving my cheeks the same treatment. “You’ve cut your hair. Finally, and after all the times Anatoly nagged at you.” He beamed at me and ran vain hands over his own hair. Slicked back and shockingly black for a man his age, it must have left a nice charcoal imprint every night on his pillowcase.

“Yeah. It just got to be too much trouble.” I reached out to sling an arm around Michael’s shoulders. “Uncle Lev, this is Michael. He’s my girlfriend’s nephew. I’m running him up to see New York for a few days. She insisted. Male bonding and all that.”

Black eyes glittering with good cheer, Lev took Michael’s hand and pumped it. “Nice to meet you, young man. Come in. Come in. You delicate sunbirds can’t handle true weather.”

In the cavernous foyer, I shook the snow out of my hair and took in the vision that was Lev Novikov. It was barely eight o’clock; yet he was already dressed in a snowy expanse of shirt with suspenders of deep blues and purples. His tie matched perfectly and the creases in his pants were knife sharp; at least they were until they reached the swell of his stomach. Both chins were damply clean and gleaming with aftershave. He was a big man, but Lev had made his way through four wives, all of whom had adored the overgrown cherub up to and even after the divorce.

“You’re looking good, Uncle,” I said, grinning. “Working on wife number five yet?”

He returned my grin with a sly one of his own. “I’ve a few damskee ygrodnik in mind, angels all.” Clapping his hands, he went on briskly. “Now, you’re just in time for breakfast, and I’ll hear no arguing on the matter.”

Behind him an unassuming figure stepped forward to take our jackets. Dressed in dark gray, he wasn’t British and his name was Larson, not Jeeves, but he fulfilled Lev’s desire for a butler all the same. He’d worked there nearly twenty years and had seen things that guaranteed him a paycheck miles above that of any other domestic servant.

We walked across marble floors in the traditional checkerboard black and white and found ourselves in a dining room in royal reds and rich gold. The table was already set for three. No time had been wasted once the call had been received from the guardhouse. There were servers massed with eggs, sausage, bacon, and fried potatoes. There were also plushki, a type of cinnamon bun, and bleeny, Russian pancakes with honey and jam. Crystal pitchers of orange, raspberry, and apple juice topped it all off.

“Sit, boys. Sit.” Lev waved an expansive hand. “Stefan, tell me what you’ve been up to. Are you still doing byk duty? Tschh, you could do so much better than . . . ah . . .” He gave Michael a glance and finished circumspectly, “You could do better. I wish you’d let me pull some strings for my favorite godson.”

He had to know Konstantin had been killed. Lev might be retired, but he’d have to be in the ground not to have heard that news. This was his way of hinting around for a bit of private discussion time.

“I think it’s safe to say those days are behind me, Uncle Lev,” I said neutrally as I took a seat and began filling up my plate as my brother did the same beside me. It would be best to keep up the pretense that Michael was in the dark when it came to my career, at least as Lev knew it. Muddying the waters was the last complication I needed at the moment. “We could talk about it after breakfast, if you want.”

“Good.” He poured himself a glass of juice. “It’s always a smart thing to keep your options open, Stefan. Your father would be the first to say.”

“Speaking of which”—I swallowed a bite of bleeny that melted in my mouth like spun sugar—“have you heard from Anatoly? I’ve been trying to contact him.”

“No, no. Haven’t much expected to, what with . . . you know.” He waggled long curly eyebrows that bunched and leaped like black and white striped caterpillars.

The feds. I nodded and stabbed a fork into a piece of sausage. “I know. I was just hoping.”

“I’m more than happy to step in until your father can be here, krestnik . That’s what godfathers are for.” His large head turned to take in the sight of Michael already cleaning his plate and loading up with seconds. “Look at the little ytenok go. You’ve a man-sized appetite in that skinny body, little one.”