Beloved Enemy (39 page)

Secrets.

His lips curled into a sly fox’s grin. The thought of keeping secrets from Galina gave him a warm feeling inside, as if he had taken a large swig of the slivovitz his father had kept in the highboy on the wall facing the head of the dining room table. Late at night, when he assumed everyone was asleep, the elder Legere would pour two fingers into a glass and down it in an instant.

Giles, crouched like a mouse on the stairs, had watched many times as his father drank and sang to himself in a language Giles did not know and had never heard since. Once, when he was nine, he had tried the slivovitz, pouring the clear liquid into the same glass his father drank from. The liquid fire had caused him to choke, gag, then vomit, making so much noise that he had roused his father, who had beaten him severely with the leather strap that hung on the back of his parents’ bedroom door.

The elevator came to a stop, reminding him that he had a mission to accomplish. The doors opened, but he stood rooted to the spot, his mind as fog-bound as a seashore. As often happened nowadays, his mind, at an impasse, would dredge up another subject entirely. As he stepped out onto the polished stone floor, Pyotr popped into his mind. He had not shed a tear upon learning that Pyotr was dead—and why should he? Pyotr was not his flesh and blood, though Galina claimed that he was. In fact, by her very claim he suspected she was lying. Galina had brought the babe with her when she moved in with him. Giles had always suspected that Pyotr’s father was some politburo big shot who wanted the child about as much as Giles did. A man who doubtless had a wife and children of his own. What need had he of a bastard?

Galina, he’d noted, had not shed a tear over Pyotr’s death, either. But then she was a strange woman, deeply private, someone who excelled at keeping to herself. Not that Giles minded—he had more than enough secrets of his own, without peeking into her head. Anyway, he had a strong suspicion he wouldn’t like what he found there.

Pyotr had been problematic from the time he could string together his first sentence, which, if Giles remembered correctly, was, “I want more.”

Typical of the little bastard. No matter how much Giles gave him, he wanted more. There was no sense that he could ever be satisfied. And Galina was worse than useless. She was too busy spinning schemes to be bothered raising a child. Of all the women he had known, Galina Yemchevya was far and away the least suited for motherhood; her maternal instincts had so atrophied they might never have existed. On the other hand, she had refined her natural affinity for giving physical pleasure. But, as Giles well knew, her attributes could cause as much pain as pleasure.

Perhaps it was best that Pyotr was dead, Giles mused as he wandered the halls like a wayward mountain king. No more anguish, no more frustration. Only a peace, of sorts. Or then again a whole bunch of nothing. Who could know?

In the subbasement, closer to the glories and disappointments of his past, Giles grew calmer. He was better able to think, as if the ever-present fog inside his head had lifted enough for him to glimpse slivers of the person he had been, the person he had wished to be.

His father, a highly successful surgeon, had insisted that Giles follow in his footsteps. When Giles showed a distinct aptitude for downhill and slalom skiing, his father had said nothing, but the next time it came for Giles to be punished, his father broke his leg.

“Let’s see you ski with a pin in your knee,” he’d said.

After he had been expelled from medical college for incessant fornication, to spite his father he did nothing at all. Following the old man’s death, he had made it his life’s work to sell off his father’s prized art collection, one piece at a time. In doing so he amassed a fortune, after which he moved to Moscow, at the behest of one of his best clients, cementing his reputation as one of the preeminent art dealers in the world. The smuggling of politburo secrets along with the artwork came later, at the behest of the same client—his idea all along, or so Giles had thought, until, following the first few successes, the client had introduced him to Dyadya Gourdjiev, an individual as shadowy as he was charismatic. Never before or since had Giles encountered someone so able to effortlessly command a room and so reluctant to do so. Giles was instantly attracted to the charisma, and unwittingly became the latest in a long line of Gourdjiev’s human shields. Of course, it wasn’t long before he cottoned on to his role; but it didn’t matter a whit. He was making too much money, had been introduced into too many power circles—in business, the arts, and politics—for him to care. After all, he was using Gourdjiev as much as Gourdjiev was using him.

Or so he had thought.

The essential takeaway about Gourdjiev was that when you thought you had him figured out, you were dead wrong, and by the time you figured
that
out, he’d already gotten what he needed from you. It was a perverse form of inversion: you bought into being a part of the Gourdjiev money-making regime, gladly did what he asked, were well rewarded, only to discover that your jeopardy was far greater than he had led you to believe and that he had used you for a purpose you could not have conceived of.

Case in point: Pyotr was dead because of Giles’s involvement with Gourdjiev, which went far beyond using his legitimate business to transport Gourdjiev’s secrets to clients all over the world. It was only after Gourdjiev’s death that Giles had discovered that this very house, which Gourdjiev had visited any number of times—had become the repository of the secrets he wished to pass on to his designated heirs.

Those secrets were, in fact, hidden in these bunker-like rooms deep inside the mountain. Which, now that Giles’s impaired mind was rolling in that direction, was the very reason he had come down here.

Finally recalling his errand, Giles began to whistle an old folk song his grandmother used to sing to him many years ago. Recently, he had tried to tote the secrets up, but like counting sheep to fall asleep, his mind clouded over before he could finish.

He was about to enter the chamber with the Dufy painting of horses in the Bois de Boulogne when, even this far underground, he felt the heavy vibrations running through the structural girders of the chalet, and he thought: helicopter! At last! He’s here!

With an eagerness he hadn’t felt in years, he hurried back into the corridor and sent the small elevator up to the roof.

*   *   *

When Jack heard the
thwop-thwop-thwop
of the helo’s rotors he was within hailing distance of Giles Legere’s chalet. The helo was not yet visible, passing through ribbons of low cloud, but he pictured it in his mind’s eye and knew it was close.

He had driven hard and fast up the narrow road that wound around the mountain on which the chalet was perched like a clawed raven. The chalet was an odd structure, more like a medieval Tibetan castle—three stories, built of black rock, shiny as obsidian. At its corners—the four cardinal directions—what appeared to be titanic talons curved out and down. Most oddly of all, the chalet had a flat roof, impractical in snowy climes like this one but essential for the placement of a helipad, which was where the helo must be headed. What other surprises were in store for him?

Not wanting to announce himself, he abandoned Redbird’s car just shy of the last bend in the road that ended at the chalet and proceeded from there on foot. It wasn’t long before he came upon the ambulance that had plowed into Radomil’s Audi. After Annika had left, he had checked outside the bunker for any sign of her half-brother, but without success. He had, however, stumbled upon the bodies of the three gunmen. As Annika had predicted, Radomil was alive and well.

As Jack had driven up, he had been afforded an almost 360-degree view of the chateau. Each changing angle had been recorded in his mind, one overlapping the next, and now, as he made his final ascent, he had a clear three-dimensional picture of the structure with all its quirks—rooms and interior staircases, illuminated through windows, balconies, drainpipes, and curious dead spaces—and had already determined the best way to gain entrance without being noticed.

Even though he was certain the helo contained Iraj Namazi and Annika, he was now grateful for the distraction it afforded him. All eyes inside the chalet must be on the descending helo, giving him a brief window in which to get inside the chalet without being discovered.

Racing around to the west side of the chalet, he climbed a mature pine and, when he was high enough, edged out onto a branch he deemed thick enough to hold his weight. Even so, the soft pine wood began to bend the farther out he inched, and he was obliged to leap off the branch before he wanted to. His body struck the edge of a balcony, his fingers grasped the lowest of the wood railings, and for a moment he hung there, gasping, his breath coming in clouds, condensing in the chill air.

Slowly and surely, he raised himself up until he was able to swing one leg then the other over the railing top, slithering, at last, onto the balcony. The curtains were pulled across a large picture window, making it impossible to see either in or out. Crossing to the slider, he was unsurprised to find it locked. Inserting a pick between the insulation strip on the stationary window and the locking mechanism on the slider, he soon had the lock open.

Carefully opening the window just enough for him to drop into the room, he slowly pulled aside the heavy damask curtains, only to be confronted with a Smith & Wesson Centennial 442 Airweight aimed directly at his chest. Holding it was a strikingly beautiful woman.

T
WENTY-FOUR

A
S
N
AMAZI’S
pilot maneuvered the helo for landing, it came under automatic weapons attack as four men in white parkas spewed out of the elevator and began firing. Sliding open the helo’s door, Annika tossed out a flash grenade, then turned her head aside as it exploded.

Moments later, Namazi leapt from the helo and, half bent over, hurled himself at the most forward of the men. Ripping the FN SCAR-H / Mk .17 out of his hands, he smashed the butt into the man’s face, then, using short bursts of gunfire, took down the remaining three. Two were dead by the time he got to them. The last was not. Namazi slammed his boot down on the man’s neck, crushing it.

After throwing the guards’ weapons over the chalet’s side, he and Annika trotted across the rooftop, opened the door into the chalet, and stepped into the elevator.

*   *   *

“Welcome to the Legere chalet,” Galina Yemchevya said, the ghost of a smile playing around the corners of her wide, sensual lips. She wore black raw-silk slacks, a wide patent-leather belt, and a low-cut oyster-gray blouse that showed off the snowy tops of her admirable breasts. On her feet were velvet slippers. “I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. McClure, I’m pleased to finally meet you in the flesh.”

She shook her head. “My name is Galina. Galina Yemchevya.” A small laugh burst from her like a helium-filled balloon. “Dyadya Gourdjiev must have mentioned me many times.”

“I’m afraid he neglected to tell me about you,” Jack said. He was leaning back against the window sash, his hands behind him. “Perhaps he had forgotten you.”

Galina’s eyes narrowed, then she laughed again, but this time it was with an unpleasant edge. “I doubt that highly. We used to fuck like bunnies.”

“But the lifespan of rabbits is so short.”

Galina, angry now, waved the barrel of the gun. “Whether you’ve heard of me or not is of no consequence. Let’s get going. Now that the Syrian has arrived, the conclave in the subbasement Giles has been waiting so long for is sure to begin shortly. I assure you we don’t want to miss it.”

As he complied, stepping forward, Jack said, “You sound like you don’t share Giles’s enthusiasm for this conclave.”

“Why should I?” Galina scarcely bothered to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “For more than twenty years, he’s been held hostage to that devil Gourdjiev’s promise that he’d be part of the old man’s legacy.” Her mouth twisted, as if she were about to spit. “All Gourdjiev brought us was an inescapable alliance with the Syrian. I argued against it, to no avail. I want no part of the devil’s legacy.”

“Gourdjiev stashed his legacy here?”

“In a vault he had specially made. There’s no key to the vault. It’s opened by inputting a series of numbers. Giles has a part of it, Annika another, and the Syrian another.”

“He couldn’t have trusted the three of them to wait until he died,” Jack said.

“Of course not. But he trusted Annika. Besides, all three of them were loyal, bound to him irrevocably, by either blood or money, as long as he was alive.” Galina grimaced, almost, it seemed, against her will. “He exerted a kind of mesmeric control over people. But now he’s dead, thank Christ.” She waggled the gun barrel again. “Let’s go.”

As Jack came abreast of her, he sensed her movement, the raising of the S&W over her head to strike the back of his head. Ducking away, he shoved her into the heavy drapes. She staggered, regained her footing, and aimed the Airweight at him. Jack struck her, and she whipped the S&W around, the side of the barrel impacting his cheek. He knocked the gun out of her hands, and she raised them, thumbs outstretched to dig into his eyes. He tried to deflect her, but she was an athlete, hard-muscled and determined. She slammed his head against the windowpane, then her thumbs were at his eyelids, pressing inward.

Light flashed behind Jack’s eyes. His hands felt along the edge of the curtain, grabbed the cord, and wrapped it around her neck. He pulled tight. The instant Galina’s hands came away from his eyes, he whirled her around so that he was behind her. She arched backward, her mouth open as she tried to scream, but only a tiny bleat emerged. She whipped her head back and forth more and more violently even as she reached back, tried to slash his face with her nails. He reared his head out of the way, tightened the cord more, cutting deeply into her throat.

Now her thrashing became desperate, her strength increasing with her body’s will to survive. She slammed her body into his, pitching him painfully against the window. Again and again she tried to dislodge him.