Last Snow

TWENTY-TWO

“DAD, EVERYONE is lying to you.”

With the echo of Emma’s voice in his head Jack turned on Annika. “What the hell is going on?” He was so filled with fury his voice had turned guttural. “What are you playing at?”

“There’s an explanation—,” Annika began.

“Of course there’s a fucking explanation.” His voice rose even more. “You and Gurov were in on this from the beginning. Do you think I need an explanation from either of you now? I used Gurov’s gun to shoot him, but it couldn’t have been loaded with live ammo. That scene in the alley was a con.” He turned on Gurov. “The other man, your pal . . .”

“Spiakov.”

“Yes, Spiakov, where is he?”

Gurov shrugged. “Six feet under, I imagine. We required verisimilitude.”

“Verisimilitude.” Jack turned back to Annika. “You murdered a man for verisimilitude?”

“It had to be real,” Annika said. “At least part of it.”

Jack was only dimly aware of Alli getting out of the car and approaching them, precisely what he told her not to do. “What I want to know is why you lied to me. Why are you offering an explanation now, at this late date?”

“Because now we’ve gotten you here,” Annika said simply. “Because, dammit, it’s time.”

“You told me you hated Gurov, that he was an assignment.”

“He is part of my assignment.” Annika was getting worked up herself. “I only lied to you when it was absolutely necessary.”

“And that makes it okay? That’s a forgivable offense?”

“Don’t confuse me with your ex-wife, who lied to you constantly,” Annika said hotly. “Believe me, I haven’t confused you with anyone else. You’ve made that quite impossible.”

“What is that, your idea of a fucking compliment?”

Jack took a threatening step toward her, and the confrontation might have degenerated into physical violence if Alli hadn’t stepped between them before Gurov could make a move.

“Stop it, the two of you!” she cried.

“If you’ll only give me a chance to explain,” Annika said, taking her cue from Alli.

“Jack, don’t you want an explanation?” Alli chimed in.

“I already have an explanation.” It was clear he was furious. “She’s been lying to me from the moment I met her.”

“Maybe she had a good reason.”

“There’s no good reason for lying,” he said.

“You know that’s not true.”

“Why are you taking her side?”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” Alli said. “Anyway, even if you don’t want to know what’s really going on, I do.”

That slowed him down a bit, at least enough for Annika to say, “I’m sorry, Jack, really and truly sorry.”

He saw a change in her, perhaps because she was asking for forgiveness, but, probing beneath the surface, more possibly because of her proximity to Alli, or Alli’s palliative words, as if being near Alli or even hearing her voice changed her subtly, brought her back to herself, whatever lay under her mask, in her unknown and unknowable heart Jack had talked about last night.

“If this could have been done another way,” Annika continued, “I promise you it would have been. But we had no choice.”

“We?” he said, more calmly in response to his probing. “Who is ‘we’?”

“AURA,” Annika said.

But immediately his anger fired up. “The entity or business or whatever you claimed to know nothing about.”

Alli put a hand on his arm. “Let’s not go there again,” she said.

“It may be necessary.” Jack’s eyes were on Annika.

“We’ll deal with that then,” Alli said as if she were the smartest person in the group. Certainly she was the calmest.

He looked over at her, and taking in her tentative smile, nodded his assent. “All right,” he said to Annika, “who or what is Aura?”

She said, “It’s an acronym for the Association of Uranium Refining Allies. It’s made up of—”

All at once, Ivan Gurov stepped forward. “Annika, no. This is a very bad idea.”

She shook her head. “He has a right to know, Ivan.”

“This could lead to dire consequences.”

“Your job is done. Stay out of it.”

Addressing Jack again, she continued: “AURA is made up of a group of Ukrainian businessmen, certain international energy interests in the Ukraine, and a small circle of dissident Russian oligarchs.”

The moment Ivan Gurov had returned from the dead Jack had seen the nature of the universe into which he had plunged. Now, at last, he saw its structure, as clearly as if he were looking at a scale model of Earth’s solar system.

“So we have AURA on one side,” Jack said, “and Yukin, Batchuk, and their creation, Trinadtsat, on the other.”

“Observe, Ivan, this is a man who sees more than you or I,” Annika said. “A man who—how shall we put it?—sees around corners. How much he has gleaned from only the stray bits and pieces he’s picked up along the way, he’s a chess master who sees the endgame forming the moment his opponent makes the first move.”

The sound of an approaching car brought them all into awareness of their surroundings.

“I think,” Gurov said, glancing dubiously at the wreck of the Zil, “I’d best get the car.”

THE CAR in question turned out to be a clunky cab, decrepit but, because of that, absolutely anonymous.

“Where are we going?” Alli said.

“The Magnussen estate,” Ivan Gurov said.

“You knew this all along,” Jack said to Annika. His anger was still smoldering.

She shook her head. “I swear I didn’t know where we needed to go. It was protocol. In the event we got picked up I couldn’t tell our interrogators our destination.”

“Interrogators,” Jack said. “Charming.” And Alli shuddered.

“Mikal Magnussen’s father purchased fifty-five acres perched on a cliff overlooking the Black Sea,” Gurov said as he drove, “high up so he could look down on his neighbors, all of whom consider themselves rich.”

It was five thirty on an evening marked by towering clouds building along the horizon. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees. It was just over thirty-one miles from the airport to the thickly forested area above Alushta where Magnussen’s father had built his summer compound. They had already come seven-tenths of the way, so in less than twenty minutes they turned off the road and came to a stop before stainless-steel gates, modern and as impregnable-looking as a castle’s portcullis. The gates were attached to a pair of fluted twelve-foot-tall granite columns.

Gurov rolled down his window in order to press a red button and recite something, perhaps a code phrase, into the grill of a small speaker. A moment later, the gates swung soundlessly open and they rolled through, tires crunching on a wide, looping bed of crushed shells.

The Magnussen estate was something out of a storybook, or a gothic novel, possibly Wuthering Heights, because its high stone walls, turreted garrets, and dizzying spires were more appropriate for the English or Scottish moors than for a seaside playground. Nonetheless it was impressive and, furthermore, gave an excellent window onto the elder Magnussen’s predilections.

As the taxi approached the house a pair of black-and-white Russian wolfhounds came bounding out of the front door, their eyes bright and curious, their pink tongues lolling.

“Boris and Sasha,” Gurov said helpfully.

“Don’t look at me, I’ve never been here,” Annika said, in response to Jack’s silent query. “I’m surprised that Ivan has, but then I shouldn’t be, our sliver of the world is so compartmentalized—watertight, as we say. That’s how superior security is built brick by brick from the foundation up.”

The wolfhounds—thick, shining coats; small, spear-point heads—pounced on the people as they piled out of the car. Initially they went right to Gurov, but gradually they became interested in Alli who, alone among all of them, knelt on the gravel, engaging them at their own level.

As Jack watched her distractedly a man appeared, came down the wide front steps, and approached them with the easy gait of someone born to money or power, possibly both. So this is Mikal Magnussen, he thought, making his first appraisal of the man he took to be the leader, or one of the leaders, of AURA.

He was a sturdy, even stolid man with startling platinum hair and even more startling blue eyes. His nose, like the prow of a wrecked ship, and ruddy, almost feminine lips, advertised an unsettling dissidence that set off in those who met him a sense of impending disaster. He wore a casual outfit that made Jack think he’d spent the afternoon hunting grouse. The wolfhounds circled him like moons, their tails wagging unrelentingly, licking his polished knee-length leather boots. Those boots, the color of burnt sulfur, were another curious contradiction: hunting boots, clearly handmade of glove-soft leather, without a scratch on their gleaming surface.

His bowlike mouth broke into a smile as he held out his hand. “Jack McClure, at last you’ve found us.” His hand enclosed Jack’s in a firm, dry grip, but he spoke to the others. “Ms. Dementieva, thank you for bringing him, and Ivan, thank you for ensuring they got here safely.”

He had not yet let go of Jack’s hand, and now he returned his attention to him. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. McClure. May I introduce myself? My name is Grigor Silinovich Kharkishvili.”

DENNIS PAULL did not see it coming, but then you never do, not this kind of ferocious death, or at least deadly intent. There are people out there in the world who mean you harm, who think of your ending, plot your demise as meticulously as a military campaign. These people don’t matter in the end, the ones who wish you harm, who conspire at arm’s length, studying methods of destruction in small, windowless rooms, swept daily for electronic listening devices, only to return home at the dwindling of the day to their wives and families, their potent cocktails and robust meals. It is their agents, the ones who you come face-to-face with, who matter, because they’re the ones who carry your destruction in the palms of their hands or on their fingertips as if it were a bottle of champagne to pour over you, or a bouquet of flowers to lay on your grave.

Having been up all night, neither wanting nor needing sleep, Paull prepared to go to his day job as Secretary of Homeland Security. He showered in very hot, then very cold water, shaved and dressed. Uncharacteristically, he spent five minutes aligning the dimple in his tie so that it was in the exact center of the knot. His fingers worked both tirelessly and unconsciously as his mind ticked off the items on his agenda today. The first was stopping off to make arrangements at the funeral home where he’d instructed Nancy Lettiere to send Louise’s body, then the office for six meetings that would take him through two o’clock, possibly three. At four, he was scheduled to hammer out interagency protocol with Bill Rogers, the national security advisor. At five thirty he had a phone appointment with Edward Carson who, he was certain, would be anxious for an update on what he had discovered about the activities of the president’s inner circle. There might be some time to wolf down a bite of food somewhere in there, but he doubted it, so he resolved to stop at a McDonald’s or a Denny’s, whichever popped up first, for a breakfast on the run.

Slipping his laptop into its case, he went out of the room, down the echoing concrete stairs, and out the side door to the parking lot. He stood for a moment, checking the immediate vicinity for anomalies, an action now habitual, so ingrained he couldn’t move from place to place without this specific scrutiny.

Having visually cleared the area he walked to his car, pressed the button on his key ring that popped the trunk. Bending slightly, he placed the laptop inside. He was just beginning to straighten up when he felt the sting in the side of his neck. His hand shot up in reflex. He just had time to register the tiny dart protruding from his flesh when he collapsed, unconscious, his head and torso inside the trunk.

A moment later a man strolled up, nonchalantly rolled Paull’s hips and legs into the trunk with the rest of him, picked up the car key, closed the trunk and, sliding in behind the wheel, drove Paull’s car sedately out of the Residence Inn parking lot.

“PLEASE. CALL me Grigor.”

“You’ll forgive me if I get right to the point,” Jack said, as Annika walked back outside to take a call on her cell phone. “Where is Mikal Magnussen, the man who murdered, or ordered the murders of, Karl Rochev and Ilenya Makova?”

Kharkishvili raised his eyebrows. “You know Ilenya’s name, you are unusually well informed.” He led Jack and Alli into a solarium at the rear of the mansion. He turned, smiling at Alli. “And this lovely young lady is . . .”

“My daughter,” Jack said.

Kharkishvili’s brows knit together. “I have a daughter more or less your age. She’s in school in Kiev, where her mother looks after her.”

“My mother is dead.” Alli stared unblinkingly up at his face. “My father is all I have.”

Kharkishvili cleared his throat, obviously taken aback. “Would you like to sit here while your father and I take a stroll? There’s a fine view of the surrounding hills and forests—”

“Hell, no.”

He glanced at Jack, who gave him no help at all. “As you wish.” He seemed to say this to both of them, his tone one of disapproval rather than of concession. He cleared his throat again, clearly uncomfortable discussing matters in front of Alli, whom he took to be a teenager. “Rochev had to be eliminated—he had ordered Lloyd Berns’s death. Why? Because Berns, having learned about us, about AURA, was going to leak the information to General Brandt, and Brandt would have told Yukin, who would have informed Batchuk, and then a Trinadtsat extermination squad would have been dispatched to kill us all.”

“And Ilenya Makova?”

“Ah, well, killing Rochev’s mistress was collateral damage. He was there with her in the dacha, but managed to escape the property.”

“Not that it mattered,” Jack said with controlled vehemence. “He was captured, brought to Magnussen’s estate outside Kiev, and tortured before he was killed.”

“That, I’m afraid, was an instance of, how best to put it, unbridled enthusiasm.”

“What a clever way to put it,” Alli said, but then, seeing Jack’s admonishing look, at once shut her mouth.

“You can use any clever phrase that comes to mind, but the outcome is the same: Rochev was tortured. Why? Because your killer—Magnussen or whoever he was—couldn’t control himself.”

Kharkishvili, aware that Jack had thrown his phraseology back into his face, said, “I don’t want a fight with you, Mr. McClure.”

“You may have no choice,” Jack said.

Kharkishvili hesitated, then laughed. “I like you, sir.” He wagged a finger. “I see where your daughter gets her sharp tongue.”

“Do you think this is a joke?” Jack said. “Torture, collateral damage, murder—none of them are what I’d call a laughing matter.”

“Of course they aren’t.” Kharkishvili spread his hands. “What I mean to say is that none of us has complete control over events. I assure you that the perpetrator of these unfortunate atrocities has been punished.”

“Meaning?”

Kharkishvili pointed out the window. “You see that large blue spruce up on the rise there?” He crossed to a glass door that led out to a flagstone terrace, beyond which appeared to be an apple orchard. He opened it and gestured. “Shall we walk across his unmarked grave together?”

“Your dog could be buried there,” Jack said, “or your ex-wife, or nothing at all.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Where is Mikal Magnussen? I want to ask him some questions.”

At that moment Annika appeared. Catching Jack’s eye, she motioned for him to join her on the other side of the solarium. Jack walked over without excusing himself.

“Harry Martin was an NSA hit man,” she said in a low whisper, “under the control of General Atcheson Brandt.”

“I don’t understand,” Jack said. “Why was he sent after you?”

Her expression of concern deepened. “The NSA must have found out about us. Your president is determined to sign this treaty with the Kremlin.”

Jack shook his head. “Even so, he would never authorize the NSA to do Yukin’s dirty work.”

“I want to take your word for it,” Annika said, “but then what’s the explanation?”

Jack thought a moment. “General Brandt is the joker in this particular deck.”

“What?”

“I have no idea what Brandt is doing handling an NSA assassin, that doesn’t track.”

“Mr. McClure.” Kharkishvili was beckoning. “If you’ll come with me . . .”

Jack stepped outside and together they walked through the apple orchard to the rise beneath the blue spruce.

“So then?”

Jack rubbed the toe of his shoe over the freshly turned earth, dug deeper. “Nothing is buried here,” he said, “or at least no one.”

Kharkishvili was eyeing him closely. “Are you saying that I lied to you?”

“Without hesitation.”

Kharkishvili stood with his hands clasped behind his back, breathing deeply. “This sense, or ability, is why you’re here now, Mr. McClure.” His eyes met Jack’s. “You see, we need you.”

“I don’t know what ability you’re talking about.”

“We’re inside a puzzle now, Mr. McClure. A Gordian knot, if you will. You have a special gift—a way of seeing around barriers that keep other people paralyzed.”

“I think you have me confused with someone else,” Jack said. “I uncovered your lie, but Annika fooled me.”

Kharkishvili nodded. “But there came a time when you began to have doubts about her, wasn’t there?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact there was, when we came out of Rochev’s dacha into the ambush.”

A vague smile played across Kharkishvili’s mouth. “Yes, we anticipated that probability.”

Sixteen diverse bits of information formed a pattern on the Rubik’s Cube in his mind. “Wait a minute, it was Gurov who shot her in the woods. He aimed for the fleshy part of her arm, a minor wound, it’s true, but my doubts vanished when she was hit.”

“You see what I’m driving at, Mr. McClure. It takes so little information for you to grasp the big picture, to determine how vectors intersect. You were the one who found your way here; Annika had no idea where we were, we couldn’t allow that. Compartmentalization is our watchword.” He brought one hand from behind his back, gesturing for them to walk to the cliff face. As they came down off the small rise the wolfhounds appeared, racing each other to Kharkishvili’s side.

“If you have any doubts about how Annika fooled you, I would counsel you to keep in mind that people don’t simply lie, because lying is never simple. Lying leads to complications—the more one lies the greater the complications. I think that’s clear enough, but for our purposes we must take these thoughts a step further, a mental exercise people rarely bother with because they’re essentially lazy.”

They were nearing the rocky promontory; the mansion rose on their left, a guardian of titanic proportions. The water looked as dark as its name. The dogs were excited either by the height or the sight of the seashore where, perhaps, Kharkishvili or Mikal Magnussen ran them on occasion.

“People lie for a reason, or for a cause, something, at any rate, larger than themselves,” Kharkishvili continued. “The causes—the things that are larger than any individual, larger, even, than a group of like-minded individuals such as AURA. Which is where you come in, because now everything that surrounds AURA seems a threat, at least to us who are on the inside. We have been blinded, made paranoid by our growing peril, so we cannot be trusted. How can we, when we cannot even see past point A to see whether point B will connect with it or destroy it. You have found the land of the blind because you can see for miles. You’re the one with the ability to make sense out of the chaos of life. You see, interpret, understand the disparate elements, you can sense if they connect or not. This is why we need you, Mr. McClure, why no one else will suffice.”

“So this was all a test,” Jack said. “The clues, the bits and pieces, like breadcrumbs in a labyrinth.”

“Oh, nothing we devised was so easy as that, Mr. McClure, but I take your point.” Kharkishvili nodded. “A practical test, yes. Why? Because we had only read about your abilities, and personally I find written reports unreliable. However, an eyewitness account, now that’s an entirely different matter.”

Jack felt the sea breeze against his cheek, saw the wolfhounds chasing their own tails. “You know what? I think you’re all nuts. If you needed me so badly why didn’t you just ask me?”

“Because you wouldn’t have come, and even if you’d had a mind to your president wouldn’t have allowed it.”

“Why?”

“Because our meeting, should it have become a matter of public record, would have jeopardized his precious accord with the shit Yukin. Because as far as the shit Yukin is concerned, as far as his ass-wiper Batchuk is concerned, we’re dead, this group of dissident Russian oligarchs: me, Boronyov, Malenko, Konarev, Glazkov, Andreyev—hunted down and killed by the FSB’s crack assassin, Mondan Limonev. Except that Limonev works for us. All these secrets I lay in your care, Mr. McClure.” He spread his arms wide. “I trust you.”

“You don’t know me. Why would you trust me?”

“Because Annika says I should. Because she trusts you.”

“That’s of no interest to me,” Jack said, though it was impossible to be immune to what Kharkishvili had said. “Edward Carson is my friend as well as my employer. I won’t betray him under any circumstances, so it seems you do have the wrong man, after all.”

Kharkishvili sighed. “Your President Carson is being betrayed even as we stand here. I think you’d better hear the whole story before you make a decision that could have dire consequences not just for AURA but also for the United States.”

“YOU MUST hate my guts,” Annika said when she and Alli were alone in the solarium.

“Not really.” Alli was watching Jack and Kharkishvili walking between the martial lines of apple trees. “But I am disappointed.”

Annika produced a rueful laugh. “Yeah, I definitely deserved that.”

“Why did you do it?” Alli asked. “Why did you lie?”

Leaning over, Annika pushed a lock of newly shorn hair off Alli’s forehead. “I had no choice.”

Alli moved away. “Don’t change the subject. That’s what my father and all his friends do when a question is too difficult or embarrassing. It’s a politician’s trick, and I hate it.”

Annika went and sat down in a teak chair, sinking back into the patterned cushions. “I explained to Jack as best I know how.” She gave Alli a rueful smile. “But I know that some actions can’t be explained away, some actions stay with you, like a stigma. I was prepared for that with him, but not with you.”

“Oh, please, don’t bullshit me.” Alli crossed the room, leaned against the glass windows, staring out at the now deserted apple orchard with its sharp, twisted branches seeming to scrape the mottled gray and blue sky.

Annika watched her as she moved, as she crossed her arms over her breasts, as she looked longingly out onto the empty grounds. “The truth is fixed, immutable,” she said, “because if it contains even a grain of a lie, it’s no longer the truth.” By examining the girl’s face she could work out just how much Alli missed Jack when he wasn’t with her, but also a terrible sadness. There was a strong cord between them, no doubt, she thought, but there was also something dark there, a lie of some measure, or perhaps something unspoken, an omission, a truth deliberately unsaid. “But a lie comes in infinite gradations, it can be judged on a scale, whereas truth cannot, you see, because a lie can contain a grain of the truth, or even a great deal of truth and still remain a lie. But of what sort, on what level?

“You can tell a, what, a white lie, I think it’s called in English, isn’t it?” When Alli didn’t answer, didn’t even move from her blank contemplation, she continued undeterred. “You’re not punished for telling a white lie, are you? You needn’t feel remorse or guilt, or wish you could take back your words.”

“Why do you say it as if it’s about me,” Alli said. “It isn’t about me.”

“I was just using a figure of speech,” Annika replied, a deliberate lie. “How would I know if you had lied, or to whom?” She paused, as if expecting an answer, then went on. “Anyway, a lie can be useful when the truth won’t do, when it’s too sad, for example, or too shocking.” Alli twitched, one shoulder rising involuntarily as she sought to protect herself from the assault of Annika’s words.

“The point is you make a choice when you tell a lie, or even when you withhold the truth—”

“Stop it!” Alli said sharply. Her face, when she turned it toward Annika, was very pale.

“—even in instances when you must tell a lie in order to protect a person you’re close to or love, or in order to serve a higher end. This is what happened to me.”

The two women eyed each other, almost, it seemed to Annika, as if they were gladiators in the Forum, overlooked by the Tarpeian Rock, the ancient burial place of betrayal. She felt energized by this electric charge, by the hope that the ongoing conflict between them would jolt the girl out of her traumatized shell.

“Every lie has its moment when it’s believed,” she said, with her teeth slightly bared, “even by those whose nature it is to doubt, or to be cynical. Lies are seductive in nature because they’re what you want to believe, or contain an element, a seed of the distrust you yourself harbor, though you may not even be aware of it.”

Alli gave a strangled little cry as she peeled herself from the glass. “Is this the way you think you can gain my trust?”

“I never even considered gaining your trust. The man who kidnapped you, who held you hostage, stole your trust, and you’re incapable of getting it back.”

Tears sprang to Alli’s eyes as she tore out the door, stumbling across the flagstone terrace, around the side of the house, blindly following some strange, self-destructive instinct that took her toward the cliff face and the falloff to the churning water below.