Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

“Connection to Chernayev?”

“None that I’ve ever heard of.”

“Well, I need to find out. How can I reach him?”

“I-” Korovin fell silent as the doddering old waitress approached. She said something to him in a quiet voice.

“You will please excuse me,” Korovin said, rising from the table, his knees cracking. “There is a call for me on the house phone.”

Ruslan Korovin followed the waitress across the dining room and into the small antechamber next to the kitchen. There, in an antique wooden booth, an old black phone was mounted on the wall. Korovin picked up the phone, heard nothing. He depressed the plunger a few times, then turned to the waitress and said, “The line is dead.”

“Yes,” the waitress said. Her voice sounded strangely deeper, stronger. “It is dead.” She slid a latch on the kitchen door, locking it.

Suddenly she lunged at him, vising his neck in the muscled crook of her elbow. Korovin struggled, gasped, but this woman-who was surely not an old woman, he now knew-had overpowered him. She twisted his head one way, his torso another.

There was a terrible loud snap and Korovin sank to the floor, and the last thing he saw was the copper bracelet on his attacker’s left wrist, barely visible under the dainty ruffle of her sleeve.

Devras Sikari needed time to think, and when, as now, he wasn’t in his beloved Kashmir, he would come here to his second favorite place in the world-his colonial farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania.

Specifically, to the chicken coop.

Sikari was sitting in his director’s chair in the pasture, watching his chickens enjoy the sun. He loved his little farm, some ninety acres, with its backyard quarter horses and tiny flock of pullets, and though he was Indian by-way-of Belgravia, he felt his most relaxed in this unlikely spot. Here he could shed his dinner jackets and Hermés ties, take off his clothes like so much costuming, and finally become himself. It made little sense, even to him. Sikari wasn’t raised in the country, but to him, this farm was home away from home.

The air had a raw October nip, but his baggy jeans and old flannel shirt kept him warm, with a waxed jacket still dusty from the morning’s ride. When he crossed one leg over the other, a red cashmere sock peeked from the top of his scuffed Blundstones. In his hand was a Phillies mug with bad coffee, which he had brewed himself. His housekeeper could make coffee the way he liked it, but it was her day off, so Sikari was stuck with his own swill. He took a sip and it tasted bitter and now, cold. He shook his head at the irony. He had patented a formula that would stump most nuclear physicists, yet he was defeated by Dunkin’ Donuts.

SQUAWK! went one of the hens, startling Sikari from his thoughts. His attention shifted back to the brood.

“Settle, Yum-Yum,” he said softly, though the pullet only blinked in response, a flash of a perfectly round, golden eye. Yum-Yum was an Araucana, an ill-mannered bird with brilliant plumage of russet, rich brown and flecks of black. Sikari kept three Araucana, because of their unusual greenish-blue eggs, and he also had a pair of brown Sussex’s that reminded him of England, as well as some docile Bard Plymouth Rocks, a spoiled American breed, and a dramatic black-and-white Wyandotte named Princess Ida. All of his hens had been named for his private passion, the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan, though the Bard Rocks looked so much alike that he simply called them the Women’s Chorus. His farm manager tolerated his naming the hens, thinking Sikari an eccentric multimillionaire, which suited his purposes. His staff believed he was an international reinsurance executive, and he paid them well enough to ask no questions.

Sikari eyed the chickens and the sight cheered him. Some of them clustered together on the soft dirt around their coop, roosting together wing-to-wing, their feet tucked under them and their chubby feathered breasts forming a scalloped edge. Others were lying flat on their sides, their heads resting in the dirt as if it were an earthen pillow, their yellow feet splayed out straight. Sikari had never known that chickens did such a thing. The first time he’d seen them lying down that way, he’d thought they were all dead. It made him think again of Kavi Balan, and for a moment he watched the chickens without really seeing them, deep in thought, his coffee forgotten.

Sikari had to deal with the fact that things had not been going well for him. Everything had been in place-the geology, the personnel, even the Scorpion-but Middleton was still alive and Kavi Balan was dead. That alone was a major disruption. Sikari had been grooming Balan to be his number one, but now his plans had gone awry, the past nine years wasted. The situation was unstable, which threatened his future and his fortune, and stole his peace of mind. He had been mulling over the solution, but had yet to come to a final decision. Time had passed without him acting, but he trusted that his path would become clear, in due course. Sikari was a deliberate man, and that was one of the reasons he was so successful. Put simply, he planned, where others did not. His modus operandi was goal-oriented behavior, whether his goal was losing weight or building weapons of mass destruction.

He always reached his goal.

He took a sip of cold coffee as Princess Ida blinked herself awake and rose to her feet, stretching one yellow foot out behind her, then the other. Sikari smiled at the sight of his poultry diva, craning her feathered neck to stretch it out, too, making herself taller and more powerful. Princess Ida was the dominant hen, and he watched her ruffle her wing feathers, then settle them back into place, the simple motion bringing Yum-Yum, Peep-Bo, and the Women’s Chorus to their feet, where they all began scratching and pecking at the brownish grass, following Princess Ida’s lead. It reminded Sikari that all of nature had a pecking order, which insured stability.

He thought to himself, Stability will be restored once my pecking order is restored. That’s all. It’s that simple.

It made his decision for him and there was no time to delay. He set his coffee mug on the ground, reached into his moleskin pocket, extracted his cell phone, then pressed one letter. When the call was answered, he said into the phone, “Come to the coop. And bring your brother.” He closed the phone with a snap and re-pocketed it, his gaze falling on Princess Ida.

The hen looked back at him, with approval.

Ten minutes later, his twin sons stood before him, with identical half-smiles, and as always, the sight pleased him. They were part of the plan, too. He couldn’t say exactly that he loved them, for he traveled too much to know them, but he liked the notion that he had two such bright, active, good-looking sons. They were six feet tall and with their curly dark-blonde hair, round blue eyes, and confident grins, Archer and Harris were almost impossible to tell apart. They couldn’t have looked more different from Sikari, but of course, he wasn’t their biological father. He had bought them as babies on the backstreets of Prague; he had no idea where they had come from and it didn’t matter anyway. He had told them, his farm staff and the tutors who home-schooled them that he was their godfather, a dear friend of their deceased French parents because he knew that passed for exotic here in the boondocks.

“Aren’t you two cold?” Sikari asked, because neither wore coats. They were dressed in a way that people used to call preppy: turtlenecks, khaki pants and navy crewneck sweaters.

The boys shook their heads. “No, Dad,” they answered, almost in unison. They were more than each other’s best friend; they were so close they were almost the same person. It was the way Sikari had wanted it, essential for what would be expected of them someday. They had been trained in the martial arts and were both remarkably gifted, schooled especially in geology and the sciences; their IQs tested even higher than his. They both were slated to enter Harvard next year, but that would change now. College couldn’t teach them what he could; he could offer them the world, literally. They’d be too young to succeed him, even in ten years time, but Balan’s death had left him with no choice. Sikari would be around to guide them for the next thirty years or so and if he started grooming them now, they’d be ready ultimately to take the helm.