Wilderness of Mirrors (30 page)

“Samantha. Your daughter.”

Demidov’s expression was beyond interpretation. After a time he said, “Describe her – this woman you know.”

Nigel closed his eyes, beyond caring. They’d stab each other and bleed to death in a Three Michelin Star restaurant. “She has your features and coloring. I’ve never seen a photo of Kirstin,”
Not one – why is that Sam?
“But perhaps their mouths are the same: wide and mocking. Enough to make a man reassess his confidence.”

“Just so,” Demidov whispered. “And is she tall?”

“Amazonian.”

“Ahhh.” Years of memory came up with that hook. “Kirstin’s head rested just under my nose. The scent of her is familiar to me even now.”

“I wonder,” Nigel recalled Sam’s dressing table, “was it French, the bottle I mean?” He opened his eyes. Vasiliv was watching him. “Did it smell of sandalwood and citrus?”
Did you want it seeped into your very pores so you’d never lose her?

Life returned to the grotesque features. “You’ve the nose of a sommelier. To me, it was simply
her
.”

“You loved them.” The truth was at unpleasant odds with Nigel’s intent.

Vasiliv nodded. “And you say she’s alive. How?”

“Sam stayed home from school that day. She never got in the car. Damn close, but far enough.” Nigel wondered how Demidov felt at this moment. How David and Kate would feel if suddenly they discovered William lived.

“Who raised her? Where?”

“New York.”

Demidov’s eyes hinted at an unknown amusement. “Surely not Loch?”

Nigel dipped his head. “Did you know him?”

“I never left Russia while Kirstin and I knew one another. But she told me a little about him. Sometimes, in her letters, I learned more. Their father was not kind to him – judged him. Apparently he was not an easy man to live with.”

“Not many of us are.”

Silence reentered the conversation.

The night was wearing thin. Nigel needed Sam. Had to know if she and Kate were coping. If he was going to kill Demidov, it needed to be soon. “Is that why you’re here? Revenge?”

Vasily’s sigh was long. “My organization has been losing ‘customers’ to someone – how should I say - unfamiliar. That someone is hiding here. Running things and disorganizing what was begun in Moscow. Money’s not flowing back. We in the Kriminalnaya have made a loose pact to work together and find this person. I volunteered to flush out the traitor.”

“You weren’t coming for me?”

“No. Ivan traced you here.”

“Ahh.” Nigel rested an elbow on the table and rubbed his jaw. “So you weren’t behind the murder of my nephew.”

“I’d have killed you, not him.”

“And Irina?” The pain of her death at his hands was acute as appendicitis tonight
.

“The prostitute?” Demidov lifted his fingertips. “If I remember correctly, you were the one who killed her.”

“Is that how you do business?”

Vasiliv pulled up the sleeve of his custom shirt. Fronds of intricate green, black and blue tattoos trailed along the skin beneath the blond hairs. “Have you been to the ‘hospital’ in Russia?”

“My cathedral has two towers.”
Twice, Nigel had been jailed there. It made sweeping landmines the stuff of pipedreams.

Large fingers refastened the cuff. “Mine looks like St. Basil coupled with a hydra.” Nigel was through with boasting about mafia tattoos. “And I’ve no doubt you wear stars on your knees and shoulders, Captain. Who cares?”

“You and sarcasm are close friends.”

Nigel touched the curve of a spoon. “I promised Irina I’d kill the man responsible for her death.”

“Yet you forwent suicide.”

They locked eyes. “Your daughter made me reconsider.”

“You’re lovers?”

“Yes.”
I want your daughter. And in every way possible way I need her to want me.

Demidov growled, “I told Kirstin I’d kill any man who touched our daughter before sliding a ring over her finger.”

“That’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”

“Fuck you.” Vasiliv’s eyes glittered. For all Nigel knew, there was a gun down there along with any number of sharpened utensils. “Where is Samantha?”

“At an animal hospital. Your men shot her dog.”

Demidov’s fist slammed against the table. Nearby voices paused. “My men? My men don’t know she exists!”

“Then who’s after her, eh? Who shot my nephew execution style?” Nigel felt the lock he kept on his control rattle. “I catch Jaak spying on your daughter and me and the next thing I know, my nephew’s dead and Sam’s got a bullet crease across her scalp. If it wasn’t for the bloody dog she’d be down the morgue beside William.”

Sergei, no doubt worried about their rising voices, parted the curtain.

“Get out. I don’t need a babysitter.” Vasily quaked with rage.

Sergei stood his ground. “Jaak called.”

“Do I look like I give a pig’s testicle?”

But there was something odd in the man’s expression. Nigel intervened. “Good brotherhood is the best wealth.”

Sergei looked to his boss for a ruling on the matter.

“Bah, be quick about it,” Demidov ordered.

“Jaak says he’s found the traitor.”

Demidov’s eyes narrowed. “Jaak couldn’t find his way out of a condom.”

Sergei held up his mobile. “He’s sent photos.”

“Give that to me.”

Sergei tossed it over the table. “There’s more.” He glanced slyly at Nigel. “A woman, Sepp’s. She’s in the second photo. Apparently, the two of them are getting cozy at some big garden. Cu?”

Nigel’s fingers went numb. “What are you on about?”

Demidov was very silent. He stared at the mobile’s screen for a long time then turned it so Nigel could see. “My God, you are right. It’s Kirstin’s mouth – exactly.”

Snatching the device, Nigel snarled at the screen. Sam was coatless, blood dried upon her forehead. He flipped back to the prior image and sucked in surprise.

“Who is it?” Demidov asked.

“Wellington Turner.”
You’re there with him? What the devil is going on, Sam?

Vasily shook his head very slowly from side to side. “Boots Turner. But surely, not him. He was…”

“He was Kirstin’s Handler, wasn’t he?”
No. No. This cannot be, Sam.

Demidov nodded. “I never met him. Never knew what he looked like.”

Nigel stared unseeing into the whiteness around them.
This means he was your leak, C. He’s the man you’ve all been looking for. And you’re with him, Sam. Somehow you’re a part of his deceit.

Nigel felt a hand on his shoulder. “Look at me! What do you know of their connection?”

Nigel’s mind crawled through the stickiness of cotton candy. “I… he came once…while I was at her flat. Showed up…wears a Glock on an ankle holster. Drives a BMW coupe. Silver. Sidcup registered plates. I ran them, thought he was too old and too interested. He worried me until a friend of mine mentioned that Boots was like a –”

Nigel froze. Jesus, no. Not that. Had it all been a set up?

‘We met at a wedding,’
she’d said. Where she tried to hire Brad as a pianist.

She had approached Nigel too…come to Brad’s boat the very night they landed in London.

And she was doing work for his sister. Remembered what William looked like from his portrait.

‘That boy in the car, is he dead?”

Dear God, Sam, how could you have seen him from below the wall?

The whiteness around him was spinning. He slammed his lids against their whirl.

“What about this friend of yours? Tell me.” Vasiliv’s grip was massive.

“Sam – Samantha - she met my friend Brad first. It was only later I came to know her.”
After they’d broken up. When she’d moved on to another agent with different Intel.

Sergei’s voice was a distant buzz of persistent flies. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Like a what?” Demidov insisted, ignoring his lieutenant. “Your friend thought Turner was like a what? Pimp? Supplier? What!”

“Godfather.”
Only he’s not, is he. He’s your Handler; isn’t he, Sam?

Demidov’s hand vanished. “Where is this Cu?”

Not far from here. Near Slough. Close enough that she probably left right after I did. Ditched Tamar and headed straight for a rendezvous with the head of London’s newest mob syndicate. Brad would never have gotten to her in time.

“Get him up. He’s coming with us.”

Nigel felt Sergei’s fingers at his elbow.

He could drop them both. Slit two throats and head for Kew, covered in gore, his heart mined and empty. Sam would see him that way, know that she shouldn’t have bothered saving him. Know what she’d ultimately done to him.

He blinked hard, restored some equilibrium, and stood of his own volition. “It’s pronounced Kew. And since I know where it is,
you’re
coming with me.”

S
am turned when she felt the reverberation of his feet along the platform. She was between two cameras and, though the night was slate-colored, under-lighting along the bridge’s length kept their movements visible to the hidden lenses.

He plowed along, his custom shoes landing toe and heel together. His gun was out, aiming at her chest. Its hurt would be a poor second to the pain of her guilt.

“What the devil are you playing at?” Boots shouted. His mouth moving enough for satellites to read his lips. “Get back down there and do your job.”

You’re not even surprised I know. Makes me two kinds of a fool.

“I mean it, Samantha!”

“You mean, ‘Do
your
job’.” Her hands whirled. “This was never my world.”

“Playing poor little deaf girl doesn’t suit you.” He stopped a few yards from her, out of breath. “I don’t give a shit about your disability.”

She felt like laughing. “No? That is surprising. I thought it was AG’s greatest caveat. I’ve had no trouble ‘overhearing’ conversations and have navigated insurmountable barriers with an aide dog that doubles as a lethal weapon.”

Turner glanced past her. “Where is Tamar?”

It was easy to push the truth into her voice. “Dead. Your bloody boys took him out.”

“Boris?” His face twitched, unreadable.

Maybe he hadn’t heard they’d been arrested.

“They shot him, just like Nigel’s nephew.” Her hands were shaking. “Why? I’ve done every job you asked – got the last job’s vase to prove it.”

A sneer touched each plane of Wellington’s otherwise good-looking face. There was exultation in the hollows of his cheeks. “Greatest caveat? Samantha, darling, you’re commonplace at best. I’ve given you jobs half the schoolgirls in Britain could handle. And the rest? Well, they weren’t even real.” His eyes mocked her surprise. “No one wants that bloody cachepot you’ve got stashed away like a greedy squirrel. No one.”

“No one but you.” She understood now.
I hate how small you’ve always made me feel.

He laughed. “Me? Not at all, my dear. The joy comes from knowing how much work your pretty little head had put into accomplishing such mediocrity. Makes me feel chuffed, truly.”

Clever, clever little bits of writing. “I’ve never presumed to be like my mother.”
This is all about her. Always has been.

His joy flattened. “And well you shouldn’t. What’s more, you’re not your father either.”

Strong arms, folk-dancing Russian eyes.
Why could I not have been like him?
She might have wept then, but something small, something bitter and wistful in his expression, caught her mind’s inner gears. They made a revolution and ended up in an altogether unfamiliar territory. But wait? “Did you imagine yourself to be my father?
You
?”

Her question trampled his expression.

She pressed on, white with anger. “Is that why you’ve done this?” Another thought caught motion and she nearly doubled with the pain. “You and my mother were lovers before she went to Moscow, weren’t you?” Sam wanted to smash her head against the railing. “Only she came back pregnant with another man’s child.”

It was that. So simple and never realized.

“Your mother, brilliant though she was, was also a whore.”

“My mother was not married to you.” The slanted writing stood out against the snowy backdrop.
‘…Karenin had the right to his anger. But if Anna had not been married?’
“You have no right to say that about her.”

His expression indicated a vehement divergence in thinking. “Demidov turned her into something filthy.”

“He fell in love with her.”

“He used her.” His jaw tightened.

The ludicrousness was too much. “What the hell do you think you’ve been doing to me all these years? You’re no different, no different at all.”

“Oh, Samantha, but I am.” He came closer. “I am very, very different.” His fingers traced the shape of her face from afar. “You know, for the longest time I looked at you and saw her. I could live with that. Then, one morning you were him.”

Sam’s memory sharpened under the radiance of inspection. “It was the day you asked my mother to skate.” She had not known the stranger to be him until now.

His eyes were flat. “Pouting is never pretty.”

“I was eleven,” she reminded him.

“You were old enough to know better. Even your stupid, bloody grandfather thought so.”

There was a magnitude 8 earthquake going off inside her. “My family owes you nothing. I owe you nothing. Fuck you, Turner.”

His eyes widened once. Then a smile of seductive nature curled the corner of his too-full mouth.

Oh, God.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” A lump of bile trekked her esophagus.

He was closer still. She could smell him; feel the heat off his wool coat. “Don’t tell me it comes as a surprise,” he said.

“I won’t bother.”
You won’t touch me. I will never let you ruin the template Nigel has laid.

He studied her. “You are like your mother in one other way.”

“We both hate you?”

“You have lousy taste in men.”

They were on the brink of a cliff. She felt the air shift.
You didn’t know about Nigel until yesterday. This is about someone else.
“Marc was a better man than you ever could be.” She held his gaze, would have held it if it turned to molten lava. “And you had him shoved in front of a fucking train. Why would you do that?”
Oh, Marc, I am so very sorry.