Cat In A Topaz Tango

Does it always come down to this? Naked need? Probably.

In a vague sense, he understood what he needed more: Garry Randolph is the man who knows who Max is and why he ended up here in this condition, and what he really needs. But Garry is a figment now. Revienne is real, and she needs a martini.

“Mein Gott, Michael! Those . . . monsters. They grabbed me off the street in Alteberg, held me overnight in a filthy, dark warehouse. Why? What have I done?”

Her gray eyes narrowed over her Gray Goose vodka gimlet. Nice combo. “What have you done?”

Not enough with you, lady.

That was the trouble with lust. It was utterly unreliable. Secret agents like himself must deal daily with the unreliable, yet must crave the reliable. That was a delusion. God, his left knee ached. The left knee of God. God must have had them, because so many of His devotees kneeled . . . .

Max didn’t believe in luck, in kneeling, in Gods who demanded both, or in good women who turned up fortuitously in bad places. Maybe he didn’t need to get laid that bad.

“Was that the village’s name, Alteberg?” he asked.

“Yes.” She gazed at him over the glittering rolled rim of her martini glass. “I’d gone out for breakfast. You were comatose.”

“Not like in the clinic.” He had dropped the Irish accent. Sounded like himself, whoever that self was.

“No, just from food and wine and . . . overstimulation.”

Her massage.

“You were dead to the world.”

All too much so.

She shrugged. She had wide shoulders for a woman. He didn’t find that unattractive. She must work out hard on her upper body strength. Why?

“That’s when you were kidnapped,” he prodded. “Do you know who? Why?

“No more than you do.” She waited.

He waited.

She ran the tip of her tongue over the cocktail glass rim.

The muscle in his right calf jerked. Overstimulated. The more seductive she was, the less his mind wanted her.

This was a game of cat and mouse. The roles hadn’t been assigned yet. He’d thought he’d needed to find her, to make sure she was safe. He’d thought he’d needed to find her, to prove he could. And he thought he’d needed to find her to seek shelter, to find out for sure if she wasn’t to be trusted.

Now it was all too easy. You’d think a man with a short-term memory loss and two bum legs would want it easy. But he didn’t. Hell, he was Irish. He knew that much. Some people thrive on adversity, and he was one.

He rose from the dim table in the storied bar. Tossed a ten euro tip on the varnished surface.

“I’ve reserved a room in your name. You should be able to rest and freshen up there. I doubt those men will bother you further.”

Her gray eyes flashed fury.

“I’ll be gone before you are in the morning,” he said. Threatened. “Thanks for your help.”

“That’s it?” she said before he could take up his cane and walk. “I nearly break my own ankles walking down half an Alp and I get a drink and a . . . what is it called in the American movies? A kiss-off? You don’t even want to know what happened to me, what those men wanted?”

“Do you know what they wanted?”

Her anger ebbed as she sat farther back into the leather club chair, reassured that he wasn’t leaving quite yet.

“They took me, but they wanted you. It seemed they were sure you would follow. They drove down the mountain slowly. Stopped for lunch! All the while holding a pistol on me.”

“What kind?”

“Black, sleek, how do I know what kind? I am a psychiatrist, not a policeman.”

“And they came straight to Zurich?”

“It’s the biggest city at the bottom of the northern Alps. Anyone leaving the clinic would have to go through Zurich.”

“How did they come across you? Know you? Know you were with me?”

“From the clinic.”

“And they didn’t force you to take them to me in the village?”

Her eyes grew evasive. “They didn’t want to cause a fuss in that little town. They said they’d make their move in Zurich.”

“In what language?”

“English,” she said, surprisingly. “But not American, as you speak. It had a more musical sound.”

“An accent?”

“I suppose so.” She frowned as she sipped again, more deeply. “It wasn’t British English. I’ve heard that on the BBC. Maybe English wasn’t their native tongue. Maybe they were Latvian. I don’t know!”

“Maybe what you don’t know is a safeguard.” He’d slipped back into a soft, nonstagy Irish brogue.

Her eyes widened like a child’s. “Yes! They spoke exactly like that.”

Max smiled, although he didn’t feel like it. The IRA was defanged these days, of its own volition. Why would Irish muscle still be after him? Unless it was the rogue branch, and even then, such a connection was ridiculous. Yet, the accent had enveloped him like a second skin when he’d wanted one to cloud his identity.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You haven’t heard a Celtic accent before?”

“Celtic? You mean Scottish?”

He didn’t correct her because she seemed sincerely puzzled.