Page 73 of The Battle of Maddox
I nodded. “Making a copy is the first thing you do. You can grab a portable cloning device and do it in seconds if it’s only a few files.”
He tapped his nose, and put a coffee in front of each of us. I doctored mine with my usual cream and sugar, while Maddox took a splash of milk and no sugar and Smoke went for straight black. A minute later, the man behind the counter came over and dropped off some pastries.
Smoke nodded and thanked him. I leaned forward, and studied the offerings. “What did you order?”
He pointed to what looked like a puffed-up cookie with fruit in the middle, and drizzled with sugar. “Kolachke.” He moved to a doughnut. “Paczki.” The next was a roll of some sort. “Poppy seed bread. Don’t take a drug test after that one.” And he pointed last to some little dough tubes. “Rurki z kremem. I was sad he hadn’t baked the kremowka yet. It’s heavenly.”
“How many languages do you speak?” I blurted out the question.
“Nine fluently, four conversationally, and probably basics in about fourteen others.”
“Polyglot,” I whispered.
“Hey. I speak three,” Maddox said, staring at me.
“You do?”
“English, ASL, Greek, and Welsh.”
I blinked. “English, French, Spanish, and ASL.”
“That’s not so bad,” Smoke said, grabbing a slice of the poppy seed roll. “Most people in the US don’t know much beyond English.”
Maddox grabbed one of the tubes of dough and crème, “How much longer to the Ukraine?”
“About three hours. We’re just about halfway there. There’s a private plane waiting for us in Lviv, and we’ll be on our way to Milan.”
“The concert is tomorrow night.” Maddox nodded. “We’ll have plenty of time to rest up and get ready, and speak to the ladies about never, ever, ever protesting in a foreign country again.”
“I’d put money on them being convinced of it after two nights in a Russian jail,” Smoke said. “I just hope they don’t have PTSD from that. Those jails are hell, even for someone who’s been trained to deal with them.”
We ate quietly after that, at least until our coffees were done. I had gone for one of the doughnuts, and it was packed with strawberry jelly.
Smoke cleared his throat. “Grab one more pastry if you want it, but we need to leave.Now.” He turned his back to the front door, and pointed to the employee entrance. “I need to go that way. Maddox—”
“Got it.”
Smoke dropped a handful of zloty and the keys on the table and I snatched one of the kolachke, and followed Maddox to the front side by side. We were a wall hiding Smoke ducking out the back door.
Maddox opened the door for me, but before I could step out, a man of Asian descent shoved me back and swore at me in Polish. I ignored him and walked out, and Maddox followed me, beeping off the alarm and unlocking the doors. We slipped in, him in the driver’s seat, me in the passenger. He backed out easily, driving down the side of the building to the baker’s entrance. The back door opened and Smoke slipped in.
“Go,” he whispered. “Aaron, start that GPS. It should still be aimed for Lviv.”
I punched a few buttons on the screen and the map came up and found us quickly. “Is there any way he can track us on this?”
“Shielded,” Smoke said. “I’m going to stay down until you’re on the highway. And Maddox, I need you to floor it. Back up to our original speed.”
“Gotcha,” he said. “Am I driving the whole way?”
“Depends on if Cheung realizes we’re only a few minutes ahead of him.”
Maddox had the car on the highway, and roaring up to the hundred twenty we’d been doing. We had about a half a tank of gas left from the previous stop.
“Smoke, do you trust the people in the bakery?”
“I’ve always been friendly and nice to them, and they have the best pastries,” he said. “I don’t think they know who I am, but I think if Cheung is his usual charming self, they won’t give him an inch. Why?”
“We’re going to need gas, and if he’s right behind us, how are we going to do that?”
