Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

“If he was at the Kiev airport,” the General said, growing annoyed at the note of condescension in Batchuk’s voice, “I’m sure he would have told me.”

“Hmm, interesting.”

Now the General really was annoyed. “How so?”

“Rhon Fyodovich Kirilenko, the FSB officer your man Martin is supposed to be shadowing—”

“I know who the hell Kirilenko is,” the General said, beginning to lose his temper despite himself.

“Kirilenko’s name has just shown up on a flight manifest departing Zhulyany in forty-three minutes, bound for Simferopol North Airport in the Crimea.” Batchuk cleared his throat, the better to emphasize what he said next: “Either your man Martin is an incompetent or he’s decided to play both ends against the middle.”

“I know Harry,” the General said, “and he’s neither.”

“Then figure out your own explanation,” Batchuk said.

The General immediately phoned Martin and informed him of Kirilenko’s whereabouts. The moment he heard the surprise in Martin’s voice he resolved to put another man in the field ASAP. This he did the moment his call to Martin was over.

He shifted from one leg to another, his body creaky and diminished inside the perfectly pressed uniform with its splendid show of medals and commendations.

“General, it’s time.”

The president’s voice, strong and firm as always, caused him to return down the aisle at his usual crisp pace to where Carson was now standing, waiting for the door to open while the contingent of Secret Service operatives buzzed around him like horseflies.

“You look gray-faced, Archie,” the president said under his breath. “Is there anything wrong, anything I need to know?”

“No, sir,” Brandt said, struggling to regain his composure, “of course not.”

“Because we’re on the firing line now, about to go into battle and, to paraphrase Sonny Corleone, I don’t want to come out of this aircraft with only my dick in my hand.”

The General nodded. “Understood, sir. I have your back, your guns are loaded, and all your ammunition is dry and awaiting your orders.”

“That’s the spirit,” Carson said with a tight smile.

The flight attendant spun the door wheel and it opened inward. The first of the president’s agents took command of the rolling stairs, then others checked out the immediate vicinity. For a moment, they spoke with their opposite numbers in the Russian secret service, then one of them turned, gave a brief, reassuring nod to his commander in chief.

“Okay, General,” the president said. “Here we go.”

THESE DAYS Dennis Paull never slept; he never stayed in one place for very long, either. It was as if he needed to keep one step ahead of the banshee that was on his trail. That banshee—or demon or ghost, whatever you wanted to call it—had a name: Nina, the woman he’d had an affair with who had almost killed Edward Carson at his inauguration. Only Jack McClure’s timely intervention had saved the president. For that Paull would be eternally grateful. If only Jack could exorcize the demon or ghost or banshee that haunted Paull’s waking life, but Jack was just a man, not a sorcerer.

Paull, who had set up a temporary office in a Residence Inn on the outskirts of the District, planned to spend his nights unearthing all there was to know about the members of Edward Carson’s inner circle. He sat at a drab desk in front of his souped-up laptop, scanning a screen full of information from yet another government database he’d hacked into. Factoids from the public and private lives of Vice President Crawford, Kinkaid Marshall, G. Robert Kroftt, and William Rogers floated across his screen like messages from a phosphorescent universe. He was particularly interested in Crawford. Like John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson before him, Carson had been drawn into a shotgun wedding with the old-line and conservative Crawford in order to carry Texas and the other swing states in the old South. The two men never got along. Though their public face was all smiles, behind closed doors their politics was fraught with friction and, at times, animosity. Though Crawford wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the intransigent members of the party, Paull didn’t like him; he certainly didn’t trust his style of backroom wheeling and dealing. Who knew what insidious pols Crawford was in bed with.

This was the work Paull had been doing since he arrived at just after six in the evening. It was now half past eleven. To one side was an open cardboard box with the remaining two slices of pepperon-cini pizza from Papa John’s. He rose, went to the bathroom, and washed the olive oil off his hands. Then he crossed to the window, peering through the slatted blinds at the smeared headlights on the highway. The traffic’s constant drone made him feel as if he were inside a beehive, an appropriate sound track for his working environment.

All at once he shivered and, focusing on the reflection of the room in the glass, thought he saw Nina, or more accurately her shadow, passing from right to left. Whirling, he confronted the half-dark room, lit only by the lamp that shed a pool of light over the desk, his work area, one corner of the stained pizza box, bloody with tomato sauce.

He wanted to laugh at the empty space, at his own foolish fears, but something stopped him, a sense of foreboding, perhaps, that he couldn’t shake. There was, for him, a sense of things ending, instead of beginning as they should have with the installation of the new administration. The world appeared to be sliding away from him, as if it were falling off the edge of a table into darkness.

Of course he was furious for allowing himself to be deceived by Nina, but that was in the past and it belonged there. Nevertheless, he was still furious, possibly more so, because he couldn’t forget her, because he missed her. She hadn’t been just another fuck, she hadn’t been just another sexy woman. When she betrayed him she’d devoured a piece of him he now knew he’d never get back. In the wake of her betrayal he felt diminished, not simply foolish or abashed. She’d stolen something vital.

Turning back to the window he stared out at a world hustling by, indifferent to his pain. He was alone, as he would be in the moment before death took him, and this made him think of his father, who was alone when he died because Paull was busy studying for his graduate school finals. He wished his father were here now, because he was the only person Paull had ever been able to confide in. Even Edward Carson, arguably his best friend, didn’t know everything Paull’s father had. The man had been compassionate enough to forgive Paull his sins and mistakes no matter their severity. “Why wouldn’t I forgive you,” he said once, “you’re my son.” And then, continuing, said, “Your mother’s gone and forgotten. You’re all I’ve got, I have to forgive you.” And yet he died alone, Paull thought, as we all do, whether we forgive or not, whether we hold people close to us or push them away, as Paull had his own wife, who was in the final, horrifying stages of Alzheimer’s, locked away in a facility. He went to see her less and less these days; she didn’t know him, but what did that matter, he had an obligation, didn’t he, he’d taken an oath: in sickness and in health. But he’d distanced himself from her, both physically and emotionally. She was like a painting, or someone perpetually asleep, dreaming a life he could never understand. Did a radish dream, or a head of cabbage? She never responded in the slightest way to the music he put on during his visits—Al Hibbler singing “After the Lights Go Down Low,” for instance, or the Everly Brothers singing “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” songs they had loved and, in their youth, had danced to. He’d thought of this, a calming consolation, when six months ago he’d taken up one of the spare pillows and prepared to lower it over her face that, in her infirmity, had grown round and shiny as a metal globe. She wouldn’t know what was happening, what he was doing to her, and if she did, he was certain she’d be grateful. What kind of life was this she led? Even cows had it better, but not, perhaps, radishes. He was seconds away from doing it, his fingers gripping the sides of the pillow, his mind already made up, set on its path, when the music came on: Roy Hamilton’s “Don’t Let Go.” It seemed somehow sacrilegious to commit murder—even compassionate murder—while that song was playing (“I’m so happy I got you here/Don’t let go, don’t let go”), and something inside him shifted, everything changed and, turning, he put the pillow back where he’d found it. Then, without a backward glance at his wife or the radish, he left and hadn’t been back since.