Last Snow

FOUR

EVERYTHING IS in the process of being lost. That’s what Emma’s death had taught him. His marriage, too, for that matter. Even at the beginning, in the first ecstatic blossoming, the seeds of loss had been sown, predestined even, looked at in a clear-eyed manner.

These thoughts rolled once again through Jack’s mind as he and Annika jounced along in the bombila. Once they were outside Ring Road and on their way to Sheremetyevo, Annika dug out her cell phone and made a call, he assumed to her superior at the FSB. However, it quite rapidly became clear that she wasn’t getting the response she had expected. After she had accurately described in detail what had happened in the alley behind Bushfire, she was silent, listening intently, her face screwed up in a frown of concentration and, then, frustration. Finally, her voice rose and she began to speak Russian in quick-fire bursts that lost Jack near the beginning. All at once, she cut the conversation short and threw her cell phone onto the floor of the bombila.

“What’s up?” Jack asked. Annika had said nothing to him after she’d queried him about their destination, not a thank-you for saving her life, nothing. Until the phone call, she had appeared sunk in contemplation without any sign of animation whatsoever, as if she were in the bombila by herself. Jack supposed her withdrawal was a reaction to the violence she had endured, the imminent threat to her life, the struggle to survive that required every ounce of energy. It wouldn’t be at all out of place for her to be in shock. Assuming so, he had preferred to give her a chance to calm down before he started querying her. Now a new, ominous element had been added to the mix.

“I’ll tell you what’s up,” she said. “We’re screwed, totally and indelibly screwed.”

“I don’t see why. Ivan was a low-echelon thug and you’re with the FSB.”

She turned her head so sharply he could hear the crack of the vertebrae in her neck. “Where did you hear that?”

“The same place I learned about the ambush. Ivan and Milan were in your room, looking for revenge. They found the cameo you’d hidden in the drain.”

“Fuck me!”

“Hiding your ID in a cameo was a mistake. A cameo is not your style at all.”

“That cameo was my mother’s.” She stared out the window for a moment, her expression opaque. When she turned back to him, she said, “The problem isn’t Ivan, it’s Milan. Ivan knew nothing, which is why I broke it off with him, but he, you know, didn’t want to let go.”

“You’re apparently very accomplished in bed.”

She stared at him for a moment with her lambent eyes. This close to her, even in the dim light, he could see silver flecks flare in their mineral color as the bombila passed streetlamp after streetlamp.

Apparently deciding not to comment, she said, “It’s Milan I was after, and once he discovered who I really was, he set the trap. Of course I took the bait, because it was he who called, because I knew he would be there, that with Ivan out of the way I could start on him.”

“They fucked you six ways from Sunday.”

She tilted her head. “I don’t know that curious idiom, but I’m sure I catch your meaning.”

They were on the final approach to the airport, and she bent down and retrieved her cell. “The real problem isn’t even Milan, though that’s bad enough. Milan was tied to a man named Batchuk. Oriel Jovovich Batchuk is a deputy prime minister, a close confidant of President Yukin’s, they go back all the way to St. Petersburg, where they served together in the municipal government. Even in those days, Batchuk did all of Yukin’s dirty work. The two developed a remarkably effective modus operandi. Yukin targeted successful businesses in the St. Petersburg area and sent Batchuk out, armed with paperwork that accused the company—its principal owner or its board—of malfeasance, of not being in compliance of arcane laws, whatever. Basically, it didn’t matter because the charges were all phony, but the resulting shit storm landed the company or the individuals themselves in court, where judges owned by Yukin handed down decisions favorable to him. Unlike in America, here you can’t lodge an appeal, or, more accurately, you can, but there isn’t a judge who pays it the slightest attention.”

The interior of the bombila was lit up in the sodium glare of Sheremetyevo’s arc lights. Jack, leaning forward, told the driver where to drop them off.

“Yukin and Batchuk got rich as very young men,” Annika continued. “Now both have risen to the ultimate level, and the same MO is being repeated, only on a national scale. Yukin is using Batchuk and the power of the federal courts to retrieve the largest, most lucrative privatized companies by finding arcane accounting discrepancies or fabricating multiple charges of fiduciary malfeasance against the officers and the oligarchs behind them, many of whom had skimmed off profits to pay him and his people. It started with the takeover of Gazprom and has only escalated from there.”

“But what is a deputy prime minister doing with a high-level member of the Izmaylovskaya grupperovka? He must have every government agency on his payroll.”

“Batchuk is far more than a simple deputy prime minister,” Annika said. “He’s at the head of a shadowy secret service agency that flies so far under anyone’s radar it doesn’t even have a name, or, at least so far as anyone can ascertain, anything other than a designation: Trinadtsat.”

“The number thirteen, possibly Directorate Thirteen?”

“Trinadtsat is not a part of the FSB, it’s over and above FSB and every other secret service agency controlled by the Kremlin.” She made a face. “This is why my directorate cannot help me in this situation—and I cannot help you. Everyone above me is paralyzed with fear now that Milan Spiakov is dead. I am, as they say, radioactive. I cannot return to my job or to my normal life, from which I have been summarily expelled.”

“I’m sorry, Annika, but I’m in somewhat of the same situation.”

She shook her head. “No, no, you are American. Americans always have more options.”

Which is why we’re at this part of Sheremetyevo now, Jack thought. It will be far easier for Edward to get me out of Ukraine than it will be from here. Besides, I still have my assignment.

He could see the private plane Carson had set aside for him. Its cabin lights were on. As Edward promised, the crew was waiting for him. As he directed her to walk with him toward the plane, he said, “I want to get this straight. Thirteen is under Yukin’s command alone.”

She nodded. “Yukin and Batchuk’s, yes. But perhaps Trinadtsat is not its name at all. What little is known is speculation, anecdotal, often contradictory, but one thing seems clear: Batchuk stands at the previously unthinkable nexus between an unknown arm of the federal secret service and the grupperovka.”

“It’s as if Yukin is covering all his bases.”

Annika shook her head. “Again, I don’t understand this idiom.”

“I mean he’s marshaling all the forces, even those who have traditionally been enemies.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. He’s presiding over an unholy alliance.”

“But why? What purpose does Thirteen have?”

They’d arrived at their destination. Jack, having failed to agree on a price beforehand, was presented with an outrageously inflated fare. That was before Annika spent the next minute and a half berating the driver with a string of colloquial curses, the meanings of which were too obscure for Jack to fathom. However, the driver understood well enough, because Annika came back with a figure one-tenth of the one the driver had first presented. Jack paid and they climbed out of the huffing bombila.

“Who knows what Yukin and Batchuk are planning?” she said. “Something sinister, surely.”

The night had turned mild. Whatever was left of the snow was either melting or being swept away by a moist southerly wind. A diadem of lights had constructed another sky—low, metallic, artificial, without the stitching of stars in the soft sky high above it.

“Now,” she said, looking around, “please tell me why we are here.”

He pointed. “You see that plane ahead of us? It’s going to get us out of here.”

She pulled up short. “Who are you, Mr. McClure?”

“We passed ‘Mr. McClure’ back in the hotel bar.”

Her eyes were full of doubt. “You are someone with his own plane. An American oligarch.”

“No, I’m not a businessman,” Jack said, urging her to continue on toward the jet and its welcoming mobile stairs. He found it curious that an FSB agent didn’t know who he was, that he worked for the President of the United States. “And the plane isn’t mine. It belongs to a friend.”

“A very rich and powerful friend. So you are his, what—vice president?”

Jack thought that was funny, though in truth there wasn’t much to laugh about in their situation. “Let’s just say that like Oriel Jovovich Batchuk, I’m a deputy prime minister.”

She eyed him even more suspiciously. “America has no prime ministers.”

“Well, not yet, anyway.”

“YOU REALLY have no idea who I am or who I work for?” Jack said.

“Should I? If you’re someone from the international pages of the newspaper you’re beyond my field of expertise or even interest.”

Having taken turns in the small restroom cleaning up as best they could, Jack and Annika were seated in the private jet as the cockpit crew went through their final checks. The captain had told Jack that he had his instructions, had submitted the flight plan to the airport personnel, and was otherwise ready to take off.

“I was wondering why you were at that hotel at the same time I was.”

“Perhaps we’re meant to have a passionate affair.”

She said this with such an acid tongue Jack could think of no possible response.

“Yes, that’s it,” she said in the same knife-edged tone of voice. “I’ve followed you all the way from—where in America are you from, Jack McClure?”

“Washington—the city, not the state.”

Annika, having made her point and clearly uninterested in his answer, turned away, stared out the small Perspex window at the airport. There seemed to be an odd tension between them now, as if in the last several moments they had become antagonists. Jack was an unusually astute judge of character, but he found this woman unreadable, as if she had multiple personalities cycling around her brain clamoring to be heard. In this respect she reminded him of Alli.

At length, she said in a more modulated voice, “My focus is, or at least has been, on infiltrating the Izmaylovskaya grupperovka, with an eye toward gathering evidence against Arsov. Now I’m beginning to believe that someone felt threatened by the investigation, that I was set up to be taken out of the picture.”

“They could have sent you to Siberia.”

She turned back to him. The flecks in her eyes had turned the color of gunmetal. “The sudden outside pressure would have set off alarm bells inside the FSB and thus brought unwanted attention on Thirteen. No, this was a better way to handle me, making me a pariah.” Her face was set in a grim mask. “Now I will be hunted, very possibly killed, by my own people.”

“At the cost of Milan’s death?”

She shrugged. “I’m quite certain there’s already another ready to take his place. That’s how these things work. Surely, you understand that people like Milan—people like me—get thrown under the wheels from one minute to the next.”

Jack nodded. “It happens in my country, too.” Then, without waiting to think about it, he said: “You haven’t said anything about what happened in the alley.” The moment he said it, however, he knew he’d made a mistake.

Annika turned to him, her full lips compressed into a line as thin and distant as the horizon. “What is there to say? Two men died and we’re alive. What would you have me do, Jack McClure, break down and sob on your shoulder? Do you feel a need to comfort me? Do I look like I need comfort?”

“You look like you aren’t used to comfort.” With her friend Jelena in the hotel bar she had seemed so flirty, “We were about to go clubbing. Why don’t you join us?” But now she was all titanium and steel. “In fact, you were friendlier when we first met.”

He could see that with this comment she had retracted her claws and was now plunged deep in thought. “It’s just—” Her voice seemed to fail her and she cleared her throat, unsure for a moment whether to continue. “I’m sorry, but I get my back up when I’m frightened.”

She had said this last with her face averted, as if ashamed of any emotion deep enough to crack her outer shell, even if only temporarily. “It’s an ugly trait, I know, but I get frightened so infrequently, you see . . .” She had turned back, was laughing softly and much too briefly. She waved a hand as if her words were written on a blackboard, erasable. “I keep asking myself why you came after me. Why would you do that? After all, we’re strangers, between us there is no obligation or, rather, there wasn’t. Anyway, every time I asked myself this question I came up with the same answer. To you, I’m not a stranger because you must work for an American secret service agency.” She glanced around. “Is this a CIA plane?”

“No, it isn’t,” he said, “and I’m not a Secret Service agent.”

Annika regarded him levelly, trying to gauge the truthfulness of his words. “Would you tell me if you were?”

“I would now, yes.”

She reached out a hand and he saw how pale it was, how long and tapered the fingers were. Was it a kind of benediction she was giving him or was he the recipient of a mysterious divination? “I believe you,” she said, as if she had been able to read something that couldn’t be seen, but which she nevertheless had conjured up with her white hand. She sighed then. “There’s something else, something underneath, if you know what I mean.” Her hands arranged themselves in her lap, crossed one over the other, as if tired from their recent work. “I suppose my prickliness is the result of spending too much time alone. Jelena is right. Damn her, she’s almost always right, and isn’t shy about bringing up her stellar record as often as possible. Anyway, I’m no good with people, at least not in my private life.”

“What about Jelena?”

She gave him a small, wintry smile. “Jelena isn’t a friend, she’s like a sister or a priest who, despite her sharp tongue, chooses to hear my confession without judging me. And therein lies the other, better reason not to acquire friends. It’s not what you do that is your life, it’s what others think you’ve done, or not done, whatever the case. In this way, the truth becomes a lie, and eventually the lie takes on a life of its own, independent of you. Do you see how you lose control of your own life, because without quite knowing how it’s happened you’ve become what other people think you are.”

A shaft of light from the headlights of a moving vehicle outside on the tarmac briefly spotlighted Annika’s face. She was really quite a striking woman, even when she was in full-bore diesel mode, but more so now when her lips had relaxed into their natural shape and a bit of color had returned to her cheeks.

“Being in the secret service plays a role in that, don’t you think?” Jack said. “It erodes your sense of yourself. You become what your handlers want you to be, the lies you need to tell to accomplish your mission become the truth, and soon enough you lose the ability to tell the one from the other, you don’t know any other way to act or react.”

“You know about this difficulty.” Her face clouded over with renewed suspicion. “I thought you said you weren’t an agent.”

“I’m not, but I know a number of people who are, and they all say the same thing. Well, if they don’t admit to it I can see it in how they act.”

For the first time since they had met in the bar, she showed a spark of genuine interest. “But in my case, the damage had been done long before I ever came to the FSB.”

“Your father?” he guessed.

“A variation on a theme perpetrated over and over on women.” She pulled a cigarette out of the handbag she’d managed to pluck off the muck of the alley, but then remembering where she was, she dropped it back into the bag. She frowned. “My brother and I shared a bedroom, not so very uncommon in this country. From the time I was twelve, my brother raped me, night after night, with a hunting knife at my throat. When he was finished, while he was still on me, while he was still in me, he said, ‘If you tell anyone I’ll slit your throat.’ And then, to make his threat tangible, he nicked a place on my body, made me taste my own blood. ‘So that you never forget to hold your tongue,’ he said. Every night for eighteen months he cut me afterward, as if I were an imbecile who couldn’t learn.”

The turbines moved to a higher pitch, the thrumming and vibration in the cabin becoming more noticeable, but Jack could see that the movable stairs were still in place. His attention returned to Annika. There wasn’t a hint of self-pity in her voice.

“Where is he now?” Jack said.

“My brother? In hell, I trust. Not that I have the slightest interest in finding out. I’m not a victim.”

She said this last with a good deal of force, almost venom. Not that Jack could blame her, but in this he suspected she was wrong, because her brother’s words—“If you tell anyone I’ll slit your throat”—whispered into her ear night after night had acted like a physician’s evil tincture, poisoning her against keeping anyone close, anyone who could protect her, who could hurt him or interfere with his heinous activities. So she kept her own counsel, closed herself off from anyone who could help her—“I’ll slit your throat”—so in that sense she had succumbed to her brother, she was still his victim. Her strength, which was both prodigious and multifaceted, was all in the hard shell she had erected to protect the still vulnerable core.

In life, like often cleaves to like. He and Alli had bonded because they were both Outsiders. He wondered whether he could make a dent in Annika’s armor, and thought it worth a try. “With me, it was my father,” he said slowly and deliberately, putting equal weight on each word so that she would pay attention, so that she would understand the gravity of what he was saying. “He beat me because he said I was stupid, because he came home drunk every night, and I suppose because he hated himself and his life. One night, I’d had enough and left.”

“Yes, of course, you’re male.” Annika’s tone was resigned rather than bitter, as if she had contemplated this inequity so often it had become banal. “Males can move about at will, can’t they, while women, well, where can they go? Even when a situation is atrocious, intolerable, there are only home and family, even though both are toxic, because slavery and death wait out on the street.”

She shivered, as if from an intimate memory. Then she turned her head again, abruptly nervous once more. “Shouldn’t we have taken off by now?”

At that moment, an aide came down the aisle toward them.

“I’m sorry for the delay, Mr. McClure,” he said, “but there’s someone who requires a word with you.”

These aides of Carson’s were always so proper, so formal, Jack thought, or perhaps that was just the way things were with any presidential staff, where deference and protocol were a way of life.

Annika looked alarmed. “Who—?”

“Relax,” Jack said as he rose. “Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it.”

He was heading forward toward the door when Naomi Wilde, the head of Lyn Carson’s Secret Service detail, stepped smartly into the cabin.

Damnit, Jack thought, what the hell is she doing here? Has something happened to the First Lady?

Wilde was smiling, though in an embarrassed fashion, as if she’d screwed the pooch in some way she couldn’t mend. This was odd, because Naomi Wilde was a take-charge agent, a woman who was superbly trained. She had confidence enough for her entire team, but now she had the look of a fish on a riverbank, a woman who finds herself in a situation for which she has no answer or, rather, only one answer, which is not to her liking. She was breathing air when she should be breathing water.

“Sorry about holding you up, Mr. McClure,” she said, “but as you’ll see I had no choice.” She stepped fully into the cabin as if impelled, and someone brushed by her as if she didn’t exist or was of no further use.

At once, Jack understood Wilde’s state of extreme discomfort. He thought, Oh, Christ, no, because he was staring into the grinning face of Alli Carson, the First Daughter.