Blood Trust

NINETEEN

“HOW IS she?” McKinsey said when Naomi slid into the passenger’s seat. She was just finishing a call.

Through the windshield, she could see the Mercedes, BMWs, and Porsches, arrayed like trophies on the street. “When you lie down with a scorpion, you’re bound to get stung.”

“She’s your sister. That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

“Rachel didn’t love Larry or her kids, she loved his money.”

“Yeah, but still. Don’t you want to stay with her?”

“I told her I couldn’t stay.”

McKinsey cleared his throat, then started the car. “I’ll drive you home.”

“We’re going to the main branch of Middle Bay Bancorp on K and Twentieth.”

“It’s almost three,” he observed.

“I called the president of Middle Bay. He’s expecting us.”

McKinsey wrapped his fingers around the wheel, but he didn’t put the car in gear. “My opinion? I think you ought to be with Rachel. She needs you now. I mean, who else does she have?”

“Rachel is more self-sufficient than I am.” Naomi gestured with her chin. “Drive.”

McKinsey sighed, then turned off the engine. “Why the hell are we going to Middle Bay Bancorp?”

“Because that’s where Billy Warren worked.”

“So?”

“He was a loan analyst.”

McKinsey shook his head. “I don’t follow.”

“What if Billy discovered something unusual was going on inside the bank?”

There was a skeptical look on McKinsey’s face. “Like what?”

“Like large sums of money going in and out that weren’t being reported.”

“Naomi, Billy Warren was shtupping Dardan’s main squeeze. This has already been established. He was killed by Dardan’s people.”

“But why was he tortured? The question has been bothering me from the beginning. No, Billy had discovered something someone badly didn’t want uncovered. Now drive.”

“Naomi, this isn’t a good idea.”

She looked at him, finally. “What isn’t?”

“Middle Bay is the wrong direction for this investigation to go in.”

“Is that a warning?”

“I’m just trying to protect you.”

“Pete, I’ve been to Roosevelt Island.”

“Come again?”

“I’ve seen the girl—Arjeta Kraja.”

“Would you please start making sense?”

She had to give him this, there was not a flicker in his eye.

“I followed you yesterday morning. I saw you going out to the island on a motorboat. Who were you with and what were you doing there, Pete?”

“Naomi, trust me, you don’t want to pursue this.”

“No, actually I do.”

He stared out the window; his fingers drummed anxiously on the wheel.

“Pete, either you take me to Middle Bay, or I’ll call a cab.”

“It’s just that…” He turned to her. “Do you remember our first day on the job together? We were sent to pick up the FLOTUS. On the way there, we got sideswiped by a van driven by a drunken driver. Anyway, you were trapped on your side of the car. We couldn’t use the Jaws of Life because you were jammed up against the door. It took me over an hour to get you out.”

“I remember.” Naomi was acutely aware of the wariness in her voice.

“I don’t want to have to do that again, Naomi. Because this time I might fail.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Forget it, Pete, it’s D.C.”

He didn’t laugh.

“Pete, we’re partners; I shouldn’t have to ask this. Do you have my back?”

“Isn’t that what partners are for?”

She nodded. “Now are you going to drive or am I going to leave you here?”

“DENNIS, ARE you okay with this?” Jack asked, as Thatë, at the head of his dirty half dozen, led them along the roundabout route he had first suggested, east, then north, then northwest toward Tetovo.

“Do I have a choice?” Paull grumbled. “I fucked up, Jack. I don’t know what got into me. I should’ve listened to your instincts.” He shook his head. “But to be led to Arian Xhafa by this kid.” Paull glared at Thatë trekking easily and confidently up ahead. “I mean, this kid should still be sucking up his mother’s milk, for Christ’s sake.”

“He didn’t have a mother,” Alli said.

They both looked at her.

“At least,” she continued, “a mother he remembers.”

“Boo hoo!” Paull parodied crying.

“You never even gave him a chance,” Alli said hotly.

“And you gave him too much of one.” Paull jerked his head. “Let’s just hope he didn’t kill any of my men when he escaped from the plane.”

“He didn’t,” Alli said.

“He told you that, did he?”

“Bite me.” She extended her middle finger at him and, picking up the pace, wound her way through the Russians to walk beside Thatë.

“Thanks for that,” Jack said.

“A word of warning,” Paull shot back. “The next thing you know they’ll be making the two-backed beast and then you’ll never be able to pry them apart.”

Jack considered for a time as the forest slid past them. Off to their left, they could hear the watercourse that marked the far end of the valley. Over the ridge beyond lay Tetovo.

“I remember hearing about a man who turned so sour on life he wouldn’t believe a boy who rang his doorbell was his long-lost son.”

Paull scoffed. “I know how this ends: he turns the boy away only to find out later that he was, in fact, his son.”

“No,” Jack said. “Against his better judgment, he takes the boy in, feeds him, clothes him, gives him a soft bed to sleep in. The two spend a week together, then another and another. Gradually, the man’s guard lowers as he comes to appreciate the boy, then to mentor him. He realizes that, in the end, it doesn’t matter whether this boy is his blood son or not.

“One night, he’s awakened by unfamiliar sounds. He goes down the hall to his son’s room. The door is open, his son’s clothes are laid out, the bed is made just as it had been before he arrived. Grabbing a gun, the man goes down to the first floor and turns on the lights.

“Someone is sitting in his easy chair. This shadowy figure calls the man by his Christian name, even though the man is certain he’s never seen the stranger before in his life.

“‘Don’t you recognize me?’ the stranger says. As he stands up, a pair of enormous black wings unfold from points on either shoulder.

“‘Where’s my son?’ the man shouts. ‘What have you done with him?’

“‘I?’ the devil says. ‘I have done nothing with your son. He’s dead—dead and buried years ago.’

“‘You’re lying,’ the man says. He’s shaking with anger.

“‘You may think so,’ the devil says. ‘But the fact remains he’s not here. He never was.’

“All at once, the man breaks, falling to his knees. ‘Why? Why?’ he cries out.

“‘Because,’ the devil says, ‘life is hell.’”

Paull moved his assault rifle from one arm to another. “Does this piece of crap have a moral?”

“You know the moral, Dennis,” Jack said. “Why do you think that life is hell?”

Paull made a sour face. “What, have you suddenly found God?”

“My only compact,” Jack said, “is with my daughter.”

Paull came up short and turned. “What are you talking about? Your daughter is dead.”

“The dead never leave us, Dennis. At least, their spirits don’t.” Jack looked him in the eye. “I suspect that’s what you’re struggling against.”

ANNIKA DEMENTIEVA sat in the first-class departure lounge drinking a vodka martini. Her flight was scheduled to depart in just over an hour. She could have left the city later, but she had decided that the airport was the safest place for her now. She didn’t want Naomi Wilde coming to look for her.

The preliminary phase of the plan had been successfully concluded. She was pleased to know that Naomi had no idea where Jack was. That meant virtually no one else did, either. A good thing because his destination was one of the most dangerous places on earth. She had witnessed the American SKOPES unit annihilated by Arian Xhafa’s battle-hardened guerillas. She had had no interest in the guerillas themselves, but in the weaponry they employed. Watching the massacre had proved the wisdom of her being sent to Tetovo. The array of Xhafa’s cutting-edge war materiel was astonishing. No wonder warning alarms had been set off in her part of the world. The Macedonian situation was already on the verge of being out of control.

If the problem was simply Xhafa she could have handled it herself, but it stretched across borders, spanned oceans, was infused with incalculable amounts of money, fueled by a hatred and fanaticism beyond even Xhafa himself. She knew she needed help, she knew who she needed to help her. And he was the one person guaranteed not to comply.

She drank her vodka martini as if it were a beer, and ordered another, chewing thoughtfully on the liquor-soaked olive until the refill arrived. Through the thick, shatterproof glass, the world looked unnaturally dark, drained of color, unreal. She listened to the muted clatter of laptop keyboards, the clink of glasses, snatches of cell phone conversations. Within thirty seconds of entering, she had observed and catalogued every person in the lounge. She was like a jungle cat, interested only in danger and prey—everything else fell to gray ash.

But then gray was the color of her life; everything in it had turned to ash. The kidnapping and extended sexual and physical abuse by her father, Oriel Jovovich Batchuk, had set fire to her heart, reduced it to a blackened cinder of antimatter. In its place a void had opened up inside her that could never be filled. She had thought that her revenge on her father in the Ukraine last year would save her, or at least stop the void from widening, but the reverse had happened—she had fallen farther into the void, and now she suspected nothing could get her out.

This had not always been so. There was a time when she had childishly believed that Jack and Alli would be her saviors. But at the time she had met them, she had already betrayed Jack, and so their relationship was doomed before it began. As for Alli, she had been the one surprise in Annika’s life. The short time she had spent with Alli and Jack had given her a false sense of security—for those weeks she had deluded herself into thinking that the three of them were a family. How could she not? It had felt so good, so right. And she was so certain that the void inside her had started to shrink back to a manageable level. But then she’d been forced to choose between Jack and Dyadya Gourdjiev. It had been her grandfather who had finally saved her from her father, so it was no choice at all. After he’d told her she could have no more contact with Jack, she had wept bitter tears through a long and lonely night. And then, defying her grandfather, she had broken protocol and contacted Jack, confessing her sin. Why she had omitted the real reason she had murdered Senator Berns she’d never be fully able to understand. Perhaps she needed to put herself on the rack, to flay herself open for Jack to see, as no one else—not even Dyadya Gourdjiev—had before or ever would again.

The truth was she loved him, but now she had ensured that he would never love her. Agonizing as that was, it was preferable to continuing to lie to him. Enmeshed as she was in concentric webs of lies, it nevertheless felt intolerable to lie to him.

Now Dyadya Gourdjiev was in the hospital following a serious heart attack. He faded in and out of consciousness. None of the doctors she had spoken to would venture a definitive prognosis. Instead, they spoke in the kind of circular logic peculiar to their profession. After such a long time, she was completely on her own.

She crossed her long, beautiful legs and stared at herself in the mirror. Everything about her was beautiful, and it was that incandescent beauty that from an early age had been a terrible curse. It was her beauty that had impaled her father with jealousy, rage, and, finally, unstoppable lust. It was her beauty that had allowed her to slip through her adolescence with a minimum of fuss so that she could use her brain for what she wanted most: revenge. With her grandfather’s help, she had trained herself in all forms of weaponry and espionage. From one of his closest friends she had learned the intricate byways of the con game. Lying came naturally to her; she had lied to her father from the time she was four years old. Lies had been her only protection against him, therefore she had become expert at it. As an adult, she had come to view lying in the same way actors viewed a role: It allowed her to be someone she was not, allowed her to express opinions that were not hers. It allowed her, in other words, to hide in plain sight.

Her flight was being called, but it was not yet time for her to board. She had one more task to perform. While she took out her cell phone, she thought about Alli, about how the girl had touched her so unexpectedly and deeply. The two of them shared similar histories of kidnap, imprisonment, and abuse. From the few intimate stories Alli had shared, it was clear that she and Annika were kindred spirits. And, despite Annika’s steely reserve, her fierce armor, she had fallen in love with Alli, the way, Dyadya Gourdjiev had told her, her mother had fallen in love with her the first time she had rested her tiny head on her mother’s breast.

Now both Jack and Alli were lost to her. Christ, emotion tears your guts out, she thought, as she stared at the blank face of her phone. For the first time in her life she was aware of two forces battling for possession of her soul. The knowledge set her mind to thrumming.

Then she thought, Fuck it! and dialed a local number.

“Henry,” she said, when Carson answered, “I’m leaving.”

“Everything is in place on this end.”

She could hear the relief in his voice. “This is far from over,” she warned. “You still need to exercise caution.”

“I’m covered.”

She rose and, grabbing the handle of her rolling carry-on, said, “Naomi Wilde is on a collision course with Mbreti.”

“Do you think that wise?”

“We’ll find out shortly.” She walked out of the lounge, riding the escalator down to the gates. “Henry, remember what I told you at the very beginning.”

“‘Trust eats its own children.’” His laugh was metallic. “Jesus, Annika, how could I forget such a dire fucking warning?”