Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

Jack told Paull his location and said, “Now have my would-be NSA assassins turn their skills to good use,” before he disconnected.

Dyadya Gourdjiev had seen Jack, and Annika turned and ran toward him, flung her arms around him, and held him tight.

“I was so frightened for you,” she whispered in his ear. “I was terrified they had succeeded.”

“They?” he said as he held her at arm’s length. “Who do you mean?”

“The Americans, of course.” Her carnelian eyes studied him with complete candor. “The Izmaylovskaya’s reach doesn’t extend to the Crimea. At least you’re safe from them, if not from your own despicable people.”

She had put him in danger the moment she had lured him into the alley behind the nightclub in Moscow, but there had been no real danger from Izmaylovskaya revenge, she was with him, and the supposed dead Ivan Gurov, loyal, brave, and more clever than he appeared, had been watching over both of them. Then the game had unexpectedly opened up, as General Brandt sent NSA agents after them, and now, after those agents had been withdrawn from the field, another—Vlad the Poisoner—had been dispatched by Alizarin Global. For what reason? Why did Alizarin want to kill him? Time to find out.

“Annika, listen, I need to speak with Vasily Andreyev, but I want you and Dyadya Gourdjiev with me as witnesses. I know Gourdjiev just arrived and he must be tired, but can you see if you can convince him to do that now?”

“All right.” She nodded and went back to the entryway, where Gourdjiev was immersed in what appeared to be a heated discussion or argument with Kharkishvili, who had stopped on his way out.

She touched his arm and, though reluctant to cut short the discussion or argument, he could not refuse her. She spoke briefly in his ear and he glanced at Jack, who stood ready and waiting. Then he nodded, said something curt to Kharkishvili that, to Jack, looked something like, “Don’t forget what I’ve told you, we’ll continue this later.” Kharkishvili stalked out as Annika and Dyadya Gourdjiev approached him.

Having taken a stroll around the main level with Alli, his brain had automatically memorized the floor plan as a three-dimensional space. He therefore knew that the best place for privacy was the old-fashioned drawing room. It had mullioned leaded-glass windows out to the west side of the house and only one entrance, double doors that opened onto the short corridor that ended with the kitchen, pantry, and back door.

Jack found Andreyev, his hair disheveled, his black button eyes furtively glancing at Alli every chance he got. A glass of slivovitz in one hand and a cigar in the other, he stood against the mantel; either he or it required propping up. The other oligarchs were now nowhere to be seen, Andreyev said that Magnussen had suggested they go for a walk to clear their heads before breakfast, but he hadn’t felt up to it. So that’s where Kharkishvili was off to. Two guards and, of course, the three Russian wolfhounds had accompanied them. By Jack’s count that left Alli and two guards remaining on the property. Gurov was gone, transporting Vlad the Poisoner back to Simferopol North Airport for delivery to the FSB. The emptying out of the manor house suited Jack’s purpose.

Andreyev accompanied Jack and Alli out of the library, down the rear hallway, and into the more private drawing room, where Annika and Dyadya Gourdjiev greeted them. Jack saw in Annika’s face a sense of great expectation, of a mystery about to be solved. As for Gourdjiev, he had his usual sphinxlike expression, calm and unruffled, despite the tension of the moment.

“You should have told me you were part of AURA,” Jack said as he clasped the old man’s hand. His grip was still firm and sure.

“No need to burden you with something you didn’t then need to know.” He gave Jack a grandfatherly smile. “Annika tells me that you will solve the dilemma of the uranium field, of Yukin’s land grab, the specter of a spreading conflagration.”

Jack’s eyes flicked to her and back. “Annika puts great faith in me.”

“She does,” Gourdjiev acknowledged. “She has from the very beginning; she is an unerring judge of character and, just as importantly, of potential.” He paused, waiting expectantly.

“May I ask,” Andreyev said in his furtive manner, “why you have brought me here, Mr. McClure?”

“Certainly.” Jack put him firmly under his gaze. “I am extremely unhappy with the unwanted attention and inappropriate advances you have made on my daughter.”

“You must be mistak—”

The beginning of Andreyev’s transparent denial was cut off by two short bursts of semiautomatic fire. Jack, racing to the double doors, was about to thrust them open when they opened from the outside. Oriel Batchuk stood in the doorway, an OTS-33 Pernach machine pistol in his hand. Reacting immediately, Jack chopped down on his wrist, knocking the Pernach to the floor, but Batchuk shoved past him, raised his left arm at Andreyev as if he were accusing him of being alive. The lethal dart struck the oligarch in the neck. Clawing at it, he fell to his knees, the terrible clicking sound of massed insects coming from his throat before he pitched over, dead.

“Step back.” Batchuk swiveled his arm. “Step back or Annika dies next.”

Jack did as he said, and Batchuk, crouching down, plucked the Pernach off the floor. “All right,” he said, standing and pointing the machine pistol at them. “Time to disarm yourselves.”

“TIME TO disarm yourself,” Batchuk said.

“I will kill you now.” Alexsei Dementiev was silhouetted in the doorway of his apartment, in which Batchuk was already standing, a Makarov pistol in his hand.

During one of his earliest evenings there before his affair with Nikki began, Batchuk had made a wax impression of her key, had a copy made so that he could gain entrance any time he chose. Though he was not given to introspection, he nevertheless understood that the complete domination of her privacy was essential to his conquest. At work, at court, inside the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Moscow, it pleased him to know that he was always, in one way or another, intimate with her.

“I’m not joking or bluffing,” Alexsei said.

His face was drawn, deeply etched with tension and misery. To Batchuk he looked ten years older than when they had first met at court, only eighteen months ago.

“I’m quite certain you’re not, I assure you that I take the threat quite seriously.” But by the way Alexsei held the pistol Batchuk knew he was no expert in firearms. In fact he wondered whether Alexsei had ever fired a Makarov, or any pistol for that matter.

“You deserve to die.” Alexsei was growing tenser, more anxious. “For what you have done to my wife I will be justified in taking you out with the rest of the garbage.”

“Tell me, Alexsei,” Batchuk said, “have you ever killed a human being?” He cocked his head. “No? As someone who has killed many men, let me assure you it’s no easy thing, no, not at all. You never forget the face of the first person you kill, the look in his eyes as the light goes out.”

“I’ll welcome that look in your eyes.”

“That expression haunts you, Alexsei, follows you down into dreams, into the deepest recesses of your mind, lodged there like a lesion or a tumor that can’t be treated, can’t be eradicated no matter what you do.”

Something flickered in Alexsei’s eyes, some disturbance or doubt roiled up by Batchuk’s words. In that instant of doubt or hesitation Batchuk lunged at him, slapping him across the face so hard that Alexsei, totally unprepared, reeled back against the door frame.

Batchuk ripped the pistol from his hand. “You’re a buffoon, Alexsei, a patsy. I used you to get to Nikki. Do you really think I’d be friends with someone like you, someone who lets his wife be taken away from him?”