Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (6 page)

“Good,” Noland said. “I’ll come quickly to the point. The media will soon burst open with the news that President Dimitri Gorev was just assassinated, in his car outside of Moscow.”

Liesl leaned hard against Cade, her mind scrambling to understand. “That wasn’t supposed to happen, sir.” She felt suddenly light-headed. Was she making sense? “We stopped that plot two years ago. Who did this?” She tried to contain the fear clawing its way up her throat, drawing it tight.

“I can’t comment on who might be responsible, Liesl. I truly don’t know. But I need your help.”

“My … help?” she asked incredulously. “How could I possibly—”

But the president was a step ahead. “We have reason to believe that there was a witness to the shooting. Evgeny Kozlov.”

Liesl reeled with the implication. Surely the man she’d come to trust with her life—after he’d threatened to take it—hadn’t done this thing.

“We believe someone had alerted Kozlov to the possibility of an attack, and that he was en route to warn Gorev.”

Liesl drew a sharp breath of relief. “How do you know this, sir?”

“I can’t tell you that. You understand, of course. But what I need from you, Liesl, is your assurance that if Kozlov makes any contact at all with you, you will alert us immediately. I’m asking you—and you, Ava—to work with us to bring him in, for his sake and ours. It was a hit squad, Ava. An ambush. They massacred the whole security detail Gorev was traveling with.”

Liesl shook her head in disbelief. Would it ever stop? Then she thought of Evgeny. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been at ease with himself. A smile flickered inside her as she remembered the new clothes he’d sported that day, at the gentleness of the hand that stroked her cheek before he slipped into the alley, running toward the nearest hole into his vast warren.

“I haven’t heard from him since January, Mr. President,” Liesl said more calmly. “I don’t know why he would contact me now.”

“I don’t either, Liesl. He may simply need a friend, and I’m told he’d grown quite fond of you. But there’s something else.” The president paused. “As before, he knows things we don’t, things that are critical for us to know. Do you understand?”

All too well, Liesl thought. Hadn’t the hunt for such critical things swept her from the vortex of one storm after another for too many years of her life? “Certainly, sir. And if he should contact me, I’ll … uh …”

What
would
she do? Would she betray him? Lure him to some CIA trap? Or could she convince him to cooperate? What if he refused? Then something Ava once told her returned quickly: “There is something more powerful than guns and missiles … that would have prevented the deaths of thousands on that morning of September eleventh. Information. It’s the most critical weapon we have against our enemies.”

Liesl turned to see Ava’s resolute nod, the go-ahead for Liesl to do what she must. “I’ll do everything I can, sir.” Though she didn’t know what that might be.

“That’s all I can ask, Liesl. And that you keep the phone you’re using right now within arm’s reach at all times. Ava, you’ll be hearing from Don Bragg regarding this. I trust you and Liesl will work in tandem. And Cade, my apologies for however this matter might intrude. Now I must go. My blessings to you all.”

“Goodbye, sir,” came the collective end to the call. The three gazed silently at each other, almost stooped beneath the ponderous weight of the president’s news. Then, one by one, each moved in a different direction. Ava grabbed her phone and headed toward the door. “I’m not waiting for Bragg to call. I’ll talk to him from home, though. See you for dinner at six.”

“And we proceed with life as usual,” Cade responded, his sarcasm aimed at no one in particular.

Liesl turned mournful eyes on him. They’d tried so hard to escape the tentacles of Evgeny Kozlov’s world. Just six months ago, they’d placed their marriage in God’s hands and reveled in the finely knit order he’d brought to it, in their love so quenching, in the peace of family woven together in the harmony of the old vine-clad house beneath the oaks. What discord had just hurled itself at them? Unforeseen and unwelcome. Liesl could adequately steel herself against it. She’d had far more practice at it than Cade. But there was something else they both had, something she wasn’t used to calling on because it was still too new to her. Though she’d finally placed her life in God’s hands, too often, she’d taken it back and proceeded as if she were still alone against the world. But now she remembered.

When Ava had left, Liesl took Cade’s hands in hers and looked deep into his troubled eyes. “Don’t you remember what you told me on the dock at the cabin that night? That God never forsakes, never abandons. That he is our future.”

Cade pulled his hands from hers and wrapped his arms snuggly around her. “And I have every reason to believe it’s going to be a humdinger, isn’t it?” he said over the top of her head. Precluding an answer, he leaned down and swept her lips with his, then lingered there until familiar footsteps approached.

Before he and Liesl could untangle themselves, Ian stepped lively into the kitchen and stopped. “It’s a little early in the day to start that, don’t you think?” Then he looked around the kitchen. “Where’s Ava?”

Cade and Liesl exchanged glances. There was no immediate reason to bring Ian into confidences the president had so clearly insisted on. “On her way home. She’s invited us all to dinner tonight.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s real nice of her.” But the words seemed to tumble automatically. It was Ian’s eyes that held the most expression as he observed their faces. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Liesl asked too warily.

“You both look funny. Different than when I left. What’s up?”

Cade relaxed his hold on Liesl and shook his head. “Just a loose board on the sidewalk steps. Want to help me fix it?”

Ian eyed him suspiciously. “Okay, young man. If you and Liesl have a secret, it’s all yours. You’re entitled. But I hope nobody around here’s pregnant. Not yet anyway.” He turned to Liesl. “You need a good long time to yourselves before we have to start changing diapers.”

Liesl walked over to Ian and hugged him gently, feeling her ill-timed tears overflow their bounds. She brushed his stubbly cheek with a kiss and left the kitchen without a word.

“What’d I do?” Ian asked blankly.

“Not a thing, Pop. You know how jittery she gets before a concert.” Cade heard the creak of worn stair treads and knew Liesl had retreated to their bedroom.

Ian looked at the empty doorway then back at Cade. “Nuremberg, huh? Why does she have to go so far from home?”

“It’s a favor for Max. I understand the tickets for both their Nuremberg and Tel Aviv concerts are almost sold out.”

“Yeah, well. It’s too soon.”

Cade knew what he meant. As much as anyone, Ian knew the toll Volynski’s conspiracy of terror had taken on Liesl and others who’d helped bring him down. Such as Evgeny Kozlov. Where was he now? Cade wondered. Headed back to Tidewater Lane?

Cade watched the lines fold deep along Ian’s brow and was glad his grandfather hadn’t heard the president’s news that morning, or sensed the gathering storm behind his words.

L
iesl closed the bedroom door behind her and sat on the bed. Her hand went to the phone she’d just dropped into her pants pocket, the CIA-issued phone on which the president of the United States had just reenlisted her to active duty. The commander-in-chief of a nation—one recently spared horrific attacks by the man who’d once lined her up in his crosshairs—had now cautioned her once again. Not in so many words. Not wishing to alarm her. But he’d used the word
urgent
alongside the name Evgeny Kozlov. Alongside his directive to keep the phone with her at all times. Every bit of it spoke of caution, of a clear and present danger somewhere out there. Liesl jerked her hand from the phone as if it might bite her and redirected her attention.

She turned to look at the gowns laid out on the bed beside her. She would take them to Israel and Germany the following week. Beside each one was the scant jewelry she allowed herself during a performance, certainly nothing to trip up her hands’ sprint across the keyboard. She also had meticulously searched all apparel for loose hooks, snaps, buttons, seams, hemlines, and any other conceivable hazard. Though such things were of little concern right now. Something had just pried open the steel lid she’d bolted over the last two years, even though somewhere in that sad saga had risen the great love of her life. She closed her eyes now, and despite the fearful morning, thanked God for his mercies.

Just then, the sound of one of those mercies rose to her window, and she got up to see. Nestled in one corner of the back yard was the playhouse Henry Bower had built for his only child, determined that at least
she
would have a refuge from a wound-inflicting world. The only retreat he’d known was the golden liquid he drained from a bottle each night before joining his wife in the bedroom next to Liesl’s. It had been the bottle that carried him off to a faraway “death” on a rocky Mexican beach. Then homeless, Henry Bower had seized the chance to fake that death and free his mother, wife, and daughter of the miseries he’d dealt them for too long.

It wasn’t until years later, when he’d learned of threats to Liesl’s life, that Henry Bower returned from the crypt, stripped of all but his love for her, and so cleverly disguised that she didn’t recognize him in passing. She never knew that through all the years since she’d witnessed the murder of Schell Devoe—her Harvard professor and mentor who’d been living a double life as a Russian agent—Henry Bower had kept watch over her. Then one day less than two years ago, she discovered him, a scarred and broken refugee of his war against himself, sustained only by the visceral need to protect the only good thing left of his life, his child.

She pulled back the curtains and looked down through the filigree pattern of limbs and leaves suspended over the yard, and saw him. His rangy, slightly bent frame leaning against the side of the playhouse, he was whittling something from a length of wood. As she often did, she studied him, wondering what simmered beneath the surface. The father who’d returned to her wasn’t the same one she’d known. No, he didn’t drink anymore. But something had gouged out a chasm inside him and from its depths came voices Liesl couldn’t hear, only feel as their vibrations disturbed the air around him. Too many times, they’d summoned him and he would abandon a conversation without moving, with only a flicker of something pulling at him inside. Though others had witnessed it, it had frightened no one but Liesl. Looking down at him now, she wondered if the voices were calling to him.

Turning from the window, she ignored the demanding clutter of her room, now hers and Cade’s, and hurried down the stairs. She was grateful that no one stood between her and the back door, guessing that Cade and Ian were gathering tools to work on the sidewalk steps. Liesl took one more flight of steps down to the yard and crossed toward the playhouse, brushing bare feet through the grass her father kept neatly clipped.

Could there possibly be another structure like the one ahead? A child’s playhouse that sprouted a steeple, a replica of the one atop the majestic St. Philip’s Church just blocks away. How ironic that her father would emulate the place where Liesl had often run to escape him. It was from the church’s bell tower that she’d seen him stuffed into the back seat of a police cruiser and taken away. She hadn’t seen him again for twenty years.

Once again, her heart spilled gratitude for his homecoming as she walked slowly toward him, only now catching his eye. It was the way his head jerked toward the closeness of her that signaled he’d been far away. His worn and crusty face, nearly charred from exposure when she first found him, now creased with delight. “Hey, Punkin.” His pet name for her also had returned.

“How are you, Dad?” She walked into the arms he opened for her and returned the embrace. His denim shirt smelled freshly laundered. It seemed to Liesl that he was trying to scour away the years that had trailed him from Mexico. Fastidious didn’t begin to describe his relentless pursuit of cleanliness. More like redemption.

“The better question is, how is the lady of the manor?” He winked. “And … is she really leaving us old folks behind next week?”

Liesl released him gently and sighed. “Dad, I know you disapprove. You all do.”

“Got that right. It hasn’t been that long since I chased off a bunch of foreign-speaking thugs ransacking your house.”

“Thugs led by a man who later saved my life. Don’t forget that, Dad.”

“Evgeny Kozlov is a treacherous man who’d turn on you again if someone ordered him to.” Now wasn’t the time to tell her dad about the president’s phone call. Like the rest of the country, he’d hear the news of Gorev’s assassination before long. And that, she was sure, would springboard into another of his forays through the what-ifs of any situation even remotely associated with her tenure as a Russian target. No, this wasn’t the time.

Liesl sniffed the breeze and affected a winsome smile. “Gee, I thought I’d just spend a few tranquil moments in the garden with my gentle dad. Hmm. Where did the moment go?”