Authors: Douglas Corleone
One last breath, then I stepped into the hallway, Glock raised, searching for my target.
The moment I saw movement I fired, struck the left knee. The leg went out from under him, but he remained able to aim his weapon.
I fired another shot, into his right shoulder, and his hand opened.
His gun hit the linoleum and I immediately kicked it hard down the hall.
Jov continued to struggle to get to his feet, so I removed Sacha’s knife from my belt.
He watched me as I maneuvered around his body. He opened his mouth to scream just I knelt behind him, lifted his right pant leg, and sliced through his Achilles tendon.
He howled in pain as his body dropped flat onto the dirty hallway floor, blood pooling all around his feet.
I strode down the hallway, leaving the fallen Jov behind with his screams. The floor was scuffed, the walls painted the same drab blue as in the sister clinic. The fluorescent lights flickered; exposed electrical wires hung loosely from the ceiling.
The operating room was positioned in the same location as at the other clinic, too—the room they’d wheeled Ana into.
Covered in blood—mine and others—I swallowed hard, steeled myself, and pushed open the operating-room doors.
Two surgical tables lay side by side. A young girl unconscious on each.
Two women and one man, all in green surgical gear, stepped away from the tables, unarmed, their hands slightly raised in the air in surrender.
Until that moment I hadn’t even realized I was holding the gun on them.
One man stood between the two tables, arms down at his sides. He pressed his glasses higher up his nose, lowered his surgical mask, and removed the green cap from his head, revealing a mess of curly salt-and-pepper hair.
“Hello, Simon,” he said in perfect English.
I stared down at the steel table holding Lindsay Sorkin. My eyes moved down her tiny body and settled on her chest.
“It’s over, Doctor,” I said.
“I don’t suppose we can negotiate,” he said sadly.
“Over a six-year-old’s life?” I said. “No, Dr. Richter, I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”
I felt dizzy from the blood loss, my arms growing weaker every moment. The gun bobbed. I cleared my head and held it straight, aimed at Richter’s center.
“The thing is, Simon, there are two six-year-old girls in this operating room. Lindsay Sorkin. And Mila Richter.”
“I’ve heard about your daughter, Doctor. And I’m sorry. But you’ve no right—”
“And I’ve heard about yours, Simon,” he said calmly. “You know what it’s like to lose a child.”
“Thanks to you,” I said, “so do Vince and Lori Sorkin.”
Richter smiled mirthlessly. “You have no idea, do you? Vince Sorkin is a criminal, Simon. A fucking traitor to his country.
Your
country.
Our
country.”
I licked my lips. My mouth was going dry.
“Vince Sorkin is selling weapons technology to Iran,” Richter said. “And his wife, Lori, knows all about it. She’s known all along. Paris was just the beginning for them, Simon. They were about to cash in, change their names, and vanish.”
I swallowed hard, tried to subdue my sudden thirst.
“First of all, Doctor, I don’t believe a word you’re saying. And even if it’s true, it has nothing at all to do with the innocent girl lying on your slab.”
“
Two
innocent girls,” he shouted. “Don’t pretend that Mila isn’t here. Don’t pretend she doesn’t
exist
.” He reached out to his daughter and ran his gloved hand gently over her forehead. “And it
is
the truth, Simon. Every word I’ve told you is true. You’ll know it soon enough.”
My left arm felt terribly weak. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold the gun.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “This isn’t about the parents.”
Richter’s eyes narrowed. “
Isn’t
it, though?” He took a small step to the left and started to round the table holding his daughter.
“Stand
still,
” I hollered.
The doctor stopped but otherwise ignored the interruption.
“Your wife
killed
herself when you lost Hailey, Simon. How can you stand there holding a gun on me and say this has nothing to do with the parents?”
“Tasha would have
never
traded another child’s life for Hailey’s,” I said.
“Wouldn’t she have, though? Wouldn’t
you
?”
“You’re mad, Doc—”
“If instead of
my
daughter,” he said, “it was
your
daughter on this slab, and I told you I could bring her back right now, wouldn’t you ask me to do it? Wouldn’t you
beg
me to?”
I looked down and for a moment I
saw
Hailey on that slab where Mila lay.
Richter said, “Aren’t you more deserving than Vince and Lori Sorkin, Simon?”
“This isn’t
about
them,” I shouted.
“It
is,
” he fired back. “Mila has no less potential than Lindsay does, Simon. Mila is no less deserving of
life.
”
“Neither is Mila more deserving than Lindsay,” I said.
“What life does Lindsay have to look forward to, Simon? A life on the run from the CIA? Or more likely, orphaned at the age of six? Mila has two parents who love her more deeply than anything on this earth, two parents who have devoted their
own lives
to the sick and dying children of Belarus. If all else is equal between these two girls, Simon, then
shouldn’t
the Sorkins and my wife, Tatsiana, and I be taken into account? Shouldn’t the way we’ve lived our lives
matter
?”
“You have no right to play—”
“God?”
Richter laughed angrily. “Don’t be so fucking obtuse, Simon.”
Beneath me I felt my legs turning to rubber. The image of the operating room was suddenly surrounded by a bright white glow. I needed to end this before I passed out.
“It’s over, Doctor,” I said again. “Wake the girl. Lindsay Sorkin is leaving with me.”
Richter stood silent for a few moments. Only now there appeared to be two of him.
“The hell she is,” he said finally. “You’re going to have to kill me, Simon.”
He moved to the table of surgical tools and picked up a scalpel.
“Don’t make me do this, Doctor,” I begged.
He moved over the insensate form of Lindsay Sorkin.
My finger tensed over the trigger of my Glock.
Richter lifted the scalpel.
“Please,”
I shouted.
Just as I was about to squeeze the trigger, the doctor looked me dead in the eyes.
Then pressed the blade of the scalpel deep into the flesh of his own throat and cut.
Chapter 56
The next morning, Ana and Lindsay and I were flown back to Paris on a private jet courtesy of the French government. Despite our best efforts, Lindsay barely said anything at all.
“It’ll take time,” I assured Ana. “She’s been through a hell of a lot.”
It was true. Even the children I’d retrieved from their estranged parents often needed years of therapy to help them deal with everything they’d been through.
Ana was still recovering from the gunshot wound. Doctors at the clinic had removed the bullet from the upper left side of her chest rather easily. The storefront window had slowed the bullet down significantly, or else it might have traveled right through her. Marek arranged for Ana to be flown via helicopter directly to a hospital in Warsaw, but Ana of course refused. She wasn’t going to Warsaw, she said. She was seeing this through to the end; she was accompanying me to Paris. I didn’t bother to argue. Even when she was doped heavily with painkillers, I knew that there was no hope of winning a verbal duel with Anastazja Staszak.
Davignon had Bertrand and another of his men pick us up from Charles de Gaulle and drive us to the cottage in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, where Davignon was waiting with an ecstatic Lori Sorkin.
Upon seeing her mother, Lindsay sprinted and leaped into Lori’s arms. Lori covered her daughter in kisses, then lifted her toward the sky and spun her till they both fell into the tall blades of grass, crying and rolling around like a pair of jubilant toddlers.
After watching the reunion, I asked Ana to follow me upstairs to afford Lori and Lindsay some privacy.
“What happens now?” she said as we entered a large, well-appointed bedroom.
I stared at the king-size bed and wished I could sleep for a month.
“Even if everything Richter told me is true,” I said, “I doubt very much the U.S. government will be able to prove Lori’s involvement.”
Given the fact that Vince Sorkin was still missing, I had little reason to question whether Richter was being honest about Vince’s selling weapons technology to Tehran. But then, over the past ten years, I’d learned to question everything. And Vince’s guilt would be no exception.
Still, I thought it likely that in her hysteria, Lori had threatened to spill everything in the hopes that it might somehow help get Lindsay back. And that’s why Vince Sorkin had run.
“Do you think Vince will ever be found?” she said.
I didn’t reply.
Dr. Keith Richter was already in U.S. federal custody in California after being stopped at the Mexican border on his way to Tijuana for what he called a spontaneous vacation. In preparation for said vacation, Keith Richter had bleached his hair and beard blond and stuffed his pockets with wads of cash. He’d left behind his wife and children.
Stephen may well have been the mastermind but he couldn’t have done it without his brother. Keith Richter evidently tested hundreds of children, then supplied the information to Stephen for comparison. Lindsay Sorkin was the perfect donor for Mila Richter. Age, weight, blood type O, and, most incredibly, a six-antigen match—the best compatibility possible between a donor and a recipient who aren’t identical twins.
Lindsay’s heart was Mila’s only chance at life. Mila would never have survived a second transplant, so Stephen Richter couldn’t afford to try any heart but Lindsay’s. A rejection of the heart by Mila’s body would have made it all for naught. The Richter girl would have died.
After receiving the data, Stephen had used his significant resources—millions of dollars he’d raised for his Chernobyl charities from people and businesses all over the world—to discover as much about Vince and Lori Sorkin as he possibly could. He hired a private intelligence firm in the States. The firm, aptly named Third Eye, employed only top-notch intelligence vets from American, British, and German intelligence. It didn’t take them long to infiltrate Nepturn Technology and discover Vince’s plans to sell secrets to Tehran.
Of course, Stephen had justified his actions to me based on Vince’s treason, but I doubt that if he’d learned that the Sorkins were model citizens he would have done anything differently. He didn’t have time to be choosy; his daughter didn’t have time. Once the heart-valve procedure failed, there was a good chance Mila would die. Short of a transplant, nothing would have saved Stephen Richter’s little girl.
Davignon tapped on the open door and stepped inside.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “But Lori insists on thanking you personally, and of course, she’d like to take her daughter and leave France as soon as possible.”
“Did she say where they were going?” I said.
He looked at me strangely. “I assume back to the States.”
“Without her husband?”
Davignon took a step toward me, lowered his voice.
“Is there something you are not telling me, Simon?”
I hadn’t told anyone. Yet. Before I told anyone anything, I needed to get to the truth.
“Send her in, Lieutenant.” I turned to Ana. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’d like to speak with Lori alone.”
“Of course,” she said.
Once Ana returned downstairs with Davignon, I folded my arms across my chest and walked to the window. The sky was gray, just as it had been when Davignon first brought me to this cottage ten days earlier. Strange, I thought, where my mind kept returning during these past twenty-fours hours. Back to Kiev. To that run-down apartment complex in the Podil district, Lower City. To Dorota Wojcik, the young girl who’d led us to the Podrova brothers. Dorota was the only innocent person to have admitted to seeing Lindsay since her parents had put her to bed in Paris. She deserved the credit, not me. Yet, Dorota remained in her unthinkable situation back in Ukraine.
I’d spoken to Martyn Rudnyk from the plane. With the Podrova brothers out of the way, he assured me, his and Kidman’s investigation would move forward with alacrity. I had no reason to doubt him. Bad people would be put away. But I couldn’t help but wonder what would become of the children. Because the Podrova brothers and their so-called modeling agency weren’t the only problems in these kids’ lives. Far from it. Fact was, they were surrounded by evil and they had no one in the world to protect them.
“Simon?” Lori’s voice remained hoarse but she sounded better than anytime I’d spoken to her over the phone these past several days. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” I said.
She stepped in slowly. She was alone; she’d left Lindsay downstairs with Ana and Davignon. I was surprised that she could let her daughter out of her sight so soon, but I supposed it was healthy.
“I really don’t know how to begin to thank you,” she said.
“Seeing Lindsay safe is thanks enough, I assure you.”
Lori walked up to me and put her arms around me and hugged me with everything she had. I let her rest her head against my chest as I warmly hugged her back.
“Lieutenant Davignon tells me you had an ultrasound,” I said, “and that the baby looks great.”
I felt her nodding, felt her tears seeping through the cotton of my shirt.
“They saw boy parts,” she said.
“Vince must be elated.”
She was silent for a few moments, then said, “He doesn’t know yet. He left before I told him.”
I gently took her by the shoulders and held her away from me so that I could look into her eyes, the eyes that reminded me so much of Tasha’s.