Last Snow

THIRTY

FROM THE back of the immense, ornate salon in the Kremlin, Jack watched as Alli stood on one side of the First Lady, Lyn Carson, Mrs. Yukin on the other, as President Edward Carson and President Yukin used pens specifically designed for the historic signing of the U.S.-Russian security accord. Alli was wearing a long sapphire blue dress that made her look very grown-up. While video and still cameras dutifully recorded the momentous occasion Jack’s gaze fell on Yukin’s face, alight with pleasure and a certain amount of secret triumph, the origin of which only he, Carson, Annika, and Alli knew. An hour from now, when Ukrainian national television broadcast Dyadya Gourdjiev and President Ulishenko jointly announcing that the tract of land in the country’s economically ravaged northeastern section was sold to Alizarin Group, Yukin’s demeanor would change markedly. Alizarin would pledge thirty-five percent of the profits to Ukraine and immediately begin hiring thousands of unemployed citizens to work the largest uranium strike in Asia.

After the signing, the seemingly endless photo ops and interviews began, neither of which Jack chose to be a part of, despite Carson’s requests to the contrary.

“I can serve you best,” Jack told the president, “by remaining in the shadows.”

Uncharacteristically Alli had agreed to stay by her parents’ side during this tiring and dreary process, or rather, Jack reflected, it was a new characteristic, one that spoke to her recent adventures, insights, and sense of herself. As he watched her move about the room with the Carsons and the Yukins he felt a great surge of pride for who she was and what she might now become.

He spent the time with Annika, who had flown back with him and Alli from Kiev, where the helicopter manned by Paull’s people had let them off.

“I don’t think I’ll ever speak to him again,” Annika said.

Jack knew she meant Gourdjiev, a man whose name she no longer spoke, much less called dyadya.

“He was trying to protect you.”

“Really, is that what you think?” She looked at him skeptically. “Or are you just trying to make me feel better?” She held up a hand to forestall an answer she did not care to hear. “The truth is he was trying to protect himself. As long as I remained ignorant of the facts of my conception he didn’t have to answer awkward or embarrassing questions.”

“It seems odd that Batchuk didn’t tell you he was your father when you were with him.”

They were standing by a window that must have been fifteen feet high. She looked away from him, out onto Red Square, where it had begun to snow again, according to the weather forecasters the last snow of winter.

“The truth is as simple as it is ugly: He didn’t want me to know I was his daughter, not then, anyway. He was too busy mourning my mother’s death and staring into my eyes—studying my face brought her back to him as nothing else could. And, of course, there was the other thing.” Tears glittered beneath her lashes. “To tell me that he was my father would have destroyed the sexual bond he tried to establish between us.”

Jack felt a sudden chill render him all but speechless. “When you were five?”

She continued to stare out at the snow, she neither answered nor moved her head, there was no need.

She wiped her eyes with her forefinger and turned to him suddenly with a thin smile. “I’m sorry, Jack, sorry for lying to you, deceiving you, putting you through the wringer with Gurov’s supposed death, but it was necessary.”

Was it, he wondered. He supposed that depended on your point of view. He could begrudge her her elaborate deception, but to what end? He had seen firsthand how Sharon’s rage at him had destroyed not only their marriage but Sharon herself. As long as she held on to that anger she would never be able to trust anyone, she’d be alone and in anguish for the rest of her life. That was a path he had turned away from some time ago.

“There’s one other thing I can’t fathom,” he said now. “How did you know I’d follow you to the alley that night?”

She put the flat of her hand against his chest. “You’re a decent man, you weren’t going to let me walk into an ambush where you were convinced that I would surely wind up dead.”

He shook his head. “I’m not buying that answer. You could never have been certain that I would come, even after you were careful to tell me in the hotel bar that the Moscow police were worse than useless.”

Her smile was cunning, which had the startling effect of turning her into a sexual creature he did not want to resist. “I studied you, Jack. I knew what had happened with Emma, I knew how your ex-wife blamed you, how you blamed yourself, how, to compensate and to try to make amends you couldn’t resist someone in peril, especially mortal peril.” When he made no comment, she went on, “Tell me you didn’t think of Emma when you made the decision to leave the hotel and come after me.”

“You’re right,” he said, after a time, “Emma was all I thought about that night.”

“Once again, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Leaning forward, he kissed her. “I don’t want to hear you say you’re sorry again.”

“Don’t worry,” she put a hand behind his head, caressing him, “you won’t.”

Jack saw the Carsons coming and remembered that Edward had invited him to dinner after the ceremonies.

“I’m going to have to go,” he said, reluctantly breaking away from her.

“Meet me tomorrow,” she said, “in the lobby of the Bolshoi Ballet at seven forty-five.”

And then she was gone, vanishing in the dense swirl of people.

“I hope I didn’t scare off your lady friend,” Edward Carson said. “I was going to invite her to dinner.”

“That’s all right, sir, I don’t think she cares much for this place.”

Carson looked around. “Who the hell could?” He put his arm around Jack’s shoulders. “Once again I owe you a debt I can never hope to repay.”

“No need, sir.”

“On so many levels,” the president continued, “not only me, not only Lyn and me, but the country itself. Dammit, Jack, no one else could have figured out a way to make this damnable security accord a success.”

“I appreciate your faith in me.” Jack didn’t want to talk about a success that involved Dyadya Gourdjiev getting everything he wanted. Instead, he looked around. “I haven’t seen General Brandt.”

“And you won’t. He’s being held incognito and in strict isolation aboard Air Force One. The Justice Department has been notified and will deal with him in due course, as will every other knotty problem of state, when we arrive home tomorrow.” His smile was broad and, for once, relaxed. “Tonight we eat, drink, tell jokes, and best of all, listen to the stories you and Alli have to tell about your adventures in Ukraine. For this one evening we’ve all earned the right to forget about the difficulties of yesterday and whatever may come the day after tomorrow.” He took Lyn’s arm and nodded in Alli’s direction. “Now how about you escort Alli back to the hotel; everything has been prepared for us in my suite.”

THE NEW day dawned just as it had ended, with snow. The presidential motorcade set out for Sheremetyevo, where Air Force One was fueled and waiting. Jack, sitting beside Alli in the limousine directly behind the one carrying the president and First Lady, was looking forward to interrogating the General. Carson had promised him an hour alone with Brandt before anyone else had a crack at him. The president was of a mind to grant Jack pretty much anything he asked for.

“Sorry to be going home?” Jack asked half in jest.

“As a matter of fact,” Alli said, “I am.”

They had reached the Ring Road, coming up on the exit that led to the airport. The snow had lessened and, according to the latest forecast, would be nothing but a memory in an hour or so, but the night had been frigid, and with the overcast predicted to hang around for the next couple of days the sidewalks and roads would remain slick. Jack thought about Annika and the date at the Bolshoi for tonight that he would not now make. He’d called her and left a message on her voice mail telling her of his change in plans. Carson had been expected to stay another day, but the itinerary had abruptly changed because of embarrassing difficulties Ben Hearth, the newly appointed Senate whip, was having keeping the conservative wing of their party in line.

“I miss Annika,” she said, “do you?”

“I wish we were staying longer.” Jack looked out the window at the bleakness of Moscow. “I wanted to see the Bolshoi.”

Alli smiled. “But not with me.”

He smiled in return. “No, not with you.”

Alli was silent for a moment, staring at the motorcycle cops flanking their limo. “Maybe she’ll come to Washington, maybe you’ll come back here.”

“Maybe.” He put his head back; he was suddenly very tired. The moment he closed his eyes he saw Emma. He smiled at her but something was wrong.

Alli must have seen the change in his expression because she said, “Don’t be sad, Jack.”

“I’m not sad, exactly, I—”

The rest of his thought was cut off by her scream. His eyes snapped open to see everything in frantic motion. The presidential limo had skidded, most likely on a patch of black ice, and was now veering off the roadway. Still spinning, it plunged down the verge onto the median, where it struck something buried under the snow. It flipped over as it slammed into a high-tension pole. The cables broke free and swooped down like black crows out of an icy sky, striking the limo, sending a powerful charge through the car.

Alli was still screaming and Jack was out of their limo, running with the Secret Service agents toward the wreck. Sirens were wailing, people were shouting, the entire motorcade had come to a halt, the press corps piling out and running, too, cell phones out, calling, texting, Twittering, whatever means would get the news out the fastest, spreading it to all four corners of the globe even before those on the scene could determine the condition of the president and the First Lady.

Alli caught up with Jack as he waited for the two agents who were closest to swing the cable off the limo. The moment it was safely aside, he wrenched on one of the rear doors. The limo was resting on its roof, there was a welter of security personnel, both American and Russians. Because the Russians were being turned back, their commander decided his men should form the perimeter, keeping back the howling press corps.

By this time Jack had wrenched the door open. He took one look inside and handed Alli to one of her detail.

“What’s going on?” she cried. “Jack, tell me what you saw!”

Putting his head back inside Jack saw Lyn Carson cradling her husband’s bloody head. All the personnel in the front were mangled, clearly dead. Defib Man checked on the president, shook his head, and started to cry.

“Mrs. Carson,” Jack said, “Lyn, we’ve got to get you out of there now.”

She did not move, did not respond, and Jack climbed in over the body of his good friend. When he began to pull her away, Lyn screamed. Her eyes were wide and staring, she was clearly in shock. Then there were other hands helping him, and slowly the Carsons were separated. That’s when he saw that the front of Lyn’s coat was soaked through. At first he thought it was Edward’s blood and, indeed, some of it undoubtedly was, but when she passed out as they tried to extricate her he knew that something was very wrong.

THEY TOOK the president and First Lady—Edward and Lyn—straight to Air Force One, where the president’s trauma surgeon was standing by in the plane’s operating room for Lyn Carson, who had sustained abdominal damage. The American medical team worked on her for six hours, and even then the team leader could not give a definitive long-term prognosis. She was, however, stable enough for Air Force One to take off. By that time the snow had ceased, and a silver sun briefly showed its face through a crease in the thick cloud cover.

During those six hours Jack stood holding Alli, who, after asking him what he had seen, had said not a word. She stared down at her father, gray as ash, shiny as a melted candle, without an outward sign of emotion. This continued for so long that Jack grew worried. He spoke to her several times in halting phrases; his tongue felt as if it were swollen. He himself needed time to grieve over the loss of Edward Carson, but it had not yet become a reality, it was too immense, too unthinkable to take in so quickly. How could Edward Carson, the President of the United States, die in a car crash, how could he be dead? He couldn’t be, no one believed it except the Secret Service detail, because they had been trained for this moment, hoping it would never come, but prepared for it mentally and physically nonetheless. Dick Bridges, the detail’s leader, was dry-eyed and stoic, there was never a moment when he wasn’t in command, when everyone wondered whether they could count on him. After he had supervised the loading of the agents who had been in the lead limo into the belly of the aircraft he returned to the president’s body as a member of the Praetorian guard stands by his Caesar, even in death.

Jack had not heard from Annika and he did not now expect to. It was just as well; he wouldn’t know what to say to her, how to respond, his mind was here by the side of his fallen friend, his leader, and Alli.

Just before the doors closed Jack left Alli’s side and stepped out onto the moving stairs. He was surrounded by grim-faced Secret Service agents, silent in their sober grieving. Their regret was so palpable he felt buffeted by it. There was nothing special to look at, Sheremetyevo was much like other airports in other countries, and yet to him it was utterly unique.

Everything comes to an end, he thought. Love, hate, even betrayal. The accumulation of wealth, the scheming for power, the barbarity, the cruelty, the endless lies that capture what we think we want. In the final moment, everyone falls, even the would-be kings of empires like Yukin, even the princes of darkness like Dyadya Gourdjiev. In the silence of the tomb, we all get what we deserve.

While he was thinking these thoughts, while he was taking his last breaths of the chill Moscow air, his phone vibrated. He almost didn’t take it out of his pocket, almost didn’t look at who was attempting to contact him at this inopportune moment. He both wanted and didn’t want it to be Annika. Compelled to look down at the screen he saw that she had replied to his call via an e-mail. He opened it up and read:

Dearest Jack,

My grandfather warned me not to tell you, but I’m breaking protocol because there’s something you have to know; it’s the reason I haven’t come, why I won’t come no matter how long you wait, why I’m not being melodramatic when I say that we must never see each other again.

I killed Lloyd Berns. I sought him out in Kiev and then in Capri, where, free of his official escorts, it was easy to do what I wanted with him. I ran him down. He had made a deal with Karl Rochev—two stubborn birds of identical corrupt feathers—that threatened AURA’s plans. My grandfather knew the president would open an investigation into Berns’s death and suspected that he’d assign you because Carson trusted you, and only you, and you were already with him in Moscow.

I know you must hate me, I’ve been preparing for that since the moment I built up the file on you. There is little point in reiterating how desperately my grandfather and I needed your unique expertise, no one else could have unraveled the Gordian knot that had stymied and bedeviled us. So you hate me now, which is understandable and inevitable, but you know me; what I can’t stand is indifference, and now, no matter what, you’ll never be indifferent to me. So, in that regard, I’m content, though certainly not happy. But, then, it seems to me that I’m not destined to find happiness, or even, perhaps, to fathom its nature, which is as mysterious to me, or maybe alien is the correct word, as prayer.

Whether or not you choose to believe it, we all run afoul of forces we cannot see, let alone understand. This is not to excuse, or even to mitigate what I did. I don’t seek absolution; I don’t know its meaning and I don’t need to. I neither regret what I did nor feel pride in it. In peace as in war sacrifices must be made, soldiers must fall in order for battles to be won—even, or perhaps especially, those that are waged sub-rosa, in the shadows of a daylight only people like us notice.

Dyadya Gourdjiev and I won our battle over Oriel Batchuk and America got what it wanted from Yukin and the Kremlin. That’s all that matters, because you, me, all the pieces on the chessboard have no meaning without it.

Annika

“Mr. McClure.” Dick Bridges tapped him on the shoulder. “Everyone is waiting. I must ask you to go inside now and take a seat, the captain has received clearance for immediate takeoff.”

Jack took another look at the e-mail, as if on a second reading the words, the meaning would change, as if this time he would not find out how terribly, how deeply, how completely Annika had betrayed him, how she and her grandfather had spun lies and deception in concentric circles, layer upon layer, each one inside another, protecting each other, like Russian nesting dolls.

He gazed out at the last snow of April. Alli had said, “Maybe she’ll come to Washington, maybe you’ll come back here.”

It was possible that one or the other of those futures would come to pass, but today as he ducked back inside the sad, lonely, silent plane, he very much doubted it.

LAST SNOW

Copyright © 2010 by Eric Van Lustbader

All rights reserved.

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Forge^® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2515-0

First Edition: February 2010

Printed in the United States of America