CHAPTER

26

VIVIAN WAS IN THE SHALLOWS, JUST BENEATH THE SURFACE of consciousness. Her mind insisted that something wasn’t right, that it was imperative she emerge, but her mind was ahead of her body, had to reach back and drag her body along with it, upward. She used her elbows for leverage, to prop up her shoulders and head, and then her body was ahead of her mind, needing to wait for it so she could clearly realize that Nikolai wasn’t in the bed. The space under the bathroom door provided enough light for her to find the plane of his bare back. He was standing at that same window opposite the foot of the bed. She chose not to say anything but rather to try to reach him with the silent language she believed they shared. It would be a good time for it, she thought, gathering her thoughts like a sheepdog tending strays. Her will asked him to turn and see that her eyes were open and on him. She transmitted so intently that it seemed she could see her will splashing off the back of his head. Finally, she sat up on the edge of the bed and asked aloud: “Couldn’t you sleep?”

“I got some.”

He replied so calmly it seemed as though he’d been expecting her voice, and she accepted what satisfaction she could from that. “Come back to bed,” she said. “Come hold me. I need the cave of you.”

“In a bit.” He still hadn’t turned.

“What are you doing, anyway? Deep breathing?”

“Watching for the dawn.”

She felt fully awake now. “It’s reassuring to have faith in the inevitable, but I for one would appreciate a miracle now and then. I’m hungry again. I suppose it’s too early for the breakfast that comes with the bedding. What time is it?”

“After four.”

“I’d give my reputation, as paltry as it is, for a glass of milk and a scone or two. Why do you think I’ve been so hungry lately?” When he didn’t answer she wondered how far away his thoughts were. Did they have a secret place they escaped to for a spell, as for a holiday? She hoped so. Secrets, especially secret escapes, were essential. She got up. The painted floor was cold. She yanked the white cotton coverlet from the bed, put it around her over her head like an Arab woman or an Italian saint. She padded to him. “When is dawn supposed to happen?”

“Any minute now.”

“Tell it to hurry.” Her hand found his, found it cold. She put the coverlet around him and herself against him, and thinking he could use the extra warmth she told him she loved him and he shouldn’t ever doubt it. He didn’t say anything, but her forehead was pressed to his cheek so she felt him smile.

By then a slight radiance was defining the horizon. The area of the sky directly in their view was changing from indigo to a purple with just a vague promise of fawn. There would be the green of the countryside, but all greens were still congealed and black, unawakened.

“How did you know that direction was the east?” Vivian asked.

“I didn’t.”

“Then possibly it’s some instinctive thing that your bones and your soul knew. How about Mama Russia demanding that you look her way and do some longing? Couldn’t that have been it?”

He slowly shook his head no but at the same time emitted a grunt that could have been taken for yes.

“Are you aware of how often you grunt? I think you must all be a bunch of bears. I noticed Savich also grunted a great deal. That night when we had dinner at Archer’s, Savich must have grunted fifty times.”

“Okay, no more grunting.”

“No, I’d miss it.” The coverlet slipped off; she pulled it back up around her. “Maybe we should go home today,” she said. “We’ve got some pieces to pick up. We have to legally defect you and everything. From what I understand, it would be a huge help if you were my spouse. How would you like to be my spouse?”

When, he wondered, had she looked into the requirements for defecting? It seemed she was always a stride ahead while giving the appearance that she was only keeping up.

“What a disagreeable word, ‘spouse,’” she went on. “Just a smidge of a sound different from ‘mouse.’ It should be struck from the language. Anyway, to hell with going to the tulips. Neither of us are in need of such repair. London will be good to us. Let’s just catch a flight from Rotterdam. We could be in Rotterdam by midmorning and maybe home by noon.”

London, Nikolai thought, was where everything might be set straight. He would go to 11 Harrowhouse and see Churcher, face up to it, lay the truth out. Churcher would trample all over it but eventually accept it. Churcher was, at rock bottom, a reasonable sort. Pulver worked for him. He could call Pulver off. Certainly it would be easier to straighten things with the System than with the Soviet Union. To his Soviet superiors he’d seriously misstepped, would have to fall.

The low sky was now definitely paling, going from mauve to pink. But everything of the land yet remained untextured, incapable of shadow or vividness. It was as though someone enormous carrying a lantern was ascending the sheer face on the other side of the world, would soon appear and come up over that distant edge. The hush that had prevailed during this dark time now gave way to chirps and trills, and a few of the more impatient birds reconfirmed that they could fly. Night seemed reluctant to leave, had to be chased, and when the sun took over Nikolai and Vivian were not prepared for what it revealed to them. Immediately below and for about a hundred yards out there was fenced pasture, but beyond that for as far as they could see on the left and as far as they could see on the right and all the way to a line of sentineled poplars in the distance—tulips!

Acres and acres of them, not all mixed up but planted in an orderly fashion according to color and species. Nearest was a regiment of intense scarlet. How many rows of those? It looked to be at least fifty. From them, a sharp demarcation to a section of soft golden yellows. Just as many. Then came those of a delicate pink shade, which had as their neighbor creamy whites. On the far side of the whites were countless rows of a salmon pink, and then oranges, cerises, and magentas laid out in swaths across the vast field, each color claiming its territory.

The higher the sun climbed, the brighter the tulips, the more impossible it became for Nikolai and Vivian to remain mere spectators. They felt drawn to participate. They dressed hurriedly. Vivian grumbled to herself now that she had to untie the laces in order to get her sneakers on. She didn’t bother with socks or panties, put on yesterday’s wine-stained shorts and the same T-shirt and oversize cotton knit cardigan. “Originally flowers didn’t have color,” she said while giving her hair a few swift strokes with a Mason-Peerson. “Did you know that?”

“No.”

“I mean, they were all nothing but green. They became colorful to attract the insects they needed in order to propagate. Wasn’t that clever of them? I think flowers think. What’ll we do with these?” she asked, referring to their automatic pistols, which were on the dresser top.

“Leave them.”

“One of those nice Kooper kids might come in and start fooling with them.”

“So hide them somewhere.”

Her first thought was to shove the pistols under the mattress. But what if someone came and made the bed? She glanced around the room. In the wastebasket? What if someone emptied it? No place seemed secure enough. She took off her sweater and armed into the shoulder harness, made sure her Beretta automatic was snug in the holster.

“Why don’t you just put them in your carryall?” Nikolai suggested.

“I don’t want to be bothered with lugging anything.” She put her sweater back on, pushed its huge sleeves up to her elbows, and dropped two loaded clips into a pocket. “Why are you just standing there?”

A what-the-hell shrug by Nikolai. He put on the harness and the holster with his Sig in it, then his windbreaker.

Apparently no one at the inn was yet up and about. Nikolai and Vivian looked for a back way out. They passed through the impeccable kitchen. Vivian grabbed the heel of a black loaf from a basket of yesterday’s bread. It was tough. She bit down hard and twisted it and feared for that one upper left front tooth she’d had capped. They were outside before she managed to be chewing on a chunk. “Tulips came from Turkey,” she said with her mouth full.

“Ups em fa uky” was what Nikolai heard, but he nodded that he understood. He looked up at the sky and thought the day was going to be a pretty one. He inhaled deeply. The air had some of the North Sea in it. He should relax, he told himself, enjoy seeing things, such as the tiny grasshoppers that were being caused to jump by his and Vivian’s strides through the grass of the wide pasture. People, including himself, should learn to appreciate each breath. He should be more like Lev. Maybe that was why Lev liked Gauguin so much; he identified with the artist’s Tahitian laissez-faire. It occurred to Nikolai that he’d never asked Lev why he liked Gauguin, had assumed it was for the same reason his own famous favorite was Turner, the visual astonishment. What Turner could do with this tulip field up ahead!

They had reached the fence that marked the end of the pasture and the beginning of the tulips. There was no gate. It was a string wire fence of three tight strands, probably intended to keep cows or sheep from the tulips. And what tulips they were! The only others equal to them that Vivian had ever seen were in a mixed bouquet in the lobby of the Ritz in Paris. They were a special hybrid, prized for their enormous blossoms that were like chalices, a good six inches long and four in diameter with stems that stood them up thirty inches or more. For a long moment Nikolai and Vivian paused to appreciate the tulips from closer range. They decided they would walk around the field or through it if possible. Vivian crawled between the upper and middle wire strands, and Nikolai was about to do the same when he saw concern cloud Vivian’s face. She was looking back in the direction from which they’d come. Nikolai turned to see the three coming across the pasture: a slight young man on the right, a heavier-set and older man in the middle, and the woman he’d seen on the ferry, the driver of the Saab, on the left. Their intent was obvious by the way they were spaced well apart and the stalk that was in their pace. They were at the midpoint of the pasture about a hundred yards off.

There was no way Nikolai and Vivian could reach the inn and the BMW. Their only alternative was the tulip field. Nikolai climbed through the fence. Immediately, he and Vivian ran full out along the plowed-up edge of the field, stumbling over clods of dirt, one step sinking in, the next coming down on a hardened spot. Nikolai glanced back. The young killer had his gun out. He was sprinting diagonally across the pasture on a convergent course, making up ground, would soon be within firing range. The heavyset man and the woman were coming over the fence. They also had guns in hand now. Without letup Nikolai and Vivian cut to their right and headed directly into the tulips. The first few rows of the scarlet ones let them know how difficult it was going to be. Each row was thickly planted. Leaves and stems had shot straight up out of the soil close together, and the unusual length of the stems that before had been so admirable was now an impediment. Most of the stems stood crotch-high and were a half inch or more in diameter, tough as whips. They resisted being disturbed, lashed at Nikolai’s and Vivian’s legs, seemed to be deliberately trying to trip.

Forty rows in. Nikolai and Vivian dove forward into the shallow depression between rows. They paused there, rolled over to catch their breath and decide their next move. After a moment they heard three forceful spits, each followed by a series of sounds like a razor blade slitting paper. Shots being fired at them from a silenced pistol, bullets tearing through the tulips. How close? The bright red blossoms directly above them had quivered, and several riper precarious petals had given up their hold and dropped. One petal fell upon Vivian’s forehead. Deep red, it looked like a pooling of blood. Nikolai refused to accept that as a portent. There! How easily Vivian directed her breath upward from the corner of her mouth and blew the red away. From those near misses, however, it was evident that their location was exactly known. The swath they had trampled through the tulips gave them away, would lead to them. They had to go on.

Vivian led the way, down on all fours now. They kept to the bare dirt space between those rows of reds. The rows were planted so straight that anyone who came to the furrow they were in would surely spot them and have an unobstructed shot from behind. Any second Nikolai expected to feel the jolt and sear of a bullet going into him. They scrambled along for about fifty feet. Nikolai had Vivian remain there while he crawled across the row of tulips on the left. He forced his way through them and continued on across five more rows before reversing direction and crawling back to Vivian over the same course. The trail he’d made was conspicuous and convincing, with snapped stems, crushed scarlet blossoms. Now he gave his attention to the tulips of the row on the right. At mid-stem level he inserted his hands and arms through them and slowly pushed them aside. He took extreme care not to put too great a strain on the stems, not to disturb the blossoms, and both stems and blossoms seemed to respond to this gentler treatment, allowed themselves to be parted enough for the crouching Vivian and then Nikolai to step over and through. At once Nikolai and Vivian set about to help those stems straighten, to untangle those blossoms that had bunched and been caught by their throats. That done, it was not evident that anyone had crossed over the row; not a single petal had chosen to fall.

They crossed ten rows in this manner without leaving a discernible trail. That brought them to where the red tulips gave way to their sisters of yellow—a yellow so pale and pure it immediately persuaded the eye to respect its silent conceit. But no time to appreciate. Again Nikolai and Vivian hurried along on all fours, keeping to the depressed furrow between rows. Within a short distance they were presented with an interruption in the yellows, a narrow, nearly undetectable path that led off to their right, no doubt one used by workers to cut across the field. Without hesitation, Nikolai and Vivian took it, passed quickly through all the yellows and on through the adjacent section of pinks and on into the whites. The blossoms of the whites seemed larger. Was it an illusion that they seemed to be held higher? Were they compensating for their lack of color?

In the whites Nikolai and Vivian felt a degree of sanctuary and stopped. Nikolai pictured their position, using his memory of the total view he’d had of the tulips from the inn’s upper bedroom. As he recalled, this section of whites was situated less than halfway across the field. Deep enough? He considered the evasive tactics they’d taken and decided at least for the time being they would stay put. It was, he thought, not impossible that they were already lost in this vast field—and wouldn’t be found. They could, if they had to, remain in this spot all day, stay right there until after dark and then make their way out of the field and away. Another moonless night would be a help. Under no circumstances would they return to the inn or try for the BMW. There was also the possibility these three killers would soon give up, might well be more impatient than relentless. They might thrash around in the field for a couple of hours, then step back and take a look at it and consider how much of it there was to be hidden in and decide to hell with it.

Either way, Nikolai thought, it was going to be a long day, or, worse, a short one.

A breeze came up, a vigorous errant little breeze that could not resist the tulips. Nikolai was momentarily startled when it scuffed across the whites and caused them to sway various ways like a fat, unsynchronized corps de ballet. The metaphor made him recall what Savich had said about the special sexual talents of ballet dancers. What a peculiar time for that to come to mind. He made the thought scurry back to its place in his memory and brought his look down to Vivian. She seemed to be studying the text of his eyes. In hers he saw what he believed was a mixture of anger and fright, but the anger was not yet a fury nor was the fright yet panic.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

He nodded that he was and felt urgently the need to tell her he loved her, knew that his desperation to say that, to keep saying that as often as he could for as long as he could, was compelled by the proximity of death. He said it once and she smiled, pleased as much as if he’d said it countless times. It was then that he noticed her knees. While he’d had the advantage of trousers, her bare knees had been victimized by the soil and rubble. Dirt was ground into the caps of them and the skin was scraped raw. Yet she hadn’t complained and didn’t now. Like a child who’d just skinned herself during hard play she used her saliva to try to scrub the dirt away and better see the sore spots. Nikolai thought how removed she was under these circumstances from the beautiful London woman he’d known. She who had come walking down the aisle that day at the auction at Sotheby’s to affect him forever. She didn’t belong here crawling for her life. She belonged in a designer’s afternoon dress with her feet in elegant shoes so barely worn they still had their maker’s finish on their soles. She belonged at lunch on Archer’s terrace tossing her laughter across the table, unconcerned about anything crucial. How could she be so displaced and yet so involved? He was to blame, but she’d never admit it.

She still had most of that heel of tough brown day-old bread in the pocket of her cardigan. She offered it to Nikolai, but if there was any hunger in him it was obscured by adrenaline. She sank her teeth into the heel of bread and held it clamped to her mouth while she took her Beretta from its holster. “Am nu ih uh iow a mal,” she said around the bread.

“I’m not giving up without a battle” was what Nikolai thought she said. He watched her handle the Beretta with deft familiarity. She released the clip, examined it, rammed it back in smartly, then shifted the safety so a red dot was displayed, indicating the pistol was ready to be fired. Her mouth had soaked the bread soft by now. She tore a bite from it, chewed, and swallowed. “Do you think we should stay here?” she whispered.

“What do you think?”

“Good a place as any. Did you bring along your spare clips?”

“No.”

“Maybe you won’t need them,” she said hopefully.

Nikolai took out his Sig. He’d checked it just yesterday on the ferry but he checked it again and took it off safety. For some reason it felt lighter to his hand now and the grip of it was a better fit. Quickly as that it had changed from stranger to comrade, from being a mere metal object to saying, Use me, don’t hesitate to use me.

They sat back to back in the dirt between two white rows. That way they could see anyone coming up that corridorlike space in either direction. For a while they sat erect with not only most of their spines in touch but the backs of their heads. As the minutes passed, however, their shoulders became heavier and demanded slouch. It wouldn’t be unbearable to sit like this all day, Nikolai told himself. The sun wouldn’t poke along, it would see what was going on and sympathetically run across the sky.

Vivian jabbed him sharply with her elbow.

He held his breath to listen. He too heard it. Off to his right, to Vivian’s left. Someone tromping across the rows, unconcerned about how much noise was made, carelessly wading through those tall tulips, forcing them aside with legs causing rustling and scraping sounds against clothing. How near? There was no way of telling. Nikolai guessed thirty rows, just a guess. He was tempted to crawl up for a peek but surely even just the top of his dark head would be distinguishable among all these identical whites. The tromping noises continued and didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Perhaps whoever it was would pass right by. The tromping stopped, then started again. Evidently just then the person had decided to change direction, because now the tromping was louder, drawing nearer. And nearer.

Vivian stood up.

Nikolai had no chance of preventing it. What the hell was she doing?

She popped up suddenly with her arms raised in surrender.

The youthful-looking killer, the one who called himself Charlie, saw her at once. He was twenty rows away, about a hundred feet. He brought his pistol up to fire, but apparently, as expected, the woman was unarmed, so he waded closer through the whites to make a surer shot. Besides, he figured, if the woman was here the man would also be. It would be a credit to him if he got the both of them. The woman had given up, was just standing there afraid. He moved in on her, glancing aside, keeping an eye out for the man. He didn’t see the man anywhere.

Nor did he notice that Vivian had the right sleeve of her baggy, oversized cotton cardigan stretched up over her right hand, concealing not only her hand but the pistol it held. In a single swift motion she brought the arm down and fired. At fifty feet if she’d been able to take careful aim it would have been an easy shot for her. As it was she had only the briefest instant to aim and squeeze off two rounds, so she was off her mark. Instead of hitting the killer in the center of his chest, both bullets went in a bit high. There was an expression of total disbelief on his face when the impact of the first bullet drove him back and the second bullet drove him back more. The first bullet entered him in the spot above his chest where his collar bones came together. It struck the top edge of his manubrium, that uppermost bone of the sternum, chipped a piece off that, and glanced upward at an angle to rip through the sheathing muscles of the neck. At a velocity of a thousand feet per second, the 105-grain bullet tore on through fibers and membranes, severed the right carotid artery and the internal jugular vein. The second bullet struck only half an inch lower than the first but was deflected more steeply upward and imbedded itself in the thickest area of the jawbone. The youthful-looking killer lay in a contorted position over a row of the whites. As though it had never liked him, eager to be relieved of its responsibility, his heart took less than thirty seconds to pump out his life.

Vivian dropped to her knees. She was stunned, like someone who’d just witnessed a horrible accident. She gazed at the Beretta in her hand, then looked to Nikolai, wordlessly conveying to him that she hadn’t intended it to come to this. The Beretta felt as though it were now a permanent extension of her arm, grafted by experience. Even if she flung it away it would still be there.

“We can’t stay here,” Nikolai told her. The remaining two killers, the heavyset man and the woman, knew their location now. Also now the killers realized they were armed, would be cautious, coming on more slowly.

“I’m okay,” Vivian said with forced confidence. “One offed, two to go.”

She led the way, crawling along on all fours again. Down the space between those two rows for about fifty feet, then across the four rows on the right, careful, as before, not to leave an obvious trail. They were still in the section of whites. Nikolai paused and sighted ahead. These rows were extremely straight; they seemed endless on that flat land, went all the way to the sky. He caught up to Vivian. She was waiting where another narrow access path intersected. They took the path, and soon saw it was leading to some sort of structure. What a welcome sight. Practically anything would provide cover more substantial than tulips. It turned out that the structure was an open metal bin, twenty feet square by seven feet high. They crawled around to the far side of it and then felt concealed enough to stand. It was blessed relief to at last be upright, able to bow their spines and stretch.

The bin smelled terrible. It had a wide, heavy-hinged gate that was slightly ajar. Nikolai looked in and saw rotting tulips, a mucilaginous heap being gone over by squadrons of huge blue flies and gnats. The buzz of the insects was acoustically amplified by the confines of the bin and sounded like an electric motor in the throes of going bad. Nikolai thought the inside of the bin might be good for cover. He pulled the gate open another foot. The huge hinges of the gate complained with a sharp screech, metal against metal. Nikolai was sorry he’d touched the gate, but there was nothing he could do about it now except hope that screech had gone unheard or been taken for the cry of a hawk or some other creature.

With the bin to sit against and serve as a shield, Nikolai and Vivian felt a few degrees safer. They were much deeper in the field now and most likely out of sight. Possibly they could wait out the day there. How many more hours until night? The sun wasn’t even through with the morning sky. It was taking its time, not performing at all like an ally, more like an entertained observer, Nikolai thought. He watched Vivian giving attention-as-usual to her Beretta. Although she’d only used two rounds of twelve she replaced that clip with a fresh, full one. She appeared recovered from her recent reaction, getting ready to kill again if need be. Nikolai thought he should admire her resilience.

On that far side of the bin there were only about a dozen more rows of whites. Beyond the whites was a wide section of pinks, an intense, shocking shade. Quite a way out in the pink section was a tractor. A bright blue one. Evidently it had been left where it was at the end of yesterday’s work. This entire field of tulips was ripe. It would be harvested a section at a time to make sure each color was kept separate. It was, of course, a business matter of bulbs, not blossoms. No solicitude for the blossoms; not a one would see a bouquet. Every blossom would be cut from every stem, so that as much as possible of each plant’s potency would be forced down into its bulb. The bulbs would be turned up out of the ground, looking like onions but far more precious. They’d be gathered by a conveyor, sacked and tagged and taken north to the auction markets at Killegom and Lisse. The bulbs of this particular well-bred species, these extra-long-stemmed, gigantic-blossomed beauties, would be choice. They’d bring a pretty price. As for the blossoms, hadn’t they by their compulsive display of vanity rather invited sacrifice? They’d be used for mulch or as fodder for cows.

Nikolai stood. Vivian remained seated. She leaned against his leg, hugged it, and that made him feel good, depended upon. He studied the blue tractor. It was, he noticed, not just a pulling-pushing thing but was equipped with special attachments. He couldn’t make out what those were at this distance, but from the work the tractor had done in that pink section he could guess. The pink blossoms the tractor and its attachments had decapitated were strewn all along the rows.

Caws of crows, mocking.

A bumblebee, its legs already burdened with pollen, hovered indecisively over one of the nearby whites before diving into it.

Vivian’s bare thighs had been streaked with the syrupy fluid from broken stems. Flaky dry now, it resembled semen. She scraped at it with a thumbnail.

Nikolai needed to assess the situation. He went to the adjacent side of the bin and peeked around the edge. His optimism expected to see only the expanse of tulips, but there little more than fifty rows away was one of the killers. The heavier-set man. He was moving swiftly in a crouch, alert but not searching, as though sure of his objective. His course was a roundabout sweeping one in relationship to the bin. No doubt the bin was what he had in mind. Meanwhile, approximately the same distance away on the far left was the woman. She was making the same sort of wide sweeping approach in the direction of the bin. They intended to pincer, close in from opposite directions and have Nikolai and Vivian caught in a crossfire. The fucking gate, Nikolai thought. The noise it made had given them away. He hurried back to tell Vivian. She got that angry-frightened look in her eyes again. She took her Beretta off safety, made sure there was a round in the chamber and that the silencer was screwed on tight. She was ready to make a stand, use the bin for cover and let the killers come. That was one option. Nikolai hastily suggested another. He’d go for the tractor. There was no way of getting to it without being seen, so he’d use that to advantage, make an obvious run for it. Vivian would stay, go into the bin and keep out of sight. No matter what, she wasn’t to fire. The killers would be drawn to him. They’d run after him, and when they did, when they were committed surely to that and were far out in the pinks, Vivian would make a dash for the inn and the BMW. Did she have that straight?

Vivian nodded compliantly.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, “I’ll make the tractor.” To himself he added: And if I do I hope to hell there’s a key in it.

He didn’t kiss her; even a peck would have admitted to a farewell. He turned and bolted and let out a primitive attention-getting battle cry as he tore through the remaining rows of whites and on through the pinks, sprinting for the tractor. He didn’t look back, just went all out for it. He figured the only edge he had was that the killers would either have to fire on the run or stop and take aim. On the run they’d be less accurate. While they stopped to aim he’d be widening the gap. Their bullets were smacking around him now, slitting through the foliage close by. He zigged and zagged like a foot soldier on the attack. He believed he felt a bullet brush the fabric of his windbreaker. He hadn’t thought he’d get this far without being shot in the back. How much farther to the tractor? A hundred yards? The mounds of the rows and the depressions between the rows were fighting him. So were these pink tulips. The mounds seemed to be getting higher, the depressions deeper, the tulips thicker. He’d never run so hard. He wasn’t used to it. The good London living had taken its toll. There was burning in his lungs because he couldn’t get any air down to them. And now, suddenly, a sharp shooting ache in his right side. But the bullets were spitting at him from behind and survival was hung like a sweet out in front of him, compelling him on. He stumbled several times but refused to fall. He loathed the tulips by now. They seemed to want to play a part in his death, the way they grabbed at his legs as he forced through them. He’d never reach the tractor. He’d never reach it, never.

Then he had. He had some part of the bright blue metal of it in his grasp. It was glad to support him. It didn’t mind that he brought bullets ricocheting off its hard body. Its other side offered protection. He drew out his Sig. His hand was shaking. He sighted back at his adversaries.

There was Vivian.

On the ground twenty feet from the tractor. She was slithering along reptilelike, trying to get to it. She appeared in pain. Nikolai feared the worst. He crawled out to her and dragged her in. Asked where she was hit. All she could do was shake her head to let him know she wasn’t hit, only winded. As further assurance she managed an on-and-off smile. She’d run in his tracks, nearly kept up, would have made it had not fatigue and some of those bloddy blooming tulips caused her to fall.

Shielded by the tractor, Nikolai again looked back over the field for the two killers. That catch in his side was still bothering him. In fact, it was sharper now. It would go away when he got his breath entirely back, he thought. He reached in under his windbreaker to massage the spot, believing that might help. At once he withdrew his hand. It was wet, sticky wet and bright red. There was no way he could determine how badly wounded he was without examining his side. He didn’t want to, didn’t want to know, didn’t want Vivian to know. What difference, anyway, would knowing make? If he was wounded seriously enough to die, then he was going to die. There’d be no rescuing ambulance and instant transfusions out there in remote tulipland. If he had to get hit, why hadn’t he gotten hit in the leg or arm so he could have applied a tourniquet? Blasted luck. Anyway, he didn’t yet feel woozy or weak. He felt even more ready than before to take these bastards on. Where were they? He scanned the pinks and the whites. They should be in there somewhere. No doubt they were. Keeping down for the moment, deliberating their next move. Was it an illusion, or had a change come over the tulips? They seemed strangely inert. The near pinks explained the impression. The six petals of each blossom had opened as wide as possible to the higher sun and were basking, drowsing. Uninhibited now, their pistils and stamens exposed like genitals. The tulips that had been so involved in this confrontation were now disregarding it with insolent ennui.

The key was in the ignition of the tractor.

Nikolai climbed up onto the bright blue plastic seat. He glanced briefly at the controls, the foot pedals. He was supposed to know about tractors. Russians were practically synonymous with tractors. He’d driven one once. For a quarter of a mile from a beet field to a barn, because he’d been asked to and hadn’t wanted to admit he couldn’t. That was seventeen years ago during one of those summers when he’d helped with the harvest on a state farm in Vetuchna only because in the future it would look good in his trudovaya knizhka, his workbook. The tractor then had been a Chaika, cumbersome and simple—two speeds forward: slow and not quite so slow. This tractor he was now on had eight forward speeds and numerous levers and switches with no indication of which was for what. He couldn’t take much time to figure it out. He was a sitting target up there. One of the killers would soon rise up and pick him off.

He shoved in what had to be the clutch pedal and turned on the ignition. The tractor exploded from its exhaust several times as though before doing anything it had to get rid of its flatulence. Nikolai eased the hand throttle down to race the engine and get it firing on all cylinders. Vivian climbed up. He moved forward on the seat to make room for her. She fit herself snug against his back, her pelvic mound pressed to his tailbone, her arms around his chest. Like a motorcycle moll, except there was no place to put her legs. She couldn’t double them up, had to extend them ahead and hope they were out of the way.

Nikolai released the clutch. The tractor lurched forward and stalled. He had it in too high a gear. He quickly restarted and shifted the stick to a different position. When he let out the clutch this time the tractor lurched again but not nearly so much. He nursed it with some throttle and kept it going, and it rolled ahead slowly. Christ, but they were vulnerable up there. Only minutes ago they’d been crawling around hugging the ground for dear life and now here they were high up, flagrantly exposed. Why weren’t the killers taking potshots at them? Nikolai wondered. Perhaps they weren’t all that close, were hiding in wait for a surer opportunity, probably somewhere in the vicinity of the bin. In that case he’d steer clear of them.

He got as sharp a turn as possible out of the tractor, then straightened its wheels to be on a course that would skirt the bin by a good two hundred feet. He double-clutched and shifted to a higher gear. His intent was to make a run for the inn and the BMW, leave the killers thrashing about in the tulips. It would be a rough trip. Going straight across the humps of the rows at ten miles an hour the tractor pitched and tossed violently, seemed to be making a furious effort to throw them off. Nikolai hung on to the steering wheel and Vivian hung on to him. It was while her feet were trying to find something to brace themselves on that she inadvertently kicked the lever that lowered the cutting attachment. It fell and locked into a horizontal position straight out like an arm from the right side of the tractor. It didn’t have serrations, teeth, or even any moving parts. It was like a razor about six feet long with a slightly curved steel blade contained in a holder so that its forward edge was the cutting edge. The blade was honed exceptionally sharp in order to sever blossoms from the pliant stems cleanly. It was now decapitating blossoms from the whites within its reach as the tractor bucked across one, two, three, four rows.

The heavyset killer sprang up.

Less than two rows, ten feet, away. Slightly off to the right, in perfect position to make the kill. He had both hands around his .44 Galesi magnum to steady it.

He didn’t see the blade. It was coming at blossom level, somewhat obscured, and, as well, he was concentrating totally on making the shot. He had just squeezed the slack from the trigger when the blade reached him. It sliced simultaneously into both his thighs. Within a few hundredths of a second it was through his skin, the superficial and the deep fascia, through the abductor magnus, quadriceps femoris, and the other muscles there. Through the nerves and blood vessels, including the femoral arteries. It had no regard for bones, sliced cleanly through both femurs and all, and continued right on to literally cut his legs out from under him and leave him in three parts among the whites.

It was better for Nikolai and Vivian that it happened so swiftly. Neither saw much of it. In fact, Vivian thought the tractor had merely run down the killer and that it served him right. Nikolai knew better but would never tell her. He kept the tractor headed for the inn. There was still the last of the killers to contend with, the woman.

Nikolai spotted her.

Far off to his left between rows of whites. She was running away. Nikolai stopped the tractor and watched her diminish as she got farther and farther off. He wondered if she would look back. She reached the distant edge of the field that ran parallel with the road, scrambled through the fence, and disappeared into some bushes. A moment later there was the sound of a car door slammed, an engine turning over, tires making gravel fly. The maroon Saab sped out of sight.

Nikolai and Vivian climbed down from the tractor. He took off his windbreaker. His shirt on the right side was sopped with blood.

Vivian uttered a little ooh.

He gingerly pulled his shirt up out of his trousers. The wound was just below the rib cage and somewhat around back. He couldn’t see it all that well. Vivian used the tail of his shirt to wipe and blot away the blood. He watched her face while she examined the wound. Her reaction would give the wound its due, he thought. He’d know by her reaction if it was terribly serious.

She looked at it for quite a while. Cocked her head one way, then the other as she considered and poked around it with a finger. Finally, she shrugged and told him: “It needs tending, but it’s hardly a nick, Nick. Actually it almost doesn’t qualify as a graze. You’re a prolific bleeder, but I’ll bet there won’t even be a scar to show for it.” Then in contradiction to her indifference she kissed the wound tenderly, and there was blood on her lips that her tongue came out and licked away.

It occurred to Nikolai that there where they’d stopped was in the vicinity of the youthful-looking killer’s body. He found it four rows away. It was distasteful for him to touch it but he searched the pockets and found some florins and pounds and a British passport issued two years ago to Charles Smith of Liverpool. Nikolai came close to overlooking the tattoo. He just happened to notice it on the man’s forearm. A blue heart with a scroll across it inscribed with one word: MATb. That the man had the word “mother” in Cyrillic on his arm and a Charles Smith passport in his pocket was certainly incongruous, and cause for thought.