Last Snow

TWENTY-EIGHT

JACK, BENT over a toilet, was retching, his eyes watering, his guts still spasming.

“It’s all right,” he heard a voice say from behind him, “it’s all out of his system.”

A pair of strong hands pulled him upright, led him over to the sink where he washed out his mouth and put his head under the cold, gushing water. Then he was being dried off with a towel. He heard the toilet flush and had a sense that that sound had been going on for some time. There was a terrible taste in his mouth, part supersweet, part salty, that made him shudder. He heard the toilet seat being lowered and then he was seated on it, the damp towel over his face, another one, rolled and soothingly cool, at the back of his neck.

“Tell them he’s all right,” the voice said. “I’ll bring him out in a minute, just be patient.”

He felt ill and exhausted, as if he’d just returned from a fifteen-round boxing match where his midsection had been systematically pummeled by Lennox Lewis. Pulling the towel off his face he looked up and saw Kharkishvili grinning down at him. Kharkishvili handed him a glass of water.

“Drink, my friend. After puking up your guts for twenty minutes, you’re seriously dehydrated.”

Jack drank the water, feeling better with each swallow; however, his head thundered and his throat ached. He handed back the glass, which Kharkishvili refilled from a nearly full pitcher.

“What happened?” His voice was a thin, ugly rasp, as if his throat and vocal cords had been seared.

“Poison,” Kharkishvili said. “You were poisoned.” He refilled the glass, handed it back. “Good thing I was in the kitchen when it happened, I’ve had some experience with poisons.” He chucked darkly. “You know, in my line of work—which, I assure you, the less you know about the better for both of us—you need to know many ways to skin a cat.” He waved a sausagelike hand. “The important thing is I got you to swallow water with sugar and salt, which caused you to expel everything in your system.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You wouldn’t, you were raving but not, fortunately, unconscious.” Kharkishvili nodded. “Now drink up and return fully to the land of the living.”

A sudden fear pierced the slowly dissipating fog in his mind. “Alli was eating the same food I was, is she all right?”

“Perfectly. She’s outside, everyone was evacuated while we interrogated the kitchen staff. Please keep drinking.” Kharkishvili refilled his glass. “It wasn’t the food that was tainted, it was your fork.”

“How?”

“Arsenic, an old but reliable methodology.”

“Who, the sous-chef?”

Kharkishvili shook his head. “One of the assistants, we have him in custody.”

Jack drained his glass; he was feeling better with every moment that passed. “How long ago was he hired?”

“I inquired of Magnussen; he was hired six days ago.”

Kharkishvili was proving to be a good man. Jack’s brain, which had felt as if it had been encased in jelly, was functioning again, enough, at least, for him to remember his conversation with the president, who had assured him that, the sanction canceled, no more government agents were in the field.

“I want to speak with him,” he said. He rose, took two tottering steps, and sat back down.

Kharkishvili frowned, making him look something like the ogre in the story of Jack and the beanstalk. “In your condition I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Please have Ivan Gurov come in, then bring the poisoner here,” Jack said, a certain snap returning to his voice. “We don’t have time to worry about my condition.”

Kharkishvili nodded and left.

When, in due course, Gurov poked his head in the doorway and asked how Jack was feeling, Jack said, “Ivan, the assassin who followed us here, the one you blew off the road, do you know anything about him?”

“I checked with Passport Control at Simferopol North. His name was Ferry Lovejoy.”

“A government-assigned legend.”

“Ah, yes.” Gurov nodded. “A false name to go with the false papers the American government gives its agents overseas. But, no, I checked with FSB in Moscow. Neither Mr. Ferry Lovejoy nor anyone matching the surveillance photo I took of him is in their database.”

Jack’s mind was working at such speeds that he felt momentarily dizzy. “It’s now more imperative than ever that I speak with my would-be murderer.”

“Mr. Kharkishvili has him outside.”

“Good. But first, please have Alli come in, would you.”

While Kharkishvili went to fetch Alli, Jack put a hand on the porcelain sink and levered himself up. For a moment he stood swaying slightly. He spent his time slowing his breathing in order to get his heart rate back to a normal level. All the while his mind was running full tilt. He now had almost all the pieces to the puzzle, though there were still important gaps to fill in. He hoped he could do that before the deadline of tomorrow night, or was it already tomorrow? He glanced at his watch, but his fall had shattered the crystal face and it had stopped working.

He pulled out his cell phone and that was when he saw that there was one voice mail message. It had been flagged URGENT.

ALLI EMBRACED him. “Are you all right?” She had arrived before he could pick up the message.

“I’m fine.”

“Then what are you still doing in the bathroom?”

He smiled. “It makes an excellent interrogation cell.” He pulled her closer to him. “Now, listen, in a moment Kharkishvili is going to bring in the man who tried to poison me and I’m going to talk to him. You’ll watch him, listen to him, assuming he says much of anything, which is doubtful. That shouldn’t matter to you, you’ll evaluate his facial and body movements, which will tell me a lot. Okay? Think you’re up to it?”

“Of course I’m up to it.” Her eyes were large and liquid. “I’m just . . . I can’t believe you’ll trust me with this.”

Jack brushed back the fringe of hair from her forehead. “It’s not my trust you can’t believe, Alli, it’s your trust in yourself.”

A moment later Kharkishvili appeared with a slight, dark-haired young man who Jack recognized as one of the kitchen assistants.

“This is the sonuvabitch,” Kharkishvili said, manhandling him through the doorway. “His name is Vlad, so he says.” He glared at Vlad. “He’s Ukrainian, that much is for certain, the accent is unmistakable.”

“Sit down.”

When Vlad made no move, Kharkishvili pushed him roughly down onto the closed toilet seat.

“You can do whatever you want to me, I’m not going to talk,” the young man said.

Jack ignored him. “Vlad, I’m going to tell you a story. This happened a long time ago, in seventeenth-century Italy. A Neapolitan woman named Toffana marketed a cosmetic, Acqua Toffana. It was a face paint that, as was the custom of the time, made women’s faces very pale, almost white. This Acqua Toffana proved astoundingly successful among the married women of the area, who were counseled by Toffana herself to make sure their husbands kissed them often on both cheeks while they were wearing the makeup. After six hundred of these unfortunate men died, turning their wives into rich widows, the authorities finally discovered that the main ingredient of Acqua Toffana was arsenic. It was the arsenic that gave it its white color.”

He shrugged. “But being an expert poisoner I suppose you know the history of arsenic. However, not expert enough, it seems, because I’m still here.”

Slouched on his uncomfortable plastic seat, Ivan looked at him, trying to seem bored. As befitted his profession he had a thoroughly unremarkable face, except for his eyes, which, when Jack looked closely, were yellowish and slippery as oil. They stared out at the world with what seemed a false stoicism, as if they were lying in wait for the enemy to appear.

“Who do you work for?” Jack said. He waited for an answer, but Vlad said nothing. His surface was as bland, as blank as the surface of polished marble, calm and curiously unconcerned by his incarceration.

“I know it’s not the United States government, Vlad, so do you work for the FSB?” Jack paused again to allow Alli to make her assessment. “Perhaps it’s the Ukrainian Security Service who employs you.”

Another pause; the silence from Vlad was deafening.

He leaned in suddenly, careful not to block Alli’s view. “I know you and Ferry Lovejoy work for the same firm.” He knew no such thing, but he wanted to observe, and wanted Alli to observe, Vlad’s reaction.

Vlad’s brow furrowed convincingly. “Ferry . . . ? I’m not familiar with that name.”

Jack smiled, using his teeth. “You work for Alizarin Global, so did Lovejoy, but he’s dead now. Ivan Gurov blew him off the road to this manor house, didn’t he?”

Kharkishvili grinned wolfishly. “Absolutely.”

“Is that supposed to frighten me, because—”

“Okay, we’ll dispense with the formalities,” Jack said, standing up. “I have neither the time nor the inclination to interrogate you further, so I’m going to hand you over to the Russians, Vlad. Let them deal with you. Believe me, whatever information you have they’ll squeeze out of you.”

Jack made a motion with his head and Kharkishvili hauled Vlad to his feet.

A look of contempt hardened Vlad’s face. “You won’t hand me over to the Russians, you won’t be allowed to do it.”

“Allowed?” Jack said, pouncing on the word. “By whom? Who do you work for, who inside AURA?”

“It’s Andreyev, isn’t it?” Alli had stepped up to stand beside Jack. “You’re taking orders from Vasily Andreyev.”

Vlad spat onto the floor. “Vasily Andreyev is an old fool.”

Kharkishvili cuffed him hard in the back of the head.

“Manners,” Jack said, but Vlad had already revealed as much as he was going to. “Take him away,” he said to Kharkishvili.

When he and Alli were alone, he said, “Tell me what you observed.”

Alli considered. In that moment Jack saw no trace of the overprotected, narcissistic young woman who had been abducted at the end of last year.

“I’d say he definitely works for a private company.”

“What seemed to frighten him, anything?” Jack asked.

Alli’s face tensed in concentration. “One thing: being turned over to the Russians.”

Jack nodded. “That was my impression also, which tells me that the company he’s working for isn’t American, or at least not primarily American.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “Okay, what else?”

“I got the feeling that he doesn’t know Ferry Lovejoy, whoever he is.”

“The assassin who Ivan Gurov killed.” Jack had come to the same conclusion.

Also, who or what was going to stop Jack from handing Vlad over to the Russians?

“And what’s the deal with this mysterious company that sent them?”

“I’m not sure,” Jack said, “but I intend to find out.”

DYADYA GOURDJIEV parked his comfortably rumpled Zil outside the front door of the manor house just as the first pallid streaks of dawn light cracked open the black-and-blue dome of night. Getting out of the car he shivered in the damp chill air and steeled himself for what was to come.

Magnussen, Glazkov, and Malenko had emerged to welcome him, but not, predictably, Kharkishvili. Though clearly startled by his unplanned visit they nevertheless were warm in their greetings.

As he walked into the entryway he felt himself transported back to the past, back to when he became aware that Oriel Batchuk was spending an inordinate amount of time at Nikki’s house. That, in fact, was why he had come over unannounced that night, he had hoped to surprise Batchuk and, in front of Nikki, tell him in no uncertain terms to stay away from her and from Alexsei. Batchuk had easily seduced Alexsei with his power, privilege, and his ability to obtain for him the plum cases that had advanced his career, and would continue to do so. By virtue of Batchuk’s magnanimous helping hand the couple had moved out of Alexsei’s cramped one-bedroom into a spacious, light-filled two-and-a-half-bedroom in a luxurious building within walking distance of Red Square. Gourdjiev had also taken note, not without some alarm, that Alexsei had begun wearing made-to-measure British designer suits and Nikki was dressing in the latest Western fashions.

But that night Batchuk was nowhere to be found, instead he walked in on a screaming fight between Alexsei and Nikki. At first no one answered the door, but when he became insistent Nikki opened the door a crack.

He was stunned to see her looking disheveled, her face pale, her carnelian eyes fever-bright. There was a snarl on her lips that she was too upset to hide or modify as she stared out at him. She hadn’t wanted to let him in, had begun to close the door on him when he’d planted his foot on the lintel. Then he’d leaned into the door and pushed it open, stepping inside.

At once Alexsei rushed out of the bedroom where, it seemed, their argument had escalated into a full-scale battle of harsh words, hurled invective, insults, and accusations.

“It’s him, isn’t it!” Alexsei shouted. “How dare you let him in?” When he saw that it was Gourdjiev standing in the entryway, he turned away, but he was hardly mollified. “Now you call your father to take your side.”

“I didn’t call anyone, Alexsei.”

“Liar! You call Oriel all the time!” he shouted as he whirled around.

“He calls me,” she said, “it’s not the same thing.”

“It is if you accept the call.” Alexsei’s lips were drawn back from his teeth.

“You’re making something out of nothing,” Nikki said.

“Do you deny you see him during the day?” he snarled. “Go on, deny it, it would be just like you. Deny it and I’ll have my proof of what sort of woman you are, because I’ve seen you two.”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“I saw the two of you having lunch, bent over the table together, your foreheads were practically touching, I saw it and there were other prosecutors there as well.”

“Alexsei, think for a minute, if I were having an affair with Oriel would either of us be stupid enough to meet in public, let alone at a restaurant frequented by your colleagues?”

“I know him, he wants to throw the affair in my face, he’s out to humiliate me, he wants everyone to know that he’s taken you away from me.”

“You speak of me as if I were a horse or a sack of wheat.”

That was when Gourdjiev turned on his heel and left. No good would come from him inserting himself between them, especially when emotions were running so high. It was only when he emerged from the building and saw the spotlit domes of the Kremlin that he knew there was only one place for him to go.

“Is everything all right?” Magnussen said now, wrenching Gourdjiev back to the present. They stood in the villa’s entryway. “We didn’t expect you.”

“Yes, I know,” Gourdjiev said, “but there was no place else to go.”

BATCHUK WAS inside the perimeter of the manor house before he saw a guard. The brick wall surrounding the property was high but not particularly difficult to scale or to get over. The real difficulty was in keeping his silhouette from being seen in the gloaming of dawn. There were no trees on the cliff top, no foliage to mask his movements, but luck was with him, a light fog was billowing in off the water in ghostly waves.

Dropping down off the top of the wall he heard faraway barking and he crouched down, still as a rock. If there were dogs on the property, particularly hunting dogs, they would present a problem. With the onshore wind they would already have picked up his scent, or would at any moment. Close to the front of the house he saw the Zil. As he watched, a guard emerged from the house and drove the Zil around to where a number of other cars were parked.

As soon as the guard was back inside Batchuk ran as fast as he could, zigzagging, still bent over, heading for the left side of the manor house. He reached it without incident, but now he heard a chorus of barks, close enough for him to identify them as belonging to Russian wolfhounds. Wolfhounds were not in themselves dangerous, they liked people too much, but they would certainly sound the alarm for those inside the house. Any moment now other guards would come pouring out, following the dogs who, he was now certain, had picked up his scent.

He knew the feeling, he’d had a hound coming after him the night Nikki told him that she couldn’t see him anymore, that Alexsei had found out about them and was causing a terrible row. She told him unequivocally to stay away when he said he was coming to make sure she would be safe.

“I don’t need you to feel safe,” she had told him. “I don’t need you at all.”

“You do need me,” he had replied like an idiot, as if he were seventeen, “I know you do, Nikki, no matter what you say you can’t hide it from me.”

“You are so deluded,” she shot back, “I was a fool, weak and sad, and you caught me in that moment, you took advantage of me and climbed all over me.”

“Don’t give me that,” he said, “you loved every minute of it, it was you who climbed all over me, if memory serves, you couldn’t get enough.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she shrieked, clearly terrified.

“I did what you wanted me to do, nothing more.”

“Liar! It was what you wanted.”

“You can’t fight it, Nikki, I don’t understand why you even try.”

“Idiot, because I’m married.”

“You’ll divorce him, I’ll make it easy for you.”

All at once she sounded desperate. “I pledged my heart, my life to Alexsei, don’t you get it? But, no, I don’t suppose you do, why would you? You have no soul, no humanity, you’re heartless, pitiless, you want what you want, that’s the beginning and the end of it.”

“Then why did you give in to me? Why did you scream over and over in ecstasy?” He barely got out the last word when she hung up on him.

An hour later Gourdjiev came for him, baying at his door, and he had had no choice but to let him in, no choice because Gourdjiev knew he was home, and if he’d ignored the repeated knocking he’d become a prisoner in his own apartment. He had plenty of power, it was true, but so did Gourdjiev; he had no wish for an all-out war that would bring an end to both their political careers, he had too much on the line to take that risk. And so he opened the door, accepted his medicine, the righteous indignation, the affronted anger, the howl of the animal that feels its off spring threatened.

Visibly chastened, he did not argue, he acquiesced. Whatever Gourdjiev wanted of him he did without argument or protest, let him win this battle, let the war wait in abeyance, all the players frozen in place, until the moment when he himself dictated that the next act would begin.

______

BUT THE dogs would not wait, the wolfhounds came tearing through the carefully manicured foliage—sculpted boxwood and cotoneaster, as close-clipped as a general’s hair—to where Batchuk had crouched under the eaves at the back of the house, but he was no longer there, and they ran in dizzying circles, barking and yelping, their nostrils full of his scent, but with nowhere to go.

“That badger again,” one of the guards said, after he and his companion had had a thorough look around, “or maybe this time an opossum.”

JACK WAS just finishing up his call with Dennis Paull, having at last found the time to answer his urgent voice mail, when he caught sight of Annika. She was in the entryway, talking with Dyadya Gourdjiev, of all people, obviously just arrived, as he stood in his water-beaded overcoat. At this hour, as misty dawn light crept slowly up to the manor house, everyone should have been sleeping, they should have been in bed hours ago, sleeping through the small hours of the morning, when the country was quiet and indolent, dreaming of yesterday or the day after tomorrow, when sorrow’s heartbeat was stilled at last, overcome by hope. But Vlad’s attempt on Jack’s life had turned the world within the manor house upside down; at Kharkishvili’s urging several of the guards had hustled the inhabitants outside while Ivan Gurov and his crew interrogated the kitchen crew, discovered Vlad’s treachery, and slowly, feeling shaken, chilled, and desolate, everyone had filtered back inside, where they puddled in the library, knocking back glasses of slivovitz and watching each other with ambushed eyes.

Jack told Paull his location and said, “Now have my would-be NSA assassins turn their skills to good use,” before he disconnected.

Dyadya Gourdjiev had seen Jack, and Annika turned and ran toward him, flung her arms around him, and held him tight.

“I was so frightened for you,” she whispered in his ear. “I was terrified they had succeeded.”

“They?” he said as he held her at arm’s length. “Who do you mean?”

“The Americans, of course.” Her carnelian eyes studied him with complete candor. “The Izmaylovskaya’s reach doesn’t extend to the Crimea. At least you’re safe from them, if not from your own despicable people.”

She had put him in danger the moment she had lured him into the alley behind the nightclub in Moscow, but there had been no real danger from Izmaylovskaya revenge, she was with him, and the supposed dead Ivan Gurov, loyal, brave, and more clever than he appeared, had been watching over both of them. Then the game had unexpectedly opened up, as General Brandt sent NSA agents after them, and now, after those agents had been withdrawn from the field, another—Vlad the Poisoner—had been dispatched by Alizarin Global. For what reason? Why did Alizarin want to kill him? Time to find out.

“Annika, listen, I need to speak with Vasily Andreyev, but I want you and Dyadya Gourdjiev with me as witnesses. I know Gourdjiev just arrived and he must be tired, but can you see if you can convince him to do that now?”

“All right.” She nodded and went back to the entryway, where Gourdjiev was immersed in what appeared to be a heated discussion or argument with Kharkishvili, who had stopped on his way out.

She touched his arm and, though reluctant to cut short the discussion or argument, he could not refuse her. She spoke briefly in his ear and he glanced at Jack, who stood ready and waiting. Then he nodded, said something curt to Kharkishvili that, to Jack, looked something like, “Don’t forget what I’ve told you, we’ll continue this later.” Kharkishvili stalked out as Annika and Dyadya Gourdjiev approached him.

Having taken a stroll around the main level with Alli, his brain had automatically memorized the floor plan as a three-dimensional space. He therefore knew that the best place for privacy was the old-fashioned drawing room. It had mullioned leaded-glass windows out to the west side of the house and only one entrance, double doors that opened onto the short corridor that ended with the kitchen, pantry, and back door.

Jack found Andreyev, his hair disheveled, his black button eyes furtively glancing at Alli every chance he got. A glass of slivovitz in one hand and a cigar in the other, he stood against the mantel; either he or it required propping up. The other oligarchs were now nowhere to be seen, Andreyev said that Magnussen had suggested they go for a walk to clear their heads before breakfast, but he hadn’t felt up to it. So that’s where Kharkishvili was off to. Two guards and, of course, the three Russian wolfhounds had accompanied them. By Jack’s count that left Alli and two guards remaining on the property. Gurov was gone, transporting Vlad the Poisoner back to Simferopol North Airport for delivery to the FSB. The emptying out of the manor house suited Jack’s purpose.

Andreyev accompanied Jack and Alli out of the library, down the rear hallway, and into the more private drawing room, where Annika and Dyadya Gourdjiev greeted them. Jack saw in Annika’s face a sense of great expectation, of a mystery about to be solved. As for Gourdjiev, he had his usual sphinxlike expression, calm and unruffled, despite the tension of the moment.

“You should have told me you were part of AURA,” Jack said as he clasped the old man’s hand. His grip was still firm and sure.

“No need to burden you with something you didn’t then need to know.” He gave Jack a grandfatherly smile. “Annika tells me that you will solve the dilemma of the uranium field, of Yukin’s land grab, the specter of a spreading conflagration.”

Jack’s eyes flicked to her and back. “Annika puts great faith in me.”

“She does,” Gourdjiev acknowledged. “She has from the very beginning; she is an unerring judge of character and, just as importantly, of potential.” He paused, waiting expectantly.

“May I ask,” Andreyev said in his furtive manner, “why you have brought me here, Mr. McClure?”

“Certainly.” Jack put him firmly under his gaze. “I am extremely unhappy with the unwanted attention and inappropriate advances you have made on my daughter.”

“You must be mistak—”

The beginning of Andreyev’s transparent denial was cut off by two short bursts of semiautomatic fire. Jack, racing to the double doors, was about to thrust them open when they opened from the outside. Oriel Batchuk stood in the doorway, an OTS-33 Pernach machine pistol in his hand. Reacting immediately, Jack chopped down on his wrist, knocking the Pernach to the floor, but Batchuk shoved past him, raised his left arm at Andreyev as if he were accusing him of being alive. The lethal dart struck the oligarch in the neck. Clawing at it, he fell to his knees, the terrible clicking sound of massed insects coming from his throat before he pitched over, dead.

“Step back.” Batchuk swiveled his arm. “Step back or Annika dies next.”

Jack did as he said, and Batchuk, crouching down, plucked the Pernach off the floor. “All right,” he said, standing and pointing the machine pistol at them. “Time to disarm yourselves.”

“TIME TO disarm yourself,” Batchuk said.

“I will kill you now.” Alexsei Dementiev was silhouetted in the doorway of his apartment, in which Batchuk was already standing, a Makarov pistol in his hand.

During one of his earliest evenings there before his affair with Nikki began, Batchuk had made a wax impression of her key, had a copy made so that he could gain entrance any time he chose. Though he was not given to introspection, he nevertheless understood that the complete domination of her privacy was essential to his conquest. At work, at court, inside the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Moscow, it pleased him to know that he was always, in one way or another, intimate with her.

“I’m not joking or bluffing,” Alexsei said.

His face was drawn, deeply etched with tension and misery. To Batchuk he looked ten years older than when they had first met at court, only eighteen months ago.

“I’m quite certain you’re not, I assure you that I take the threat quite seriously.” But by the way Alexsei held the pistol Batchuk knew he was no expert in firearms. In fact he wondered whether Alexsei had ever fired a Makarov, or any pistol for that matter.

“You deserve to die.” Alexsei was growing tenser, more anxious. “For what you have done to my wife I will be justified in taking you out with the rest of the garbage.”

“Tell me, Alexsei,” Batchuk said, “have you ever killed a human being?” He cocked his head. “No? As someone who has killed many men, let me assure you it’s no easy thing, no, not at all. You never forget the face of the first person you kill, the look in his eyes as the light goes out.”

“I’ll welcome that look in your eyes.”

“That expression haunts you, Alexsei, follows you down into dreams, into the deepest recesses of your mind, lodged there like a lesion or a tumor that can’t be treated, can’t be eradicated no matter what you do.”

Something flickered in Alexsei’s eyes, some disturbance or doubt roiled up by Batchuk’s words. In that instant of doubt or hesitation Batchuk lunged at him, slapping him across the face so hard that Alexsei, totally unprepared, reeled back against the door frame.

Batchuk ripped the pistol from his hand. “You’re a buffoon, Alexsei, a patsy. I used you to get to Nikki. Do you really think I’d be friends with someone like you, someone who lets his wife be taken away from him?”

Alexsei, enraged at both his rival and himself, came at Batchuk, roaring like a bear. Indolently, almost carelessly, Batchuk swiped the barrel of the Makarov across Alexsei’s face.

“That’s right, she was going to leave you, leave your poor, pathetic life behind to be with me.”

Alexsei would not stop, he continued to grapple with Batchuk until Batchuk had no choice but to take Alexsei’s head in one hand, his neck in the other, and twist in one powerful motion that broke the vertebrae.

DYADYA GOURDJIEV, glancing briefly down at the handguns he, Annika, and Jack had placed on the carpet of the drawing room, heard Batchuk say, “Now sit down, all of you, and I’ll outline the situation.”

As they sat, Batchuk continued, “The two guards are dead, the others are away with the dogs, so that leaves just us, not that I have much time, but then killing doesn’t take much time.”

“Whatever you do, leave the girl out of it,” Jack said, indicating Alli. “She has nothing to do with this.”

“She’s here, isn’t she, she’s seen my face.” Batchuk shook his head. “No one is exempt.”

“Oriel, your battle is with me, let the others go,” Gourdjiev said sharply.

“I told you I was coming after Annika, I told you she had overstepped even your protection, did you think I didn’t mean it?”

_____

“HE’LL COME after me, I know it,” Nikki said as she lay in the hospital room.

“Have no fears on that score,” Gourdjiev said soothingly, “I’ll protect you come what may.”

“And the child.”

Gourdjiev took her hand. “Of course the child, she’s the product of your and Alexsei’s love.”

Nikki closed her eyes. “He’s coming soon, Papa, when I’ll be weak and helpless.” Her eyes flew open. “Oriel has an instinct for knowing when people are most vulnerable. Promise me you’ll keep her safe.”

“I swear, Nikki, calm yourself.”

“Her name is Annika, I want to call her Annika.”

She was a perfect baby. Gourdjiev remembered holding her in his arms, so tiny, so pink, so Annika, and the world seemed all right again. But then five years later everything came undone, Nikki had killed herself, Annika was gone, and Gourdjiev knew that he had failed daughter and granddaughter both.

“I HAVE an instinct for knowing when people are most vulnerable,” Batchuk said, “and now that I’ve caught up with you both it’s time to end our decades-long game of charades.”

“I prefer to call it a game of cat and mouse,” Gourdjiev said.

“Call it whatever you want,” Batchuk leveled the machine pistol, “it’s over.”

At that moment, Alli moved.

“Keep still, girl!” Batchuk shouted so loudly that Alli jumped and he almost shot her.

Jack took a step forward, Batchuk swung his machine pistol around, and Annika rushed him. She buried her fist in Batchuk’s belly while Jack wrested the Pernach away from him.

“His left arm!” Gourdjiev shouted, leaping to his feet. “He’s got a dart launcher!”

Indeed Batchuk, through eyes streaming with tears, struggled to level his left arm at Gourdjiev. Jack knocked it sideways an instant before the dart was launched, causing it to embed itself harmlessly in the crown molding that joined wall to ceiling.

“Let me go,” Batchuk said. Though he was being restrained by Jack, he addressed Annika, as if they were alone in the room.

“Why would I do that?” she said. “You’re a monster.”

“It’s your grandfather who is the monster. I swore never to talk about it, never to tell you, but what are oaths now, in the end the promises we make all fail, they’re meant to be broken.”

“How evil you are,” Annika said. “You’re rotten with malevolence, nobody knows this better than I do.”

A peculiar light shone in Batchuk’s eyes. “You think you know the meaning of evil, but you don’t, Annika, because it’s your grandfather who’s truly evil.”

Gourdjiev took a step toward them. “Don’t believe a word he says, Annika.”

“Yes, not a word of it, but here is the truth of it: Nikki and I were in love, she was the only woman I cared about, to this day that’s the truth.”

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and bit you,” Gourdjiev said.

Batchuk kept his gaze firmly on Annika. “It was your grandfather who schemed to keep us apart. He never let me even meet your mother until it was too late, until she was already engaged to Alexsei.”

“No,” Annika said, “my mother and father were in love.”

“Alexsei loved her, of that there can be no doubt.” Batchuk shook his head. “But as for Nikki, no, she thought she loved Alexsei until we met, and then she knew the truth of it. Even though she was married neither of us could help ourselves, we became lost in each other—nothing, no one else existed.”

“What he’s saying is nonsense,” Gourdjiev said. “He’s simply trying to justify his actions.”

“Annika,” Batchuk said, “it was our love, your mother’s for me and mine for her, that caused Alexsei to feel so threatened. If we’d just had a quick tumble, if our connection was purely physical, do you think he would have become so maniacal with her? No, he knew, just as she knew that her love for me meant that their marriage was over.”

“You killed him,” Gourdjiev said. “You broke Alexsei’s neck.”

“He gave me no choice, he was out of control, nothing less would have stopped him from tearing me limb from limb.”

“So now you claim the murder was self-defense,” Annika said.

“Yes.” Batchuk nodded. “Absolutely.”

Gourdjiev took another step toward him and at last his antagonistic intent was unmistakable. “And that same night was it self-defense when you raped my daughter the moment she came home while her poor dead husband was bundled in a closet?”

Batchuk’s face filled with blood. “I did no such thing!”

Annika’s eyes were full of shock and rage. “Did you? Did you rape my mother the night you killed my father?”

“I never raped her,” Batchuk said. “There wasn’t a time I touched her when she didn’t want it, didn’t beg for the release only I could give her.”

Annika slapped his face, very hard, the energy rising in her from her lower belly through her arm into the tips of her fingers, the imprints of which could be seen on his cheek white on red, and then an instant afterward, red on pink.

Gourdjiev kept moving in, as if for the kill. “And what do you call it, also self-defense, when you stole Annika away from her mother?”

“You mean from you, Annika was never Nikki’s child, she was yours, you tried with all your power to make sure of that,” Batchuk said. “But yet it most certainly was self-defense. I took her from you, from your clutches, because she’s mine.” He turned to Annika. “You were conceived the night I killed Alexsei Dementiev in self-defense, you were conceived after he died, in the frenzy of passion your mother and I shared.”