Flashback

Geronimo was as Nick had remembered it—a small adobe building that had been a private home in 1750, its entrance area dominated by a large central fireplace with a mantel topped by both a huge floral display and a giant pair of moose antlers—but the restaurant itself was small. Since it was cool and raining out that evening and the porch dining area closed, the small interior seemed crowded. Luckily, given Sato’s girth, they were seated in a corner banquette all to themselves. The two men said little. Nick was finished with his first course—Fujisaki Asian pear salad with sweet cashews and cider honey vinaigrette—and was halfway through his main course of filet mignon “frites,” the hand-cut russet potato fries alone worth killing for, when the memory of his last time here with Dara struck him.

He felt his chest ache and his throat tighten and, like a fool, he had to set down his fork and sip water—Sato had ordered a bottle of Lokoya ’25 Mount Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon for the two of them at a price just slightly less than Nick’s last full year’s salary as a police detective—and pretend he’d bitten into something too spicy to hide his tears and flushed face. Nick’s strongest wish at that moment was that he could immediately go back to his room at the consulate and use one of the last one-hour vials of flashback he’d brought along to call back his dinner at this restaurant with Dara nine years ago. The ache and need was more than mere flashback withdrawal, it was an existential matter: he didn’t belong here and now, eating this fine food with this huge hulk of a Japanese assassin, he needed to be there, then, with his wife, sharing a wonderful meal with her while both of them looked forward to going back to their room at La Posada.

Nick sipped water and looked away until he’d blinked away the idiotic tears.

“Bottom-san,” Sato had said when both were eating again, “have you considered going to Texas?”

Nick could only stare at the big man. What the hell was this about?

“Texas doesn’t accept flashback addicts,” he said softly. The tables were very close together and Geronimo’s was a very quiet restaurant.

“Nor do they execute them as do my country, the Caliphate, and some others,” Sato said. “They only deport them if they refuse or are unable to drop their addiction. And the Republic of Texas does accept rehabilitated drug and flashback addicts.”

Nick set down his wineglass. “They say that getting into Texas is harder than getting into Harvard.”

Sato grunted that male grunt of his. What it signified still escaped Nick. “True, but Harvard University has little use for important life skills. The Republic of Texas does. You were an able law-enforcement officer, Bottom-san.”

It was Nick’s turn to grunt. “Was is the proper tense of that verb.” He squinted at the big security man—or Colonel Death assassin and daimyo, if he were to believe Noukhaev. “Why the hell do you care, Sato-san? Why would you—or Mr. Nakamura—want me in Texas?”

Sato sipped his wine and said nothing. Gesturing toward the emptied plates, he said, “I will be wanting dessert. You also, Bottom-san?”

“Me also,” said Nick. “I’m going to try some of that white chocolate mascarpone cheesecake.”

Sato grunted again, but the grunt sounded like approval to Nick’s wine-sotted ears.

The return trip to Denver had been totally uneventful, thanks mostly—Nick felt sure—to the two black Mercedeses that Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev had sent along as “escort.” Why Sato would trust them to serve that function, Nick had no idea, but with one black limousine eighty meters in front of them and the other eighty meters behind on the Interstate, no one bothered them, even though they’d seen dust clouds suggesting tracked vehicles both to the east and west of their highway.

Sato had ridden in the front passenger seat while “Willy” Mutsumi ta drove, “Bill” Daigorou Okada handled the topside gun, and “Toby” Shinta Ishii sat in the back in a fold-down chair opposite Nick. For the first hundred miles or so, Nick could not put the image of the back of the first M-ATV Oshkosh—all flames, the metal and plastic interior walls melting, with “Joe” Genshirou It’s headless body turning to ash and burned bone in seconds—out of his mind. But when they passed the ambush site north of Las Vegas, NM, he relaxed. Soon he’d taken off his helmet and set his sweaty head back against the webbing and closed his eyes.

What had Noukhaev been trying to tell him?

The last night at the Japanese consulate, Nick had spent six of the eight hours of his sleep period using the last of his flashback. Most of the time he’d spent with the now-familiar hours with Dara—the dialogues just after Keigo was murdered where she seemed to be trying to tell Nick something (and where Nick, absorbed in his own job and the murder case, and in himself, had paid no attention to her attempts).

But to tell him what?