Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

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The electrifying follow-up to the Jack McClure thriller
 from
bestselling author of 
and Jack McClure, Special Advisor and closest friend to the new President of the United States, interprets the world very differently from the rest of us. It’s his greatest liability, and his greatest asset.
An American senator, supposedly on a political trip to the Ukraine, turns up dead on the island of Capri. When the President asks him to find out how and why, Jack sets out from Moscow across Eastern Europe, following a perilous trail of diplomats, criminals, and corrupt politicians. Thrust into the midst of a global jigsaw puzzle, Jack’s unique dyslexic mind allows him to put together the pieces that others can’t even see.
Still unreconciled to the recent death of his daughter and the dissolution of his marriage, Jack takes on a personal mission along with his official one: keeping safe from harm his two unlikely, unexpected, and incompatible companions—Annika Dementieva, a rogue Russian FSB agent, and Alli Carson, the President’s daughter. As he struggles to keep both young women safe and unearth the answers he seeks, hunted by everyone from the Russian mafia to the Ukrainian police to his own NSA, Jack learns just how far up the American and Russian political ladders corruption and treachery has reached.
In the vein of Eric Van Lustbader’s latest bestselling Jason Bourne novels, Lustbader takes us on an international adventure in this powerful page-turner that will keep you reading through the night.
From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Lustbader's wordy sequel to First Daughter takes dyslexic Jack McClure, former ATF agent and now adviser to recently elected U.S. president Edward Carson, to Moscow, where Carson is negotiating an important treaty with Russian president Yukin. When minority whip Sen. Lloyd Berns dies in a mysterious hit-and-run accident on Capri, the president asks Jack to investigate. Accompanied by Annika, a beautiful Federal Security Bureau agent who's part of a complicated Russian trap, and Alli, Carson's 22-year-old daughter whom Jack saved from a bad guy in the previous book, Jack travels to Ukraine, where Berns was supposed to be on a fact-finding tour. In Kiev, Jack finds a secret agency called Trinadtsat, a shadowy group of Russian oligarchs, and plenty of trouble, including a retired American general out to have him killed. Lustbader fritters away many pages with Jack's navel-gazing, time that could have been better spent in gunfights and derring-do. 
From Booklist
Lustbader’s second in the Jack McClure series is a definite step up from its predecessor (First Daughter, 2008). After saving the daughter of the president of the U.S., McClure now has a role as a special advisor to the president. When he’s asked by his new boss to investigate the mysterious death of a U.S. senator on a diplomatic mission to Ukraine, McClure can’t say no. His comrades on the investigation include a rogue Russian agent and the president’s daughter. Meanwhile, stateside, both McClure’s home life and new job are in danger of falling apart. In the previous book, McClure never emerged as more than a stock action hero, but this time he shows signs of multidimensionality. The story line seems oddly out of sequence in a couple of places, but the main plot will hold readers’ attention. Lustbader’s last several books have found the formerly best-selling author spinning his wheels, but this time he shows some renewed spark.

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“It seems odd that Batchuk didn’t tell you he was your father when you were with him.”

They were standing by a window that must have been fifteen feet high. She looked away from him, out onto Red Square, where it had begun to snow again, according to the weather forecasters the last snow of winter.

“The truth is as simple as it is ugly: He didn’t want me to know I was his daughter, not then, anyway. He was too busy mourning my mother’s death and staring into my eyes—studying my face brought her back to him as nothing else could. And, of course, there was the other thing.” Tears glittered beneath her lashes. “To tell me that he was my father would have destroyed the sexual bond he tried to establish between us.”

Jack felt a sudden chill render him all but speechless. “When you were five?”

She continued to stare out at the snow, she neither answered nor moved her head, there was no need.

She wiped her eyes with her forefinger and turned to him suddenly with a thin smile. “I’m sorry, Jack, sorry for lying to you, deceiving you, putting you through the wringer with Gurov’s supposed death, but it was necessary.”

Was it, he wondered. He supposed that depended on your point of view. He could begrudge her her elaborate deception, but to what end? He had seen firsthand how Sharon’s rage at him had destroyed not only their marriage but Sharon herself. As long as she held on to that anger she would never be able to trust anyone, she’d be alone and in anguish for the rest of her life. That was a path he had turned away from some time ago.

“There’s one other thing I can’t fathom,” he said now. “How did you know I’d follow you to the alley that night?”

She put the flat of her hand against his chest. “You’re a decent man, you weren’t going to let me walk into an ambush where you were convinced that I would surely wind up dead.”

He shook his head. “I’m not buying that answer. You could never have been certain that I would come, even after you were careful to tell me in the hotel bar that the Moscow police were worse than useless.”

Her smile was cunning, which had the startling effect of turning her into a sexual creature he did not want to resist. “I studied you, Jack. I knew what had happened with Emma, I knew how your ex-wife blamed you, how you blamed yourself, how, to compensate and to try to make amends you couldn’t resist someone in peril, especially mortal peril.” When he made no comment, she went on, “Tell me you didn’t think of Emma when you made the decision to leave the hotel and come after me.”

“You’re right,” he said, after a time, “Emma was all I thought about that night.”

“Once again, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Leaning forward, he kissed her. “I don’t want to hear you say you’re sorry again.”

“Don’t worry,” she put a hand behind his head, caressing him, “you won’t.”

Jack saw the Carsons coming and remembered that Edward had invited him to dinner after the ceremonies.

“I’m going to have to go,” he said, reluctantly breaking away from her.

“Meet me tomorrow,” she said, “in the lobby of the Bolshoi Ballet at seven forty-five.”

And then she was gone, vanishing in the dense swirl of people.

“I hope I didn’t scare off your lady friend,” Edward Carson said. “I was going to invite her to dinner.”

“That’s all right, sir, I don’t think she cares much for this place.”

Carson looked around. “Who the hell could?” He put his arm around Jack’s shoulders. “Once again I owe you a debt I can never hope to repay.”

“No need, sir.”

“On so many levels,” the president continued, “not only me, not only Lyn and me, but the country itself. Dammit, Jack, no one else could have figured out a way to make this damnable security accord a success.”

“I appreciate your faith in me.” Jack didn’t want to talk about a success that involved Dyadya Gourdjiev getting everything he wanted. Instead, he looked around. “I haven’t seen General Brandt.”

“And you won’t. He’s being held incognito and in strict isolation aboard Air Force One. The Justice Department has been notified and will deal with him in due course, as will every other knotty problem of state, when we arrive home tomorrow.” His smile was broad and, for once, relaxed. “Tonight we eat, drink, tell jokes, and best of all, listen to the stories you and Alli have to tell about your adventures in Ukraine. For this one evening we’ve all earned the right to forget about the difficulties of yesterday and whatever may come the day after tomorrow.” He took Lyn’s arm and nodded in Alli’s direction. “Now how about you escort Alli back to the hotel; everything has been prepared for us in my suite.”

THE NEW day dawned just as it had ended, with snow. The presidential motorcade set out for Sheremetyevo, where Air Force One was fueled and waiting. Jack, sitting beside Alli in the limousine directly behind the one carrying the president and First Lady, was looking forward to interrogating the General. Carson had promised him an hour alone with Brandt before anyone else had a crack at him. The president was of a mind to grant Jack pretty much anything he asked for.

“Sorry to be going home?” Jack asked half in jest.

“As a matter of fact,” Alli said, “I am.”

They had reached the Ring Road, coming up on the exit that led to the airport. The snow had lessened and, according to the latest forecast, would be nothing but a memory in an hour or so, but the night had been frigid, and with the overcast predicted to hang around for the next couple of days the sidewalks and roads would remain slick. Jack thought about Annika and the date at the Bolshoi for tonight that he would not now make. He’d called her and left a message on her voice mail telling her of his change in plans. Carson had been expected to stay another day, but the itinerary had abruptly changed because of embarrassing difficulties Ben Hearth, the newly appointed Senate whip, was having keeping the conservative wing of their party in line.

“I miss Annika,” she said, “do you?”

“I wish we were staying longer.” Jack looked out the window at the bleakness of Moscow. “I wanted to see the Bolshoi.”

Alli smiled. “But not with me.”

He smiled in return. “No, not with you.”

Alli was silent for a moment, staring at the motorcycle cops flanking their limo. “Maybe she’ll come to Washington, maybe you’ll come back here.”

“Maybe.” He put his head back; he was suddenly very tired. The moment he closed his eyes he saw Emma. He smiled at her but something was wrong.

Alli must have seen the change in his expression because she said, “Don’t be sad, Jack.”

“I’m not sad, exactly, I—”

The rest of his thought was cut off by her scream. His eyes snapped open to see everything in frantic motion. The presidential limo had skidded, most likely on a patch of black ice, and was now veering off the roadway. Still spinning, it plunged down the verge onto the median, where it struck something buried under the snow. It flipped over as it slammed into a high-tension pole. The cables broke free and swooped down like black crows out of an icy sky, striking the limo, sending a powerful charge through the car.

Alli was still screaming and Jack was out of their limo, running with the Secret Service agents toward the wreck. Sirens were wailing, people were shouting, the entire motorcade had come to a halt, the press corps piling out and running, too, cell phones out, calling, texting, Twittering, whatever means would get the news out the fastest, spreading it to all four corners of the globe even before those on the scene could determine the condition of the president and the First Lady.

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