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"Couple weeks."
"Oh, psh," she said, waving a hand. "And you're trying to find the bottom of a bottle already?"
"I don't mind fucking over a bad guy, but doing it to a good person never sits easy on me."
To that, she snorted. "There are good people in the world?" she asked, only half joking.
It was easy to get cynical when you spent your time wading around with the filth of the world. But I imagined it was a problem that was exasperated by being a woman, by having those filthy hands try to touch you, undermine you, take advantage of you.
It was probably hard to see good in anyone in her world.
"Not a lot of 'em," I agreed. "Which is why screwing over one of them sucks."
"Fair enough," she agreed. "Do you know how long your job is for?"
"However long it takes. I haven't gotten any pressure yet. You?"
"Here? About another three weeks, I figure. Then it is onto the next."
"Any hopes?"
"Getting out of this part of the world for a while. But that's unlikely. Guns are being traded here like water. I never thought I would say this, but I would kill for a winter. A good, cold, Russian winter. Or Kazakhstan winter. Hell, even a Canadian winter."
"Can't see the arms trade being that strong there right now."
"A girl can hope," she told me, raising her glass like a toast before drinking. "What about you?"
"I'd trade you covers. I want to be in the action."
Except, if I was being perfectly honest, I didn't want to go anywhere now.
I didn't want to go.
It was new for me.
I was always ready to toss my shit into a bag - or leave town without it - when the need arose, when a job went south, when it was time for something new.
I had fallen for different countries, had made attachments in my soul, but I was a rootless person. I didn't like settling anywhere for any length of time.
But there was no denying it as I sat there; I wanted to stay.
I wanted as many days with Mack as possible. I wanted to hear that laugh, see that smile, feel her soft skin, experience the sweet sound of her coming for me.
"First day of training," Not-Alice - like I was Not-Mikhail - started, making me start.
"What?" I asked, watching the bartender pour me another round.
"First day of training, what did you learn?" she asked.
"A lot of things."
"But the most important," she insisted. "It's the one that makes it possible to be able to do this for more than a few months."
"Am I supposed to guess?"
"Don't get emotionally involved in an operation," she told me with a raised brow.
Right.
She was right.
That was the absolute first thing we were taught.
You couldn't get emotionally involved.
You never knew when your asset, someone who had become your new drinking buddy, would need to be taken out. And you had to hold the gun.
You couldn't get attached.
And yet, pretty much every agent I had come across had done so at least once before. Then suffered for it.
It looked like I would be joining their ranks.
"It's too late," I admitted.
I shouldn't have trusted Not-Alice. In this job, you didn't trust anyone. Hell, you could barely trust your own handler.
But sometimes, trusting no one got old. Sometimes, you had to open up, you had to confide.
If there was ever a safe person to do that with - and, I was convinced, even with normal people, there was no such thing as safety when you were getting vulnerable with them - I figured it was a person in a similar situation to mine.
"So, it's not the wife, right? I've seen her. She has more plastic in her than the ocean."
"It's not the wife," I confirmed, watching as her lips pursed a bit, thinking, rolling the pictures around in her head. "Oh, you fuck," she said, turning back to me. "You absolute fuck." There was a little anger there. For Mack. For her youth and innocence in the whole thing. "She's a baby."
"She can't be that much older than you." Because whoever Not-Alice was, whatever she had going for her that got her noticed, it got her on the radar young.
"I'm legal to do this in all countries," she said, raising her glass. "Well, the countries that allow drinking anyway. Maybe minus a few of the areas in India."
Which put her over twenty-one but likely under twenty-five.
"You have a whole lot of cynicism for someone your age."
"Okay, Grandpa," she said, rolling her eyes. "But is it really cynicism if the world is a genuinely terrible place? I mean, there are men in their thirties running around seducing young girls just to get to their rich, bad uncles..."
"Ha-ha," I grumbled into my drink.
"Really, I'm not judging you that hard. This world is full of harsh lessons for young girls," she said in a way that implied that she'd been a young girl who'd learned some hard lessons herself. And, really, well-adjusted, loved, and cared for kids didn't usually grow up to be spies.
