Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

“Alli, didn’t you say that Magnussen’s parents died on the same day?”

She nodded. “But in different places.”

Jack examined the headstones, one by one. Using his fingertips to trace the outlines of the chiseled letters allowed him to read what had been written more easily and quickly. “They died on August first, seventeen years ago. Magnussen’s father passed away here, on these grounds, but his mother died in Alushta.”

“Alushta is on the east coast of the Crimea,” Annika said. “It’s filled with expensive villas that overlook the Black Sea.”

“Bingo! That’s where Magnussen’s gone,” Jack said.

Annika frowned. “What? How could you possibly know that?”

“His mother was buried there.”

“I don’t see the connection.” Annika shook her head. “Maybe she was on vacation, maybe she was visiting friends.”

“In that event she would have been brought back here to be buried,” Jack said with such perfect logic that Annika was unable to contradict him.

“But a villa—”

Jack’s mind was working faster than the others could match or even imagine. “Look at this spread here. This family was wedded to money and prestige, they wouldn’t have remained here all year long. The summers are hot and unpleasant, aren’t they?”

Annika nodded, still dubious.

“Where would the Magnussens go in the summer? I’m willing to bet they own a villa in Alushta.”

“This is ridiculous, you’re not the Delphic oracle.”

“In a way he is,” Alli interjected. “Jack’s mind works differently than yours or mine, he can see things we can’t, make connections we can’t until much, much later.”

Annika stared at Alli as if she’d grown wings or had been struck by lightning. “Is this a vaudeville act between the two of you, or some idiotic sleight of hand trick?”

“Why would it be a trick?” Alli said so fiercely that Annika seemed stopped in her tracks.

“If you’ve got a better idea,” Jack said to Annika, “now would be the time to tell me.”

Annika looked away for a moment, her gaze roaming over the back of the manor house in the distance. “Seriously?” she said as she turned back to him. “You think Magnussen has gone to ground in Alushta?”

“SO WHO was he then,” the golden-haired American said, “the marksman who took a shot in the woods?”

He was not a tall man, nevertheless he was imposing, like all the American agents Kirilenko had met or had seen in surveillance photos. He was possessed of a confidence that bordered on arrogance. Kirilenko envied him or, at least, was jealous of his sense of entitlement. The world was his oyster, he moved about in it as he pleased, with an ease Kirilenko imagined only in his dreams. Kirilenko, the good silovik , who was tied to Russia as if by a chain-link leash. And he thought: I am faithful, like a dog, and the American is my master. He holds my fate in his hands—hands that do not ache in the cold, are not reddened and chapped, aged before their time. He has not seen what I’ve seen . And then with the briefest flash of contempt like heat lightning that comes and goes in one breath: What does he know of life, anyway? What can he know, he’s American .

Was it contempt Kirilenko felt for the golden-haired American or was it pity? His name was Martin, like the bird. Harry Martin. But what was his real name? Likely Kirilenko would never know.

“Harry Martin,” the American had introduced himself when they first met, “from Latrobe, Pennsylvania.” And when Kirilenko had looked at him blankly, he’d added, “You know, the home of Arnold Palmer, surely you’ve heard of the legendary golfer.”

Kirilenko just barely stopped himself from laughing in Harry Martin’s face. God in heaven! While Russians were struggling to survive, Americans were playing golf.

The two men sat side by side now in the backseat of Kirilenko’s car, drinking hot coffee from a thermos one of Kirilenko’s men had fetched.

“So who was he then?” Harry Martin repeated. “Any theories?”

They appeared to be two old friends chatting about something inconsequential, a sports match, perhaps, or the prospects of a favorite soccer team.

“I don’t deal in speculation, only facts,” Kirilenko said with a good deal less irritation than he felt. It wouldn’t do to rub the American the wrong way, he had too many powerful friends who, with one phone call, could seriously impact Kirilenko’s career, not to say his life. Just knowing this caused him a level of stress he found intolerable. Harry Martin was like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and it was driving him to distraction.

All at once he threw open the car door and stepped out into the waning day. The air smelled of smoke, charred fabric, and burnt plastic. While he was facing away from Martin he took out the cell phone and sent the photo of Annika Dementieva emerging from Rochev’s dacha to his assistant with specific instructions. A moment later Martin clambered out and without a glance at Kirilenko strode into the woods beyond what had once been the front porch of the house.

“All your men out of here?” he asked.

Kirilenko pocketed the phone as he followed the American into the woods. “The SBU also. It’s just us here now.”

“I need theories,” Martin said as they wound through the thick stand of hemlocks. He switched on the flashlight Kirilenko had given him. “I need something .”

Swallowing his emotions, Kirilenko said in his best fatalistic tone, “Someone has taken Karl Rochev, by force I would guess, judging by the corpse impaled to the mattress back there. It wasn’t us and I guarantee it wasn’t the SBU. Which means that there’s another faction in this mysterious, unnamed pursuit of yours.”

“Another faction.” Martin turned this phrase over as if it were alien to him or an idea to which he needed to adjust. He trained the flashlight’s beam on the forest floor as they picked their way across the soft earth. “Then we’ll have to find them, whoever they are. And we’ll have to eliminate them.”

Kirilenko made a noise deep in his throat. It was a kind of warning, as primitive as it was inarticulate, not that Harry Martin would notice, or even care. “And how do you propose we do that?”

Dying light, red and yellow, seeped through the evergreen boughs. Martin knelt, running his fingertips lightly over the nest of evergreen needles, pointing out to Kirilenko a muddle of fresh footprints, none of them made by the boots of his men. “A man, a woman—and these.” One set was significantly smaller than the other two. He stood. They were very close to the road. “We pick up the perpetrators’ trail and follow them back to the source.”

He seems so sure of himself , Kirilenko thought bitterly, even though he’s in a land foreign to him, among people who don’t even speak his language. Such an American trait.

They walked to the edge of the trees.

“This road goes in only two directions,” Kirilenko said. “Several miles away is a turning that takes you back to Kiev, otherwise it goes straight to the city of Brovary.”

“What’s there?” Martin asked.

Kirilenko shrugged. “It’s the shoe-making capital of Ukraine.”

“We split up. You go on to Brovary, see if you pick up their trail. I’ll take my man and two of yours and head back to Kiev and try to do the same. At least it’s a city I know.”

Kirilenko felt a wave of relief flood him. It was a minor miracle to have this gorilla off his back.

Martin nodded at the twilit road that unspooled before them, a tar-black ribbon, vanishing into the darkness of the evening. “Wherever Rochev is you can be sure of one thing: These three people will take us there.”