Collateral (Tier One #6)

Hotel Intercontinental Berlin

Berlin, Germany

September 18

1430 Local Time

“I hear you, Buz, but that makes absolutely no sense,” Dempsey said, shaking his head at the Russian grammar worksheet in his hand. “This sentence says cat caught mouse, correct?”

“Koshka poymala mysh,” Buz said, with a patient nod. “Yes.”

“And this sentence translates to mouse caught cat?” he said, pointing to the next line.

“That’s right. Mysh poymala koshka.”

“And this one, poymala koshka mysh,” Dempsey said, struggling to pronounce the Russian himself this time, “translates to caught cat mouse?”

“Correct,” answered the old spook.

Dempsey exhaled with aggravation. “How the hell can mouse caught cat and caught cat mouse mean the same thing as cat caught mouse?”

“This is what I’ve been trying to explain to you,” Buz said with an empathetic smile. “The Russian language is very flexible. Word order by itself is irrelevant. You can write the same sentence with these three words six different ways and the default translation will always be cat caught mouse. And remember, the Russian language doesn’t use articles like we do. You don’t have to put a the in front of cat or an a in front of mouse.”

“So all I have to do is memorize the verbs and nouns and then I can say them in any order I want and people will understand me—is that what you’re saying?”

Buz chuckled. “No, that’s not at all what I’m saying. Context, intonation, and the application of the six cases are what differentiate and provide the meaning to the sentence.”

“But word order doesn’t matter? I can at least bank on that.”

“Well, no, sentence structure does matter sometimes, but we’ll get to that later.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, this is hopeless,” Dempsey said, setting the paper down on the desk. “I’ll never learn Russian.”

“Never say never,” Buz said. “You learned to speak Arabic, right?”

“Yeah, a little, but that’s only because I was around people speaking Arabic for fifteen years,” he grumbled. “And I’m not even close to fluent.”

“Sounds like you’re an auditory learner; most people are when it comes to languages,” Buz said, giving his shoulder a pat. “I’m just going to have to start talking to you only in Russian during these lessons. We’ll see if that causes things to gel.”

“I hope you’re a patient man,” Dempsey said with a self-deprecating shake of his head. Then he glanced at his watch. “I should probably get back to the room and prep for the op.”

“You up for this?” Buz said, with an undercurrent that made Dempsey wonder if the killing was beginning to weigh on Ember’s most seasoned spy.

“Easy day,” Dempsey said, flashing a crooked grin. “See ya in a few.”

He let himself out of Buz’s hotel room, walked down the hall to the suite he was sharing with Grimes, and let himself in with the key card. The bathroom door was closed and he could hear the water still running in the shower.

How long does it take for this woman to wash her damn hair?

He walked over to the mini-fridge and grabbed himself a bottled water, spun off the cap, and chugged half its contents. A second later, he heard the shower finally turn off.

“About friggin’ time,” he murmured. For this evening’s op, he needed time in the bathroom to prep. But instead of getting cleaned up, he was about to get dirty.

And smelly.

Very dirty and very smelly.

This particular disguise had been Munn’s idea, and at the time had seemed reasonable to Dempsey. But now as he contemplated the specifics of what was required to achieve authenticity, he was having second thoughts. He sat down on the corner of the bed and began to unlace his boots.

The bathroom door swung open.

When he heard footsteps approaching, he looked up to find a very wet—and very naked—Elizabeth Grimes standing in front of him, her head wrapped in that post-shower towel-turban thing that women do.

“Christ, John!” she exclaimed, her hand pressed in between her bare breasts. “I thought you were in Buz’s room practicing Russian.”

“I was,” he said, mouth agape, watching her heavily freckled chest flush to match her cheeks. “But I . . . I came back.”

“Instead of just sitting there gawking, do you mind handing me one of those towels, please?” She thrust an index finger at the stack of white towels that housekeeping had left on the corner of the bed beside him.

“Uh, sure,” he said, mostly averting his eyes and handing her the top towel off the stack.

“What’s that grin for?”

“I never really noticed your freckles before, but I guess that’s because I’ve never seen you . . . um . . . naked.”

“You know, roommate,” she said, as she wrapped the towel around her torso, “you could have looked away sooner.”

“Yeah, well, you could have turned around and run back into the bathroom, roommate,” he said.

“Are you implying I have something to be ashamed of?”

“Nooooo,” he said. “Quite the opposite. Your body is definitely, shall we say, beach ready.”

“Damn right—and don’t you forget it,” she said, then turned on a heel and disappeared back into the bathroom.

This was the fourth hotel room they’d shared in as many weeks as they posed as husband and wife during this string of city-hopping Zeta assassination ops. Unlike the intimate experience he’d had pretending to be newlyweds with the Israeli operative Elinor Jordan, he and Grimes had kept things strictly professional—no kissing, no hugging, no bed sharing. With Elinor, he’d instantly felt the tug of attraction. With Grimes, it was the opposite. She was like his cousin or a stepsister . . .

He heard a hair dryer turn on.

Chuckling, he finished taking off his boots. While doing so, his right ankle cracked, triggering the sudden sensation that everything was out of whack. He’d put his forty-year-old body through the wringer over the years, and the last three years had arguably been the hardest. Waking up was the worst. Most days he ached pretty much everywhere he had a joint, and that was a lot of places because the body has a lot of joints. He rolled his neck, then each wrist, and cracked his knuckles—sounding very much like a popcorn machine popping a fresh batch. Next, he arched his back and twisted his spine—cracking the vertebrae to relieve the pent-up tension and get himself back in alignment. He got satisfying pops from all the usual offenders except one, the vertebra right between his shoulder blades. He twisted right and then left, trying to get it to shift, but it stubbornly refused to pop. He took a knee, then lay down prone on the carpeted floor. He pressed up, his hips against the floor, while lifting his head skyward and arching his back.

Nothing.

He rolled onto his back and tried crossing his left arm across his chest and pulling on it. No crack. Right arm pull . . . nope. The more he focused on it, the more the damn thing bothered him. He knew it wasn’t possible, but the bone felt completely crooked in its slot, like it was cocked forty-five degrees out of whack. He rolled back onto his stomach and tried reaching behind to see if he could press the spot with his thumb . . .

“What the hell are you doing?” Grimes said.

He looked up and saw her standing directly in front of him—fresh-faced and now fully clothed—looking down at him.

“I’m trying to get this one stupid vertebra to pop,” he said in an irritated grumble. “It’s driving me fucking crazy.”

“I told you not to do that. The more you crack your joints, the more they want to be cracked. It’s like an addiction, JD. You’re a crack addict.”

“I’m not a crack addict,” he said, chuckling. “I’m a cracking addict.”

“God, you look pathetic down there,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think you’re going to get it that way.”

“Ya think?” he said, straining with futility.

She sighed, and then with resignation said, “What do you want me to do?”

With an anticipatory smile, he moved his arms to his side, turned his chin to the left, and lay completely straight and flat on his stomach. “I need you to stand on my back.”

“What? No,” she said. “I’m not doing that.”

“Trust me, it’s fine. Kate used to do it all the time.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. It works. Trust me. Just step up onto the middle of my back between my shoulder blades. You can hold onto the wall to steady yourself.”

“Fine,” she said and walked to his right side. She put a reluctant bare foot onto his back and began to step up, but after applying marginal pressure quickly stepped off. “I’m going to hurt you. I can’t do this.”

“You’re not going to hurt me,” he said with a laugh. “I promise . . . unless you step on T8. That would be bad. Don’t step on T8, that’s the one I shattered that’s held together with pins. The one that’s bugging me is T4. Or maybe T3. I can’t really tell. Between my shoulder blades.”

“No, no, no, I can’t do this. I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about, and I refuse to be the person responsible for putting John Dempsey in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

“Lizzie, please,” he said, craning his neck to look up at her. “Trust me, you’re not going to put me in a wheelchair. Just don’t step on my lower middle back and I’ll be fine.”

“This is stupid,” she said, grudgingly placing her foot between his shoulder blades. “I’m heavy.”

“I’ll be fine . . . and no, you’re not.”

With a pained expression on her face, she stepped up with her other foot until all her weight was on him.

He let out a groan.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he said. “But I was wrong, you are heavy.”

“You’re such a dick.”

“Kidding, kidding, I’m only kidding,” he said, trying not to laugh. “You’re absolutely perfect, Freckles.”

“Freckles?” she snapped indignantly. “All right, that’s it. I’m getting off—”

“No, no, not yet,” he protested. “You didn’t get it.”

She shifted her weight and the offending vertebra popped loudly underfoot. “Oh my God, I felt that. Did I get the right one?”

“Yeah,” he said with a satisfied groan, closed his eyes, and smiled. “Thank you.”

In that moment, the door’s lock beeped. The handle turned, the door opened, and Buz Wilson stepped in. The old spook looked at Grimes, then down at Dempsey, and a crooked grin curled his lips.

“It’s not what you think,” Grimes said, stepping off his back and folding her arms across her chest.

“I’m not judging,” Buz said, then, twisting his shoulders, added, “Come to think of it, I could use some good back-walking myself.”

“What? You do this, too?” she said, her tone incredulous.

“Oh yeah, back in the day Bonnie used to walk on my back all the time,” Buz said.

“But not anymore?”

“No,” he said, his tone almost wistful. “It feels damn good, but the thing is if you don’t stop cracking your joints, then they get all loose and you have to crack them every day . . .”

“See, I told you,” Grimes said, wagging her finger at Dempsey as he did a push-up and got to his feet. Then, turning to Buz: “That’s exactly what I told him.”

Dempsey smiled defiantly at them both. Punctuating each word with a crack of his knuckles, he said, “Not gonna happen.”

They chuckled collectively at this, and Buz checked his watch.

“You guys about ready?” he said, his dubious gaze traveling between them but settling on Dempsey.

“Almost,” Dempsey said, grabbing a wadded-up pile of ratty clothes off the nearby desk. Tucking them under his arm, he headed for the bathroom. On his way past Grimes, he looked at her and said, “I’m sorry, about . . . you know, earlier.”

“It’s fine,” she said with an easy smile. “We’re roommates. Bound to happen sooner or later.”

He nodded, any guilt assuaged.

“To stay on the timeline, we need to get moving. We don’t want to miss the professor,” Buz called after him.

“I know,” Dempsey said with a dismissive wave over his shoulder. “I just need a couple of minutes to shit my pants, and I’ll be ready to roll.”