“Finish them off! I have the women,” the voice shouted.
Wally and Claire could hear the footsteps of at least three men trotting into the woods, hunting down the two Russians. More gunfire sounded in the near distance as Klesko and Tiger fought for their survival.
A single set of footsteps approached Wally and her mother, Claire still lying halfway across Wally in the snow, protecting her. The man’s voice sounded again, nearby. Wally looked up and was surprised to see a familiar face looking down at her, a smug grin on his face and a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. He reached down and grabbed the women’s guns, hurling them off into the woods.
“Little sister,” he purred at Wally.
Claire gave her daughter a questioning look. “Wally? Who—”
“His name is Panama,” Wally finally said. “He buys and sells things.”
“Not Panama, actually,” said the man, his voice suddenly without the street inflection that had seemed so natural to him before. Now he sounded more like a cop. He reached into his lapel pocket and pulled out a leather ID holder, flipping it open to reveal an ATF badge and then shutting it again.
“Cornell Brown,” he said, grinning at Claire. “And you would be Yalena Mayakova. I’ve been looking a long time for you, Yalena. A very long time. Now, you needn’t be concerned with the Kleskos anymore. My men will take care of them.”
If Brown was expecting any gratitude from Claire, he was disappointed; she fixed a murderous gaze on him.
“Please get up now,” Brown spoke reasonably, “and let’s go have a look at your other stashes. And don’t tell me there are no more stones. I would know very well if you had unloaded them, so don’t waste my time. Take me to the stones, now.”
With Brown’s shotgun pointed at her face, Claire struggled to her feet. Wally rose along with her, helping her mother up. As her body moved, Claire groaned in pain and grabbed her stomach.
“Mom?” Wally opened Claire’s parka, to discover that Claire had a gunshot wound to her abdomen, blood soaking her clothes deep red.
“Mom!”
“Let’s move, then,” said Brown, looking at Claire’s wound. “Not much time for you, Yalena.”
“Fuck you,” Wally said.
“Okay,” said Brown, pushing the barrel of his sawed-off against Wally’s forehead. “Then let’s get it over with.”
“No!” Claire cried out. “I’ll take you.”
“Good,” said Brown.
“Johanna …”
Brown looked down at Johanna, looking completely lifeless in the snow beside them. He nudged her body with the toe of his boot, and there was no response.
“No longer your problem, I’d say,” said Brown.
Claire pulled Wally close and kissed her.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said.
“We’re moving,” Brown said. “Right now.”
He followed as Claire led them through the woods, in the direction of the beach; Claire was in great pain and needed Wally’s support to keep upright.
“I’m the only one who figured it all out,” Cornell Brown congratulated himself as they pushed through the woods. “Everyone had a theory about Yalena Mayakova, but I’m the one who put it all together, and it only took me fifteen
goddamn
years. That you were pregnant when you ratted out Klesko and left little Valentina at the orphanage. How you made it to the U.S. with the help of the scumbag Hatch—all that. Of course, I never quite figured
who
or
where
you were, Yalena. Little sister here, she helped me with that last step.”
“What do you mean, I helped?” Wally asked, but in fact she was already putting it all together herself.
“I got hold of your adoption records,” said Brown smugly.
“How?” Claire wanted to know.
“I have a source,” Brown answered. “A good one. And I tracked you down in the city. Yalena wasn’t gonna show her face for me, that was for sure, but she might if her girl came looking for her.” Brown let that thought hang there, his eyes beaming at Wally as she figured it out.
“The file from Brighton Beach,” Wally said. “The note from my mother …”
“What note? What are you talking about?” Claire struggled to follow the exchange between Brown and her daughter.
“Oh, Mom. I’m sorry,” Wally said, in anguish now. “It was me. I ruined everything. I went to Brighton Beach and there was this package for me, and it had a letter and papers and … it was all a fake?”
“All fake, all bullshit.” Brown chuckled. “Not bad, right?”
As the three of them made their way to the beach, another barrage of gunshots was exchanged back in the woods, just a
pop, pop
sound like fireworks from that distance, no way to tell who was winning.
“I had little Sophie—poor little Sophie—steal your ID,” Brown continued, “so you’d need a new one. Even gave you a choice where to go, but I knew you’d choose the one in Brighton Beach ’cause of the Russian thing. I had that file planted and waiting for you. And the letter from Yalena—that lit your fire right up, didn’t it, little sister? Once you started looking for Yalena, it was just a matter of time before she poked her head out. And she was your American mother all along!” He shook his head and whistled through his teeth. “Never saw that coming. She was right there the whole time.”
“And Sophie?” Wally said, seething. “It was you who killed her?”
Brown shrugged as if the decision to take Sophie’s life was nothing remarkable, the cost of doing business. “Remember who it was that first brought you to me? Sophie. Girl with a habit is easy to use that way. But she started missing her crew—by then you’d kicked her out—and it made her a little crazy. She was gonna track you down and tip you off to what I was doing, so …”
“You fucking asshole,” Wally seethed.
Brown ignored Wally’s rage. He stopped for a moment and listened. The sounds of gunfire from the woods had stopped. He continued walking, urging Wally and Claire along with him. Claire was in terrible pain, the blood from her wound now dripping down onto the white snow. The three of them reached the beach of Coecles Inlet; the Hatches’ dock was far off to the left and the pristine sand of the Mashomack Preserve to the right.
“Where?” Brown demanded.
Claire weakly pointed to the spot where a stone jetty reached into the inlet. The three of them slogged along the sand, Claire struggling even more now. Brown was oblivious to her suffering.
“You know what I’m most proud of?” he said. “The stone—the alexandrite. I pocketed that when our ATF team tore through Klesko’s St. Petersburg apartment, long ago. I’d been holding on to that for sixteen goddamn years—little bit of a retirement bonus for myself—but then I realized what a fine investment it would be to put it in that file, Wally—to get your imagination going. That hurt, but it was worth it. Just like the picture of Klesko, the psycho bad guy, to add a sense of urgency. Of course, I had no idea he’d actually show up, but that worked out fine too. Klesko lit a real fire under your ass, am I right? Had to get to your mama before he did?” Brown chuckled again, immensely proud of himself. “And all along you had the cell I gave you—with GPS. I’ve had my crew on your ass for weeks; of course, never close enough for you to spot them.”
When they reached the jetty, Claire steered them inland again, following the line of the jetty to the denuded brush just ten feet from the edge of the beach. Partially buried in the sand was a woven steel cable, rusty from decades of exposure, which had once been the anchor of an old pier. Claire traced the cable for ten more feet, then got on her knees and began to dig underneath it. The ground was frozen on its surface and brutally difficult to penetrate. Claire was struggling for breath now and ghostly pale.
Wally dropped to her knees beside Claire to help dig. As she dug, Wally observed her mother and became even more anxious.
“Mom?”
“I’m okay,” Claire said, and tried a reassuring smile for Wally, unsuccessfully.
“Keep going,” Brown said. “Slow and easy. I saw that shit you pulled with Klesko. One goddamn twitch and you are both dead.” He scanned the woods, now growing anxious as the moment he had been working toward drew near. It had been several minutes since there had been gunshots behind them.
Wally kept digging, and within five minutes she was over two feet down in the soil and sand mixture. Her fingers scraped on the top of a plastic container.
“Easy …” Brown cautioned her.
Wally reached down into the hole and grabbed the plastic container, then stood up with it in her hands. It was not large—a pint at the most—but through the translucent blue plastic it was easy to see that it was almost full of pebble-size stones.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about, little sister,” he said, his voice reverting to the Harlem street accent he used for his role as Panama. “Gimme here.”
As she stared at Brown, a strange smile came to Wally’s face—as if she had a secret. She raised the container up, holding it beside her ear, and slowly shook it. It made the sound of a large baby rattle, hundreds of pebbles
plock
ing loudly against the walls of the plastic. The sound seemed to mesmerize Brown, for a moment. Wally went on, shaking the container harder, filling the air with the rumbling of the stones.
“Enough,” Brown commanded her, and reached out for the container.
Suddenly he felt the muzzle of a gun against the back of his neck and heard the
click
of a hammer being drawn back. He stopped speaking.
“Agent Brown.” Atley spoke calmly. “Detective Atley Greer.”
“Listen, Detective,”
Brown said in a reasonable voice, Atley’s gun still pressed into his neck. “Maybe we could discuss an option that would benefit both of us. …” Atley quieted him by jabbing the muzzle of his gun more insistently.
“Don’t make a stupid mistake,” said Atley. “I’ve called it in … it’s over.” Atley looked past Brown to Wally and Claire. “Is she all right, Wallis? I’ve called her injury in too—they’re scrambling a medevac.”
Wally tossed the cache aside and knelt down by Claire, who was looking worse now.
“Mom,” Wally said, “you’re going to be okay….”
For just a moment, Atley was distracted by the interaction between mother and daughter. Brown took advantage and spun suddenly around, whipping Atley’s gun aside with the barrel of his shotgun, which he then pointed at Atley’s face. He was ready to blow Atley away, but a gunshot rang out from behind Atley. A bullet hole appeared in Brown’s forehead and the life was gone from him instantly. As Brown dropped to the ground, Atley spun around and raised his own weapon again, but two more shots came, striking him in the arm and his ribs on the left side. Atley dropped to the ground, still alive but clenched in pain as he gripped his own wound.
It was Alexei Klesko who stood above Atley, gun in hand, winded and with fresh wounds, but still alive. Tiger was at Klesko’s side, also hurt; he bled from gunshot wounds near his ribs and lower leg.
“Daughter,” Klesko said to Wally, pleased with himself despite being in obvious pain, “tell your American friends: never fight a Russian in the snow. You see? How many empires of the world must learn this hard lesson?” Klesko gave a swift kick to the body of Agent Brown. “ATF? Kiss my ass …”
Klesko stepped to where Wally was crouched at her mother’s side.
“Give them,” Klesko said, his voice a primal growl as he pointed at the plastic container
In sudden burst of rage, Wally grabbed the container and hurled it at Klesko. It hit his chest and the impact popped the lid open. Several hundred small stones flew out of the container in every direction, with a few dozen dropping to the ground at Klesko’s feet. He bent over painfully and pulled up a handful of them, examining the treasure with emotionless objectivity. They were clearly just stones from the beach, worthless.
“Of course,” he said with a strange sort of resignation, and passed the handful to Tiger. “My son, I leave you this. Your future.”
Klesko chuckled. Tiger let the stones spill through his fingers and glared at Klesko.
Turning away from his son, Klesko took a deep, slow breath, relishing the feel of the cold air in his lungs, then stepped forward until he was standing above Claire.
“Yalena …” he said, then raised his gun at Claire, pointing it directly at her face. “Now,
your
future …”
“No!” Wally shouted, positioning herself between Klesko and her wounded mother. “It’s over! Leave her alone!”
Klesko barked a sardonic laugh.
“You think I cannot kill my own blood?” He pointed his gun straight at Wally’s face, but at that moment Atley rose from where he lay bleeding on the ground and launched himself desperately at Klesko. The two men struggled for a moment, but Atley’s wounds were greater and he didn’t have the strength to take Klesko’s gun away. Klesko freed one arm and elbowed Atley in the solar plexus, dropping him once again to the ground. Klesko used the butt of his gun to knock Atley unconscious.
Klesko raised his gun once more, aimed it at Claire, and was about to shoot, but a blast sounded beside him and the left side of Klesko’s chest exploded from the single shot, close range. The woods were silent for a moment as Klesko remained standing, looking startled. He gazed down at the gaping wound to his chest, now spurting blood. With disbelief, his eyes followed the only possible trajectory of the shot to Tiger, who stood beside him with his smoking gun still raised. The young man stared unapologetically at his father, watching almost without expression as Klesko dropped to the ground beside Agent Cornell Brown.
Sirens could be heard in the distance. Wally turned to Claire, whose face was now a ghostly white. She was barely holding on to consciousness.
“Mom!” Wally cried, wrapping her arms around her mother’s neck.
“My girl.” Claire smiled weakly. “We’re together.” Claire looked up and her eyes met Tiger’s. He stood six or seven feet away, keeping his distance. Claire raised a hand and waved Tiger over to her. For a moment he did not move, but then slowly he shuffled over, shy and awkward, and knelt down beside his mother and sister. Something had changed Tiger; like a revelation, his anger had melted away. Tiger seemed suddenly to be no more than a boy, the sad and lonely child who had been left behind so many years ago.