Eric Lustbader: Last Snow

“That’s not going to happen.” Gourdjiev sighed. “Ivan Gurov’s vehicle was intercepted on the way to the airport and Vlad was rescued. Unfortunately, Gurov chose to put up a fight and was killed.”

“What are you saying?” Annika looked as if she had about hit her breaking point. “Your people murdered Ivan?”

“He gave them no choice, Annika. He wouldn’t let Vlad go.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Then it was you who ordered Jack killed?”

“Not killed,” Gourdjiev corrected, “poisoned by arsenic, debilitated, perhaps hospitalized, not dead, never dead.”

“But why?”

Dyadya Gourdjiev turned to Jack and said just as if he were asking for the time, “Do you want to tell her, I’m certain you have figured it out by now.”

Jack hesitated, not because he didn’t know the answer but because he wasn’t sure he wanted to play Gourdjiev’s game. Then he shrugged mentally. “It was Alli, she really threw a wrench into your plan. It’s a joke, funny when you think about it, but that’s how life is, Gourdjiev, a spur-of-the-moment decision, something from out of left field you couldn’t possibly have anticipated. Given her real identity you couldn’t afford the scrutiny from the American government that would be the inevitable result of my bringing her here, so you thought up a way to take the spotlight off her and put it on me. My government would be so busy trying to find out who had tried to poison me they’d forget all about Alli and what happened to her here, that was why you risked exposure to rescue Vlad, why your people killed Gurov. He recognized them, didn’t he, or at least one of them. You couldn’t allow either Gurov or Vlad to talk, now neither of them will.”

Dyadya Gourdjiev nodded as if immensely pleased with a prized pupil. “And of course you figured out my plan.”

“It seems that you’ve been playing both ends against the middle. You were never going to share the astronomical profits from the uranium strike, either with Yukin or with AURA. You wanted it for yourself.”

“Not at first.” Gourdjiev kept one eye on the muzzle of the machine pistol. “I put AURA together to go after the uranium strike, but rather quickly I saw that AURA was going to fail, principally because Kharkishvili turned against me, he split the AURA members, it was becoming ineffective.” He shrugged. “So I decided to have Alizarin step into the breach.”

“But there was a problem,” Jack said, “a seemingly insurmountable one, which is where I come in.”

Now Gourdjiev laughed. “I very much regret that I ordered Vlad to dose you, you have a remarkable mind. Unique.” He nodded admiringly. “I’ve known the president of Ukraine, Ingan Ulishenko, since he was a young man. I went to him with our proposal, but all he saw was sovereign land, potential profits being taken away from him. He refused to believe that there was an imminent threat from Trinadtsat , from Yukin and Batchuk. He would not allow us to buy the land.”

Jack had not raised the weapon, had made no threatening move against Gourdjiev. “What you needed was an outside source to confirm what you’d told him, someone unimpeachable, someone Ulishenko could neither ignore nor refuse.”

“An American in government, close to the president, but who was totally apolitical.”

“Someone Ulishenko would be sure to trust.”

“No one else fit the bill, Mr. McClure.”

“Which is why your grandfather would never kill me,” Jack said to Annika. “He needs me and, as it happens, I need him. I’m going to make sure Alizarin Group gets the uranium field.”

The solution had come to him sometime when he was washing Batchuk’s grisly debris off his face. He had tried to come up with an alternative, but it was no use, his brain told him that he’d found the only one, even though it wasn’t perfect—wasn’t even, to his way of thinking, good—but there was no other path to take, and now he wondered whether Gourdjiev had hit upon it before him.

“The accord with Yukin must be signed, President Carson made that perfectly clear. But if he does sign it Yukin will move into Ukraine and use the accord to stay there. That isn’t acceptable, either. I talk to Ulishenko, tell him what Yukin is planning. He’ll have no choice but to sell the uranium field to Alizarin Group. Alizarin is a multinational corporation that Yukin can neither touch nor attack, so as to his energy ambitions in Ukraine he’s stymied. Plus, he now must abide by the accord he will sign tonight with the United States.”

Jack turned back to Gourdjiev. “In addition to the purchase price, Alizarin Group will pledge fifty percent of all profits from the field to the Ukrainian government.”

“Ten percent,” Gourdjiev said.

“Don’t make me laugh. Forty-five percent or I tell my government what you’ve done. They’ll shut Alizarin Group down like a toxic waste dump.”

“Twenty-five percent or I walk away and let Yukin have his way.”

“Without me to confirm to Ulishenko the imminent threat posed to his country by Yukin you and Alizarin are dead in the water,” Jack said. “Thirty-five, that’s my final offer.”

“Done.”

Dyadya Gourdjiev held out his hand.

“Jack, you’re not really making a deal with him,” Alli said.

“I have no choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” she said, “you taught me that.”

“Not this time.” Jack grasped Gourdjiev’s hand, and at that moment they all heard the clatter of rotor blades descending.

“What’s happening?” Gourdjiev said.

“The cavalry,” Jack said, “has arrived.” Just as Dennis Paull promised.

THIRTY

FROM THE back of the immense, ornate salon in the Kremlin, Jack watched as Alli stood on one side of the First Lady, Lyn Carson, Mrs. Yukin on the other, as President Edward Carson and President Yukin used pens specifically designed for the historic signing of the U.S.-Russian security accord. Alli was wearing a long sapphire blue dress that made her look very grown-up. While video and still cameras dutifully recorded the momentous occasion Jack’s gaze fell on Yukin’s face, alight with pleasure and a certain amount of secret triumph, the origin of which only he, Carson, Annika, and Alli knew. An hour from now, when Ukrainian national television broadcast Dyadya Gourdjiev and President Ulishenko jointly announcing that the tract of land in the country’s economically ravaged northeastern section was sold to Alizarin Group, Yukin’s demeanor would change markedly. Alizarin would pledge thirty-five percent of the profits to Ukraine and immediately begin hiring thousands of unemployed citizens to work the largest uranium strike in Asia.

After the signing, the seemingly endless photo ops and interviews began, neither of which Jack chose to be a part of, despite Carson’s requests to the contrary.

“I can serve you best,” Jack told the president, “by remaining in the shadows.”

Uncharacteristically Alli had agreed to stay by her parents’ side during this tiring and dreary process, or rather, Jack reflected, it was a new characteristic, one that spoke to her recent adventures, insights, and sense of herself. As he watched her move about the room with the Carsons and the Yukins he felt a great surge of pride for who she was and what she might now become.

He spent the time with Annika, who had flown back with him and Alli from Kiev, where the helicopter manned by Paull’s people had let them off.

“I don’t think I’ll ever speak to him again,” Annika said.

Jack knew she meant Gourdjiev, a man whose name she no longer spoke, much less called dyadya .

“He was trying to protect you.”

“Really, is that what you think?” She looked at him skeptically. “Or are you just trying to make me feel better?” She held up a hand to forestall an answer she did not care to hear. “The truth is he was trying to protect himself. As long as I remained ignorant of the facts of my conception he didn’t have to answer awkward or embarrassing questions.”