Minotaur

4

The small dining room turned out to be, surprisingly, quite small. It was no bigger than the kitchen where Chapel normally ate back at his apartment in Virginia. Apparently the movies had lied to him, and rich couples didn’t eat at opposite ends of a table long enough to double as a shuffleboard court.

They sat down to a salad of crisp greens, matched with a white wine that Chapel thought smelled a little like creosote. He smiled when Fiona asked him if it was to his taste—he must have winced to get her to ask a question like that. He very much wanted to ask Angel if it was drugged or poisoned but there was no way for her to know—as much as he thought his guardian angel was omniscient, she could really only hear what he heard. The hands-free unit he wore didn’t even have a camera onboard. It was designed to be discreet, to look more like a hearing aid than a telephone accessory. Anything else would have been rude to wear to dinner.

After the salad Favorov’s children came in to say hello. Angel guided Chapel through the delicate matter of greeting the children—two boys, Daniel and Ryan, respectively aged ten and seven. The boys were politely introduced and Daniel came forward to shake Chapel’s hand. Ryan stayed close to his mother, even hiding his face in her skirts when Chapel tried to talk to him.

Chapel looked up at Fiona and they shared a smile. “Do you have any children, Jim?” she asked.

“No, no,” he said. “I guess I never had time.”

“You should find it. These two mean the world to me. I never really understood what it meant to love someone until I met Daniel for the first time.”

Favorov had no comment on that. Daniel just rolled his eyes, which made Chapel smile all the broader.

The children were sent off to their room to get ready for bed before the salad course was finished.

The second course—Chapel would have called it an appetizer—proved to be slices of duck in a fruit sauce. Chapel had never had duck before and found he actually liked it. Like a lighter cut of beef, he thought. “This is really delicious.”

Fiona dabbed at her smile with her napkin.

“Is she covering her mouth?” Angel asked. “I bet she is. It would be unseemly for her to react too much to a compliment like that. Especially since she didn’t cook your food herself.”

Not for the first time Chapel wished he could speak back to Angel. But his hosts would wonder who he was talking to, and he wanted to preserve the illusion he was here alone.

Before the main course the servants brought out a tureen of soup, a clear consommé. Chapel stared at the bowl placed in front of him as if it was full of snapping alligators.

“You’re hesitating,” Angel said. “I know we talked about this before. It’s going to be okay. Just don’t slurp.”

Chapel grimaced and picked up what he assumed was his soup spoon. It was bigger than the others. He glanced up and saw Fiona chatting pleasantly with Favorov about the weather.

He lifted a spoonful of soup toward his mouth.

It was important, he’d been told, that he keep the upper hand here. Hollingshead and the Pentagon didn’t really care if he ate his soup properly. They didn’t care if he picked up his dinner roll and threw it at Fiona’s head—as long as he kept his authority intact. If he slurped his soup, if he came off like a clown, the actual business he’d come for would be much harder. He needed to make Favorov feel like he was talking to a social equal, or at least a man worthy of respect.

He put the spoon in his mouth. Poured the soup onto his tongue rather than sucking at it, just the way Angel had recommended.

She’d forgotten to warn him it might be hot enough to scald him.

Chapel tried desperately not to make a sound. A groan started up in his throat as his tongue lashed about inside his mouth. He grabbed for his napkin and pushed it hard against his lips to make sure he didn’t spew the volcanically hot liquid all over the table.

He couldn’t help but stamp his foot on the floor. The pain in his mouth needed some kind of outlet, and that, it turned out, was what it chose.

Instantly the light conversation on the other side of the table stopped. Every eye in the room—Fiona’s, Favorov’s, those of the servants—fastened on him and wouldn’t let go. Fiona started to rise from her chair but he waved her back down.

He forced himself to swallow. The soup seared his throat all the way down and he felt a terrible need to cough. “Hot,” he gasped.

It was enough to make Favorov grin. The man had the grin of a cheetah watching a limping antelope.

Damn.

Chapel threw his napkin down on the table in self-disgust. He couldn’t believe it. He’d failed already, and the entrée wasn’t even on the table.

Fiona did rise from her chair, despite his protests, and came toward him with a bottle of wine, clearly intent on refilling his glass. Across the table, Favorov put down his fork and knife and folded his arms. He looked like he was watching an especially engrossing play. “I’ll warn the cook not to serve it so hot next time,” he said. “That is, if you ever come back.”

In his ear Angel whispered something he couldn’t make out over the rush of blood in his head. What a screwup—he’d been given very specific orders and he hadn’t carried them out. There were few things in the world that hurt a good soldier like Chapel more.

“I can send down to the kitchen for something cold, if that would help,” Favorov said. “Maybe a gazpacho. That’s a kind of soup that’s served cold, if you don’t know.”

Chapel felt his face turning red, and not from the heat of the soup.

“Here, please, drink. It will help,” Fiona insisted, handing his wineglass to him. The tarry smell of the wine made Chapel want to turn his head away.

All right. Enough, he decided. There was still one thing he could do, to regain control. He reached inside his jacket. Favorov’s eyes followed his hand as if he expected Chapel to pull out a gun.

But it wasn’t a gun Chapel drew from his pocket. It was the steel casing of a single bullet, a 7.62 × 39 mm round of the kind used in AK-47 assault rifles around the world. The actual bullet had been fired—only the casing remained—but it was still big enough and solid enough to make a thunk when he smacked it down on the table.

That shut Favorov’s mouth, at least.