Firebird (57 page)

And then she gathered her daughter and the drum and walked away from him, down the dim hallway.

* * * *

Garcia looked around Alexandra’s narrow kitchen.  A little girl dressed as a princess, sitting on a soft blue carpet playing with her new drum, a huge Lab curled protectively beside her.  A beautiful red-haired woman setting a coffee pot on an old white stove.  

They were growing close in ways he hadn’t expected.  Hadn’t
wanted
.  This could have been my life, he thought suddenly, as he watched Alexandra reach for pottery mugs, sugar, spoons. 

And then the peaceful picture shattered as she flung the spoons across the counter.

“You’re
sure
Panov is dead?”

“It was my bullet, Alexandra.  I don’t miss.”

“I’m glad.”  She set down the two mugs, hard, and reached for the coffee.   “He was the watcher, Garcia.  The one who broke into my apartment, who attacked me in Maine.  He threatened Ruby.  It was Panov who kidnapped Juliet and left her to die...”

“Si.  What you don’t know yet is that he was Ivan’s Control, the ‘man from St. Petersburg.’  He’s thought to be the grandson of one of the original KGB planners of Operation Firebird, the Shestidesyatniki.  And – he was the bartender Nikolei at the Palace of the Firebird restaurant.”

She froze, the coffee pot still in her hand.  “Of course!  He wasn’t wearing his ring, but - my God, he was so familiar.  It was the perfect cover for him.” 

“I told you once - men like Panov, agents who in reality hold so much power, often hold menial, low-profile jobs - a doorman, a secretary, a chauffeur…”

“A bartender,” she finished.  “And he could keep watch on Tatyana Danilova.”  She shook her head.  “He could have hurt me, more than once.  Why didn’t he?”

“My bet is the brooch.  They wanted it, and you knew where it was.”

She nodded thoughtfully, poured the coffee into the mugs.  “And Ivan?” 

“The docs think he’ll make it.  We’re moving him to a more secure medical center in Virginia this afternoon.  If he recovers, he should serve time.  But he has firsthand information we want very badly, as you can imagine.  So he’ll cut a deal.”

“Our country does not want to be embarrassed.”

“That’s a fact.  So we get his info.  And he quietly disappears into the sunset.”

“And you can’t tell me more.”

He held her gaze.  “Not yet.”

“But there’s still so much I don’t understand.”

“I can tell you what we’ve learned about Rhodes.  Most of what you believed was true.  He
was
born here, in Connecticut, to a wealthy and politically powerful family.  He graduated from Yale, went to King’s College, Cambridge, served as an officer in Vietnam.  I think the disillusionment set in during ‘Nam, after he saw his best friend from high school blown to bits.  Sometime around then he was recruited by the remnants of the Burgess-Maclean-Philby-Blunt group, who still had ties to Cambridge.”

“Those spies were members of some exclusive society, weren’t they?”

“Yes. 
The Apostles
.  At Trinity and King’s College.  They were called the Cambridge Four.  It’s still widely believed that there was a fifth man involved.”

“So Anthony was converted to communism in the late sixties.  And then he went under deep cover for Operation Firebird.  He never wanted the New Russia to succeed.”  She looked up.  “I should have caught it earlier.  In the library at Foxwood, the night of his reception, he quoted a Russian poet...”  She shook her head.  “But how did Ivan discover Anthony’s real identity?”

“Tatyana Danilova’s Firebird brooch.  Anthony knew she was alive, of course, and befriended her over the years.  And when they couldn’t find the original brooch to activate Ivan, he stole hers – the copy.” 

“For Ivan, learning that his friend Anthony knew Tatyana was alive had to be the ultimate betrayal.”

“Si.  And discovering that he’d lived a life of lies.  For decades Rens Karpasian believed he was Ivan, a true Russian mole.  Last night he realized it was never supposed to be him.  He would be sacrificed, exposed as a spy, so that the second agent,
the real mole
, could remain in place.  Suspicions diverted.  A Vice President dead, a spy unmasked, and Anthony free and clear to use his power.”

“
Two
moles…” she said slowly, as everything fell into place.  “We identify Ivan, and the true spy stays hidden forever.”

“It all went south from the moment Charles Fraser learned about Operation Firebird from Belankov.  Fraser was ready to lead a full scale investigation.  But Anthony couldn’t risk a mole hunt so close to the election.  He had to protect himself at any cost.  That meant sacrificing Ivan.   We think he had his men in St. Petersburg contact Panov with orders to activate Ivan.  The brooch was the signal, to convince Ivan that he was doing the bidding of the old hard-liners.”

“The Firebird brooch…” murmured Alexandra, looking down into her coffee cup as the answers swirled in her head.  “From a Czarina to the KGB.  From the KGB to Yuri Belankov.  From Yuri to Charles Fraser.  From Charles to Eve.  From Eve to me…”

“And when Panov couldn’t find the original at Cliff House, Anthony was forced to steal Tatyana’s copy.”

“Because Eve had hidden the original brooch for me after reading Fraser’s letter describing Operation Firebird.”  Her eyes flew to his.  “Eve went to Anthony for
help
, told him she wanted to expose the Firebird at Foxwood’s Gala.  That’s how Anthony found out what she knew.  Because she trusted him…”  Alexandra’s voice faltered.

“Don’t go there, Chica,” said Garcia gently.

“All that time, I thought Ivan was the one who asked my sister to meet him that night at the river
…”  So many secrets
.

CHAPTER 64

“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall...”

Sir Walter Raleigh

Dusk was settling outside the window.  Alexandra switched on a lamp, another.  Moved to the desk.  Lifted a photograph.  Set it down.  Smoothed Ruby’s curls.  Gazed out the tall windows at the glowing streetlamps.

“I know you have to get back to D.C.,” she said finally, ambushed by the sudden sense of loss. 

Garcia tossed a Halloween candy wrapper on the coffee table and came to stand in front of her.   “Before I go, Red - I want you to know.  When Billie told me that Juliet was missing - dammit, I knew you’d go after her.  All I could think about was getting to you.”

She stared at him.  “Even you could not have kept me off that blasted roof, Garcia.” 

“But I know how scared you are of heights.”

She looked into his eyes, shook her head mutely.

“It’s time you tell me about the roof, Chica.”

”It’s really about another roof,” she said finally, “a long time ago.  I told you, that night at Billie’s club, that Eve married the man I loved.  She announced their marriage at my seventeenth birthday party, on the beach in Maine, standing in a shower of fireworks.” 

She let out her breath.  “What I didn’t tell you is that I ran, Garcia.  Like a coward, back to Cliff House.  I didn’t fight for myself.  All I could think to do was hide from the pain.  And then - much later that night, I heard Eve calling.  I climbed the stairs to the attic…

“Then I saw her, through the open window.  She was out on the roof, crouched near the chimney, clearly drunk and crying for help.”  Her breath caught.  “She always liked the high places.”

“Alexandra -”

“No, I’ve got to say it all.  I was so hurt, so damned angry with her.”  Her body vibrated with pain.  “It was dark, terrifying.  God help me, Jon, I didn’t want to go out there!”

“But you did.”

“Of course.  She was my sister.”

Her sister’s voice, sobbing in the darkness
.
 You can’t leave me here, Zan!  I’m so sorry.  Please!  I can’t hold on much longer…

Grasping hands.  Locking fingers.  I’ve got you!

Suddenly, both slipping, scraping hard down the slick roof.  Toward the edge!  Don’t take Eve with you. 

Eve, terrified, pulling her hand away.

“I can still hear the cries of the seabirds,” she murmured.  “Someone screaming. And then the black edge of the roof, rushing toward me through the mist.”

“Dios!  You fell from the roof.”

“Three stories.  I was medi-vaced off island, in the hospital for two months.”  She flashed a rueful smile.  “It was the rhododendron bushes on the terrace that broke my fall.”  She gazed at him.  “But there’s something else, Garcia.  Like my sister, I had a secret of my own.”

She felt the well of tears, blurring her vision.  He simply waited beside her.

“I was pregnant when I fell,” she said finally.  “Four months along.  I lost the baby that first night.  They told me I would never conceive another child.  A miscarriage…  Jesus, the pain swallows you up.”  She looked down at her daughter, and her voice caught.  “And to
never
be able to have a baby?  Of course I blamed my sister.”

“And Eve?”

She blinked away the tears.  “She hadn’t known about the pregnancy.  She told everyone that she’d found me on the roof, that she was trying to rescue me.  
She
was always the fearless one, why wouldn’t they believe her?  And I was silent, protecting her, as I always had.”

Her breath came out, harsh in the quiet of the room.  “And then she went off to be with the man I loved.  No one knew the truth.  Just one more secret.  Everything changed after that night.  I was released from rehab, went away to school.  My father always had to visit me, I refused to go back to the island.  Until the night I went to find Juliet.” 

Until I met you
.

He stepped closer.  “Not everything changed.  Years ago you went out on a roof for your sister.  And you went out on a roof again two nights ago.  For her daughter.”

“Juliet needed someone who would abandon all common sense for her,” she said simply.  “And… I felt Eve with me, on the roof.  This time, we held on to each other.” 

She glanced over at the unfinished canvas.  “I was so angry with Eve for so long,” she murmured.  “And I couldn’t forgive her for dying.  My dazzling big sister, always leaving me behind.”

“She broke your heart.”

“More than once.  But now…”  She felt the shifting, deep in her chest.  “
Now
I have to look at the truth of our relationship.  Now I know that she was never going to be the sister I wanted.  But I also know that I loved the sister I got.”  She gazed at him.  “I can see us now as the women we became, Garcia.  Not the girls we were.  We shared blame, but it doesn’t even matter any longer.  It’s time to forgive
both
of us.”

He smiled down at her.

“What?”

“I think you will be able to paint your sister now, Chica.”

She stood very still. 
Yes, I think I can
.

“But there’s something you should know,” said Garcia.  “You got
yourself
from the roof onto that balcony, Alexandra. 
You
did it, only you.”

“All I could think was,
Don’t give up on your girls
!  It was all so dark, so confusing.  But I know someone else was there.  Not Eve, but someone
real
, someone who helped me fight for my life, who wouldn’t let me go…”

“You refused to leave Ruby.  You held on, Red.  You stayed with me.”

Stay with me
.

In a flash, it came to her.  Strong arms, gathering her against a broad chest.  Safety.  And something more. 

Her eyes widened in shock.  “It was you!  
You
found me on that balcony.  It was
your
face I saw.  You ran through a burning building for me…” she whispered, suddenly understanding what he had risked.  “You said, ‘Stay with me.’”

She turned, and rested a hand on his chest.  She could feel his heart thudding right through the bandages on her palms.  At that moment, something changed between them.

Stay with me
, he’d said.  It made her feel – dammit, it just made her bloody
feel
!  

As if he’d read her thoughts, he gave her a blazing look.  “You can’t keep pretending that something’s not going on between us, Chica.” 

“I want you to stop saying these things.”

“And I want to be able to walk into a room, dammit, and
not feel
something for you!  But it’s not gonna happen.”

Her breath hitched.

His gaze locked with hers.  “You wanted to kiss me, on the Vaya con Dios.  I wanted you, too.  I want you now.”  He smiled down at her.  “
That’s
a fact.”

She took a startled step back, pushed a hand through her hair in confusion.

“But not this way,” he said softly.  “You’re not ready, and that’s okay.  I can wait until the time is right.  I’m not going anywhere.”

“There won’t ever be a right time, Garcia.”  She looked down at a now petulant Ruby hurling toys across the room.  “I’m a single mom with a tired kid and more baggage than Vera Wang at a society wedding, a workaholic, a –”

He set his hands on her shoulders to stop the flow of words.  “Are you listening, Alexandra?  For the longest time, I’ve been standing in one place.  Waiting.  For – something.  And now…”

Just breathe.

He shook his head in disbelief.  “For years, I’ve shut myself off from life.  I didn’t want to deal with anything, didn’t want to feel!  And then some crazy redhead crashes into my cottage, falls off a cliff, saves my dog, gets run down by a stallion… and I can’t get her out of my head!  So now, here I am.  Everything’s changed, nothing’s the same anymore, because of
you
!  You make me think, you make me
feel
.  The depth of your love for Ruby, how fiercely you fought for Juliet…  that
gets
to me.  And I feel alive again.”  He smiled crookedly.  “I’ll be damned.”

She stood frozen.  Finally she said, “Everything’s changed for me, too.”