Beloved Enemy (29 page)

“And you know this how?”

Gensler, apparently feeling himself at last on firm ground, grinned. “Legere’s got a favorite girl. He called for her while he was in the hotel. She went to see him there.”

“Address,” Redbird said, holding out his hand while Gensler frantically scribbled on a notepad.

*   *   *

“How did it go?” Krofft said when Jonatha checked in by phone.

“Perfectly. Marshall and I have an alliance.”

Krofft shook his head. “You could recruit a nun to kill her mother.”

Jonatha laughed. “You know me, I’d give it the old college try.”

Krofft laughed with her. “Over the next week, I’ll be feeding you intel you’ll pass on to Marshall. At some point, knowing him as I do, he’ll go to the president with it. When I prove the intel’s disinformation, he’ll have made such a fool of himself with the president, the POTUS will have to act. I’ll finally get Marshall off my back. Ever since DCS was initiated, he’s made it his mission to meddle in Company affairs. He thinks DCS is a reaction to my failures.” Krofft made a sound akin to a cat purring. “The sooner I’m rid of him, the better.”

*   *   *

Annika took Rolan to the taxi and got them out of the ghetto as quickly as traffic would allow. At the edge of the medina, she paid the driver, then led Rolan into the labyrinth, until they became lost in the cacophonous ebb and flow of the immense market, a city within the city.

They walked, seemingly aimlessly, long enough for Annika to make certain they weren’t being followed. Rolan’s body was close beside her. At times, in the dense crowds, they touched, even, once, pressed together, but she felt nothing. It was as if the man she had known, the man she had once loved, had died in the bomb blast. The creature who had been released from Dr. Karalian’s care was as hollow and dead as a golem, a thing created from clay in the shape of a man.

At a tiny café she knew, she ordered sweet mint tea and a plateful of small pastries. Rolan sat next to her, staring out at the endless parade of people moving to the beat of drums, the bark of hawked wares.

When the tea had been poured from a copper pot with a spout as long and graceful as a swan’s neck, she pushed the plate of sweets toward him. He said nothing and did not look her way.

After a time, she said his name just loud enough to be heard over the incessant clamor. His head swung toward her. His eyes were empty of love, of empathy, of any recognizable human emotion. He was a walking time bomb, another of her grandfather’s chess pieces.

“I recognized the man who attacked me in the cemetery. He’s CIA.”

“Why is the CIA after you?”

“Rolan.” She forced herself to extend her arm, take his hand in hers. It felt hard as marble and twice as cold. “Rolan, you shouldn’t be here.”

He stared at her for a long time. Annika had difficulty meeting his eyes.

“Where should I be, then?”

His voice was like nails over sandpaper, making her wince inside.

“I see you have no answer for me,” he went on, “but you must. I have no answers for myself.”

“Rolan, forgive me.” She put her head down. “I didn’t know you were so unhappy at Dr. Karalian’s clinic.”

“I was neither unhappy nor happy,” he said in a curiously mechanical voice.

It seemed as if his thoughts were already elsewhere. “It’s as if…”

His eyes slid away from her, much to her relief.

“I’m in a cage,” he said slowly and carefully, “a glass cage. I can see out; I remember what the world looked like once upon a time, but now I can no longer make sense of it.”

This confession only exacerbated her guilt.

“Everything is distorted,” he continued, apparently oblivious to her pain. “I see people, but they mean nothing to me. I can’t taste food, smell smells, feel pleasure—all that is gone.”

“Rolan, what can I do to help you?”

“There’s nothing anyone can do. I’m beyond Karalian’s help, or even yours.” His face seemed chiseled out of stone. He sighed. “At least I was able to save you.”

When his eyes swung back to her they were dark and haunted. “I remember who you are, Annika. I remember a time when … but then the memory eludes me, slips through my fingers even while I try to hold on to it. I loved you once, I know that. I loved so many things. But now—now that seems alien to me, like someone else’s dream. I want to go back.”

“Rolan, you need to stay here with me. That’s what Dyadya wanted.”

“You said ‘wanted.’ Is he dead?” Rolan’s eyes narrowed. “Is Gourdjiev dead?”

When Annika nodded, he said, “Better late than never.”

She was taken aback. “What are you talking about? My grandfather loved you.”

“He loved himself,” Rolan said bitterly. “Possibly you, too, though he wasn’t above using you.” He paused to search deep within Annika’s eyes. “Don’t you get it? To him, people were chess pieces, and you can’t have an attachment to pieces you put in jeopardy. On the next move or the one after you may have to sacrifice them in order to win the match.”

“You must stop talking like this, Rolan. Dyadya didn’t sacrifice anyone.”

“He sacrificed me.” Rolan’s face grew dark. “Didn’t you know? Your Dyadya wanted the Aleppo attack to happen.”

“Impossible. Why would he provoke a terrorist attack?”

“It was a trap. He wanted to teach the Syrian a lesson. Think about it. How many of the Syrian’s people returned from that raid?”

Annika felt as if she had lost the ability to breathe. “Not one.” Her voice barely rose above a whisper.

Rolan nodded. “Those men weren’t suicide bombers; the Syrian is not a religious fanatic—his motivations are purely venal. No, the men who were caught in your grandfather’s trap were the elite of the Syrian’s soldiers—and none of them survived.”

Annika felt as if her head were about to explode. “But you were in Aleppo by accident. It was a coincidence that—”

“Annika, think back. What was I involved in then?”

“I … I don’t remember.” Her heart was hammering painfully in her chest. The past and present, colliding, rushed at her at light speed. “I … you were in Aleppo for a Mid-East economic summit.”

“Yes and no. You recall that I was employed by the Saudi Royal Bank. But at the same time I was secretly working for the opposition to Syrian President Assad’s regime.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I? But Gourdjiev somehow found out. He used me as bait to draw out Namazi. At that time, Namazi needed to infiltrate the Syrian opposition.”

“I don’t understand. Why would he—?”

“Assad had hired him to root out the opposition leaders,” Rolan said, “for an obscene amount of money.”

Annika bit her lip to keep herself from screaming. “How could I have known nothing about this? Dyadya—”

“Imagine what would have happened, Annika, if you had found out. Your grandfather kept you out of it. You were completely in the dark, as was I, until I discovered afterward what he had done.”

“This can’t be,” Annika said. “I refuse to believe it.”

“You’re far too smart not to believe the truth when you hear it.” In his eerily detached way, Rolan watched the pain work itself across her face. “That’s the way it went.”

“You’re telling me that Dyadya destroyed your life—
our
life together.”

“Chess pieces, Annika. Sacrifices in the service of checkmate.”

Annika looked away, no longer able to bear the thought of him knowing how her grandfather thought and acted.

Rolan bit mechanically into a small cake, chewed as if it were made of cardboard. “Annika,” he said after a time, “you must know by now that we aren’t alive unless someone loves us.”

“Rolan, I love you.”

“You once did, that’s true enough. But you don’t anymore. I see it in your eyes, in the way you can never quite look at me.”

Annika shook her head, but she found herself thinking of Jack. “That’s your injured brain talking.”

He shook his head, his expression without a scintilla of sorrow or remorse. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t feel anything anyway.” He pushed the plate of barely eaten sweets away. “Though I’m not quite dead, I’m beyond life now. I inhabit a place of darkness, a place where emotions don’t exist, and never did.”

*   *   *

In the darkness, Jack’s keen hearing identified the harsh scrape of metal against metal. Reaching out to the seam between the doors, he felt the sharp edge of a crowbar. Romy brushed by him, pressed her ear to the door well away from the intrusion of the crowbar.

Another rustle and Jack felt her lips against his ear. “Pyotr’s people are on the other side,” she whispered. “They’re saying they have us trapped.”

Legere was panting. Jack could smell his sweat.

“He’s claustrophobic,” Romy said.

Jack nodded. “Get down on your hands and knees,” he said, pushing Legere down. When Legere tried to resist, he added, “You want to get out of here, don’t you?” He sensed, rather than saw Legere nod. “Then do as I say.”

Standing precariously on Legere’s narrow back, he stretched up until his searching hands found the emergency door in the roof. The squeal of the crowbar trying to pry apart the doors was unnaturally loud in the confined space. Jack didn’t know how much time they had. He focused on the roof escape, turning the lever, unlocking the hatch and pushing it upward.

He hauled himself up through the square opening, onto the top of the elevator. In the dim light of the shaft he could see the cables. Beyond was the reinforced concrete wall of the shaft, into which horizontal steel bars had been set as rungs for maintenance workers and firemen to climb up and down.

In a whisper, he instructed Romy to get Legere to his feet.

“Raise your arms,” he said to Legere, then pulled him up to the roof of the car.

Legere was ashen-faced, shaking, mumbling into his gag, crumpled into a useless pile. Just as well, Jack thought. In this state, he’d offer no further resistance. Reaching down a second time, he grabbed hold of Romy’s outstretched hand and helped her through the opening.

“Now,” he said, “all we have to do is get to those rungs, climb up to the next floor and use the emergency button in the shaft to open the doors.”

“Are you kidding?” Romy said. “There must be a three foot jump from here to the wall.”

“It’s more like four,” Jack said. “But we have no choice.”

“I can’t make it,” she said.

“Sure you can.” Jack lifted her to her feet and walked her to the edge of the elevator.

He could feel the tremors up and down her body. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I have you.” With his hands on her waist, he heaved her across the divide.

She bit back a scream as her hands instinctively reached out, her fingers wrapping around the rungs. She lost one shoe, then shook off the other as her feet scrabbled for purchase on the rungs lower down.

“You bastard!” she cried.

“Climb up, Romy,” he said. “Legere’s people have pried the elevator door almost open.”

Seeing her do as he ordered, he grabbed Legere. He seemed as light as if he were made of balsa wood.

Legere tried to shout a protest around his gag. Jack ignored him. With his arm around the other man, Jack leapt off the edge of the elevator. As he grabbed hold of the rungs, Legere almost slipped out of his grip.

“Grab on, man!” he shouted. “Grab it! Yeah, that’s right.”

The three of them began to climb. Romy, reaching the floor above first, slammed her palm against the emergency open button on the left side of the doors, and climbed back onto safe ground. Jack and Legere soon followed.

In the third-floor corridor, they raced to the fire stairs. As Jack threw the door open, he could hear a clutch of voices.

“They don’t know where we are,” he said. “Come on.”

He drew Legere’s Luger as he herded them down the stairs. They were approaching the second floor, when the hairs at the nape of Jack’s neck stirred. With a gesture, he halted them. He put a forefinger across his lips. He took a step downward, then another. The flicker of a shadow came from below, just past the landing, where the staircase doubled back on itself.

A moment later, he saw Hanna ascending barefoot in order to keep her approach silent. Jack took another step down in order to block her view of Romy and Legere. Her long neck twisted as she stared up at him.

“Herr McClure,” she said calmly, “you don’t seem to appreciate our spa.”

“I was disappointed, Hanna. Your treatment was somewhat overcooked.”

Her wide lips twisted into the semblance of a wry smile. “But you left prematurely, Herr McClure. You didn’t give us a fair chance.”

“It doesn’t seem as if a fair chance is on your hotel’s menu of amenities.”

It was then she produced a Beretta from behind her back, aimed at him. “Get down here, Herr McClure.” The veneer of banter had disappeared, replaced by the steely resolve he had observed in her earlier. “Get down here now.”

“As you wish,” Jack said, and shot her through the heart.

Hanna, eyes open wide in astonishment and shock, pitched back down the stairwell, her body rolling over and over as her head struck the edge of each successive step.

“
Sheisse!
” he heard Romy exclaim from just behind him. “Is she dead?”

As Legere turned tail, Jack leapt back up the stairs, pulling him down with such force the other man tripped, his knees buckling. Jack dragged Legere behind him as the three of them continued down the stairs. When they came across Hanna’s body, Romy bent down and retrieved her Beretta.

As they stepped over Hanna’s broken body, they heard the frantic drumbeat of shoes against the concrete stairs.

“Get behind me,” Jack said. “Here they come.”

*   *   *

The moment she saw Jonatha jog out of Rock Creek Park, Alix Ross, behind the wheel of her black Chrysler convertible, leaned over and opened the passenger’s side door. The early morning light was pink, glowing like mother-of-pearl. Stratus clouds, high up and far away, reflected the sun that had not yet risen above the horizon.

Jonatha saw the car with its open door first, Alix second. With her sport towel around her neck, she jogged easily over. Her hair was pulled back off her wide forehead, a plain rubber band binding it into a ponytail. Alix’s eyes ate up every inch of Jonatha in her Spandex running shorts and sleeveless top.