asked Bolichova a question of his own. “Who was he?”
She was still in shock, but she said, “We . . . can only . . . assume he was the guest in the next suite.” She looked at her screen. “Darrin Patch, from Canada. I’m sure it’s a pseudonym, despite his backstopped legend.”
“He just appeared in the room. How did he get into her suite without you seeing it on the hotel camera?”
Inna said, “There’s only one explanation. He went out his window, climbed over to hers.”
Anya was still incredulous about this. “That’s . . . a long way down.”
“Tell me about it,” Maksim said.
“No, Maksim,” Inna said. “You tell me about it. How are you alive?”
Maksim moved slowly to a chair near the laptops. Anya pulled it out for him and helped him sit down.
Finally, he said, “It all went to shit. The woman was a fighter, just as you said, but we had her. It was going to be messier than I wanted, but with Ennis there, I wasn’t worried about all the evidence of a fight.
“Then he appeared. Out of fucking nowhere. We fought a moment, I injured him, but he was slippery. He . . . that man . . . he was . . . he was like nothing I’ve come up against. Economy of movement, unreal speed, an efficiency in his decision making.” He looked at the women. “He dove away from one of my knives, thrown from only five or six meters’ distance. He almost avoided the second one completely, too. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
Both Anya and Inna were impatient, but it was Inna who said, “Tell us how you survived the fall.”
“I dove out the window. I didn’t mind dying, I just refused to die at the hands of another. I remember flying through the air, the falling, the wind rushing past my ears. I thought I would be at peace, but I felt no peace, because I didn’t understand who this man was and how he made me fail my final mission. I finally felt it.”
“Felt what?”
“The will to live. If only to kill Zoya Zakharova.”
He paused again. Inna was about to walk over and slap him across the face, just as she’d done late the previous night, so he could snap out of his inebriation long enough to tell them what the fuck was going on.
But before she could, he shrugged. “And then I hit it.”
“Hit . . . what?” Anya asked.
“I hit a flagpole. Don’t know how far down it was, but it hurt. It snapped under my weight, but I got hold of the flag, and it tore immediately. Then I was falling again. Spinning.” He looked off into the distance; he was reliving a recent memory through the haze of drink.
“I crashed into the canopy in front of the main entrance. A big, red, soft fabric, which tore in two, of course, with the force of my weight and my fall.”
Anya cocked her head. “You crashed through the awning and hit . . . what?”
“A bellman was pushing a luggage cart into the hotel. I landed on it. The flagpole and the flag slowed me, the canopy absorbed much of my momentum, and a stack of Louis Vuittons took care of the rest.”
Inna remained utterly incredulous. “That must have been eighteen, maybe twenty meters.”
Maksim replied, “I’m no expert, but it felt like twenty-five.”
“You weren’t hurt?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course I was hurt.” He took off his wet raincoat with difficulty, opened his shirt, and took it off in front of the two women. Though he was covered in body art, when he lifted his right arm to them, it was easy to see it was horribly scraped and bruised. Vicious red and purple splotches covered the right side of his rib cage, as well. “But nothing broken, I don’t think. If I sober up I might find out differently. I was helped up, someone ran to get me a doctor, but I just staggered off. Bought this coat, went to a bar, fell asleep in a park, went to a liquor store, came here.” He sighed. “What a day.”
He unscrewed the top of the bottle of bourbon, started to bring it to his lips, then looked at Inna. “With your permission.”
She sniffed and looked away. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?” She was still fixated on his story. “You are the luckiest maniac to ever live.”
“Me? Lucky?” He snorted out a little