Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
And what is it exactly that you want, Waxman?
the General wondered.
He set aside the remains of his cigar. “You’re really in love with that mind of yours, aren’t you?”
“Mind games.” One corner of Waxman’s lips twitched. “You don’t want to start with me.”
“Is that a threat?” The General’s voice was languid as he rose.
Waxman had no choice but to get to his feet. One shoulder was noticeably lower than the other, as if he were poised to make a fast getaway. The General towered over him; nevertheless, he appeared anything but intimidated.
“Sun Tzu wrote, ‘All war is deception,’ General,” Waxman said as, leaning on his stick, he brushed past. “You would do well to keep that in the forefront of your mind.”
The tick-tock of the walking stick was like the beating heart of a clock. The General watched Waxman disappear into the innards of the hunting lodge. At length, he turned and picked up his cigar, but it was already cold. The taste he loved was gone.
T
HE SUNLIGHT
in Moscow was white. It fell from a featureless sky cold and hard like sleet. Somewhere there were clouds, Jack McClure thought as he peered through the hospital window, and beyond, hard as it was to believe, a pale blue sky.
Workmen were busy stripping off the gaily colored billboard sheets for the Red Square Circus. Just beyond loomed the blank, brutal faces of the squat Soviet buildings across the street, a reminder of the old guard, as well as the repression and corruption that endured through every regime change. The Russian personality was stronger than communism, socialism, glasnost, and latter-day imperial fiat.
Hearing Annika call his name, he turned to see her across the corridor. She had just emerged from the room where Dyadya Gourdjiev lay beneath rough muslin sheets. Dyadya. Everyone called him Uncle—even Annika—but he was actually her grandfather.
“How is he?” Jack said, stepping across to her.
“The doctors say he’s dying, but I don’t believe it.” She gave him a wan smile. “Neither does he.”
He took her in his arms. She had her thick blond hair tied back in a ponytail, as she had the first time he’d seen her two years ago in the bar of a hotel across town. The buzzing fluorescent lights turned her carnelian eyes dark as dried blood.
“But if the doctors—”
“The doctors are fools,” she said. “They’ve been saying he’s dying for the better part of a year.” Her wide mouth was warm against his cheek. “He’s been asking for you.”
“Me?” Jack pulled away to see her expression. “You’re joking.” But he could see that she wasn’t. “Why would he want to see me?”
She laughed softly. “Don’t be an idiot. He liked you even before he knew you loved me.” She tapped his temple with a long forefinger. “He likes what’s inside there, the way you think. He says you remind him of himself.”
Jack stood looking at her, dumbfounded. “He used me just like he uses everyone else.”
“No, not in the same way.” She gave him a little push. “Go on, now. If you wait much longer he’ll be asleep.”
Jack nodded and, like a sleepwalker, pushed open the blond-wood door and stepped inside. The first thing he saw was the extremely handsome woman sitting in a chair near the far side of the bed. She turned as he entered. She wore an oxblood wool suit over a cream-colored silk blouse, caught at the neck by a magnificent cameo. Vitality usually reserved only for the young blazed through her as if she manufactured sunlight.
With a slight rustle of fabric, she rose. “You must be the Jack McClure I’ve heard so much about.” She extended a slender hand, white as snow, and he took it.
“You have me at a disadvantage, madam.”
“You have the honor to meet Katya Tanova,” Dyadya Gourdjiev said from his position propped up in the bed.
Katya Tanova’s eyes sparkled like diamonds. As she came around the end of the bed, Jack saw that she still had magnificent legs. Her figure was slim and elegant. She seemed ageless.
“So you are Annika’s lover.”
“Katya, please!” Dyadya Gourdjiev protested. “A little decorum.”
“At my age, decorum is a useless trait.”
Her smile was of the megawatt variety; Jack basked in its warmth. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, ma’am, not if you call me Jack.”
She gave him a formal little nod. “And you must call me Katya. All the family does.”
“Katya.” There was a warning note in Dyadya Gourdjiev’s voice, though it was tempered by an affection he chose not to hide.
“Yes, yes, I know. You men must talk about cabbages and kings.” She said this with a mocking tone, waving one hand at the space between Jack and Gourdjiev, then gathered up her things. As she went toward the door, she paused beside Jack. “Try not to tire him out. If you let him, he’ll talk all day and all of the night.”
“It’s a promise,” Jack said.
She smiled. “And you’re a man who keeps his promises.” She put a finger beside her nose and tapped it. “I have a sense about these things.”
“She does, you know,” Gourdjiev said when she had left. “A sorceress of sorts.”
The two men studied each other, the air between them a swirl of difficult memories and bittersweet emotions.
“It’s been some time,” the old man said.
“Seems like a lifetime.”
“And you’ve been busy, Annika tells me. The Albanians are a ruthless bunch of thugs. Disgusting habits. Thoroughly reprehensible.”
Jack said nothing, and the silence deepened. Apart from the beeps and blips of the monitors to which the old man was hooked up, there was no sound at all in the room.
“The way you look at me,” Gourdjiev said, “you think I look old.”
“You
are
old,” Jack said.
The old man gave a wry smile. “It’s an act I put on for the doctors. Otherwise, they feel neglected.”
Jack laughed and, as was Gourdjiev’s intent, the tension was broken. Even so, the levity was short-lived.
The old man nodded. “You’d better say it, get it over with.”
“You used me to get to Oriel Batchuk.”
Gourdjiev nodded. “In a roundabout way.”
“So Annika could kill him.”
“Who had a better right?”
“He was her father!”
“A father who kidnapped her when she was just a child, a father who tortured her, who forced her to do unspeakable things, over and over again.” His eyes snapped with an inner force. “Do you believe that Annika regrets what she did?”
The old man’s monitors revealed his distress.
“Calm down,” Jack said, alarmed. He came across and sat on the edge of the bed.
The door opened and a nurse peered in.
“I’m fine,” Gourdjiev croaked. “Get out!”
The door sighed shut behind her.
“So?” It was a challenge.
“I believe…,” Jack began, “it brought her a kind of peace.”
The old man gave a little sigh. “To me, as well.”
“Annika said you wanted to see me,” Jack said softly, the better to bring Gourdjiev back from the past.
The old man looked him straight in the eye. Unlike most old people, his eyes were as clear as a young man’s, they weren’t rheumy or watery or lacking in color. On the contrary, Jack could see the lamp of extraordinary intelligence still burning brightly.
“Jack, do you trust me?”
“I think the question is, do you trust me?”
Dyadya Gourdjiev smiled. “You wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t. Now, come, answer me.”
“Trust. That depends on what you mean,” Jack said truthfully. “You’ve lied to me in the past.”
“Did things turn out badly?”
“No.”
“And it’s always turned out for the best, no?”
“That doesn’t stop me from feeling used.”
The old man took a moment to digest this. “Do you trust me to do no harm?” Like a doctor, the analogy apt, considering their surroundings.
Jack nodded. “It depends on your point of view. I’m never certain whose side you’re on.”
“Do you trust me to protect Annika, whatever the cost?”
Now Jack’s alarm escalated. “Protect her from whom?”
Gourdjiev closed his eyes for a moment, his lids thin as parchment. “Please.”
Jack let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Of course I do.”
The old man’s eyes opened, his gaze steady on Jack. “Then we may proceed.” He drew a deep breath, as if preparing for an arduous task. “Listen to me closely. I’m not dying, but it may be that my life is growing short. Who can know, we’re all human, yes? The clock keeps ticking.” He shrugged. “In any event, the time has arrived for me to plan for a future when I am no longer present.”
Jack waited patiently.
“So now I must ask you for a favor.”
“Anything.”
Gourdjiev slapped him lightly on the forearm. “You agree to such a thing so quickly, without a second thought.”
“My second thought would be the same as my first,” Jack said seriously.
“Without knowing what this favor might entail.”
Jack remained silent, but his gaze remained level on Gourdjiev’s face.
“So.”
The old man pursed his lips, but Jack sensed that he was pleased.
“Well, all right, then. I need you to get me out of here.”
“What, the hospital?”
“The hospital, Moscow, Russia.”
Jack was puzzled. “But you have so many friends, so much power.”
The old man smiled. “The jackals are circling, the hyenas, and now the lions. They’re all watching. They all smell blood.” He folded his hands on his lap, staring at the tracery of raised blue veins. “Times have changed, Jack. Now money is the only thing that matters. If you have enough money, you buy your way into power. It’s easier, you see, than fighting for it yourself. And so much quicker. Shortcuts. These people today, they’re lazy, they want everything immediately. Money is the speedway, the rocket to the moon, so to speak.”
He shifted slightly, rearranging the sheet over him. “So the old ways are dying, if not already dead, all right, fine, I’m not one to hold on to the past, wringing my hands, mourning for the old days. I think about the future, always, which is why I must make my escape before I get dragged down by what is happening now.”
“Which is?”
“A present for which I am unprepared.” He shook his head. “Don’t look at me like that, I’m neither senile nor paranoid.”
“Although in our business,” Jack said, “a little paranoia is a good thing.”
A small smile played around the corners of Gourdjiev’s mouth, but was quickly extinguished. “This escape has to be done now—today.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re out of Russia, not before.”
“Annika told me that you want to get to a cache of information you’ve amassed over the years.”
“Evidence of wrongdoing, malfeasance, extortion, embezzlement, murder. Documents and photos, taped conversations, videos, that sort of thing.” The old man smiled. “There’s no such cache.”
“Then why did you tell Annik—”
“For her own protection. If she knew everything is inside my head, she’d be paralyzed with fear for me. You understand I can’t have that.”
Jack did.
Again,
he thought,
who wants her dead? The same jackals, hyenas, and lions that are watching, circling the old man, waiting for an opening; it stands to reason. But who are they?
Dyadya Gourdjiev tapped the back of Jack’s hand with a papery finger. “I wanted you to meet Katya. I love her and she loves me. Now, in my twilight, that’s all that’s important to me—love. I have no more need of either money or power—they’re for younger people, like you and Annika.”
With a sudden lunge, he clutched Jack’s hand. “You love my granddaughter, yes?”
“Yes,” Jack said.
“Because she loves you. This is my beacon in the dark, the only thing I pay attention to now. This is the depth of my trust in you, Jack. Words—words mean nothing, an actor’s lines. I want you to remember that. No matter what may occur, you must remember that you love each other, that that love will never change, that it is your true strength, your only salvation.”
The old man looked deep into Jack’s eyes. “You don’t understand this now, but I have faith that one day you will.”
Jack sat for a long time, turning over everything Gourdjiev had said. At last, he roused himself. He had a fistful of questions, but he knew the old man well enough not to ask them now. “As to our escape,” he said, “I suppose you have a plan.”
“When do I not?” That smile again, sharp as a scimitar’s blade. “I’m going to have to die.”
* * *
H
ENRY
H
OLT
Carson received a call from the president after hours, though, when it came to both men, that phrase hardly existed. Carson was as apt to be up and working at three in the morning as he was at three in the afternoon. His sprawling empire, anchored by his InterPublic Bancorp, made it imperative that he often transact business in Asia and the Middle East. He was not a man to delegate tasks both difficult and delicate to others just because it might gain him some sack time. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” was Carson’s most beloved phrase.
The two men met in the parking lot in back of an enormous Walmart inhabited only by dead-looking trailer trucks unhooked from their cabs and the president’s Secret Service detail, which had immediately established a watchful perimeter of granite-faced men linked by a wireless network. Crawford and Carson looked a lot alike. Hands plunged deep in cashmere overcoats, they smiled at each other in a chilly, feral manner, because more often than not the reason for their meetings wasn’t pleasant. For both men, business was everything, pleasure a distant memory enjoyed by their younger selves in another, dimly recalled lifetime.
“Making money?” Arlen Crawford said with his just-us-folks Texan heartiness.
“Every minute of every hour of every day,” Carson said. “But since you’re regularly kept abreast of our mutual holdings I very much doubt that’s why we’re here in this godforsaken place.”
“It suits our purpose.” Crawford, tall and rangy, with a cowpoke’s rough, wind-reddened skin, indicated that the two should walk. Crawford was not a man who enjoyed being sedentary. Briefings saw him walking back and forth behind the facing sofas in the Oval Office, a habit that still disconcerted some members of his cabinet. This was the very reaction Crawford sought. The president liked everyone off balance, even his closest advisors. “Absent a real live battle,” he would say, “it keeps ’em sharp.”