“What do your parents think?” That sounded like an intelligent way to stall. Technically, I was still an outsider, and the family would probably frown on any influence I had over the boys.

“Bah!” Zerleg spit. “They want me to stay here too. Like Sasug, they want me to be a sheepherder.”

“Sasug?” I asked, a little confused. “Doesn’t that mean ‘smelly’?” Maybe my Mongolian wasn’t that good.

Zolban nodded. “Yes. But it actually means ‘she smells good.’ At least, that is why they named her that.”

The boys seemed confused by my confusion, so I let the matter drop. I’d never really gotten the hang of Mongolian names and their various shades of meaning. All I could do was continue my profound respect for their culture and leave it at that.

“Have you told your family how much this means to you?”

Zerleg nodded. “Grandfather and Uncle Chudruk are on my side. But they have little influence.”

I had not met the boys’ parents or Sasug. They had not accompanied them on this journey. Zolbin said they would be at the naadam, though, so I wanted to be careful what advice I gave. Besides, who would listen to advice from a single carney/assassin whose most meaningful relationship had been with a guinea pig?

“I think your grandfather is a wise man and can help you,” I answered.

“What would you do?” Zerleg pressed. “If I were your son, what would you say?”

I thought about this a moment. “I would tell you to follow your heart,” I said, hoping they would get it.

They didn’t.

“What do you mean?” Zolbin asked. Apparently, he had a stake in this too.

“You should pursue what you love, and not what you don’t. By marrying a woman you do not love and working at something you do not enjoy, you are hurting everyone. If you love education and poetry, you should pursue them both.”

Zerleg’s face brightened and he threw himself into my arms. And although I was glad he was happy, I wondered if this was going to bite me in the ass later. One more thing to add to our trip-a couple of angry parents and one pissed-off girlfriend. Not good.

Chapter Eighteen

The road to Ulaanbaatar was paved with trucks, yaks and horses. The sights and sounds were an exotic tonic for my nerves. I should say that I usually do not get nervous. However, I usually do not have this much going on. I tried to scan the crowds as we moved toward the edge of town, on the very slim chance that I could spot Dekker and maybe take him out before Ronnie arrived. No such luck.

Plan A was to ambush him. Missi still hadn’t sent me any information, and I was on edge. There was always the old standby of slipping on a banana peel (which has worked so many times it’s ridiculous) or falling in the bathtub, but I wasn’t sure I could maneuver it after all the wrestling (or if he was staying someplace with an actual bathtub)…if I was lucky enough to advance through the competition.

In the end, I’d do whatever I could to finish the job. There was no other option. And if it had to look like foul play, I could make sure Ronnie knew how bad this guy was. Damn, this woman was making my usually mess-free life a mess.

As we pulled into the campground area, I found these worries slipping away. It was as if the world exploded in color. The brilliant blue sky fused with the blindingly green grass. People were covered in bright silks of every color imaginable. The cool air softly mingled with the heat from the sharp sun. Sounds of music and laughter competed with the smells of food and beer. It was home to me. A carnival. I felt like I belonged.

Yalta barely waited for the truck to come to a complete stop before he hurried us into a practice session. In fact, men were wrestling all around us as we went through our routine, warming up muscles that were tense from riding in a beat-up truck down bumpy roads for hours on end.

My shoulder was feeling better, and that gave me a small surge of confidence. I’d need it. All the wrestlers around us looked either a lot younger or a lot bigger than me. There was no doubt they all had more training too.

“Focus, Coney!” Sansar-Huu swiped me on the back of the head playfully, and I resumed my workout.

Something about hard work in the hot sun surrounded by bloodthirsty, happy people made me feel stronger. By the end of our training session I was spent but relaxed. Sansar-Huu shoved a cold glass of beer in my hands and I gulped it down. I’d really missed cold beer. That seemed to make the carnival setting complete.

“Hey! Cy!” Veronica’s voice gave me a little shiver I was not prepared for. I turned to see her walking toward me. Her smile filled me with something I hadn’t felt in decades.

“Look what Odgerel made for me!” She spun around in a silk deel the color of an orange sunset. The trim was brown fur, and for some reason this made her green eyes sparkle. I was stunned. Ronnie looked lovely in it. Ironic, isn’t it? The deel covered everything. And yet she’d never looked more beautiful.

I pulled her hard against me, kissing her deeply. She responded to my body, and it occurred to me that I might need her deel to cover my arousal. But I couldn’t let go of her lips, her body. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to say no tonight.

Veronica sighed and buried her face in my chest. I just held on to her, afraid to let her go…go where?

“Oh!” She laughed as she finally pushed away. “I forgot to tell you! Arje is here!”

Well, that was a buzz kill. And I wouldn’t need her deel to cover me anymore. “Great,” I managed.

“We’re going to meet him for a drink! Come on!” With a smile that cut right through me, she dashed off into the crowd.

I barely managed to shrug on my deel before I spotted the two of them sitting on a blanket by the tent with the beer.

“Sit down!” Ronnie motioned me toward her.

“Dekker.” I nodded my greeting and extended my hand. I had promised Veronica I would help her, and a simple courtesy was as much as I could do. Besides, the sooner she interviewed him, the sooner I could kill him.

“ Bombay.” Dekker took my hand and shook amiably enough, but there was a deadly caution in his eyes. I couldn’t blame him. Why shouldn’t he be suspicious of me? If he really knew what I was going to do to him in the next two days…

“I told him about my thesis, and Arje agreed to an interview,” Ronnie was saying to me. I pulled myself out of my thoughts of murder and became the nice guy she knew me to be.

“So, Ronnie says you’re a carney?” Dekker asked.

It pissed me off that he used my nickname for her. And it pissed me off that she didn’t mind it.

“Yes. A carney with a strange obsession for fighting methods.” I laughed forcibly. “So what is it you do?” Normally I don’t ask Europeans that. They consider a question like that to be extremely rude. For once, I didn’t mind playing the obnoxious American.

“Oh, I’m in the military…” he answered blithely.

Of course he wouldn’t say he was a bloodthirsty mercenary who had taken the lives of women and children for the highest bidder. The intel I’d had on him mentioned an episode of ethnic cleansing he’d engineered in Africa that involved mutilated mothers and children who had been left to struggle for their next breath as he fled the country to his vacation home in the Bahamas with a suitcase full of euros.

“Really? That’s amazing!” Veronica cried. “I could use a proper military perspective on my thesis.”

I hated that she gushed over him without knowing the monster he truly was. It took everything I had to remain calm and casual on the outside.