Pamela Landy: This is Jason Bourne, the toughest target that you have ever tracked. He is really good at staying alive, and trying to kill him and failing…just pisses him off.
– THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
The road to Ulaanbaatar was paved with trucks, yaks and horses. The sights and sounds were an exotic tonic for my nerves. I should say that I usually do not get nervous. However, I usually do not have this much going on. I tried to scan the crowds as we moved toward the edge of town, on the very slim chance that I could spot Dekker and maybe take him out before Ronnie arrived. No such luck.
Plan A was to ambush him. Missi still hadn’t sent me any information, and I was on edge. There was always the old standby of slipping on a banana peel (which has worked so many times it’s ridiculous) or falling in the bathtub, but I wasn’t sure I could maneuver it after all the wrestling (or if he was staying someplace with an actual bathtub)…if I was lucky enough to advance through the competition.
In the end, I’d do whatever I could to finish the job. There was no other option. And if it had to look like foul play, I could make sure Ronnie knew how bad this guy was. Damn, this woman was making my usually mess-free life a mess.
As we pulled into the campground area, I found these worries slipping away. It was as if the world exploded in color. The brilliant blue sky fused with the blindingly green grass. People were covered in bright silks of every color imaginable. The cool air softly mingled with the heat from the sharp sun. Sounds of music and laughter competed with the smells of food and beer. It was home to me. A carnival. I felt like I belonged.
Yalta barely waited for the truck to come to a complete stop before he hurried us into a practice session. In fact, men were wrestling all around us as we went through our routine, warming up muscles that were tense from riding in a beat-up truck down bumpy roads for hours on end.
My shoulder was feeling better, and that gave me a small surge of confidence. I’d need it. All the wrestlers around us looked either a lot younger or a lot bigger than me. There was no doubt they all had more training too.
“Focus, Coney!” Sansar-Huu swiped me on the back of the head playfully, and I resumed my workout.
Something about hard work in the hot sun surrounded by bloodthirsty, happy people made me feel stronger. By the end of our training session I was spent but relaxed. Sansar-Huu shoved a cold glass of beer in my hands and I gulped it down. I’d really missed cold beer. That seemed to make the carnival setting complete.
“Hey! Cy!” Veronica’s voice gave me a little shiver I was not prepared for. I turned to see her walking toward me. Her smile filled me with something I hadn’t felt in decades.
“Look what Odgerel made for me!” She spun around in a silk deel the color of an orange sunset. The trim was brown fur, and for some reason this made her green eyes sparkle. I was stunned. Ronnie looked lovely in it. Ironic, isn’t it? The deel covered everything. And yet she’d never looked more beautiful.
I pulled her hard against me, kissing her deeply. She responded to my body, and it occurred to me that I might need her deel to cover my arousal. But I couldn’t let go of her lips, her body. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to say no tonight.
Veronica sighed and buried her face in my chest. I just held on to her, afraid to let her go…go where?
“Oh!” She laughed as she finally pushed away. “I forgot to tell you! Arje is here!”
Well, that was a buzz kill. And I wouldn’t need her deel to cover me anymore. “Great,” I managed.
“We’re going to meet him for a drink! Come on!” With a smile that cut right through me, she dashed off into the crowd.
I barely managed to shrug on my deel before I spotted the two of them sitting on a blanket by the tent with the beer.
“Sit down!” Ronnie motioned me toward her.
“Dekker.” I nodded my greeting and extended my hand. I had promised Veronica I would help her, and a simple courtesy was as much as I could do. Besides, the sooner she interviewed him, the sooner I could kill him.
“ Bombay.” Dekker took my hand and shook amiably enough, but there was a deadly caution in his eyes. I couldn’t blame him. Why shouldn’t he be suspicious of me? If he really knew what I was going to do to him in the next two days…
“I told him about my thesis, and Arje agreed to an interview,” Ronnie was saying to me. I pulled myself out of my thoughts of murder and became the nice guy she knew me to be.
“So, Ronnie says you’re a carney?” Dekker asked.
It pissed me off that he used my nickname for her. And it pissed me off that she didn’t mind it.
“Yes. A carney with a strange obsession for fighting methods.” I laughed forcibly. “So what is it you do?” Normally I don’t ask Europeans that. They consider a question like that to be extremely rude. For once, I didn’t mind playing the obnoxious American.
“Oh, I’m in the military…” he answered blithely.
Of course he wouldn’t say he was a bloodthirsty mercenary who had taken the lives of women and children for the highest bidder. The intel I’d had on him mentioned an episode of ethnic cleansing he’d engineered in Africa that involved mutilated mothers and children who had been left to struggle for their next breath as he fled the country to his vacation home in the Bahamas with a suitcase full of euros.
“Really? That’s amazing!” Veronica cried. “I could use a proper military perspective on my thesis.”
I hated that she gushed over him without knowing the monster he truly was. It took everything I had to remain calm and casual on the outside.
“Damn,” Ronnie said. “I wish I’d brought my digital recorder.” Her face brightened. “I could run back and get it!”
I interrupted before she could leave me alone with this bastard. If she did, she’d just find him in pieces when she returned. And I couldn’t have that.
“Let’s just make plans to meet up again,” I said quickly. “I’d like to get back to camp and rest for a bit.” I turned to Dekker. “My zazul’s been working us since we got here. Don’t know about you, man, but I’m too old for this shit.”
Dekker grinned. “I’m right there with you on that, Cy.” He looked at Ronnie, taking her hand in his. “Say tomorrow around noon?” Before I could crush his spine (something my grandmother taught me how to do using my elbow), he bent to kiss her hand and strode off.
“You aren’t jealous, are you?” Veronica asked as we made our way to the camp.
“Of course not,” I answered. But I was. The thought of Dekker speaking intimately to her, touching her, drove me crazy.
“I think you are,” she teased, and took my hand in hers. It was soft and warm. Just like her body that first morning after making love all night. The tension in my shoulders released a bit.
“My shoulder is just bothering me,” I lied. “Zolbin threw me and I think I sprained it.”
Veronica frowned, then looked at my right shoulder. “Oh. Well, I’ll take a look at it when we get back.”
I laughed. “And just what are you looking for? Have you ever seen a sprained shoulder before?”
“No.” She winked. “But I’m sure Odgerel has something involving goat intestines and yak urine that I can put on it to make you feel better.”
I tightened my grip on her fingers. “Oh, I think you can do something better than that.”
“No. I promised Chudruk.”
This caused me to jerk to attention. “Chud? Why did you promise him that?”
“Because he has some money riding on your performance here.”
I looked at her sidelong. “I didn’t think a girl like you approved of gambling.”
“Well, let’s just say I’ve loosened up a bit in the last few weeks.”
“Maybe you could give me a demonstration of how loose you are willing to be?”
She pushed me away. “Not if I want to lose the money I’ve bet on you too.” Veronica laughed and ran toward our group. All I could do was stare. That woman was full of surprises.