Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

He took another long drag and let the smoke drift out on its own. Seven years ago Claire had visited for a long weekend with her then boyfriend, one of those young men full of entitlement based on an inflated assessment of their own self-worth. She was nothing but smiles and laughs, even when they had gone together to visit Louise, who, at that time, might on occasion still recognize her daughter.

Following dinner on Saturday night, in an awkward attempt at male bonding, the boyfriend had invited Paull out onto the back porch. Producing a pair of cigars, he boasted that they were Cubans. Not a good way to get into Paull’s good graces. Nevertheless they smoked together companionably for a time while the boyfriend spoke about his important job on Wall Street, his conservative views on politics, religion, and morality, his plans for the future, which appeared to include Paull’s daughter.

It wasn’t until late in the day on Sunday that Claire told him she was pregnant, that she wanted to marry the boyfriend as soon as possible, which, Paull intuited, was the underlying reason for the visit. He did not argue with her, he said scarcely anything at all. She no doubt thought he took the news quite well, but then he’d done an excellent job of making her think he liked the boyfriend who, Claire made clear, as yet knew nothing of her changed physical state. In fact, she was excited about telling him, having picked out the time and the place that to her seemed the most romantic. “It’ll be just like a scene from the movies,” she gushed, her eyes shining.

For his part, Paull chose his own time and place to tell the boyfriend, watched in satisfaction as the young man choked on an inhalation of Cuban cigar smoke when he delivered the news.

“I expect you to do the right thing and marry Claire,” he said, which was a risk he’d carefully calculated. Instead, as he’d suspected, the boyfriend cleared out, wanting nothing to do with a child conceived out of wedlock. What a hypocrite, Paull thought. He had no trouble taking my daughter to bed before their wedding night but his moral righteousness kicked in the moment the consequences of his reckless fornication reared their ugly head. He was enraged and had been since the cigar-smoking incident of the night before when the boyfriend had stupidly revealed himself, telling Paull how important he was, how much he made, talking about the house he had his eye on in Connecticut, giving his bona fides for buying Claire at any price, as if she were an expensive cut of meat, or a racehorse, he rode her well enough.

The only problem was Claire. Instead of being grateful to him for saving her from such a shallow hypocrite, she railed against him endlessly, screams and tears bursting forth in equal measure before she slammed out of the house. Certain that her hysterics would pass he allowed several days to go by before he phoned her. She wouldn’t take his calls, and to this day never again spoke to him. He had a grandson, this much he knew, but whether or not his daughter had married, or married the hypocrite, or whether she was a single mother he had no idea. Once, he’d hired a private detective to find out, but paid him off a day later, sick of the whole sorry issue. The only thing he was grateful for was that Louise was too far gone to understand the unpleasant mess that without warning had been dropped into his lap.

As for Claire, he rarely thought about her now, except at odd times like these, and then he recalled her not with a twinge of nostalgia, but with a pang of disappointment. He did miss knowing about his grandson, even if he was the offspring of entitlement and hypocrisy, but only because someone would have to wean the boy off those tendencies before they poisoned his system. He found it sad, tragic even, that it wouldn’t be him.

The thought of his anonymous grandson living an unknown life burned his skin as if he had thrust his arm into the furnace that would soon enough consume the sadly wasted remains of Louise. He stared down at his open hand, pulsing with blood, and for the first time came face-to-face with what it meant to be alive, to look back and see nothing but loss, a diminution of self, of his soul. He backed up against the cold wall that still held a smear of the night manager’s blood, slid slowly down it. The moon was hidden from him now. Goodnight Claire, goodnight nameless little boy of seven, goodnight moon.

UPSTAIRS IN his darkened room, which sudden and unwanted sentiment had caused him to vacate, a brief but telling hacker’s probe scanned General Brandt’s private data over which Paull had been poring like the devil’s advocate, then it captured the ISP address of Paull’s computer. Within fifteen minutes of the probe being withdrawn an anonymous car hit the road, driven by a man who looked like an accountant, or possibly a schoolteacher, but who, having received his orders, was fully weaponized and ready to destroy life.

MR. LOVEJOY KNEW this road like the back of his hand. The Crimea had been his theater of operations for five years now. Not that he’d ever gotten used to it. The food still lay like a leaden ball in his stomach, his skin always itched from some fungus or other, and he hadn’t slept in the same bed for more than three straight nights. The saving grace was the women, who were young, tall, blond, and plentiful. They loved foreigners, particularly Americans, who they hoped to rope into marriage in order to get them out of the hellhole into which they had been born. Once you knew that about them you could entice anything out of them. Mr. Lovejoy was looking forward to this evening’s festivities, which he’d already set in motion, anticipating a quick resolution to this commission.

The road had risen up as it reached the cliff face. Already he could see the aquamarine sparkle of the Black Sea as the road began its long sweep around the coastline. Checking his odometer he saw there was less than a kilometer to the apex of the curve where the commission would be, as he put it, realized. It was time and, pressing down on the accelerator, he moved the Toyota into position.

The great sweep of the Black Sea, now darkly bruised by lowhanging clouds on the horizon, was rapidly opening up as he approached the apex. The Zil had already entered the first part of it. Swinging out into the oncoming traffic lane, he put on a sudden burst of speed. A moment more and he’d slam his off-side front fender into the left rear quarter of the Zil, launching it into a death spiral that, by his calculations, would send it over the cliff during its second rotation.

“MORE SPEED!” Jack shouted from the backseat.

“Hang on!” Annika called back to him.

As he saw the Toyota pull out into the left-hand lane, he added, “Jesus, he wants to send us over the cliff.”

“This damn auto.” Annika’s hands gripped the wheel as firmly as possible, but it had begun to vibrate alarmingly as the Zil started to shimmy. “If I go any faster we’ll go over the damn cliff without his help.”

“Here he comes!” Jack said. “Alli, curl yourself into a ball and stay that way.”

He rolled down the window and began firing at the oncoming Toyota, but their own car was behaving badly, shaking as if at any moment it would fly apart from the excessive stress it was under. Jack was thrown back and forth, making it impossible to get off a clean shot.

“Annika, for God’s sake, put on more speed!”

She did as he asked, and for a moment it appeared as if the maneuver would work. They began to pull ahead of the Toyota, but then something lurched, forcing Annika to flutter the brake to stop them from flying off the road into thin air.

In that moment, the Toyota hit them and they slewed badly, beginning their spin. Jack, thrown against the open window, caught a glimpse of the Toyota before they spun around in a circle.