Heart of a Russian Bear Dog Page 2

  “Thank you, Ms.…Tanya. We do not know these American ways. We must keep you safe.” He turned to go fetch the guards.

  Anything to get her out of the Ukrainian Embassy. As self-important as the Americans were, they were not the center of Ukraine’s world. Which was reflected in her country’s Washington, DC embassy. Not only wasn’t it on the main embassy row, it was the very farthest from the city center on the secondary row. Only Thailand, and Antigua and Barbuda were out this far.

  The three-story brick edifice looked little better than a Soviet Khrushchyovka apartment block and was just as lacking in charm on the inside. Brown walls failed to accent the brown-linoleum flooring. Instead, combined with the narrow windows—steel-barred on the first floor—it required having the lights on even on a sunny afternoon, which failed to actually cast any warmth on the brown fake-leather furniture.

  The ambassador had given her the nicest office after his own, which appeared to have had Joseph Stalin as the interior decorator. His bust had gone away on Ukrainian Independence Day in 1991 but nothing had replaced it—even Tomas looked like he’d been here since that day. There was a Ukrainian flag, and a picture of the Ukrainian President shaking her father the Prime Minister’s hand. She sighed. Even here she couldn’t escape Father’s watchful eye.

  The only sign she wasn’t in Kyiv was the white two-story Starbucks that faced the embassy from across the busy street.

  Ambassador Tomas returned with two Americans…and their dogs. She hadn’t expected that.

  The first was a tall man, greatly bulked up by his bulletproof vest and all of the other gear hanging from his vest. He had no weapons, but he had the holsters, so his guns must be at the front security desk. He led in a Belgian Malinois as handsome as his master. The dog was scanning the room and sniffing the air while its handler was… scanning her. She had some experience with guard dogs, and far too much with men like him.

  The second man was as different as possible from his companion. He was no heavier than the Malinois’ handler, but he wasn’t overwhelmed by his gear at all. He had one of those eternally young and hopeful faces. His expression was more the overeager boy than jaded urbanite. His hair was blond, and he wore a baseball cap with USSS across the brow in big letters. It was cocked just slightly askew, giving him a casual air.

  His first action upon entering was to scan the room quickly. He barely looked at her, which was almost as irritating as the first man’s blatantly assessing look. Then he snapped his fingers and waved one finger in a quick circle close by his side.

  A massive Caucasian shepherd with a gorgeous dark brown coat padded out from behind him. The dog seemed to fill the room as he made a quick circuit of it—he crossed past file cabinets, around chairs, sniffed under her desk, and circled back around to the other side. His only pause was as he reached her. The big dog sniffed her, wagged his tail once, then moved on.

  She’d been around enough Ukrainian Army guard dogs to know that wag was unusual. When they were seeking scent, trained dogs were very, very focused.

  No one spoke until the dog had completed its circuit and returned to its handler’s side.

  “Show off.”

  She could just hear the Malinois’ handler mutter to his teammate before he turned to her.

  “Lieutenant Carlton Tibbets, ma’am, US Secret Service, Uniformed Division. I’ll be leading your detail. This is Ripper.” He neglected to introduce his companion.

  “Sidet’,” the blond agent spoke softly in Russian and the Caucasian shepherd sat beside him. He gave it a treat. Show off? Perhaps, but she also liked the thoroughness—trust nothing. The Russians had taught the Ukrainians that a thousand times over the centuries.

  “Valentin, ma’am,” he rubbed the dog’s head, before looking up at her. “And I’m— Holy shit! Tatyana Larina.”

  The dog looked up at him in surprise and then turned to inspect her more closely.

  “Tanya. I am to be called Tanya. Or better yet, Ms. Larina. Not that other name. Which should have been clear in one of your insidious American intelligence briefing files.”

  “I apologize for my language. Sorry, ma’am. And we weren’t provided with any briefing file.”

  By Carlton’s smug look, they had been and he’d chosen not to share it.

  “But you are the spitting image,” the unnamed agent continued.

  “The spitting image of what?” But she was very afraid that she already knew his answer.

  In a good Russian accent, he spoke the verse that was the bane of her existence. “And so Tatyana was her name / Nor by her sister's brilliancy / Nor by her beauty she became / The attraction of every eye.” He said it as more as a whisper than any arrogant recitation.

  “What the hell?” Carlton was looking at his fellow agent.

  It was from Aleksandr Pushkin’s 1833 poetic masterpiece, Eugene Onegin. And she was the real-life twin of the most famous painting of Pushkin’s fictional Tatyana Larina. She still hadn’t forgiven her father for having the surname Larin then, knowing that, naming her after his favorite literary heroine, Tatyana. Being female, Larin became Larina.

  Worse, Tatyana Larina was not Elizabeth Bennet with her happy-ever-after ending. Instead, Tanya was named for Russia’s equally famous equivalent who had denied true love, instead choosing honor and duty in such a terribly depressing Russian way.

  Her mother, where she’d gotten most of her looks, at least had the decency to see the irony. To this day, Father was still tickled by it.

  Tomas was smiling with deep amusement, something she hadn’t known the man was capable of, despite his being a frequent guest at her family’s dinner table when he was in the Ukraine.

  “You shall not find me to be: Wild, sad, silent did the maid appear / As in the timid forest deer,” she replied in Russian with the next couplet of the poem.

  Tomas’ amusement grew, “That is a great truth.”

  She ignored them both and switched back to English. “Lieutenant Tibbets, do I need two dogs to guard me?”

  “We’ll be working in shifts. Based upon your profile—”

  The Caucasian shepherd’s handler twisted sharply at that. Carlton’s smug smile returned. This Russian-speaking blond boy and his beautiful dog were not his favorites.

  “—you are under possible threat from Russian agents. The treaty that you have sponsored—”

  Sponsored? It had been her sole creation—ramming it through every step of the Ukrainian’s arcane and corrupt political system.

  “—is very unpopular with their government. We’ve been asked to protect you from potential foreign agencies until it is signed next week.”

  “And,” the unnamed agent spoke up, his smile said it would be a tease, “it would look terrible if a high-ranking foreign official were to die on our soil.” He had recovered quickly from his earlier surprise at not knowing about the report regarding her. Apparently, he was not even enough of a man to feel anger. If he were such a fan of Onegin, he should challenge this Carlton Tibbets to a duel over his besmirched honor.

  And yet he looked at her as if he knew things about her just because she looked like a century-old portrait of a two-century old heroine.

  Well, she’d show him that she was no cast member from Russia’s Golden Age of Literature.

  3

  “Valentin, Ko mne!” To Me. Tanya Larina called it out with the authority of someone who expected to be obeyed.

  Valentin popped to his feet, and trotted over to her as she continued leaning back on the edge of her desk.

  What the hell? Alex was so surprised the he couldn’t even blink.

  Russian bear dogs were suspicious of everyone and only ever answered to one master, the alpha dog—and Alex had done a lot of training to prove that was himself. The breed was always immensely loyal, but to only one master. They’d tolerate family and teammates, but never answer to them.

  Yet Valentin trotted over to the Ukrainian beauty as if she was the alpha.

  Granted, s
he was astonishing. Five-ten at least. Slender, the smoothness of her simple squat and how it left her well-poised to spring in any direction revealed advanced training—military or martial arts. Maybe dance, for which she certainly had the look.

  Valentin nosed the long dark hair that slid forward off her shoulder in soft curls which echoed the Timoshenko portrait.

  She gave Valentin a big hug and a head rub. His tail was wagging almost as fast as a Malinois’. He even licked her hand for crying out loud.

  Valentin then turned to give him a look as if surprise that Alex hadn’t accompanied him across the room.

  “He is such a beautiful dog.” Even though she didn’t use a squeaky dog voice, Valentin was eating it up. Tanya’s voice was low and smooth. And he could hear everything in her tone, the tease and the pleasure that her ploy had worked. But also the admiration for the great Russian bear dog.

  But Valentin never socialized, especially not with other humans.

  Apparently satisfied with having made her point, she stood.

  Valentin remained close before her, looking up at her face.

  “Kysh,” she wiggled her fingers at him. Shoo!

  Valentin didn’t move.

  Alex considered calling Valentin back, but he knew what she’d done. Rather than confronting him over identifying her with Pushkin’s tragic heroine, she’d tried to punish him by calling Valentin.

  Alex wished he could ask his dog why that worked, but he wasn’t going to help her get out of it unless she asked.

  Besides, there was no denying the similarities. Her face was aristocratic, and she would look great in one of those early-1800s high-waisted empire-style dresses that cinched just below a woman’s breasts. Though the stone-washed designer jeans and the red jewel-tone satin blouse did look exceptional on her as well. The lace-up mid-calf black boots kept her from appearing merely feminine. Instead she looked ready to take on some Russians.

  She tried several things, until even Carlton was smiling, but Valentin was having none of it. She even tried ignoring him, but it was hard to ignore a waist-high, hundred-and-eighty-pound dog.

  She finally looked from the dog to him. “What is the command I need?”

  “Go Home,” Alex said in English.

  “Domoy!” She pointed at Alex’s chest.

  Valentin trotted back to stand at his side, but left a longing look in his wake.

  “Thank you, Agent…”

  “Sergeant Warren,” Carlton answered for him. “Agent” meant protection detail, not Uniformed Division, but did he need to hit Alex’s lower rank quite so hard?

  “Alex Warren. That’s how I got interested in Aleksandr Pushkin in the first place. We share part of a first name and a birthday.”

  “June 6th. Practically a national holiday—for Russians.” Her tone reminded him that Ukraine was not Russia, though he knew Pushkin was almost equally popular there. He had been exiled to Odessa, Ukraine, while he wrote Eugene Onegin, after all.

  “May 26th,” Alex corrected her. “We overlap under the old style, Julian calendar that he was born under, not that new-fangled Georgian thing that the Soviets only adopted in 1918—along with the rest of the world, I’ll admit.”

  Her eye roll was as emphatic as his parents’ when he got on about Russian history. Nerd alert. Maybe he really should drop it.

  “Are you first shift, Lieutenant Tibbets?” She very clearly turned the cold shoulder on him. Real smooth, Alex. Way to impress the protectee.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m with you until you lock down in your hotel tonight. Just tell me what time and Sergeant Warren will be waiting for you in the morning. Please do not leave your room unless he is there.”

  “Fine. Yes. I don’t care. Let’s get out of here.” She pulled on a brilliantly blue parka but didn’t bother zipping it against the DC cold—but he definitely felt a Ukrainian icy chill as she breezed by him and out the door. Carlton’s sneer before he departed said that Alex had totally lost that round. Who knew what garbage Carlton would unload about him during his shift. If Alex found out that there was a single word against Valentin though, he’d—

  “Da.” Ambassador Tomas Khomenko came up beside him.

  Alex didn’t even recall moving to the window. He watched her exit the embassy and walk down the street with her parka still open. Valentin had placed his front paws on the windowsill so that he too could watch her.

  “You are going to be having troubles with that one,” the ambassador continued.

  “Lieutenant Tibbets is the head of the detail,” he answered carefully.

  “That is not of whom I was talking.”

  4

  Tatyana breathed in the cool air. It was so much fresher here. Only February and the taste of spring was already on the air. Kyiv would still be wrapped in winter into April. DC also didn’t have the heavy air pollution of Ukraine’s capital. Instead, here the air tasted as if winter had never quite happened and crocuses were already nodding bright flowers above green grass.

  Her choice to walk into DC’s core, despite the embassy lying over two miles out, bothered Lieutenant Tibbets—he tried three times to direct her to one of the pair of black SUVs parked at the curb. She didn’t care. Besides, his dog appeared to enjoy it as he took the lead, sniffing right and left as he went. Between the dog’s aggressive attitude and the Belgian FN P90 submachine gun dangling across Carlton’s chest, they cleared a hole down the sidewalk that she didn’t have to think about walking through.

  “You don’t like your partner.”

  “What’s to like?” Carlton seemed much more reasonable off by himself.

  Good. Maybe she could rub him in Alex Warren’s face for saying she was anything like her fictional namesake.

  He continued, “He’s from the West Coast, not DC. It may not sound like much, but they’re slackers out there. We’d never have selected a Caucasian shepherd for a DC patrol.”

  “Yet both the Russian and Ukrainian armies have selected them as patrol dogs.” Which made it even more surprising that her ploy had worked with Valentin.

  Carlton nodded rather than arguing. “Yes, hyper-aggressive and hyper-loyal. However, that’s not what makes a good ERT—Emergency Response Team—canine. We need high-speed, agility, and hair-trigger responses.”

  “Uh-huh.” She wasn’t really paying attention as they were passing the Nike store. She hadn’t realized it was so close to the embassy. She definitely needed to get some cool runners before she returned to Ukraine. Maybe there was even a marathon to run here before she returned to Kyiv. Probably not in February. Americans were always so bothered by little inconveniences like cold.

  “Do you run, Lieutenant Tibbets?”

  “For sport? As little as possible. Do enough of it at work. My dog loves to run though, don’t you, boy?” He said the last in a high cheery dog voice that made her think better of him.

  His dog twisted to look at him in confusion.

  “Sorry boy, I forgot you were working. Such!” He repeated the Seek command in German for his dog.

  “Why doesn’t he speak Dutch? Or even French?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Tanya sighed. “Because he’s a Belgian shepherd. Not a German shepherd. Very few Belgians speak German even as a second language.”

  “Oh,” Carlton seemed to think she was serious. No sense of humor at all.

  She did turn in at a Kate Spade store. She didn’t mean to, but there was a satchel of a perfect spring green with matching leather handles hanging in the window that was utterly irresistible—so she didn’t.

  Carlton was tapping his foot impatiently by the time she came back out of the store, even though she’d been quick. Well, she’d taken a little time to choose between the tropical floral scarf and the blue dahlia one presently knotted around her ponytail.

  They’d walked another block as she fussed with the new satchel. It was foolish to spend three hundred American dollars on a satchel she didn’t really need, but she couldn’t help sm
iling at it.

  She was just considering if she should double back to the Nike store to challenge Carlton, when there was a sharp bark that made Carlton jump.

  5

  “Look at them jump! Well done. Horosho! Horosho!” Alex told Valentin. Good! Good!

  He had hung back to get a briefing from the Ukrainian ambassador, since it was clear Carlton wasn’t going to even show him the report that he’d been provided. Asshole!

  Ambassador Tomas Khomenko had been more than obliging, offering succinct advice built on years of knowing Tanya Larina. It was clear that she was a headstrong woman used to having her own way—and not above baiting people. She’d already proven that with her summoning Valentin.

  And it was impossible not to respect the man. Tomas’ last days in the battlefield had been over thirty years before, but they’d included the Soviet-Afghan War. He was also very protective of Tanya on far more than a merely professional level. It meant Tomas liked her a great deal, which spoke to the woman and not just her governmental position.

  Later, as he and Valentin had been driving back into DC, he’d spotted Tanya coming out of Kate Spade. Already impossible to miss, she had added a new green purse that stood out brighter than a Formula 1 car race start flag. He liked that flamboyance. The woman certainly had flair.

  But, while Alex had waited and watched at a red light, he didn’t like that Carlton had let Ms. Larina lag behind him as they moved down the street.

  When he pulled even with them after the green light, he’d rolled down the passenger-side window so that Valentin could stick his big head out.

  “Govorit!”

  And Valentin had Spoken. Not a growl, which would be Golos or Voice, but a Russian bear dog-sized bark.