Last Snow

SIX

“WHAT’S UP with you?” Jack said.

“What’s up with the psycho-bitch?”

“Please don’t call her that.”

“I’ll stop calling her a psycho-bitch when she stops acting like one,” Alli said. “Which will be never.”

Jack had taken Alli to the rear of the aircraft as soon as it had taken off and reached cruising altitude.

“Jack, what is she doing here? I mean, who is she, anyway?”

Jack glanced over her head, checking to see that Annika was still in her seat. “She and I got into some trouble, which is why she’s here. She can’t go back to Moscow, to her old life.”

“You mean she fucked up her life, now she’s going to fuck up yours.”

“It’s not that simple, Alli.”

“Okay, then explain it to me.”

“The less you know about this, the better, believe me.”

“Now you sound like my father.”

“Low blow,” Jack said, and they both laughed at the same time. “Still,” he said, sobering quickly, “two men were killed tonight, two criminals.”

“So what’s the problem? The police—”

“This is Russia, Alli. The police aren’t to be trusted. They’re in the pocket of either the Russian mafia or elements of the federal government, both of which are as corrupt as they come.” He looked at her. “In any case, one of the criminals was so highly connected that Annika’s bosses have turned their backs on her. They may even send people after her.”

“To bring her back?”

“To kill her.”

“You’re kidding, right? Tell me this is a joke—I don’t care how sick it is, maybe I deserve it, but just tell me—”

“It’s no joke, Alli.” He sighed heavily. “Now you know why I didn’t want you coming with me.”

She was silent for some time. The plane hit an air pocket and dipped unexpectedly, obliging them to hold on for a moment. Jack reached for one of the overhead bins, Alli grabbed on to him, pressing closer.

She bit her lip. “The only reason I fought to come on this boring trip was so I could be near you.”

“Alli—”

“Listen to me. I feel safe only when I’m with you. It doesn’t matter where you go, Jack. I can’t be on my own now—I can’t be with my parents or their handlers or the doctors. When I am, I’m filled with a nameless dread, or maybe it isn’t so nameless, right? We know him—you and me and Emma.”

“Morgan Herr is dead, Alli. You know that.”

“And yet I feel him close to me, breathing against my neck, whispering horrible things in my ear.”

Jack put his arms around her. “What kind of things?”

“Things from my past—people and places, things that only Emma and I knew, and sometimes not even Emma; things I’m deeply ashamed of, things I’d rather not remember, but he won’t let me forget. It’s like he crawled inside my head and somehow, I don’t know how, he’s still there, living and breathing, whispering to me, whispering . . .”

Her last words dissolved into racking sobs. She pushed her face into his chest and he rubbed her neck in order to soothe her and, in another sense, soothe himself because he felt her pain almost as if it was his own, a twin, two melancholy trains running along the same track, which led to Emma, perhaps only a memory of her, perhaps not; best friend to one, daughter to the other. But part of him wasn’t sympathetic at all. He sensed that a good deal of her persistent anxiety stemmed from pushing down those very incidents in her past, because the more she turned away from them the more they tore at her, exacerbating her anxiety, stoking her fear. For the moment, at least, it was easier for her to believe that Morgan Herr was instigating those thoughts, rather than admit to herself that it was her own mind struggling to work through the most emotionally devastating days and nights of her past.

“I wish Emma were here,” she said in her soft little girl’s voice.

Jack stroked her hair absently. “Me, too.”

“Sometimes I can’t believe how much I miss her.”

Alli said it, but it might just as well have been Jack. “She’s in our memory, Alli, which is what makes memory so precious.” He detached himself from her so that he could look her in the eye, to confirm to her, if she didn’t already know, that they were traveling along the same track. “It’s this same memory that holds your dark days—Emma’s, too, for that matter, as well as mine—and I think you can figure out for yourself that it’s all one, the dark days and the bright, shining ones. Of course we both want to remember Emma, and we do, but for you the cost of holding your dark days at bay has become too great. If you push them away then you risk losing Emma as well.”

“It can’t work that way—”

“But it does, Alli. Whatever’s happened to you is a part of you; you can wish it hadn’t happened, but you can’t deny that it did.”

“But every time I think about the dark days I break out into a cold sweat, I start to shake, and I hear a screaming inside myself I can’t silence, and then I’m sure I’m losing my mind, and the fear starts to build until I can’t stand it anymore, and I think . . .”

True to her word, she had started shaking, tiny beads of sweat appearing at her hairline. Jack held her close again. “I know what you think, honey, but you’re never going to act on that thought. You understand that, don’t you? You’re not going to kill yourself, there’s far too much life inside you.”

He waited until he felt her nod wordlessly against him before going on. “Whatever happened to you, you’re still who you always were. Morgan Herr didn’t have the power to take that away from you. In fact, it was in those dark days that you found your own courage, you found out who you are.”

“But he programmed me. I did what he wanted me to do.”

She looked up at him, a little girl again, stripped of her tough young woman’s armor, her smart mouth, her arrow-swift rejoinders learned in a culture that grew its children into adults before their time, a culture that moved far too swiftly, becoming fixated on the glossy surface of things. He saw her as her father never would, an unspeakable tragedy that Jack, a man who had lost his only child, was struck by more deeply than most.

“No one knows the future,” he said, “we all accept that, but we don’t really know the past very well, either. We know only what happened to us, not what happened to those around us. We have no idea, for instance, how what they did or didn’t do aff ected us. Once you accept that we’re aware of only a sliver of what happened, you can see how nothing is simply how we remember it. We create our own past, our own history, it’s all fractured, pieced together, and yet this is who we become, imperfect but human.”

“WE’LL BE landing inside of twenty minutes.” Annika smiled into Jack’s face. “I’ve made this flight before, a number of times.”

“Then you know Ukraine.”

“Intimately.” She turned, looked back at Alli’s sleeping form. “For a young girl—”

“She’s twenty-two.”

“She can’t be just seven years younger than I am,” Annika said. “She looks sixteen.”

“Alli has Graves’ disease. It screws around with the pituitary gland.” He pointed to the side of his neck. “Her growth process was compromised when she was a teenager.”

Annika showed some surprise, or perhaps it was pity, it was difficult to say with her, a woman trained to be guarded even when she didn’t have to be.

Then she shrugged. “Well, no matter. I will be leaving you as soon as we set down.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jack said.

She raised an eyebrow. “No? Why not?”

“You said yourself that the FSB might be sending people after you.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said stiffly.

“Of that I have no doubt.” Jack pursed his lips in thought. “On the other hand, you’ll be easier to track down if you’re on your own.”

Annika tossed her head, dismissing his words. “I have many friends in Ukraine.”

“Friends or colleagues?” His pause was deliberate. “Ex-colleagues now. And if Batchuk is as powerful as you say, if he’s even half as vengeful as most Russians in high places, he’ll have compromised some, if not all, of your contacts.”

In the ensuing silence, both became aware that the aircraft was slowly losing altitude. Annika had been right on the money as to the length of the flight.

A range of emotions passed across her face like clouds brushed by a freshening wind. She seemed to be digesting his words, or possibly considering the range of her next moves. “Do you have an alternative to suggest,” she said slowly, “or are you simply stating a fact?”

“I’m doing both.” Jack led her to glance at Alli again. “Look, maybe her coming aboard is a godsend for us.”

Annika appeared on the verge of laughing in his face. “How could that possibly be?”

“We enter Ukraine as a family: mother, father, daughter. That will throw your FSB pals off the scent, at least for a while.”

“Really?” Annika cocked her head to one side. “And what passports are we going to use, Mr. McClure?”

“I hadn’t considered that.”

“No, I thought not.” Annika nodded. “But that’s all right. I’ve been working out a plan while you and the girl were huddled together in the back. Assuming we’re flying to Kiev . . .”

“We are.”

“At least something’s gone right tonight. I know someone there.” She held up her hands, palms outward. “Don’t worry, he’s not an ex-colleague, he’s someone I unearthed on my own, the head of the airport immigration staff, who’s always in need of money to feed his gambling habit. You have money, I take it.”

“Don’t leave home without it.”

“Dollars, not, God forbid, rubles, which don’t do anyone any good, not even us Russians?”

Jack nodded.

“All right, then.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Let me get to work. Once my greedy friend escorts us past Immigration, there’s someone else I know who can forge us documents so we can become your mythical family and move about the city. Names?”

Jack thought a moment. “Mr. and Mrs. Charles. I’m Nicholas, you’re Nora.”

“Nora.” Annika wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t think I like this name.”

“Would you prefer Brandi, or maybe Tiffany?”

“Nora it is,” Annika said, already dialing. “And the girl?”

“Emma,” Jack said without thinking, because in this instance thinking would be fatal; thinking would point out all the flaws in this insane plan, just as it would put into glaring headlines the terrible risks he’d chosen to take the moment he’d decided to try and protect Annika from Ivan and Milan.

They took their seats and strapped in as the Fasten Seatbelt sign came on. Annika was chattering away on her cell, which meant that she had at least been able to contact her immigration official. What if he hadn’t been on duty, or was on vacation—though who in Ukraine took vacations at this time of the year?—or, worst of all, wasn’t answering his phone? But another, more benign outcome seemed to be taking place, so for the moment Jack sat back and tried to look at the situation from all angles, as he worked on thinking his way out of this jam.

His first option, once they were on the ground, was to call Edward, but he didn’t know whether that was the smartest option or the stupidest. The very last thing he wanted to do was to involve the President of the United States in what could turn out to be a major international incident. Relations with President Yukin were fragile enough as it was. Carson had spent the better part of this past week trying to undo the damage his predecessor had inflicted on U.S.-Russian relations over the past eight years. So in a clearheaded moment Jack decided that the man who could help him the most—the most powerful man in the free world—was also the most vulnerable and, therefore, off-limits to him.

His next option was to contact Dick Bridges and persuade him to use his clout in the Department of Defense to get him and Alli out of Kiev using a cadre of the clandestine agents from the CIA or the NSA. That plan also had its risks, not the least of which was Carson’s own warning not to let Bridges know what Jack’s mission was. If Bridges was working for Edward’s enemies and Jack told him what was going on, Jack would personally sink Carson’s administration before it even got rolling.

The third and last option he’d thought of involved calling Chief Rodney Bennett, his old boss at ATF. The problem there was that Bennett ran a regional office. Jack had no idea whether he had the contacts higher up to trust with this highly flammable information.

Precisely when had this situation become toxic, Jack wondered. When he’d overheard the conversation between Annika and Ivan? When Annika had been accosted by Ivan? When he’d become aware that Ivan and Milan had invaded Annika’s room? Each increment of last night was like a tiny glass tile with its own color, shape, and texture, meaningless on its own, but when pieced together they had led him to this fugitive place, where only the unknown awaited.

The aircraft kissed the tarmac with only the slightest of bumps. By this time Annika was on her second call and Jack had come to the glum conclusion that for the moment he was alone in hostile territory with the First Daughter and a Russian Security Service agent he scarcely knew, and both FSB assassins and grupperovka liable to play Whac-A-Mole with them if their faces popped up in the wrong place.

THE MAN who came on board with a slim-hipped swagger provided by his position was named Igor Kissin. He was not, as Jack had expected, Annika’s contact, but the contact’s emissary, a younger facsimile, who was authorized to take Jack’s money for the service Annika had been promised.

He glanced at Alli, and for a split instant Jack was terrified he had recognized her from photos in the press directly following the inauguration but then his lidded eyes moved on, tracking past Jack, who he didn’t look directly at, not even when he accepted payment. His burning black eyes were only for Annika, who he appeared to devour with his gaze. His high cheekbones and vaguely almond eyes hinted of his Asian ancestry. His skin was dark, glossy as satin, his mouth and jaw cruel and barbarous. Jack had no difficulty imagining him as a Cossack, bearing down on fleeing peasants as he set fire to their crops and houses.

“We should go now,” Annika said, after the money had changed hands.

Alli was slipping into her coat when Igor said, “Wait.” He had a deep, abrasive voice that rumbled through the cabin like mountain thunder.

They all turned to look at him.

“There are still matters to be resolved.”

“What matters?” Jack said.

Igor was still staring at Annika, and when he spoke it was clear he was addressing her: “Administrative matters.”

“Dmitri and I have an understanding,” Annika said calmly but firmly. “The transaction has been consummated.”

“With him,” Igor said, “not with me.”

“I’m not giving you more money.” Jack would have said more but Annika’s raised hand stopped him.

“It isn’t money Igor wants,” she said. “Is it?”

Igor continued his obscene scrutiny of her. “There is the matter of consummation.”

Taking a step between them, Jack said, “I won’t allow—”

“Stop it!” Annika was looking at him. “Stop it now!” Her voice, though very soft, had about it the unmistakable steel of command.

“Annika—”

She smiled ruefully and, on her way past him, placed her hand briefly against the side of his face, so that he felt burned or marked in some mysterious way. “You’re really quite sweet.” When she took Igor’s hand she was still looking at Jack. “Stay here now, yes? Stay here with the girl. When we return, all will be well.”

Then she led Igor back down the aisle to the rear of the aircraft, where they vanished into the restroom.

Alli came up beside him. She looked disheveled, smaller than usual, as if her unhappiness had altered her, or had diminished her presence. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and dark circles had already risen like bruised half-moons beneath them. She glanced up at him. “Jack, you’re not actually going to let her bang this sleaze-bucket.”

“This is Russia; I can’t interfere.”

“Jesus,” Alli said, “do you believe this psycho-bitch?”