Last Snow

TWENTY-NINE

“IS THIS true?” Annika said to Gourdjiev, breaking the stunned silence. “You knew?”

“Not right away, of course not.”

Jack could see that the old man was on the defensive now, which was just where Batchuk wanted him. He risked a glance at Alli, who had come off her chair and was standing very near Gourdjiev as if to stop him if he leapt to throttle Batchuk. He could tell that she was totally absorbed in the psychological fireworks.

“But gradually, as your mother’s mental condition began to decline, I got some inkling. At first I thought her depression was a result of Alexsei’s death, but then, as the months turned into years I grew convinced that something else was eating her alive. Finally, five years from the day of Alexsei’s murder, I got it out of her, how she had come home that night to find not Alexsei waiting for her, but him, Oriel Batchuk.

“I was out of my mind with rage and anguish, all I could think of was how to revenge myself on him, so much so that I lost sight of her, I failed to realize just how deeply in the grip of her depression she had sunk. That night I stayed with her and with you, and that night she slit her wrists, silently, on the bathroom tiles, while you slept and I plotted revenge.”

“There you have it,” Batchuk said, triumph creeping into his voice, “the anatomy of true evil.”

Annika put the machine pistol to the side of his head. “Move away, Jack,” she said.

“Annika.” Alli had moved from Gourdjiev’s side to Annika’s. “Don’t, he’s your father.”

“You don’t know what he did to me, the years I was with him.”

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

“Liar! It was what you wanted.”

“You’re wrong, I kept you safe,” Batchuk said, “safe from him.” He glanced at Gourdjiev.

“I didn’t need you to keep me safe.”

“Annika, no matter what he did in the past, no matter what he is now, he helped bring you into the world,” Alli said. “Without him you wouldn’t exist.”

“At this moment,” Annika said, “I wish I didn’t exist.”

“You don’t mean that,” Alli said.

There were tears in Annika’s eyes. “I’m going to blast his goddamned skull open.”

“Don’t, Annika, don’t. You’ll never be able to live with yourself.”

“It doesn’t matter, I want to die, but before I do I will see his blood spattered all over this room.”

“I hate my father, too.” Alli was pleading with her. “But I couldn’t bear the thought of him dying.”

“Whatever he did, it couldn’t be anything like what this man—”

“Your father.”

“—did to me.”

“Crimes are crimes,” Alli said. “Whether they’re of cruelty or of neglect what matter does it make, they’ve changed us, and they can’t be taken back or absolved or forgotten, but the cycle has to end somewhere, so why not here, why not now, with you?”

“You’re right.” Annika smiled at her, a slow, sad, rueful smile. “It has to end.” Then she pulled the trigger. Batchuk’s blood, brains, and bits of bone flew outward in a hail of red and pink, an explosion so violent its human shrapnel covered them all, so massive it seemed as if he had detonated from the inside out.

BENEATH A gauzy and indistinct sky Dennis Paull stood with his daughter and grandson at Louise’s grave site just across the Chesapeake in Virginia. He and Claire had each dropped a shovelful of dirt onto the lowered coffin.

“Mom, why did you and Grandpa put earth in the hole with Grandma?”

Tears glittered in Claire’s eyes. “So part of us can stay with her and love her always.”

To Paull’s surprise and immense pleasure Aaron stepped forward, stooped down to grab a handful of earth, and dropped it on top of theirs.

Even though they had come here to bury his wife his thoughts weren’t diminished by her death and loss, rather they were filled with the return of his family. How, he wondered now, had he deserved this miracle? Had he been a good man, righteous, strong in his convictions, repentant for his sins? And what did the answers matter, the universe didn’t care, every event was random, chaos ruled, there was no answer for any question, large or small, only compromises and, perhaps, if one was as lucky as he was, sacrifices.

His arm was around Claire’s shoulders, his eyes were on Aaron, who was perhaps dreaming of the promised celebration later this afternoon, but for Dennis Paull the celebration had already begun.

_____

A DEAFENING silence now engulfed them all, made their legs numb, their hearts thud in their chests, numbed their minds. What remained of Oriel Jovovich Batchuk lay half in, half out of the drawing room, his blood was all over, but not a single drop of Vasily Andreyev’s had been spilled.

“So, it’s over at last,” Gourdjiev said, breaking the awkward silence. “Annika, I’m so terribly sorry you had to hear that.” He went to her, tried to put his arm around her, but she shrugged it off.

“Don’t,” she said, moving away from him.

Jack gingerly unwound Annika’s fingers from the machine pistol. When he took it from her she made no protest, instead she took Alli’s hand and held it tight.

“I knew you were right, I wanted to . . . but I couldn’t.”

“It’s all right,” Alli assured her, “it’s all right.”

Annika stood staring down at her grandfather’s nemesis—her father—with a kind of terrified disbelief. She was holding Alli’s hand so tightly their fingers were white. Jack knew it wasn’t healthy for any of them to remain in this abattoir.

“We need to clean up,” he said.

Annika nodded, but she didn’t move. There were bits of bone stuck to her cheeks and nose, oblique smears of blood elsewhere on her chest and face, including her lips. Gourdjiev stepped agilely over the body and stood in the hallway waiting for them, silent, wrapped in his own enigmatic thoughts. He did not look at his bloody hands.

“How are you?” Jack asked Annika.

Her carnelian eyes were pale and bleak, as if all the mineral quality had leached out of them. “I haven’t the faintest notion, my mind is numb, I feel lost and alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Jack said. “Come on, you and Alli need to clean up.”

He nodded to Alli, and she guided Annika out of the drawing room, past Gourdjiev, stoop-shouldered and gray, and into the bathroom. Jack led the way into the kitchen, where he and Gourdjiev cleaned up as best they could, using the kitchen sink.

Jack watched warm water sluice the muck off his hands. “It’s true, isn’t it, everything Batchuk said.”

Gourdjiev stared out the window over the sink. “Most of it, anyway.”

“So for years you knew he was her father.”

“Yes.”

“But she didn’t.”

“Not until a few minutes ago when you heard about it yourself.”

“It’s no wonder she killed him.”

“To be shot to death by your own child.” Gourdjiev turned back into the kitchen, slowly washed his hands as if reluctant to part with the tangible evidence of Batchuk’s death. “I wish I could say that I felt satisfied, but I fear that revenge is not all it’s cracked up to be; in fact I’m finding it’s rather meaningless. His death won’t bring my Nikki back, it can’t mitigate her pain, and now I think it’s very possible that Annika is lost to me as well. If that happens I’ll have nothing.”

Jack, aware that Annika and Alli had come into the kitchen, their faces and hands clean if not their clothes, said, “Not to worry, you still have Alizarin Group.”

“What, I didn’t hear you.”

“You heard me well enough,” Jack said. “I know you own Alizarin Group. There are six other partners, but you’re Alizarin’s guiding hand.”

“I’m afraid you’re sadly mistaken, young man.”

Jack hefted Batchuk’s machine pistol. “The only thing you should be afraid of is me.”

“I don’t understand.”

During this exchange Gourdjiev was gradually transformed from an old beaten-down grandfather to a stern, ramrod-backed businessman with the keen, knowing eyes of an expert poker player. No wonder he had outsmarted Batchuk, Jack thought. And he knew that he had to guard against succumbing to the same fate.

“The man who poisoned me was employed by Alizarin Group, your company.”

Annika stared at him. “Dyadya, is this true?”

“What nonsense, of course it isn’t.”

“He’s lying,” Alli said. “I was with Jack when he interrogated Vlad. He works for Alizarin Group.” She and Annika stood close together, as if they were sisters standing up to their parents. “Anyway, when Ivan Gurov delivers him to the FSB the truth will come out.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Gourdjiev sighed. “Ivan Gurov’s vehicle was intercepted on the way to the airport and Vlad was rescued. Unfortunately, Gurov chose to put up a fight and was killed.”

“What are you saying?” Annika looked as if she had about hit her breaking point. “Your people murdered Ivan?”

“He gave them no choice, Annika. He wouldn’t let Vlad go.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Then it was you who ordered Jack killed?”

“Not killed,” Gourdjiev corrected, “poisoned by arsenic, debilitated, perhaps hospitalized, not dead, never dead.”

“But why?”

Dyadya Gourdjiev turned to Jack and said just as if he were asking for the time, “Do you want to tell her, I’m certain you have figured it out by now.”

Jack hesitated, not because he didn’t know the answer but because he wasn’t sure he wanted to play Gourdjiev’s game. Then he shrugged mentally. “It was Alli, she really threw a wrench into your plan. It’s a joke, funny when you think about it, but that’s how life is, Gourdjiev, a spur-of-the-moment decision, something from out of left field you couldn’t possibly have anticipated. Given her real identity you couldn’t afford the scrutiny from the American government that would be the inevitable result of my bringing her here, so you thought up a way to take the spotlight off her and put it on me. My government would be so busy trying to find out who had tried to poison me they’d forget all about Alli and what happened to her here, that was why you risked exposure to rescue Vlad, why your people killed Gurov. He recognized them, didn’t he, or at least one of them. You couldn’t allow either Gurov or Vlad to talk, now neither of them will.”

Dyadya Gourdjiev nodded as if immensely pleased with a prized pupil. “And of course you figured out my plan.”

“It seems that you’ve been playing both ends against the middle. You were never going to share the astronomical profits from the uranium strike, either with Yukin or with AURA. You wanted it for yourself.”

“Not at first.” Gourdjiev kept one eye on the muzzle of the machine pistol. “I put AURA together to go after the uranium strike, but rather quickly I saw that AURA was going to fail, principally because Kharkishvili turned against me, he split the AURA members, it was becoming ineffective.” He shrugged. “So I decided to have Alizarin step into the breach.”

“But there was a problem,” Jack said, “a seemingly insurmountable one, which is where I come in.”

Now Gourdjiev laughed. “I very much regret that I ordered Vlad to dose you, you have a remarkable mind. Unique.” He nodded admiringly. “I’ve known the president of Ukraine, Ingan Ulishenko, since he was a young man. I went to him with our proposal, but all he saw was sovereign land, potential profits being taken away from him. He refused to believe that there was an imminent threat from Trinadtsat, from Yukin and Batchuk. He would not allow us to buy the land.”

Jack had not raised the weapon, had made no threatening move against Gourdjiev. “What you needed was an outside source to confirm what you’d told him, someone unimpeachable, someone Ulishenko could neither ignore nor refuse.”

“An American in government, close to the president, but who was totally apolitical.”

“Someone Ulishenko would be sure to trust.”

“No one else fit the bill, Mr. McClure.”

“Which is why your grandfather would never kill me,” Jack said to Annika. “He needs me and, as it happens, I need him. I’m going to make sure Alizarin Group gets the uranium field.”

The solution had come to him sometime when he was washing Batchuk’s grisly debris off his face. He had tried to come up with an alternative, but it was no use, his brain told him that he’d found the only one, even though it wasn’t perfect—wasn’t even, to his way of thinking, good—but there was no other path to take, and now he wondered whether Gourdjiev had hit upon it before him.

“The accord with Yukin must be signed, President Carson made that perfectly clear. But if he does sign it Yukin will move into Ukraine and use the accord to stay there. That isn’t acceptable, either. I talk to Ulishenko, tell him what Yukin is planning. He’ll have no choice but to sell the uranium field to Alizarin Group. Alizarin is a multinational corporation that Yukin can neither touch nor attack, so as to his energy ambitions in Ukraine he’s stymied. Plus, he now must abide by the accord he will sign tonight with the United States.”

Jack turned back to Gourdjiev. “In addition to the purchase price, Alizarin Group will pledge fifty percent of all profits from the field to the Ukrainian government.”

“Ten percent,” Gourdjiev said.

“Don’t make me laugh. Forty-five percent or I tell my government what you’ve done. They’ll shut Alizarin Group down like a toxic waste dump.”

“Twenty-five percent or I walk away and let Yukin have his way.”

“Without me to confirm to Ulishenko the imminent threat posed to his country by Yukin you and Alizarin are dead in the water,” Jack said. “Thirty-five, that’s my final offer.”

“Done.”

Dyadya Gourdjiev held out his hand.

“Jack, you’re not really making a deal with him,” Alli said.

“I have no choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” she said, “you taught me that.”

“Not this time.” Jack grasped Gourdjiev’s hand, and at that moment they all heard the clatter of rotor blades descending.

“What’s happening?” Gourdjiev said.

“The cavalry,” Jack said, “has arrived.” Just as Dennis Paull promised.