Columbus (25 page)

And three, I’m sure he didn’t read
The Compleat Angler
carefully, if at all. Otherwise, he might have come across a passage in the fifth chapter. A passage I read over and over. A passage I memorized. It reads: “for you are to know that a dead worm is but a dead bait, and like to catch nothing, compared to a lively, quick stirring worm.”

Risina looks up to see Svoboda coming at her with his gun out, his finger on the trigger. He has his free hand with his index finger covering his lips, signaling not to make a sound. On his face is a grim satisfaction, the look of a fisherman who first feels a tug on his line.

“Tomas Kolar!” I scream from his left, where he’s not expecting me, and he stutters for just a moment, the surprise of that name and the surprise that I know it and the surprise of where I’m coming from all combine to provide a half second’s hesitation. He pulls the trigger, just as I launch at him, and the shot goes off wildly, plugging into the opposite side of the sofa from where Risina is perched.

Now she does scream as I take him down to the floor and pound his gun hand into the wood, once, twice, and he gives it up, letting it go while swinging his elbow around in an attempt to shift the leverage.

I should’ve shot this fucker when I rounded the corner and saw him with his gun hand out and up but I couldn’t be sure I’d force him to miss unless I took out his arm with my bare hands.

He wallops me in the cheek with that loose elbow, and this is the fighting in which Archibald’s report said he excels, close-contact grappling, and again he smashes me in the ribs. Before I can get my hands around him, he sees an opening and flips me over onto my back and in seconds, I can feel his teeth breaking through the skin of my neck. He’s a street fighter, a dirty fucking lunatic, and everything is fair game.

The smell of blood fills my nose, and I just have a second to think
my blood
,
goddammit
, and I’m going to have to do something drastic and do it quickly. I use all of my strength to buck up like a Brahma bull, flipping my entire body over and my defensive move does the trick, his teeth come off my neck and he slides across the wood toward the door, toward his gun.

Just as he reaches for it, Risina’s boot kicks out, sending the pistol flying toward the bathroom, and both Svoboda and my eyes track it all the way till it comes to a stop equidistant from both of us. Our eyes lock once more and I can see him make the calculations instantly . . . can he get to the gun before I do?

Risina jumps away, pushing her back against the wall like she’s trying to disappear through it. She holds her breath, watching, waiting.

Svoboda’s expression turns to fire as he decides against going for the gun. Instead, he springs around and throws open the front door, fleeing, just like he did when his bullets ran out.

Without thinking, without looking at Risina, I leap after him, bursting into the hallway like a missile and I close the gap between us in what seems like seconds. There won’t be a chance to regroup, a chance to play this tragic drama out on another stage. This ends here, tonight, and so help me God, it only ends one way.

He jumps inside the open elevator a half step before I do and turns to receive me and I plow into him with the full force of my weight, lowering my shoulder like a ram and hitting him square in the chest.

His back smashes into the wall of the car, but he absorbs the blow and tries to get his fingers into my eyes as we lock together in the three feet of space.

I shake my eyes free and am able to ball my fist and throw a blow directly into his stomach with everything I have. The air rushes out of his lungs and in that instant, I have him. My hands immediately clamp on to his throat like a vise, and no matter how much he thrashes, and how wildly he kicks, and how desperately he paws, I do not loosen my Beowulfian grip.

I can feel the elevator car descending as Svoboda continues to claw at my fingers, trying desperately to pry them off his throat. Maybe we bumped into the button during the initial impact or maybe someone below is waiting on the car, but my concentration on the task at hand doesn’t flag. I am not going to let go and he knows it.

It won’t take long now. I wonder what his final thoughts are as I watch his eyes begin to roll backward. Is he thinking it is fitting he’s going to die not by gunshot, but with a man’s fingers clasped around his throat? Is he thinking about all the times he’s been on the other end of this situation, that he’s been the one to kill a rival assassin with his bare hands? Is he thinking about where he must have gone wrong? Is he thinking about Risina, about how I used her as living bait?

If I were Svoboda, I know what I’d be thinking. I’d be thinking I shouldn’t have taken this job.

Risina’s face is as white as a gravestone when I enter her apartment. I was going to tell her everything. Maybe I should have done it sooner. Maybe it would have made a difference.

She crosses the room and has her arms around me and her face buried in my chest before I can react, squeezing with all her strength. I hold her as tightly as I can, losing myself in it, my mind blank.

When she finally loosens her grip and leans back, her face has regained its color. Her voice is strong, though there is a slight quiver in it.

“Is he . . . ?”

“Yes.”

She nods. “I think we should leave now.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Outside her apartment, Rome is at once both quiet and alive. We walk up the sidewalk in the general direction of the train station, my arm around her waist, leaving the body, leaving that life behind.

I wonder how soon Italy will call to Risina after we leave. I wonder if she’ll find it difficult not to answer.

EPILOGUE

WE’VE COME TO LOOK FORWARD TO THE AFTERNOON SHOWERS, WHEN GRAY CLOUDS GATHER OVER THE MOUNTAIN LIKE MISCHIEVOUS SCHOOLCHILDREN BEFORE HEADING DOWN THE HILL TO DROP BUCKETS ON OUR HEADS.
The air cools as the wind picks up, blanketing the village in a thick sheet of mist. Then, just as quickly, the sun emerges as though from a short nap, and chases the clouds out to sea. Shunned, abandoned, they thin out and fade to nothing.

The only outsider I’ve talked to since coming here is Archibald, once, soon after we arrived. I took a bus to a distant town and purchased a pre paid mobile phone.

“You gone, Columbus?”

“I’m gone.”

“Good. Your tracks are covered. So stay gone.” And he hung up.

I’ve had a few months since then to tell my story, and I’ve spooled it out for Risina slowly, afraid too many details about my life would lead to a conflagration, burning down the relationship before it had a chance to build. After the showers, when the beach is at its coolest, we lie in the sand, and she lets me talk. Usually, her knees are up by her chest, her arms wrapped around them, her eyes focused on mine. She nods encouragement when I hesitate, or asks for clarification when I leave out details, or presses me to repeat something if I recount it too quickly. Never once does she flinch, though I can sometimes see grief in her eyes.

I tell her of my mother, and Abe Mann. Of Pooley and Mr. Cox. Of Vespucci and the man who called himself Hap Blowenfeld. I tell her of two men named Ponts and Gorti, of a bookmaker named Levien, and a girl I once loved named Jake Owens. I tell her of all my assignments, all my jobs, all my fences, from Vespucci to Ponts to William Ryan to Archibald Grant. I tell her of Anton Noel, of Leary, of Llanos, of Svoboda. Finally, I tell her of Ruby.

She asks me about the end, the incident in her apartment. I explain to her about getting inside my target’s head, about trying to see the world as he sees it. That I have used this technique throughout my killing career as a psychological mechanism, that once I am inside my target’s head, connected to him, then I can sever the connection and continue to do what I do. I tell her how I applied that to Svoboda, that by being his target, he became mine.

When I discovered that Svoboda on several occasions killed the girlfriend, mistress, lover, or wife of his targets, I knew the best play was to use Risina as bait. To settle into a routine, meeting her after work each night, going to dinner in a conspicuous restaurant, retiring to her apartment, until Svoboda picked up on the pattern and attempted to exploit it. From Archibald’s file, I knew I was better than him. That I could beat him. I
knew
it.

When he stole the motorcycle and had the book, I knew it wouldn’t take long for him to find her. I couldn’t leave until he did. If we ran, he would follow. So while he stalked, I planned the trap. Dangled the living bait, let it wiggle in front of him, and then pulled the line when he struck.

Risina takes this information the same way she’s taken everything I’ve told her: as stoically as Epictetus. I don’t know if I was expecting her to get angry, abusive, maybe to slap me for admitting I used her as bait, but she does none of these. Instead, she closes the distance between us and presses her lips to mine. When night comes, we cross the beach to our home and go to bed without eating. Sometime in the night, I hear the shower going. How long she’s been in there, I have no idea.

She appears in the doorway, her hair wet, swept back from her forehead, framing her face. She is naked, and with the moonlight snaking through the window, her body is exposed, vulnerable.

“I know your name isn’t Columbus,” she says softly, swallowing, gathering her strength. “And I know it isn’t Jack Walker. You didn’t know me when you met me, and I realize now you would have never given me your name. I understand . . . I realize I don’t know your name, your real name.”

She folds her arms across her body. Her eyes never lower, never leave my face.

“So what I want to know . . . what I have to know . . . what is your name?”

And I tell her.

COLUMBUS
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EGASUS
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OOKS
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New York, NY 10004

Copyright © 2009 by Derek Haas

First Pegasus Books edition 2009

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ISBN: 978-1-4532-1590-6

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