Rasputin's Shadow

74

There was nothing I wanted more just then than to be back home with some Joss Stone in the background, a cold beer on the nightstand, and a warm Tess in my arms. But that would have to wait.

There was a monster issue I needed to sort out first, and it had to be done quickly and carefully if it wasn’t going to get me trussed up in an orange jumpsuit and thrown into a dingy cell.

I needed help, but not just anyone’s help. This had to be someone I could trust implicitly. Someone who had the resources and the strength of character to make the impossible happen. Because what I needed was the impossible.

My monster issue was called Leo Sokolov. Or Kirill Shislenko, take your pick. Either one led to the same headache.

There were only three options. One was for him to die. That was one way to guarantee that his horrific discovery wouldn’t rise out of the carnage of the Oyster/Adams Bilingual School’s playground and unfurl its cloak of pain and suffering again. Inconveniently, Leo had survived this whole debacle, and I didn’t really have it in me to put a bullet in his head. Plus, I’d grown to like the guy in the short time we’d spent together. Yes, he had blood on his hands. But I didn’t think he deserved the gas chamber or a 115-grain jacketed hollow-point slug penetrating his brain at 1,300 feet per second.

Option two was to hand him over to Larisa’s people at the CIA. He’d be well looked after. They’d probably sort out a wonderful life for him as a member of one of their protection programs. Slight hitch, though. Remember what I said a few seconds ago about that nasty cloak of pain? Option two pretty much guaranteed that Leo’s machine would be reborn-bigger and nastier, too, no doubt. And I didn’t think I could ever forgive myself for unleashing that on the world in which Kim and Alex would grow up. It was already screwed up enough as it is.

Option three was for him to disappear. I liked that option. It also felt like the fairer one to Daphne, who hadn’t really deserved any of what she’d been through so far. Problem was, if Leo was going to disappear, he had to really disappear. I mean, disappear disappear. Never-to-be-heard-from-again disappear. And that, as Osama bin Laden and countless others would testify if they were still around, was pretty tough to pull off.

But I thought I knew one man who could help me make it happen.

We’d avoided the post-event briefings and flown the coop, taking the chopper right back to New York City, the four of us-me, Aparo, Larisa, and Leo. It was around ten o’clock by the time we landed at the East Thirty-fourth Street heliport. Aparo’s Charger was there, where we’d left it. But what I was going to do next, I needed to do alone. For Aparo’s sake, and for Larisa’s.

“You guys know what to do?” I asked.

They both nodded.

Leo went up to them and thanked them warmly. Then it was time to go.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I told them, then looked at Aparo. “You gonna be able to keep Miss Tchoumitcheva here entertained until then?”

I could almost see his blood pressure rise as he struggled with a controlled grin. It was like waving a red rag to a bull.

Larisa sidled up to me.

“You sure you want to do this alone? You still don’t trust me?” she asked. Then before I could formulate an answer, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “I love watching you squirm,” she said. Then she nodded at Aparo, turned, and walked away. He followed her, flicking me a wave of his hand.

Leo and I got in the Charger. We bypassed Federal Plaza completely and drove straight across to Brooklyn and then to the 114th Precinct in Astoria, where we sprang Daphne with minimal obstruction from the overworked and underpaid desk sergeant.

Seeing Leo and Daphne hug each other tearfully only confirmed my feeling that these two deserved to be left alone to enjoy the rest of their lives together. Whether we’d get away with it-that was another matter. But it seemed like a gamble worth taking. And like I said, options one and two-not really options at all.

Next came the hard part. Where to stash them.

I explained it all to Daphne. How if we went ahead with this, she would never, ever be able to communicate with anyone in her family again. Not her sister, who she was close to. No one. We’d let the sister know they were okay. But that break would have to be final. That was the only strictly nonnegotiable condition she had to accept.

It’s never an easy one for anyone to accept. But after some painful moments when it finally sank in, she said she would do it.

I knew she would.

THAT TIME OF NIGHT, and with my lights spinning, we made it to the Canadian border in five hours.

We talked a lot on the drive up. I got to listen to Leo tell Daphne his whole amazing story. Daphne was in turns stunned, fascinated, shocked, but to her credit, she took it all well, considering. He’d had quite a life, by any standard. I was glad that the worst part of it would soon be over.

I asked him about Corrigan, of course. He couldn’t give me much more than a general physical description, which was pretty broad-no one-armed distinctive trait for me-and thirty years out of date. It killed me that I couldn’t sit him down with a sketch artist back at the office and get him to draw up a portrait of my ghost, which we could then age appropriately using our software. I couldn’t use the Bureau’s resources on this, nor was there time for that. I had to make Leo and Daphne disappear quickly, before anyone noticed they were gone.

We hit the border, and I was able to badge my way through. A few minutes later, we were in the parking lot of the Best Western at Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle.

True to his promise, Cardinal Mauro’s people were waiting for us there.

I didn’t want to know where the Church would hide them. It was safer that way for everyone. What I knew, though, was that the Vatican would ensure the Sokolovs’ safety. They’d be fine. Mauro assured me of that. As the Vatican’s secretary of state, basically the pope’s right-hand man, he had the power to make pretty much anything happen. And I knew he’d be true to his word. We’ve been through a couple of seriously intense experiences over the last few years, both related to Templar secrets, the most recent of which was a couple of years ago, when Tess had been kidnapped. He owed me, I owed him. We helped each other out.

Daphne gave me a long, tight hug, Greek-style. I loved every second of it.

“Efkharisto poly,” she said into my ear, thanking me. “You’ll be in my prayers, always.”

I reached into my jacket’s inside pocket and pulled out the wad of cash I’d found in Koschey’s bag, and handed it to Sokolov. “Take this. It might come in handy.”

He flushed, then nodded. He reached out and gave me a firm, warm handshake, cupping my hand in both of his-then he pulled me in for a big bear hug himself.

“Thank you,” he said, not letting go. “Truly.”

I nodded.

He paused and studied me for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to say anything. Then he said, “You know, your people are researching this too. Who knows? Maybe they’ve already figured it out.”

“God, I hope not,” I told him.

“They could already be using it in ways you can’t imagine,” he added. “The thing is… this is going to be the century of the mind. The technology’s finally here for it. And these discoveries… they’ll have the ability to either free us to explore our minds and reach higher potentials that we never dreamed about-or they’re going to enslave us. And it’s going to be very tough to explore the first without opening the door to the second. I wish you the best of luck in keeping that door firmly shut.”

“I think we’re going to need it.” I smiled. Then I watched them get into the car and disappear into the early dawn.