Beloved enemy, p.17
Beloved Enemy, page 17
“I’m so sorry.”
Karalian had given her a wan smile. “Thank you, but feeling sorry is the one unalterable condition of my life. That’s the main reason Illyusha brought Rolan here to me. He knew I would give him the best care. Also, that I wouldn’t condemn him out of hand.”
“He means to use Rolan.”
Dr. Karalian had nodded. “This is my surmise, though he has not confided in me.”
Dyadya Gourdjiev had not confided in her, either. But, looking at what Rolan had done with such ease, she understood that her grandfather meant Rolan to be the hammer of God, the instrument of his revenge. And now that the monster had been unleashed, she was to be his guardian.
* * *
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Nona said, sticking her head in the doorway.
“Nona,” Commissioner Dye said, “come on in.”
When Nona was seated across from him, he said, “How’s the Herren case coming? The senator is understandably anxious for a quick resolution.”
“Understood,” Nona said, “but I’ve been in the department for more than a decade and I’ve yet to encounter a triple homicide that leads to a quick resolution.”
Dye nodded. “Senator Herren wields a lot of weight in this town of heavyweights.”
“Let him solve the murder, then,” Nona said dryly.
A twitch at the corner of the commissioner’s mouth was all she received in return. “You know, my job is more political than procedural.”
“That’s why you get the big chair, sir.”
Dye grunted. “Herren’s put my nuts in a vise. Don’t make me regret promoting you.”
“Is that a threat?”
Dye leaned forward. “Nona, do you want my nuts in a vise?”
She rose. “A quick resolution. Got it, sir.”
Just before she reached the door, Dye said, “Nona, I understand you’ve been nosing around the Paull murder.”
She stopped in her tracks, took a breath while she thought, What the fuck? then faced him without expression. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t pull that shit with me.”
“Okay, what d’you want?”
“I want to know what you think you’re doing?”
“McClure’s a friend of mine.”
“A fact that will get you in trouble.” Dye stood up. “I don’t want you in trouble, Nona.”
“Am I? In trouble, I mean.”
The commissioner came around from behind his desk. “You’ve got a high-profile triple murder to solve. That’s more than enough on your plate.”
“My own time, sir.”
“Even worse.” As he lowered his voice the tone became more intense, every word hammering home. “The tension in this town is palpable. I’ve received some calls from people I’d rather not hear from, especially when they’re voicing complaints.”
“This sounds like some terrible cliché.”
“This town is one immense cliché, Nona. There is an immutable hierarchy, rules that are set in stone, one of which is Metro doesn’t stick its snout in the feds’ business. I shouldn’t have to remind you of any of this.”
“Jack helped me out when no one else would. I owe him.”
“Dear God, Nona, I don’t doubt your good intentions. But the fact is we’re both new to our jobs. The last thing either of us needs is for homeland security and the Company to bust our humps.”
“I understand, but—”
“I went out on a limb naming you chief of detectives,” Dye pressed on, overriding her. “There were doubts, some objections. People are waiting to use the least excuse to wag their fingers in my face and say, ‘I told you so. Fire the bitch.’ Whatever you’re doing that relates to Paull and McClure, stop, now. Am I making myself clear?”
“Like crystal.”
Dye’s face darkened. “I don’t care for your tone,” he said.
“Neither do I.” Nona stepped out into the deserted corridor.
* * *
Zurich’s Old Town, where Jack was headed, straddled the Limmat river, important in the south valleys, where in convenient stages it fell off, for hydroelectric power. Jack was taking no chances on Scheiwold calling Legere after he had left the doctor’s office. To that end, he had pulled out the telephone cord and had taken the battery out of his and Greta’s mobile phones, after tying them both up.
The taxi crossed over the Schanzengraben canal, which bordered the Old Town and which had been dredged to aid construction of one of the city’s three great fortress walls between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Scheiwold’s receptionist had booked Pyotr Legere into the Schloss Schnee. The hotel, used by the surgeon for his patients’ postsurgery recovery, was more restful, not to mention discreet, than a hospital. It stood a block from the lake, the glittering opera house, and Bahnhofstrasse, Old Town’s main thoroughfare, with its bustling shoppers, old-world trams running on a spiderweb of overhead lines, and, at night, lights twinkling like a constellation of stars.
Schloss Schnee was a modern building sheathed in glass and steel, an all-suite hotel, stocked with every imaginable luxury. Dr. Scheiwold had called the concierge before Jack had left his office, and the dapper young man had anticipated Jack’s arrival with a cup of freshly made hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream.
“Herr Legere is in the spa,” the concierge said as Jack sipped the rich, dark liquid chocolate. The concierge gestured as a lithe blonde, who might have been Greta’s younger sister, appeared. She wore a sea-green sheath dress that hugged the outline of her well-toned body. “Hanna will guide you to the spa.” He smiled, gave a little bow, and, Jack could swear, almost clicked his heels. “I wish you success in all your endeavors, Herr Griffiths.”
Setting his cup onto the top of the concierge’s counter, Jack followed the Schöne Hanna to the elevator bank, where they descended two levels, then down softly lit corridors. The odor of rose essential oil could not quite hide the chlorine smell.
They entered the spa through a wide rosewood door. Jack was surprised to find it deserted. When he remarked on the fact, Hanna told him that when Dr. Scheiwold’s clients requested spa time, the area became theirs exclusively, in order to maintain their anonymity.
“Most of them choose to come here because they don’t want to be seen until the bruising is gone and their cheeks and brows are sheened to perfection,” she concluded.
“Is that what happened to you?” Jack asked.
Her laugh was like the tinkling of bells. “My genes are better than that.” Her smile was as warm as buttered toast. “You should see my mother.”
She led him past a fully equipped gym, beyond which was a steam room, sauna, a rubdown room that smelled powerfully of wintergreen liniment, and a small but cozy lounge, equipped with a half-fridge, healthful snacks, tall glasses, and two plastic pitchers, one filled with ice water, the other with iced tea. Several paces on, he could hear the velvety echo of water lapping against tiles.
“Three pools,” Hanna said, “one cold, one warm, one hot.”
“Where is Legere?”
“Right in here.” She gestured. “Our tanning salon.”
Jack almost tripped at the threshold, the toe of his shoe stubbing against the marble sill, his balance tipping so precipitously he surely would have fallen had not Hanna caught him. He was aware of her strength as he righted herself.
She peered at him, frowning. “Are you all right, Herr Griffiths?”
“Perfectly.” But when he nodded, the vertigo overcame him again and he was obliged to grab hold of her to keep his balance.
“Herr Griffiths, you look unwell.” Hanna led him over to one of the tanning beds. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“Legere. Where is he?” Jack was dimly aware that he was slurring his words.
“Right over there, in the tanning bed across from us.”
Jack turned his head, or at least tried to. Dimly aware that his body was acting as sluggishly as his mind, he said, “Maybe I should sit down.”
“Considering your condition, I have a better idea.” Hanna smiled her buttered toast smile as she lifted the lid of the coffin-like tanning bed. “Here we go,” she said as she gave Jack’s shoulder a push.
It wasn’t much of a push, but to him it felt as if an avalanche had landed on him. His body canted over. He tried to right himself on his own, then, as he was going over, reached out for Hanna, but she had moved away and all he grasped was dead air.
He fell into the tanning bed at an angle, and Hanna, lifting his legs by the ankles, put him completely to bed. He stared up at her impossibly beautiful face. He willed himself to get up, but the flat of her hand on his chest settled him in place.
“I wish you success in all your endeavors, Herr Griffiths,” she said, echoing the concierge, as she lowered the lid and snapped it into place.
A moment later, humming like a swarm of wasps, the UV lamps came on.
FOURTEEN
“WHAT PRECISELY is going on?” Iraj Namazi said into his sat phone. “Why aren’t they convinced McClure is the mole?”
While he listened to the voice on the other end he watched three Egyptian kites wheeling high in the sky. He thought they must have spotted a dead animal—that’s what they liked best, dead meat. Just like us humans, he thought.
“Who is this Jonatha Midwood?” he asked, hearing her name for the first time. “We don’t want her mucking around in our business.”
The kites were lowering, like storm clouds about to release their rain. He sat in his car, fifteen miles from the hotel, ten miles from nowhere. He didn’t like Trabzon, a mixture of the touristic and the postmodern ugly. It bore no resemblance to Trebizond, the capital of the ancient Greek Byzantine Empire and, in its day, the most important trading hub linking the Eastern and Western worlds. How the mighty had fallen, he thought, as he watched the kites land and begin to feed on whatever poor animal was lying on the side of the road. Trampled by history, he thought sourly. A state into which he fervently prayed to Allah he would never fall. He longed to return to Fez, which he had made his home for the past year.
“In what ways is she vulnerable?”
“If we attack her,” the voice in his ear said, “we’ll only attract more unwanted attention. My position isn’t under scrutiny—yet. I don’t want to do anything to change that.”
“Disruption is our business,” the Syrian said. “I trained you well. Figure something out. Act in a way that will throw suspicion on one of your colleagues. The more confused these Americans are, the better for us.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.”
Namazi put the car in gear, drove to where the kites were feeding. Their keen eyes had spotted a polecat that must have been hit by a speeding vehicle. He watched them, greedy birds, feasting on the beast’s flesh. Death came to everything, he thought, and everyone.
“About Atlas,” he said.
“These things take time.”
“Even for you?”
Laughter rang in his ear. “You’ve been away from the States too long. You’ve forgotten how paranoid we Americans are.”
“This is why I rely on you,” Namazi said. “Don’t make me use what I have on you.”
There was a short silence, during which Namazi, like a preening carnivore, basked in his supremacy.
“The first operational phase of Atlas is about to be deployed,” the voice said.
“I need the names of its operatives,” Namazi said. “The people who hired me need to disrupt them, feed them disinformation, then pick them off, one by one.”
“Disinformation works both sides of the street.”
The kites’ sharp beaks were bloody, strung with bits of flesh and organs. This was life at its most elemental. There was no hate in the kites’ hearts, no envy, no bitterness for injustices done them or their kin. They were driven simply by the need to eat, to live.
“Meaning?”
“I have heard the whisper of a rumor that someone—CIA, DCS, I don’t know—is sending out disinformation regarding Atlas.”
“An attempt to smoke you out.”
“Yes.”
Namazi’s laugh was as harsh as a jackal’s. “What a joke these people are!”
“And yet it would be a mistake to underestimate them. Dennis Paull was definitely onto something, after all.”
“And now Dennis Paull is dead,” the Syrian snapped. “Leaks are only dangerous until they’re stopped up.” He made an animal noise in the back of his throat. “Go on then. Get on with it.”
* * *
Elady Zukhov, standing in the deep mansard shadows thrown by the Paris roofs in twilight, had never married. He had no children of his own. His protégés were his children; he could love them no less than if they were blood of his blood. In his lifetime, he had trained three; Caro was the last and the best.
Zukhov took Caro’s concerns very seriously. It was inconceivable that he would stand by while something untoward happened to her. Like a wolf—his hacker handle—he would rip the throat of anyone who threatened her.
There were many ways to trap a stalker, but none more effective than putting yourself between him and his intended victim. This path was not without danger, but Zukhov had been raised on a steady diet of danger from the time he was eleven years old, when he lived in the great shaggy cemetery-city in Prague, where the ghosts of murdered Jews built their golems in the hours between midnight and dawn.
These were the stories the night watchman used to tell him, trying to scare Zukhov away from witnessing the unholy business from which the watchman made his living—grave robbing and drug dealing.
Far from being frightened, Zukhov, an enterprising orphan whose parents and siblings had been killed shortly after arriving from the Russian heartland, wanted to believe in avenging ghosts and their undead instruments of revenge. But since he never encountered avenging spirits—never even caught a glimpse of them—he decided to become one.
Someone needed to protect the dead, so it might as well be him. He figured there must have been a reason that he was left washed up in that cemetery. That was the closest Zukhov ever came to believing in a divine power, and at last, some weeks later, he took up a rusty, dirt-clotted shovel and stove in the side of the night watchman’s head. What else but the divine spirit could have lent such power to a child’s hand?
Now, watching the night steal over the jewel-like square far below, he recalled those ancient days in Prague with the painful fondness one feels for a lost love.
His head turned. With the darkness came movement, just a blur at the edge of his field of vision, but it was enough. Zukhov had had enough experience with the Syrian to know what—if not who—was coming for Caro. Over the years, as his weight ballooned, he had taught himself to compensate. He moved like a sumo wrestler, like a dancer, his weight centered in his lower belly. Despite his size, he was as deceptively quick as he was agile. When he wished it, his weight seemed to melt away.
This time, however, as he stood on the rooftop of Caro’s building, he had no need to move. Raising his right arm, he fired a bolt from a mini-crossbow he had manufactured himself. The release made virtually no noise. The bolt, traveling almost as fast as a small-caliber bullet, buried itself just below the stalker’s sternum, thrusting him backward, so that he staggered.
Zukhov, springing forward across the canted tiles, caught him before he could pinwheel over the parapet. For a moment, their eyes were at equal level, before Zukhov dropped him to the rooftop. He slid down a little, curled around Zukhov’s feet like a stricken cat.
Lowering himself to his hams, Zukhov slapped the man’s cheek, causing his eyes to flutter open. His face revealed his Middle Eastern origins to Zukhov, who could see that he had recently shaved off his beard, no doubt before he had entered France. His expression, though stoic, could not completely hide the terrible pain he was in.
“You had no chance to get to her,” Zukhov said softly, as a night bird sang on a nearby chimney pot. “No one the Syrian sends to kill her will.”
“He didn’t send me to kill her, or even to hurt her,” the man said slowly and haltingly. “He wants her to come back.”
Zukhov grasped the fletched end of the bolt. “I don’t believe you.”
The man licked his parched lips. “He needs her; no one else can fathom the algorithm protocols she created and set in place. Without her, his financial empire is in shambles. Soon, if he cannot access his money, he will be in real jeopardy.”
“All the more reason for Caroline to stay away.”
“He believes she will return. The financial rewards are substantial.”
“I can only imagine,” Zukhov said dryly. “And if she were to refuse? Then what?”
The man closed his eyes. His blue lips were trembling. “I don’t know.”
Zukhov moved the bolt as if stirring a pot of stew. “Of course you know.”
The man groaned. He seemed to be bleeding from his eyes.
Zukhov searched him for the weapon the Syrian had given him to use on Caro should she refuse his offer. What he found chilled him to the bone: it was a lead vial.
“What is in this?” Zukhov said, though, being Russian, he suspected he already knew.
The assassin shuddered as his breath sawed in and out of him. “I had orders to poison her,” he said, “with plutonium.”
* * *
What would it be like to be broiled alive? Jack, sweltering in the heat emitted by the powerful UV, awoke to the groggy feeling of being a lobster in a pot with its claws bound with stout rubber bands. The difference was, he’d probably go blind before he was fully cooked.
Keeping his eyes squeezed shut, he reached up, fumbled behind his head. Every tanning bed had a kill switch embedded in the lid. He found it, after a short search, but when he depressed the button nothing happened. The lamps were still burning brightly. The kill switch on this bed had been deactivated.
Now he pushed with both palms against the lid, but it was firmly shut. He could not budge it. The adrenaline pumping through his system was working overtime at dissipating the drug he had ingested with the hot chocolate. As a result, it was running its course prematurely. He could feel an unmistakable lethargy beneath his frenzy, and this, more than anything, terrified him. When his overtaxed system stopped producing adrenaline, he was finished.
