“Nikki!” But the argument takes precious attention.
I need her to go. At this point, not much changes if all of the guards get out. I’ll still have a standoff with all the guards. Me against all the guards.
Two is only a little bit better than that.
There was a time, back when Viktor and I were so wild and free, that we would’ve felt excited by such a thing.
The standoff goes on.
I stare straight ahead, keeping them both in my sight with what peripheral vision I have. Monitoring people on either side of you is part concentration and part relaxation.
More shots. I calculate the shots she has left across the three weapons I left her with. Not so many.
At one point the guards look at one another.
They could coordinate. I don’t have the sense that they’ve worked together long, but they could find a way. They’re in a far better position than I am. Do they understand that?
Viktor and I used to spend hours dissecting scenarios like this. We always assumed everybody did, until we learned otherwise—that we were nerds about it, as the Americans might say.
I remember everything now.
I remember everything I knew as Tanechka and everything I knew as a novice nun. I contain all of it.
I’m stronger for it. I might die because of it, but I wouldn’t trade it.
Another gunshot rings out from the break room. Nikki. Holding them in. She doesn’t understand that she won’t survive this if she stays. She can’t see ahead the way Viktor and I can. Viktor and I trained ourselves to think ahead about all of those Rubik’s Cube moves. Every move affects another, unseen and seen.
A double Mexican standoff like this was the worst. Neither of us had ever been in one, but we’d heard of them.
And now here I am.
We’d heard of one in Vladivostok that lasted hours. It ended from muscle failure. The older fighter couldn’t hold his weapon up any longer. Standing here with my arms out to either side, all the tension and adrenaline pumping through me, I can see how that would happen.
Viktor and I decided that you could never win such a standoff alone. You could only win such a standoff with an external helper, and that helper would die. “The replacement move,” we called it.
I think of the diagrams we used to scribble.
There was such beauty in what we had. I remember every kiss. I remember everything we dreamed. I remember that picnic in Gorky Park. I remember Red Square and my Taylor Swift outfit. I remember his face as he choked down the sweet Manhattan. I remember walking around Moscow with no money in our jacket pockets. I remember the pink champagne and being bloody together and being happy together.
And I remember his eyes the day he threw me over the cliff. Like my own heart, cast from my body.
And I remember the peace I felt when I didn’t remember it.
I sigh, clearing my mind. Alone in a double Mexican. I wish Viktor could see, so he would know, considering this was such a topic of interest for us. Look at me, you kozel, I’d joke. I’m going to die in a double Mexican standoff. So much more glorious than your gorge. Your paltry Daliani Gorge.
I smile.
“What?” one of the guards says.
I laugh. “My nines weigh half what your .357s weigh. One of you will tire first. One will move. One jerk and we go. We do this.”
A creak from the back door. It could be another guard, but I don’t think so.
I stare straight ahead, watching both of them and neither of them. My pulse races.
He’s come.
I always feel him. Everything in the world shifts. Gravity itself seems to shift.
Viktor.
Another creak. My heart pounds as he nears.
He appears at the door, eyes burning into mine. Instantly, he sees all. He smiles, Glocks in both his hands. “Imagine this, lisichka.”
“Put them down, on the floor!” the one on my right yells. He’s agitated, and an agitated man will sometimes shoot when he doesn’t mean to.
Viktor puts his hands up, still holding the guns. He addresses me in Russian. “One solution.”
I widen my eyes when I realize what he’s proposing. “Nyet,” I whisper.
“What did he say?” one of the guards asks. “No Russian.”
“The replacement move. We’ve thought this through,” Viktor continues in Russian.
“This is my operation,” I say. “My operation, my decision. Go find Nikki and take her away.”
“Are you crazy? We’ll finally see if it works.”
My blood races. As the fourth person, he would dive at me and replace me. We worked it out precisely. It’s true.
There are certain mechanical eye-hand principles you understand when you are us.
One of them is how to draw men’s hands this way and that. The motion of the one who dives in draws the gunfire away from the center person. It’s the diver who gets the bullets.