Red Sparrow

The brass lamp felt good to Nate and heavy enough to throw, but Black’s backhanded parry was a blur, but at least it got him off her, and he closed with impressive speed, more like gliding, really, and Nate stepped inside the point of the blade, and he felt cool air on his arm and on his stomach where his shirt split open, then hot blood running down under his belt and down the front of his legs like pissing himself and the motherfucking sword was the real issue so he held the brocade chair like in the circus and the other sleeve of his shirt opened up and the hot blood pooled in his hand, and the point of the blade caught in the brocade of the chair, and he stepped in, not much more time on the clock, he reckoned, and tried to torque Black’s knee with legs that were losing strength, bad sign, very bad, like his red footprints on the carpet, and the smell of copper in the air.

Dominika looked at them across the room, Matorin moving easily, swinging his Khyber knife, and Nate staggering sideways, sodden clothes red from the chest down. My fault, coming back here, idiotka, he’s going to fight until he dies, she thought. He’s fighting for me, and the rush of realization, He does love me, he is buying me time, and the goryachnost, the rage, picked her up off the floor, and she limped and weaved in an S to the bed and picked up the black pouch. She was looking for a weapon, any weapon.

Black was breathing easily through his nose, and Nate could feel something come loose as the blade ran across his biceps and he grabbed the blade and felt it slide across his palm and through his fingers, like a wet knife through a birthday cake. Black stood looking at him, and Nate concentrated on locking his weak knees so he wouldn’t fall. This Spetsnaz guy no doubt was savoring the next cut, thought Nate, an upward rip to spill his long intestines on the Wilton, or the backhand strike at the side of his neck.

Then Liberté came over the ramparts like something out of Delacroix with one breast out of her bra and she drove the red and the yellow pens into his buttocks and his instinctive back fist knocked her down, head bouncing hard, but Black started melting and rasping, great heaving breaths on hands and knees with red and yellow tails pinned on the donkey, and he crawled toward the knife but was slowing down, crawling in slow motion and shaking his head from side to side, with a narcotized diaphragm and a skull full of barbiturates and the good eye rolling up into his head and the heels drumming on the pink-and-blue carpet and the death rattle and Let’s seriously consider sawing off his head, just to be safe, but Nate’s hand was under Dominika’s left breast and he was glad of the fluttering heartbeat, her eyes opened, and he started to lay his head on the softness but remembered something important, he couldn’t go to sleep just yet, he had a call to make.

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Dominika had taken the phone from Nate’s nerveless fingers and told Bratok where they were, and he listened good and brought a cleared Embassy medic and a trauma kit, they were waiting on the street in the car. How Marty Gable got them both cleaned up and out of the hotel was a miracle, vintage Saigon and Phnom Penh. Bedsheets became bandages, Matorin’s vinegary-smelling jacket was buttoned all the way up, Dominika’s hair was slicked back. Gable motioned to her to yank the pens out of Matorin’s ass, sheath the Khyber blade, check his pockets. He put Nate’s arm around his neck and humped him out the service entrance, telling a limping Dominika to lock the door to the suite and throw the room key in a planter in the hallway.

They collapsed in Gable’s backseat like Bonnie and Clyde, and the wide-eyed medic wrapped Israeli pressure bandages around Nate’s chest, arms, and hand, another around Dominika’s thigh, and taped the diagonal slice across her stomach. Nate’s pulse was thready from loss of blood, so the medic started an IV, and Dominika cradled Nate’s head in her lap, not talking, holding the plasma bag up as Gable slammed through traffic, cursing and pounding the steering wheel.

They banged up the hilly streets into Zografos, under the loom of Mount Ymittos, and Gable helped them up to a top-floor retirée in a quiet Greek apartment block where the Station kept a contingency safe house. They put Nate in the small bedroom, and the medic stayed with him until the Embassy doctor arrived; they were both cleared, but Gable wanted them out as soon as they finished, twenty stitches in Dominika’s leg, three times that for Nate. Gable held Dominika by the shoulders, looking at her over the tops of his glasses, but she shrugged him off and went into the other bedroom to sponge off the blood, insanely flashing to Ustinov, how long had it been? Her breaths started coming in gulps.