Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

In fact he had orchestrated their meeting so that Batchuk would see Nikki and Alexsei together, see how much in love they were, and no matter what he thought of Nikki would understand that that path was closed to him forever.

Now, driving away from the airport in the Crimea, Gourdjiev could scarcely believe the lengths to which he had gone to keep Nikki and Batchuk from meeting. Had it been a dream, a premonition, or simply intuition, he could no longer remember. But it seemed to him that he had awoken in the middle of the night with a vision of Nikki and Batchuk together, Nikki weeping bitterly, inconsolably, and it was as if he had been afforded a glimpse of a tragic future so that he could ensure that it would never happen. He knew Batchuk’s taste in women, knew just what he liked most to look at and to feel, and there was no doubt in his mind that Nikki fell right into that category. What she might have felt about him he couldn’t say, but over and over again he had seen Batchuk pursue what he wanted, persistent, implacable until he got it. It might be an exaggeration but Gourdjiev had come to believe that there was scarcely a woman Batchuk wanted who would not eventually accede to him. Long experience had taught him that the only way to view Batchuk was through a cynic’s eyes because Batchuk was at his most dangerous, his most disingenuous when it appeared that he was being sincere.

He swung onto the highway without it fully registering. His mind was back at that meeting when he’d seen the dreadful expression on Batchuk’s face as he watched Alexsei swing Nikki around outside the mall jewelry store. Good Christ, that was very nearly the worst moment of my life , Gourdjiev thought. He wished to whatever god existed that it had been, everything might have ended differently.

Watching Nikki, Batchuk had the look of an angel, as if an ethereal glow were illuminating him from the inside. Gourdjiev knew that meant trouble on whatever level, but he pushed the thought aside as people will terrifying nightmares or worst possible outcomes because the human brain won’t allow it. It was like contemplating your own death—the incomprehensible end of all things known and comforting—the level of fear was simply too great to maintain. Some benign circuit breaker in the brain turned off that possibility, or shoved it so far back into the realm of unreality or fable that it faded from consciousness. This is precisely what happened to Gourdjiev when he saw Nikki’s image fill Batchuk’s eyes to overflowing. Some part of his brain switched off, saying: No, no, no, let’s get on with the real, the present, the pressing now, and for the next twenty minutes the two men talked about their plans as if nothing untoward had happened.

And yet it had, Gourdjiev thought, as he accelerated toward the coastline and, beyond, the violent and turbid Black Sea. The malevolent seed had been sown despite his best efforts, and immediately began to germinate, cracking open and springing to life in the black soil of Batchuk’s mind.

Gourdjiev neared the coast with its high, dark, bruised-looking clouds, trembling with thunder and rain. He did not have to glance in the rearview mirror to know that he was being followed, he had felt it the moment he had arrived at the airport, the sense that someone was watching his every move. There was a vehicle behind him, of this he was certain, he was being followed, either by Batchuk or by someone Batchuk owned.

One glance in the mirror would tell him. He knew Batchuk so intimately that he could pick out his outline even through the rain-spattered windshield. And yet he kept his gaze on the road ahead as it wound through the landward incline of the brooding cliff face. The truth was he preferred not to look, preferred to be unsure of the identity of his pursuer, of one thing at least, because everything else was laid out before him as if it had already occurred, as if he were locked into a trajectory that, no matter how he tried to twist away or fight against it, would lead him to some final place filled with tragedy.

FIFTEEN MINUTES after Dennis Paull drove out of the Alizarin Global compound with Claire beside him and Aaron heavy-lidded and drowsing in the backseat, he found a spot by the side of the road where, this late at night or early in the morning, he was certain he could not be observed. He got out of the car, went around, and opened the trunk. He fired up the laptop and within minutes found that it had been hacked. Because of the safeguards he had installed the hacker’s electronic fingerprints were all over the file system; Paull knew that he had made a complete copy of the information on the hard drive.

That was fine by Paull, he’d expected no less. Despite what he’d told the president he had used insecure servers to gather information. He needed stone-cold proof as to the identity of the man in Carson’s inner circle who was passing on classified information to Benson and Thomson, and if he didn’t have the time to do it himself he was determined to let the culprit do it for him. When he had exited the Residence Inn that morning he had known that sooner rather than later someone would be coming for him. That’s why he’d planted this dummy laptop in his trunk days ago. His real laptop, the one with all the hacked information, was stowed in a secret compartment below the spare wheel well that he opened now by the light of the small, recessed bulb on the inside of the trunk lid.

He turned it on, and plugged in a 3G Wi-Fi card. Almost at once his private, shielded network was activated. He had a good signal, even out here. He inputted information and set up the parameters of the various Internet searches he wanted the automated software to perform, then closed the trunk and got back behind the wheel.

“Tomorrow I promise we’ll be off to do some celebrating.” He was looking at sleepy Aaron, but he knew Claire understood he meant it for both of them. “Would you like that, kiddo?” He used to call Claire kiddo when she was Aaron’s age.

“I sure would, Grandpa.” His grandson looked around and yawned. “Where are we gonna celebrate?”

Paull grinned at Aaron’s image in the rearview mirror as he put the car in gear. “It’s a surprise.”

“BEFORE I saw you and Aaron this afternoon,” Dennis Paull said, “I thought it was all slipping away from me, everything I had ever wanted out of life, that even before I died there would be nothing left, nothing to live for. Everyone had left me prematurely: your mother, you, and Aaron, who I’d never seen before today.”

The three of them were in the spacious room at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Maryland Avenue where he was putting Claire and Aaron up for as long as they wanted to stay after the funeral. His first instinct had been to invite them back to the house, but on second thought he decided it was presumptuous. The house where he and Louise—mostly Louise—had raised Claire was crammed with too many memories, good and bad, for both of them. Better, he felt, to take it slow.

“But you had your work,” Claire said without rancor, as she closed the door to the bedroom where she had put Aaron to bed, “and it seemed to us—Mom and me—that was all you cared about or needed.”

Paull felt as if he had been set on fire by his own guilt. “Yes, I can see how I must have given that impression so many times.” He took her hand. “I’m so very sorry, Claire.”

“Don’t be sorry, Grandpa.” Aaron stood in the doorway, speaking with the meticulous seriousness only a seven-year-old could display. He was wearing Buzz Lightyear pajamas. “Mom and I will take care of you.”

This elicited a burst of laughter from Claire. “Oh, Aaron.” She went over and kissed him on the cheek. “Now go on back to bed, honey.”

Paull bit his tongue so that he wouldn’t say what he was thinking: No, I’ll take care of you and your mother, because he knew Claire would hate that. He had to get used to her being grown up, an adult who could take care of herself.