Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
He limped to stand over Jack, who lay on his back, staring up at him. “It was never Alli I wanted, McClure, it was you. She was merely bait you couldn’t resist.” He shrugged. “I can’t say I blame you, really. But you see how much of a liability she is to you. Better for all of us if Herr slits her throat.”
He limped out, the door slamming shut behind him. From the hallway, Jack could hear Waxman’s raised voice. “And here they are now.”
“What do you want, Waxman?” Jack shouted. “Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you.” He struggled, but found it impossible to move. “Just promise you won’t hurt her.”
The door creaked slowly open and Waxman limped back into the room. “You mean that?”
“Of course I mean it.”
“Then let us talk.”
“Promise you won’t harm Alli.”
“A bargain struck.” Waxman limped closer and leaned on his walking stick. “Your reputation precedes you, McClure. It is said there isn’t a puzzle you can’t solve.” He began to circle Jack slowly, seemingly painfully. “Well, I have one for you. It’s a puzzle disguised as a children’s rhyme, and this is it: ‘Ashur had a little horse, / Her mane as bright as gold. / And everywhere that Ashur went / The horse was sure to go.’” Waxman stopped directly in front of Jack. “What does it mean, McClure? What is the rhyme trying to tell me?”
“I don’t know. How could you possibly expect me to know?”
“Who is Ashur?”
“I never heard of an Ashur.”
“Who or what is the horse with the golden mane?”
“You’re asking the wrong person.”
“But, you see, I’m not, McClure. Because I believe the horse with the golden mane is Annika Dementieva, which is what Annika Batchuk calls herself.”
“What would give you that idea?”
“Because in some way I cannot understand, her Dyadya Gourdjiev is involved.”
“Whatever it is,” Jack said, “I have no knowledge of it.”
“Even though you were just with them in Moscow.”
Jack said nothing.
“I see.” Waxman limped to the door, opened it, and went through.
“Wait!” Jack called. “Remember our bargain!”
“You told me nothing. We have no bargain, McClure.” Waxman’s voice came through the door. “Besides, it’s already too late. Blood has already been spilled.”
December 13–December 19
Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.
—J
OHN
D
OS
P
ASSOS
,
The Ground We Stand On
“…
HAS ALREADY
been spilled,” Waxman said into the empty hallway. He had waved his men back to their previous positions. He lifted his handgun and pulled the trigger, the report echoing through the corridor and, he was quite certain, through the cell door behind which McClure must be listening with every fiber of his body. The idea was to exterminate any hope McClure might have that Alli Carson could be saved.
“It’s over, McClure,” he said as he retreated down the corridor. “She died quickly, if not well.”
* * *
“W
HY AREN’T
you afraid?”
With the knife at her throat and Radomil gripping her like iron bonds, Annika said, “Why do you want me to be afraid?”
“Fear makes everyone vulnerable. Even you.”
“Radomil, let’s stop this. You won’t kill me.”
He heaved a sigh from the depths. “You see how it is.” He took the blade from her throat, wiped the blood off its razor edge with his forefinger. “You’re a better person than I am. You have
his
genes.” He gestured toward Dyadya Gourdjiev, inside the restaurant.
“What chance did you have, Radomil? Oriel Jovovich delivered you and Grigori into other hands.”
“And I never stop asking myself
why
. Why did he do what he did?”
“Because you were boys. He had no interest in—”
“What he did to you.”
“—abusing you.”
He picked his head up and glanced down the Veneto. “Look where we are, in a section of Rome forgotten except by tourists who don’t know that time has passed them by.”
“Meeting here was your idea.”
“It’s secure.”
“The overwhelming sadness makes it secure.” She put an arm around his waist. “You did good.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a brief, ironic smile. “Life is like a train, each station bringing with it more sadness.” He said this without a trace of self-pity, which had been burned out of him at an early age shortly after he and Grigori had been taken from their mother. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “That’s another reason I chose this venue. Its sadness is all that keeps it from sliding into the Tiber and being swallowed whole.”
Annika allowed a short silence to build, before she interrupted it. “Please let me help you, Radomil.”
That ghost of a smile again. “What makes you think—”
“This has to be your decision, no one else can make it for you.”
“But how can I be—”
“You can’t be sure,” she said. “Isn’t that the point? About life, about everything?”
“You see this road? It twists and turns like a snake. It has shed its original skin, it has become something else. This is the truth, it is irrefutable.” He watched her, tense and waiting.
“Nothing is the way we want it to be, nothing is the way it seems today. Even the snake, even Via Veneto. What lies around tomorrow’s corner? You must have faith.”
“Ah, now I understand you.” He nodded. “But faith cannot exist without love. And you must understand what I mean because you have read the file that…” He faltered, his voice trailing off as he looked away again.
“That was the point of the experiments,” she finished for him. “But I also know that we’re all human beings, not machines.” She touched his heart with her forefinger. “Somewhere in there is the child, no matter how damaged, who was born to Marion Oldham and Oriel Jovovich.”
He made an animal sound in the back of his throat. “And what about Grigori?”
“Grigori is not like you.”
“But that’s the whole point of the experiment!” Radomil cried. “To make us identical in every way, to make us killing machines who would think alike, take orders—any orders—without question.”
“And I repeat, Grigori is beyond redemption, but you are not. You are loved, Radomil. Your mother loves you, I love you.”
He looked at her.
“Yes, it’s true. You’re my brother, my flesh and blood.”
His eyes narrowed. “And Grigori?”
“We have spoken too much of your brother.”
“He, too, is your flesh and blood.”
“He has chosen his path, Radomil. You have chosen your own.” She smiled gently. “So you see, love is alive. Only you can kill it.” The bow of her lips parted. “Is that what you want? To destroy the thing you desire most?”
Radomil’s hands curled into fists, the skin across the knuckles stretched and white. “This was the test to which Grigori and I were put. It was so easy for him, so difficult for me. We were meant to destroy the thing we loved most. That was our final exam.”
“Good God!” she said, almost physically recoiling from his words. “Does my grandfather know this?”
Radomil shook his head.
“Then you must tell him,” she said, linking her arm through his and leading him back to the restaurant.
Radomil peered in through the window. “I am afraid of him.”
“Yes,” she said. “We’re all afraid of him.”
* * *
V
ERA WATCHED,
stunned, as Chris Fraine picked his way toward his twin. On the way, he paused, turning toward her.
“Don’t move,” he said.
She nodded mutely.
Alan Fraine lay where the bullets had propelled him, his back propped against the shop’s side wall. He was still alive, breathing like a bellows full of holes, which just about summed up the state of his lungs.
Chris Fraine squatted down in front of him. “So it’s come to this.”
Alan Fraine opened his mouth, but only a low gurgle emerged, along with a thin drool of blood.
“This is your reward for taking the high road,” Chris said. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you. I wanted you with me, despite what Vater Nacht planned for us. I went against the program and he never forgave me. But you—you were his bully-boy, weren’t you? Bad genes reversed by whatever infernal methods he used. I’d kill him if I could, but I can’t. His infernal methods are at least that strong inside me. Alan’s breathing abruptly turned more labored. Chris sighed. “But I did the next best thing. I killed you.”
He stood then and, turning on his heel, addressed Vera. “And what, might I ask, is your part in this passion play?”
By this time, Vera had regained a measure of both her equilibrium and her bravado. “I didn’t know your brother and I don’t know you. My concern is—
was
—Moses Malliot. It was his Town Car into which my … friend … Alli Carson was bundled.”
Chris Fraine approached her, clearly intrigued. “Bundled?”
“She was abducted,” Vera said, unsure how much to tell him. “Near the
Titanic
Memorial, by a man named Werner Waxman.”
Chris shook his head. “Who?”
“The man with the limp,” she said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He moved even closer. “But because you being here at the same time as Alan can’t be a coincidence, I want to know.” He reached out and grabbed her just as Nona burst through the front door, service pistol at the ready.
* * *
R
EGGIE
H
ERR,
racing down the hallway, realized that he had unaccountably lost the Carson girl. He brought himself up short. How had that happened? He was right behind her as she turned the corner, but now the hallway leered emptily at him.
Three doors, three possibilities. Methodically, he kicked open one door after another, checking the offices, the windows, any places the little rat could hide. Nothing. But in the last room, he found a window that had been cranked open. Leaning out, he saw that an intrepid person—especially one with minimum body weight like the little rat—could leap into the water without a problem.
Cursing under his breath, he turned on his heel and belted out of the room, along the corridor, clattering down staircase after staircase, and out the slipway door. He prowled the shoreline for a good ten minutes without seeing a sign of her. At last, forced to face facts, he stopped looking. She was gone.
* * *
T
HE MOMENT
Chris Fraine saw Nona, he turned and fled into the rear of the shop. She might have gone after him, but she saw Alan propped against the wall, blood pooled around him, and she immediately dropped to her knees in front of him.
“Alan,” she whispered. And then, as she placed two fingers against his carotid, “Alan!”
Vera started after Chris, but froze when Nona commanded her to stay right where she was.
“But that man—”
“Forget him,” Nona said. She was already speaking to central dispatch, identifying herself. “Officer and civilian down.” She wept as she gave their location. When she was done, she punched in Paull’s number. He wasn’t answering, so she left a message on his voice mail.
She put a palm against her boss’s cheek. “What man, Vera?”
“You know who I am?”
“I don’t know much of anything right now,” Nona said, “but I know that.”
Vera came toward her. “I need protection.”
Nona gently closed Alan’s staring eyes, and somehow thought about Frankie, lying dead to the world in his hospital room while a complicated mechanism breathed for him. “Christ almighty,” she breathed, “don’t we all.”
* * *
A
LLI, SUSPENDED
above the open window, gripped the narrow overhang with the tips of her curled fingers. The toes of her shoes desperately scrabbled for purchase on the wooden siding. She sensed, rather than saw, Reggie Herr stick his head out the window and peer down into the Washington Channel. When she risked a circumspect glance down, she saw the window was clear, and, arms and shoulders aching, she clambered down and let herself back inside.
For a moment she sat on the sill, head between her legs, taking deep breaths. Then she rose and, crossing the room, opened the door and peeked out. The corridor was clear. She stole out, listening with every part of her body—voices, footfalls, vibrations, the small, sharp noises of metal on metal, like rats scurrying in the walls.
“Get the hell out of Dodge!”
Jack had said to her, a coded message, one of several he had insisted she memorize. Knowing full well that at any moment she could be in danger, the two of them had set up a number of contingency codes.
Get the hell of Dodge
meant that he had left something for her—something that would help her escape. However, as she moved stealthily down the corridor toward the back stairs, she knew that she had no intention of escaping—not until she had found Jack and freed him. He had come for her twice, at extreme peril to himself. There was no way she was going to leave him here and run back to Fearington. As she picked her way along, she thought of Jack, of everything he had taught her, and she thought of Sensei and everything he had pounded into her.
Whatever she knew now wasn’t going to be enough, she had no illusions about that, but for the moment, at least, it would have to suffice for the job at hand.
Reaching the narrow set of stairs, she cocked her head, listening intently. She heard no one moving up or down, so she began to descend from the top floor. Where would Jack have left whatever it was he had left for her? It had to be somewhere he felt would be safe; it would also have to be a place he had come across. She knew how Jack’s mind worked, knew he would never have attempted to infiltrate this place without having a clear idea of the interior. If he’d seen architectural plans, Secretary Paull surely would have procured them for him, which meant Paull could very well be involved in the mission. But she also knew Paull never would have agreed to send Jack in alone. This meant that Paull’s people must have already thrown a cordon around the area. All she and Jack needed to do was get themselves outside and Paull’s men would do the rest.