Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

“Jack,” Alli said, “I’m hungry.”

He nodded. “Me, too. Let’s find the kitchen.”

Was it his imagination or had she grown up in the last couple of days, did her features seem more set, had the last vestiges of her girlhood been swept away by the intense events compressed into the short time they’d been together? It was as if she had unlocked an invisible door and, having stepped out into the light of day, or in this case, the ample lamplight of the manor house, was at last allowing herself to be seen, instead of cowering in the shadows of her misery and anguish.

Like everything else in the manor house the kitchen was vast. Bubbling with activity just before and at mealtimes, it was manned now by a sous-chef and a couple of servers who doubled as kitchen assistants. They were going over the recipes for tomorrow, and paid Jack and Alli scant attention, but when they approached the enormous double refrigerator the sous-chef broke off his discussion and came over to them, asking what they’d like to eat, there were plenty of leftovers from dinner. Neither of them wanted the rich food they had already rejected so they both settled on vegetable omelets.

There was a plain wooden table where, Jack suspected, the kitchen staff ate at odd times. He and Alli pulled out chairs and sat while the sous-chef broke eggs into a stainless steel bowl and began to whip them with a bit of water and heavy cream.

“How did you manage at the meeting?” Jack asked.

“That sleazeball Russian I was sitting next to, Andreyev, wanted me to come to his room tonight because I owed my life to Ivan Gurov,” Alli said.

Vasily Andreyev, with skin the color of putty or suet, and the black button eyes of an evil doll that, having been shunted aside for newer playthings, harbored the need for revenge.

“Don’t give me that look, I can take care of myself.” She tossed her head. “I tuned him out by thinking about what you said before, and I know you’re right. I’ve been so intent looking over my shoulder for death to steal up behind me, I was already half dead. When I was taken . . . that week might have been a month or a year, I didn’t know, I became unmoored from the present, or maybe from time itself. Nothing felt right, there were periods when time passed at a glacial pace and at other times it seemed as if hours were compressed into seconds.”

Jack put his elbows on the table, leaning forward, listening to every word she said. With the crackle of the frying eggs no one could overhear what she was saying.

“When I went to Milla Tamirova’s apartment, when I went into her dungeon, sat in the restraint chair, I began to realize that the feeling of being unmoored, of being outside time never left me during the months after you rescued me. Now I think it has, now I want to look ahead, to experience the new, and even the old, which will feel like new to me, just like I’ve been doing since we got here.”

The eggs arrived, sided by thick slices of the dense Ukranian brown bread. The sous-chef placed the plates in front of them, along with silverware, and went to pour tea out of a large, ornate samovar standing on a corner of the work counter.

Alli took up her fork and dug into the glistening eggs. “In the middle of hearing about what flawless skin I had,” she continued, “it dawned on me that the only time I’ve been happy—really happy—since Emma’s death is when I’ve been with you and Annika. The adrenaline rush of the present annihilated the past, at least for a short time, but it also began to resurrect my sense of time and place.”

Jack chewed on a slice of bread, which was intensely flavorful, slightly sour, and slathered with salted butter. “You feel more yourself now.”

“I don’t know about that, because I was only beginning to learn about myself when Emma died.” Alli looked thoughtful. “What I feel is different , as if I’ve just thrown all the sandbags off an air balloon and now I’m rising up toward. . . .”

“Toward what?”

“I don’t know, exactly, but I think now that I have a kind of gift. When I listen to you talking to other people, or when I listen to them talking among themselves, if the conversation goes on long enough, I have a sense of what they mean, not what they’re saying necessarily, but what they’re trying to get across or, more often, what they’re trying to hide. And, it seems to me, that the longer the conversation goes on the clearer their real purpose becomes, or maybe I mean how important their lies are to them.” She cocked her head. “Do you see what I mean?”

“I think so.” Jack was wolfing down the omelet. “But give me an example, anyway.”

“All right, let’s see . . .” She screwed up her face in thought. “Okay, here’s one, that Russian sitting next to me—”

“Andreyev, the lecher.”

She laughed softly. “That’s right. Well, when I mentioned that we had met Dyadya Gourdjiev he started talking about him, and though there was nothing negative in what he said—quite the opposite, in fact—I began to sense that he was lying, that he didn’t like him at all, and when he mentioned Kharkishvili—and only in passing—I just knew that Andreyev had aligned himself with him.”

Jack was thinking of his recent conversation with Kharkishvili, who had denied any kind of rivalry between him and Gourdjiev. If Alli was right in her observations then Kharkishvili deliberately lied to him and the situation within AURA was more complex than he had been led to believe, which in all likelihood might lead to difficulties in his dealing with these people even if he did come up with a solution to the problem of how to defuse Yukin’s plan. He resolved to test her belief at the earliest opportunity.

At that moment Kharkishvili came into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a bottle of beer. He nodded at Jack in a stiff, almost formal manner.

“I need to ask this guy some questions,” Jack said, rising. “I’ll be right back.”

He was halfway to where Kharkishvili was standing, working an opener under the crenelated cap of the bottle, when the floor began to tilt under his feet. He took a step to correct it and felt as if his knees had turned to jelly. He began to pitch over, but before he hit the floor he heard Alli screaming. Then he plunged headlong into oblivion.

TWENTY-SEVEN

IT WASN’T often that Dyadya Gourdjiev thought about Nikki, in fact there were entire months when she never entered his mind. She was, however, never far from his heart. The essence of her filled his mind now as he stepped off the plane into Simferopol North Airport. He’d made no secret of his plans, booking the seat and traveling under his own name. He thought this would make it easier for Oriel Batchuk to follow him; he didn’t want anything to impede his enemy’s progress.

Gourdjiev took his time even after he picked up his weekend bag from the luggage carousel and walked outside to the long-term lot and got into the car he always left there when he was on his way back to Kiev or, every once in a while, Moscow. It was an ancient Zil that wheezed every time he stepped on the brakes, but he loved it anyway. It smelled like home.

He could not get Nikki out of his mind, perhaps he didn’t want to because thoughts of her brought him back to Batchuk. He recalled with startling detail the moment Batchuk had first seen Nikki because that was the moment death had attached itself to him, and from that moment forward a shadow followed in Batchuk’s wake. Other people would experience it as intimidation, but Gourdjiev was not so easily fooled, because when he looked into Batchuk’s eyes all he saw was catastrophe and death.

From time to time he had mentioned Nikki to Batchuk—after all, there were occasions when it was impossible not to—but he had bent over backward to make certain the two never met. He made dates for Batchuk to come over to the house for dinner only when he knew that Nikki would be busy with her girlfriends or, latterly, with Alexsei Mandanovich Dementiev, to whom he had introduced Nikki at a gala at the State Opera House. He had no notion as to whether they would take to one another, but he was immensely relieved when they did, and it was only when Alexsei asked for her hand in marriage that Gourdjiev contemplated allowing Batchuk to catch a glimpse of her.