if he decides to dig it up and spend it, but he doesn’t. He keeps his where it stays safe. He’s been poor. Living in a shitty house and driving a housewife’s car isn’t so bad when you know you don’t have to do it. And there are reasons not to be so showy.
In the morning, he drives the boy to school. They talk a little, but not about anything. Then Yuli does whatever. Groceries sometimes. Laundry sometimes. He takes himself to a movie if something good is on. He likes action films because they’re easier to follow, or at least if he doesn’t catch everything, it doesn’t matter as much. Lunch is back home if he doesn’t want to see people, or Café Gurman if he does.
Today, he does.
Café Gurman is in a strip mall between a musical instrument shop that sells violins to pretentious white parents on one side and a payday loan on the other. The windows have a thin film on them that no amount of cleaning will ever make clear. The booths are red leather, cracked some places and mended with red tape. The walls have pictures of famous people, as if they have eaten there. Maybe they have. It is the home of the expatriate community. Or one particular expatriate community, anyway.
His.
Doria is at the register, doing something on her cell phone. She is the owner’s daughter. She doesn’t make eye contact with anyone, even as she takes their money and talks to them in Russian. She’s a good kid. She’ll go away soon, hopefully to college, and then he won’t see her again. He orders his usual shawarma, nods to the familiar faces in the other booths. As soon as Wrona comes in, he knows something is wrong.
Yuli has known Wrona longer than anyone else in the United States. They were on the same detail the first time Yuli worked private. He’s a tall man with long hands and a face as craggy as tree bark. When he sees Yuli, he lifts his chin in greeting, steps over, and sits in the booth across from him. Yuli frowns. This isn’t how they are to each other. Not normally.
“You’re looking good,” Wrona says, and it is as close to an apology as Yuli will get. A little acknowledgment that Wrona has crossed a boundary, and that he’s about to cross others. “You’ve been going to the gym?”
“No. I don’t like those places.”
“Me neither,” Wrona says, scratching his neck with his long fingers. When he speaks next, it is in Polish. “There was something I needed to ask you. That thing. You know the one?”
Yuli’s frown deepens to a scowl. If there was any doubt what Wrona meant, his discomfort clears it away. There is only one subject that would make him this nervous, and it’s one that he shouldn’t bring up. Not even vaguely and in Polish.
“I know,” Yuli says.
“Do you still have it?”
“I know where it is.”
Wrona nods but won’t meet Yuli’s eyes. “Yes, I thought. I mean, I assumed. But I heard something about people coming into town who shouldn’t be here. People from Zehak.” Now he turns his eyes to Yuli. “You know what I’m saying.”
Yuli’s mouth is dry, but he doesn’t let anything show in his face. He takes a last bite of his shawarma, lifts a hand to get Doria’s attention, and signals her for coffee. They’re quiet until she brings it. He likes it black, roasted dark enough to hide evidence. That’s the joke.
“All right,” he says.
“If you have that much money,” Wrona says quietly, “someone’s going to be looking for it.”
“I know.”
“If you need a gun …” Wrona spreads his hands.
“No, it’s all right,” Yuli says. “I have guns.”
After a long journey, you reach the township of Tannis Low. It’s not a big place, but it’s seriously defended. A stone wall that goes up thirty feet and then bends backward into the town so that people can hide in the overhang. The gates are bronze, but they’ve been charred badly over the years so that they look almost totally black. The valley around it is all stone and dirt. There are no trees. Almost no plants.
You know what’s weird?
What?
Why does a dragon even have gold? I mean, I know why we want it. Pay off the assassin’s guild. But what does Aufganir want with it? It’s not like he’s heading off to market every weekend to buy lunch meat.
It’d be like a whole cow. Cheaper to just fly out and roast one yourself.
That’s my point, right? I mean why have a shit-ton of gold just to sit on?
Hemorrhoids. Definitely hemorrhoids.
Don’t be gross.
You laughed.
For serious, though. Is there some kind of magic about gold? Or does he eat it or something? Whatever he wants it for, it’s not the same as what we want it for, right?
People, people! Can we focus up here?
Sorry. It’s just something I was thinking about.
Okay. So like I said, after a long journey, you reach the township …
It had been back when Yuli was working private in western Afghanistan, his fifteen years for Mother Russia behind him. Mercenary work suited him, and the pay was good. He’d had more hair back then. And cheekbones. The contract had been all about suppressing the poppy trade. Opium, heroin. Burning out the farms, breaking the trucks, disrupting the flow of drugs and money whatever way they could. Probably the client had been a rival producer. That was fine. Yuli didn’t judge. One rule was very clear. The operation stopped at the border. They weren’t to cross over into Iran.
They had crossed over into Iran.
There were four of them. Yuli, Wrona, another Pole called Nowak, and a man of no particular nation who everyone called Pintador though it wasn’t his name. Yuli was driving. It was a Humvee with customized light armor. He liked it. It felt strong. It was dark, and he had night-vision goggles on that made the hills green and black. The target was a little compound in Sistan and Baluchestan Province that an upcoming warlord named Hakim Ali was using as a base. The target was soft, because the enemy knew that Yuli wasn’t permitted to cross the border. Being in Iran kept it safe.
Yuli parked just before the top of a rise, and they all got out, moving quickly and quietly. Pintador whistled under his breath as he took position with a sniper rifle. Yuli surveyed the site through binoculars. Everything matched the briefing except that there was an extra car. A black sedan. Someone had chosen the wrong night to visit.
They moved forward carefully,Yuli and Wrona and Nowak. They each carried a 9A-91 assault rifle with a suppressor. Pintador’s soft whistling in his earpiece meant the sniper hadn’t seen anything to raise an alarm. The compound was two small houses and a shed, chain-link fence. An American pickup truck that had been white once, an ancient Jeep with a Barrett 82A1 mounted on its frame, and now the sedan. Yuli didn’t see a guard, but two dogs were sleeping beside the shed. Yuli shot them first, then Nowak cut the chain on the fence, and they were in.
Three men were eating dinner, served by a woman in a burqa. One of the men wore a Western-style business suit, but except for that, they could have been brothers. Yuli didn’t know what alerted them. Maybe they’d made a sound. Maybe the light from their window had reflected off some piece of equipment. Whatever it was, the enemy caught sight of them as they were crossing the yard, and before they could find cover, the enemy was firing at them. Nowak died, but Yuli and Wrona made it to the side of the shed where the dogs lay motionless.
“This is not good,” Wrona had said as bullets cracked past them, but Yuli took the barrage of fire as a good sign. The enemy was undisciplined, and the undisciplined were weak. Even now, he can remember the calm of those moments. The focus that left no room for fear. They stayed low and held their fire as he murmured orders to Pintador. Yuli’s patience had always been a weapon.