Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

“KIRILENKO MUST have been with the team that surrounded us at Rochev’s dacha,” Annika said.

“What a joke,” Alli said. “He must think we killed Rochev’s mistress. That’s why he’s coming after us.”

Jack and Annika stared at her. “It’s no joke,” they both said, more or less at once.

They were still in the mouth of the corridor leading to Airport Services. Jack was looking around for security personnel who were sure to be patrolling the area, while Annika kept an eye on the door to the CCTV control room through which Kirilenko had disappeared not five minutes ago.

“There’s no doubt he’s looking for us,” Annika said. “And, as Alli pointed out, now we’re suspects in three murders.” She shook her head. “There’s no help for it, we’re going to have to terminate him.”

“What?” Jack spun around. “Are you crazy? We can’t attack an FSB officer.”

“I didn’t say attack.” Annika’s carnelian eyes never looked harder. “I said terminate.”

“As in kill?” Alli said.

“Yes, dear. We have to kill him in order to save ourselves.”

“I won’t hear of it,” Jack said.

“Then we’re doomed.” Annika indicated the door with her chin. “Unless we put him six feet under, I promise you this sonuvabitch won’t stop until he’s either killed us or dragged us back to Moscow in manacles.”

A look of pure terror distorted Alli’s face. “Jack—”

“If not for us, then for the safety of the girl,” Annika pressed her point. “For so many reasons, we can’t allow anything to happen to her.”

Jack shook his head. He knew she was right, but he wasn’t willing to give in just yet. “There’s got to be another way.”

“I’m telling you there isn’t, we’ve got to do it now while we have the chance,” Annika said urgently.

As if to underscore her anxiety, the door to the CCTV control room opened. They shrank back into the shadows as Kirilenko emerged, his face marred by a smug look that told Annika everything she needed to know.

Without another word to either of her companions, she sprinted from the shadows and, while he drew out his cell phone, she delivered a vicious blow to his kidneys, wrapped her crooked arm across his throat, and with astonishing power, jerked him backward off his feet.

GENERAL ATCHESON Brandt was the last person Dennis Paull had suspected of treachery—so much so, in fact, that in nine hours of eye-watering work he hadn’t yet gotten around to shining his investigatory spotlight on Brandt or his life.

Paull had finally quit his room, reeking of human sweat and the peculiar odor of heated electronics. It was two thirty in the morning and he was walking down the hallway of the Residence Inn, looking for the cigarette vending machine he’d noticed when he’d checked in. In these days of universal smoking bans, cigarettes were hard to find, never mind an old-fashioned vending machine that sold them. Nevertheless, there was one here, crouching on a brown carpet whose pattern failed to hide stains even steam cleaning couldn’t get out.

He hadn’t smoked in twenty years, but the pressurized developments of the last half hour had caused his old craving to reassert itself. He’d tried to fight it, but it was no use. Like most vices, once it lodged in your mind it couldn’t be denied.

Slitting open the pack, he tore the filter head off a cigarette, then lit it with a match from a pack thoughtfully provided with his purchase. He used the key card to his room to open the side door to the parking lot, went out into the chilly night. It had rained sometime while he’d been working and the concrete walkway was slick and wet; cars gleamed in the security lights. The hum of traffic from the highway was reduced to the inconstant hiss of occasionally passing cars on their way to or from mysterious errands. What were people doing up at this hour, he wondered. Whatever it was he doubted they had the weight of the world on their shoulders as he did.

The smoke, deep in his lungs, calmed him, or at least gave him the illusion that he had time to make a decision. The night was quiet, not another soul stirring in all of the Residence Inn, though as he looked up at the facade he could see lights on in several rooms, a reminder that insomnia lurked like a ghost here as everywhere.

He smoked the cigarette down to the end without coming to a decision. His mouth felt dry and stale, but he ripped off the filter on another cigarette, stuck it between his chapped lips, and lit up. With the information he had on General Brandt the road before him forked in several directions. He could inform the president, but that would surely distract him, in the process derailing the delicate negotiation process with President Yukin. He could call Jack and warn him, which again would expose his knowledge of the General’s treachery. McClure was a good friend of Edward Carson’s—they knew each other long before Paull himself met Carson. Therefore, Jack could be counted on to inform the president ASAP even if Paull begged him not to disturb Carson until the crucial accord was signed.

As Paull walked up and down the walkway, growing colder and colder, he realized that he was on the horns of a serious moral dilemma. How could he allow Jack to remain uninformed about the sanction? How could he allow the U.S.-Russia accord to be disrupted? He had no doubt that General Brandt was insane. He had determined that his own self-interest was paramount, anyone who threatened it was to be terminated. He could call Edward and tell him what he’d discovered, but he had no solid proof and the call would only serve to muddy waters that were already fouled.

Grinding the second butt beneath his heel, he scrabbled in the pack. He was going through cigarettes as if they were Tic Tacs. Well, why not, considering the behemoth he was confronting. The fact that Jack had somehow become a clear and immediate danger to Brandt was of less concern to Paull than why Jack was threatening the General’s self-interest.

What the hell was the General up to? And then he remembered a bit of the conversation he’d had with Edward Carson in the presidential limo following Lloyd Berns’s interment. The president had complained that Brandt had been pushing to sign the accord. Why would he do that, Paull asked himself. Of course the General was one of the primary supporters of the current rapprochement with Russia. In fact, Carson had leaned heavily on the General’s advice for why to engage Russia and how. But Brandt was smarter than to advise the president to elide over minor details Carson wasn’t comfortable with, especially with the Russians.

However, his restless mind was turning over the question of paramount importance at the moment because there was a clear-cut decision to be made: To warn Jack or not to warn Jack, that was the question. And the answer hinged on morality and self-interest, one of which was clear-cut while the other was nebulous, open to interpretation of every kind. He wasn’t like Edward, whose enduring sentimental feelings for family and friends was both a weakness and a blinder to the harsher aspects of reality. Paull understood the truth that the president refused to acknowledge: The notion of morality was a squishy subject, never more so than nowadays when there were mountains of information, factoids, and electronic data to sift through that provided a multitude of reasons for making or not making a decision. There were always extenuating circumstances, hidden explanations coming to light like corpses in a river appearing at the first spring thaw. Nowadays there were any number of ways to make a decision understandable, credible, acceptable, convincing.

All of which led him to one inescapable conclusion: He needed to pursue the inquiry into General Brandt’s sanction without informing anyone, not the president, not Jack. His own self-interest was and must remain paramount. He had no other recourse now, none at all.