Snow Leopard

I gently tap her on the cheek. No reaction. I tap harder. Her eyelids flutter, and her breath speeds up for a second but then slows down again. I grab her shoulders and shake her. Still no reaction. She’s very deep under. I must have overdone it with the ether. Getting sloppy in my old age.

I walk to the kitchen, pour a glass of cold water, then return to her and pour the water over her face. There we go. Finally.

Her eyes pop open, and her body strains against the ropes. It takes her a couple seconds to fully wake up and take in her surroundings. She strains again, this time deliberately. The motion is smooth, as smooth as anyone could manage with wrists and ankles tied to a chair. After another second, she sits back and relaxes. I can’t help smiling. We know each other so well.

“Nice knots, Miles.” Her voice comes out hoarse. Her throat must be burning. “Grinner?”

I go back to the kitchen and pour another glass of water, and this time I put in a straw. I come back to her in the living room and put the straw to her lips. She drains the glass in a few ravenous gulps. “Uni,” I reply, “But good guess.”

I put the glass down on a nearby coffee table, grab a chair for myself, and sit facing her.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” she says, “Why am I here?” This time her voice slices through the air cleanly and crisply, like her blades.

“I want to talk to you, Brianna.” I hear a quiver in my own words. Great. Getting sloppy and emotional in my old age.

She says nothing, just looks at me. I know the look. She is studying me. The predator assesses the prey before beginning the chase.

“Do you remember when we got into this business, Bri?” I pause and wait, but she remains silent. “We agreed to follow several rules. Our own code of ethics. Just for you and me.”

She nods, ever so slightly. I’m feeling restless. I get up and start pacing.

“No children. No mentally or physically disabled people. No torture. Make it quick and clean.” I feel anxious agitation pulsing in my stomach and chest, but I like how my voice is sounding. Calm. Confident.

“No innocent bystanders,” she adds quietly.

“That’s right, Bri.” I feel a bit calmer, my actual emotions starting to match my demeanor. I stand behind my chair and lean forward on it, staring her in the face. “So what happened to you?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, arching her eyebrows in feigned innocence.

I sigh and shake my head. “Don’t play games with me. No BS. Remember?” She says nothing again, so I continue. “Arms. Legs. Intestines. The way they find the bodies after your jobs, Bri… There is nothing quick or clean about it.” I pause, but she gives me nothing, not even a facial expression. “You are hacking people to pieces. It’s not right. It’s not what we agreed to.”

For a moment her face twitches, but I can’t tell what emotion passes across it, or if it’s any emotion at all and not just pain from the ropes.

“Do you remember what they used to call you in the guild? Long ago, when we were…”

“Yes,” she whispers, interrupting, “Snow leopard.”

“That’s right. Snow leopard. A beautiful, swift predator.”

Her lips curl up in a hint of a smile, but her blue eyes keep studying me humorlessly. “And blonde samurai.”

I nod. “And blonde samurai.”

“Blonde samurai,” she repeats, “But no BS.”

I feel my calm threatening to give way to anxiety again. She has a way of making me nervous through simple conversation. I’m getting the impression she is playing some kind of game. I force my voice to remain steady. “Good. I’m glad we are on the same page.” After a pause, I ask, “Do you know what they call you now?”

She tilts her head slightly, that almost-smile still playing on her lips.

“They call you Bri the butcher.”

I expect a reaction to this, but not the one I get. She throws her head back and laughs. A full-on, hearty belly laugh. She keeps laughing for almost a minute, then gets hold of herself and looks at me again. “OK,” she says, “And?”

“And? You mean you don’t even care?” I’m feeling my face burning with frustration. “You’ve gone against our agreement. You’ve gone against our code.”

She considers this for a few seconds. “What about you, Miles?” she says finally, “What do they call you now?”

“Same as always. I’m the surgeon.”

She scoffs at my words. “I’m the one with the blades, but you’re the surgeon.”

I sit back down in my chair. “It’s not about the tools, Bri. You know that.” I feel calm and self-assured again. “My work is always clean and precise. And I cut out disease.” I like how the words feel coming out of my mouth. “I’ve stuck to our code, Bri. After all these years. I’ve kept our agreement.”

Her mouth twists into a snarl. The predator shows its teeth. “Good for you,” she mutters.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I say, “What happened to you?”

She gives me a long, cold stare. “You might say I’ve been having some… strong feelings of anger.”

I close my eyes and take several deep breaths. I figured we would have to have this conversation.

“I’m sorry, Bri,” I say finally, my voice quiet and gentle, “I came to look for you, but it was too late. I was delayed, and by the time I got to Hong Kong, you were gone.”

“Delayed?” she spits the word out like a rotten apple, “I waited for a month. I went to the giant Buddha every day for a month. And you never came.”

“They… they kept coming. I… it took a long time to get rid of all of them.” I’m looking for the right words. I feel like I’m floating, trying to grab onto an anchor.

They came for us in Bangkok. For her. They surrounded the hotel. Bri and I agreed that she would run and I would hold them off. I would follow her when I could. We would meet in Hong Kong, on Lantau Island, by the giant Buddha.

But they kept coming. Not just at the hotel. They seemed to be all over the city, coming after me again and again, thinking she was still with me. Swarming like cockroaches with guns. Day after day, night after night, I kept killing, hiding, dressing my wounds. Occasionally eating or sleeping.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat.

“You’re lying,” she replies, “I can tell when you’re lying. You never came to look for me.”

More deep breaths. Stay calm. “I know you were angry, Bri. Still are. I was angry too, you know. I know you had to run, but… did you really have to?”

She narrows her eyes, piercing me with a look of pure rage. “Did I really have to? Did you forget we thought I might be pregnant? That I might be carrying our child?” She pauses and adds, “Have you thought about how you might have an eight-year-old son that you’ve never even met?”

Now I really am lost. No anchor in sight. I have to find my way back to the right topic… back to a feeling of control. “I know you are angry,” I say again, “But that’s not a reason to take it out on your targets. Fair or not, I was angry too. But I always kept it quick and clean, as we had agreed. I always stuck to our code.”

“Again about yourself, Miles,” she hisses, “So what do you want from me? You want me to admire you? You want me to envy you? You and your…” She pauses and sneers. “Your high ethical standards?”

“No,” I say quickly, “That’s not it at all.” But it is. It’s not all there is, but it’s a big part. After all this time, I still want her to look up to me.

“Then what do you what? You never answered my question either. Why am I here?”

“I want you to stop doing what you’re doing,” I tell her. This is true. This is the other big part. “I want you to give me your word you will go back to following our code, starting now.”

She looks puzzled. “My word? That’s all? And then what?”

“That’s all. And then I’ll let you go. I know you always keep your word, Bri. Except for breaking our code, of course.”

She takes a minute to think about it. She knows I’m telling the truth.

“And if I refuse?” she says finally.

“Then… you know what happens.”

She nods. “One bullet. Just above the bridge of the nose.”

“That’s right.”

“Because you are the surgeon.”

“And I cut out disease.”

We sit facing each other in silence for several minutes. Finally she says something, very quietly. It’s a name.

“What’s that?” I ask.

She says it again, a little louder. This time I hear it, but my brain refuses to take it in.

She says it again, at normal volume. “Cassie Weissman.”

It’s a punch to the solar plexus. I feel my stomach tighten painfully and my breath catch. I can’t inhale or exhale, or speak, or move. How does she…

“She was five years old, Miles,” Bri says. Her voice is very quiet again.

I manage to get a sound out. “That was a terrorist att..”

One look from Bri stops me. She shakes her head. When she speaks again, her voice is barely above a whisper and filled with deep mourning. Her eyes, so clear and cold earlier, are cloudy with tears. “It was you, Miles. I knew it was you when I read about it. The rocket fired into the house was a cover.” She stops and blinks away her tears, then looks down at the floor before speaking again. “It was played off as a terrorist attack. The Liberation Front even took responsibility. Such responsible people. Especially when paid off.” She looks up at me again. “But you know what one journalist reported, shortly before her story was taken down and it was all swept under the rug? Bullet holes. The bodies were burned nearly down to the bones, but the skeletons had bullet holes. The big one had a hole” – she pauses for emphasis – “just above the bridge of the nose. And the little one…” Her voice breaks, and she stops speaking and closes her eyes. Her facial muscles strain as she tries to stop herself from crying.

James Weissman, the CEO of United Rubber, needed killing. And not just because of a special, well-compensated request from the President of a certain small Southeast Asian country. The chemical waste from Weissman’s factories in said country was poisoning half the population. To Weissman, the people were a source of cheap overseas labor. To the people, Weissman was another source of unnatural death, competing with poverty, endemic cholera, and an unofficial, unending civil war involving the government and various mutually hostile terrorist groups.

The time window for the job was one week. Weissman was coming to tour the factories, staying at his mansion in the hills, high above the toxic runoff.

Unfortunately, he decided to combine his business trip with a family vacation. He brought his daughter Cassie. She stayed with him at the mansion, always by his side. Maybe family bonding wasn’t the point. Maybe he knew.

For many hours every day, I stalked the house, waiting for the right moment, looking for a clean shot. She was always there when he was, always in a place where she served as a shield. The week was ending. The time window was closing. I never got my clean shot.

“No children,” Bri whispers, “The first and most unbreakable rule of our code.” She is looking me in the eyes again. I want to avert my gaze, but I can’t. I want to say something, but nothing comes out of my mouth. I want to get up, but I can’t move from the chair. I feel paralyzed and powerless. Which one of us is tied to a chair, and which one of us is in control? I no longer know.

“I… I couldn’t,” I whimper finally, “I had no ch…”

“You always have a choice,” she interrupts. She stares at me in silence for a few seconds, then goes on: “This is why I’ve been so angry, for so many years. You not coming for me in Hong Kong – I could have moved past that. Maybe even forgiven you eventually. But this…” She shakes her head again. “You betrayed me, Miles. You betrayed us. You betrayed everything we told each other we stood for.”

I have nothing to say in reply.

“My blades,” Bri says. I find I’m able to get up from the chair after all, but only to obey her command. I retrieve her duffel bag, put it on the floor between our chairs, and sit back down. The predator’s greatest advantage is its prey’s fear.

“Wrists,” she orders. I open the bag and take out a small stiletto knife, barely larger than a Swiss army knife and sharp as a scalpel. I cut through the knots that bind her wrists to the back of her chair. She puts her hands in her lap and does stretching exercises to get the blood flowing. “Ankles,” she says. I obey, freeing her ankles from the chair legs. I return the knife to the bag and sit down in my chair again.

She gets up and stands over me. After a moment, she opens the bag and looks inside. Choosing. A feeling of peace spreads through my body. This is right. This is good.

Finally, she pulls out her scimitar, forged for her personally 12 years ago by a master bladesmith in Isfahan. This is her favorite sword. It’s a sign of respect. Respect I don’t deserve.

She puts the scimitar to my neck. “Go ahead,” I say, my voice as serene as my heart, “I deserve it.”

She hesitates. A minute passes. Maybe an hour. Perhaps a million years.

Finally, she withdraws the blade and puts the scimitar back in the bag. “No,” she says, “You don’t deserve to die by Damascus steel. You deserve to keep living, and to spend every day with the knowledge of what you did, and the knowledge that I know what you did.”

She zips the bag closed, puts it over her shoulder, and walks to the front door. “Goodbye, snow leopard,” I tell her.

She turns at the door and looks at me one last time. “It was a girl,” she says, “You have an eight-year-old daughter. And you’ll never even know her name.” She opens the door and walks out. “Goodbye, surgeon,” she says, with her back to me, “Good luck cutting out this disease.”