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Opening Gambit:  Endgame

Rudyard Kipling called it the “Great Game”.  Nowadays, we call it “intelligence” . . . and a lotta days, I think Kipling had the better notion.  It can be fun, in a funny way . . . but it’s amazing how often I end up doing things that look pretty dumb.

Like that old standby:  jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

Or my current exercise:  dangling in mid-air above a steep ravine in the Krusné Hory mountains in northwestern Czechoslovakia, with a river in spate a long way down and a perfectly good bridge on top of me.

It had taken over five months for the DXS to work through the negotiations for the prisoner exchange that would bring three of their operatives home from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.

It took about fifteen seconds for the whole operation to go wrong.

And they’d been expecting it . . . which was why MacGyver was here, slung into climbing harness, trying not to think about the misty drop below his dangling feet as he waited under the footbridge that the two sides had agreed would serve as a safe location for the swap.  Mac had been out there since two o’clock in the morning, rigging transit lines that now ran from one end to the other, so he could manoeuver along the bridge at need.  After all, if the expected betrayal did occur, who could say where on the entire length of the bridge any of the players would be at just that moment?  The plan was simple enough, on the face of it:  the prisoners to be exchanged would start at opposite ends at the same time and cross from one side to the other.  Both sides would get what they wanted – what they had agreed they wanted.

It could have been that simple, if there had been only two sides.

So we’ve got an extra side too . . . the underside.  Once Mac had finished rigging his lines, it had been safer for him to stay in place rather than risk being spotted leaving or returning.  But it hadn’t made for an easy night, trying to nap in his climbing rig while he waited for dawn and the scheduled exchange.

I mostly find the sound of running water pretty soothing . . . but not fifty feet straight down.  Three days of heavy rains in the mountains had flooded the river and threatened to delay the operation, but the clouds had finally slunk away the previous evening, and the early May morning promised to be as bright and warm as a day could be.

MacGyver watched through one of the DXS’ mini-periscopes as the prisoners started their crossing, the three DXS operatives being liberated from the eastern side and the two exchanged detainees from the west side.  One of the westbound prisoners, a woman, was plainly limping, assisted by another, a stoutly built man with several days’ growth of beard; the third seemed dazed by the fresh air and the bright morning light that flashed off his thick glasses, as if he’d been held in darkness for a long time.

The DXS had started with an unusually valuable prize in hand to offer for a trade, putting their negotiator in a position of unusual strength when the talks began.  A tough and seasoned diplomat with a long history in intelligence, he’d chosen to apply the extra leverage and demand the release of an additional US citizen.  In turn, he gave up the control over the exchange location.  A long and complicated series of negotiations had led to this asymmetrical situation, with Mac trying to keep an eye on all five at once as they approached the centre of the bridge and passed each other.  The woman glared furiously at the eastbound prisoners, and the man assisting her seemed all but ready to spit in their faces; but the two groups passed each other without exchanging any remarks.  For a moment, MacGyver was able to breathe deeply and wonder if the extra layers of elaborate safeguards had been a waste of time.

And then the shooting began.

Dang it!  I hate being right!

The DXS strategic analyst had predicted a sniper, and had sniffed at MacGyver’s expectation of automatic weapons fire – but it was Mac who’d had the final say in the preparations, and it was Mac who was there on the site, feeling his adrenaline flare at the all-too-familiar unmistakable rattle of an AK-47.  He’d just leapfrogged his station to keep up with the westbound DXS agents and run the mini-periscope up again to look back along the bridge.  He saw only too clearly as the two eastbound detainees went down, huddling protectively in on themselves.  The wooden boards of the bridge deck offered no hope of cover, but they’d both been supplied with bulletproof vests under their clothing, and Mac could only hope it would be enough.

He could also see the westbound group, who hadn’t had anyone to demand body armour for them.  They hit the deck also when the gunfire started – Mac wasn’t at all surprised to see Bill Foy covering Emily Breckenridge with his own body as he hauled her down, and then turning to bark instructions over his shoulder to the third member of their group, who was slower to respond, looking around frantically in his confusion.

MacGyver was already moving, hitting the release catch to pay out enough slack on his line as he grabbed for the edge of the bridge and vaulted over the rail, landing in a crouch beside Bill and Emily.  He tossed them two of the other lines he had prepared, gasping, “Swing over – climbing harness ready for you under the bridge!  Go go go!!”

That was enough for the two seasoned agents:  Bill Foy had had solid enough training, and Emily was an expert mountaineer who freeclimbed the Alps for fun and was probably going to tease MacGyver mercilessly about his own nerves once they were all safe at home again.  Mac ran back in a crouch towards the eastern side and grabbed hold of the third man, who had turned to look back frantically at the far end of the bridge where the two released Soviet detainees lay.  He cried out in alarm and struggled in Mac’s grip.

Mac gave him just enough of a shake to get the man’s attention focused on him.  “Jason Blake?”

Behind the thick glasses, grey eyes widened in surprise.  “Who – where’d you come from – ?”

“Name’s MacGyver.  Your sister Karen sent me.  Hold on!”  Mac wrapped his arms around Jason Blake’s emaciated frame and dived over the bridge rails as the lethal firing path of the AK-47 on the far bank passed by and above them.  He heard Jason let out a high-pitched scream as they went over the edge, and some part of Mac’s own brain that wasn’t allowed to drive just now echoed the scream inwardly.  The shriek turned into a squashed splutter as the climbing rig caught them in mid-drop and their fall turned into a swinging arc.

Mac shifted his grip.  “Jason, listen to me.  You’re all right but you gotta listen.  Wrap your arms and legs around me and hold on – I’ve gotta get us back up underneath the bridge before they figure out where we’ve gone and start shooting again.”

With Jason clinging like a panicked limpet, MacGyver pulled them both up on the lines until they were back under the slender protection of the bridge.  The young man resembled his older sister:  fair-haired, fine-boned, young and nervous, with eyes that would have seemed too large for his face even if eight months of imprisonment hadn’t left him so gaunt that he seemed to weigh nothing.  Getting him into his climbing harness felt like stuffing a small child into a playsuit, except that Jason was doing his awkward best to help.

Bill and Emily were long gone.  In addition to the harnesses rigged and waiting on the main anchor line, Mac had set up a parallel looped line that ran clothesline-fashion through a pulley fixed to the support pylon on the western bank.  All the agents had to do was belay onto one line and pull on the other, and they could make the transit to the end of the bridge as fast as they could haul on the rope.  Mac had been using the same system to shift himself quickly back and forth along the underside of the bridge.

He saw now that the two seasoned operatives were already at the western bank, casting off from their harnesses to make the dangerously vulnerable leap across the exposed gap between the pylons and the safety of the steep slope beyond.  MacGyver watched Bill haul Emily under the cover of the thick underbrush and begin the scramble up to where they would be met and welcomed by the main force of waiting DXS agents.  Two chickens safely in the basket, and the third at least temporarily out of the frying pan:  that still left two lives in the balance.

The gunfire had stopped.  An eerie silence fell over the ravine, and the rushing river below them could be heard clearly again.  The morning seemed to be holding its breath, waiting to see who had survived the sudden plunge into violence.  Once Mac was sure Jason wouldn’t fall if left alone briefly, he pulled out his mini-periscope and extended it again, trying to get a clear look at the eastern end of the bridge where the other two prisoners had fallen.

MacGyver often felt a strange reluctance whenever the DXS insisted on issuing him specialized equipment.  It never really worked out any better than his own improvised solutions, and the fancy gear always seemed more likely to get shot up, banged up, or broken.  The moment he raised the periscope head clear of the surface of the bridge, the machine gun clattered again and the line of bullets found the protruding end and shattered it.  Mac only just managed not to drop the thing from the force of the smash.

“Aw, dang it!” he said, out loud this time.

The radio bud in his ear buzzed and crackled.  “You still with us, Mac?”

“Givin’ up on radio silence, Pac-Man?”

“Well, they know we’re here.  They know you’re there.  Seems pretty pointless.”

Mac grinned.  Ed Packwood was the DXS coordinator for the operation, and just having him around meant better odds of getting home intact.  “I’d say it’s an idea whose time has come . . . and gone.”  He stuffed the broken periscope into a pocket.  “I’ve got our third man safe, but I didn’t see what happened to the other two.”

He didn’t like the long hesitation that followed before Packwood answered.  “I think Alexi Chernov made it.  We saw him crawl to the far side and make it into the trees.”

MacGyver glanced up to see Jason following Mac’s half of the conversation.  “Jason, did you see what happened to the two guys we were exchanging?  Did they both go down?”

Jason swallowed with visible difficulty.  “Uh . . . one of them got all the way across – the dark-haired guy with the scowl.  The other one, the man with the catfish moustache . . . he . . . the gunfire kept coming back to him.  I didn’t see any blood at first – ”

“We gave ‘em both bulletproof vests.”

Jason swallowed again.  “The guy with the gun must have figured that out . . . the last pass they – they must have targeted his head.  It wasn’t . . . no one could have survived that.”  Jason looked very sick.

Mac found himself swallowing hard as well.  “Didja hear that, Pac-Man?”

“Yeah.  I heard.”

“Quayle’s dead.”

Packwood didn’t reply.  There wasn’t anything to say.

“And they’re probably listening in on us.  So no tellin’ them the combination to my locker.”

“Aw, Mac, there’s nothing in there anyway except dirty socks and a pile of old National Geographics.”

“Hey, those are vintage magazines.”  MacGyver looked along the length of the bridge and back towards the eastern bank, narrowing his eyes against the slanting morning sunlight.  He slid his pack off his back and hung it from the main anchor line where he could reach it easily, then dug into a pocket for an extra carabiner and clipped it to the same line towards the western bank of the river.

When I was a kid, Halloween could get pretty competitive – my buddies and me were always trying to come up with some scary gimmick that would top anything anyone else tried.  And, of course, whatever we did one year, we had to top it ourselves the next.

“Pac-Man.”

“Yo.”

“Was it my imagination, or did that last burst of gunfire come from a different angle?”

“Were you the teacher’s pet in geometry class as well as physics?”

Mac pulled out the broken periscope again, extended it to its maximum length, and rigged it with a triangle of cord to hang horizontally under the carabiner, looking a bit like a coat hanger.  “C’mon, Pac-Man.  The first shots came from the slope way above the level of the bridge, and almost straight up from it – just a bit on the downstream side.  Those didn’t.”

“’Fraid you’re right, Mac . . . I think he’s working his way upstream, and down the ravine wall.”

MacGyver wriggled out of his jacket, rolled it into a compact bundle and stuffed it into the pack, then shrugged out of his own Kevlar vest.  He should have felt uncomfortably exposed, but instead his muscles sang their relief at being finally free of the restricting weight and rigid bulk.  He breathed deeply, tasting the sweet misty air that rose from the rushing river far below.  The adrenaline racing through him brought the entire world into sharp, beautiful, exquisite focus.

“You’re being flanked.  He wants you.”

“Hey, it’s always nice to be wanted.”  Mac hung the Kevlar vest on the crosspiece of the periscope, studied the effect for a moment, and then shrugged out of his shirt and draped it over the vest.  Much better . . . although the bare skin between his shoulderblades prickled with a suddenly heightened sense of vulnerability.

There was the year we had the scarecrow that suddenly came to life in the front yard . . .

“He’s good.  Our own sniper hasn’t been able to get a single clear shot at him.”

“You mean every minute I’m out here, I’m putting one of our Eastern friends in danger of gettin’ shot?”

“Friends?  He’s trying to kill you, Mac.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m sure it’s nothin’ personal.”

. . . and the next year, I had the best idea of all:  I made the scarecrow fly.

“I thought you said getting shot was always personal.”

“Did I?  I guess it is.”  Mac pulled the tight knit cap off his head and secured it to the top of his ‘scarecrow’.  His hair promptly fell into his eyes – he’d had no chance for a haircut since he’d left LA weeks before, hell-bent on somehow catching up with Pete Thornton in the vast reaches of Soviet Russia in time to be of some help on Pete’s latest mission.  They’d been on their way home at last and had only made it as far as Athens when the word reached them that the long-delayed prisoner exchange was finally going to happen.

All it took was a well-oiled pulley, the right application of gravity and physics, and a whole lotta clothesline.

He pushed his hair back again. “Any word from the other side?  Are they still holding radio silence?”

It was a moment before Packwood answered.  “No . . . but they might as well, for all the good it’s doing us.”

“Thought you had a translator on your team.”  Mac caught hold of one side of the looped line and pulled it to within Jason’s reach.  “Hold on to this, will ya?  Don’t let go.”  He grasped the other side of the parallel line, pulled out his Swiss Army knife and cut through it.  “Good.  Now pay me out some of the slack . . . easy.  Keep hold of the line, we’re gonna need it.”  He made his end of the rope fast to the scarecrow.

“Of course I have a translator!”  Packwood snapped.  “And whatever they’re speaking, it isn’t Russian, German, or Czech.  It also isn’t French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Greek, or Turkish, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t Choctaw either.  Got any other ideas, genius?”

“Yeah.  I might.  Can you patch their transmissions through to us?”  Mac looked at Jason.  “Karen told me you’re a linguist.”  Jason’s file had said a good deal more:  his station chief had been furious when his best translator had been risked, and lost, in a poorly handled field operation.  Jason hadn’t even been fully certified for field work; but the ops coordinator had not survived to face a reprimand.

Jason only shrugged and nodded.

“Careful now – I need you to keep hold of that rope for me a bit longer.”  MacGyver passed his radio over to Jason, noting how the young man’s attention became focused the moment he was able to hear the voices from the eastern side.  Mac glanced upstream – no further sign yet of the enemy gunman – and fished in his jeans pocket for another carabiner.  “Can you follow what they’re saying?”

Jason nodded.  “Sure, no problem.  They’re speaking Hungarian.”

“Hungarian operatives?  What the heck are they doin’ here?”

Jason made an impatient gesture.  “They aren’t Hungarian, they’re just speaking it – they probably think no one on our side can understand them – no, wait, one of them is Hungarian.  Budapest native.  Professional class.  Maybe it was his idea.  The others are Czech and Russian, and their CO is Russian, probably from Leningrad originally.  He’s totally pissed off and he’s got the most awful accent you wouldn’t believe.”

“I might.  What’re they saying?”

“They’re looking after the survivor – Chernov?  He’s injured, but not badly.”  Jason winced.  “He’s Ukrainian.  With a bad temper and a really expressive vocabulary.”

“Anything about the gunman?”

Jason frowned.  “This doesn’t make any sense.  It sounds like they don’t know who he is.  They’re arguing over whether to go after him.”  He looked at MacGyver in confusion.  “I thought he was on their side.”

Mac had found a good spot on the underside of the bridge and was securing the second carabiner – Packwood had ragged him unmercifully about his insistence on adding duct tape to his regular field kit, and now he’d get to rag him back.  “More than two sides to this operation – and please don’t ask me how many there really are.  It makes my head ache.”

“Listen, um . . . what did you say your name was again?”

“MacGyver.  Just call me Mac.  Lemme have that line now – thanks.”  Mac threaded the line through the carabiner, coiled up enough of the remaining length for what he needed, cut the excess off and stuffed it into the pack.

“Okay, Mac . . . um, don’t think I’m not grateful and all that, but what the hell are you doing?”

“Keepin’ a promise.”  Mac gave his scarecrow a final examination and added a few extra strips of duct tape to make sure it would hold together.  “I promised your sister I’d get you out.”

“But why are we still out here?  Why didn’t we just follow Bill and Emily?”

MacGyver pointed towards the western end of the bridge, where the slanting morning sun was dappling the bushes and trees around the pylons.  It all looked deceptively peaceful.  “I figure that even when the shooting first started, there was an exposed gap between where the cover of the bridge ends and where the bushes and trees get thick enough to hide under.  Bill and Emily got across while the gunman was finishing off Quayle and tryin’ for us.  Since then, he’s been workin’ his way around . . . by now, a good part of the final stretch of the transit is gonna be open to fire, and the longer we wait, the more he can see.”

Jason turned even whiter under his prison pallor.  “You mean – you mean we’re cut off.  There’s nowhere to go but back there . . . ” he glanced over his shoulder at the eastern bank.  “No way.  I can’t go back.  Please . . . ”

“Relax.  We’re not gettin’ out that way.”

“Then where can we go?”

MacGyver looked pointedly downwards, towards the river foaming far below them.  “How well can you swim?”

Jason followed his gaze and gulped.  “Are you crazy?”

Mac grinned and shrugged.  “Hey, I asked you my question first.”

“Um . . . okay, I guess . . . but I’m not all that strong any more . . . and really, it’s not like I ever was . . .”

“Good enough.  I’m giving you the pack; it’s got some bouyancy, and this pocket here has a self-inflating survival cushion built into it.  Let’s get your glasses stowed in there, too – you don’t wanna risk losing or breaking them.  Good.  Just remember to keep your head up, and pull this tab once you’re in the river.”

Getting Jason ready to shed his climbing harness was even more like dealing with a small child – and not a well-coordinated one.  “Okay.  Now take your shoes off, stuff your socks into them, loop the laces through your belt and tie them together.”  As he spoke, Mac was doing the same with his own sneakers.  And Packwood just didn’t understand why I wouldn’t wear combat boots on this jaunt.  I bet he doesn’t remember how heavy those things get when they’re soggy.

He retrieved the radio from Jason.  “Any fresh news, Pac-Man?”

“Well, the Red Sox still can’t play worth a damn, and we still haven’t spotted your sniper.  Bill is sitting on Emily’s good leg so she won’t try to go after the guy herself, and she’s taught me eight new swear words in three different languages, but she won’t tell me what they mean.”

“So nothing’s changed.”

“Nope.”

“Then I guess we’re done here.  See ya on the flip side.”

“Good luck, Mac.  And you better make it.  I don’t want to have to explain to Pete that I lost you.”

MacGyver sealed the radio into a waterproof pouch, shoved it into his backpack and sealed the pack in turn.  He strapped it to Jason’s chest, hoping that position would work better as a makeshift PFD, and attached a fifteen-foot length of the excess line to the pack, leaving the end trailing loose.  “You ready?”

“Hell, no!”  Jason gulped.  “But I guess it beats getting shot.”

“That’s the spirit.  Let’s go!”

My Mom was awful mad about her clothesline, but even she thought the flying scarecrow was pretty slick.

As the two men dropped towards the river, Mac held onto the line he’d threaded through the carabiner, which ran out to the pulley at the western pylon and back again to his scarecrow.  As the slack was taken up, it yanked the vaguely man-shaped bundle along the transit line towards the western end of the bridge.  When the machine-gun fire opened up again, Mac’s skin cringed of its own accord; the next second and a half of falling seemed frozen in amber, time crawling slowly as he watched to see if the gunman would target the real fugitives or the decoy.

When the scarecrow began to jerk and sway under the impact of the bullets, Mac let go of his end of the line and time speeded up again with an almost audible whoosh.  The decoy had appeared in the sniper’s field of fire, just where he’d expected to see someone making a break for the homeward bank; who would be crazy enough to drop into a flooded river instead?  Especially when the river flowed south and east, back towards the heart of Czechoslovakia and Soviet territory.

Mac’s feet hit the water cleanly and he went deep into the cold, clear river, feeling the current pushing at him, its eager force carrying him away from the bridge and out of gunshot range even as he headed upwards again.  His head broke the surface and he shook his hair out of his eyes, almost laughing with exhilaration.  Barefoot and shirtless, free of the menace of the sniper and the no-win game of lethal five-handed chess at the bridge, he felt light as a feather.  Waves of adrenaline were still racing through him and the icy water had no power to drag him down.

He could see Jason bobbing along up ahead, the rope trailing visibly behind him in the water like a fishing line behind a solidly hooked trout, giving Mac an easy means to catch up with him.  Like a simple sea anchor, the trailing line also provided some stability in the foaming current.  It was eight miles downriver to the nearest town – Soviet controlled – but only two miles to the fallback point Mac had scoped out on the western side, where they would be able to double back and meet up with Packwood waiting with dry clothes and a vehicle.

MacGyver let out an exultant whoop and started to swim after his fish.

*

The dizzy feeling of giddy exaltation had ebbed by the time they reached their landing spot, but the sense of freedom and delight remained.  Jason was shivering with the cold, but he’d found MacGyver’s enthusiasm contagious, and couldn’t keep from grinning even though his teeth were chattering.

“Oh my god.  We made it.  We really made it.”

Mac relieved him of the pack and fished out his jacket, glad to see the waterproofing had held.  “Here, I think you need this more than I do.  Get that wet shirt off and put your shoes back on.  We’ve got about half an hour’s hiking to get across the watershed to our pick-up point.  Think you can make it?”

“I feel like I ought to be able to fly.”  Jason took a few staggering steps; Mac caught him as he tripped.

“Easy.  There’s survival rations in the pack – that oughta help.  It doesn’t look like the prison food agreed with you.”

“There wasn’t a whole lot of it to agree with.  Oh my god, chocolate.  I don’t even remember what it tastes like.”

“C’mon, then – we’ll take it easy.  Walking should warm you up.”

“What about you?  Aren’t you cold?”

“Not yet, but we better go – the hike will help.” 

The May sun was bright and the air felt balmy now that they were out of the river; and even at the gentle pace MacGyver set, muscles that had stiffened in the cold water soon began to loosen up.  The real chill was deep inside, where the sunlight couldn’t reach.

Quayle should have resisted being traded back.  He knew he’d be a target the moment he set foot across the Iron Curtain, but he’d been too arrogantly confident of his own value and importance.  Mac’s mission hadn’t even included keeping Quayle alive; the man had been a sacrificial pawn from the start.

And when all the shooting was done, as far as the DXS were concerned, the exchange had been a complete triumph by official standards – or would be, once MacGyver and Jason reached their goal.  All three DXS detainees had been retrieved without further injury.  Most important, the sacrifice play with Quayle had bought success for the real goal of the prisoner swap:  Alexi Chernov was back on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, his credentials intact, ready to resume his work as a Western double agent, work that had been interrupted when an overly zealous Belgian customs agent had collared him six months before.  The successful operation might even help offset the official annoyance at Mac and Pete’s recent unsanctioned activities in the USSR.

MacGyver looked up at the lovely clear mountain sky, wishing the bright sunlight could burn away the returning headache of trying to keep track of the moves in the complex game.  The Great Game . . . the plunge into the river had felt profoundly cleansing, but his skin began to crawl again when he thought of Quayle lying back on the bridge with his skull blown open, shot by his own associates after one too many double-crosses.  The man had been scum, but his death had been a bloodlessly calculated strategy play.  Was that really any better?

Jason had been silent for some time, but he was keeping up well enough.  They crested the ridge they’d been climbing and he stopped to catch his breath.  “I haven’t thanked you yet.  You saved my life.”

Mac started, glad to be distracted from his thoughts.  “Hey, no problem.  Like I told you, I promised Karen I’d get you out.”

“Karen.  I can’t believe I’m really going to see her again.  How is she?  She must have had a horrible time after I was captured – she’s always looked after me.”

“Don’t worry.  She’s fine.”

She’s not fine.  But it can wait till you’re safe home before you have to face any of that.

She’d’ve faced criminal charges for working with Quayle if Pete hadn’t’a stuck his neck out for her – my request – my “bonus” for taking Quayle down.  Instead, she was canned.  Pete couldn’t stand in the way of that.  I couldn’t ask him to, and I didn’t.

She’s eating her heart out because all she ever wanted was to be an intelligence operative . . . to fight the bad guys, free the oppressed, all of that . . . and she ended up compromised and disgraced.  She about climbed the walls waiting while they negotiated your return, but she’ll be kicking the walls anyway from now on.

Some big brass sent you behind the Iron Curtain without a good enough exit mapped out, and before it was over Pete and Karen and I spent a sunny afternoon playing lethal Sardines with a nutcase who thought he could play every side against the middle.  And now he’s been shot by one of his own sides to keep him away from another.

Your sister had the courage to help us all get out alive, but they booted her anyway.  Now she’s just another secretary in some downtown office.

The Great Game didn’t seem as much fun as it used to be.

One: Castle Queenside

The car that met Pete Thornton at the Oakland Airport was bland and nondescript – on the outside. Inside, the upholstery was unobtrusively luxurious, the appointments were world-class, the legroom was generous, and the ride had the weightlessly smooth quality he’d have expected from a limousine.

Within the first five minutes, he had also recognized the professional expertise of the driver. But despite all Pete’s best efforts at easy informality and confidential charm, when the 25-minute drive to the Presidio area ended, he still didn’t know anything more about the driver than when they had started. He knew the man’s professed opinions of various sports teams, the price of gasoline, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, and the weather, but he suspected that all of it could easily have been invented for his own benefit. Most of all, he didn’t know where the man had learned his unacknowledged tradecraft.

When the car drew up in front of the restaurant, Pete had to admit defeat and bail out. “Gregory, am I correct that if I offer you a tip, you’ll turn it down?”

“There’s no need for any of that, sir. It’s been a pleasure.”

“I’ll just bet. Okay, I’ll offer you a tip anyway: if your current employer is ever enough of a damned fool to let you go, come to me and you’ll have another job on the spot. Not that I think you’ll ever need it.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate the compliment. Have a good evening.”

“I’ll do my best.” Pete waggled his hand as the car pulled away, then squared his shoulders before he ascended the steps. Even a friendly dinner with Ruth Collins called for a certain degree of fortitude.

The restaurant was unquestionably Ruth’s kind of establishment: so exclusive and elite that it didn’t bother with any external street signage, and probably wasn’t even open to anyone without a personal invitation or a pedigree, preferably both. Pete hadn’t been there before, but it was never a challenge to find Ruth in any restaurant: he simply headed for the most likely location of the best possible private table, wherever the view would be best and the diners could be well attended in splendid isolation. In the corner of his eye, he caught the sudden movement of the maître d’ headed in his direction. Pete smiled privately when the man checked himself a moment later and he was allowed to proceed unhindered. Ruth Collins’ guest had been recognized.

The view of the ocean and the Golden Gate was truly magnificent; the furniture was Chippendale and the linen was immaculate. Ruth herself looked mysteriously in tune with her opulent setting, despite her casual dress, the setting sun over the Pacific gilding her silver hair. She rose as Pete approached and held out a gnarled hand to him. He pressed it gently but warmly, feeling, as always, a ridiculous impulse to bow. Instead, he held her chair for her before he seated himself.

“Pete Thornton. It’s been far too long . . . thank you for fitting me in on such short notice. Any problems with your flight?”

“Are you kidding? If there had been, you’d have been informed while I was still in transit, and you’d probably have overhauled and reorganized Oakland Airport’s Air Traffic Control Center by now.” Pete settled himself in his chair. “I suppose you’ve taken the liberty of ordering?”

Ruth smiled slyly, the wry gleam in her eyes making her seem suddenly much younger. “Believe it or not, I have bowed my head to the immutable fact that you are a man who prefers to make his own decisions. So no, I haven’t ordered for you.” She gestured towards her wine glass. “I did take the liberty of ordering the wine, however . . . knowing your absence of expertise in that particular field.”

“I hope I know when to leave a key decision in the hands of an eminently qualified expert.”

“Now that opens an interesting line of thought.” Ruth’s pleasant expression set Pete’s hackles on edge; he could almost hear the snick of a rapier drawn to begin a formal challenge. “Can any of us be experts in our own futures? Can we claim to know what will be best for ourselves down the road – months or years from now?”

Pete reached for the wine bottle. “You’ve spent months trying to convince me that you’ve got a better idea for my own future than I do myself.”

“And how you’ve resented the arrogance of that, even when you couldn’t help being intrigued.” Ruth pushed her half-empty glass towards him. “But that’s not why I asked you to come have dinner tonight.”

Pete raised an eyebrow as he poured. “You mean this isn’t about the job offer?”

“Actually, Pete, I’ve changed our minds.”

He opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again, considering first. “Have you.”

“Oh, don’t look so crestfallen, Pete.” Ruth held her glass up to the light from the window, admiring the ruby sparks kindled by the sunset. “I still want you. We still want you.”

“Should I worry about how easily you swap those pronouns around?”

“Not if you’re half the man I take you for.” Pete wasn’t certain what the signal had been; the waiter seemed to materialize from the woodwork. Once their orders had been taken, he faded away as effortlessly as he had come.

Ruth leaned forward, clearly ready to come to the point. “I’ve grown greedy and grasping in my old age, Pete.” Pete snorted. “Now, no flattery! I don’t just want you. I want that protégé of yours as well.”

“MacGyver?”

“You’re wasting him, Pete!” A fine-boned hand slapped on the table, sunset fire blazing in an antique ring. “Just how much have you been giving him to do, playing spy games? Ferrying bits of microfilm back and forth across assorted borders? A handful of rescue operations and the odd dabble into security? Hardly seems like enough for that set of talents. Do you really think you’ve got his full attention?” Ruth looked at Pete searchingly. “Wasn’t it just last winter that some old chum of his waved a scientific expedition in his direction? – poorly thought out, badly equipped and pathetically unsupported, but it was science. And just like that your man was haring off to the Amazon for weeks at a time . . . and damned near didn’t come back, from what I’ve heard.”

Pete had managed, so far, to keep his face straight, but his eyes had narrowed. “Your sources always were impeccable.”

“And wouldn’t you dearly love to be able to identify them? Don’t waste your time trying.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve got my hands full enough chasing the bad guys without trying to beat my best teacher at her favorite game.”

This time Ruth snorted. “I thought I told you no flattery. And don’t even get me started on how badly the DXS are wasting you.”

Pete set his wineglass down; his face had hardened, crumbling the mask from inside. “And you’ve got something better to offer? ‘The Phoenix Foundation for Research’ – okay, maybe it’s going to be science that saves us in the long run. I’ll admit you’ve done some pretty remarkable things. But Ruth, I’m not young enough to wait that long. Intelligence is what I know, and I’m damned good at it.”

The old woman started to reply, but Pete cut her off with an impatient gesture. “If you’re about to point out that you’re older than I am, don’t bother. You know damned well just how much I’ve lost already – or sacrificed – to be in a position to make a difference to the future. Do you really expect me to give all that up and settle down at a civilian think-tank? I’m sorry, Ruth. I’m just not patient enough.”

Dinner arrived and Pete welcomed the interruption. He dug into his entrée, determined to fortify himself against the expected lecture. He chewed resolutely for several minutes before the protracted silence across the table broke his resolve, and he looked up to meet Ruth’s sardonic gaze.

“Pete.” She set down her wine glass. “After all these years, you have finally managed to disappoint me. No, I don’t mean with your refusal – it’s the very least I’d have expected. But did you really think I’d sideline you – commit you to babysitting scientists after the kind of work you’ve done? Admittedly, they do take a great deal of babysitting, but there are others better suited to that particular task.”

Ruth speared a cucumber slice and held it up as if considering its fate. “You must have looked through the files I showed you last time on our operational side. I know I wasn’t able to leave them with you, and that’s half the real reason I asked you here tonight. As far as public knowledge goes, we’ve merely begun to branch out into a new field as security consultants – and not before time: technology is going to transform that industry before it knows what’s hit it. But trust me, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. It’s the rime of frost on the tip.”

She looked at Pete again and her eyes were diamond-hard. “Pete, we need you. Far more than the DXS does now or ever will again.” She reached into her purse, drew out a square envelope and offered it to Pete. As he took it, he realized from the hard outlines inside that it held a computer disk. “This should bring you up to speed.”

“What if the rest of your board objects?”

Ruth raised an eyebrow. “Are you planning on telling them?”

“What’s the password?”

Pete saw her nod with satisfaction. “I remember a younger man who resisted making assumptions – he hadn’t learned to trust his instincts, let alone act on them. Good riddance to him, I say. I’m sure his older self will remember the name of my favorite waiter in Toulon.”

Pete tucked the computer disk into his pocket. “You’re taking quite a risk.”

“A calculated one.”

“I haven’t forgotten how much you liked taking risks – except with your people’s lives.”

Ruth laughed, a deep throaty cackle. “Another thing we had in common! Ah, Pete, if only I’d been twenty years younger when we met. Except you were married then . . . we both were . . . oh, look, they’re bringing dessert already. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed; I certainly won’t be.”

Dessert was a fantasy confection of chocolate and cream, accompanied by a vintage brandy. Ruth’s lifelong pursuit of fine restaurants had always been driven by her sweet tooth. But she hardly took a mouthful before returning to her subject.

“You’ll recall, back when you were still considering our job offer, we also discussed the possibility of mounting some joint operations?”

Pete started to laugh, and Ruth broke off to glower at him. He ignored the steely look. “Who are you, and what have you done with the real Ruth Collins? Since when did you ignore chocolate in favor of shop talk?”

Ruth laughed in turn, picked up her brandy snifter, and held it out in a toast. “Touché, my friend! I promise, I’m nearly finished. But hear me out. Call it an old woman’s obsession if you like.”

“Not a chance.”

“Very well. In that case, you can sit there and suffer the consequences of your own gallantry. I’m telling you that you’re wrong – you’re wrong about your own career, and you’re wrong about MacGyver. It’s high time you both gave up the intelligence game: the world’s changing anyway, and the DXS are going to start falling behind the curve soon, along with the CIA and Interpol and MI-5. You need to get ahead of that curve. It’s where you belong. You need to come work for me, for Phoenix, where you’ll be able to go on making the world a better place to live, not moving pawns around on a board that will soon begin to become irrelevant.

“Pete, if you were a betting man I’d make this a bet. But you’re not – at least, I’ve never seen you bet anything except your own life, and only when the stakes were high enough and there was nothing else to hand. So I’ll make this a challenge instead.”

She leant across the table. “I told you I wanted both of you. Lend me MacGyver for one mission. I need him anyway: that’s the other half of the reason for your invitation. Not but what I welcome the company.”

Pete nodded cautiously. “It will depend on the mission. You know he’s essentially free-lance – it’ll be his own choice, and I won’t try to convince him.”

“Understood. I won’t even offer him a job. But by the time he’s done, he’ll know he wants to come work for us – full-time, not just as an odd-jobs man – and he’ll tell you to come too.” Ruth looked Pete full in the eyes.

“If he does, you say yes. That’s the challenge. Will you take it?”

Pete sat back in his chair, trying not to smirk. “You’re on, Ruth. But I don’t think you’re going to find Mac all that easy to manipulate.”

Ruth dug into her dessert with a satisfied smile. “That’s just the point, Pete. I won’t have to.”

*

Now, I can remember exactly when and how I first heard of the Phoenix Foundation for Research; but most folks don’t, and they don’t realize how long it’s been around. It was founded not long after World War II, right around the time the Cold War was starting to heat up, but it kept a real low profile until maybe ten or fifteen years ago. Up till then, you mostly saw the words “sponsored by the Phoenix Foundation” in a tiny line of fine print at the bottom of grant proposals, or scholarship awards, or patent applications, or formal papers reporting the results of groundbreaking scientific studies.

The ground being broken started getting bigger and muddier and more noticeable, and in the course of a few years the fine print got bigger too. Then it turned into paragraphs in the news. And then it was headlines.

The main building for the Phoenix Foundation in downtown Los Angeles housed both offices and laboratory facilities – administration and research in the same place. Where other skyscrapers seemed to hunch their shoulders aggressively in the cramped, competitive airspace of the LA skyline, the Phoenix building reached up mirror-bright towards the sky. It seemed astonishing to MacGyver that, in all the years since he’d first moved to LA, he’d never been there.

The security guard at the entrance to the visitors’ section of the parking garage had a frank, open face and a friendly smile; MacGyver also noticed that his eyes were alert and that the glance he gave Mac’s visitor’s pass, although quick, wasn’t cursory. He’d held it at just the right angle for the watermark to show up plainly – the watermark that Mac hadn’t yet figured out how to duplicate accurately.

I think it musta been after the first Earth Day in 1970 that folks first really sat up and took notice. While other groups were predicting the end of life on Earth and arguing over what was gonna kill us first, or spinning thin theories out of pseudoscience and self-interest, the Phoenix Foundation was there with solid studies and plans for research, hard data and workable ideas. They were also there when the big corporations tried to sweep everything under the table, and they were tough to ignore and impossible to discredit. They’d started as a civilian alternative to government-backed research, and when Vietnam was grinding to its miserable end and a lotta folks wouldn’t trust the government if it said the sun would rise in the east, they trusted Phoenix.

The main lobby was elegant but functional, sheathed in warm brown marble the color of well-seasoned oak. Mac’s appointment was for the early afternoon, and a returning lunchtime crowd streamed past him, laughing and joking. He noticed a tendency towards casual dress, a surprisingly wide range of ages and ethnicities – the same crowd at the DXS building would be dominated by white males in suits and ties between the ages of 25 and 40 – and a high percentage of women. Several were pretty enough to catch his attention, and they smiled back easily when they saw him looking; one statuesque brunette looked him over deliberately and winked.

The Foundation had deep pockets, unimpeachable credentials, and a reputation so spotless it could’ve been used for a soap commercial. I figured they must have been the most respected scientific institution in the country.

What I couldn’t begin to figure out was why the heck they would want me for a job.

When Ed Gantner, my old buddy at the State Department, called me up and said they wanted a chat with me, I thought he was pulling my leg. Heck, if I’d been fifteen years younger and stupider, I’d’ve wanted to sneak into their tall shiny office building just to see what they were cooking up. As it was, I had an official appointment and a guest pass that was going into my keepsake drawer . . . if I could only manage not to have to give it back at the end of my visit.

By the time MacGyver had been smoothly and politely passed through the outer perimeter, he still hadn’t spotted any substantial holes in the building’s unostentatiously tight security – for all his brash imaginings, he wouldn’t really have wanted to try to break in himself. He wasn’t quite sure he could pull it off. And just how long had it been since the last time he’d thought that about any place?

The guard at the lobby desk had escorted him into a comfortably furnished waiting room, lined with enough books on one wall to make any length of wait seem trivial; but Mac’s attention was caught by the rest of the room. A massive relief map of the planet, festooned with markers, showed locations of past and present expeditions. The remaining walls were covered with a gallery of beautifully framed photos showing Phoenix employees at work on a variety of projects, in settings ranging from ordinary labs to dense jungle to mountain peaks and polar icecaps. Glass display cases held more memorabilia from the organization’s history – scientific curiosities, historical artifacts from archeological digs, and design schematics and prototypes of various inventions, some of them now household items.

One prominent case held an even greater surprise: under a large placard bearing the words “Lessons Learned the Hard Way” was a rogue’s gallery of spectacular mishaps, failed experiments, and scientists – some of them quite famous – caught in moments of ignominy. Mac grinned when he recognized one of his own mentors ruefully posing with an engineering mockup and what had to be the prototype model, twisted and melted beyond recognition.

He was still grinning when the door opened to reveal, not the expected bureaucrat or flunky in a suit and tie, but a thin young man several inches shorter than Mac, with light brown hair and intelligent brown eyes behind slightly askew glasses with large lenses. He was wearing a tie under his lab coat, but he didn’t look or talk anything like a flunky.

“Hey there – are you MacGyver? I’m Willis. Sorry you’ve had to wait so long. Ruth’s in a meeting that’s running late, so she asked me to show you around in the meanwhile. Hope you haven’t been bored.”

“Not a chance. Pleased to meet you, um, Willis . . .” The young man’s badge simply read ‘Willis’ and ‘Research’; Mac let the name drag out, hoping for some context. He waggled his fingers in the air in inquiry.

The immediate response was an unaccountable flush and a sidelong glance. “Um, just Willis – it’s my last name. I hate my first name. Please don’t ask.”

Mac held up both hands. “Hey, no problem, I totally get it.” Their eyes met, and after a moment their grins mirrored each other in perfect mutual understanding.

*

By the time MacGyver had seen the chemistry and engineering labs, he’d completely forgiven Willis for the tie and was trying not to let his envy show too much.

“This is the main electronics lab. We’re getting pretty cramped for space, as you can see – they’re talking about setting up another facility that’ll be all lab space, but for now we’re having to outsource some of the new projects and contracts to assorted partners.”

Mac had dug his hands into his pockets; it was all he could do not to start picking up the equipment and examining it in more detail. Okay, fiddling with it. “You don’t like that much, do you?”

“Hell, no. I’d way rather keep it in-house.”

“Better job security?”

Willis looked startled and almost confused. “Oh. Well, sure, I suppose. But that’s not the real point. It’s just that – well, our kind of work really needs top-notch facilities with state-of-the-art equipment and trained specialists, and whether you like it or not, that’s mostly found in the corporate labs. And here, of course. But like I said, we’re kind of busting at the seams.”

Mac started to pick up an especially intriguing prototype, remembered in time, and stuffed his hands back into his jacket pockets, feeling like a kid in a candy store with his mother’s eagle eye on him.

Willis hadn’t noticed. “The more we can keep in-house, the less chance there is for any conflict of interests, if you know what I mean. Oh, damn it!” He fumbled at his glasses as they slid away from his face; one of the earpieces clattered to the floor, and he groped for it myopically.

MacGyver retrieved the errant earpiece. “Got a screw loose?”

“That’s what my brother always insists, but not on my glasses.” Willis peered at the frames. “Oh, hell. I knew it wasn’t going to hold much longer – I should’ve gotten new glasses months ago, but I never seem to have time. God, I hate having to tape my glasses. If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we get an all-night optometrist?”

“Here, lemme take a look.” Mac studied the broken pieces. “They work you that hard around here?”

“No, I just keep forgetting to stop. Last week my manager called me a ‘mad scientist’ – said she ought to have me escorted off the premises and not allowed back till I got some sleep. Of course, it was two o’clock in the morning . . . I think I scared her a bit when she walked in on me. But I was getting such good results on the computer projections, I just couldn’t bear to give it up and go home.” Willis was digging through his pockets. “Here. I keep tape handy . . . oh, damn it, the roll’s empty.”

“Never mind,” Mac said. “Didn’t I see a first aid kit over there?”

Willis brightened. “Of course! There’d be tape in there.”

“I was hopin’ for something a bit better than tape,” Mac murmured. He’d already noticed that first aid kits and fire extinguishers were prominently located in every lab they’d seen so far; once open, the kit proved to be well-stocked.

Mac fitted the broken earpiece together and held it out to Willis. “Here, willya hold that in place for me? Thanks.” He took the band-aid he’d extracted from the first-aid kit, opened the scissors on his Swiss Army Knife and cut one of the ends free of the central bandage pad. “So do you have to come in that late to get computer time?”

“Are you kidding? If we were that short of resources, we’d enlarge the mainframe again.” Willis watched with fascination as Mac peeled back the tab on the section of band-aid and wrapped the adhesive strip tightly around the broken earpiece. “Wow. Cool. I never would’ve thought of that.”

“It’s less bulky than ordinary tape, just as strong and a lot more flexible. But you really do need to get them fixed, okay?”

“Yeah, you bet.” Willis replaced his glasses and beamed at Mac. “C’mon, let me show you the main computer room. It wasn’t really supposed to be on the tour, but . . . would you like to see it?”

“You bet. Lead the way.”

*

In the end, it wasn’t a flunky but a brisk assistant who corralled the two men from the fascinating depths of the computer lab and marched them up to the operations center. “Honestly, Willis, you’ve got a watch – can’t you remember to look at it? Ruth’s been waiting for half an hour!”

“Hey, it’s not really his fault – ” MacGyver tried to intervene.

He was no match for the high-heeled human bulldozer who’d been sent for them. “Those who don’t read clocks are no better off than those who can’t.” She threw open the door and chivvied them through like truant schoolboys.

Mac’s eyes darted around the operations center as they passed through; it wasn’t at all what he would have expected. They’d had to pass yet another security cordon to enter, which had required both a cardkey and a voice-recognition protocol. The large, well-lit room hummed with activity; there were computer terminals on nearly every desk and an intensity to the murmuring voices that sent ripples up his back.

The room was dominated by another wall-sized map of the globe, this one in ochre and white, backlit and apparently equipped with some kind of sophisticated computer-generated display controls. The locations flagged on this map were very different from the map in the public waiting room below: Mac picked out numerous political hot spots as well as centers of environmental and scientific activity. And the markers all looked like current items; this was a working operational map, not a brag display. Just what kind of operations was Phoenix running?

The office of the Ops Director was at the far end of the computer bay; glass walls and a glass door delineated rather than separated the inner sanctum from the working operations center. As they were ushered in, a familiar figure turned to face them from one of the windows.

“Well, it’s about time.”

MacGyver beamed. “Pete! What’re you doin’ here?”

“Waiting for you, of course. I hear you were led down the garden path.”

On the far side of the Director’s wide antique desk sat a silver-haired woman whose ramrod posture belied her small stature. Her suit was expensive and impeccably tailored, and her eyes were bright and shrewd as she studied MacGyver. “So it would seem. Jocelyn?”

The human bulldozer snorted. “It’s a good thing computers don’t use machine oil. They’d both be covered in it.”

“Dear me. Willis, the last time we found you head-down in the mainframe, you came out swearing that the entire thing would be completely obsolete in ten years’ time. Do please tell me you’re feeling less apocalyptical today.”

“But it will, Ruth. Trust me,” Willis said earnestly. “We’re just going to have to be ready when the time comes.”

Ruth sighed and waved a hand. “Off with you, Willis. Come back in half an hour’s time and tell me how much it will cost. Or perhaps you’d better wait till after dinner; I’ll probably need a stiff drink.”

As Jocelyn and Willis left, Ruth studied MacGyver thoughtfully. “I’m very pleased to meet you at last, young man – I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

“Anything good?”

“I did ask you here, didn’t I? The word is you’re resourceful and enterprising. You’re known for improvising your way out of tight corners, which means that you don’t require detailed and precise instructions, particularly when a situation makes that impossible.” Ruth’s smile became briefly enigmatic. “You’ve a fine sense for the peculiar smell of rats, and, as we used to say, you know how many beans make five. More to the point, you’re highly regarded as a security expert . . . and you have a solid scientific background.”

“Um . . . “ Mac looked sheepish. “I’m not sure why you included that . . . it’s been a long time since college . . . ”

“Not so long that you can’t appreciate the Foundation’s essential purpose.” Ruth stood up and leaned across the desk, her hand outstretched. “But I’m getting ahead of myself; we haven’t even been properly introduced. I’m Ruth Collins, Director of Operations pro tem for the Phoenix Foundation.”

“Ruth Collins?” MacGyver‘s face lit up. “The Ruth Collins? Ruth Somerset Collins?”

Ruth looked at Pete and arched an elegant eyebrow.

Pete shrugged. “No, I haven’t told him anything about you. But he reads a lot . . . including random samplings of files from the archives.”

Mac gave Pete an aggrieved look. “You mean you know Ruth Collins, and you never told me about it?”

“Good lord, young man,” Ruth broke in. “By the time my files were declassified, I’d have sworn nobody was left alive who would give a damn about the Résistance. It’s becoming far more politically convenient to focus on Vichy.”

Mac looked from Pete to Ruth. “An old farmer in Alsace saved my neck last year when I was being chased by some Stasi agents. He said that for the sake of ‘Madame Root’, he was glad to help an American espion, even though my French was bad and my shoes were ugly.”

“Ah, let me guess . . . would that have been Gaston Boucher by any chance? Don’t take it personally; not even my French was up to his standards. But you must have gotten along well with him. He used to have a fine knack for blowing things up, especially Nazi-controlled railway lines.” She settled back into her chair and eyed MacGyver speculatively. “And if I recall correctly, he has a granddaughter of a fine and tender age.”

Mac looked flustered and started to stammer out a reply, but Ruth cut him off with an emphatic gesture. “Time enough for war stories another day. For today, the Phoenix Foundation is hoping your unusual talents might help us resolve some concerns about one of our projects. I asked Pete to be here because the DXS have agreed to offer their support with additional information, if they have anything to offer – Pete and I have been discussing the possibility of cooperative work when the situation merits, and I think this one does.”

MacGyver settled into one of the chairs in front of Ruth’s desk. “Sounds good to me. What’s up?”

“We’ve quite outgrown our current staffing and facilities, and until the problem can be addressed permanently, we’ve had to subcontract some of the work on select projects to corporate partners.”

“Yeah, Willis mentioned something about that.” Mac unconsciously picked up a paperweight from Ruth’s desk, a small jade carving of a bird rising in flight, its wings entwined in carved flames, and started to trace the fine lines with his fingertips. “He also mentioned conflicts of interest.”

“Yes, that’s always a concern. But in this case, the worry goes deeper.” She handed Mac a thick buff folder. “Have you ever heard of a company called Brookhearst Chemical?”

*

After MacGyver had left, Ruth flipped an intercom switch on her desk. “The coast’s clear, Willis. Come back in now.” She looked at him expectantly as he entered. “Well?”

“What do you mean?” Willis glanced uncertainly at Pete.

Ruth gestured imperiously. “I mean, what did you think? Is he all he’s cracked up to be? His old teachers couldn’t say enough about him – when they weren’t grumbling over his unforgivable treason in not following in their holy footsteps into theoretic physics, or mechanical engineering, or electronics, or biochemistry.”

“Oh, that.” He looked at her in surprise. “You mean there was any question about it? He’s brilliant. Absolutely amazing . . . the most complete natural synthesist I’ve ever met. Do you remember when I was telling you about the problem we were having with the modem signals?”

“I remember you trying to explain it to me.” Ruth’s expression became long-suffering. “I told you to use shorter words, and you said you couldn’t get them below one syllable.”

Willis looked long-suffering in turn. “I was trying to tell you about the problem we were having with the mainframe not sustaining recognition of modem signals from car phones over variable distances.”

“Gesundheit.”

“It’s a minor problem right now, but it’s going to become a bigger issue every year,” Willis continued in exasperation. “Excuse me, it was going to become a bigger issue.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The young man shrugged. “Problem solved. I could kick myself for not spotting the solution myself, but . . . never mind. Do me a favor and hire him fast? I’m going to need his name on the patent application.”

“Willis, I assure you that I’ll do my damnedest.” She turned to Pete, who had remained silent and impassive, although his mouth occasionally twitched with amusement or pride. “Are you certain you wouldn’t entertain a small side bet, Pete? Let’s say – a round of golf at any set of links in the country you care to name, against dinner at any restaurant I might choose?”

“Ruth, that’s crass,” Pete retorted, but his eyes had grown distant. “Any golf course?” He knew that with her social connections, she could pull it off.

“No holes barred – if you’ll forgive the expression.”

Pete snorted, then shook his head decisively. “Nope. Not a chance.”

“Oh, Pete, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. It’s not as if a side bet would harm anyone.”

He shook his head again. “That’s not the point. I just realized that if I take your bet at all, I’d be betting against MacGyver – and I’m not enough of a fool to do that.”

Chapter Text

Two: Upping the Ante

Helen almost sighed with relief when MacGyver wandered up to her desk in the DXS Operations Department, perched on the edge of it, picked up her favorite pen and started twiddling it between his fingers.  Normally, it would have annoyed her considerably; Mac often made a game out of dodging her petulant swats.  But after a long day full of upsets, blustering, and edgy egos, she welcomed the friendly teasing and comfortable familiarity.

She swatted at his hand anyway, but smiled.  He eluded her easily.  “Is Pete in?”

Helen jerked her head towards the closed door.  “He’s been holed up in there since he got back from his most recent meeting with the new General Director over an hour ago, and I haven’t heard a word out of him since then.  I’m holding his calls and I’m not supposed to let anyone in.”

“Yeah?”  Mac gave her back her pen.  “Helen, have you noticed that the list of things we’re not supposed to do around here has been gettin’ longer every day?”

Helen dropped the pen in her desk drawer, closed it crisply and stood up.  “I’ve got some filing I need to get done.  You remember what I said, now.”

MacGyver poked his head around the edge of the office door, took a long look at where Pete was sitting at his desk, and then the rest of him followed his head.  He wasn’t surprised that Pete let him enter without protest; but it unsettled him to see the older man simply sitting, expressionless, apparently looking at nothing at all.

Mac dumped his armful of files into one of the chairs that faced the desk and slumped into another.  Now that he’d charmed his way past the guardian dragon, much of the energy seemed to leak out of him; he slid down in the chair, slouching with his hands dug deeply into his pockets.  He and Pete looked at each other in silence for a long moment.

“So how did it – “ Pete began.

“So what’s up with the – “ Mac began at the exact same instant.

Both men broke off at the same moment and started to laugh in spite of themselves.  The laughter didn’t last long, but Mac pulled himself upright again and drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair.

“I just ran into Craig Bannister in the hallway,” he said.

Pete pulled a face.  “I can guess.”

“Yeah?  C’mon, Pete, what’s going on?  ‘Once a vulnerability, always a threat’ – does that hot-shot new Director think that anyone is perfect?  Except maybe him?  Bannister said they’ve busted him down to warming a desk chair.  He’s talkin’ about getting out.”

Pete rubbed his eyes, which seemed to start aching earlier every day.  “I know.”

“And don’t even get me started on the way they’re treating Bill Foy and Emily Breckenridge.  Months in prison, and they come home to be told they’re officially ‘compromised’?!”

“MacGyver, Bill spent three months in that hell-hole in Gdansk . . . and Emily was detained in Pankrác for seven weeks before they even ID’d her, and she spent another two months in Valdice after that.  Under the new policy, reassessment is mandatory after any significant period of incarceration.”

“Aw, Pete, that’s just bunk.  Emily’s too tough and Bill’s just too darn stubborn to crack.”

“I know, Mac!  And you may get to be selective about your assignments, but I don’t get to be selective about regulations.”

“Regulations,”  Mac grumbled.  “So what happens if they count up all the time I’ve spent in one jail or prison or gulag or another?”

“I don’t think you’ve ever spent more than a few days in any one facility, have you?  Sometimes only a few hours.”

“Probably not.  But it’s gotta add up to something ‘significant’ by now.”

Pete sighed.  “MacGyver, lateral transfers are always a challenge.  We’ve always known the DXS has a different departmental culture from other intelligence organizations . . . and Brandon had a brilliant career with the CIA.  He’s just taking some time to settle in.”

“Yeah?  Well, speaking of settled,  I’m supposed to go apartment hunting again.  Right away.”  Mac pushed himself out of the chair and paced over to the window.  “It seems I’ve had the same address for too long.”

Pete frowned, puzzled.  “I thought you were going to move months ago.”

“I thought so too, but it didn't work out.”

“You made a big enough fuss about it at the time!”

Mac shrugged, looking faintly sheepish.  “Yeah, well . . . they rented that beach cottage to someone else.  Vicky and I went skiing instead, and I unpacked again after I got back.”

“Wasn’t that when you broke your hand?  Must have made all that unpacking a challenge.”

“Well, it was.  And I don’t feel like doing it again just now.  Darn it, Pete, I like that place.  I like being on the ocean.  You know the chances of finding another beach loft this time of year?”

“Let me guess:  you have exactly two chances – slim and none.”

“Yup.  And anyway, I’m not even supposed to look for the same kind of place.  ‘Avoid any established pattern of residence.’  My apartment is compromised, Bannister’s compromised, Bill and Emily are compromised – with all that going on, there sure doesn’t seem to be much of a spirit of compromise anywhere.”

“I know, I know!”  Pete’s voice had risen; he dropped it again with a conscious effort.  “Trust me, I’d like to ‘compromise’ him.  But there’s nothing I can do.  I’m in a difficult situation here.”

MacGyver looked back from the unpromising cityscape to study Pete.  “They still givin’ you a hard time about our jaunt into Russia?”

“Well, you have to admit we didn’t come back with much.  But ‘command staff are not supposed to expose themselves to the risks of field operations.’  The whole department . . . ”

Both men finished the sentence in a sour unison.  “ . . . could end up compromised.”

Mac was scowling.  “We nailed Piedra.  Didn’t that help get them off your back?”

“It would have helped more if we hadn’t lost so many men.”  Pete sighed again.  “So what are you doing around here anyway?  I thought you were working on that investigation for the Phoenix Foundation.  Are you finished already?”  He looked at the stack of folders Mac had dumped on the chair and, somewhere deep inside, smiled smugly in spite of his anxieties.

“Finished?  I’ve only just started.  I came in to get a look at some files and talk to Vicky – pick her brain some more about old familiar faces from Moscow.”  Mac pulled two folders from the stack, steadied it absentmindedly as it threatened to topple, and opened the dossiers where Pete could see the contents.  “I want anything we’ve got on these two guys.  They’re both Russian defectors, but Vicky couldn’t help any.  She’d never seen either of them before.”

“Volen Andreievich Baranyev and Arvil Volenevich Baranyev . . .” Pete read.

“Easy for you to say.”

“Not really.  Father and son?”

“Yeah, but they defected five years apart.  Junior got here in 1979, and Baranyev joined him just a coupla years ago.  They weren’t considered real important; no direct connection to the government.  Just two average guys with enough money to get out of the country, and enough enemies to make it seem like a good idea.”

Pete studied the black-and-white photos of the two men:  one in his fifties, one in his thirties, both wearing dark suits and serious expressions.  The family resemblance was unmistakable, although neither man would have stood out in a crowd.  “Small-time or not, they’ll have been under surveillance – not constant or consistent, but the records can be pulled.  You think they’re sleepers?”

“I don’t know what I think.  That’s why I need more information, if we’ve got any.”  Mac tapped the younger man’s photo with a long finger.  “Junior here is general manager at Brookhearst Chemical – seems he put in several years as an administrator running Soviet chemical research facilities before he gave it all up for the lure of capitalism.  You know how big the Russian community is in the Bay Area.”

Pete nodded.  “They help each other out with resettlement and jobs and the like – I’ve lent a hand there from time to time.  So have you visited Brookhearst yet?”

“Sure – Ruth set it all up; flew me up there and even had me picked up by her own driver – who wasn’t at all what I’d’ve expected.”  Mac was still looking at the photos and didn’t notice the grin Pete swallowed.  “I got a real nice, glossy, pointless tour of their state-of-the-art facilities up in Marin County – everything’s clean as a whistle, and they couldn’t do enough for the Official Representative of the Phoenix Foundation.  They practically wrapped me up in cotton wool so I wouldn’t bump myself on any sharp corners.  You know, Pete, it really is a nice facility – they’ve got a great lab set-up.  It’s almost as nice as the ones at Phoenix.”

“Yeah?”

Mac’s eyes had taken on a distant expression, and he didn’t notice the thoughtful look Pete was giving him as he continued.  “I couldn’t help thinkin’ – if I hadn’t’a been in such a hurry to see the world right out of college, I mighta ended up working there, or somewhere like it.”

“And you’d be bored out of your skull by now, and probably thinking about blowing something up just to break the monotony.”

Mac met Pete’s eyes and grinned mischievously.  “You been talkin’ to my old chemistry professor?”

Pete picked up the photo of the senior Baranyev and leaned back in his chair to study it.  “What about the father?”

“He seems to be involved with the lab operations as well – he’s got a nice plush office there – but he wasn’t around that day, unless he was just staying out of sight.”

“So your next move will be to go back, sneak into Brookhearst and snoop around on your own.  How soon?  Tonight?”

Mac looked aggrieved.  “Pete!  Am I that predictable?”  Pete simply looked at him, and Mac grinned and shrugged.  “Not quite yet – I’m still figuring out what I’m looking for.  I just flew back from the Bay Area, and I’m gonna drive up there again tomorrow or the next day.”

Pete replaced the photo in its dossier.  “It looks pretty straightforward, but you’re smelling something.  What’s the problem?”

“Their names.”

“Names?”  Pete looked at the dossiers again.  “Huh.  You’re right.  ‘Volen’ and ‘Arvil’ – are those names actually Russian?”

“Not really; they’re Soviet names – there were a lotta names coined from Russian, celebrating Lenin and the Great Revolution and all that.  They were real popular with the Party faithful.  The thing is, they pretty much stopped using them after World War II.”

“Baranyev’s the right age . . .” Pete began.

“But his son’s awful young to have that kinda name.  They had to have really bought into the system to stick with it like that.  And why did two generations of a hard-line Party family take it into their heads to defect?  At different times?”

“Soviet politics are a real snakepit, MacGyver.  Even the most loyal families can come under suspicion.”  Mac could see from Pete’s face that he was thinking of people he’d known who had become snakebite victims – he’d helped Pete with more than one extraction from the gulags.

“I’d like a look at the full transcripts of the security debriefings from when they defected – there isn’t much in the summaries.”

Pete nodded.  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“And what I’d really like is a talk with whoever interviewed Baranyev.  I need to find out if he’s particularly superstitious.”

“What?”

“Something I saw in his office made me wonder . . . it might be a way of gettin’ closer to him.”  MacGyver started to gather up the files again.

Pete handed him the two Baranyev dossiers.  “So how’s that kid you were mentoring – Reggie – how’s he doing?  Do you ever hear from him?”

Mac shrugged, less energetically than before.  “Aw, you know kids that age don’t write much.  But he’s fine.  He’s doin’ great.  He likes Atlanta, his grandmother loves having him around now that she’s got a good place for them both to live, and he’ll be all settled in by the time school starts again.”

Pete frowned.  “So when are you going to talk to the Big Brothers Association again?  I remember you were looking forward to continuing in the program.”

Mac didn’t meet Pete’s eyes; he was studying the fingers of his left hand.  “Um, Pete . . . they turned me down.”

“What?”

“They wouldn’t assign me to anyone new.  They said I’m out of the country too much . . . it seems I don’t meet their standards for stability.”

“Mac, that’s just crazy.  You’re terrific with kids . . . listen, do you want me to talk to them?  Pull some strings?”

“Naw . . . ” Mac shrugged again.  “The thing is, they’re right.  Reggie never knew when I’d be around.  He said he didn’t mind, but I always wondered.”

Pete noticed how heavy the callouses had become on Mac’s fingertips; he knew it meant a lot of solitary evenings spent playing guitar.  He stood up from behind his desk.  “I’ll walk out with you – I need to have a word with Helen.”

“Now, Pete, don’t give her a hard time just ‘cause she let me get past her.”

“Relax, Mac.  I’m just going to let her know I’m all right.  And . . . I really should apologize.  I was a bit snappish to her earlier.”

“I’ll bet.”

The two men parted at the desk of the unrepentant Helen.  “We’ll track down whoever it was that debriefed Baranyev after his defection – they should get in touch with you in the next day or so.”

Helen watched MacGyver leave, striding energetically down the hallway.  “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“No,” Pete said shortly.  “And I don’t want a word or a hint to reach him, understood?  I’m going to have a few more shouting matches with Brandon first.”  Helen looked pessimistic, but Pete looked determined.  “Our new General Director can argue with me all he likes, but when it comes to MacGyver, he’s going to have to argue with the results.”

*

MacGyver hung up his phone and wandered out onto the balcony of his apartment to lean against the parapet and look out across the beach at the broad Pacific, reaching away to the endless horizon.  He could imagine the line that stretched out from his loft to span endless miles, never touching land again until it reached Japan, or – if he turned towards the south – the Philippines, or Indonesia, or even Australia.  Turn farther south, and the line ran all the way to Antarctica, ten thousand miles of water open and empty enough to soak up his most restless moods.  Living this close to the ocean, it was like having infinity within arm’s reach any time he wanted a piece of it.  When he’d lived at the observatory, he’d felt the same way about the nighttime starscape – except you couldn’t actually go out into that.

He really didn’t want to move again already.  How many addresses had he had in the last six years?  It wasn’t like he spent much time at home anyway.  Funny how thinking about that made him restless again.

It might be the light, of course – this late in June, the sun was only just beginning to set at this hour.  The fiery light blazed across the water, bright and warm on the face and shoulders, catching glints on the breakers.  There were still diehard surfers chasing waves below him – one sport he’d never taken up; he liked diving better.  Who would want to flounder around on the top of the ocean when you could explore underneath it?  There was plenty of surface, but way more depth.

Mac realized he was procrastinating.  There was no reason to hesitate about making his next phone call – it wasn’t as if he was worried about being turned down.  But he waited until the sun had dipped all the way down to the distant edge of the world, flaming the blue water into scarlet and orange, before he went back inside and dialed.

“Hey, Jason.  It’s MacGyver.  Um . . . fine.  Say, Jason – you remember you told me to call if I ever needed a favor from you?”

Chapter Text

Three: Inside Straight

Going hiking with my grandpa was always an adventure, especially the times when we just grabbed blankets and supplies and fishing tackle and headed out for a few days.  Harry had some favorite places he liked to go, but sometimes he’d just spread out a map, pick a spot and say, “That looks good, Bud.  Whaddya say we go check it out?”

When you know where you’re trying to get to, but you don’t know how to get there – you don’t know the route, there’s no marked trails and you can’t see it from where you’re starting – sometimes you find yourself heading off in funny directions.

“Jason, are you sure this is really necessary?”

MacGyver looked longingly at the flannel shirt he’d discarded.  He didn’t dare look in the mirror.

“Trust me on this one,” Jason answered.  “You show up looking like the Brawny paper towel guy, and they’ll take one look at you and think ‘lumberjack’.  That is not a good image with this group.  Besides,”  Jason’s grin was pure mischief, “isn’t the whole idea of going undercover trying to blend in?”

“Blend in?  In this?”

“Mac, I told you, you just have to trust me.”

Mac finally snuck a glance at the mirror.  It wasn’t just that the colors in the tie-dyed T-shirt were bright – well, they were, but he had to admit they were kind of cheerful.  After the last six years of intelligence work, he sometimes got tired of dull colors and nondescript clothing; his memories of Eastern Europe tended to blur into one continuous haze of grey and dull brown.  But the largest shirt in Jason’s collection was still a size or two too small for him, and the fabric was stretched almost skin-tight across Mac’s chest.  He felt slightly squashed and very conspicuous.

Jason’s own T-shirt was even brighter; the orange and yellow swirls made Mac want to reach for his sunglasses.

“Just tell me I don’t have to add sandals and love beads.”

Jason looked over from the kitchen counter – his apartment, like most San Francisco lofts, was incredibly tiny, and the kitchen was little more than a niche carved out of the living area – and cocked his head thoughtfully.  “Well, now that you mention it – do you own a pair of sandals?”

“No.”

“Then the sneakers will have to do.  Have they been washed any time in the last year?”

Mac picked his flannel shirt up off the floor, wadded it up and threw it at Jason, who caught it laughing.  “Hey, careful there!  We don’t want lint in the casserole.  Good job on that, by the way.  I can’t even boil water without burning it.  What’s in it?”

“You said vegetarian would go over well.  It’s tofu.”

“No kidding?  Just promise me it tastes better than it looks, okay?”

MacGyver turned away from the mirror, hooked his thumbs in his jeans pockets and studied Jason thoughtfully.  It was six weeks since they had hiked out of Czechoslovakia, and Mac could hardly credit how quickly the young man seemed to have recovered from his ordeal.  It wasn’t just that he’d regained enough weight that his clothes no longer hung on him like empty sacks – at least we aren’t gonna show up looking like a tie-dyed Laurel and Hardy – he seemed genuinely relaxed and at ease, with only faint echoes of the battalion of nervous tics and twitches that he’d shown after his rescue.  Shortly after Mac’s arrival, a car had backfired in the street outside, and Jason hadn’t even seemed to notice it.  But now he was looking uneasy; he had taken off his glasses and was polishing them distractedly on Mac’s shirt.

“Mac, I . . . I’m afraid you’re going to think some of the people in this group are – well – a little weird.  Okay, actually, most of them are a little weird, and some of them are – ”

“A lot weird?”

“Yeah.  That’s right.”

“Jason, I’ve been living in California for a lotta years.  I’ve seen plenty of weird by now.”

Jason replaced his glasses and looked at Mac sharply.  “Sure, but have you ever let it get close to you?”

Mac shrugged and waved desultory fingers in the air.  “It depends.  Weird how?”

“Um . . . “ Jason studied the casserole intently.  “The kind of things they believe in . . . the way they talk, and dress, and . . . you’ve got to understand.  Karen can’t stand them.”

“Well, I don’t see Karen any more, so that doesn’t have to count for anything.”

“Yeah, what happened there?  When we were on our way back from Czechoslovakia, I thought you two were an item.”

MacGyver shrugged.  “After the DXS cut her loose, she said it would be too painful to go on seeing me.”

“So she kicked you to the curb?”

“Yup.”

Jason looked around awkwardly, as if he thought his kitchen might offer him a way out of the discussion.  “Well . . . for what it’s worth, I’m still grateful to her for everything, but – well, I’m not a kid any more.  We don’t agree on a lot of things.  She doesn’t even like Gina.”

“Gina – is she the unofficial call that you didn’t have me make when the State Department sequestered you for debriefing?”

“Yeah.”  Jason tapped the lid of the casserole dish.  “That’s the one.  I never had a chance to thank you for that, you know – ”

“Hey, forget it.”

“I can’t.  Look, MacGyver.  You called me up and said you wanted an introduction to Irina Dmitrovna Dementieva . . . ”  Mac felt a moment of pure envy, hearing the liquid syllables pouring out with such effortless ease.  “You promised me that you didn’t mean her any harm, and I’m trusting you on that.  But you need to understand just how much trust is involved.  Baba Irina isn’t an easy person to get close to – her granddaughter’s very protective of her, for one.  So’s almost everyone else who knows her.”

“Including you?”

“Well, yes.  And this gathering really is the best and quickest way.  All you have to do is make a good impression from the beginning, and I’m trying to help you do that.  I haven’t even asked you why you want to meet her . . . although – you did say this isn’t for the DXS?”

“That’s right.  I’m doin’ some work for the Phoenix Foundation – you’ve heard of them, haven’t you?”

“Who hasn’t?  The thing is . . . well, I’m not too fond of the DXS right now.”

“I know they put you on leave of absence – ”

“It’s not that.  I like the embassy work here; it’s a little dull, but ‘dull’ is pretty much what suits me right now.  It’s just . . . I heard about Bill and Emily.”  Jason was looking off into a blank empty distance, unconsciously twisting MacGyver’s shirt in his hands.  “Mac, when they took me out of my cell at Valdice and loaded me into that truck, I thought they were going to cart me off into the woods and shoot me.  I lost track of how many times they pulled that kind of stunt . . . they didn’t tell me I was being swapped.  Freed.  They didn’t tell any of us.  We were hours on the road from Prague to Cheb . . . if it hadn’t been for Bill and Emily, I think I’d have died of fright on the drive.”

Mac had walked over and leaned his elbows on the kitchen counter, listening with focused attention until Jason was done.  “So what were you tellin’ me about your friends up in Marin County?”

“Just this – they’re good people.  They’re open-hearted, accepting, caring . . . I was kind of messed up when I got back from Czechoslovakia.  And Gina had just about gone crazy with worry – she couldn’t get anyone to tell her what had happened to me, of course.  I never thought anyone could be that totally loyal and patient.”  Jason was polishing his glasses again.  “She’s been great, and the others – they’ve really helped me get my head on straight.  And they did it without asking too many questions.  It was enough for them that I needed help, and healing, and, well, love.”

 “Sounds good enough to me.”  MacGyver picked up the casserole dish.  “So am I finally gonna meet Gina?”

Jason’s smile slid from broad relief to sheepish pride.  “You bet.  She’ll be there already – yikes, we’d better go – we’re running late.  At this rate we won’t get there till sunset.”

“So what is this event anyway?”

“Aw, c’mon, Mac.  I thought you were an astronomy buff.”

“What’s that got to do with . . . oh.  The summer solstice?”

Jason nodded.  “It’s Ivan Kupalo.  Midsummer.”

*

As the Jeep crossed the Golden Gate and headed north past Sausalito, MacGyver felt himself taking deeper breaths.  He liked San Francisco, but the heart of the city in particular always felt cramped, almost claustrophobic.  The farther they went into Marin County, the more he felt his elbows unlock from his sides.

As the traffic grew lighter, Mac drove with half an eye on his rear-view mirror – once or twice he’d seen what looked like the same car behind them.  He thought he was being discreet, but Jason spoke up.

“Mac, are you just being twitchy, or is there really someone following us?”

“Probably just my guilty conscience.  Unless it’s the fashion police.  Is tie-dye a misdemeanor or a felony?”

“In Marin County?  It’s practically a requirement.”  Jason glanced over his shoulder.  “Seriously, is there someone there?”

“I’m not really sure – and there’s no reason anyone could have to follow us just now.”

“Well, our turn’s coming up.  Anyone who’s following us after that is going to be awfully conspicuous.”

There was very little traffic and no sign of a tail as they left the main highway behind and followed a side road as it wound up into the hills – although the twists and turns of the winding route might have concealed a very careful following car.

Except for an occasional house, all signs of recent development faded away; the hills were striped with bands of alder, maple and pine woods between open meadows where coyote brush and redbud alternated with broad patches of long-stemmed grasses and wildflowers.  They were driving with the top down, and Mac could smell the fresh, damp air from the patches of woodland and hear birds beginning to make their twilight calls in the long, lingering sunset.

“Nice area,” he said at last.

“The land belongs to Moon Bear’s parents.  We’re lucky to be able to use it – they bought it as an investment, and they never come out here themselves.”

“‘Moon Bear’?”  MacGyver couldn’t keep the dubious tone out of his voice.  “Is he Native or something?”

“Oh, he’s one-sixty-fourth Cherokee, and he’ll tell you as much if you give him half a chance.  But he’s harmless.”

Mac winced.  “Lemme guess – his great-great-great-great-grandmother was an Indian princess.”

“Probably.”

“And I bet Moon Bear isn’t his real name, is it?”

“No, of course not.  He calls himself that.  His parents are mostly native to the tennis court and country club circuit.  Um, speaking of names . . . ”

“Yeah?”

“Most of the people in the Tribe go by names they’ve chosen for themselves.  And if you don’t choose one, someone’s likely to choose it for you.  That can be kind of embarrassing.”

“Did that happen to you?”

“Sort of.  I’m called Bluejay – Gina named me at the first gathering I attended.”

“How come?”

“I was wearing a blue shirt.  Oh, stop laughing!  Take the next turn to the right, just past that clump of manzanitas.”

At their destination, the parking area was little more than an open field between thickets of bay laurel and manzanita, recently mowed to leave room for some twenty cars, mostly older models sporting bumper stickers that ranged from peace symbols to environmental slogans.  MacGyver pulled his Jeep in between a self-styled ‘Tree-Hugging Dirt Worshipper’ and a very muddy VW bus festooned with hand-painted flowers and a banner reading ‘War Is Not Healthy For Children and Other Living Things’.

Beyond a screen of trees, a larger field seemed to be the center of activity.  Mac could see a clump of tents at one end, surrounded by the familiar piles of camping gear; several large open pavilions were scattered around the main field, and someone was lighting tiki torches in anticipation of the gathering dusk.  In the middle of the field, a cluster of gesticulating people seemed to be having a lively debate, but nothing could be heard beyond the rise and fall of agitated voices.

Mac glanced at Jason as they climbed out of the Jeep.  “Um . . . bwana, I hear drums.”

“Get used to it.  They start at sunset and they’ll be at it all night.”  Jason pointed towards the larger tents.  “The drumming circle usually sets up there, and the pot-luck tent is over at that end – there’s a picnic table, but don’t expect to find chairs.  The biggest tent in the camping area is open to anyone who wants to crash for a few hours.”

“Bluejay!”  A heavyset woman in a flowing tie-dyed dress was climbing out of the VW bus.  On the far side of the car, an eight-year-old girl hit the ground running and whooping, followed by three more girls in their late teens and early twenties.

“Hey, Raven!  Good to see you again.  Raven, this is – ” Jason glanced at MacGyver with a moment’s blank expression, and then grinned.  “Raven, this is Phoenix.  He’s a good friend of mine.”

Mac looked daggers at Jason, but Raven didn’t seem to notice.

“Phoenix, huh?  Cool.”  She turned to the oldest of the girls.  “Sunrise, would you go tell Isis that Bluejay’s finally decided to show up?”

Sunrise was eyeing MacGyver appreciatively.  “Can’t you tell her yourself?”

“Sunrise – ”

“Oh, all right, all right, I’m going.  Geez.”

“And keep an eye on Willow!  Don’t let her go into orbit without a parachute.”

Raven shook her head as she shut her car door, then hurried up to Jason and enveloped him in a bear hug.  “Great to see you – and your friend – “ MacGyver suddenly found himself being enthusiastically hugged in turn.  The woman continued talking to Jason and didn’t seem to notice Mac’s confusion.  “Bluejay, guess who’s here?  Rainbow’s home early!  Rainbow, get over here, Jay’s brought a friend!”

Mac held out a hand with a friendly smile as he studied Rainbow, who had emerged more slowly from the front passenger seat of the VW bus.  Her looks belied her name:  with limp pale hair, sallow skin and dark-circled eyes, she looked more like a recent refugee than Jason did.

Raven looked at Mac’s proffered hand and started laughing.  “Jay, where’d you find this one?  Emily Post’s Finishing School for the Terminally Uptight?”

“Give him a break.  He’s from the Midwest.”

Rainbow glared at them.  “Would you two knock it off?  Geez, you’d think it was a crime to have any personal space at all.”  She seized Mac’s hand and shook it briskly.  “Great to meet you, and just ignore these jokers.”

“Hey, it’s fine.  I can deal with the local customs – as long as someone remembers to tell me about them – “  Mac tried to catch Jason’s eye, but the younger man had been engulfed by a dark-skinned vision in flowing white draperies who had apparently materialized out of nowhere at a full run.  “Whoa.”  That’s gotta be Gina.

Raven rolled her eyes again, gathered a double armful of blankets and pillows from her van, and walked away towards the main field.  Rainbow snorted.  “They won’t come up for air for a good five minutes.  I think they’re still making up for lost time – Bluejay was gone for, like, months.  In fact – ” her voice dropped to a confidential murmur – “I heard nobody even knew where he was, like it was some kind of secret.”

“Yeah, um – ”  MacGyver cast about for a change of topic.  “So you only just got back from a trip yourself?”

Rainbow shrugged.  “I’m fresh home from a Peace Corps stint.”

“No kidding?  Where?”

“Bhopal.”  Her voice had gone flat, and the spark went out of her eyes.  “And before you say anything else, no, I do not want to talk about it.  I just want to forget it.”

“Hey, that’s fine.  I can understand that.”

“Can you?  Funny how nobody else can.  Half of them think I’m some kind of hero, and the other half think I’m a quitter.”

“What do you think?”

She shrugged.  “Does it matter?”

Mac leaned back against the trunk of a car emblazoned ‘Speak Your Mind, Even If Your Voice Shakes’.  “It oughtta matter more’n anything else.”

“Okay.  I think the world’s going to Hell and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.  I think if there’s anything I can do, I’m going to do it here at home where I won’t be so damned alone.  And I think if I don’t get my ass over to the firepit soon, Raven’s going to come looking for me again and ask more damned thoughtful, nosy questions that I don’t feel like answering.”  She turned her back on him and stalked off towards the meadow.

“O-kay,” Mac murmured under his breath as he watched her go.  If he’d had any thought of following, he gave it up at the sound of Jason’s voice.

“Uh, sorry about that, Ma – uh, Phoenix – there’s someone here you need to meet – ”

The vision was still firmly entwined around Jason, but she spared a gleaming smile for MacGyver.  “I’ll say, baby!  Who’s your handsome friend?”

“Isis – ”

“Sorry, baby.  I know I shouldn’t tease you like that.  But you make it so easy.”  She wrapped herself a bit more tightly around Jason and whispered into his ear, loudly enough that Mac could hear her easily, “So what language you gonna make love to me in tonight, mmm?”

“Gina!”  Even in the fading light, Jason was visibly scarlet.

Gina – ‘Isis’ – was cover-girl beautiful, with rich dark hair and a flawless dark-chocolate complexion.  She was wearing copious amounts of vaguely Egyptian jewelry and a very sheer white cotton dress; MacGyver was careful to look her full in the eyes as Jason introduced her.

“‘Phoenix’, huh?”  Her eyes looked shrewdly from Mac to Jason.  “Just a guess, but maybe you the man who dumped Jay here into that river?”

Mac glanced at Jason in some confusion.  “Well, yeah.  It seemed like the best option at the time.”

“Good for you.  Air, water, earth – all we need is fire and you’ll have gone round the wheel together.”  Gina turned back to Jason as Mac tried to make some kind of sense out of what she’d said.  “Speaking of fire, baby, we got a problem.”  She waved expressively towards the open meadow.

Jason glanced over.  “Isis, I don’t see the bonfire.  They should have had it lit before this.”

“That’s just it, honey.  Come on and I’ll show you.”

In the center of the meadow, where the arguing people were still gathered, there was a large stack of wood and a wide clear space for a firepit.  The reason for the rancor became clear:  instead of a fire, there was a haphazard pile of logs, some smouldering, most not, and a reek in the air.  Mac grimaced as the smell hit him, and guessed what had happened.

“It was that stupid-ass idiot Moon Bear is what,” Gina was saying.  “Jay, Hawk put him in charge of the fire.  I didn’t think even Hawk could be that much of a dumbass!”

“Hey, whoa, slow down.  What went wrong?”

“It rained the last two days, remember?  And Moon Bear was in charge of getting the fire ready.”

“You mean he didn’t bother to get his butt out here and cover the firewood when it started to rain?”

“That’s right, baby.  I think he was probably off communing with the Great Fire Spirit instead.”  She rolled her eyes.  “So when it comes time to light the bonfire, he don’t have nothin’ but soggy wood and a big-ass bottle of lighter fluid.”

MacGyver had been studying the sullen embers of the fire as he followed the conversation.  “You mean he just piled up a bunch of wet logs, poured lighter fluid on them, and thought that would work?”

“That’s right, handsome.  He got a big-ass blaze at first and a couple of these yahoos cheered, but then it died down like you see.”

“Well, of course it didn’t work.”  Mac picked up a long heavy branch and scattered the sooty logs, shoving them to one side of the firepit.  “Butane’s volatile.  All you’re doing is burning the fumes.  And it’s toxic, too.”  He walked over to the woodpile and squatted next to it, running a hand over the ends of the lower tiers of logs.  “It doesn’t even generate much heat, and what heat there is goes upwards, not down.  If you want a fire to catch, the wood itself has to get hot enough to reach flashpoint.  If it’s wet, you gotta dry it out.”  Mac stood up and dusted his hands off.  “I left my flashlight back at my Jeep.  Anyone got one handy?”

Raven had turned away from the arguing group when Mac started speaking.  Now she handed him a light.  “Can you do anything?”

“I think so, but you gotta help too.  The top three or four layers of that woodpile are soaked, but if you can pull out some pieces from farther down, you’ll have wood that’s only wet at the ends.  We’ll need three or four pieces from that for starters, and more in a bit.  And Gina – I mean Isis – can I borrow one of your scarves?”

MacGyver took the light and hurried off into the nearest patch of woods.  When he returned several minutes later, he had a confident spring in his step and a large bundle wrapped in Gina’s scarf; there had been no shortage of dry tinder and twigs for kindling under the thicker bushes.

Jason and Gina stood back arm in arm, watching MacGyver with matching grins.  Mac was oblivious, caught up as always in the immediacy of the problem at hand – for once, an easy problem that he’d solved dozens of times before.  By the time the fire was going well, with half a dozen logs solidly burning and a second circle of pieces of slightly damp wood arranged around the growing blaze, steaming themselves dry, a dozen more people had gathered around and were laughing and joking as Raven directed them in restacking the woodpile.  Sunrise was hanging by Mac’s elbow, looking at him adoringly.  Moon Bear had stalked off to sulk.

Mac was still lying prone by the fire, blowing one last log into bright flame, when Jason nudged him with his foot.  “C’mon, ‘Phoenix’.  You can turn the job over to the fire-tenders now.  Tasha’s lit the lamps in Baba Irina’s tent – you can come meet her now.”

*

The largest and gaudiest of the pavilions stood with one wall open to the meadow and light spilling out across the field.  As they crossed towards it, Mac craned his head upwards, mentally picturing the pattern that the outline of the hills had made as the sunset had thrown them into relief, and trying to get a good look at the stars; but the full moon had already risen and the constellations were washed out.  “Darn it, I wish I’d kept closer track of how that road wound around coming up here.  Jay, are we anywhere close to Brookhearst Chemical?”

“You mean the big research lab?”  Jason looked around aimlessly.  “Hell, I’m the last person you should be asking that – I can never keep from getting turned around.  Isis?”

“Not very near.  They’re in Mill Valley and we’re pretty close to Muir Woods here.  They’d be over thataway.”  Gina pointed.  “How come?”

“Just wonderin’.  Gina – sorry, Isis – you live near here, right?  You know anyone who works there?”

Gina shook her head.  Jason replied instead.  “She lives in Sausalito.  What’s the deal with Brookhearst?  Is that who you’re investigating?”  He had lowered his voice, but when MacGyver looked sharply from him to Gina, he shrugged.  “Gina’s cool.  Don’t worry.”

Mac nodded.  “The Phoenix Foundation’s got some questions – they asked me to try to get them some answers.”

“So what’s Baba got to do with it?”

“Tell ya later.”

They had reached the open front of the pavilion; a woven mat held the shoes of the people inside, and warm golden lamplight was streaming out along with the unmistakable sound of adolescent wheedling.

“Baba, pleeeease.  It’s Midsummer.  You told Jade that the Gypsy magic is always stronger at Midsummer.”

The answering voice was deep and rich; despite a pronounced Russian accent, the words were clear and distinct.  “I never said such a thing, surely!”

“You did.  You totally did.”

“Bozhe moi!  When did I tell you that?”

“Midwinter!”

The tent was lined with assorted rugs, throws, and pillows of all sizes, with several small tables holding lamps and a large and magnificent tea urn on tripod legs.  A young, dark-haired woman in jeans and a peasant blouse was tending the urn and laying out plates of food on one of the small tables.  Jason gestured towards her.

“That’s Tasha – she’s Baba’s granddaughter.”

Irina Dmitrovna – ‘Baba’ – was seated in a nest of velvet cushions and fringed rugs, somehow giving the pile of mismatched, threadbare finery the air of a throne room.  A small table beside her held a fine china teacup and saucer and a plate of sliced fruit and cheese, and two young girls were sprawled around her.

Baba’s face was deeply seamed, bronzed and weathered; Mac guessed she was in her seventies, possibly older, and thought she would have been tall if she had not been so stooped with age.  Her clothing was a rich polychromatic riot that made even Jason’s tie-dyed shirt look tame, with myriad scarves and shawls and a welter of silver jewelry that chimed and rang when she moved.  Beneath fine white brows, her eyes were as dark and bright as a bird’s.

“Yes, Amber, and now it is Midsummer, and that is a holiday!  Tonight I am enjoying my holiday.  You want me to work tonight?  To perform tricks for you like a trained monkey?  Oh, very well.  Bring me my cards, Jade.  Amber, you will get me more tea.”

As the girls scattered giggling to different sections of the enclosure, Baba lifted her head in its multihued scarves, turned towards the open front of the tent and looked MacGyver directly in the eyes.

Years before, Mac had been on a recon mission in Afghanistan, watching a village where a Soviet patrol was temporarily based.  He’d been observing the comings and goings around one hut through his binoculars when one of the villagers had suddenly turned in his direction and somehow, impossibly, looked right back at him, meeting his eyes across an unbridgeable distance.  Despite an absolute certainty that nobody could have spotted him without binoculars, MacGyver had never felt more desperately visible in his life.  He’d run then, and only fifteen minutes later an airstrike had hit the hillside where he’d been concealed.

Baba’s eyes were neither welcoming nor hostile; merely sharp and penetrating.  But Mac hadn’t felt so utterly noticed since that day in Afghanistan.

The old woman smiled, deep ravines creasing her face, and turned away and began to shuffle and lay out the Tarot cards Jade had brought her.  “Hmm, ha.  There is a stranger in our midst . . . a man of rare talents, an old soul.”  The girls gasped with delight, and Tasha looked up from her work in time to see MacGyver roll his eyes and look away with a derisive expression.  Tasha scowled and glared at Jason, who shrugged apologetically.

“A great traveler,”  Baba continued, “yet for all his knowledge he is no closer to wisdom than when he first set foot upon his long road.”  There was a smirk deep in her shrewd eyes when Mac looked at her again.

Jade looked at MacGyver and began to giggle, but Amber was pouting.  “Baba, that’s not what we meant!  We want to hear our fortunes!”

“Oh, so now you are telling the old Gypsy what the cards should be saying?  You know the cards better than old Baba, you say?”

“Nooo!”  Jade punched Amber in the arm.  “Shut up or you’ll totally ruin it.”

“Enough!  Run away and dance, my children.  Ivan Kupalo is a night for the drums and the dancing.  Let the future wait for another night.  You have plenty enough future to spare.”  She flapped her hands at the girls and they scrambled away.

When Baba turned back towards the group at the tent opening, the indulgent grandmother of a moment before had disappeared, replaced by a tribal matriarch.  She beckoned to them to enter.

Gina led the way, kneeling gracefully in front of Baba to exchange warm greetings and kisses on both cheeks.  Jason knelt in turn, far more awkwardly; but there was nothing awkward in the flow of fluent Russian as he saluted the old woman in terms of profound respect and began to introduce MacGyver.  Mac just barely managed to follow him well enough to nod and smile at the right moment.  Baba glanced over at Tasha and gestured imperiously towards the tea urn.

Jason switched back to English.  “Phoenix, I’d like to present you to Baba Irina.”

Mac inclined his head.  “Ochen priatna.”

“‘Phoenix’, is it?  You’ve enough ash on you for it.”  The old woman turned back towards MacGyver and studied him as if they had not been sparring silently for the last few minutes.  “So.  Have you been reborn?”

Mac glanced down at his hands, still grimy from the fire, and wiped them on his jeans, trying not to feel self-conscious.  “Actually, I think my Mom got it right the first time.”

Tasha, in the middle of bringing tea over for Jason and Gina, glared at him and seemed about to speak, but Baba laughed with unrestrained delight.  “Very good!  No, I suppose you are in no hurry to go through all that again just yet.  Perhaps you are wiser than you know.  Come, sit by me.”  She patted the cushions beside her.  “Keep an old woman company.  It is many years since I last passed a fine evening with a handsome man beside me.  And you have not forgotten how to blush; that is good, very good.”

MacGyver glanced over at Jason and Gina as he settled himself into the cushions, but they had joined Tasha at the other end of the tent and were sitting and talking quietly, clearly leaving Baba to conduct her audience in privacy.

“So, young man!  Here we are in your own country, and in spite of that you find yourself in a foreign land.  They used to warn young men who sought out the Roma.”  The Tarot cards were still scattered on the rug beside her; she began to gather them up with crooked hands.  “But we have you to thank for our bonfire tonight.  It would not be Midsummer without the bonfire.”

“Glad I could help.”

“You have come a long way just to meet an old woman.  I should be flattered, except your reasons for seeking me out are not flattering.”

“Um . . . “  Mac tried to gather his wits; Baba seemed to be intent on keeping him unsettled.

She chuckled.  “You do not lie when you do not need to.  A man who so dislikes telling lies?  You are in the wrong profession, molodoi chelovek.”

“Now hold on just a minute.  You can’t possibly know what my profession is.”

“Of course not!  How could I have made such a lucky guess, then?”  Baba wrapped the Tarot cards in a long silk scarf and set them aside.  “Ah.  I must have seen you roll your eyes when he said your name was Phoenix.”

“You couldn’t have seen it.  You weren’t even looking at me – you were watching Tasha pouring the tea.”  Mac had also noticed that he hadn’t been offered any, and wondered how serious that was.  This wasn’t going well.

“There.  You see?  You hate the lies.  Even when they might help you.”  She produced a well-worn pack of ordinary playing cards from a fold of her voluminous skirts.  “You see lies when you look at me.”

“Hey, no I don’t – ”

“Now is no time to start lying!  And you do not believe that the cards have any truth to them.  They have a sense of humour, you know.  It is best to accept that.  Let us see . . . ”

Her fingers shed their stiffness as she riffled the deck, shuffled and cut, and flipped a string of cards face-up onto the gaudy throw rug, one after another:  seven of hearts, eight of diamonds, three of diamonds.

“Ha.  You think I am a charlatan! . . . and you are right.”  As Mac started to protest, she cut him off.  “And you are also wrong.  Me, I think you are not what you seem, and I am right.”  She turned over the two of diamonds and waggled it at him before she set it down.  “And I am also wrong.”

The five of clubs followed the seven of spades.  “Neither of us is telling the truth, and neither of us is lying.”

Mac had been watching her hands intently.  He was impressed in spite of himself:  he hadn’t yet spotted a single manipulation.  Baba reached forward and produced another card from behind his ear, and he had to admire the professional smoothness of the move.

“And it is time we both said, ‘Oh, the Devil take it all,’ and cut the crap.”  Baba cackled at his expression and turned the card so he could see it:  the joker.  A twitch of her fingers, and the jack of spades peeked out from behind it.  “But this is not the time or the place, because we are about to be interrupted.”

Loud voices were suddenly heard outside.  She must have real sharp ears – I didn’t hear anyone coming.  Baba was studying Mac’s face, smirking as if she could hear his thoughts; he met her eyes defiantly.  She laughed and patted his hand.

“You are too young to be patronizing; the most you can achieve is insolence.  But the skepticism is good.  Do not let go of it – it is one of your strengths.”

Gina had gone to the front of the tent to greet the newcomer, a tall blonde man in long white robes, with a Nordic chin and a carrying voice.  For a moment, Mac wondered if Moon Bear had come by to complain about the fire, or whether he had even managed somehow to put it out; but the man was a stranger.

“Isis – you’re looking terrific, as always.  Remember, the new study group starts meeting next week at the Temple of the Sun.  Can we look forward to seeing your lovely face with us again?  And hey there, Tasha!  How are you doing?  Happy Midsummer!  I just wanted to come pay my respects to Baba.”

Tasha had followed Gina more slowly, and was standing with folded arms.  “That’s Baba Irina to you, Bryce.  Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Hey, Tasha, mellow out!  No harm meant, no harm done, right?  And Bluejay – great to see you, guy.  You’re looking a lot better these days.  Not so skinny, huh?”  Bryce had stooped to enter the tent; now he stood up to his full height.  He was taller than Jason, and had kept an arm around Gina after returning her welcoming hug.  Jason had been slow to stand up when Bryce arrived, and he was now adjusting his glasses and looking uncomfortable.

“‘Scuse me.”  MacGyver had risen to his feet and walked up behind the group without anyone noticing.  Bryce turned around and took a step back; with his broad shoulders and arms akimbo, Mac was nonchalantly taking up what seemed like a great deal of space in the tent.  Even in his socks, he topped Bryce by at least three inches.

Mac nodded down at Bryce’s feet.  “I think you forgot to take those boots off before you came in.”

Bryce’s glossy smile became brittle at the edges as he tugged off his cowboy boots.  “You must be Phoenix – I hear you covered Moon Bear’s butt when he screwed up the bonfire.  I guess the spirits named you well.”

“Actually, Bluejay here gave me that name.  I don’t remember any spirits being involved.”  Out of the corner of his eye, Mac saw Tasha apparently torn between annoyance at his flippancy and delight at Bryce’s discomposure.

Baba spoke suddenly, her voice carrying clearly across the tent.  “Bluejay.  You will bring your friend to my home for coffee.  The day after tomorrow.  Three o’clock.”

Jason looked astonished, but it was Tasha who responded, in colloquial Russian.  “Babushka!  You’ve got to be kidding.  Him?  Why?”

MacGyver could see that Bryce didn’t understand the Russian, but it was enough that he understood the snub.  He gave Mac a long look, then turned as Rainbow and Raven came across the moon-drenched meadow, along with the eight-year-old Willow, now yawning and visibly drooping.  Raven returned Bryce’s profuse greetings perfunctorily as she shed her shoes.  Rainbow brushed past him as she wiped her already bare feet on the mat and entered the tent.

Baba beckoned the young woman over, then turned to MacGyver and gave him a nod of dismissal.  “I will see you day after tomorrow, Zarptika.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Mac glanced back inside the tent as he located his sneakers.  Bryce was by the tea urn, still attempting conversation with an uncooperative Tasha; Raven had settled herself on the cushions with Willow curled up in her lap.  Across the tent, Baba was talking earnestly to Rainbow.  The cards were nowhere in sight; Baba was holding both of Rainbow’s hands, speaking rapidly and intently in a low voice.  The young woman was sitting with hunched shoulders, looking sullen, her thin lips pressed firmly together.

Looks like the chip on her shoulder isn’t budging even with Baba leaning on it.

Jason and Gina were waiting in front of the tent.  “I just don’t like the way he looks at you,” Jason was saying.

Gina laughed deep in her throat and nuzzled him.  “Honey, you don’t got nothin’ to be jealous about.”

“I’m not . . . well . . . anyway, speaking of jealous – ” Jason looked at MacGyver.  “Have you got any idea what an honour it is to be invited to Baba’s for coffee?  Half the Tribe would give their eyeteeth for an invitation like that.  Bryce would probably kill you for the chance to swap places.”

Mac grinned.  “Yeah, I got that impression.  I guess we better not disappoint her.”

Gina glanced at Mac with a puzzled look.  “What was that Baba called you just now?”

“Zarptika.”  Mac tried to get the word out without stumbling on it.  “It’s the Russian word for ‘Firebird’.”

Chapter Text

Four: Ace of Hearts

Out in front of Baba Irina’s pavilion, MacGyver slipped his feet back into his sneakers and turned to Jason.  “Are we about ready to leave?”

“Leave?”  Jason shook his head in surprise.  “The rites haven’t even started yet.”

“The what?”

“The main celebration.  There’s the fire blessing, and the Spiral Dance, and – you know, Mac, rolling your eyes like that is not going to win friends and influence people.  Not these people anyway.”

“Sorry.”

“Lighten up, all right?  You’ve made one hell of a good impression so far – don’t ask me how – but you leave now and you’ll offend everyone, especially Baba.  And trust me, she will notice if you’re not at the fire when the time comes.  She might even pull your invitation for coffee.”

Mac sighed.  “Okay.  How much longer is it gonna be?”

“Hard to say – no one here really worries about running anything on schedule.  And folks are still getting ready.  Speaking of which . . . there may be a little problem . . . ”

Mac gave Jason a pained look.  “What now?”

Jason looked to Gina as if for help, but she rolled her eyes at him.  “C’mon, baby.  Spit it out.”

“Well, okay,” Jason continued.  “It’s like this.  The Tribe didn’t used to be all that formal in its practices – ”

“You call this formal?”

“Don’t interrupt.  Anyway, Gina’s been involved since they got started – she’s the one who brought me in, of course.  And she and Tasha have been best friends since college.  Now, Tasha didn’t think much of the Tribe at all – ”

“I can understand her feelings,” Mac muttered.  “Okay, sorry, I won’t interrupt again.”

“But she told Baba about it . . . and next thing we knew, Baba started showing up and teaching us some of the Rom ways.  She said that with her own tribe scattered, it was time to pass some of it on so it wouldn’t die out.  We’ve always held a gathering on the Solstice, and Baba said that was great – she calls it Ivan Kupalo – but she insisted we had to include a lustration.”

“Lustration – okay, so you do some kind of ritual washing.  How do you manage it – roll around in the dew?”

Jason gave Gina a long-suffering look, then scowled when she smirked at him.  He turned back to MacGyver.  “Mac . . . this is Marin County.”

“Yeah?”

“We do our ritual bathing in a hot tub.”

“Oh, no.”  Mac held up both hands and took a step back.  “No.  You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Jason grinned wickedly and held up the bundle he’d been holding behind his back:  large towels in bright colors. Mac suddenly remembered Jason loading that very bundle into the Jeep.  “What did you expect?  The Tribe also believes in karma – and that was one cold river you dumped me into, you know?”  He grabbed MacGyver’s arm and tugged him across the meadow; Mac followed as if in a dream, Gina trailing behind them and trying to swallow her own grin.

The full moon had risen far enough to crest the trees, and the long shadows dappled the meadow grass.  Behind them, the drummers had begun to pick up a faster beat, and cheerful whoops resounded from the circle around the bonfire; but ahead of them, a broad path cut through another arm of woodland leading to a smaller clearing not far from the road, where the power lines gave access to electricity.  Mac could hear splashing and laughter.

Female laughter.  He stopped dead in his tracks and began to protest again.

Jason cut him off.  “Forget it, Mac – there’s some ‘local customs’ you can’t blow off.  And relax, for Christ’s sake.  No one’s going to bite you.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, honey,” Gina murmured.  She smacked her lips, and Mac closed his eyes with an expression of pain.

“Oh, hell, now look what you’ve done,” Jason grumbled.  “Hey!  Aspen!”  Mac turned and opened his eyes as Jason waved to a newcomer approaching from the main meadow – and turned away just as quickly; the approaching woman wore a flowing skirt, several garlands of flowers, and nothing else.

“Aspen, it’s great to see you – ”  First Jason and then Gina hugged the woman without taking any apparent notice of her semiclad state.  Jason continued.  “You’re on your way to the tub, right?  Do me a favor – when you get in, would you kill the lights and turn on the bubbles?”

Aspen chuckled.  “First-timer, huh?  Don’t tell me – he’s from, let’s see, Kansas?”

“Worse.  Minnesota.”

Aspen looked MacGyver up and down.  “Minnesota’s loss, then.  Damn, I knew there was a good reason to come out here tonight.  You’re on, Bluejay.  Give me five minutes and bring your boy in.”

With Jason and Gina running interference, and the moonlight throwing confused shadows across the clearing, it wasn’t so bad.  The tub was set on a wooden deck, with benches for clothes and towels; off to one side close to the nearest thicket a showerhead had been rigged, and the shadows were deeper there.  Once showered, Mac was able to keep his towel wrapped firmly around his waist until the time came to actually slide into the tub, and Jason and Gina sat on each side of him and introduced the other bathers as if they’d simply sat down at a picnic table.

“Phoenix, you’ve already met Aspen – she’s one of the Tribe’s elders and founders.  This is Talis; her partner Moira is one of our best drummers.”

“Not just any drummer,” Gina murmured.  “She gets so into it poor Talis is practically a widow overnight.  And on Midsummer, too!  But she rocks, man.”

“And that’s Morgaina – she’s Sunrise’s older sister.”  Morgaina had been staring at Mac since he got in – he suspected she’d been staring before that, too.

The tub was amply large enough for eight or ten people, and the steaming water was roiling from the underwater jets; once safely in, the foam hide everything under the surface.  Mac was just beginning to let the hot water start to ease the tension in his back and shoulders when he felt a hand starting to slide up his thigh, hidden under the surface of the bubbling water.  He shifted his leg, trying to slip away without drawing any notice, but the hand followed and continued to roam.

Suddenly Mac had had enough.  He caught the straying hand by the wrist, held it in a lock just firm enough to be uncomfortable but not painful, and lifted it clear of the water.

“‘Scuse me.  I’m not sure who this hand belongs to, but that leg belongs to me.  Okay?”

Jason and Gina looked embarrassed; Aspen scowled, and Talis developed a sudden cough and became fascinated with her own fingernails.  Morgaina, the owner of the hand, pouted and giggled.  “Aw, don’t tell me you’re feeling sexually harassed?”

Aspen reached out and deliberately smacked the surface of the water, sending a splatter right into Morgaina’s face.  Mac released her hand as she shrieked with outrage and scrabbled at her eyes.

“Stuff it, Morgaina!  Everyone here agrees with you:  the man looks like sex on legs, and we’re all going to have naughty fantasies about him.  Well, maybe not Talis.  But he’s got every right to be pissed off over you treating him like a piece of meat, so back off.”

Morgaina hunched her shoulders and glared at Aspen – but she also folded her arms, which at least put her hands well out of reach of MacGyver.  “You can’t blame me for trying.”

“I can blame you for trying so clumsily that you screw up anyone else’s chances.  No, I take that back.  I can blame you, period.  If a guy did that to you you’d have every right to pitch a fit and punch his lights out, and we’d all stand in line to help.  What makes you think it’s any better the other way around?”  Aspen turned to MacGyver.  “Phoenix, I’m so sorry that happened.  Whatever it was exactly.  And if you wanna punch her lights out, we’ll help out if only in the name of fair play.  Hell, if you’re too chivalrous to punch her out, we’ll even do it for you.”

“Stop it, Aspen!”  Morgaina wailed.  “Why are you all being so mean?”  She clambered out of the tub, grabbed her clothes and stormed off.

After a long moment of silence, Talis looked over at Mac.  “Fuck, if that’s what it takes to get rid of that little twit – you gonna be busy on Lammas?  Don’t suppose you’d like to stop by again?”

“Talis.”  Aspen gave MacGyver an apologetic look.  “Talk about a lousy way to end the week.  I don’t suppose we can persuade you to develop a sudden case of really bad, really short-term amnesia and forget the last five minutes ever happened?”

Mac shrugged, trying to let the embarrassment pass.  “Hey, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay, but bless you for saying that anyway.  Maybe we can make it okay.  If you’re willing to trust me with your feet, I’ll make a start at least.”

“My feet?”

“Sure.  Just lean back and let your legs float up – and don’t worry; I swear by all that’s holy that I’ll stay below knee level.  But there’s isn’t a human being alive in the concrete world who doesn’t need a foot rub.”

Talis laughed.  “Better do what she says, Phoenix.  Aspen gives the best foot rubs in California.  And she’ll do both feet, ‘long as you don’t piss her off.”

“Yeah, right.  After that little display of immaturity, I’m gonna hunt Morgaina down and rub just one of her feet, to teach her a lesson!”

Mac was never sure how it happened, but the next thing he knew he was reclining in the hot water, with Aspen working miracles on his feet and calves and Talis talking to him matter-of-factly about the best places to find motorcycle parts in the Bay Area, and her favorite local rides.

Jason and Gina had retreated to one section of the tub and lost any sign of interest in anything but each other . . . which should have been embarrassing, but was somehow easy to overlook.  After a while, the other three climbed out and left Jason and Gina alone in the hot bubbling water and the moonlight.

*

The night was still quite warm and dry; MacGyver guessed that the dew wouldn’t even begin to form until shortly before dawn.  Under cover of the moonshadow from the trees, he pulled on his jeans and sneakers but simply draped the too-tight shirt around his neck.  He could wait to struggle back into it when he was no longer damp.

“Did you eat yet, Phoenix?”  Talis was asking.  “Someone brought a kick-ass casserole, but it’s long since gone.”

“Um, I think that was mine . . . plain white dish?  Yeah.”

“Damn,” Aspen exclaimed.  “And that was tofu, right?  You don’t know what a compliment you’ve just been paid.  Talis is not a tofu kind of person.  She usually hacks roadkill into bleeding chunks and broils them over the engine of her Harley, then eats them without salt.”

“I do not.  Jesus, Aspen.  You gotta have salt to cut the taste of the engine grease.”

Aspen laughed.  “Me, I’ll eat anything that hasn’t developed language skills and a rudimentary mythology.  Sorry I missed your casserole, though.”

The moon had risen high over the meadow, and cast faint shadows ahead of them on the long grass.  They were approaching the firepit, which had become the center of activity:  the drummers had abandoned their tent and were gathered off to one side of the bonfire, and a couple of dozen people were dancing nearby, the firelight dappling their bodies.

Talis turned to MacGyver.  “Hey, Phoenix.  Didn’t you say something about playing guitar?”

Mac felt embarrassed – the desultory conversation in the tub had wandered in a dozen different directions, and music had been one of the detours.  “Well, yeah, but mine’s at home in LA.”

“Well, fuck, Cairbre usually brings his, and then he don’t play it.  Lemme see if he’ll let you . . .”

“Really, you don’t . . . have to . . . ” Mac’s voice trailed off; Talis was already gone, pausing to wrap her arms around one of the drummers and give her an enthusiastic squeeze from behind, before she started talking earnestly to another, a tall black man with dreadlocks wrapped in bright ribbons.  Mac looked at Aspen.  “I thought Jason – Jay – said the drumming was gonna go on all night?”

“Oh, it will.  And the dancing – that’s the whole point of the Long Dance; there’ll be someone drumming, and someone dancing, every moment from when the setting sun touches the horizon right round till when the sun returns at dawn.  Fortunately, on Midsummer it’s not that many hours.  Midwinter is the marathon.  This is just a wild party.”  Aspen glanced at MacGyver.  “I’m sorry – that’s not what you were asking about, is it?  The drumming – it doesn’t mean you can’t throw in other instruments if someone brings them.  Hell, we used to have a real hot-shit flute player who’d go on right through for most of the night . . . but he was too sick to come this year.”

“Sick as in . . .”

“AIDS.  You’ve heard about that?  Yeah . . . it’s hitting us pretty damned hard.  You’re straight, right?  Thank God.  I don’t know how many more friends I’m going to lose this year, but it’s looking pretty damned ugly.”

Talis returned, carrying a battered guitar case festooned with decals and bumper stickers.  “Check it out, man.  Will this do?”

MacGyver spent some time tuning the guitar; there was no tuning fork or pitch-pipe in the case, but he cocked an ear towards the tones of the drums and used that as his starting note.  After several minutes, he realized he was procrastinating.  He wasn’t used to playing for such a large group – he generally played guitar alone, at home in the evening, with no one but himself to listen and no one to wonder what moods were carried along in the music.  He would have avoided playing, but it seemed rude to do that after Talis had gone to the trouble . . . and the rhythm of the drumming was beginning to seep into his blood.

The drummers weren’t playing a simple beat, or even playing the same beat; the lead flashed between one player and another, bursts of syncopation and short complex rhythmic phrases spoken first by one drum, then echoed by the others before another drum responded to the pattern as it changed and mutated and flowed.  Mac started strumming, following the underlying rhythm and letting himself settle into the river of sound, and then began to let his fingers dance, improvising around the many-voiced chatter of the drums.

He never knew how the music would hit him, in his more introverted times; sometimes it seemed to come from within, sometimes from outside.  That was always best on windy nights, when he could hear the wind and the sound of the ocean crashing against the beach, and try to wrap the voice of the guitar around the patterns of sound.  Sometimes it just came spilling up out of whatever hidden inner well contained it when he was focused elsewhere.

Tonight, underneath the drums there was the crackle of the fire and the feet of the dancers – mostly barefoot, soft stamps on the earth and the brushing of long grass against bare legs, warm sensual laughter and occasional wordless shouts.  With the deep tones of the drums dominating, MacGyver thought the guitar music would find its place amongst these softer sounds, no more than a half-heard thread; but either Cairbre had been keeping an ear cocked for the sound of his own guitar, or else the musicians had become a single force, many-handed but with one heart.  When Mac hit his stride on the guitar, the drums dropped in volume and opened a place for him in the complex dance of rhythm and tone.

He glanced up and met Cairbre’s eyes, and the man flashed him a broad white smile as wide as the Pacific; his hands on his djembe picked up the riff Mac had just played and somehow echoed not only the rhythm but the phrasing and tones, embroidering on the theme and tossing it back with nonchalant glee.  Mac repeated the riff again, with an extra turn and a flourish, and this time Moira and two of the other drummers echoed him, then each other, and then passed the lead back again.  The sound seesawed crazily, growing and expanding and turning back in on itself before looping outwards again; louder whoops came from the dancers as they responded to the renewed energy and intensity.

The floodwaters of a mountain river were nothing to the force of those currents of sound.  Mac had no idea how long the mad, intoxicating chase lasted before the music, seemingly of its own inclination, began to settle down into a quieter, steadier mood.  The drums didn’t quite stop, but several of the drummers who had been playing when Mac had begun paused or dropped out, and their places were taken by others.

He let the lead go back to Moira one last time, followed her and Cairbre into a lull, and finally let his hands grow still.  Moira stepped back from her drums and stretched out her own hands, and Talis materialized beside her, kissed her and handed her a beer.  MacGyver carefully laid the guitar back in its case and stretched his fingers, feeling the comfortable ache of well-used muscles.

His right hand was promptly seized by one of the women who had been dancing close by.  She smiled at him and began to rub his hand, not very effectively.  “That was, like, so cool.  It was totally magic.  You want a beer?”

“No, thanks.”  She’d already had plenty herself; he could smell the fumes.

“Aw, you sure?  There’s lots.”

Raven materialized on Mac’s other side.  “Holly, he just said no.”  She offered him a large paper cup.  “How about water?”

Mac accepted gratefully; it gave him an excuse to retrieve his hand from Holly’s grasp.  She promptly slid a hand up his arm and leaned her head against his shoulder.  “That was so totally awesome!  I wish I could play like that . . . ”

Raven murmured into Mac’s other ear, “Whatever you do, don’t offer to teach her.  Holly uses that line all the time– she collects musicians.”  She watched him flexing his left hand and asked, “May I?  I used to play some myself – I know which muscles are going to want attention.”

“I guess so – ” Mac was still feeling bemused from the tumbling power of the music, and the murmur of the drums was beginning to pick up intensity again already as a new group of drummers joined in.  Raven took his left arm between both hands and kneaded the muscles of the forearm, then caught his hand in a firm grip that seemed to peel away the stiffness and fatigue like a glove.  He blinked.  “Wow.”

“‘Scuse me, Holly – ” Raven deftly supplanted the younger woman and repeated the manoeuver on MacGyver’s right arm and hand, pausing at the end with a frown to study his knuckles.  “You’ve got some swelling here.  What did you do, punch someone out?”

To Mac’s relief, she didn’t seem to expect an answer.  Well, yeah, but he really had it coming.  Much better left unsaid; it was a thought from a world that seemed very far away at the moment.

Mac noticed the fire had begun to burn low.  Before he’d made up his mind to do anything about it, one of the other men approached it:  Hawk, a heavyset older man with a ridiculous bright red bow tied into his greying beard.  To Mac’s surprise, instead of building it up higher, Hawk spread out the glowing coals in a line across the width of the firepit and added wood carefully and deliberately, until the fire blazed bright without burning high, a long finger of flame tracing a line along the ground.

“Oh, look,”  Raven pointed.  “They’re finally coming out to give the blessings.”

Across the meadow, Baba Irina had emerged from her pavilion, with Tasha and several others in attendance.  Tasha carried a folding chair, and Rainbow and some of the others bore cushions and drapes; Bryce was trailing after them, carrying a large padded footstool.  From his peevish expression, Mac guessed that he had been hoping for something with a little more dignity.  Tasha set up the chair near the fire and directed the others in spreading out the drapes and arranging the cushions to give the simple folding chair the air of a throne.

Baba paid no attention to the preparations as she moved around the circle of drummers, formally kissing each, repeating the process with the group at the firepit.  She then drew herself up to her full height and gestured dramatically, scattering a double handful of powder into the fire, which flared up and died down quickly.  Mac tried not to roll his eyes noticeably at the transparent showmanship, but the assembled crowd cheered and whooped.

Baba bowed her head graciously in acknowledgement and settled herself in her throne, then nodded to Talis. MacGyver wasn’t sure what would happen next, but what did happen was the last thing he’d expected:  Talis began to sing.

Even more unexpected than the singing itself was the sound of Talis’ voice:  she had a deep, resonant alto that drew rich echoes from the trees and couldn’t fail to draw notice from every corner of the festival encampment.  The pure tones of her voice also drew awe and a trace of envy from MacGyver, whose singing voice had never been a strong point.

“Yeslib zhizn’ lyudyei byla
Kak skazochnaya pesn’
Dlya peniyav nochi – ”

He recognized the tune after a moment, although he’d last heard it two years back, and in English.  Talis sang it through once in Russian before switching to English; when she did, the rest of the assembled gathering joined in, picking up the tempo and breaking spontaneously into a round after the first repetition.  The song did seem to be a summons to the entire camp; more people were coming up out of the darkness to join the group by the fire.  Mac saw Jason and Gina in the crowd, arm in arm, Gina’s incandescent smile flashing as they swayed to the music of their own singing.

If the people lived their lives
As if it were a song
For singing out of light
Provides the music for the stars
To be dancing circles in the night . . .

“Did Baba tell you that was an old Russian Gypsy song?” Mac murmured to Raven.

“No, not at all.  Talis learned it off a record, and Baba laughed at us and said it would do.”

It wasn’t as elegant as it had been at the UN concert, with a full stage set-up and a horde of international dignitaries for an audience; but it was completely heartfelt.  Mac wasn’t sure when he began singing himself; in the swell of voices, he didn’t have to worry about whether he was quite on key or not.

No one signaled the end of the song, but after several repetitions the different voices of the round came together in a final chord as if it had all been rehearsed.  The drums had dropped to a soft murmur while the singing lasted; suddenly a new set of complex rhythms leaped forward as if released by a breaking dam.  Mac saw that Moira had resumed her position at the largest set of standing drums.  The meadow echoed with whoops and shouts, and the gathered crowd spontaneously formed into long lines, hand clasping hand, beginning a wild serpentine dance.  Half a dozen chains of dancers were looping around, snaking back and forth, doubling back on their own tracks and sometimes ducking between two dancers in another line, drawing shouts of laughter until the tangles resolved.

Raven had kept hold of Mac’s hand throughout the singing, and Holly, after a moment’s pout, had slipped around to his other side and taken his other hand.  Suddenly Mac felt himself being dragged forwards in Raven’s wake into the dancing.  He tried to break free.

“Hang on, Phoenix!” she called cheerfully, and her grip tightened.

“No, wait – no way, I don’t know this dance – ”

“There’s nothing to know!  Just hold on and enjoy yourself!”

Enjoy this . . . !  At first, Mac gritted his teeth as their own line, perhaps a dozen people with Raven at its head, wrapped itself into the interlaced skeins of dancers weaving crazed patterns around the meadow.  His mind flashed back to old games of crack-the-whip on the ice in Minnesota.  He’d taken some bad spills before he’d mastered the knack of tucking and rolling out of a fall – a skill that had saved him from serious injury on innumerable occasions since then.  But Raven’s grip on his hand stayed firm, and although the pace was energetic, there were none of the abrupt changes of speed and direction that meant grief on the ice.  The object of the dance wasn’t to shed stragglers, but to keep the line together through even the worst snarls.  The faces Mac saw in the moonlight and the firelight were laughing and smiling; when a dancer stumbled, there were hands on each side to catch and support.

Someone heading another line ducked under the hand Holly was clasping, and she laughed and lifted their arms into an arch, swaying in place as the dancers in the other line squeezed through; Raven promptly turned their course back on itself, following along the curve of the second line.  Mac had expected to have his arm yanked half out of its socket; but after a moment of confusion when he thought he was going to be pulled in two ways at once, the coil smoothed out and the crossing dancers flowed smoothly past – except for the last three, all women, who each slowed down as they passed him and tried to land a kiss on his face.  Between his height, the darkness, and the unsteady footing, their aim wasn’t very good; Mac attempted to dodge the last one, whose breath smelled very strongly of wine, and nearly collided with her instead.

Then they were in the clear, and Raven doubled back and dived in turn between two dancers in another line.  The threads twined and intertwined, and began to link up into longer lines that doubled back on themselves so that the dancers streamed past each other, finally creating one great spiral that wound in on itself, disintegrating at last into indiscriminate clusters of people hugging or kissing, their arms wrapped around each other in groups that coalesced and broke up and reformed.  Mac found himself half-squashed in a group that included Jason and Gina, and also Morgaina.  When she saw him, her face crumpled and her eyes brimmed over.  He could smell wine fumes on her breath as well.

“Phoenix – I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean anything – well, I did, but I didn’t mean . . . oh, shit.  I’m sorry is all.”  She threw her arms around him in a fierce hug, then released him and slipped away.

“Wow.”  Aspen materialized beside him.  “How do you like that?  A real apology.  Maybe there’s hope for her yet.”  She selected a flower from one of her garlands and tucked it behind Mac’s ear.  “Congratulations, Phoenix.  You’ve survived your first Spiral Dance.”

“Terrific.”  The flower promptly started to slide down his neck, and he scrabbled for it.

“And don’t worry about your lost dignity.  You can pick it up on your way out; they’ll have it at the door, along with everyone else’s.”

“What door?”

“Damn.  We forgot to bring a door.  Isis – ?”

Gina had been kissing Jason with obvious enthusiasm; she looked very annoyed at the interruption.  “What?”

“Remind me to bring a door next year!”

Gina’s reply was unprintable.  Aspen laughed, caught Mac’s hand and tugged at it.  “C’mon, Phoenix!”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the firepit – they should be hard at it by now.  C’mon!”

*

Although the group dance had ended, the drumming was continuing at a wild pace and there were still over a dozen individuals dancing around the fire.  More than that:  Mac saw, as they approached, the reason for the odd arrangements Hawk had been making earlier.

On one side of the long tongue where the fire had been extended, a man stood, swaying to the beat of the drums, his movements becoming ever more tightly wound, like a coiled spring; at last, he took several steps backwards, stamped on the ground like a charging bull, and ran straight towards the fire.  Without realizing it, MacGyver was starting forward in alarm when the young man leapt over the blaze and landed safely on the other side.  The group around the fire whooped and clapped – and another person, a young woman, stepped forward into the jump zone and began to sway back in forth, gearing herself up for the leap.

“What the – ” Mac hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud until Aspen replied.

“They’re jumping the fire.  It’s part of the tradition.”

“That’s crazy!”

“It’s midsummer.”

“But – ”

Aspen shrugged.  “It means good luck for the coming year, and new beginnings.  And when two people do it together, it’s a pledge, the strongest pledge there is.  Anyway, take a closer look – we’re not totally nuts.”  She pointed to where Hawk was standing between the firepit and the woodpile; MacGyver saw that he had a full bucket of water beside him, and what looked like a thick blanket already soaked down.

“Anyone ever been hurt?”

“Other than their feelings, no.  Well, we did get one sprained ankle a couple of years ago.  But we stay prepared anyway.  Excuse me – I need to get closer in, or it’ll be ages before I get my turn.”  She slipped away from him and moved next to the fire as the next leaper stepped up.

Talis had been sitting with the drummers; she set down the djembe she’d been playing and walked over to stand near Mac.

“Well?”

Mac eyed her uneasily.  “Well what?”

“Aren’t you gonna jump the fire?”

“I just told Aspen it was completely crazy!”  MacGyver burst out.

“Yeah?  So what?  I know that look in your eye.”  Talis smirked at him.  “Don’t tell me you’ve never done anything crazy in your life.”  She pointed.  “Here comes Isis and Bluejay – awright!  Finally.  Jay missed the Midwinter fire festival – I hear he was out of the country or something – and Isis wouldn’t jump at all without him.  They’ve been waiting long enough.”

Jason and Gina, holding each others’ hands as if they never meant to let go, had approached the fire; at a gesture from Aspen, several people who had been waiting to jump stood back and let the couple go ahead of them.  Mac heard the drumming kick into high gear and recognized Moira’s signature style and rhythm.  He hadn’t seen Baba since the dancing began; now she advanced forwards out of the darkness, a stately figure in spite of the gaudy haphazard finery she wore, which should have made her look absurd but instead gave her a wild magnificence.  Jason and Gina bent their heads to her in turn and received a formal kiss on the forehead.

Talis tugged at Mac’s arm.  “C’mon, man.  We need to get closer.  You’re his buddy, right?  Time to show your support.”

Jason and Gina looked at each other, and Mac couldn’t quite stifle a spike of envy at the joy in their faces.  Maybe someday.  Maybe.  They turned to face the fire, and when the drums reached a new peak, they ran forward as one and leapt together, Gina’s fluttering draperies well above the level of the flames, landing safely on the other side.

Mac found himself clapping and whooping with the others, carried away in the delight of the moment.  Jason and Gina made the rounds of the group by the fire, trading hugs indiscriminately;  even Bryce, who had been standing off to one side looking petulant, gave a warm hug to Gina and a perfunctory one to Jason.

When Gina reached MacGyver, she paused and looked at him seriously.  “I owe you big, Phoenix.  Jay don’t talk much about it all, but he don’t have to.”  She wrapped her arms around him and murmured into his ear.  “You like helping people, don’t you?  Well, you ever need anything yourself, you just ask, you hear?”  She kissed his cheek and moved on to embrace Talis.

The couple had left the firepit, but Mac suddenly found himself the center of attention.  Raven had joined the group and was looking at him expectantly.

“Aw, c’mon, Phoenix – give it a try!”

The shout was taken up by the others.  “Phoenix!  Phoenix!  Phoenix has to jump the fire!”

Somewhere very far back in MacGyver’s brain was a small voice insisting that the whole idea was crazy, stupid, pointless, and dangerous.  Mac ignored the voice.  He’d heard it on a lot of other occasions, always insisting the same things, and he’d ignored it then too, when he’d usually been up against something a good deal more dangerous than a bonfire of his own making.

The rhythm of the drums had invaded his blood, and the challenge of the fire was blazing as bright as anything ever had.  He waited for the drumming to tell him the right moment, ran forward and leapt as high as he could, hearing the shouts of delight and acclamation as he landed on the far side, tucking and rolling out of the leap from long habit.

Raven appeared on the other side of the bright haze, helping him to his feet.  She was grinning from ear to ear.  “Way to go.  You know that means you’ll have a new beginning, don’t you?”

MacGyver started to protest, but she waved him off.  “Before the season turns, you’ll find yourself on a new path, and it will lead to where you most want to be.  Oh, don’t look like that.  You don’t have to believe it – but three months from now, you remember this moment.  You’ll see.”

*

It wasn’t long before the fire-leaping ended and the ranks of the drummers thinned, and the drumming settled into a quieter, steady beat.  Mac found himself standing and watching as most of the dancers, in close couples, broke away from the larger groups and faded away across the meadow.  Only three people remained dancing around the fire – not so much dancing as standing and swaying to the beat, each apparently lost in a private trance.

Mac studied the fire with satisfaction; Hawk had pushed it back into the center of the firepit and it was burning well, needing no attention for the time being.  He felt a presence behind him and wasn’t surprised when he was hugged from behind; he glanced down at the hands and recognized Aspen by her rings.

“Hey there.”

“Hey yourself.  I just wanted to come thank you for being such a good sport..”

MacGyver shrugged.

“Did you even notice that Firewolf was watching you like a starved puppy?  I’ve never seen him so smitten.  But at least he has manners.  Very good manners, unlike some I can think of.”

Mac wasn’t sure what to say to that.  “The crowd sure thinned out quickly.”

“That happens after the Spiral Dance . . . the exhibitionists have all headed over to the Temple Grove, and the others have scattered to find some private nooks.”

“Oh.”  Another comment with no easy reply.  “So . . . that’s what the tents are for?”

“Hell, no.  That’s the quiet zone; there are kids asleep in some of them.  Folks only go there to, well, sleep.”

Aspen was having trouble keeping her mind on the light conversation; she could feel the flat muscles of Mac’s stomach against her arms, above his low-slung jeans, and she practically had to dig her nails into her palms to keep her hands from wandering.  He felt even better that she had imagined; and he hadn’t yet tensed up or tried to shrug her off.  She rested her head against his broad back for a moment and mentally tallied it amongst the blessings – or miracles – of the night.

“So what are you really called?  I get the feeling you’re not comfortable with ‘Phoenix’.”

“Well, yeah, it’s kinda – ” he waved a hand in the air.

“Pretentious?  Stupid?  Mystical woo-woo silly?”

“Somethin’ like that.  Anyway, my friends call me Mac.”

“Mmm.  Short and sweet.”

“Well, short anyway.”  She could hear the smile in his voice.

“I hope you don’t think ‘Aspen’ is pretentious.  My real name’s so stupid I hate using it.  It stinks of suburbia.”

“No problem.  I think it’s nice.”

Aspen smiled and squeezed her arms, tightening the hug.  “Thanks.”

It was a mistake – she knew that immediately, feeling the abrupt tension in him.  She was still topless, and he’d suddenly become aware of her bare breasts pressing into his bare back, the sensation distinct amidst the tickle and brush of the flower petals of her garlands.

Shit.  It was a moment before she was even fairly sure she could control her voice; but as soon as she could, she murmured, “Hell.  I’m sorry,” and started to let go and draw back.

MacGyver caught her hands and held them in place for a moment, still wrapped around his waist, until she stopped trying to pull away.  Then he turned around in the circle of her arms and looked down at her face.

The sweet, fragrant night air suddenly seemed terribly thin.  Aspen felt light-headed.  “Thanks,” she managed to say, and wondered that her voice didn’t quaver.

“No problem.”  Mac raised a hand and brushed the hair from her face, smoothing a stray strand back behind one ear.  He lifted another lock of her hair and twirled it slowly and gently between his fingers, drawing it out to its full length before letting it fall.

“So.”  Aspen attempted a casual smile.  “Wanna come up to my grove and see my etchings?”

Mac’s smile was slow and easy.  “You mean you’ve got another tattoo that I haven’t seen yet?”

“You’d have seen them all when I got out of the hot tub if you hadn’t been oh-so-carefully looking elsewhere.”  She tightened her arms again, with more confidence this time.  “You are such a damned gentleman.  Would you stop looking me in the eyes already, just for a minute, before my ego is completely crushed?”

“Crushed ego?  Can’t have that.”  MacGyver looked her up and down, and his dark eyes gleamed.  “I don’t suppose this grove of yours offers anything in the way of privacy?”

“Hey, I’m a tribal elder. I get my very own personal glade with a private supply of moonlight, and dew delivered fresh every morning.”  Aspen knew she was chattering, but couldn’t seem to stop herself.  To her relief, MacGyver smiled and let her lead him across the meadow and along a tiny footpath that opened up in the belt of trees.

Tucked into the trees was a small clearing like a sylvan pocket, buffered by thickets but open to the south and west where the hillside began to fall away.  A few scattered lights glinted on the far side of the valley, but the glade was drenched with moonlight.  A groundsheet was spread out on the damp grass, with a sleeping bag and pillow and a small pile of personal belongings.

“I hate bothering with a tent on a clear night like this,” Aspen murmured.  “It just seems wrong.”

“I know the feeling.”  They stood side by side for a moment, looking out across the nightscape; Mac was holding her left hand, his thumb brushing across her rings.  He tugged on her hand so that she faced him and repeated the gesture as he took her other hand.

Aspen raised an eyebrow.  “Did I pass the ring check?”

Mac looked briefly sheepish.  “None of ‘em looks like a wedding ring . . . ”

“You’d be surprised.  But no.  I’m not involved with anyone just now, if that matters.  In your case, I’m guessing it does.”

MacGyver simply nodded.  In the dim light, his eyes looked very large, the darkness infused with heat.  He released her hands and lightly walked his fingers up her bare arms to her shoulders, then slid his warm hands down her back and pulled her closer.

She ran her hands up along his chest, brushing her palms lightly over the soft pelt of hair, and wrapped her arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe to reach for his mouth as he bent down towards her.  He brushed her lips lightly with his own, and then drew back slightly, dark eyes studying her face.

His lips were very soft, and the retreat was maddening.  She leaned towards him to close the gap.  As soon as her mouth covered his, Mac began to kiss her, not aggressively but expertly and thoroughly; he cupped her head with one hand and tilted her face to a better angle.  She pressed herself tightly against him and felt his arousal, and this time he didn’t draw back.

Under the taste of his mouth and the scent of his body, she could smell the perfume from the flowers in her garlands as the petals were crushed between them.  She’d been watching him, trying not to be obvious, all through the jam session, and had watched his hands dancing along the guitar, the long nimble fingers flashing, mesmerising in their agility and grace.  He had caressed the instrument, and it had responded with music.  Now the same hands played another song on her skin, slow and gentle.

As she ran her hands over his upper body, she could feel the play of the muscles under the skin.  The fine hair on his chest and arms and stomach felt as soft as velvet.  When she reached for the fastening of his jeans, he stopped her, stooped, and untied his sneakers.

“You can actually think ahead at a time like this?”  Aspen could hear the hoarseness in her own voice.  “That’s not fair.”

Mac’s grin was no longer innocent.  “Well, yeah, but not too far ahead.”  He kicked his shoes off to one side.  The jeans followed, along with Aspen’s skirt.

He reached for her again, but this time it was Aspen who paused and drew back slightly.

“Please give me a moment . . . I just want to look at you.  God, you’re beautiful.”  He seemed about to reply in turn, but she pressed her fingertips to his lips.  “No, don’t say anything.  Just let me look.”  Her fingers followed his jawline down to his neck, traced the strong lines of the collarbones.  Even in the moonlight, the gold tones of his skin glowed with warmth.  She spread her hands out on his shoulders and marveled at their width.

She found and traced the irregularity in the hollow of his right shoulder.  “Wow.  That’s some pocket of scar tissue you’ve got there.”

“I got . . . I had a puncture wound that got infected.”  MacGyver put a hand over hers to stop the probing.

“You must have very good healing skin.  I noticed the scar when we were in the hot tub, but it didn’t look like much.  And I didn’t want to say anything anyway . . . ”  Her hand slid around to his back and found the roughened knot of skin that marked the exit wound.  She met his eyes, then looked away and bit her lip, nodded slightly, and slid her hand away from the second scar.

Mac cupped a hand around her cheek and gently turned her back to face him.  “Okay, so now you’ve seen my etchings.  How ‘bout that other tattoo of yours?”  His grin was boyish, but the glint in his eyes was not.  “You promised.”

She smiled with relief as the awkward moment evaporated.  “I think I’m going to make you find it for yourself.”

His next kiss was harder and more insistent, and she felt herself caught in his arms and carefully lowered onto the sleeping bag.  His mouth was on one breast, and his hand on the other, the long fingers lightly tracing patterns on her skin.  She ran her fingers through his long silky hair – feather-light and feather-soft in her hands – and wondered at how the moonlight seemed to wash all the color out of it, as if he was a marvelous creature the night had conjured up out of her fantasies.  She felt his tongue doing amazing things to her breast, and she buried her face in Mac’s hair and breathed in the scent of woodsmoke and fresh air and night woodlands.

Chapter Text

Five: Double Bluff

When we headed back across the Golden Gate to Marin County on the way to Baba’s the second day afterwards, it was beginning to seem like the Jeep knew its own way north, while I was free to just take in the breathtaking sweep of ocean and hill and sparkling bay in the afternoon sunlight.

Well, I wished I was free to take it all in, anyway.  But I kept catching myself watching the rear-view mirror, still not certain whether anyone was back there.

Looking over your shoulder is part of playing the ‘Great Game’.  It’s one part that I’ve never really liked – although it’s not as bad as the part about not being able to trust anyone you meet.  I was never much good at that.  Back when we first started working together, Pete used to try to get me to change – but he gave up after a while.  He said it could get me killed someday, but trusting people has saved my life more times than I can count; and so far, I’m way ahead on that game.  So far.

You’re supposed to expect betrayal, and you’re also supposed to be ready to betray others when the chips are down.  I was never any good at that.  Pete never tried to change me there.  I guess it’s one of the reasons I’ve never wanted to give up working with him.  And for him.

Of course, we both know that Pete’s really lousy at that part too.

“You’re getting to know your way around pretty well,” Jason remarked.  “Take the next exit.  And is it my own paranoia, or are you still watching for a tail?”

Mac shrugged.  “I drove out to Brookhearst yesterday to scope the place out – a couple of times I wondered if I was being followed, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“It probably was the fashion police this time.”

“I didn’t buy the shirt till afterwards,” Mac declared in an aggrieved tone.  “There was a street fair going on in Corte Madera.”  He glowered at Jason.  “I do not believe I’m getting this from a guy who wears orange and yellow tie-dye.”

“C’mon, Mac.  Tie-dye is one thing.  But tropical flowers?  Pink and purple and orange ones?  Just tell me that thing has a volume control on it, or I’ll have the neighbors complaining at night.”

“Tell ‘em to get sunglasses.”

“They’re going to need blindfolds.”

 *

Baba’s house in Mill Valley was tiny but immaculate, tucked well back from the street and nearly invisible in the welter of color of the garden surrounding it.  The reason was immediately apparent:  Tasha was elbow-deep in the beds out in front, weeding and pruning with nonchalant expertise.  Raven’s daughter Willow was playing in the yard near her.  She had contrived a makeshift catapult from sticks and was launching flowers into the air.  Tasha was stolidly disregarding the random scatter of dead rhododendron blossoms that had accumulated around her.

“Taaasha . . . I’m out of amma-nition.”

Tasha answered without turning around.  “Sweetie, you’ve deadheaded all my rhododendrons already, but I don’t suppose the neighbors will mind if you start on theirs.  Or you can gather these up and recycle them.  I bet the bad guys will be even more scared of recycled rhododendrons.”

“Bluejay’s here, and the man with the fire breath.”

“Fire breath – ?”  Tasha looked over her shoulder.  “Oh, right.  Sorry, Jay – I lost track of time.  Hi, Phoenix.”  She rose and brushed her hands off on her overalls.  She glanced at MacGyver.  “Willow was really fascinated with how you did the bonfire night before last.  She’s convinced you have a magical power over fire.”

“I guess she’s gonna be disappointed.”

“And I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a bit – Baba’s got a phone consultation and there’s no knowing how long it will take.”

“Hey, no problem,” Jason replied.  “Right, Mac?”

“‘Mac’?”  Tasha looked from one to the other.

MacGyver held out his hand.  “The name’s MacGyver.  We can drop the whole ‘Phoenix’ thing, if you don’t mind.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Tasha accepted his hand.  “I don’t mind a bit.  I can’t stand the whole silly spirit-name business myself.”

With the atmosphere somewhat thawed,  Tasha returned to her gardening.  Jason settled himself on the porch, but Mac squatted down next to Willow and took a closer look at her handiwork.  “Whatcha got there?  Hey, that’s pretty cool.  Did you make it?”

The child nodded.  “These are magic flowers,” she explained solemnly.  “They don’t hurt the bad guys, but it makes all the buildings fall down and then the trees all grow back.”  She carefully loaded several wilted flower heads onto her catapult – a long section of flat wooden shingle balanced across a large round branch – and brought her fist down onto the firing end, launching another payload more or less in Tasha’s direction.

“Cool,” Mac declared with equal solemnity.

Willow studied him matter-of-factly.  “Your hands are dirty,” she declared.

“Yeah, I know.  I had to check my car engine on the way over here.”  MacGyver spread out his hands, which were streaked with engine grease and dirt.  “I bet I’m gonna have to wash my hands before Baba Irina lets me touch anything.”

Willow examined her own grimy hands thoughtfully.  “Tasha says, be careful I don’t get a splinter.”

“You know, I bet we could do something about that.  Hey, would you like to be able to shoot even farther?”

The child’s eyes gleamed and she nodded eagerly.

“You go get a fresh supply of ammunition, and I’ll see about upgrading your system.”

The shed that held Tasha’s gardening tools and supplies stood with its door open, and Mac quickly found what he had hoped for:  a flat wooden paint-stirring stick amongst a collection of paint cans, brushes, and other supplies.  He also picked up an old coat hanger from the floor and hurried back.

The coat hanger bent easily in his hands, and he was able to wire the stirring stick loosely to the round branch Willow was using as a fulcrum, so that he could slide it back and forth and adjust the moment arm.  It was ready by the time the child returned with Tasha’s gardening hat full of more wilted flowers.  She carefully loaded and fired, and chortled with glee at the improved results.

“Taaaasha!  Look how far I can shoot now!”

Tasha had been watching, her face softening in spite of the rain of flowerheads peppering her.  “Very impressive.”

MacGyver was showing Willow how to adjust the firing arm.  “The longer lever makes the difference, see?  And you can slide it back and forth like that.”

“It’s a catapult,” Willow insisted.

“Yup.  And this part’s a lever.”  Mac loaded a fresh supply of dead rhododendron flowers, adjusted the aim, and tapped the firing end smartly with one finger.  The blossoms sailed into the air and landed in Jason’s lap.

“Aw, thanks, Mac.  You cared enough to send flowers.”

“Hey, you bet.  Let me know if any buildings start falling down.”

Willow giggled.  “My turn!”  She selected the largest flowerhead in her fresh arsenal and once again banged her fist down on the lever, hard enough that Mac worried it might splinter after all.  This time, the scarlet flower lofted over Jason’s head, and Baba Irina, materializing silently behind him at the back of the porch, caught it in her hand as if it had been a bird coming to light.

She was dressed far more sedately than she had been at the solstice festival, but while the bright Gypsy clothing was gone, the imperious manner was not.  She beckoned to MacGyver.  “Zarsha.  It is time for us to have coffee and talk.”

Jason hadn’t seemed surprised when Baba appeared; now he stood up with a respectful nod to her and stepped down from the porch.  “So Tasha, shall we take Willow out to the park and see if we can find some wicked developers for her to terrorize?”

“Um, wait a moment . . . ” MacGyver looked from Jason to Baba.

The younger man shook his head gently, smiling.  “The invitation was for you, hotshot.  I’m just the native guide.  You’re on your own.”

*

Baba Irina’s house was as tidy on the inside as it had been outside, sparsely furnished and uncluttered.  None of the furniture was new, but everything was well-tended, and the shabbiness had a quiet dignity to it.  MacGyver had never seen a house with an elderly occupant that had so few knick-knacks or photos in it.

“Your garden’s so nice, I’m surprised you don’t have any flowers in here.”

“I leave the flowers to grow in peace where they are.  They live longer that way.  And if I must go to them to enjoy their beauty – that is good, too.  Why not?”  She lowered herself into an easy chair upholstered in a faded floral brocade.  “Tell me, is Leningrad still as beautiful in the spring as it was when I was a little girl?  It was Saint Petersburg then, of course, but no matter.”

Mac settled himself on the couch near her.  “What makes you think I would know?”

“You have been there.  More than once, I think.  And you have been there recently.  Come, will it harm anyone to make an old woman happy with news of home?”

“Hard to say who it might harm,” Mac answered slowly.  He paused for only a moment before he spoke again.  “Spring was early this year.  There was still hard frost at night, but the sun was warm enough in the daytime that the leaves were out on the trees early.  No flowers, though.  Not while I was there.”

Baba shook her head sadly.  “We have flowers much earlier in this place.  It is a gift I treasure every year.”  Between her chair and the sofa where MacGyver sat was a low table with a beautiful coffee service laid out; it was by far the finest thing in the room.  Baba leant over the table, lifted the lid from the china pot, and breathed in the scent. 

“Today there will be no interruptions, and it is now time to cut the crap.  You went to very much trouble to meet me – and more than trouble:  you were ready to go against your heart.  And you risked losing face.”  She replaced the lid on the coffeepot and looked Mac directly in the eyes.  “You are willing to play the fool, but only when you choose that role yourself.  So.  Why did you seek me out?”

After a moment’s hesitation, MacGyver drew an object out of his pocket:  a complicated knotwork of colored cords wrapped around three iron nails of an unusual style – farrier’s nails, used for shoeing horses.

“Ha!”  Baba should have been annoyed, but instead she seemed almost pleased.  “So that is why Volen Andreievich called in such a panic.”

“I’ll bet.”  Mac tossed the charm onto the coffee table.  “I counted five of them just in his office at Brookhearst.”

“And you thought that with so many, he would not notice just one missing?”

“This one wasn’t the best-hidden – that one I figured he’d check more often.  I did hope he wouldn’t spot it right away.  If that was him calling just now, at least it took him a few days.”  Mac met her eyes thoughtfully.  “You haven’t scolded me for scaring an old man by stealing his domovushka.”

“Is it a scolding you are expecting?  Or praise that you know what it is?”  Baba pursed her lips and shook her head reprovingly.  “He has been very much more nervous lately – more . . . dyorganyj.”

“Jumpy?”

“Da.  He thinks the KGB are after him.”

“Are they?”

“Ah, so now you believe that I do have some special knowledge?”

“No, not exactly.  But you know more about Baranyev than you let on.  I did some digging after I found – that – and I learned that he doesn’t make a move without consulting his favorite Gypsy fortune teller.  And that’s you.”

Instead of bristling, Baba merely smirked and lifted the coffeepot.

“Baba . . . ”  Mac gestured for her to pause before she began pouring.  “The truth is, I’m not real fond of coffee . . . and since you’re not really Roma . . . ”

The coffeepot suspended in mid-air.  In a genuine Romany household, the refusal of coffee would have been a deadly insult.  MacGyver waited to see what Baba’s reaction would be.

Her eyes had sparked, but her expression gave nothing else away.  After an interminable moment, she finally nodded slowly.

“What makes you say this?”

“I checked your laundry hamper when I washed my hands.”

A sudden broad smile creased Baba’s wrinkled face, and she set down the coffeepot and waggled a finger at him.  “You came here with the dirty hands on purpose, no?”

“Yeah, I did.  I pulled over on the way and messed with my car engine to make sure.”  Mac leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.  “Baba, you have only one clothes hamper – and everything’s in it:  skirts and blouses in the same wash.  That’s marime.  No Roma would choose to live that way.  You know a lot about the language and the culture, and you put on a good act, but you’re no more Rom than I am.”

Baba had turned back to the coffee pot.  “Are you sure how much that is?  But no matter.”  Leaving MacGyver’s cup empty, she poured her own.  After a moment, she rose to her feet, cup in hand.

“Come, Zarsha.  If coffee is not to your liking, I will make you tea.  Herbal tea.  Mint, from Tasha’s own garden.  The earth is good to her – she has a gift in her hands.  You will drink tea?”

MacGyver nodded.  “I’d like that.”

The kitchen was cozier and brighter than the living room had been; the wooden table was old, scarred, and well-scrubbed.  A telephone sat on it, temporarily displaced from a nearby nook; beside it lay both a pack of Tarot cards and a deck of ordinary playing cards.  Several of the latter were still laid out on the table.

Mac stopped at the table and looked at the spread, picking up one:  the three of spades.  “This kinda threw me, you know.  You were using the Tarot cards the other night to snow those two girls, but you switched to the real cards when you did my reading.”

Baba chuckled.  “Is it a ‘snow job’ to give foolish little girls what they want – a taste of brighter lights ahead?  At their age, the future should be full of promise.  I told them no lies.”

“How about me?”

She shrugged eloquently.  “What truth do you want that you do not know already?  It is true that I was not born Roma.  That you know.  But I was still very young when I learned the true Gypsy ways.  I cannot dance, I am no treat to look at, but I can put on one hell of a show for rich gullible gadje men.”

“Men like Baranyev?”

At the stove, Baba snorted.  “Men like Baranyev do not pay me for truth.  They pay me to hold their hands and tell them they are good boys.”

Mac took one of the chairs at the kitchen table, idly fingering the cards, waiting.  It was a long wait as Baba bustled around the kitchen.

“It was my nurse,” she spoke at last into a silence that had stretched so long that it had become somehow familiar and comfortable.  “Zhana Mostovoi.  She was Ruska Roma, from a kumpania that did not lie low enough, or rub palms hard enough . . . so much pride.  So much sorrow.  Zhanasha was fourteen when the Tsar’s men took her from her people to ‘civilize’ her, and gave her like a cow to my family as a servant.  If she had not come to us, her own people would have given her in marriage to a drunk three times her age.  But still she raged.”

She had refilled the kettle and was looking over a collection of jars that held assorted dried herbs.  When she opened the mint, MacGyver could smell the sweet pungency from where he sat.

“She loved me – I believe that even now.  And I loved her, so much.  She told me I was her little sister, and taught me what she could.  My parents never knew, of course.  They would have turned her out if they had known.  It was our secret.”

The kettle began to whistle, and Baba poured water over the filled teaball and brought it to Mac, joining him at the table.  “She taught me the language, and how to read the cards and the tea leaves, and how to make the domovushki.  In the end, it has served me better than what my parents taught me.  I have forgotten how to give orders to servants and plan fine dinners, but my skills have kept a roof over our heads and food on the table for many years.

“The Tsar’s men destroyed her familia.  Stalin killed my parents.  Kruschev killed my husband, his family, most of my children.   If Zhanasha was not my sister when I was a little girl, she was my sister long after she was dead, when I was a widow in a strange land with fatherless children and grandchildren.”  She picked up her coffee cup again and drank the black, unsweetened contents.

Mac ran a finger along the bright painted designs on his own cup.  “Okay, I can understand what you’re doing with the Gypsy Queen business for Baranyev and his sort.  But why put on the act for Jason and Gina and the rest?  What do you get out of that?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he was reminded again of the bright stare of a bird.  “You see that I can create the illusion.  Because of this, you assume that all is illusion.  Is this wisdom?  But no matter.  You will get what you want from me, Zarsha.”

Mac cocked an eyebrow.  “I haven’t told you what I want.”

Baba spoke with a magnificent dignity.  “I will make a lucky guess.”  She reached out and gathered the cards from the table in front of MacGyver.  “Tonight, Volen Andreievich will send his fine car for me.  It is all arranged; we spoke on the phone.  He wishes me to read for him, and he needs me to bring him new charms and ask the spirits if his enemies are closing in.”  Once again he watched her hands shift from slow stiffness to fluid grace as she shuffled the exposed cards from the reading back into the deck.  “And me, I will need to bring my assistant.  That is arranged also.  You will come back at six o’clock so we have time to prepare.”

Mac had the peculiar sensation of having been swept away by an overpowering current when he hadn’t even known he was headed for deep water.  “I will?”

“You have very good hands, you know.  You should do well.”  She presented him with the deck.  “You can handle the cards, yes?  Do not tell me that you lack that skill.  I will call you a liar if you do.”

For an answer, Mac shuffled the deck, cut three times, fanned the cards out face-down across the table with one smooth motion of his hand, then turned over the four aces, one after another.  Baba laughed and clapped.

Mac gathered the cards up again and handed them back.  “You haven’t asked me what I’m doing.  Or why.”

“Should I?  You are hunting Baranyev.  You work for the government, no?”

“Well . . . no.”  Hearing himself deny it was somehow easy; the shock lay in the recognition, as he said it, that it was true.

Baba looked at him piercingly.  “Who tells lies now?”

“Okay, yeah, sometimes I do.  But not this time.”  MacGyver had suddenly realized that he didn’t need to lie about his activities – he didn’t even need to prevaricate.  For once, he could abandon the need for secrecy that had so often chafed him, especially when he had to turn to strangers for help.  “Have you ever heard of the Phoenix Foundation?”

“Of course I have,”  Baba snorted.  “My youngest grandson went to university on a Phoenix scholarship.  Now he is engineer in Arizona.  He makes the desert bloom, and has forgotten every word of Russian he ever knew.  But that is not your fault, Zarsha.  Do you speak Romany?”

“Uh, no.”

“Too bad.  How good is your Russian?”

“Better than my Romany.”

“Ha!”  Baba switched back to English.  “Not so good.  How do you manage when you are in Russia?”

MacGyver’s thoughts flashed back to Leningrad; he could almost smell the antiseptic stench of the asylum – the cloying miasma of sweat, frustration, rage and misery overlaid with chemical disinfectant and despair.  Remember, Mac.  This can work if you play it cool and don’t attract any special attention.  His mind filled with the memory of dashing around the ward, bouncing on the beds and spouting nonsense, praying inwardly that his unreliable accent would hold together, or that the outrageous behaviour would distract from any slips he might make.  It had to have been one of the stupidest, most quixotic moves he’d ever made – even though it had worked.  Sort of.  It had almost been a relief to be clubbed into unconsciousness.

“Mostly I try to stick with being the strong, silent type.”

*

It was a real shock when it hit me, talking to Baba:  I didn’t have to lie to her about what I was doing, who I was working for, or why.  The arrangement with Ruth Collins included a confidentiality agreement, but nothing like the layers on layers of doubletalk and doublethink that build up with the different security restrictions and controls and clearances I’ve had to juggle sometimes.  The State Department and the DXS shouldn’t need to be at odds with each other, or with the CIA and the Pentagon and Interpol and so on and on . . . but it drove me nuts sometimes, the way the suits and the uniforms who live in some of the faceless corridors could play at mental turf wars.

I figured out way back that Pete ran a lot of interference for me there – without it, I don’t think I could’ve lasted at the DXS.  But there were times when I knew they ran him ragged in turn.  Need-to-know and eyes-only and top-secret and top-level clearance – sometimes the whole thing felt like a quicksand sink.  Or like an endless maze with doors that locked at random . . . and for once, all the doors were open and I could get out and run.

With an exasperated sigh, MacGyver shifted the phone from his right ear back to his left again and resigned himself to another wait.  He was absentmindedly running his fingers through one of the shallow bowls of polished crystal pebbles Gina had sitting on half the tables in her apartment.  There hadn’t been time to cross back to San Francisco and return again before the evening appointment with Baba; at Jason’s insistence, they had dropped in on the cheerfully uncomplaining Gina for the duration, giving Mac a chance to make his phone call in peace if not tranquility.

He had been expecting to hear the nasal tones of the new head of the DXS records department – already too familiar and already unwelcome – but after a shorter wait than anticipated, he heard Pete’s voice on the line instead.

“MacGyver? Is that you?”

The voice was like sweet rain after a drought.  “Pete!  What the heck – what are you doing in the office?”  If I’d known, I’d’ve asked for him straight off and I wouldn’t’a been sitting here twiddling my thumbs for this long.

“What do you think I’m doing?  I’m working, of course.  Some of us desk jockeys actually have regular schedules.”

“But it’s Monday afternoon.  Isn’t this well after your normal tee time?”  Mac mentally checked his last contact with Pete – he was sure the older man had put in his usual excessive stretch of weekend time.  Trouble doesn’t take the weekend off, Pete liked to say, but it generally naps on Monday afternoon.

“Yeah, well – things here needed attention.  I cancelled.”

“Pete, you need your exercise.”

“I told you.  I had some things that needed attention.” Pete’s voice sounded brittle.  “What’s up?  Helen collared me and told me you were on the line.”

“Not sure if I’m on a line or on a leash.  Pete, what’s goin’ on?  I called Records yesterday with an ordinary request for information on a Soviet refugee.  They oughta be able to do one of those in their sleep.  Instead, I had to go into a face-to-face this afternoon blind, and I really could have used the edge.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a copy of your request on my desk . . . Irina Dmitrovna Dementieva.”  Mac took some consolation in hearing Pete hesitate over the name.  “You know, Mac, you didn’t give Records much to work with – you’re ‘pretty sure’ she’s ‘really’ a Soviet refugee, you don’t even know what decade she arrived in the States, you think she was a widow with children, you’re ‘pretty sure’ that’s really her name.”

“Well, yeah, but I did give them some family information to work with, and I can fill in a few more details now . . . but that’s not the point.  I can understand their not being able to pull a rabbit out of a hat overnight.  But when I called this afternoon, as far as I could tell, they’ve lost the hat altogether and aren’t sure whether rabbits are allowed under current regulations.”  Mac’s fingers tightened in the bowl of polished pebbles, and several spilled out over the tabletop.  Gina’s cat pounced on them.  “Pete, I was just talking to the head of Records, and he’s complaining that I didn’t fill out a proper written form.  And without it,” Mac’s voice took on an imitation of the nasal tones, “he can’t confirm if my security clearance will permit him to release the information to me over the phone.  It’s ‘most irregular’.”  He flicked one of the spilled pebbles across the table, and the cat happily pounced again.  “Pete, this may sound stuffy, but it’s been a long time since I got hassled about my clearance!”

“I understand, Mac.  I’m sorry.  Look, as I said, I’ve got your request on my desk – I’ll make sure it’s taken care of.  I’m going to be up in the Bay Area the day after tomorrow, and I’ll bring it with me, whatever they’ve managed to dig up by then.”

Mac felt the grin starting to spread over his face as he waggled his fingers at the cat.  “Got a rematch with Ruth Collins?  Can I get a ticket?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but yes, I’m meeting with her again.”  Pete frowned at the odd sounds coming from the phone.  “MacGyver?  Is anything wrong? What’s going on?”

“Nothin’ – I’ve got a cat attacking my hand is all.  Ow!”

*

Baranyev’s car was a sleek gold Lincoln Continental with a leather interior that seemed larger than Baba’s living room.  The house in Tiburon was a three-story mock Tudor surrounded by professionally manicured lawns, with a grandly curving driveway.  The diamond-paned windows had opaque curtains, and Mac’s eye picked out the components of the security system:  elaborate, expensive, and discreet.

The driver ushered them in through a side door from the garage; Baba clearly knew her way around, but her haughty manner made the escort seem like a guard of honour rather than a flunky keeping an eye on the hired help.  MacGyver held a position a few steps behind her, carrying an extra shawl she’d handed him, feeling the peculiar invisibility of the support role wrap itself around him.

It’s a funny thing, but it sure makes my work easier:  take on a menial role, begin a menial task, and no matter where you are or what you’re really doing, you might as well paint yourself to match the walls for all the notice you’ll get from anyone in authority.  The higher the authority, the more invisible you get.  It would really bug me if it wasn’t so useful.

The house was even more opulent on the inside, with Oriental carpets, antique furniture, artwork on the walls and exotic treasures on every side table.  Mac wondered what an interior designer would have made of the collection – it looked jumbled, cluttered and showy to him – but he noticed a preference for Russian and Russian-themed decoration and artwork, especially in the sections of the house where the Baranyev men apparently spent most of their time.  The hallway displayed a row of framed paintings by Kandinsky and Brodsky, while the sitting room where Baba settled in, with the air of a queen preparing to hold audience, held works inspired by Stravinsky and Diaghilev on the walls and some genuine-looking ikons in a locked glass case.

Business must be good if they’ve managed all this in only a few years – and on a lab manager’s salary?  Guess capitalism suits them.

The thought was an uncomfortable reminder of the risk of recognition:  Arvil Baranyev was unmarried, and shared the house with his father . . . and had met MacGyver only five days before, when Mac had visited Brookhearst openly during the Phoenix-sponsored tour.  Mac doubted that his ‘Gypsy’ disguise would hold up against a face-to-face encounter.

Baba had provided MacGyver with a walnut dye that had darkened his hair almost to black and deepened the brown of his face, neck and hands to umber.  She’d given him an oversized amulet to wear and a scarf to tie around his head to keep his hair out of his eyes – he still hadn’t bothered to get it cut – but other than that, she’d seemed quite satisfied with his Western clothes.  Even the gaudy flowered shirt had passed without comment.

She’d also borrowed his Swiss Army knife.  If ‘borrowed’ was the right word – it had felt more like having it confiscated.  The knife you carry in your pocket, Zarsha.  You must let me have it for a little while.  She had laughed to see how reluctant he was to hand it over.  Do not worry so much.  You will have it back when you need it.  Exactly where she had stashed it in the riot of rainbow skirts, shawls and scarves she now wore was impossible even to guess.

So far, there was no sign of the younger Baranyev, although when the senior Baranyev entered the study, expensively tailored and entirely self-assured, the sense of invisibility peeled away for a long uncomfortable moment.  The older man greeted Baba graciously in Russian, after a glance towards MacGyver that only seemed cursory; Mac felt himself examined, assessed, and then dismissed, presumably filed somewhere between ‘insignificant’ and ‘vermin’.

“Irina Dmitrovna.  It is too good of you to come out again so soon and console me in my troubles.  So this is the assistant you spoke of?”

“Da.  Perhaps he will become my student.  He has rare gifts, and it is time I began to pass on my secrets before it is too late.  We shall see.”  She drew a new domovushka from a fold of her wraps.  She had brought at least three with her – Mac wasn’t sure just how many.  This was the largest and most elaborate, with bright multicolored cords knotted in elaborate patterns twining around a horseshoe.  She had been carrying it wrapped in a square of bright silk; now she laid the packet on the table, unwrapped it solemnly and showed it to Baranyev, then folded the cloth again and gestured peremptorily towards MacGyver.

“Zarsha.  Your next task begins now.  You will take this domovushka into our good host’s office, where he toils at his labors.  When I have finished here, you will tell me how the domovoi fares in that place, and where you think the domovushka should go.”  She turned to Baranyev.  “Will you have your man show him to your study?”

Baranyev nodded, beckoning to the driver.  “Peterson, take gospozha Dementieva’s assistant to my office,” he ordered; his English was accented, but his voice was crisp and very clear.  He turned back to Baba, with MacGyver apparently already dismissed from his mind.

Mac could hardly credit the smoothness of the set-up as Peterson led him down the hallway to the study.  It seemed too easy.

It was too easy.  Once they reached the study, Peterson remained in the room, leaning against the doorjamb.

Gonna be a bit hard to snoop around with that much company.  So . . .

MacGyver set the domovushka down carefully on the vast, highly polished oak desk and unwrapped it.  His first quick glance around the room had set his hackles on edge, but he assumed an uninterested air as he took a stance in the middle of the deep Aubusson carpet.  After a moment, he raised both his arms, his hands outstretched, and began to turn slowly around in a tight circle, gazing intently off into the distance at nothing at all.  As he turned, he moved his hands in long slow circles in the air.

Peterson, who had been looking bored, began to look uncomfortable instead and finally blurted out, “Man, what the hell are you doing?”

Mac halted with a start, whipping his head around and staring intently into the man’s eyes.  He raised a finger to his lips.  “Shhh . . . don’t you feel it?  Surely you do.  You must.”  He spoke slowly and seriously, keeping his voice in its lower register but making no pretense at a Russian accent.

The driver started in turn.  “You’re not Russian.  You talk just like an American.”

MacGyver looked at him with great dignity.  “Of course I’m an American.  My mother was an American citizen.”

“Then what are you doing hanging out with – well – ”  Mac guessed that the household staff had some unflattering nickname for Baba.

He didn’t have to pretend to be offended as he pinned Peterson down with narrowed eyes.  “If you mean Madame Irina Dmitrovna – ” for once, he managed to deliver the name without stumbling – “my father did her a great service many years ago.  Now she has agreed to take me as a student, if I prove worthy.”

“No kidding . . . that’s really cool, um . . . ”

Mac continued to glower at him.  “The domovoi does not like this room.  And your aura is disturbing the energy here.  How long since this room was purified?”

“Man, I don’t know . . . uh, don’t take this wrong, but do you, like, need me to be here?  I’ve got some stuff I ought to be doing out in the garage . . . ”

Mac made a dismissive gesture and returned to his slow circling.  Once Peterson had beaten his retreat, Mac hurried to the door and closed it firmly.  He knew he didn’t have much time, and he needed time to make sense of what the study held.  He’d never seen anything quite like it, and the implications made his blood ice over.

*

MacGyver had dialed the first five digits of the DXS night desk number when he changed his mind, disconnected, and dialed a different number.  It was answered on the third ring, although he could hear nothing at first except clattering.  In the delay before the voice came on, he could easily imagine the startled fumbling for a phone that didn’t ring very often, especially late at night.

“Willis?  It’s MacGyver.  I had a feeling you’d still be at work, even this late.”

“Hey, Mac.  What do you mean, late?  It’s not all that late, is it?  Oh.  I hadn’t noticed.  But hell, it’s not all that much past midnight.”

“Think you could fit in a research job for me?  I don’t know if you have to ask Ruth to approve it first . . . ”  Mac realized that he had no idea how much leeway he had to make demands on the Phoenix Foundation’s resources.

“Not a problem, Mac – they give me a lot of autonomy in prioritizing my workload.  Besides, I just sent a job to the mainframe and it’ll be a while running.  Is this part of your Brookhearst investigation?  What do you need?”

“I need you to research some phone numbers for me.  First off, I need a check on a list of country codes – I recognize a lot of them but I’ve gotta be sure.”  Mac spread out the sheet of notes he’d made in the Baranyev study and went through the list, giving Willis time to write them down.  He noticed that Willis didn’t need to look up most of them.

“Yeah, that’s Bulgaria . . . thought so.  The next one’s Cyprus, right?  Hong Kong, uh-huh . . . Dubai?  Are you sure?  And Buenos Aires, huh?  The next five are all in the USSR, but I need to know which cities.  Czechoslovakia – it’s not like I could miss that one – Romania, Iran, Switzerland – right, Zürich, I know.  And Budapest.  But double-check me on the last three.  Yeah, I’m not surprised.  Cayman Islands.”

“Sounds like a real rogues’ gallery, Mac.  I can find out where the numbers go – that’s a piece of cake – but where the hell did they come from?”

“It’s the programmed autodial list from the computer set-up in the Baranyev study.”

Willis whistled.

“Here’s the tricky part,” Mac continued.  “My bet is that there are more computers on the other end of every phone number on that list.  And every one of  ‘em will be monitoring incoming calls, so we can’t just phone them to check and then hang up.  They’ll notice.  And that would not be good.”

“Huh!  Yeah, I see what you mean . . . don’t worry, I’ve got a couple of ideas.  I’ll check it out for you.  Do you want me to get you the specs for the Brookhearst mainframe?”

Mac briefly wondered just what kind of insider contacts Willis had, to be so certain of getting that kind of information.  Maybe I’ll ask some other time.  “Don’t bother.  Baranyev’s computers didn’t include a remote terminal for the mainframe.  Everything he’s got is standing separate from the lab computers.”

“Whoa, Mac.  Did I hear you right?  And you did say ‘computers’, as in ‘more than one’?”

“That’s right.  Baranyev had the fanciest computer set-up I’ve ever seen in a private home – including mine!  It must’ve cost a mint.  He had a videotex machine, too – it looked like a Minitel with a lot of custom stuff added on.”

Willis whistled again.  “How much do you want me to tell Ruth?”

“Hold off on that till I’ve had a chance to do some more checking.  I’m gonna be visiting Brookhearst again tomorrow night, but unofficially.”

“You got it.  I should have some results for you by morning – and don’t worry about the monitoring; wherever the other computers are, they won’t know we’ve been anywhere near.” Mac swore he could hear mental gears whirring into overdrive.  “You said this was their private home, right?  How about if I dig out the details of their phone records?  Might find out something useful there.”

“You might not find anything at all.”

“Well, that’s useful too, isn’t it?”

Mac grinned, feeling a wave of delight in spite of the ugly feeling that still lingered in his stomach every time he thought of that insidious electronic spiderweb in Baranyev’s office.  “Willis, remind me not to get on your bad side, okay?”

Chapter Text

Six: Ace in the Hole

The building that housed the Brookhearst Chemical Research Laboratories hadn’t been designed to look grand or imposing; it was only three stories tall, set in a swath of second-growth forest, with a deliberately small footprint that had won some environmental awards.  Most of it was underground, even the parking.  The lab design had been pioneered by the Phoenix Foundation, in fact – they’d partnered with Brookhearst off and on for years, mostly working on safer alternatives to some of the nastier compounds used in everyday industry.  Now Phoenix was positioning itself to go big-time into cleanup projects – a field that was getting to be in huge demand – and they had a lot of new work coming up for their old buddies.

That’s why Ruth started sounding alarms when Brookhearst missed a bidding deadline for a real promising new project, and then shrugged off the prospect altogether.  She wasn’t a lady who took rejection well.  She started poking around – I think she must’ve been almost as nosy as I can be – and found out that half the senior administrative and operations staff had turned over in the last three years, and the new blood was pretty cool to the old partnership.

MacGyver parked his Jeep behind a service station about half a mile away from the Brookhearst building and approached on foot, a dark-clad shadow slipping through the trees.  Several winding footpaths cut haphazardly through the greenbelt that buffered the lab, and he’d gotten a good feel for the area on his previous visits.

Getting back to the lab building.  It was kinda nice to have the rooftop only three stories up.  The external lighting was kept at a minimum – no electricity being wasted there – and what with the long association between Brookhearst and Phoenix,Willis was able to give me the kind of detailed plans of the security systems that I don’t usually get.  Plus I got a real good look of the place on my official tour, when I wasn’t swiping voodoo doodads outta Baranyev’s desk.

Mac had judged the most vulnerable entry point to be on the roof, via the exhaust system.  Once inside, there were no security cameras and he was free to roam the corridors at will – or he would have been, if he’d had any idea of who might be in the building and where he might run into them.  That was the drawback of having all the parking tucked away underneath the building:  he hadn’t been able to wait for the parking lot to empty, or pick his time based on the number of remaining cars.

Instead, he headed for the elevator bank, got into the manual controls, and overrode and opened the doors and peered down each shaft, one after another, to check the location of the cars.  Two of them were at the ground floor; good enough, and MacGyver fixed the controls to make sure they’d stay there.  One was almost all the way down the shaft, at what he thought was one of the lower lab levels.  Darn it.  Night-owls on the research staff, I bet.

The fourth elevator car was also below ground level, at what Mac thought was the parking garage:  probably left there by the last employee to leave.  He summoned that one all the way to the third floor and locked it in place at the top of the shaft.  In that position, there was a gap between the carpeted floor of the corridor and the bottom of the elevator car – enough room to slide into the shaft, painfully ignoring the drop while he found a good tie point for the knotted rope he’d prepared.

With the climbing rope threaded down the elevator shaft, MacGyver had free access to all the floors in the building, and far less risk of running into anyone.  His first target was Arvil Baranyev’s office, located conveniently near the elevator bank on the ground floor.  During his previous visit, it had been difficult enough to slip away from his minders for the few minutes he’d snatched in the office of the elder Baranyev; he’d had no chance even to look at Arvil’s office.

The sea-change at Brookhearst must’ve started when Baranyev Junior hired on, or maybe it had started when Joshua Brooke accepted a buyout at about the same time and went back to New Jersey to be closer to his horde of grandkids.  Hearst had left too, some years earlier – no relation to the other Hearsts – and when Ruth tried to interrupt his cushy retirement in Europe with unwelcome questions about his successors, he always seemed to have just moved on to a different resort.

Then there was the chief accountant, who quit six months after Brooke left, and the security manager, who surprised everyone by retiring early and moving to Canada, and the head research project manager, who got killed by a hit-and-run driver.  The head of operations was fired – and he was so good at his job that Brookhearst’s biggest rival snapped him up before he’d finished cleaning out his desk.  The lab director resigned without giving any reason, and was teaching at Cornell instead.  And none of the folks who could still talk seemed to be interested in the subject.

Only the research staff had been untouched by that silent wave of attrition; and my guess was that they were so wrapped up in their work that as long as the lights stayed on, they weren’t about to notice anything else.

Mac slipped into the outer office and closed the door firmly behind him without turning on any lights, finding his way across the room to the doorway of the inner office by the aid of a penlight.  In contrast to the elegantly appointed office suite of Baranyev Sr., Arvil’s secretary lived in a starkly functional realm of filing cabinets, phone system and fax machine, and a simple electric typewriter.  Mac had met her briefly:  a middle-aged woman, stolid and unimaginative, apparently addicted to celebrity gossip magazines.  He doubted that she had the energy or inclination to snoop beyond her prescribed job responsibilities.

MacGyver waited until he was inside Arvil’s inner office, with the door firmly closed, before he flipped the light switch.  He started towards the desk and stopped in his tracks.  Like the outer office, Arvil’s domain was simple, functional, and contained only basic equipment:  there was a fax machine and a telex, and bank after bank of locked filing cabinets – and no computer equipment of any kind.

Mac sat down in Arvil’s desk chair for a moment to collect his scrambled thoughts.  He’d been mentally gearing himself up to hack into the Brookhearst computer via Arvil’s terminal and start piecing together the next part of the electronic puzzle he’d found in the study in their private home.  The last thing he’d expected was to find an office with no computer at all.

What the heck . . . ?

Still, wherever there were locks, there was probably something interesting behind them.  MacGyver stood up, pulled out his knife, and started working on opening the filing cabinets.

I have got to get my other knife back from Baba.  He’d forgotten all about it until he was getting ready for the night visit.  He’d dug his spare out of the emergency kit in the Jeep, but it was a different model, lacking the smaller blade that he particularly liked using on this kind of lock.  He hadn’t sharpened this one in a couple of months, and that was annoying too.

The first few drawers yielded no information other than the fact that Arvil was methodical and meticulous, well-organized and thorough, and that his apparent commitment to old-fashioned paper recordkeeping obviously wasn’t hurting the lab’s operations.  Mac skimmed from one section of the files to another, and finally struck pay dirt at the far end of one of the freestanding lateral file cabinets.

The dryness of the documentation lent a commonplace air to the files, organized by date and then by name; it took Mac a few minutes to grasp the implications.  Starting some three years back, Brookhearst had branched out into overseas consulting, which by all the signs had rapidly grown into a booming business.  The travel details of each trip were neatly filed – along with the often elaborate arrangements for establishing the identities and credentials of the ‘consultants’, and the equally elaborate arrangements for them to disappear as needed, either when they reached their official destinations or, nearly as often, at some midpoint of the trip.  It was a carefully developed, sophisticated system that had moved dozens of individuals, possibly hundreds, clandestinely from East to West or back again.  MacGyver recognized the significance of some of the specific travel dates – he still remembered attending the funeral of one DXS agent who had died as a result of that particular ‘consultant’ showing up in Amsterdam at a critical moment.

Few of the files mentioned money, but those that did made it plain that Brookhearst had become a front for money-laundering on at least as large a scale as its laundering of human movement.  Mac thought again of the computer set-up in the office at the Baranyevs’ home, with its instantaneous interconnections between some of the worst rogue states in the world and most of the biggest offshore money havens.

No wonder they didn’t want to play any more when Phoenix came calling.

He couldn’t have said what it was that drew first his eyes and then his fingers to the current year’s ‘OPQ’ file.  It wasn’t that it contained more files, or fewer, or that anything in them stood out.  Perhaps it was just that the letter Q made his palms itch.

Mac stood next to the lateral filing cabinet and spread the contents of the folder out across its top.  The file that had caught his eye was mostly made up of telex correspondence and internal memos.  His face was grim as he leafed through the pages, which dated from January back to the previous November.

Quayle.

There had been some measure of hell to pay at the DXS when no trace could be found of how that man had slipped into the country – he was persona non grata, and by the time the furor had ebbed, so were several of the DXS research staff.  An attempt to hang the blame on Karen Blake had fallen apart, and not because MacGyver or Pete had been running interference.  There simply had been no information to be found.

Now it was here in front of him:  the negotiations and arrangements, the pseudonyms and false credentials, the address and details of the safe house, the extra demands for ‘special equipment’, the four full days Quayle had had alone there to set up his traps – everything was there, along with the notes on Quayle’s outbound itinerary after the ‘scheduled elimination of all targets’.

Targets.  Mac’s face went granite-hard and cold at the thought of Pete lying on the library floor, and the memory of the sickening internal lurch he’d endured in the endless seconds it had taken to find Pete’s pulse still strong in spite of the near-electrocution.

The last section of the file involved a Bulgarian contact who hadn’t bothered with a signature; apparently the bill for services had not been paid after Quayle’s capture left the contract uncompleted.  The file petered out into a collection of memos in scribbled Cyrillic clipped to the inside of the folder.  MacGyver couldn’t make out a word; he slipped the memos into an inner pocket of his black leather jacket, scowling.

Once captured, Quayle had been arrogant, uncooperative, and uncommunicative.  The mystery of just who he’d been working for had never been resolved, and had died with him on the footbridge in Czechoslovakia.  When the DXS had opened the negotiations, the KGB had been almost frantically eager to get their hands on him, a good indication by itself that Quayle hadn’t been on their side, not that week anyway.  Mac felt his head beginning to throb again over the frustrating, endlessly shifting labyrinth of the layers upon layers of shadow play – the Great Game wasn’t played out over a giant chessboard, with two tidy sides and a known set of pieces.  It was a multi-level maze, and you could never tell if some seemingly solid wall was about to open up and reveal a hint of a new player that you hadn’t known was involved.

Mac started at the sound when the telex began to chatter.  Between his distraction and the noise of the incoming message, he might have missed the click of the door latch if the man who entered the office hadn’t already been talking as he came in.  It was a short, balding man in shirtsleeves and suspenders, with a close-cropped dark beard:  Paul Samarin, the lab director who had stepped so smoothly into the shoes of his disgruntled predecessor – a man who had refused to give any reason for his abrupt resignation.

“That should be the confirmation coming in now – who the hell are you?”

Mac’s Swiss Army knife was lying on top of the lateral filing cabinet next to the files he’d been studying, with the nailfile and the reamer blade still extended from when he’d jimmied the last lock.  He had a sudden mental image of Gina’s cat, energetically chasing the polished stones that Mac had flicked along the length of the coffee table.  A lightning movement of his hand sent the knife spinning and skittering along the top of the cabinet towards Samarin.

The man yelped and flinched away, not even certain what it was; Mac charged at him and he shied back.  Mac sidestepped and slipped past him to the office doorway – and slammed to a screeching halt at the sight of Arvil Baranyev standing in his way, holding a cocked 9mm pistol with the ease of long familiarity.  His pale blue eyes were narrow slits.

“So.  My father was right.”

As Arvil stepped forward, Samarin glanced frantically from one to the other.  “Arvil, it’s that guy who was here last week, the one from the Phoenix Foundation.  What the hell is he doing here now?”

“Phoenix Foundation be damned, Pavel.  This man is a DXS agent.”

“What!”

Mac looked at Samarin with interest.  “Why?  Who were you expecting, the INS?”

“Shut up.”  Arvil gestured with the gun; MacGyver met his eyes and didn’t like what he saw there.  “Careful!  Keep your hands where I can see them.  Pavel, bring me the pocketknife that is lying on the floor.  I believe it belongs to our inquisitive guest.”

MacGyver set his teeth as, for the second time in as many days, he watched one of his knives disappear into someone else’s pocket.  The gun in Arvil’s hand remained steady throughout, and there was no break in the Russian’s attention to give Mac an opening to try anything.

He jerked his head towards Samarin, still not looking away from MacGyver.  “Don’t stand there gawking, you fool.  Go get me something I can use to tie him up.”

Samarin almost jumped.  “What?  Where do I find . . . ?”

“Try the mail room, you idiot.  They just unpacked a new shipment of glassware for the labs – there must be something we can use.  And be quick about it.  This man is notoriously slippery.”

Mac raised his eyebrows at Arvil as Samarin scurried away.  “‘Slippery’?”

“My father is a more important man than anyone knows.  I told him that Phoenix had sent you to look us over, and he knew your name.  You have quite a reputation, Mr. MacGyver.”

Mac made a face.  “Not the camels again.  Just tell me they didn’t mention camels.”

“Turn around and place your hands on the top of the cabinets.  Farther!”  Mac complied, and stiffened when he felt the cold metal of the gun barrel nudge against his skull just behind his right ear.  “Do not try anything amusing.  It would be a terrible shame to blow a hole in those remarkable brains.”

“Hey, I’m just standing here – ” Mac tried to keep his voice even and casual.  It wasn’t easy, especially when the gun pressed harder against his head.

“I said shut up!  It will also be very much more difficult to explain if I have to shoot you, but I will.”

Mac waited for a long count of fifty, letting the silence stretch out, before he spoke up again.  “Slick operation you’ve been running here.  I bet you’ve got more imaginary people working for you than real ones.”  He was careful not to move, and as he had hoped, Arvil began to talk again.  Most folks can’t stand silence.  More of them oughta get out into the woods sometimes.

“Oh, they are far from imaginary – although they do not exactly work for us, not directly.  Most of them work for the KGB, or KOS, or the Stasi, or DS – but we are all working for the same ultimate ends.”  Mac didn’t try to turn his head, but he could hear the smirk in Arvil’s voice.  “It is a display of true solidarity – can you see that?  Communist unity will prevail.  It is only a matter of time.  You capitalists will never be able to understand that, not with your every-dog-for-himself beliefs.”  Arvil’s accent had grown thicker as he slipped into dogma.  “You make me sick, do you realize that?”

“So what’s with Samarin?  He’s got an American accent.  Is he a sleeper?”

Arvil actually spat.  “That dog?  He is a capitalist, with expensive habits and a few dirty secrets.  Such men are very easy to find and control.  Men like you . . . not so easy.”

“So you came to the US on your own, then – got everything set up here while your dad arranged it all at the other end, and then he joined you here.”

“Exactly.  I followed his instructions to the letter.”

“Do you always do what your dad tells you to?”

“Of course.  As long as he does not try to make me screw around with his damned computers.”

The contemptuous remark hit Mac like a punch in the gut.  Somehow he managed to keep his voice easy.  “Yeah, I saw you don’t even have a terminal in here.  Doesn’t your dad let you play with his toys?”

“Toys!  Games for children and weak-minded fools.  I cannot understand why he wastes so much time fiddling around with all that chyortovo otrod’e.”

Wait a minute.  Is he kidding?  Baranyev’s own son doesn’t know what Dad’s up to? MacGyver didn’t know himself, but his neck prickled again at the sense of the deadly shadow player in the game, running a side of the board that no one knew was there.  With everything else that was going on, it meant that the operation at the lab must be completely independent of whatever schemes were hatching in the electronic nest in Baranyev’s study.  Mac thought about the sniper above the footbridge, and the nervous twitch that had him checking his rear-view mirror so often these days.

What else is Dad keeping from Junior?

The problem of the shadow player was going to have to wait.  Mac heard Samarin return, and Arvil yanked Mac’s hands behind his back and tied them with a few quick movements.  Mac winced.  From the feel of it, it was rough jute cord, the kind used to tie packing cases; the harsh fibers chewed into his wrists.

Mac had clenched his fists when Arvil started to tie him, hoping to win some slack in the ropes later on when he relaxed.  He wasn’t prepared for the double spike of pain when the Russian struck him hard on the back of each hand with the butt of the pistol.  He gasped aloud and his fingers relaxed automatically in the reflexive spasm, and he felt Arvil tightening the knots.

“Not clever enough, Mr. MacGyver.  Horses do that too, did you know?  They take a deep breath when you saddle them up, trying to make you leave the harness loose.”

The pistol was back at MacGyver’s neck, and Arvil jerked on his arm and turned him towards the door.  Mac could see Samarin standing in the doorway, dithering.

“What are you going to do with him?”

Arvil’s voice was very soft.  “The only thing you need to know is that this man was never here.  You met him last week when he visited us, and you have not seen him since.  Do you understand?”

“I – ”

“Pavel, just say yes.”

“Okay, yes, I understand!  But – ”

“But nothing!  Go home.  Lock up your office, get in your car, and drive home.  Tomorrow, you come to work, and we do not talk about it.  None of this ever happened.  Next week, we all collect another fat check.  Life goes on.  Understand?”

Samarin retreated, and Arvil shoved Mac ahead of him through the outer office and to the elevator, and down to the lab area.  The main working lights had been dimmed for the night, and the safety lights picked out only a few gleams from the equipment, with deep pools of shadow between them.

There’s some differences between the kind of bullies you run into when you’re growing up, and the kind you run into later.  A whole lotta differences, really.  But they mostly stay the same.  They don’t like it when someone’s tougher than they are, but they really hate it when they think someone’s smarter than they are.  Which is most of the time.

Mac balked for a moment when he realized where they were headed:  Arvil was steering him towards the small airtight observation chamber used for gas testing.  But the unrelenting pressure from the pistol didn’t give him any choice.  Arvil gave MacGyver a hard shove as they entered the tiny room, and he stumbled forward, caught his balance in spite of his tied hands, and turned to face the other man as Arvil switched on the lights.  He was still smirking.

“For a snoop, you are not very inquisitive.  You have not asked me what is going to happen.”

“Well, I kinda figured you’d tell me when you were ready, and not before.”

I could keep the bullies pretty much at bay myself – I could hold my own from an early age, and sometimes help out one of the younger kids who was having a bad time of it.  No matter where you are, bullies like to feel they’re in control.  When they’re younger, they do it with their fists.

When they get older, that isn’t enough.  They have to rub it in.  They have to tell you how many points they’ve scored off you.  It’s real dumb, and sometimes you can learn a lot from them that way . . . if you can handle the bruises.

Mac could see the next move coming a mile away, but it didn’t help much.  Arvil threw a vicious punch at his stomach, and Mac fell away from it, sprawling onto the floor.  He landed hard, but he managed to land most of the way into one of the corners of the room, hoping Arvil wouldn’t guess that it was deliberate.  The Russian seemed too sure of himself to suspect anything; he stood over Mac’s prone form, nudging him with his foot, but made no move to drag him out towards the center of the testing chamber, as MacGyver feared he might.

“This is the man my father thinks is so very dangerous?”  Arvil sniffed loudly.  “At least I will be able to tell him his problem is solved.”

He squatted down and ran his pistol under Mac’s chin, forcing Mac’s head up to meet his eyes.  “Government agent.”  The contempt was heavy in the Russian’s voice.  “You are used to solving problems with your fists, yes?  Or a gun, or some clever gadget?  Do you even understand the first thing about science?  Back home, in my own country, I was a scientist, a chemist, not some damned bureaucrat.  I ran a research laboratory ten times the size of this one.  We did some fine work for the State.  My father was very proud.”

“I’ll bet.”  Mac winced; Arvil had finally pocketed the pistol, but he had produced another length of the packing cord and was tying Mac’s ankles.

“But there was one project I was not proud of.  It could have been so useful – a gas weapon for the military to use in hostage situations, or to capture enemy personnel alive during the takeover of strategic properties.  We spent millions of rubles developing it and be damned if it never worked properly.  Very difficult to deploy, although we could have solved that.  But it had, let us say, an unfortunate side effect in many test cases.”

“Lemme guess,” Mac said through gritted teeth.  “It’s lethal.”

“Very good!  My father said you were a clever man.”  Arvil shook his head sadly.  “Yes, there is damned little market potential for a gas that kills both hostages and terrorists alike.  Even worse if it kills the hostages and leaves the terrorists alive.  There was one incident – it was hushed up, of course, but it was very embarrassing.”

He threaded another length of cord between MacGyver’s wrists and his ankles, and yanked hard to bring them together.  Mac set his jaw to keep from grunting at the sudden extra strain on his shoulders; he didn’t want to give Arvil the satisfaction.  But he could feel his fingers starting to tingle as the tight cords began to cut off circulation.

Arvil’s voice was maddeningly reminiscent of one of Mac’s more boring chemistry professors, a man whose lectures could leach all the fascination out of one of his favorite subjects.  “It is – what would you call it?  A cocktail.  Yes, that is the word.  A chemical cocktail.  Ingredients:  fentanyl and pancuronium bromide, with a touch of droperidol for flavor, you might say.”

“Hey, that’s a great idea.  Don’t let your victims get too worried while you knock them out and paralyze them.  What did they die from, respiratory failure?”

Mac couldn’t see Arvil, but he could feel the man’s malevolence, and he knew he should have kept his mouth shut.  Arvil had finished securing the hogtie, and he backhanded MacGyver savagely across the back of the head.  This time there was no way to roll away from the blow; Mac’s head sang from the impact, and Arvil’s voice briefly receded as the lecture continued.

“The real difficulty is that, with so many components, it becomes very difficult to be certain how it will work on human subjects.  Very difficult to test properly, you see.  Will they become confused quickly enough that they do not notice the paralysis as it overtakes them?  How long before they lose consciousness?  Why do so many of them die so quickly?  And in this country, there is no opportunity to conduct any tests at all.”

Arvil stood up and walked back to the door of the containment chamber.

“I wish I could tell you that your death will contribute to the advancement of science – but this is not a properly controlled experiment and I will not be taking detailed notes.  However, it will make your disappearance very much easier to explain.  The ocean around here is very cold, did you know that?  People die from the shock of just falling into it.  By the time your body is found, no one will be able to tell what killed you.”

There was only a soft sound as the sealed door to the test chamber closed, but the slide and click as the hatch was dogged seemed very loud.  Louder still was the hiss as the pumps were activated.

C’mon, MacGyver, think.  How are you gonna get out of this one?  Mac knew it wasn’t really a gas – from Arvil’s description, it would probably be a fine mist of aerosolized microscopic droplets, almost certainly heavier than air.  Holding his breath wasn’t going to help for long; the stuff would seep into his skin and his eyes.  Arvil had deliberately left him tied so that his face was at floor level.  He had to get loose, and fast.

Mac strained his head backwards and arched his back to see just how far above the floor he could get his mouth and nose, and saw the shape of Arvil’s head silhouetted in the observation port of the test chamber.  Aw, terrific.  He’s gonna watch!

A piercing, shrilling electronic howl shattered the air, so sudden and unexpected that it took MacGyver a moment before he realized it was the lab’s fire alarm system.  Mac saw the outlined shape of Arvil’s head at the observation port jerk up, look away, and then disappear.  The Russian must have gone to see what the problem was.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t turned off the gas.

Chapter Text

Seven: Wild Card

Minnesota’s over a thousand miles from the ocean, but the Scoutmaster who taught me to tie knots musta been the world’s most frustrated sailor.  If he could make us learn to tie a knot left-handed, one-handed, upside-down and backwards, behind our backs in the dark with our eyes shut, he did.  He said it would come in handy for sailing at night or in storms, or caving, or any other emergency situation.

I don’t think he ever imagined anything quite like this.

MacGyver squirmed farther into the corner where he had fallen until he could brace his knees against the wall and push.  With his shoulders aching and his legs doubled up behind him, it was hard to have to push himself into an even more cramped position – but the effort paid off when he won enough slack to be able to grab the rope joining his wrists and ankles.  His fingers found the knot in that rope, and the dizzying temptation to untie it and release the immediate strain was almost irresistible – but that wouldn’t get him free, and he couldn’t hold his breath for much longer.

With his fingers already half numb from the bite of the ropes, he had to work fast before he lost any more sensation – or the gas began to take its insidious toll on him – or Arvil resolved whatever problem had triggered the alarms, and came back.  MacGyver pulled against the rope, reeling his own ankles in closer to his bound hands, running his fingers along the rough cord until he could reach the knots and free his feet.

If you can tie knots that way, you can untie ‘em too.  Although it’s still tough to untie knots behind your back at a bad angle when your fingers are going numb.

First one foot and then the other came loose, and he kicked himself free of the cords and scrambled to his feet, his hands still tied behind his back.  He leaned back against the wall, his eyes half closed, breathing in deep ragged gasps of the air that he knew was still pure and untainted.  For now.  The aerosolized mist was heavier than air, but the level had to be rising.

One more round.

Mac hiked his jacket up above his waist, took several more deep breaths, then dropped to the floor again, tucking himself into the corner so he could brace his hands against one wall and his feet against the other, pushing his own hips backwards through the loop of his bound arms.  It would have been difficult even without holding his breath; but after a few terrifying moments when it seemed he couldn’t make it, his fingers caught hold of a bracket in the wall and found some purchase, and suddenly his bound hands were clear of his hips, looped awkwardly behind his knees, and he was able to pull each leg clear in turn.

The struggle not to breathe had become almost unbearable by the time he stood up again, his hands in front of him.  He leaned against the wall again, gasping, for another long precious moment before he set to work on the knots with his teeth.  The tight ropes finally slackened and fell away, and his hands were suddenly full of pins and needles as the blood rushed back into them.

MacGyver couldn’t see the gas, but he swore he could feel it, a foul clammy mist pooling around his ankles and lapping up his legs.  The test chamber hadn’t been made to hold prisoners captive, but it had been designed to keep gasses from escaping; the hatch dog on the outside of the sealed door wasn’t likely to break easily.

That left the window . . . Mac hurried over to the observation port.  He might be able to bust out that way.  As he ran exploratory fingers around the seal at its edges, he saw the door to the main corridor flung open and Samarin, looking hangdog and miserable, hurried into the lab.  The lab director stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of MacGyver, but when Mac pounded on the inside of the window, pantomimed yelling for help and gestured frantically at the test chamber door, he glanced nervously over his shoulder and ran to open the hatch.  The sound of the alarms suddenly blared out as the door was thrown open.

Samarin was literally wringing his hands.  “Are you all right?  I couldn’t – Arvil never mentioned anything about killing – ”

Mac gave the man’s shoulders a warm squeeze.  “Way to go, Paul!  But we’ve gotta get that gas turned off – where’s the controls?”  He followed the man’s unsteady gesture and shut the pumps down.  “How long will it take before Junior figures out that you set the alarms as a decoy?”

“What?”  Samarin looked even more frightened.  “I – I didn’t set the alarms off.”

”What?”

“They just – went off – a few minutes ago.  I have no idea why.”

“Oh, man.”  Mac ran his fingers through his hair.  “Then who did?”

The jangling of the fire alarm was suddenly cut off inside the lab, although MacGyver and Samarin could hear it continuing, muffled, outside in the corridor and throughout the building.  In its place, the lab intercom crackled and spat, and a voice came on – also muffled and disguised, although vaguely familiar.

“Phoenix, is that you?  Are you all right?”

‘Phoenix’?  “Who’s that?” Mac answered.

“It doesn’t matter who I am.  But you have to get out.  Now.  Please.”  The voice quavered on the edge of hysteria.  “You don’t have to die.  I don’t want you to die.”

“Who are you?”

“Please.  Get out.  There isn’t much time.”

Oh, jeez.  “What have you done?”

“This place is evil – it has to die, but you don’t.  The fire will purify it, Phoenix.  Get out, please!”

“Fire?”  Mac felt the blood drain out of his body as he thought of the number of volatile and reactive compounds the building held – not to mention oxidizers, accelerants and explosives.  Aw, man, no.  He fought to speak calmly; it might help him stay calmer himself.  “Listen, it won’t work – this building has a fire suppression system.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?”  The voice sounded almost childishly sulky and enraged.  “I turned it off.  Why are men so stupid? Get out now or you’ll die too!”

“Wait, hang on a moment – why are you doing this?”  Mac’s memory stumbled, reaching for the identity of the speaker; he almost had it, if only the muffled voice would talk a little longer.  But the buzz of static had cut off.  The anonymous speaker had fled.

High time we did too.

But if we just run . . . even if we can get out in time . . . the whole place goes up.  And what then?  Mac thought of Arvil’s file room up on the ground floor – a roomful of evidence of incalculable value, located on US soil – in the hands of the DXS, it could be priceless.  In the hands of the Phoenix Foundation – hey, for once the whole mess might not get swept under a government-issue rug.

“Paul, is there anyone else here tonight?  Anyone working late?”

Samarin stared.  “I don’t know – but there usually is . . . ”

“Oh, great.  C’mon.  We’ve got to find out where she set that fire.”

“ ‘She’?  You know who that was?”

“No!”  I’ve gotta figure it out, though – later . . .  “C’mon!”

Mac looked out into the hallway.  The gas testing lab was most of the way down the main corridor, close to the emergency stairs; he ran back towards the elevator shaft, guessing that the arsonist hadn’t gone any farther than necessary before starting the fire.  No shortage of flammables.  No shortage of fuel . . . oh, man.

Smoke was beginning to billow out into the corridor from an open door next to the elevator bank.  Mac took one quick look inside, slammed the door, and stepped back.  Samarin almost skidded into him.

MacGyver ran a hand through his hair, trying to recall details of the labs from his tour the previous week.  “Paul, which lab is that?”

“Gas chromatography.”

“Right.”  Mac’s mind buzzed, running through a mental index of what the lab must contain, trying to recall its exact layout.  His imagination seemed to split and began to run in parallel.  Down one list, his mind was sifting through the possibilities of the equipment and supplies in the room; but racing along the same list, side by side, was a horrific catalogue of just what could happen with each of those items in a fire.

Organic solvents.  Alcohols and acetone – methylene chloride – toluene – oxidizers – how the heck could anyone be crazy enough to deliberately set a fire in a chemical laboratory?

Fires start and grow on a triangle:  heat, fuel, and oxygen.  In a forest fire, they sometimes use a small backfire to clear out fuel before the main fire can reach it.

Of course, most forests don’t have explosive trees.

Samarin was looking around in confusion.  “I don’t understand – the alarms are going off, but why hasn’t the halon system engaged?”

“Didn’t you hear her?  She said she turned it off.  She musta messed up the main fire control panel, and then came down here and started the fire.  And then turned on the building alarms and warned us.”

“Why would she do that?”

“You think she sounded like she’s playin’ with a full deck?  I don’t!”  Gotta get up to the main fire control panel – how much damage did she do?  “I think we got a communications problem.”

“What?”

“I think the different parts of your system aren’t listening to each other.  She probably yanked the connections between the detection system and the suppression system.  It can’t turn on if it doesn’t know there’s a problem.”  Arvil shoulda made it to fire control, but he doesn’t seem to have fixed anything.

“Then what are we doing here?  We’ve got to get the fire suppression system working!”  Samarin glanced down the hall towards the emergency stairs.  “There’s a manual override in the mechanical engineering room.”

“Where’s that?”  It hadn’t been on the tour.

“Ground floor.”

“Not enough time.”  Seared into Mac’s brain was the image of that brief glimpse into the lab where the fire was burning.  It had been started at one end of the room, and was blazing in a pile of cardboard boxes that probably contained mostly paper:  manila folders, instrument analysis reports, rolls of paper for the strip chart recorders.  It was already well past the size where any sane person would tackle it with an ordinary fire extinguisher, the fingers of flame reaching out with the insatiable, mindless greed of all fires, eager to consume the world.  By the time we get to fire control, it’ll have gotten out of the paper and into the juicy stuff . . .

He visualized the twin gas chromatographs, each with its set of gas cylinders: nitrogen, hydrogen, air.

Hydrogen.

Oh, no.

Or . . . wait.

MacGyver grabbed Samarin by the shoulders.  “Paul, where’s the mass spectrometry lab?”

Samarin stared.  “Right here.”  He pointed at the next door down the hallway.

“Good.”  MacGyver yanked the door open, slapped the light switch as he dashed into the room, threw open the doors of the chemical storage cabinets and started to rummage through the contents.  After a moment, he emerged holding a one-liter amber glass bottle.  “That’ll do.”  He pulled off his leather jacket, skinned out of his long-sleeved shirt, and hurriedly shrugged the jacket back on over the black tank-top he wore underneath.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Fightin’ fire with fire.”

One nightmare you don’t find in the woods is fuel that releases more oxygen as it burns – oxidizers – where one leg of the triangle feeds another.  You get enough oxidizers into the mix and nothing will stop or slow the burn till the fuel’s completely consumed, along with everything else around.

I figured about every third chemical in that wing of the labs was an oxidizer.

Mac reached into his pocket and suppressed the urge to cuss when he remembered he didn’t even have his backup knife any more.  Instead, he grabbed the nearest beaker and rapped it sharply against the lab bench.  It fractured into jagged shards, and he used the handiest to slice into the edge of the fabric of his shirt so he could tear off a strip of the cotton cloth.  He unscrewed the cap of the bottle he held, dropped the long end of the strip of fabric into it, and tilted the bottle so that the volatile liquid would saturate the cloth fuse.  The chemical smell of the solvent, sweet and sharp at the same time, filled the room.

“Listen, Paul.  If that fire gets a firm hold, it could spread through this entire level while we’re still tryin’ to get the firefighting system back on line.  You know what the fire department will do – they’ll pull back and wait till all the chemicals have finished blowing up, and then they’ll move in and clean up the ashes.  You won’t have anything left but a big contaminated hole in the ground.”

Samarin was staring at MacGyver’s handiwork.  “That’s xylene!  What the hell are you thinking?  You’re going to throw a Molotov cocktail into a fire?”

“I’m tryin’ to buy us time.”  Kinda expensive, though.

“Are you completely insane?”

Mac grinned momentarily.  “You know, I get asked that a lot.”  He gripped Samarin’s shoulders.  “Paul, get outta here!  Run for the stairs and try to get to the manual override.  Trigger the system if you can, and get the heck out of the building.  You understand?”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry!  I’ll be right behind you!”  I hope.

When my grandpa told me to ‘fight fire with fire’, he wasn’t speaking literally.  But sometimes you do just that.

The great square bulk of the two gas chromatographs occupied most of the space in the center of that lab; MacGyver could see them clearly in his mind’s eye as he stopped outside the door of the gas chromatography lab, set his bottle on the floor, and worked the manual override for the elevator doors.  His knotted rope was still dangling in the shaft, and he pulled the end into the corridor and weighted it down with a wrench from the spectrometry lab.  He glanced down the hallway; Samarin had made it to the stairwell and was clear of the immediate fire zone.

He took a deep breath as he picked up the bottle of xylene, and regretted it: even outside the closed door, the smoke was growing thick and beginning to take on the particular stench of the wrong kind of fire.  He coughed, wiped at his streaming eyes with the remains of his overshirt, pulled out his box of matches and lit the fuse that dangled from the bottle.  One moment to brace himself while it caught soundly, and picture his target clearly before he slammed open the lab door.

The smoke came billowing out, but he was prepared for that.  All he could focus on was the closer of the two gas chromatographs, with its rack of gas cylinders.  He had one chance, and he put every ounce of arm and shoulder power into one hard throw at the hydrogen cylinder.

He couldn’t spare the time even to see if the aim was true, if the bottle of flaming solvent had hit the regulator valve hard enough to crack it or break the copper tubing that linked the tank to the equipment; he’d know soon enough.  It wouldn’t take much to start the leak he wanted.  He dived for his climbing rope, swung into the shaft and started climbing faster than he had ever done in his life.

The shock wave from the exploding hydrogen rocked through the building.

Mac balled himself up on his rope like a traumatized spider and hung on until the world stopped shuddering.  There was a double ripple in that hammer force – the hydrogen cylinder on the second gas chromatograph must have gone up in a chain reaction, probably rocketing itself off into a wall, or through it – but the twin blows passed, and he found himself still swinging in the elevator shaft, his eyes squeezed tight shut and his ears ringing, gripping the knotted rope so hard he thought his arms would crack.  His side felt bruised – he dimly remembered slamming against one side of the shaft when the first shock wave hit him.

The world hadn’t quite come to an end:  the lab had been built with heavily reinforced walls and ceilings as a standard precaution.  Not that there’s anything standard about any of this . . . !  But he’d blown the hydrogen and taken out the most critical threat in the direct path of the fire, and the explosion would have sucked the oxygen out of the immediate area and should at least have dampened the blaze.

There was going to be an aftermath after all.

Pete is not gonna believe this when I tell him – using an elevator shaft to escape a fire?  Way too much like trying to climb out of the fireplace by the chimney . . . maybe I’ll leave that part out.  He worries too much as it is.

It was too much to hope that the blast would have snuffed the fire – it was more likely to have spread it, scattering the burning material over a wider area.  But with luck, we oughta have a window of just a few minutes when we’ll have a whole lot of little fires instead of one big monster that can’t be stopped.

There was plenty of smoke in the elevator shaft, and MacGyver was coughing and gasping by the time he made it up to ground level.  Partway up, he’d felt a change in the air and smelled a new set of fumes; he was pretty sure Samarin had made it to the manual override and turned on the halon system.  When he emerged from the elevator shaft into the corridor, he looked down the side hall that held the main fire control panel and saw Samarin standing in front of it, wringing his hands.

“Paul, what the heck are you doin’ here?  I told you to get out!”

Samarin jumped and stared at him.  “You’re alive!  I didn’t think – ”  He waved at the panel.  “I think I got the halon turned on, but I can’t tell – ”

“You did.  We might get this licked yet.”

“But take a look . . . ”

MacGyver surveyed the inside of the fire control panel:  it looked as if the arsonist had simply grabbed at the wires by the handful and yanked.  “Wow, what a mess.  But it could be worse.”

“Worse?”

“Well, we don’t need all the systems back online right now.  The building’s divvied up into fire zones, isn’t it?  And we already know where the fire is.  We just need to find the right set of eyes for the main lab and plug ‘em back in.”  As he spoke, he was tracing wires, checking and testing connections.  “Got a pair of pliers handy?”

Now that the immediate danger was lessened, his mind was beginning to wrestle with the problem of the Baranyevs.  Who was on what side?  Was Baranyev afraid of the KGB because he worked for them, or working for them because he was afraid?

And another fear was beginning to chew at Mac’s gut – if the elder Baranyev had known MacGyver by name and reputation, Mac might have been identified when he’d accompanied Baba to Baranyev’s house.  He had to warn Baba – he angrily suppressed the immediate thought that she would know if she was in danger, without needing any warning.  That’s crazy.

If I’m still around when the fire trucks show up, it’ll be hours before I can get away – reports to make, forms to fill out – and what happens when they ask what I’m doing here?  If Arvil was still anywhere around – and if he'd gone to summon the fire department, he’d return with them – Mac could end up facing much worse delays than a stack of reports.  Real bad publicity for Phoenix if their shiny new freelance investigator gets thrown in jail on suspicion of arson.

A Christmas-tree display of lights was beginning to flower in the panel as he found more of the right connections to restore; not only was the system responding to its own sensors, it was bringing information back.  Good enough for now.  “Paul, it’s way past time for you to go.  The fire trucks oughta be here any minute.”

Samarin started towards the front door, then looked back over his shoulder as MacGyver headed down the side corridor.  “Where are you going?”

“I gotta go out the back way.  You remember what your boss told you?  I was never here.”

“But – ”

“Please.”  Mac met his irresolute gaze firmly.  “Trust me, it’s gonna be a lot better this way.  You’ll hear from me again – but right now, I’ve got another fire to put out.”

Chapter Text

Eight: Black Jack on Red Queen

Once MacGyver made his way back to his Jeep, he drove straight for Baba’s house, fighting the urge to floor the gas pedal.  A ticket for speeding would be bad enough, but any cop who got a good look at him would have a lot of time-consuming questions, and the reports of the fire at Brookhearst  would have gone out by now.  Mac was grubby and soot-smeared, and his black leather jacket reeked of smoke and chemical fumes; when a red light forced him to stop, he shucked it off and dumped it behind the passenger seat.  The black tank-top underneath smelled too, but not as badly.

The momentary distraction helped him resist the urge to run the red light, although he chafed at every delay.  Baranyev might already have sent someone to Baba’s house to ask awkward questions.

Or shoot first and ask questions later.

There were no cars drawn up in front of the house, and it seemed quiet; but Mac’s heart lurched into his throat at the sight of a light in the living room window.  Someone was up – at three o’clock in the morning.  He ran up softly to the door and tried the handle without bothering to knock.  The door was unlocked:  another bad sign.  He slipped inside and peered around the corner into the living room.

Jason was sitting on the couch, his face ashen, staring blankly into space.  Tasha’s orange tabby cat was curled in his lap, but he barely seemed to notice it; the cat occasionally rubbed against his hand with its head, and Jason petted it mechanically for a moment before losing track.  When Mac walked into the room, he started and seemed about to burst into tears.

“Oh God, Mac, you’re finally here – wait, what are you doing here?”  His eyes finally focused for a moment.  “You look like hell.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Oh, hell, I’m sorry.”

“Jason, what’s going on?  Is Baba here?”  Jason shook his head.  “Where’s Tasha?”

“I don’t know!  She and Gina should have been back hours ago.  I didn’t know what to do – Gina’s got a spare key, so I came over here to wait.”

“Whoa, slow down.”  Mac’s own anxiety was ebbing; he couldn’t imagine either Baba or Tasha going without a fight, and there was no sign of a struggle.  Even the exquisite coffee set was in place, every fragile china cup intact.  “Back from where?”

“They went over to Bryce’s place.  There was supposed to be some kind of study group meeting tonight – last night – maybe I’m overreacting.  I just – Bryce gives me the creeps, and Gina doesn’t get it.  She thinks he’s harmless.  I try to keep an open mind, but . . . ”

“You don’t have to keep your mind so open that your brains fall out,” Mac muttered.  “Jason, where’s Baba?”

“Not here – Tasha said she went off to spend a few days with friends.  I don’t know where.  Tasha said – oh, hell, what was it? – Baba said she’d ‘done what she could’.  I don’t know what she meant.  I mostly don’t anyway.”  He was clutching the cat more tightly now, but the animal didn’t struggle away.

Mac’s world gave an Alice-in-Wonderland lurch.  Okay, Baba.  Just what game are you playing at?  How come you were so willing to help me get to Baranyev?

An inner voice pointed out that he’d set out to use Baba for just that purpose.  Yeah.  You bet.  Who’s using who?

When the phone rang, the jangle cracked right across silence and raw nerves.  MacGyver and Jason both started at the sound; then Jason was grabbing at the receiver.  “Hello?”

“Jay – Jay, is that you?”  It was Tasha’s voice, sounding very muzzy and faint.  Mac leaned over so he could hear as well.  “Oh, crap.  That’s right.  Baba’s not home, is she?”

“No, but Mac and I are here.  Tasha, are you all right?  Where are you?”

“ ’m not sure – can’t think – oh, God, my stomach hurts . . . ”

Mac took the phone from Jason.  “Tasha, it’s Mac.  What’s going on?  Is Gina with you?”

“Dunno – just woke up – I think I’m still at Bryce’s.  Back bedroom . . . I found a phone.  I think he put something in the wine.  Yeah.  Must be Bryce’s.  Local call.  And his house stinks.  I know the smell.”

Mac looked at Jason.  “How long to get to Bryce’s place?”

Jason blinked.  “Maybe ten minutes.  Not much traffic – ”

“Tasha, can you hear me?  Stay put.  Don’t go anywhere or do anything.  If anyone comes in, pretend that you’re still out cold.  You understand?”

“ ’k – ”

“We’re coming over to get you.  Stay calm.  We’ll be right there.”  Mac rang off, leaned over Jason and gripped his arm, helping him to his feet.  “C’mon, we’ll talk as we go.  I’ll drive – you give me directions.”

*

Jason’s concentration was so scattered that Mac had to talk to him steadily as they drove, to make certain his mind stayed on track.  “What’s goin’ on with Bryce?  Has he got something against you and Gina?”

“Gina and I jumped the fire together on Midsummer, Mac.  Remember?  That means we’re engaged.”  He pulled himself up a little straighter in his seat, shedding some of the helpless fog that had wrapped around him.  “And if the DXS has a problem with that, they can go to hell.”

“Did Bryce have a problem with it?”

“Yeah, I think so.  He was way too eager to play comforter for Gina when I didn’t come home last winter – and I don’t think he was real happy when I finally did.”

“I’ll bet.  I kinda got that feeling myself.”

“You did?  Christ, I wish I’d asked you about him earlier – I kept telling myself I should be – ”

“Yeah, I remember.  More open-minded.”

“Mac, what do you think’s going on?”

“I can’t be sure, but Tasha sounded to me like she coulda been dosed with rohypnol.  You ever hear of Bryce going to that kind of length?”

“No – honestly, most of the time he doesn’t need to make an effort.  He’s even more of a babe magnet than you are – he actually tries, for one thing.”  Mac gave Jason a quelling look, but the younger man didn’t notice.  “He mostly targets women who don’t think they’re attractive, and anyone who wants to feel like they’re something special – he has a knack of really focusing his attention on you.  And he’s usually really good at sorting out who’s susceptible.”

“He should’ve stayed away from Baba, then.”

“Yeah.  I think he wanted the extra clout he thought he could get from hanging around her.  You didn’t see him at his best at Midsummer – Tasha’s really good at needling him, and you threw him off his stride even farther.  But he’s smooth.  He always has a string of people signing up for classes and study groups – you know how the Bay Area is overflowing with folks looking for ‘spiritual enlightenment’.  And somehow they’re always willing to chip in for his groceries and his beer money.”

“You mean he’s a con artist.”

“Not exactly.  Half the time, I think he buys his own line of bull – he thinks he’s really a spiritual leader, and his ‘followers’ are just doing the right thing in keeping him afloat.  If he had a little more ambition, he might grow up to be a con artist.”

*

The ten-minute drive to Bryce’s house followed a direct route down a steep economic slope.  The houses and apartment buildings grew shabbier and more neglected; the cars parked on the street grew fewer, older, uglier and more battered; lawns grew ill-kempt and then disappeared, replaced by patches of bare dirt and clumps of tall weeds.  The occasional yards that retained their plantings were untended and overgrown, looking more like small patches of jungle than anything else.

MacGyver felt an odd sense of familiarity, and suddenly remembered his old buddy Jack Dalton.  He hadn’t seen Jack in years – he’d lost touch with a lot of people after he’d started working for the DXS and had begun to travel so much of the time.  He didn’t exactly miss Jack, though, not after the number of times he’d watched Jack’s self-destructive cycles in and out of this kind of neighborhood.  There were places like this in every city:  the kind of area where the rent was low, the leases were short and the neighbors kept to themselves.  And somehow Jack’s moves inevitably wound up with Mac doing the moving, or at least the heavy lifting.

When Jason pointed out Bryce’s house – a older, two-story house with peeling paint, a sagging screen door and dilapidated front steps – Mac drove past it and parked on the far side of the house next door.  “Who’s likely to be there, besides Bryce and the girls?”

Jason shook his head, shrugging.  “He’s always got a few housemates, but they come and go so fast I can’t keep track of them.  Half of them are stoners – I think they pay in kind if they can’t make the rent.”

As they quietly approached the back door, MacGyver reached into his pocket for his knife, and scowled when he remembered.  Dang it!  Still down two knives.  As he looked around to see what else might be at hand, a movement caught his eye – a smoke-grey shape emerged from a narrow opening at the bottom of a window, landed lightly on the porch, and paused to sniff at Mac’s ankles before wrapping itself around them, purring enthusiastically.

Mac leaned down and scratched the cat’s ears and chin.  “Thanks, buddy.”  He hadn’t spotted the partly-open window.  In the trash of the back yard, he located a piece of broken pipe with the right kind of bend towards the tip, and by standing on a handy milk crate, he was able to slide his arm in and reach far enough to catch the latch of the deadbolt on the back door.

Once inside, the first thing that hit them was the smell – stale and musty, with overtones of cigarette smoke, old pizza, and cats.  Bryce might be able to con rent money from his housemates and beer money from his ‘students’, but it seemed he couldn’t con anyone into doing any housework.  Mac’s own housekeeping was haphazard at best, but Bryce’s kitchen made him want to retch.  He heard Jason behind him, stifling a choked cough.

“No wonder that cat was so friendly,” Jason murmured.  “I mean, you smell like a chemical incinerator, but that’s got to be an improvement over all this.”

Mac gave him an annoyed look and gestured for him to be quiet.  He could hear someone coming down the hall towards the kitchen.  The man who shuffled in from the hallway was tall, beefy, and slovenly, wearing a pair of dirty sweatpants and a sweatshirt that looked and smelled as if he’d been sleeping in it for a week.  He made a beeline for the refrigerator and stopped short at the sight of Jason and MacGyver.

“What the . . . ”  He peered blearily at Jason.  “Well, look at that.  It’s Jay-boy.  Come lookin’ for your girlfriend?”

Mac raised an eyebrow at Jason.  “This must be one of the housemates.”

Jason nodded.  “He’s named Mark.”  Mac guessed from Jason’s expression that he’d had a few run-ins with the bruiser, and hadn’t come off well.

Mac turned towards the newcomer.  “Howja do, Mark.  We’ve got business with Bryce.  I don’t suppose you’d be willing to just . . . ” Mac made an airy gesture with his fingers  “ . . . go off somewhere and meditate for a while?”

Mark’s answer was slurred, but unprintable.

Mac looked at Jason.  “That wasn’t very enlightened.”

“Nope.”

MacGyver took a step forward, and Mark took a swing at him.  Mac snatched a mop from beside the fridge, blocked the badly aimed blow with it, and deftly slid it between Mark’s legs and gave a twist and a jerk.  Mark toppled and fell, waving his arms, narrowly missing the kitchen counter with his head but landing hard enough for the wind to be slammed out of him.

“What the fu . . . ?”

Mac rapped him on the head with the mop handle, not hard enough to knock him cold but enough to make him yelp and lie still.  “It’s called a ‘mop’.  When you get your breath back, you might try using it on the floor once in a while.”  He dropped the mop on top of Mark, stepped over him, and slipped out into the hallway.

Jason leaned over the man as he passed and said, “Lemme give you some free advice, Mark – when you get your breath back, just get the hell out of Dodge.  You copy?”  He stepped over the sprawled form in turn and hurried after Mac, grinning.

I remember the first time I ever walked up to a kid who was shoving around a younger boy and decked him.  My hand hurt for hours, and my Mom was furious, but I couldn’t stop grinning over it.  That wasn’t very ‘enlightened’ either, I guess.  But it felt pretty good.

Mac turned to Jason as the younger man came up, and saw the grin on his face.  “We need to find Tasha first – she said she thought she was in a back bedroom.  Where would that be?”

Tasha was curled up on an unmade bed in a filthy room piled high with assorted junk; Mac guessed that she had passed out again after making her call for help.  She blinked at them blearily.

“Jay . . . Mac . . . was it – oh crap.  It wasn’t a bad dream, was it?”  She curled up more tightly on herself and retched.

Jason stroked her hair.  “Sorry, Tatiana.  Nightmare, yes; but no dream.  Tasha, what happened?”

“The – the study group ended as usual – Bryce kept Gina on, talking, and of course I couldn’t leave without her – then he pulls out this bottle of wine and says he wanted to propose a toast to you and Gina.  No, wait – that’s not what he said.  A toast to Gina’s future happiness.  That was it.”  Tasha made a face.  “I don’t remember much after that.  I didn’t drink much out of my glass – somehow I just didn’t like the idea of sharing his hospitality.”

“Good thing you didn’t.”  Mac had stayed by the door, listening for any sounds of movement in the rest of the house.  “Did Gina?”

“Yeah, she laughed and tossed it right back.  I remember that.”

“We gotta find her, then.  Tasha, when you called us, did you stay awake long enough to call 9-1-1?”

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised by the look of stubbornness that settled over her face.  A small, tight community – and the police were invaders from outside, not to be trusted with the group’s troubles.  She shook her head, then groaned and clutched at it.  “Ow.  Oh crap.  No, I didn’t.  Do we have to?  Can’t we . . . ”

“All right, all right.  I’ll let it go for now.  Where’s Bryce’s bedroom?”

“Why?”

“Well, he’ll have taken Gina there, right?”

Tasha shook her head again, more carefully.  “No, I’m sure they’ll be downstairs in the temple.”

“The what?”

Jason broke in.  “Down in the basement.  That’s what he calls it, anyway – of course, he also calls himself a spiritual leader.”

The basement offered up a new bouquet of smells – mostly dust and mildew, with a heavy reek of cheap patchouli incense freshly overlaid.  There wasn’t much furniture, other than a few battered chairs and a wall of brick-and-board bookcases that held a mishmash of books:  mythology, spirituality, mysticism, European fairy tales and Native American legends, running the gamut from Joseph Campbell and Robert Graves all the way down through Aleister Crowley to lurid novels about UFO abductions.  The walls held tattered posters of Zodiac charts stuck up with thumbtacks and masking tape.

A gaudy throw rug had been spread out in the middle of the cheap, thin carpeting, and Gina was lying on it, full length.  She looked deeply and peacefully asleep.  Mac felt a wash of relief when he saw that except for being barefoot, she was still fully clothed:  in her white cotton dress and Egyptian jewelry, she looked oddly like an image of a goddess.  Beside her, Bryce was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, his eyes shut and his arms raised above her, mumbling and chanting.

The chant ended in a strangled squawk and a thump when Jason ran forward, shoved Bryce violently aside and gathered Gina in his arms.  “Baby – baby, you okay?  Mac, is she all right?”

Ignoring Bryce, Mac knelt beside Jason and lifted an eyelid with his thumb.  “I think so, but we better get her to a hospital.  Tasha – ”

Tasha was standing over Bryce, hands on her hips, glaring down at him.  She picked up a handful of the rose petals that were scattered on the floor and threw them in his face.  Pure rage had apparently burned away her lingering shakiness.  “You bastard.  You goddamned bastard.  You were trying to cast a love spell, weren’t you?  How dare you!  Bryce, you are so totally lame!  Jason, what was he chanting?”

Jason glanced up with a distracted look.  “Gibberish, mostly – although parts of it sounded like a really bad mistranslation of the Heart Scarab prayer . . . ”

MacGyver felt a return of the Alice-in-Wonderland feeling.  Okay, Jason, you were right.  A lot weird.  And no, I never let it get this close.  “I don’t care if he was reciting hockey scores.  We need to get her to ER so she can be kept under observation while it wears off.  And get tested for rohypnol.  And for signs of rape.  Sorry, Jason.”

Bryce was glaring at them and rubbing the elbow he’d landed on when he was knocked over.  “I didn’t touch her!”

“Okay.  If you say so,” Mac snapped.  “So she’ll have to get tested for signs of attempted rape.  And there’s the little matter of unlawful detainment.  Tasha, would you please go back upstairs and make that call now?”

Tasha didn’t move.  “Can’t we just take her to the hospital ourselves?”  She met MacGyver’s look with a freshly mulish expression.  “Baba gets nervous at the thought of bringing in the authorities . . . she doesn’t really trust them, you see.”

“Oh, geez.”  Mac ran a hand through his hair.  “What’s she gonna do instead?  Put a curse on him?”

“Well, yeah, she might.” Tasha’s chin went up. “Don’t you think that matters? You can believe or not, but once she puts the word out, his name’s mud around here. You think she can’t do it?  You think it doesn’t make a difference?”

“That’s not the point!”  Mac threw up his hands.  “Fine, curse him if you like.  But would you please press charges too?”  He pointed at Bryce, who was still lying on the floor, looking sulky but not contrite.  “Don’t you know what’s gonna happen?  He’ll just move on to somewhere else, hang up his shingle and start over.  Do the next group a favor, and make sure he’s got a police record following him, okay?”

Jason broke in.  “I’ll make sure of it.”

“You just try it, Jay-boy,” Bryce sneered.  “You just try and make it stick.  You ain’t got nothin’.”  Bryce leaned back on his elbows, glaring at Jason.  “She wouldn’t let me touch her all those months you were off in Europe doing whatever – you never even picked up the phone and called her, you jerk.  You put her through hell.”

Mac looked at the harsh lines that had appeared in Jason’s face.  He had called in a favor at the DXS to gain access to Jason Blake’s debriefing file after the rescue:  Jason had spent eight months in one of the Eastern Bloc’s most notorious hell-holes.  After one good look, Mac slid his arms under Gina’s still form, taking her weight away from Jason.  As soon as he was unencumbered, Jason climbed to his feet.

“Beauty is sacred, man.  Why should it get wasted on a pathetic dweeb like you?”  Bryce stood up in turn, towering over Jason as he had at the Midsummer festival, obviously not aware of the change in the other man.  “You were never good enough for her.  She’s a highly evolved soul.  Who the hell are you to get in my way?”

“I’m the guy who ought to punch your lights out.”  Jason glanced over at MacGyver as Bryce started to laugh.

MacGyver merely nodded.

For a complete novice, Jason didn’t do too badly.  Bryce crumpled up and lay on the floor whimpering, although Mac suspected his pride was more bruised than anything else.

“Well, that was unenlightened.”  Mac tried to swallow his grin, but it wasn’t easy.

Jason was shaking his hand, obviously surprised at how much the blow had hurt him in turn. “Yeah, but it sure felt good.”

Tasha sniffed.  “Men.”

MacGyver turned to look at her.  “Yeah?  You mean you don’t want to take a swing at him yourself?”

Tasha flushed and looked away.  “Okay, okay, you got me.  You’re damned right I would.”

“Figured as much.  Jason, next time, ladies first.  Got it?”  MacGyver stood up and lifted Gina’s limp form in his arms.

Jason bent over her, alarmed again. “Geez, Mac.  Is she going to be all right?”

“She’ll be fine – she just needs to sleep it off.  But she’ll be better off with medical care.  C’mon.  Let’s get outta here.”

*

The first pale flush of predawn was beginning to touch the sky when they came out onto the front stoop of Bryce’s house, but the front lawn was in deep shadow, a jungle of overgrown and untended trees and bushes.  For a moment, Mac wished they had gone out the back instead, but he was too tired to worry about turning back, not with the Jeep only a short walk away.

He hadn’t yet reached the end of the walk when a man stepped out from behind the tall, unkempt hedges that fronted the street, blocking the way.

MacGyver looked over his shoulder, hoping Jason and Tasha might be far enough behind him to bolt, and saw a second man in nondescript clothing emerge from the shadows of the sagging porch to block their retreat.

The first man spoke quietly but with icy authority.  “KGB.  Be calm.”  The American accent was almost perfect, as it would have to be for any stateside operative.  He looked at Gina, lying unconscious in Mac’s arms in her white dress and gaudy jewelry, and added to his partner, “Holy shit, Vasily.  They told us Americans were decadent, but I never imagined anything like this.”  Even in Russian, the tone of disgusted contempt was plain.

Chapter Text

Nine: Queens’ Gambit

The guy who briefed me before my first-ever unofficial trek behind the Iron Curtain told me, ‘The KGB never arrest anyone.  They accost you instead.’  He used to joke that they take a special class in how to say ‘KGB.  Be calm.’ in just the right tone of voice to make your blood freeze.

Of course, hearing them say it on the street in California was even worse than hearing it in Moscow or Leningrad. It meant they knew way more about me than I liked. It meant that they knew I knew what it meant, and that put them at least two moves ahead, and with three other people on my hands, there wasn’t much room for me to move at all.

Behind him, MacGyver swore he could feel the wave of ice hit Jason as they all froze in place.  He tightened his grip on Gina and kept his voice even as he addressed the KGB operatives in Russian.

“How long have you been following me?”

“Long enough, Mr. MacGyver.”  The speaker was the man behind them – Vasily.  Mac tried not to wince at the sound of his own name. Way too well-informed.

The man in front of them shifted, and Mac saw the light of the predawn sky glinting on the gun in his hand.  “Get in the car.  Now.”

“Wait.”  Mac indicated Gina with his chin.  “This woman needs a doctor.  They both do.  And they know nothing of our business.”

“So?”

Mac switched back to English.  “Jason, my Jeep keys are in the right-hand pocket of my jeans.  Take them out, slowly – real slowly – and give them to Tasha.”

The gun came up purposefully, and Mac caught his breath; but Jason followed MacGyver’s instructions, moving slowly but unhesitatingly.  He heard Jason murmuring to Tasha, and his mind groped unsuccessfully for the meaning of the words until he realized Jason must be speaking in Romany.  He heard the words ‘Tatiana’ and ‘zarptika’, but nothing else emerged from the flow of almost-familiar sounds.

“Stop that,” came the curt order from Vasily.  “What are you doing?”

“My car’s over there,” Mac said evenly.  He half-turned so he could see Vasily and address him directly.  “Let them go.  They can drive themselves to a hospital.  They can’t follow us – and they won’t know where we’re going.”  He added, “You have no orders concerning them, do you?”

The Russian studied him for a long moment before he nodded once and spoke to his partner.  “Sasha, take Mr. Blake to the car.  If I do not join you in five minutes, kill him.”

Mac raised an eyebrow.  “Not takin’ any chances, are you?” he murmured.  Inwardly, he winced; they had Jason’s identity as well.  First time in a week I forget to watch my rear-view mirror.  Figures.

Vasily didn’t take any chances; he held Tasha at gunpoint until Mac had placed Gina carefully in the front passenger seat of the Jeep, fastened her seatbelt, closed the car door and backed away.  Vasily switched his aim to MacGyver as Tasha moved unwillingly towards the driver’s side.

“Tasha – don’t try to play hero now, okay?  Please?  Just get Gina to the hospital.  Jay and I will be okay.  But keep the cops out of it.  All right?”  Nothing’s gonna make the KGB cut their losses faster than attention from the local police.

*

Mac wasn’t surprised when the car headed south and east, towards the moneyed enclave of Tiburon.  They were being taken to the Baranyevs’ house.  But something gnawed at him; some pieces of the puzzle weren’t fitting together.  The Baranyevs had made the arrangements for Quayle’s mission, but Quayle hadn’t been working for the KGB – he was outside that system altogether, a renegade even from other rogues.

Never mind the right hand lying to the left – it’s faking out the entire arm and both legs.

He glanced at Jason, worried at how the younger man was holding up.  Jason looked frightened and miserable, but his eyes hadn’t yet taken on the deer-in-the-headlights glaze that Mac half-expected to see.  Their captors had searched them – fresh outta pocketknives for you guys to collect – and taped their hands behind their backs, and Jason was sitting bolt upright on the car seat, his entire body tense and rigid.

“Jason,”  Mac whispered.  “Relax your shoulders.”

Jason started, but he remembered to answer in a whisper.  “What?”

“Your shoulders.  They’re gonna get tired fast enough no matter what you do.  Try to relax them as much as you can.”  MacGyver was leaning back against the seat cushions as much as he could, although nothing could make him comfortable.  His wrists had already been scraped raw by the rough cord Arvil had used on him earlier, and the tape felt like fire on the abraded skin.  He felt a moment of chagrin for the many times he’d used duct tape himself on other people.  His shoulders and arms ached.

And Mac was tired:  he’d caught a few hours of sleep on Gina’s couch the previous evening, before he’d headed out to Brookhearst, but it seemed a very long time ago.  He closed his eyes and tried to rest while the drive lasted.  He’d have to start running on adrenaline again soon enough.

Beside him, Jason murmured, “Mac.  Comprendes español?”

“Sí.  Just speak slowly, okay?”

“I told Tasha to call Phoenix.”

“I thought so.  Good thinking.”  The Spanish was even better thinking; the Russians weren’t likely to be able to understand it at all.

The click of the safety catch seemed very loud; Mac opened his eyes to see Vasily leaning over the seat in front of them, glaring over his gun.  “You two shut up!  No more talking.”

As before, they were brought into the house through the garage entrance.  The place was quiet and there was no sign of the chauffeur; Baranyev must have cleared the house of any live-in staff.  This time they were taken down a different hallway, into the large, grandly furnished living room towards the front of the house.

Even before Vasily approached to make a formal salute, the ramrod posture and attitude of the man standing in the center of the room marked him clearly, in MacGyver’s mind, as the commander of the KGB unit.  Mac’s attention went to the straight-backed chair in front of the CO, where a man was sitting, slumped forward, only his bound hands preventing him from sliding out of the chair.  His face was bruised and bleeding.

Baranyev.

Mac stared at him in astonished horror.  What the . . .  He tried to hide his bewilderment.

Like his men, the CO was wearing nondescript civilian clothing, but his air of command somehow gave it the air of a crisply pressed uniform.  His short hair was mostly grey, and his eyes were steely probes above a hatchet nose.  His long assessing glance made Mac acutely aware of his own scruffiness, the soot smears on his bare shoulders and the smell of smoke that still clung to his clothes.

“Mr. MacGyver and Mr. Blake.  Thank you for joining us.”  His American accent was all but flawless, only an occasional glottal tic in the consonants catching at the ear.

Mac shook off his confusion and shrugged his sore shoulders.  “Your invitation was kinda hard to turn down.  Now, lemme guess – Major?  No, Colonel . . . ?”

“Not bad.”  The Russian commander bowed his head slightly.  “Colonel Iosif Grigorivich Reznik.  And I believe you have met our host.”

Baranyev had raised his head at their approach, and was now glaring at MacGyver in livid fury.  “You!  You are MacGyver?  By God, I let you into this house myself, with that damned Gypsy bitch!”

Reznik nodded with satisfaction.  “As I thought.  He has not met you.”  He walked over to Baranyev’s chair and leaned over him, speaking softly.  “I’m getting tired of the lies, old man.  Your son told you he had killed this American agent, but he is still alive.  You said the Kremlin knows what you are doing, but my superiors have told me they know nothing of this.”

“Then you must ask them again!  My son and I have always been loyal.  We arranged for you and your men to enter this country!”

“At a price!  There’s more going on than your little travel agency, you greedy traitor.  What are you really up to?”  He backhanded Baranyev savagely.  “You helped that worm Quayle elude us last year.  What side were you on then?”

At the sound of Reznik’s words, Jason had started.  When Mac glanced at him in puzzlement, he blurted out, “Mac – the colonel, Reznik – he was there.  At the prisoner exchange.  He was the Russian CO I heard talking over your radio.  I recognize his voice.”

At Jason’s words, Reznik turned away from Baranyev and glared at them.  “You have a very good ear, Mr. Blake.  And you, Mr. MacGyver – you dealt us an unholy mess back there in Czechoslovakia.”

“Wait a minute,” Mac said.  “You think we set up Quayle to be shot?  The sniper was on your side of the river!”

“He was not on our side of the game!”  Reznik walked over to MacGyver and studied him with cold, narrowed eyes.

Oh, but it’s not a game.  Something clicked in Mac’s mind and he looked over at Baranyev, whose eyes were bright with malice and contempt.  We’re being played, but this isn’t a game.  A wall had opened up in the complex pattern around them, and he could almost glimpse the shadow player.  He remembered the memos he’d pocketed from Quayle’s file at Brookhearst:  he’d intended to ask Jason to translate them.  Now the memos, with whatever answers they might hold, were safe in the pocket of his leather jacket, tucked behind the passenger seat of his Jeep.  Safer than we are right now.

Reznik glanced at Vasily.  “Did he have time to report in since the fire?”

“He made no calls.”

“Good.  It will take time before the DXS start to look for him . . . they will have their hands full sifting through ashes.”  His smile came nowhere near his eyes.  “In fact, we have plenty of time, and all the resources of a private home at our disposal – a fine, secure, American home, here where they treasure privacy so very much.”  Reznik waved a hand.  “There is a kitchen with plenty of running water – although you seemed fond enough of cold water in Czechoslovakia.”  He had been looking directly at Mac as he spoke, but his glance flicked over to Jason as if assessing which one could be broken with the least effort.  He paced over to loom in front of Jason, who tried to back away; but Sasha was standing directly behind him, a stolid barricade of muscle.

“There is also the fireplace here,” Reznik continued.  “We can build a fire.  There is a pantry with cleaning supplies – caustic chemicals, acids – I was taught to be creative.”

Even as Mac interrupted him, a voice in the back of his head was trying to tell him it was a bad idea, but he ignored it.  “Hey, Iosif, I remember your name now.  You were pretty hot stuff in the chess world, weren’t you?  Didn’t Kasparov kick your butt just a coupla years ago?”

Reznik turned away from Jason, who wilted visibly, and studied MacGyver again, more carefully.  “Comrade Kasparov is a Soviet hero,” he said in a controlled, even tone of voice.  “And his job has always been to play chess.  I still play chess, on a different board.”

He gave a slight jerk of his chin, a signal to one of the men who had been standing behind Baranyev’s chair.  “Gennady.”  Gennady walked over to take Vasily’s place behind Mac.

MacGyver didn’t like having the man behind him; he was tall and huskily built, and seemed far too pleased at the summons.  Mac set his teeth as Gennady ran a thumb down his spine – even the touch felt like an invasion.

The man’s thumb dug into a nerve nexus and the blaze of pain ran up and down Mac’s spine; he threw his head up and arched his back to try to get away from the agony, and only the set teeth kept him from screaming.  When the pressure eased, he found his knees had sagged and Gennady was holding him up.

“Enough of a demonstration, I think,” Reznik observed.  “You might consider your words more carefully after this.  I don’t like to be interrupted.”

As if to illustrate his words, he glanced up and scowled; another man had entered the room, and spoke quietly to Reznik.  “Mikhail and Tolya have returned – they finally have the son.”  MacGyver saw Baranyev’s head come up at the news; he looked alarmed but not as distressed as Mac had expected.

Reznik nodded with an unpleasant smile.  “Excellent!  Now we’ll really get somewhere.”  He indicated Mac and Jason.  “Take them to the library; they’ll be safe enough there.  They can consider their situation.  Arvil Volenevich also – but bring him in here first.  He doesn’t need to speak to his father just now, but he should know how things stand.”

*

The room where Sasha and Gennady took MacGyver and Jason was the same small, richly furnished room where Baba had met with Baranyev a very long day and a half ago.  They were pushed roughly into the over-upholstered antique furniture, their ankles bound with more tape, and left alone.  Gennady left Mac with one last dig into the overstressed nerves behind his shoulderblades.

Once the world had stopped spinning, Mac looked over at Jason and studied him.  “You okay, Jason?”  He didn’t look good.

“They haven’t hurt me at all, Mac,” Jason replied dourly.  “I guess they didn’t figure I knew anything useful.”

“No, they think it’s easier to psych you out if you see what they’re willing to do to someone else.”

“It’s working,” Jason muttered.

“I’m not sure what they’re keepin’ us for, though – insurance, maybe.  Or hostages, if anyone from the DXS shows up.”

“Just what are they after anyway?  How did they know about the fire?”

“I’d guess Junior called his dad to report in, and the KGB guys were listening.  They musta been following us for days; they probably had Baranyev’s line tapped.  I think they’re really after Baranyev – and whoever else he’s involved with.”

“Isn’t he one of them?”

“You mean KGB?  No.  I don’t think he ever was.  I think – ”

He broke off as the door was unlocked; Arvil Baranyev was ushered in, his hands behind his back, a shell-shocked expression on his face; Mac wondered if he’d received any of Gennady’s special attentions.  He flinched visibly on seeing MacGyver.

“What the devil – ?”

He was deposited onto the couch beside Mac, who swore he could see a smirk on Vasily’s face as they left.

Arvil kept staring at Mac as if he was seeing a ghost.  “The firemen – they found no bodies – but I did not think to see you alive again.  I thought you had died in your own fire.”

“My fire – you think I set that?  C’mon, Junior, the Phoenix Foundation hired me to find out what was goin’ on, not to torch the place!”

“My father said you were a saboteur.  You are a DXS agent!  An enemy of the State!”

“Look, Junior, will you get a grip?  Like it or not, the State is not your buddy any more, and the KGB are not your friends!  The only reason we haven’t been shot yet is they’ve got more information to beat out of us first.  Once they’ve got what they want, they’re gonna kill you and your dad.  And me, too.  And Jason.  You might not care about that, but I do.”

“But my father – I don’t understand!   My father sent me here to work for the State!”

Mac rolled his eyes.  “Your dad sent you here to carve him out a beachhead for his own little empire.”

Arvil looked genuinely distraught.  “We’ve got to get loose somehow.”  He kicked his bound feet in frustration.

“Would you stop kicking?” Mac snapped.  “Just be grateful that they didn’t go in for hogties.”  He bunched himself up and slid off the couch onto the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Lookin’ for something I can use to get free.”  MacGyver rolled onto his side, looking around to make sure he wasn’t going to bang his head against any of the furniture when he started to squirm out into the center of the room.  He found himself looking directly at the legs and underside of one of the fancy side tables that flanked the couch, a glossy antique in dark mahogany with elaborately carved ornamental scrollwork on the legs.

Tucked neatly into one whorl of carved wood was the Swiss Army knife Baba had ‘borrowed’ from him two days before.

Do not worry so much.  You will have it back when you need it.

Mac rested his forehead against the thick carpet for a moment until the dizzy lurch passed before he set to work.

After he had freed Jason and himself, he stood over Arvil for a long moment.  “Junior, can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just tape your mouth and stuff you into a closet?”

“I know this house.”

“So do I.”

“I speak Russian, and my accent doesn’t stink.”

Jason spoke up.  “So do I.”

After a moment, the stolid veneer of Arvil’s face cracked.  “I don’t want my father to die.  Please.  I want to save him.”

Mac and Jason exchanged glances.  Mac shrugged.  “That’s good enough for me.”

As Mac freed Arvil, Jason picked up the library phone, then set it down, glanced behind the library desk, and lifted the severed cord.  “No dice.  Can we count on Tasha getting us any help?”

“Probably not; she won’t know who to ask for or what to say, or where to send it.  Let’s see.  Reznik might want to be able to use the phone in the living room – he probably yanked the others.  Careful guy.  I wonder how thorough he was . . . c’mon.”

“Where to?”

“Baranyev’s study.”

“But we’re locked in here.”

Mac grinned and picked a shred of adhesive off the large blade of his knife before he switched blades.  “Don’t worry.  I’ve got a key.”

*

In the study, Jason made a beeline for the phone; when he turned to MacGyver a moment later with a somber expression and another cut phone cord, Mac wasn’t even paying attention.  He was bent over one of the computers.

“Um, Mac?  Reznik’s been through here too.”

“Doesn’t matter.”  Mac’s fingers flashed over the keyboard as Arvil and Jason exchanged looks of complete bewilderment.  “Arvil, what was your mom’s first name?”

“Valeriya.  Why?”

“Thought so.  It’s your dad’s password.”

Arvil jumped as the computer emitted a high-pitched whine and screech.  “Chyort poberi, I hate that noise.  What are you doing?”

“Callin’ for help.”  The keys on the keyboard chattered.  “Good thing Reznik doesn’t know about modems.”

“What are you talking about?” Arvil exploded.

The clicking continued.  “Junior, you may think these are expensive toys, but your dad must have been using these computers to move millions of dollars in blood money around the world pretty much every day.  We’re looking at the future of international crime here.  I wonder how much he’s told Reznik so far?”

“But you said the line was tapped,” Jason objected.

“Different phone lines – and not even the phone company knows these are here.  Willis said it took him hours to trace them, and he knew what he was looking for.”

Mac finished typing and turned off the nearest of the computers, then pulled the CPU towards him, disconnected the keyboard and started to dismantle the system with the screwdriver blade on his knife.  “The only problem is, there’s no way to tell how long it’ll be before the cavalry gets here.”

“Then what do we do, Mac?” Jason asked.

“Get out if we can, hide if we can’t, fight if we have to.  We’re outnumbered and outgunned.”

Arvil was nodding.  “You are very clever indeed.”

“And you thought I was just dumb muscle.  Thanks for underestimating me like that,” Mac added.  “It came in handy.”

“Perhaps I know better now.  And you pick locks?  Can you open that middle drawer on my father’s desk?”

“Yeah, probably.  Why?  What’s in it?”

“Keys to the garage and to the car.  Since the garage is locked, perhaps it will not be guarded.”

“Hey, good thinkin’, Junior.”  Mac switched blades on his knife, feeling a moment’s glow at having it back, and bent over the lock.

The drawer gave after a moment’s work, and Arvil pushed him aside and opened it.  Mac didn’t see any keys in the jumble of pens, paper clips and other paraphernalia including another of Baba’s domovushki, but Arvil reached in with confidence, sliding his hand towards the back of the drawer.

When his hand came out, instead of keys, he was holding a fountain pen.  Mac took one look at it and tried to duck away, but he wasn’t fast enough; Arvil aimed the pen at MacGyver’s face and thumbed the release.

The jet of stinging liquid hit Mac full in the face, burning his eyes and sending a wave of fire right into his brain:  it had to be the same chemical weapon Arvil had tried to use on him in the lab at Brookhearst, this time in concentrated liquid form.

Mac’s fingers clawed at his face and eyes and he scrabbled for the front of his tank-top, trying to wipe as much of the fluid from his face as he could while his hands would still obey him, before the eyes and skin could absorb the insidious stuff into his system.  Arvil swung a heavy fist at Mac’s stomach and he fell against the desk, scattering the computer components, and crumpled to the floor.  Worse than the blow or the burning in his eyes was the immediate sense of a heavy grey opiate fog, wrapping around his mind and dulling his senses.  Behind it lurked the freezing grip of imminent paralysis.  Behind that – how much of a dose did it take before breathing stopped?

He heard a cry from Jason and another blow, and the heavy thump of Jason’s body hitting the carpet.  Arvil must have a collection of the pens, since he had ready access to the drug.  The room receded to the far end of a long tunnel as MacGyver lay still, concentrating on his breathing, trying to claw his way out from under the fog that pressed down on him.  He vaguely heard the sound of a body being dragged away – Jason? – then felt his own ankles seized as Arvil dragged him behind Baranyev’s desk.

“My father is not a criminal, MacGyver,” he heard Arvil hiss.  “Once the KGB have you safe again, we will be able to clear up this misunderstanding.  They will see who is loyal.”

MacGyver lay still, his heart pounding as if he was running a marathon, trying to focus on the rhythm of his own breathing.  After each exhalation, he waited for an agonizingly long time to find out if his body still remembered what came next.  His thoughts were wandering in circles, meandering through the endless maze that kept growing new branches.  Every so often a wall would open up, but it never revealed anything except more twists and turns, every tunnel fading away into the heavy grey fog.

After a while, the fog became less dense and he remembered why he was lying on this thickly carpeted floor.  Fentanyl.  Fentanyl metabolizes fast.  Real fast.  How fast?  How much did I get?  How long have I been lyin’ here?  His head was spinning and there was a metallic aftertaste in his mouth.

Mac managed to open his eyes, but the room seemed very dim.  He could see his own hand lying on the floor just a few inches in front of his face, and a few inches beyond that, the hard drive from the computer he’d been dismantling.  That’s right.  Baranyev’s computers.  I wanted to take the drive with us.  Evidence.  Mac strained to make his fingers move, to slide his hand over and clasp the drive before it could retreat and hide in the maze, but the message wasn’t getting through.  Come on, you guys, he thought to his fingers.  This is no time to be goofing off.  His hand continued to ignore him.

On the far side of his hand, he could see under Baranyev’s desk and across the room to the door that led into the hallway.  Arvil had left – he must be elsewhere in the house, trying to bargain his way into the KGB’s good graces.  How long had he been gone?

The door swung open.  MacGyver threw every fiber of his will into the struggle to make his hand move, and saw the fingers stir in the dimness.  Beyond them, two men appeared in the doorway – but it wasn’t Reznik and Arvil, coming back to finish the job.  Baranyev was standing in his own study, while the young KGB operative, Sasha, closed the door and then hurried to cut Baranyev’s hands loose.

“Nu chto, starik . . .” – Mac’s mind grappled with the Russian, wrestled for a moment to make the sounds into meaningful words.  “All right, old man.  What did you mean in there about my future?  Why are you talking about opportunities?  Look at you!”

Baranyev spoke more gently than MacGyver had heard him do before.  “Sasha – you are Sasha Mikhailovich Lebedev, aren’t you?  I remember your name – you’re a star wrestler.  Or you were.  The Olympics of 1980, wasn’t it?  A pity you were denied any further opportunities.”

Sasha’s face hardened.  “That was the past.”

“Yes, it certainly was.  And the future is more uncertain every day.” Baranyev’s voice was a honeyed rumble.  “Are you the only athlete in your family?  Or are there others – any younger brothers or cousins hoping for success and advancement?”

“We hope to serve our country.  What else should we hope for?”

“Serve the State?  Do you think it will value you as you deserve?  Do you see how well I’m valued?  My family gave everything for our country, and look how I’m treated now.”  Baranyev placed a fatherly hand on Sasha’s shoulder.  “But even as our government grows weak and begins to fawn on the West, we are building a new world in its shadow.  And we need men like you – young men with quick minds, men who will adapt to the new world we are creating.”

“What about your son?  They’re searching for him even now.”

Baranyev shrugged.  “You would think a young man would be more flexible, more able to think ahead and see the possibilities.  This is the future.”  He pointed towards the computers, and Mac felt himself freeze inside his paralysis . . . if they spotted him, lying helpless behind the desk . . . “My son will have nothing to do with them – and look, your superiors have begun to tear them apart!  But you – you’re not afraid of technology, are you?”

Beyond Baranyev, the study door silently swung open a crack.  Someone’s there.  Someone’s listening.  Baranyev, you’ve been set up.

The door was thrust open suddenly and Mac had a glimpse into the hallway of one of the KGB men, standing and listening intently; then Arvil shoved his way past and bustled into the study, with Reznik and Vasily close behind.

“They’re safe in here – what?”  Arvil looked from his father to Sasha, dumbfounded.  Baranyev looked furious.

Reznik gestured towards the hall, and the listener entered.  “Did you hear enough, Mikhail?”

“Yes, sir.  A very interesting conversation, don’t you agree, Sasha?”

Baranyev turned to Sasha with eyes narrowed with rage, to be met with a look of contempt. 

Reznik laughed.  “You think I can’t trust my own men?  Sasha had his orders.  Sasha carries out orders very well.”

Arvil looked bewildered.  “Father – I don’t understand – surely this is a misunderstanding?”

“Visha, you idiot!  What have you done?  What have you told these thugs?  Why am I cursed with an idiot for a son?  If your brother had survived, he would not have disappointed me so much.”

Arvil went as white as if he’d been slapped.  Reznik turned his cool, dispassionate gaze towards the young man, smirking faintly.  Even as he looked away, Baranyev snatched Sasha’s gun from its holster and shot Reznik in the head at pointblank range.

MacGyver felt his whole body flinch away from the sound of the gunshot, although the muscles were still reluctant to obey him.  He made another desperate attempt, and his fingers began to move, crawling across the carpet towards the hard drive on the floor in front of him.  His hand wrapped around the cool metal block.

Baranyev had stepped away from the others, brandishing the gun.  “Listen to me, all of you.  Forget those weak fools in the Kremlin – do you want to follow them blindly while we’re all run down by perestroika?  Join me instead.  With one click of that keyboard I can make every one of you rich.  Do you think you’ll get what you’ve earned any other way?  I didn’t!”

As Baranyev turned to gesture towards the computers on the desk, Vasily drew his own gun in one smooth unhurried motion and pulled the trigger.

Mac had a clear view of Baranyev’s face as the sheer blunt force of the shot drove him, staggering, several steps backwards to collide with the half-open hallway door behind him.  He showed no sign of pain or shock, only astonishment as he looked down to see the sudden and rapid wash of blood spread across the wrinkled, stained fabric of his shirt.  The look of surprise remained on his face as his eyes clouded over and he slid to the floor.

Arvil gave a howl like a mortally wounded animal and dived for Vasily.  MacGyver didn’t see the fountain pen in his hand, but when Vasily screamed and clawed at his own eyes, he guessed easily enough what had happened.  This time Arvil wasn’t satisfied with one hard punch to his victim’s stomach; he went for his father’s killer with his bare hands, grappling him by the throat.

Caught off guard, Sasha grappled ineffectively at Arvil’s back, trying to pull the screaming, flailing, half-crazed man away.  Mikhail started to reach for his gun, circling the scrimmage to find a better angle.

Mac reached up a hand through the layers of resistance, caught at the edge of the desk and dragged himself to his feet, still clutching the hard drive, feeling an almost ridiculous delight at being upright again.  It was difficult to stand, but easy enough to half-fall against Baranyev’s desk and slam the great square bulk of the computer monitor with his shoulder.  The monitor toppled off the desk and crashed to the floor, and Sasha and Mikhail both jumped away and threw their hands up to shield their heads.

What, were they expecting it was gonna explode?  The plastic cover of the monitor case cracked but the CRT remained intact.  The crash seemed to have penetrated Arvil’s maddened focus; he released Vasily, glanced around, and charged at Mikhail, knocking him to the floor and beating him with indiscriminate fury.

MacGyver saw Sasha stoop for his gun where it had fallen from Baranyev’s hand.

“Sasha!”  Mac yelled.  “Look out!”

Sasha glanced in his direction in confusion, and MacGyver tossed him the hard drive.  Sasha grabbed at it instinctively, and Mac snatched the computer keyboard from the desk, took three long strides towards him and swung it edge-first at Sasha’s head.  It connected solidly, and the young man sprawled on the floor.

MacGyver staggered, thrown off-balance by his own swing, glanced around and found he was the only person still standing – and none too steadily at that.  Vasily was lying in a drugged stupor, his slow breathing rasping in his bruised throat, and Mikhail lay senseless beside him.  Arvil was crouched beside his father, holding the lifeless form in his arms, his body racked with uncontrolled sobs.

Shouts and pounding footsteps out in the corridor told him that the respite was only momentary; the gunfire and crashes had alerted the rest of the unit.  Half staggering, Mac threw himself against the partly-closed door, grunted with surprise to find it was heavier than he had expected, slammed it and shot the bolt.

That won’t hold ‘em for long . . . he glanced around the room; they were running low on options.  He flinched inside his skin at the sound of bullets hitting the lock on the other side of the door, then grinned shakily at the unusual sound of the impact.  The door – Baranyev musta had it reinforced with steel.  Keeping his inner sanctum safe . . . I guess the paranoia paid off, for us anyway.  Didn’t save him.

A quick search around the room revealed no way out.  The windows were fortified but impassable, even if he’d been confident of his returning coordination.  He spotted Jason’s glasses, miraculously intact, halfway under a massive armchair where they’d been kicked in the scuffle with Arvil, and then found Jason himself, shoved between the chair and the wall.  Jason was still breathing, but was out cold.  MacGyver dragged him out onto the floor, lifted one of his eyelids with a thumb and found the pupil shrunk to a pinpoint.  No help there.

Sorry, Karen . . . and I got him into this one . . .  He picked up the keyboard again and stood by the door, listening, trying to figure out what was happening outside.

There was a fresh rattle of gunfire in the hallway; not pistols this time, but automatic weapons fire.  Aw, noo . . . wait . . .  the burst had been from an M-16, not an AK-47.  The gunfire ended, and the shouts on the other side of the door were recognizably English.

Even more recognizable was the rhythmic knocking on the door that followed:  dum-da-da-dum-dum . . .

Shave and a haircut . . . Mac started to laugh, weakly, as he stumbled back to the door and rapped twice.

Six bits.

Beyond the door, he heard the impossibly familiar voice of Bill Foy calling out.  “MacGyver?  You okay?  Wanna let us in?  I’m kidding about the haircut.  I promise.”

Mac unlocked the door and leaned against it weakly as he swung it open, feeling a new wave of dizziness hit him.  He realized he was still holding the keyboard.  He waved Bill in with it.

Beside Bill’s solid, reliable form was none other than Ruth Collins, brandishing a brightly polished pistol with every sign of familiar competence.  She was flanked on the other side by her chauffeur Gregory; behind them in the hall was Emily Breckinridge, standing over the KGB agents where they lay on the hall carpet, covering them with an M-16 that looked absurdly oversized in contrast to her small frame.

Bill looked at Sasha lying on the floor, then at MacGyver and his keyboard.  “You brainy types are getting awful militant, aren’t you?”

Mac gave a faint smile and shrugged.  “It’s just the impact of modern technology.”

Bill glanced around the study and turned to Ruth.  “I told you he wouldn’t have anything for us to do except to clean up after him.  Pay up.”

“Four KGB operatives still standing, and you call that just ‘cleaning up’?” Ruth replied tartly.

“It wasn’t that hard – they were distracted, they didn’t expect us, and their CO was down.  Don’t quibble.”  As Ruth handed him a twenty, he added, “And no taking this out of my signing bonus.”

Mac looked from one to the other.  “Signing bonus?”

“Yeah – Emily and I just accepted job offers from Phoenix.  And you can congratulate me, pal:  Phoenix doesn’t have a policy against field operatives marrying.  Wanna be my best man?”

Mac winced.  “Am I gonna have to rent that tux again?”

Bill laughed.  “It’s up to Emily.  But you know she’s more into Gore-tex.  Maybe we’ll just elope.”  His eyes lit up with mischief bordering on malice.  “Hey, maybe we’ll have one of those really different ‘adventure’ weddings.  Which would you hate more:  following Emily up a sheer cliff, or stuffing yourself into another tux?”

“Emily – ” Mac called out.  “About that elopement business?  Great idea.  Go for it.”

Bill laughed and returned to the hallway to help Emily secure the Soviet agents.  Mac looked at Ruth, fighting a fresh wave of giddiness that threatened to swamp the sense of sheer relief.  “So my message got through?”

“Which one?”  replied Ruth.  “A young lady called our main local office line early this morning, but it took some time for word to reach me; and she had no idea where you’d been taken.  I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of personnel in the Bay Area, and most of what I had I sent out to look for you already.  When Willis called to tell me where you were, I scrambled what troops I had on hand.”  She gently waved the hand that wasn’t holding a gun.  “Exactly how Willis knew, I have no idea; I told him not to waste any time trying to make me understand.  I simply assumed a little bird popped up out of a crystal ball and whispered in his ear.”

“You went ahead and acted on his information – just like that . . . ?”

“Without vetting it?  Of course.  Willis’ little birds may be incomprehensible, but they’ve always been reliable.”

A man Mac didn’t recognize poked his head in from the hallway.  “We’ve finished sweeping the rest of the house, Ruth.  All clear.  No more enemy assets discovered.”

Ruth winced.  “I do hate calling people ‘assets’.  But we’ll turn the lot of them over to the DXS – and I do love setting them up to owe us favors.”  She looked over at Arvil, her face sombre.  “So that’s young Baranyev?  You’ll have to fill me in on what happened – but I can see how it’s ended.”

Baranyev lay sprawled on the carpet like the toppled king at the end of a chess match.  Arvil had stopped weeping, but was still crouched holding his father’s body, drowned too deep in grief to pay any heed.

Ruth shook her head.  “Another one for the DXS to handle . . . I dare say he’ll be booted back to the Soviets as an undesirable.  I doubt he’s worth much in trade.”

“Hard to say.”  Mac tried to find some room for compassion at the young man’s devastation, but it was difficult.

“Swapping pawns . . . that’s supposed to happen early in the game.  You’d think they’d have come up with some better moves by now.”  She set the safety catch on her gun and it vanished into a pocket of her tailored suit.  “Pete will be arriving soon – he’ll be best at making those arrangements.  Dear me, Gregory.  I was going to have you pick him up again, and you’re here instead.  That was careless of me.”

“If you say so, ma’am,” Gregory replied with aplomb.

“I do.  Well.  One thing at a time.”  Ruth glanced around the study again.  “I think we’d better send for Willis immediately; he can hop up from LA and have a lovely time playing with all these wretched computers.  Somebody might as well be enjoying themselves.”  She gave MacGyver a thoughtful look.  “As for you, you look terrible, and you smell like an chemical charnel house.  How long has it been since you got any sleep?”

“I guess that depends on whether you count being half knocked out and dosed with joyless juice.”

“I don’t.  And if I tried, I dare say Pete would have words with me.  I’m supposed to return you undamaged.”

Mac grinned unsteadily.  “I’m not sure you’re gonna get your deposit back.”

Chapter Text

Ten: Dealer’s Choice

At the Bay Area regional office of the Phoenix Foundation, Pete rang off the phone at last and turned to where Ruth was sitting, reviewing the reports of the previous day’s events.

“That’s it for now,” Pete announced.  “Still no leads on the arsonist – although Mac said he had a few ideas there.  But the San Francisco branch of the DXS will keep you posted on the Brookhearst aftermath.  If they start to stonewall you, let me know, all right?  I’ll set them straight.”

“Good.”  Ruth tossed the final report onto the stack on her borrowed desk.  She had commandeered the office of the regional director, who was in obvious awe of her.  “Once the rats have all been flushed out of the maze, we should be able to resume work there.  They’ve been very good partners in the past, and there are some fine scientific minds on their staff.  We might simply take over running the lab; God knows we have enough projects to keep them all busy and out of trouble.”

“Speaking of staying out of trouble – Ruth, what the hell were you doing leading a team into that KGB nest yourself?”

Ruth arched one elegant eyebrow.  “Why shouldn’t I?  Is it the presumed dignity of my advancing years, or the expected constraint of my fancy title?”

“A little of both.”

“Oh, Pete.  You know what happens to old spies.”

“Well, no, I don’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because other than you, I’ve never met one.”

“Damned straight you haven’t.  That’s because there aren’t any.  As a breed, as soon as we start to age or slow down, we make some stupid-ass mistake and get ourselves shot, usually taking a few younger, faster, better, up-and-coming young sparks out with us as an entourage to our stupid-assed egos.”

“Ruth, I’m getting worried about you. You didn’t used to be so shy about expressing your personal opinion.”

Ruth laughed.  “I did try to retire from the game, Pete.  I truly did.  And I damned near went insane.  My husband finally told me that since I clearly needed a hobby, I could choose between divorce or gardening, or go back to trying to save the world.”

Pete laughed.  “I think you married the right man.”

“Oh, I did.  All three times.  But what about you, Pete?  The DXS have given you a lovely wide desk, and it’s getting wider.  How hard a stretch is it to reach across it?  How much pressure are you under to stay out of the field?”

“Ruth, I thought we’d dropped that subject.”

“I’m picking it up again.  Do you know why I’m currently warming the chair of the Phoenix Director of Operations?”

“Of course I do.  Your predecessor died suddenly, and you’re trying to replace him.  With me.  And you’re not paying attention when I tell you I’m not interested.”

Ruth waved a dismissive hand.  “Oh, Tom died very suddenly indeed.  He died in the field during active operations.  He stopped a bullet – but he also stopped an attempt by the Bulgarian DS to ‘repatriate’ a scientist that we helped liberate the previous year.”  Ruth leaned back in the plush leather office chair.  “Pete, the Phoenix Foundation has no age limit for field operatives, as long as they stay certified.  Admittedly, a dozen times during my last recertification, I wished I’d chosen gardening instead . . . I should also mention that we badly need a better assessment program for ongoing certification.  Does that sound like the kind of project you’d care to tackle yourself?”

Pete eyed her.  “Two minutes ago, you were lecturing me on why old spies should just fade away.”

“Ah, but I’m not a spy any more.  I’m a civilian.”

Pete shook his head reprovingly at her and turned away.  “Where’s MacGyver?  He wanted to check up on Jason Blake once we were finished here.”

“Last I saw, he was stretched out on the couch in the outer office, dead to the world.  But that was hours ago.”  Ruth reached for her intercom.  “Jocelyn, any signs of life from Sleeping Beauty?”

“He’s been awake for a while – Willis called with some computer question.  They’re still on the phone.”

“Good lord.”  Ruth stood up in alarm.  “We’d better go remind him what day it is.”

The phone in the outer office had a long cord, and Mac was pacing around as if at the end of a leash, gesticulating emphatically as he talked.  “Aw, c’mon, Willis.  That’s science fiction.  You’re never gonna get true artificial intelligence just by networking computers together, even if they can get the connections up to speed.  Okay, yeah, I agree; sooner or later they will.  So you hook up a thousand computers – a million! – and they’ll all still be individually stupid.  But when you connect all those computers, you’re also connecting the people behind them.  Just think about where that could lead!”

Jocelyn looked desperately at Pete and Ruth.  “Please.  Make him stop.”

*

“Geez, Mac, what is it with you and the girls?”

MacGyver was sitting on Gina’s couch, trying to remove a loudly purring cat from his shoulders, but it seemed to have become semiliquid.  He was having trouble getting a firm grip on it.  “What?”

“The first four months after I started seeing Gina, Bastet wouldn’t even let me pet her,” Jason replied.  “Now she’s fallen in love with you.  I didn’t think you were a cat person.”

“I’m not!  I’ve always had dogs.”

“Or camels,” Pete cut in.

Mac picked up one of Gina’s gaudy throw pillows and lobbed it at Pete’s head.  Pete caught it easily.  Once MacGyver stopped trying to shift the cat, she climbed off his shoulders and planted herself firmly in his lap, kneading his legs and purring.

“So how’s Gina feeling?” Mac asked.

“She’s okay – they released her this morning.  She’s lying down right now.  The cops picked Bryce up yesterday afternoon; he’s still in jail.  Fortunately, he hasn’t got a prayer of making bail.”

“Fortunately?”

“Yeah.  Talis heard about what happened to Gina and Tasha.  Baba’s going to have to distract her for a while, or there won’t be enough left of Bryce to prosecute.”

Mac winced at the image.  He had been petting the cat without realizing it; when he stopped, she butted his hand with her head and yowled.  He looked down at her.  “Pushy, aren’t you?”

Jason laughed.  “Okay, you win.  You’re not a cat person.  You’re just an easy mark.”

MacGyver looked at him in annoyance and reached into his jacket pocket.  “Jason, I’ve got something for you to translate for us.  Are you up to it?  How’s your eyesight?”

“I get dizzy spells and I’m still having trouble with tunnel vision.  Other than that, I’m okay – how ’bout you?”

“You got a bigger dose of Arvil’s cocktail than I did – I have to be careful driving at night is all.  It’s like having sunglasses on all the time.”

“Better stay out of dark alleys for a few days, then.  What’ve you got?”

Mac pulled out the memos he’d taken from the file room at Brookhearst, spreading them out on the coffee table.  The cat in his lap started to bat at the nearest one, and he pushed them closer to Jason and out of harm’s way.  “They’re from that file I found on Quayle.”

Pete nodded.  “Yeah.  It’s going to take a lot of work to go through everything in that file room – thank God the fire didn’t reach it.”

Jason studied the scribbled Cyrillic.  “These memos were written by two different people – oh, I see.  They’re between Volen Andreievich and Arvil Volenevich – ”

Mac interrupted.  “Um, Jason – if it isn’t too much to ask, can you just call ’em ‘Dad’ and ‘Junior’?”

Jason gave MacGyver a puzzled look.  “Okay.  Sure.  At any rate . . . let’s see.  This set is dated from January – Arv, uh, Junior is complaining that someone has refused to pay something – ”

“That’s right,” Mac broke in.  “After we took Quayle down, whoever was supposed to pay the travel bill welshed on the deal.  I guess it was supposed to be a round-trip ticket.”

Jason continued.  “There’s no letter ‘Q’ in Cyrillic, of course.  They refer to him as ‘K’.”  He frowned.  “That’s funny – Junior asks if he should close the file, and the same memo was sent back – Baranyev just wrote on it, ‘No, keep the file open.’”

Mac and Pete looked at each other uncomfortably, thinking of the botched prisoner exchange in Czechoslovakia and the conviction that another set of interests had been at work.

Jason picked up the next memo.  “This next set is from May, after – well . . . ”  He looked faintly green.  “Anyway.  This one’s from, uh, Dad.  ‘Visha’ – that would be Arvil – ‘I told you to drop it.  You do not need to know more.  K was a weakling and a fool.’  Here’s the reply:  ‘I thought you said he worked for us.’”

The room had become very quiet as Jason picked up the last memo.  The cat’s purring had stopped some minutes before.  “‘He worked for me, and he knew too much.  He was a liability.  Close the file.  I do not want to hear of this again.’”  Jason set the memos down and wiped his hands on his slacks, trying to scrub off the tangible sense of corruption and betrayal.

Pete let out a long whistle.  “Just what was Baranyev up to?”

Mac shook his head, his eyes troubled.  “I’m not sure.  Nothing the KGB or the Kremlin knew about or planned – nothing official; we know that.  Something outside the system – something big and nasty that hasn’t got a name just yet.”

“There are a lot of changes getting started in Eastern Europe,” Pete remarked.  “Some things are being set free that would’ve been better kept locked up.  When the system starts to relax its grip, the predators are going to get loose too.”

“Hang on . . . ”  MacGyver sat back in the couch, unconsciously rubbing the cat’s ears as his eyes turned inwards, hunting a wisp of memory.  “There was a phrase in some of those telexes – it kept turning up.  Soviet Biznesa, no, Sovet – that’s it:  Internatsional’nyi Sovet Biznesa.”  He looked at Jason.  “Nothin’ to do with the official Soviet government at all – ”

Jason was nodding.  “That’s just ‘Sovet’ as in ‘network’ – ‘International Business Network’.  It sounds pretty simple.”

Pete’s eyes had narrowed.  “Some foresighted entrepreneurs taking an early shot at capitalism – from the underside.  I don’t think we’ve heard the last of them.”

Jason rose abruptly, grabbing the back of his chair to steady himself.  “I’m going to go check on Gina.”  The cat slipped away from under Mac’s hands, flowed off his lap, and padded after Jason.

Pete looked over at Mac and seemed to reach a sudden decision.  “MacGyver, there’s something I need to talk to you about.  Things have been, well, a little unsettled at the DXS.”

“Brandon still givin’ you a hard time about our little trip to Leningrad?  Heck, you’ve got a whole basketful of KGB goons you can dump on his desktop.  And we can finally close the file on Quayle, with some real answers for a change.”

“It’s not that.  It’s – Mac, he has been giving me a hard time, but not about Russia.  About you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.  He’s not comfortable with your status at the DXS – he’s, well, puzzled that you even exist.”

“You know, whenever I start to wonder about that myself, I usually go hiking.  Has he tried that?”

“Mac, that’s not what I meant!  Brandon doesn’t like having an operative who’s a part-time contract worker!  And he wants to know why I give you all the ‘plum assignments’, in his words.  He told me he wants you ‘regularized’.”

Mac shook his head and blinked both eyes.  “ ‘Regularized’?  Is that even a word?”

Pete gave a twisted smile.  “It’s from an obscure dialect of Bureaucracy-speak.  I don’t think even Jason could translate it into anything meaningful.”

“Oh, I get the meaning all right.  Pete, how long have you been runnin’ interference for me on this one?”

“I haven’t exactly – ”

“Oh, yes you have – ”

They were interrupted by the loud jangling of the phone.  Mac started, then picked it up.  “Hello?”

“Zarsha.  Did you find your knife?”

Mac settled back on the sofa.  “Yeah, Baba.  I did.  How did you know anyway – never mind, don’t tell me.  Lucky guess?”

“Of course.  Lucky guess.  What else?”

“Where are you callin’ from?  Are you okay?”

“I am at home.  I am safe.  You will come here now, please?  And I think your friends should come too.  Not Gina; she must rest.  The others.  There is something that must be considered.”

*

When they reached Baba’s, Tasha was sitting outside on the porch, watching Willow run back and forth on the lawn, arms outstretched, emitting vrooming sounds.  The girl was wearing a child-sized motorcycle helmet.  Talis’ Harley was at the curb.

Willow ran up to the Jeep as soon as it was parked, stared solemnly at Pete, then attached herself to Jason’s leg as he climbed out and demanded an introduction to Pete.  Once MacGyver emerged from the driver’s side, she abandoned Jason, ran around the Jeep and proudly showed Mac her helmet.

“See?  Talis promised to take me for a ride.”

Mac picked her up.  “Cool.”

“She says I’m too young to have my own bike.”

“Well, yeah.  Your arms need to be longer so you can reach the hand controls.”

Willow pulled off the helmet and looked at MacGyver seriously.  “What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“Your real name.  The one you like to use.  Not ‘Phoenix’.  You don’t like that.  You don’t like any of the others.”

“Mac.”

“Mac.  Did the fire scare you?”

Mac ruffled her hair.  “If you’re careful with fire, you don’t have to be scared of it.”

“Not that fire.  The big smelly one, where it went boom and stuff.  The one you had to put out.”

Mac stared at her.  “How could you possibly know anything about that?”

Willow shrugged.

“Well, yeah.  I was scared.  I was scared that a lot of people might get hurt.”  MacGyver felt a wave of ice wash through him at the memory, and he found himself hugging the child harder than he had intended to; but she merely wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed back, the helmet thumping against his back as it dangled on its strap.  “That scared me so much I didn’t even think about getting hurt myself.  And that’s why I had to put the fire out.  Later on I thought about how I could have been hurt, but I’d still do it again if I had to.  Sometimes you just do things even when you’re scared.”

“I was scared to jump off the diving board at the pool last week, but Mommy told me to go ahead and so I did.”

“Did you?  Good for you.  And good for her.”

Talis came out of the house and Willow looked at her, waved, and wriggled to be set down.  Once on the ground, she put the helmet back on and charged at the tall woman, tagged her and ran away.

Pete and Jason had already gone in; Mac paused on the porch for a moment with Tasha, turning to watch Talis chase Willow around the yard, roaring like a turbocharged lion.

“She asked you about the fire, didn’t she?”  Tasha asked.

Mac nodded, not sure what to say.

“And no, nobody told her anything.  She brought it up herself yesterday, and I didn’t even know what she was talking about.  We finally told her she’d just have to ask you.”  Tasha stood up and met MacGyver’s eyes directly.  “Baba said you asked her why she plays the ‘Gypsy Queen’ role for Aspen and Gina and the rest.”

Mac looked at the child.  “That’s why?”

“Yes.  There are two or three others, but she’s the one we worry about the most.  She’s so young . . . so far, we’ve managed to keep her thinking it’s just an ordinary thing.  Private, but normal.  We’re teaching her to be careful who she talks to about it.  She understands ‘private’ very well.”

“It’s a good thing for kids to learn about anyway.”

“Careful, MacGyver.  Your skepticism is looking a bit thin.”  Tasha gave a sideways jerk of her head.  “Baba’s waiting for you inside.”

“Do you know why?”

She looked troubled.  “Yes, but I’m not supposed to tell you.”

The scene in Baba’s living room was eerily reminiscent of finding Baranyev a prisoner in his own house; but this time, the stern authority figure was Baba herself, with Pete and Jason backing her up instead of a matched set of KGB heavies.  The focus of their attention, although miserable and sullen, was not bound and bleeding.  And instead of a disorienting lurch as the world realigned, there was an almost audible click as the puzzle pieces fitted together.  MacGyver realized that he’d known all along.  He even understood why he had to be the one to do the talking now.

Rainbow sat hunched in the middle of Baba’s couch in her stained and faded tie-dyed shirt and scuffed jeans, her arms wrapped around herself, hopeless and yet defiant.  She looked up as Mac approached her, glaring, uncontrite.

“You followed me that night at Brookhearst, didn’t you?”  Mac looked down at her and tried not to give in to the memory of the infinite sickening moments in the underground lab, caught between the frying pan and the fire.  Getting dressed that morning, he’d found most of his left side covered with livid bruises from when the shock wave had slammed him against the side of the elevator shaft.  “That’s how you got in.”  Man, my rear-view mirror musta been way more crowded than I thought . . . good thing Rainbow and Vasily didn’t trip over each other.  “Did you pick Brookhearst as your target because of me?  Because you heard me talkin’ about them?”

Rainbow shook her head.  “No.  I did hear you talking about them, and then when I saw you there that night I followed you.  But I already . . . I was already going to do it, even before that.”

“But why?  Why set the fire?  Okay, you saw a lot of horrible stuff in Bhopal – but why Brookhearst?  They had nothin’ to do with it!”

“But I knew that what they were doing was evil!”

If you only knew, Mac thought.

Rainbow’s sullen spite suddenly flared into rage.  “I thought you’d be on my side!  I heard you at the Solstice festival – you knew something about Brookhearst.  And what you said about toxic chemicals.  You must’ve known they’re poisoning things.  They’re all part of it.”  She hunched her shoulders again.  “Why’d you have to put the fire out?”

“Well, for one thing, there were people in that building!  Including me!  And research that might actually help people – aw, nuts, forget it.”  He could see in her eyes just how tightly closed the doors were inside.

Rainbow sniffed petulantly.  “I didn’t mean anyone to get hurt!  I’m sorry.”

Baba threw up her hands.  “Enough!”  She had once again shed her gaudy trappings and ostentatious jewelry, and in her plain black dress and head scarf, she had faded into near invisibility.  Now MacGyver caught a glimpse of Pete’s startled expression as Baba stepped forward.  Pete had only just met her, and had never seen her make this sudden switch into the haughty autocrat.

Baba stood in front of Rainbow and folded her arms decisively.  “You were to apologize to him, not argue with him – and since you cannot do even that, this ends now.”  She turned to Jason.  “Bluejay, you will go with her to the authorities?  Tasha will take you in her car.”

“Of course I will, Babushka,”  Jason replied.  He glanced from her to Mac and Pete.  “Um, where should I take her?  Somehow I don’t think the local cops are going to be the best choice . . . ”

Pete rose to his feet.  “I’ll make a couple of phone calls.  We should be able to get this wrapped up pretty smoothly.”

Mac stood with his thumbs hooked into his jeans pockets, watching as Jason and Tasha led Rainbow away.  Behind him, he could feel Baba like a watching shadow.  Once they were alone, he turned to face her.  After a long moment, his hand dipped into his front pocket; he drew it out and opened the fingers wide to show his knife.

“Thanks.  I guess I owe you one.”

Baba shook her head vehemently.  “No.  If there is a debt it is on my side.”

“Baba.  Why did you send me off after Baranyev?  Did he do something to you, or your family?  Did you used to know him, back in Leningrad – in Saint Petersburg?”

“All that – you think it was for revenge?”  She shook her head emphatically, almost indignantly.  “I never saw him before he came to this country, not so long ago.  I have been here many many years!  You know that.  I am citizen here.  I still have the little flag they give me.”  She gestured towards one wall, and Mac suddenly noticed that there was a small domovushka hanging from the framed mirror that faced the hallway.  Worked into the knotted cords was a small, faded American flag.

She shook her ahead again, but without anger.  “No, no.  I needed your help to be free of him.  When I first went to his house, I knew it was not a good idea.  But it was already too late to refuse.  Every time I saw him, every time he sent for me, the stink of evil was worse.  His money stank of evil.  I had to give it away.  I was afraid, afraid for Tasha, afraid for all my foolish children who wish so much to be a little bit Roma.  They have no notion how evil men can be.”  The birdlike eyes pierced his own.  “When you look at me, do you still see a charlatan?”

“I’m not sure what I see,”  Mac said slowly.  “And since I’m not sure, I’m not gonna pretend I know better.”  As Baba smiled broadly, he added, “What do you see?”

“Me?”  She shrugged.  “Are there words for it?  I see patterns.  Sometimes, I see where the pattern is broken, or where it is shifting and will soon break.  Then I must look for the thread that will make the pattern whole.”

Baba stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss like a benison on MacGyver’s forehead.  “And you, Zarsha – you must hold the pattern of what you believe.  It is part of what you are.”  She reached into a pocket of her dress.  “This is for you.  A keepsake.”  She held out a small, painted wood carving of a bird:  the firebird from Russian folklore.  “And now you will excuse me, please.  There is someone I need to see.  She will be here soon.”

Pete returned from his phone calls to find MacGyver sitting on Baba’s couch, turning the firebird carving over and over in his hands.  Mac looked up, his face uncertain but resolute.  “Um, Pete – there’s somethin’ I need to tell you.”

“What’s up, MacGyver?”

Mac looked slightly sheepish.  “Now, don’t take this wrong, but . . . well, it’s like this.  I’m gonna be talking to Ruth, and I’m gonna ask her to keep me in mind if the Phoenix Foundation has any more work that they might want me to do.  And, well, I might have less time for DXS missions.  Maybe a lot less.”

“I see.”

“Oh, don’t look like that, Pete, okay?  You know I really like workin’ for you.  And with you.  It’s been great.  But – I’m kinda missing out on a lot, traveling so much.  And there’s lots of things needing attention closer to home – did I ever tell you about the Challengers Club?  I dropped in on them again a coupla weeks ago.”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned them.  I know you liked being involved there.”

“And when you get down to it – Pete, I just can’t see myself getting ‘regularized’!”

“MacGyver, are you sure about this?”

“Yeah, I am.  You know I always wanted to make a difference – well, this is a different kind of difference.  And . . . I kind of owe them one.”

Pete’s expression had been carefully noncommittal; now he merely looked blank.  “What?”

MacGyver had been running his fingers along the delicately painted wings of the firebird carving, following the lines as the flames turned into feathers and back again.  It was the work of a master:  the fire that engulfed it also uplifted it.  “I guess I never told you – you know my family never had a lot of money.  Didn’t you ever wonder how I managed to swing college?  Especially at a place like Western Tech?”

“I always assumed you went on the GI Bill.”

Mac shook his head.  “That woulda maybe paid for state university.  No, Pete.  I went through college on a Phoenix Foundation scholarship.  I’d never even heard of them till a buddy of mine told me I ought to apply.  They paid for everything.”

Pete nodded.

“Ya know, Pete . . . have you ever considered working for Phoenix yourself?  You saw their operations center – there’s a lot more goin’ on there than just scientific studies.”  Mac looked at Pete in annoyed frustration.  “Oh, for cryin’ out loud, Pete, why are you laughing like that?”

Pete’s laughter was echoed by a chuckle from the doorway.  MacGyver looked up to see Ruth Collins leaning against the jamb, her arms folded, a triumphant smile on her face.

“Ruth!  What the heck are you doin’ here?”

“Baba Irina called me a short time ago, and asked me to come over.  I just arrived, and she chivvied me inside and disappeared.  I thought it better not to ask why.”

“You know Baba?”

“Well, not really.  I’d never even heard of her till yesterday; but after reading your report, I called her up this morning to see if she’d consider reading cards at my next party.  She has graciously condescended to accept me as a client.”

Pete was still laughing, but he shook his head at Ruth reprovingly.  “You know, Ruth, I never thought of you as a collector.”

Ruth gave him an arch look.  “I’m simply recycling, like a good citizen of the earth.  In this case, I’m picking up underutilized resources that the DXS are damned idiots enough not to put to full and proper use.”

MacGyver was looking from one to the other suspiciously.  “What’s goin’ on?”

“I’m afraid you just lost him a bet, MacGyver.”

“I never accepted that bet!” Pete snapped.

“True.  But I’ll pay up on my side anyway, as a signing bonus.  I’ve always been a firm believer in incentives.”

Pete sighed.  “The carrot and the stick?  Is that what we both have to look forward to?”

“Don’t fret yourself, Pete. You needn’t worry that I’ll interfere – well, not much – very little – not once I’ve handed over the reins. I shall retire to my lovely nest here in San Francisco, and you’ll only have to contend with me during Foundation board meetings.”  Ruth glided into the room and settled herself in one of Baba’s armchairs with the air of a queen assuming a throne. “Believe me, if I’d wanted to keep the job of Operations Director, I wouldn’t have bulldogged you for all these months. And I behaved myself last time, didn’t I?”

Mac had been listening with fascination.  “Last time?”

“Oh, tell him,” Pete said with resignation.

“Very well.  I first met this rascal in Toulon, over twenty years ago.  I had returned to France and was yawning my way through the social whirl.  My husband found it necessary to borrow Pete from the DXS to bring embassy security up to something resembling competence.  The Cold War was heating up, and I thought that sounded far more interesting than cold cuts and garden parties.  So I reactivated what remained of my old network from the war and turned it over to Pete.  I believe they performed satisfactorily?”

“Once you made it clear I was your anointed successor, yes.  You had some damned good men on tap.”

“I have never been satisfied with less than the best.  And now I can be sure I have just that.”  She beamed at her new acquisitions.

MacGyver looked thoughtful.  “Ruth, exactly what kinda work were you planning on havin’ me do?”

“I wasn’t planning on being exact about it.  Exactitude is often overrated.  What kind of work do you want to do?  You have a unique set of talents, after all.  We’ll just call it ‘troubleshooting’ and have done with it.”  She looked at Pete again.  “And Pete, before you start in with a fresh batch of regrets, let me warn you both:  don’t be too quick to assume you’re writing yourselves out of the pages of history.”

Pete snorted slightly.  “People like us aren’t there anyway.  Our part gets written in invisible ink.”

“Then you may find working for Phoenix a refreshing change.  Governments generally find the truth unsightly and awkward:  an embarrassment to be buried in some dark cellar.  We’re more interested in dragging it out into the sunlight and watching to see if it starts to smoke – or sprouts leaves and blossoms instead.  There’s a great deal of work to do, and no end of trouble to be stirred up.”

MacGyver set down the firebird carving. His grin was a beam of pure mischief and delight.  “I can’t wait.”

d.c. al coda

Chapter Text

Cards On the Table
a gratuitous epilogue

“NO, Mac.  No way.  End of discussion.”

MacGyver stood in the middle of Jason and Gina’s new San Francisco condo, arms akimbo, grinning unapologetically.  “Aw, c’mon.  Whatever happened to being open-minded?”

“You’re the one who told me not to let my brains fall out!  And if you show up to my handfasting in that shirt, somebody’s brains are gonna be served up on a platter for the potluck, and it ain’t gonna be mine!”  Jason glared at Mac.  “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?  Just to get at me?”

Mac laughed and shrugged.  “Just tryin’ to get you to relax.  I can’t do it by getting you drunk, after all, and that’s supposed to be the traditional method.”

“Well, you could . . . “ Jason muttered.

“I won’t.  Same difference.”

“Well, threatening me with that shirt is not relaxing, okay?  A shirt that ugly has to be bad luck.”

“Oh, so now you believe in plain ordinary luck?”

“After everything I’ve seen you pull off, I’ve got to,” Jason murmured.  “But – luckily enough! – Gina had a hunch that you might pull something like this.”  He produced a package from underneath a sofa cushion and tossed it to Mac.  “Present for you – from both of us, kind of, but mostly from Gina.”

MacGyver pulled off the wrapping expecting the worst, and broke out into a broad grin when he held up the contents:  a short-sleeved, open-collared cotton shirt in bright sky blue, a color guaranteed to make any DXS ops coordinator froth at the mouth.  It was spattered with red and yellow cartoon figures of rocket ships and explosions, and large white and yellow letters reading “BANG” and “BOOM”.  The shirt wasn’t merely ‘conspicuous’ or even ‘attention-grabbing’.  It was strident.

Mac loved it on sight.

“Gina found it at one of the downtown boutiques – she’s got five new clients already thanks to Ruth, and now that she doesn’t have to commute across the Gate, she’s got more time to stir up customers.”  Gina ran her own business, doing window dressing design for high-end shops.  “So what’s she doing?  Getting more exclusive.  You wouldn’t believe how much an ordinary shirt costs in the place where she scored that one.  Not that she paid for it.  She never pays for clothes.  I think she permitted them to give it to her.”

Mac had unbuttoned and shed the bright flowered shirt he’d worn to bait Jason, and was standing in his khaki slacks checking his new acquisition for pins as Jason talked.  He realized he’d been grinning too hard to say thanks.

“Well, hell, it’s the least I can do after everything you’ve done . . . and if you expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with our getting this condo, you can think again.  I may not be a genius – ” Mac would have interrupted, but Jason gave him no opening.  “ –  but I’m not naïve.  I know just how tight housing is in San Francisco . . . I mean, look at this place.  I can walk to the embassy from here, and Gina’s an easy transit hop from her clients.”

Mac couldn’t help feeling a true sense of smugness, looking around the condo.  Ruth Collins hadn’t been kidding when she said she believed in incentives.  When Pete had told her about the informal ‘bonus’ system he and MacGyver had developed over the years, she’d been delighted with the idea and had insisted on adopting the same practice immediately.  Her insidious network of contacts had scored the condo for Jason and Gina, which had eliminated one of the obstacles to their marriage.

MacGyver was still wondering about some of the other obstacles.  “Um, Jason . . . did you ever hear from Karen?  Is she gonna be there?”

Jason shrugged.  “Nothing final, but that’s final enough.  I had to be honest with her, Mac – I told her our father was coming.”

Mac blinked at him.  “Karen told me you were the only family she had left.”

“Did she? Well, you can’t blame her for not counting Dad – he and Mom got divorced when we were in our teens, and she took it pretty personally.  After Mom died, she kind of pretended he didn’t exist either.  Actually, so did I – it wasn’t till after I got back from Czechoslovakia that I got back in touch with him.”

“Good for you.”

“Good for Baba, really.  She made me do it; gave me a really awful scolding.  But I’m glad now.  So how’s the new job working out?”

MacGyver’s face became incandescent.  “Aw, it’s terrific.  Man.  Where do I begin?  I just wrapped up three weeks of marine habitat studies down in Monterey – we’re assessing the status of the Marine Gardens park there, you know, and – ” he was about to launch into a more detailed description when he saw Jason’s eyes showing signs of glazing.  Instead, he broke off with a sheepish look.  “Anyway, I had to take a break in the middle of that for a field test of your embassy security.”

Jason stared at him.  “That was you?”

Mac shrugged and nodded.

“Do you know how badly you freaked out the ambassador?” Jason demanded.  “Since your little visit, they’ve added so many new security protocols, it takes me three times as long just to get in and out of the building!”

Mac shrugged again.  “Well, just between you and me, I’ve seen birdfeeders that were harder to get into.”

Jason shook his head and glanced at the clock.  “C’mon, hotshot.  We need to get going.”

“Um, I forgot to ask before – ” Mac attempted a nonchalant tone as he shrugged into the new shirt.  “Is Aspen gonna be there?”

Jason didn’t answer immediately, and when Mac looked up in concern, he found the younger man smirking at him.  “Yeah, she’ll be there.  Better give her some space, though.”  He studied Mac thoughtfully.  “You know, I had my doubts when Gina brought that shirt home, but it’s okay.  But what happened to your hair?  It looks lighter than it used to be.”

Mac pulled one of the longer strands around so he could peer at it.  “Beats me.  You remember when Baba had me use that dye, when she took me to Baranyev’s house that first time?  Afterwards, she gave me some other stuff to get rid of the dye, but I swear it made everything way lighter than before.”

Jason shrugged.  “Well, you know what they say – if you stay in California long enough, sooner or later you’ll turn into a blonde.  Now you just need to get a red sports car.”

*

The hills of Marin County dozed under the August sun, and even the birds were quiescent, sheltering in the shade of the thickets until the heat of afternoon was gone.  Preparations for the wedding had paused until the sun passed far enough to the west that the hammerblows of summer no longer hit so hard.

“Gypsy Time,”  Jason had called it.  “The Tribe never actually starts anything on schedule, even when we bother having one.  Maybe we’re just pretending about the Gypsy thing, but it’s still a good idea.  Who says we have to be in a hurry?”

Mac thought it was a terrific idea.  In Baba’s grand tent, the sides had been looped up so that the breezes off the Pacific would pass through and keep the shady insides cool, or at least cooler.  Most of the guests wouldn’t arrive until early evening anyway; in the meanwhile, half the people who had been getting ready were now sprawled in the shade, dozing or resting, and the others were gathered around where Tasha was telling stories.

“When the wise woman saw that the Prince held a single feather of the Firebird in his hand, she shook her head at him.  ‘Go home, young man.  Abandon your quest.  Cast that feather away from you, or it will be your death.’ ”

MacGyver was sitting with Willow on his lap, listening to Tasha.  When the child had been handed over to him, Raven had insisted that it was just to keep her out of trouble while the preparations were made for the celebration; but Mac suspected that he was also being kept out from underfoot.  They’d been happy enough for his help in setting up tents and rigging canopies, although he tended to ask awkward questions when it came to the rest of the arrangements.  But the men had begun to shed their shirts as the day and the work grew warmer – Mac had cached his new shirt in the relative safety of the Jeep – and when the women began to follow suit, his confusion and embarrassment had begun to interfere with his ability to help.

He didn’t mind; the afternoon sun was hot, the shade was comfortable, there was a samovar full of iced tea, and Tasha was a good storyteller.

“ ‘I cannot,’ the Prince declared.”  Tasha’s voice hit a deep register.  “ ‘I will never give up my treasure.  My father sent me to seek out the Firebird itself, and I will not return without it.’  He held up the feather.  ‘See how brightly it shines!  It fills my heart with joy.  For this treasure I will give up all that I have and all that I might have had.’ ”

Mac suddenly recalled one of the pictures on the wall of the Baranyev library, barely noticed at the time:  it had shown a young man in fairy-tale costume, reaching out to seize a bird that had looked something like a peacock, only flying.  The bird had been blazing with radiance against a night sky, and the light had caught the young man’s face; but his expression hadn’t been joy or delight.  It had been naked greed and blind ambition.  Mac shivered at the memory, remembering his last sight of Arvil Baranyev, demented with grief, his shirtfront stained with his father’s blood after he had finally let go of the dead man.

Willow began to wriggle and squirm.  After a moment, Tasha paused and looked at her fixedly.  “Willow – ”

“He’s leaking.”  The declaration was petulant, but matter-of-fact.

Tasha shook her head reprovingly.  “Everyone leaks, sweetie.  You know what you’re supposed to do.”

Willow hunched her shoulders, rubbed at her arms briskly, then relaxed, wiggled around and looked at Mac consideringly.  He studied her, not sure what to say.

“Much better,” Tasha said.

Willow beamed like a small nugget of sunlight.  She started to dig through her pockets.  “Wanna see what Baba gave me?”

“Uh, sure.”

After a moment, Willow stopped hunting through her pockets and fished out a braided cord that hung around her neck.  A farrier’s nail hung from it, a large one, big enough to shoe a Percheron.  Mac raised an eyebrow, not sure what to say.

“It works like this.”  Willow unlooped the cord from her neck and stabbed the nail into the ground.  “See?  All the bad stuff goes into the earth.”

“Um, cool.”

“ ‘Lectricity works like that too.  Did you know that?”

“Uh-huh.”

Willow pulled the nail out by its cord and examined it thoughtfully.  “Tasha says not to stick metal stuff into sockets.  Or fingers.  Did you know that?”

“Um, yeah, I learned that one a while ago.”  Mac gave her a hug.  “I learned it the hard way.  My mom was real mad at me afterwards, but I think it was just ‘cause I scared her.”

“Was she mad at you a lot?”

Mac couldn’t help laughing.  “Sometimes it seems that way.  I guess I was a real handful.”

As the sun dropped, activity resumed, especially around the cooking area; but MacGyver had done his share of the heavy lifting and hauling there earlier, and was glad to keep his distance.  He had found he didn’t care for the smell of the meat in the roasting pit.  It made a big difference, being at home more often and able to choose what he wanted to eat.

He’d already given notice on the lease of the beach loft before the pressure from the DXS had ceased to matter, and he hadn’t been able to regain the tenancy.  He still regretted that bit of bad timing.  But the new loft was airy and convenient, and he’d filled the fridge with fresh fruits and vegetables and actually been able to eat them, instead of returning after another sudden and unexpected overseas trip to face yet another batch of science experiments.

Mac returned to the parking area to retrieve his shirt from the Jeep.  Enough cars had arrived that newcomers had a longer walk than before, and the trodden grass of the field was dusty.  He had to give the shirt a good hard shake before putting it on again.  He wiped the dust off his sunglasses in turn and put them back on, and glanced up to see an unexpected new arrival picking her way slowly along the line of dusty cars.  Her feet in their high heels sank awkwardly into the loose, dry earth, catching stalks of dried grass.  Karen Blake, in her business suit and nylons, looked lovely and well-groomed, and hopelessly out of place.

“You’ll find it easier going if you take those off,” he said.  He leaned against the end of the Jeep and watched her approach.

“Hi, MacGyver.”  Her smile was strained.

“Good seein’ you.”

“It’s good to see you too . . . I got your message.”

“And?”

“That’s why I’m up here in the Bay Area.”  She crossed her arms, smiling nervously.  “You were right.  The Phoenix Foundation has a job opening in their Washington, DC branch . . . keeping an eye on the big guys in suits.  I just had an interview with Ruth Collins.”

“How’d it go?”

Karen started to flinch and hunch her shoulders, and turned the reaction into a shrug.  “It seems she puts a lot of value in your opinion.  She wants to talk to you about the ‘incident’ last fall.”

Mac pushed his hands into his pockets and studied her thoughtfully.  “So you came out here today just to make nice to me?”

“No.”  She turned away from him.  “I came out here to be at my brother’s wedding.  I figured I’d go look you up after that.”  She looked around at the battered cars with their idealistic bumper stickers, and glanced up towards the main clearing as a wordless shout of laughter echoed across the meadow.  “You know, I just couldn’t picture it, but I should’ve known you’d find some way to fit in with these people.  God knows I never could.”

“But you’re here.”

She shrugged again.  “Ruth told me that if I wanted a second chance, I was going to have to make up my mind to deserve it.  I guess I had to start somewhere.”

“Smart lady.”  Mac pushed himself away from the Jeep, gesturing with his head towards the meadow.  “C’mon.  Jason’ll be real happy you came.”

She fell in beside him, still picking her way in her pumps.  “It’s just hard getting used to the idea that my little brother doesn’t need me any more.”

Mac took her elbow to help her across the rough ground.  “But he does.  Just not in the same way.”

*

After the ceremony and the feasting had ended, the drumming began.  MacGyver was surprised at how much of a temptation it was.  Cairbre and Moira had both asked him to sit in, and the sound tugged at him palpably . . . maybe later.  He had something else to take care of first.

He’d seen Aspen within five minutes of their arrival that morning; she greeted him with an enthusiastic “Mac!  I didn’t know you were going to be here!”  He’d received a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek, and then he’d been sent off with Cairbre to help dig the cooking pit.  He’d seen her a dozen times during the day, always in the middle of something; during the afternoon siesta, she’d been nowhere in sight.  In the end, he’d heeded Jason’s advice to ‘give her space’, but he still wasn’t sure what was going on.  If anything was.

Aspen wasn’t at the firepit, but Mac was hesitant to start asking around for her.  It seemed too transparent.  After a moment’s reflection, he headed for the brightly lit beacon of Baba’s tent.  He glanced inside as he paused at the open doorway, ready to kick off his shoes, and saw Baba holding court in a circle of giggling adolescent girls.  His heart sank at the thought of running that particular gauntlet; but Baba glanced up, met his eyes, and winked.  She pointed deliberately across the meadow, waved a dismissive hand, and turned away to smack Sunrise’s hand as the girl started to reach for the deck of Tarot cards.

The entire exchange had taken only a moment.  Mac left his shoes on and beat a hasty retreat in the direction Baba had indicated.

The sun had set some time back in a blaze of glory, and there had been only a faint fingernail of a moon, briefly visible at sunset.  Now the dark sky was bright with stars; away from the firepit and the torches near the tents, the meadow was shadowed and dark.  Mac nearly walked into Aspen before he saw her.

She was standing by herself, her head thrown up to watch the sky.  She started when she saw him approaching, and then smiled.

“Well, hi, stranger.”

“Hi yourself.”  He stopped a short distance away.  “Stargazing?”

“Yeah.  I was really watching for shooting stars – Lammas is a bit early for the Perseids, but sometimes we get lucky.”

“What’s too early?”

“Lammas.  That’s what this festival is called.  It’s halfway between the solstice and the equinox.”  She looked at him directly.  “Mac, is it my imagination, or have you been keeping your distance all day?  I don’t bite, you know.”

“That’s not what I remember,” Mac said softly, with a half-smile.  Even in the dark, he knew he’d made her blush.  “Jason told me I needed to give you some space.  I wasn’t sure what he meant.”

“Oh!  Um, I think he just meant till after the ceremony.  I get really focused when we’re getting ready for a festival – there’s always a lot to keep track of, and most of the Tribe really aren’t any good at staying organized.  Somebody has to be, or we’d never get anything done, so it’s usually me.  I don’t usually start to relax till things are underway.”  Aspen shrugged.  “And, well, I didn’t want to make any assumptions.”

“Assumptions?”

“Well, I knew you were from out of town – LA, right? . . . I didn’t know if I’d see you again.  It’s not like I own you or anything.”  She realized she was staring at him hungrily, and she flushed and looked away.  “I mean, c’mon.  A guy as good-looking as you are?  Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d shown up with a Venice Beach sun bunny on each arm.”

“Ummm . . .no.”  Mac hesitated before he continued.  “I – well, I just wanted to be sure – you’re not mad at me from last time?”

“Mad?”  Aspen gave him a blank look.  “Mad at you?  Because you left in the morning without waking me up?  You warned me about that before we fell asleep – you said you had things you had to do.”  She studied him searchingly.  “I guess you weren’t kidding about that.  I’ve heard some pretty wild stories.”

Mac tried to think of any answer he could make to that.

She grinned, not noticing his hesitation.  “Of course, it might have been more fun if you had been there when I woke up . . . or not.  I can be pretty lousy company in the morning, till I’ve had some coffee – no, you had the right idea, just slipping away.  Much safer.”

“It wasn’t – ”

“Hey, I said it was all right!  It was probably higher wisdom and all that!”  She started snickering, and suddenly they were both laughing.  Mac wrapped his arms around her and held her until she stopped giggling.  She gave him a warm hug and suddenly half-pulled away, pointing towards the sky.

“Look!”  A streak of light smeared across the velvety darkness.  “There’s one!”  She craned her head upwards again.  “Do you know much about astronomy?”

“Some.  I actually used to live at Griffith Observatory.”

“What?  You’re kidding.”

“No, really.  I was the resident caretaker.”

“Wow.  Cool.”  Aspen twisted slightly, tilting her head up to the sky again.  Mac stepped around to stand behind her, still holding her, his chin brushing the top of her head as they watched the stars together.  After a few minutes, his hands slipped under the hem of her loose blouse, his fingers tracing patterns on her warm skin.

She gasped and shivered, leaning back against him.  “You’re not so shy now, are you?”

“Nope.”  He started to nuzzle her neck as his hands continued to wander, gently exploring.  “Should I stop?”  His voice was low and husky.

She drew a deep breath, feeling light-headed.  “Not unless you’re really pissed off at me and want revenge.”

“Nope.”  He let go of her for the brief moment it took to find and release the catch of her bra, and then his hands were back, pushing the fabric up to slide under and cup her breasts, warm fingers gliding across her skin, the thumbs finding and brushing her nipples.  She forgot about watching for falling stars and leaned back against him, taking deep breaths of the sweet night air.

The moonless night was warm and dry; Aspen’s glade was in heavy shadow, with only a faint wash of starlight.  She had used a penlight to lead MacGyver along the path through the band of trees, but she tossed it aside once they’d reached her bedroll.

Mac gently ran his fingers over her face, locating her mouth by touch and then covering it with his own, and she found the buttons of his shirt and began to unfasten them, running her fingers in turn over the solid muscles of his chest and the soft dusting of hair as the fabric fell away.  When she pushed the shirt off his shoulders, her hands felt the play of the muscles there as well; she wrapped her arms around him, exploring the strong curves of his back.  Wherever she touched, there was strength and life and energy under her hands.

“I’d really like to be able to see you,” Mac murmured between kisses.  “Have you got some kinda light?”

“I have a little battery lamp, but it’s awfully bright . . . I don’t use it unless I have to.  It draws moths.”

“Where is it?”

She found it in the tumble of possessions beside the sleeping bag and turned it on.  Mac picked up his shirt from where it had fallen and draped it over the bright electric bulb.  The spot of light turned into a diffuse wash, barely brighter than the moonlight had been, dappling the trees but only reaching a few feet away.  “That oughta do it.”

The dappled light caught at some images and left others in pools of shadow.  Whatever MacGyver had been doing in the six weeks since she’d seen him, he’d spent plenty of time out of doors in the sun; his skin glowed like molten bronze, and when he laid a hand on her thigh, it showed dark against the pale skin.

The touch of his fingers was feather-light, as delicate as the moth that wandered past, puzzled by the unfocused glow.  At one point, maddened by the lightness of his touch, she caught at his hand and pressed it against her breast, almost desperate to assure herself that the moment was real.  He responded with a fierce intensity she hadn’t expected, mouth and hands wandering over breasts and body as she held him close, running her hands across his back, feeling the warmth and strength under her fingers.  When he entered her, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and held him as tightly as she could, trying to imprint on her memory the feel of his body against hers.

Afterwards, Mac looked at Aspen’s face in sudden concern:  there were streaks of tears at the corners of her eyes.  He reached out a hand to brush them away.  “What’s wrong?  Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head, smiling in spite of the tears, caught at his hand and kissed his fingers.  “I – I’m just not used to the gentleness,” she said softly.  “I’m not used to it being about giving instead of getting.”

Mac started to reply, although he wasn’t sure what to say; but she laid a finger against his lips. “I don’t need to get used to it. It’s enough to have it now.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close. “Now is what matters.”

*

MacGyver opened his eyes and blinked up at the feathery leaves on the trees that arched above them, the silhouette of the branches edged with the first tentative rays of dawning light.  Aspen was curled up beside him, her arms still wrapped around him, her head cradled on his chest.  Her grip was warm but not possessive.  He lay contented for several minutes, stroking her tousled hair gently with his fingers, watching the rosy light shift to gold as the sun cleared the horizon.

After a timeless span, Mac became aware that she was awake and looking at him, the sleepiness in her eyes gradually clearing away.

“Morning.”

“Yup.  It’s morning.”  Aspen squinted up at the trees.  “Of all the mornings I’ve seen, this is definitely one of them.”

Mac grinned.  “Maybe I shoulda slipped away after all .. .if only to find you some coffee.”

Aspen laughed.  “Some things are even better than coffee in the morning.”  She trailed her fingers over his chest.  “I guess there weren’t any important secret missions calling you away this time, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Lucky me, then.”  She was studying him closely; he suddenly felt pinned down by her scrutiny.

“What're you looking at?”

Aspen looked apologetic. “I’m trying to imagine who you are when you aren’t here,” she blurted. “Someone like you – what you do has to be part of who you are. I’m just trying to guess what that is. I can’t figure it out.”

MacGyver smiled.  “You could ask.”

“We don’t, usually, you see,” she replied seriously.  “It’s kind of bad manners.  That’s why no one’s asked you your last name.”

Mac almost laughed at that.  “It’s MacGyver.”

“Oh!”  She blinked.  “Mac’s short for that, right?”  He nodded.  “Let me guess – you’re saddled with one of those don’t-ever-ask first names, huh?”

“You got it.”

Aspen laughed.  “That’s why our people mostly choose their own names.  But I guess you’ve already done that.”

“Huh.  Yeah, I guess I have.”

“So . . . what do you do, Mac?”

Mac lay looking up at the sun-gilded trees, realizing he didn’t need to tell her anything other than the unvarnished, happy truth.  There was no reason to be anything other than completely honest.  “I work for the Phoenix Foundation.  You’ve heard of them, right?”

“Who hasn’t?”  Mac could see the admiration and respect in her eyes – something that he’d never seen in the years he’d worked for the government.  “But what do you do for them?”

“Well . . . whatever they need me for, really.”  Mac drew her closer to him, smiling.  “I guess you could say I’m a troubleshooter.”

~ game over ~

Acknowledgements:

This story would never have seen the light of day without an incredible amount of help and research support. Particular gratitude goes out to:

For chemistry: Robin, a Dangerous Woman with many interesting recipes.

For mid-80's computer systems: Rockatteer, of the macgyveronline website. (Home systems only. Any errors involving mainframes are entirely my own.)

Special thanks also goes to Rockatteer for his documentation of MacGyver's various Swiss Army knife models.

For Russian: Laarell, Astra, and MacNymph, and the Linguaphiles community on LJ.

Special thanks to Melissa, for overall support and vetting me on the behaviour of small children.

And extra-special thanks to Lothithil, the best Beta in the world, for support, enthusiasm, and checking me on canon.

A great deal of information and dubious inspiration came from Misha Glenny's recently published book McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (published in the UK as McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers); released in April 2008, just in time to give me plenty of background and ruin my sleep.

Any and all errors, omissions, and sloppy or cavalier treatment of reality are my fault.

Russian and Romany terms and expressions:

molodoi chelovek – young man.

Babushka – Grandmother; can be used to apply to any old woman. 'Baba' for short.

domovoi – in Slavic folklore, the tutelary spirit of a house.

domovushka – a good-luck charm.

marime – the Romany (Gypsy) concept of impurity or uncleanness. Unrelated to actual physical dirt.

gadje – Romany term for a non-Rom. (The word "Gypsy" is not used by the Romany at all.)

Ruska Roma – the largest of the ethnic Romany groups of Russia. As in most countries, they suffered ongoing persecution, which persisted under Tsarist, Communist, and contemporary government.

A note on Cyrillic transliterations: any attempt to render Russian into the Roman alphabet is going to involve awkward stumbles. As an example, I chose to use the spelling 'zarptika' for the Russian "firebird", although my best source for Russian rendered the word 'Zhar-ptitsa'.

Also worth noting: the Russian Firebird is very different from the Phoenix of Arabian mythology, as dissimilar as the European and Chinese dragons. Where the Phoenix passes through a fire of its own making and returns to life renewed by the passage, the Firebird is an elemental force of fire itself, not to be approached casually or regarded lightly.

Other notes:

Arvil's 'cocktail': comprised of fentanyl (an opiate), pancuronium bromide (a paralytic agent) and droperidol (an anti-anxiety agent), with dimethyl sulfoxone (DMSO) as the solvent for the liquid form. Fentanyl is suspected as an agent in the Russian OSNAZ response to the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002, in which 39 terrorists and 129 (or more) hostages died. Don't try this at home.

Rohypnol:  although not common in the US in 1986, it was already known in Europe; both Jason and MacGyver were in a position to have encountered the drug.

Sasha's wrestling career: the US boycotted the 1980 Olympics, held in Moscow; the USSR boycotted the 1984 Olympics, held in LA.

The song that appears in chapter 4 comes from the album "Concert for the Earth" by Paul Winter, recorded live at the General Assembly of the United Nations on World Environment Day (5 June 1984) under the title "Hymn to the Russian Earth". It became popular in the USA as a round in the New Age, pagan and counterculture communities, where its confused provenance quickly became even more muddled.

Although commonly believed to be a traditional Russian song that Winter discovered during his trips to the USSR, the song appears in a 1946 Unitarian hymnal, with the same tune (attributed to Yuri Zaritsky) and a similar though not identical set of lyrics (attributed to Jim Scott). The lyrics used by Paul Winter are attributed to Eugene Friesen; the partial translation back to Russian used for this story was provided by the linguaphiles community.