“Everything.” He looked at Harry then, his eyes hard. “Makes it easier to walk away, yes?”
Harry conceded half a shrug. “I guess.”
“Your apartments held no personal effects,” Asher said. “You rent them furnished, I assume, so what difference does it make?”
Now it was Harry who looked out to sea. Asher’s words stung, but the truth always did. “No difference.”
Asher finished his pastry and took some kind of cookie out of the bag. He handed it to Harry. “It’s makrout. Try it.”
He took one out for himself and bit into it, groaning as he did. It was obscene, and Harry almost forgot he was holding anything. He also had to tell himself to close his mouth.
Asher laughed. “Eat it, or I will.”
Harry bit into it, and yeah, it was as good as the groan warranted. Harry couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten something purely for the enjoyment of it.
And yet, there was Asher sampling every country’s culture that he visited. In between sniping people, that was. Harry was having a little trouble reconciling the two personas: touristy Asher, the guy who loved the food and the people, and the Asher who could pop a target from a mile away with a twenty-knot side wind.
Harry thought of himself as more of a ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of guy. Sure, he could kill people too, but he looked like he killed people.
Asher looked like a guy on vacation.
“How many languages do you speak?” Harry asked when he’d finished his lunch. He sipped his bottle of water and waited for Asher to answer.
“Fluently? Eight. Understand enough to get by? Maybe another five.”
“Jesus. Did they feed you dictionaries as a kid?”
Asher cracked a smile, though it wasn’t particularly a happy one. “Language was something I picked up so easily. Some tiny child can sit at a piano and play Mozart. I could do that with languages.”
“A prodigy.”
Asher made a thoughtful face. “Maybe that’s why they didn’t kill me, huh?”
Harry’s eyes cut to his. This was his first personal insight into the real Asher Garin.
No one knew anything about Asher Garin.
No past, no history, no country.
Only rumours.
“You grow up in an orphanage?” Harry asked, maybe a little too bluntly. Asher shot him a scathing look, and that killer-Asher that Harry had trouble placing just a few minutes ago was right there. Harry tried for nonchalance. “I think I heard that you did.”
Asher said nothing.
“You know everything there is to know about me, apparently,” Harry added. He didn’t mean to sound like a dick.
Asher’s smile was cold. “Let’s just say I had a very different childhood to yours.”
“Do you know what kind of childhood I had? Was that in your file about me?”
“I know enough.”
Harry sighed, past the point of caring. “I’m tired. We should go.” It felt like they’d left Mr Sadik’s home and crossed the border a week ago. They’d been awake going on thirty-six hours. They needed to sleep.
Asher pointed to the public restrooms. “I might suggest using a bathroom. In case you didn’t realise, our room only has a basin.”
Thankfully Asher had hailed a cab for the trip back up to their room. Harry hadn’t even brought it up, but Asher had grumbled something about them needing to walk tomorrow when they met with this woman, their contact.