Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

Having visually cleared the area he walked to his car, pressed the button on his key ring that popped the trunk. Bending slightly, he placed the laptop inside. He was just beginning to straighten up when he felt the sting in the side of his neck. His hand shot up in reflex. He just had time to register the tiny dart protruding from his flesh when he collapsed, unconscious, his head and torso inside the trunk.

A moment later a man strolled up, nonchalantly rolled Paull’s hips and legs into the trunk with the rest of him, picked up the car key, closed the trunk and, sliding in behind the wheel, drove Paull’s car sedately out of the Residence Inn parking lot.

“PLEASE. CALL me Grigor.”

“You’ll forgive me if I get right to the point,” Jack said, as Annika walked back outside to take a call on her cell phone. “Where is Mikal Magnussen, the man who murdered, or ordered the murders of, Karl Rochev and Ilenya Makova?”

Kharkishvili raised his eyebrows. “You know Ilenya’s name, you are unusually well informed.” He led Jack and Alli into a solarium at the rear of the mansion. He turned, smiling at Alli. “And this lovely young lady is . . .”

“My daughter,” Jack said.

Kharkishvili’s brows knit together. “I have a daughter more or less your age. She’s in school in Kiev, where her mother looks after her.”

“My mother is dead.” Alli stared unblinkingly up at his face. “My father is all I have.”

Kharkishvili cleared his throat, obviously taken aback. “Would you like to sit here while your father and I take a stroll? There’s a fine view of the surrounding hills and forests—”

“Hell, no.”

He glanced at Jack, who gave him no help at all. “As you wish.” He seemed to say this to both of them, his tone one of disapproval rather than of concession. He cleared his throat again, clearly uncomfortable discussing matters in front of Alli, whom he took to be a teenager. “Rochev had to be eliminated—he had ordered Lloyd Berns’s death. Why? Because Berns, having learned about us, about AURA, was going to leak the information to General Brandt, and Brandt would have told Yukin, who would have informed Batchuk, and then a Trinadtsat extermination squad would have been dispatched to kill us all.”

“And Ilenya Makova?”

“Ah, well, killing Rochev’s mistress was collateral damage. He was there with her in the dacha, but managed to escape the property.”

“Not that it mattered,” Jack said with controlled vehemence. “He was captured, brought to Magnussen’s estate outside Kiev, and tortured before he was killed.”

“That, I’m afraid, was an instance of, how best to put it, unbridled enthusiasm.”

“What a clever way to put it,” Alli said, but then, seeing Jack’s admonishing look, at once shut her mouth.

“You can use any clever phrase that comes to mind, but the outcome is the same: Rochev was tortured. Why? Because your killer—Magnussen or whoever he was—couldn’t control himself.”

Kharkishvili, aware that Jack had thrown his phraseology back into his face, said, “I don’t want a fight with you, Mr. McClure.”

“You may have no choice,” Jack said.

Kharkishvili hesitated, then laughed. “I like you, sir.” He wagged a finger. “I see where your daughter gets her sharp tongue.”

“Do you think this is a joke?” Jack said. “Torture, collateral damage, murder—none of them are what I’d call a laughing matter.”

“Of course they aren’t.” Kharkishvili spread his hands. “What I mean to say is that none of us has complete control over events. I assure you that the perpetrator of these unfortunate atrocities has been punished.”

“Meaning?”

Kharkishvili pointed out the window. “You see that large blue spruce up on the rise there?” He crossed to a glass door that led out to a flagstone terrace, beyond which appeared to be an apple orchard. He opened it and gestured. “Shall we walk across his unmarked grave together?”

“Your dog could be buried there,” Jack said, “or your ex-wife, or nothing at all.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Where is Mikal Magnussen? I want to ask him some questions.”

At that moment Annika appeared. Catching Jack’s eye, she motioned for him to join her on the other side of the solarium. Jack walked over without excusing himself.

“Harry Martin was an NSA hit man,” she said in a low whisper, “under the control of General Atcheson Brandt.”

“I don’t understand,” Jack said. “Why was he sent after you?”

Her expression of concern deepened. “The NSA must have found out about us. Your president is determined to sign this treaty with the Kremlin.”

Jack shook his head. “Even so, he would never authorize the NSA to do Yukin’s dirty work.”

“I want to take your word for it,” Annika said, “but then what’s the explanation?”

Jack thought a moment. “General Brandt is the joker in this particular deck.”

“What?”

“I have no idea what Brandt is doing handling an NSA assassin, that doesn’t track.”

“Mr. McClure.” Kharkishvili was beckoning. “If you’ll come with me . . .”

Jack stepped outside and together they walked through the apple orchard to the rise beneath the blue spruce.

“So then?”

Jack rubbed the toe of his shoe over the freshly turned earth, dug deeper. “Nothing is buried here,” he said, “or at least no one.”

Kharkishvili was eyeing him closely. “Are you saying that I lied to you?”

“Without hesitation.”

Kharkishvili stood with his hands clasped behind his back, breathing deeply. “This sense, or ability, is why you’re here now, Mr. McClure.” His eyes met Jack’s. “You see, we need you.”

“I don’t know what ability you’re talking about.”

“We’re inside a puzzle now, Mr. McClure. A Gordian knot, if you will. You have a special gift—a way of seeing around barriers that keep other people paralyzed.”

“I think you have me confused with someone else,” Jack said. “I uncovered your lie, but Annika fooled me.”

Kharkishvili nodded. “But there came a time when you began to have doubts about her, wasn’t there?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact there was, when we came out of Rochev’s dacha into the ambush.”

A vague smile played across Kharkishvili’s mouth. “Yes, we anticipated that probability.”

Sixteen diverse bits of information formed a pattern on the Rubik’s Cube in his mind. “Wait a minute, it was Gurov who shot her in the woods. He aimed for the fleshy part of her arm, a minor wound, it’s true, but my doubts vanished when she was hit.”

“You see what I’m driving at, Mr. McClure. It takes so little information for you to grasp the big picture, to determine how vectors intersect. You were the one who found your way here; Annika had no idea where we were, we couldn’t allow that. Compartmentalization is our watchword.” He brought one hand from behind his back, gesturing for them to walk to the cliff face. As they came down off the small rise the wolfhounds appeared, racing each other to Kharkishvili’s side.

“If you have any doubts about how Annika fooled you, I would counsel you to keep in mind that people don’t simply lie, because lying is never simple. Lying leads to complications—the more one lies the greater the complications. I think that’s clear enough, but for our purposes we must take these thoughts a step further, a mental exercise people rarely bother with because they’re essentially lazy.”

They were nearing the rocky promontory; the mansion rose on their left, a guardian of titanic proportions. The water looked as dark as its name. The dogs were excited either by the height or the sight of the seashore where, perhaps, Kharkishvili or Mikal Magnussen ran them on occasion.