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“It’s kind of my thing…so.”
“You’re not a spy. You’re Sean Busby, from Hamilton, Ontario.”
“You lied to me, and I want to know why.”
Now Zoya’s jaw tensed, and the rippling muscles in her fit neck and shoulders twitched. “Don’t act tough with me. I don’t believe it, so I don’t feel the threat you’re implying.”
“There’s no threat implied other than the threat that I get up from this table, grab my bug-out bag, and bug the fuck out of here. Right now.”
She reached across the table, grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the beer. Softly, she said, “No. I can explain.”
Court went silent. His face was stone, but hers reddened, her eyes misted. “I hate that you don’t trust me,” she finally said.
He pulled his hand back to his lap. “And I hate that not trusting you turns out to have been the prudent thing to do. If we’re going to live this life together, we have to be open and honest with one another. If you have a good reason you lied, then I’d like to hear it, because right now I don’t have any idea what is going on.”
“You saw me in the café.”
“I did.”
In the near distance, the gas truck had moved on, but the speaker on the roof continued squawking from a distance. “Zeta Gas! Zeta Gas!”
•••
Zoya could almost see the walls going up around Court; he was angry and hurt and confused, and it uneased her more than she was letting on. She was ashamed. Court was not a trusting person; she might have been the only one on earth he really put his trust in, and she’d violated it. Her voice quivered when she said, “I was going to tell you. I was just trying to figure out what to say.”
“Maybe try the facts on, see how they feel. What happened?”
“What you already know. At lunch today I saw a man that I recognized.”
“Linen suit, hat. Sixty-five?”
“He’s not sixty-five. He’s a healthy seventy or so. His name is Borislava Genrich.”
“A Russian. Wow. This day keeps gettin’ better.”
Zoya heaved her shoulders a little, and then they sagged. “My brother and I called him Dyadya Slava.”
Court bolted upright now. “Dyadya? He’s your fucking uncle?”
She shook her head. “A friend of my father’s. He was always around growing up, he was just Dyadya Slava, his wife we called Tetya Olga. I haven’t spoken to him in over a decade.”
“Why is he in Guatemala, and why was he three tables away from us at lunch?”
“I didn’t say anything to you at the time because I wanted to handle it. To see what was going on. I didn’t think it was a coincid—”
“Of course it wasn’t a coincidence.”
“That’s what I just said! Jesus! This doesn’t have to be an interrogation. I’m going to tell you everything.”
Court’s fight-or-flight reflexes were amping him up. She understood. She took a sip of cold beer, wished like hell she had a shot of tequila in front of her instead, and then she began talking.
•••
In the café courtyard, Zoya Zakharova shot the remnants of her margarita in one gulp, thankful for the tequila right now as she maintained eye contact with the older man across the table. “All right, then, Uncle Slava, what’s this all about?”
Borislava Genrich leaned closer and spoke slowly, his voice masked by the gentle bustle from the other patrons, the sounds from the street behind them, the chirping and singing of birds in the foliage of the courtyard. “You and I have always had a good relationship. Since you were a child. Your brother, too.”
Zoya did not disagree.
