The quantum solution, p.19
The Quantum Solution, page 19
Silence.
Then he signaled to the guard to follow him out of the room. As they crossed the room to the door, Tribe said. “He’ll be right outside, hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
And then she was alone with Inessa.
30
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
“You can’t shoot an animal through the head, it’s disrespectful. Never forget the animal is a worthy enemy.” Kusnetsov had cause to recall the Sovereign’s words as he dragged Petrov’s corpse onto the cheap rug, which Petrov himself had unrolled. It was, Kusnetsov considered, not unlike ordering prisoners to dig their own graves.
He had no doubt that the Sovereign had planned not only Petrov’s death but the manner in which it was to be carried out before ever setting foot onto the train. And of course now his seeming aside about hunting made perfect sense. He had to not only kill Petrov for his stupidity in allowing the physicist from Directorate KV to escape but also do it in a way that disrespected him. Why this way, when there were so many others that would have humiliated Petrov just as well? Because the Sovereign was a hunter, and this is what hunters do, it is how they think. The manner of Levrov’s death made it indelibly clear to everyone that the Sovereign had no respect for Levrov, and considered him less worthy than an animal.
“The trouble with you,” the Sovereign said to General Sidorov, “is that you listen too much to the other generals.” A vein stood out on the Sovereign’s left temple. It throbbed with a life of its own, the only hint that he was working himself up into what Kusnetsov privately called a froth. Just like D’yavol, the Sovereign’s beloved horse, after a long and full-out gallop in pursuit of his master’s prey. “Everyone believes this is a war for oil, just as, it is said over and over, every war in this century and the last was fought over oil. But this war—my war—isn’t about oil. Not at all. It’s about expansion. So … as Ukraine goes, so go Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania. You see it now, General Sidorov? Do you get the picture? My picture?”
“But, my Sovereign, fully a third of our forces have already perished. Our tanks—even our most advanced models—are being destroyed by missiles delivered by NATO countries. We are running out of attack drones and cannot quickly make more. We are being throttled, the Western European clients we thought addicted to our oil and gas have abandoned us. I humbly inquire where is the money to continue waging this war—your war—to come from?”
For a moment the Sovereign looked down at his perfectly manicured nails, a curiously feminine touch for such an overtly masculine man. “While you’ve been here with me, Mikail Maximovich, half the generals were placed under house arrest. Another quarter are in the Lubyanka.” Looking up, he cocked his head. “Tell me, would you care to join either group?”
Sidorov rubbed a hand across his mouth, possibly to keep himself steady in the face of panic, Kusnetsov thought. A putsch was underway. The Sovereign was disappearing the high-ranking people he could no longer trust. Kusnetsov had seen the increasing number of officers in the unfamiliar black uniforms with gold piping, and now he understood. The new order had arrived.
“Neither option appeals,” Sidorov finally said, taking too long to reply. He failed to hide the slight quaver in his voice.
“Ah, well, I didn’t think so.” The Sovereign eyed him with what appeared to be dispassion. Kusnetsov was not deceived. Though outwardly expressionless, the Sovereign did nothing with dispassion. “And yet … the generals decided even before the Ukraine reclamation. They commanded their men half-heartedly. Consequence: high casualty rate—death and desertions in unacceptable numbers. And did anyone anticipate the acres of fucking Ukrainian mud that stalled our ground forces, made of our vaunted tanks sitting ducks for NATO nations’ anti-tank missiles? We were bogged down even worse than we were in Afghanistan. And on our own doorstep, mind you!” he thundered.
“Well, if we can’t win the war,” Kusnetsov said, “at least we can make Ukraine uninhabitable.”
The Sovereign laughed with his whole body, deaf to the sarcasm of Kusnetsov’s remark. Did the Sovereign know that each day that passed more and more young Russians were refusing to be enlisted in this war? Did he know that desperate aviation engineers were cannibalizing parts from civilian aircraft to repair damaged air force planes? Did he know that all leave in every area of Russian industry had been canceled indefinitely, even though in many cases industry was grinding to a halt for lack of raw material? Did he realize that bread was no longer readily available because of the war? What wheat was leaving Ukraine was destined for the West. Yes, more rice was being imported from China—rice that was a whole lot better than the disgusting large-grain homegrown variety. But then who the hell wanted to subsist on rice? And as for potatoes, the recent crops had been smaller, as if the potatoes themselves were protesting the war. Every day, he thought, the stability of our life is slipping away from us. Was the Sovereign aware of any of this? Of course not, and even if he was he’d refuse to believe it. But no, no one was going to tell him, least of all Kusnetsov.
“At last, someone who makes sense!” The next moment the Sovereign’s face darkened. “But we cannot, we will not lose this war. Understand me?”
Rising to his feet, the Sovereign approached Sidorov. Only Kusnetsov’s keen eye noticed the weakness in his left leg.
“Darko Vladimirovich, tell me.” The Sovereign’s voice reached imperial pitch. “What consequence should be meted out here?”
“You know my opinion on this matter,” Kusnetsov said.
“Be so kind as to repeat it for the general, who I think has been inhaling the swamp gas expelled by his unfortunate comrades-in-arms.”
“I am of the opinion that the GRU has become corrupt and incompetent.”
At this, Sidorov launched himself at Kusnetsov.
Like an expert matador, Kusnetsov sidestepped the bull rush; the carriage doors slid open. Sidorov, off-balance, skidded toward rushing darkness. The howling passage of air took sound and breath away, as if Sidorov were falling into the vacuum of outer space instead of a subterranean tunnel. He went headfirst into the ground between rail and wall. Then all sight of him was swept away as if he had never existed.
31
LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS
Evan unbuckled the last of the four restraints holding Inessa to the bed and stepped back.
For several moments Inessa lay unmoving, staring up at the ceiling. Evan could see her chest rise and fall, the only evidence she was alive.
“Ya ub’yu tebya,” Inessa said, as if speaking to the room. I’m gonna kill you.
“Come and get it,” Evan replied, using a voice stripped of all emotion.
In the space of a heartbeat Inessa sprang off the bed. But instead of leaping at Evan, she unwrapped one of the restraints, whipped it out. The far end wrapped around Evan’s wrist. Immediately Evan drew her arm up and back. Inessa, drawn to her, stumbled for the space of an eyeblink, but she could not counter her forward momentum. Evan slammed the top of her forehead into the bridge of Inessa’s nose.
Noting the gush of blood out of Inessa’s nostrils, she said, “Your sister was the faster one.”
Wrapping the restraint around her fist, she slammed it up against Inessa’s jaw. She said, “Your sister was the stronger one.”
She cuffed Inessa, palm against her ear. She said, “Your sister was the smarter one,” as Inessa staggered back against the door with a loud thud. The door shivered as Inessa bounced back.
The guard must have had his ear to the door. It was yanked open and there he stood, snub-nosed pistol out of its shoulder holster.
“What the hell?” His eyes opened wide as he took in the scene. “Damn it, I knew you’d need help.”
“What are you doing?” Evan took a step toward him. “Get out!”
But it was too late. Inessa had whirled. Slamming her knuckles into the guard’s throat, she grabbed the gun out of his hand, turned it toward Evan. Evan knocked it free with the edge of her hand and scrambled to reach it. She calculated her distance to the gun, knew she wouldn’t make it. Instead, she snatched the chair, hurled it at Inessa as she reached for the gun. Inessa’s sprawling body spun the gun away through the doorway into the hallway.
Cursing mightily in both Turkish and Russian, Inessa turned on her bare heels, picked up the chair, raced across the room, threw it into the window. The glass shattered. With arms crossed over her face, she leapt through, disappearing from Evan’s sight.
A commotion behind Evan—the sounds of pounding shoes—as more of Tribe’s security, drawn by the sounds of the violent struggle, crowded the hallway. Shouts for her to get back, get back! The leading man lunged for her, but she wheeled away from him, sprinted across the room, bent over the sill, careful not to rip her palms to shreds on the glass shards.
Inessa was shinnying down a drainpipe that ran between the window and a large palm tree planted at the southwest corner of the villa. Without a backward glance at the security detail that had entered the room, Evan launched herself onto the drainpipe, began to slide her way down. The drainpipe was old, cracked in some places where the seams between sections were inexpertly joined. By the time she was a mere third of the way down, Inessa had reached the ground. Inessa gazed upward, and then, instead of fleeing, she grabbed a gardener’s shovel from a nearby wheelbarrow, slammed it into the nearest floodlight, then swung it horizontally into the highest of the insecure joins she could reach. She made sure she was in the deep shadow of the palm; only Evan, continuing her descent, could make her out in the darkness between the upward splashes of the faraway security lights still working.
With each blow the drainpipe shuddered and rattled, forcing her to stop her descent and hold on for dear life. Inessa continued her attack until the pipe gave way altogether, leaving Evan stranded. Leaping from the dangling pipe through the fronds to the trunk of the palm, she gripped it with her knees and forearms. Sliding down was out of the question—she’d rip up her skin and clothes. But those same rough outcroppings, made when older fronds turned brown, now served as steps, making her descent faster.
By the time she leapt to the ground, Inessa was a mere shadow moving among larger shadows. She took after her, saw her rounding a corner, sped up. Reaching the corner, she turned in to the cross street only to receive an elbow to her chest. At once Inessa was on top of her, her knees pressing down on Evan’s biceps, pinning her.
Inessa’s face, distorted by rage, loathing, the thirst for revenge, the lunacy that comes with such extreme emotions, loomed above her. Her lips, feral in the inky shadows, were drawn back from teeth as savage, as tapered as a wolf’s. She struck Evan’s face over and over with white-knuckled fists soon enough stained with Evan’s blood.
Evan struggled, but she lacked the leverage to throw Inessa off. Her limbs were useless. She arched her torso, rocking it back and forth in a desperate attempt to dislodge her attacker, but it was no use. Moments from now, she knew, her face would be reduced to a bloody pulp. It occurred to her that lying in a back alley of Santa Cruz de la Palma, night gentle as velvet closed down around her, was not how she imagined her death. That she had imagined it many times meant nothing now; she was facing it here, close enough to smell its rotten-meat breath. The chill of the grave swept through her, freezing bones clothed in gooseflesh gone blue.
“Who’s the faster one?” Inessa hissed, throwing Evan’s taunt back at her.
Another blow, hammer on anvil.
“Who’s the stronger one?”
More pain, setting her nerves to screaming.
“Who’s the smarter one?”
A sudden gust of warmth, the copper taste of her own blood filling her mouth.
“Who, who, who?”
Evan gagging, consciousness flickering like a candle flame beside an open window. Better to be there in the flickering light than here in the darkness.
In that instant the street was lit like a roman candle firing its energy. The brilliant light, dazzling, blinded Inessa as she instinctively looked up, threw a forearm across her eyes. Evan felt the loosening of her tormentor’s grip. Heaving her hips to one side, she gained enough leverage to slide Inessa off her with her freed arm.
Even keeping her eyes turned away from the light, she felt it coming closer. And now she could hear the purring of an expensive car’s oversized engine. Someone had turned in to the street at just the right moment. How? Why? No time for questions, let alone answers. She drove her knee deep between Inessa’s legs, contacted bone.
Inessa groaned. The two of them, covered in blood, gained their knees. Their bodies threw grotesque shadows on the walls of the buildings on either side of the street. While Inessa was doubled over Evan toppled her onto her back, then grabbed her wrist and pulled her arm while at the same time stamping down hard into the hollow of Inessa’s armpit. Inessa screamed as her arm separated from her shoulder socket.
Instead of rolling away as Evan had expected, Inessa managed to get to her feet. She kicked out, connecting with the point of Evan’s chin. As Evan staggered back against a limewashed house façade, Inessa loped away down the street. The car’s headlights illuminated her as she put her good shoulder against a door, but it would not give. Heading farther down the street, bent over, trying to recover from the kick to her crotch, she flickered into shadow.
Evan’s jaw had begun to swell, was tender to the touch. The blow Inessa had delivered filled her head with the thunder of pain. As she came off the wall, she heard hurried footsteps, then the scent of Marsden Tribe. He had been driving the car that had saved her.
Thanks, she tried to say, but winced in agony. Instead of asking her how she was he asked her to open her mouth. When she did, he placed his thumbs at the hinges at either side of the inside of her jaw.
“Think happy thoughts,” he said as he dug his thumbs in.
She felt a tiny pop, a burst of localized pain, and then a kind of quietude in her cheeks as he removed his thumbs.
“Where did you learn that?” she asked him, dizzy as a drunkard.
“All part of the first-class service,” he said. “Can you walk on your own?”
“Of course.”
He said, “Don’t worry. I’m not taking you back to the villa. I know how vital Inessa is to you. Besides, I like nothing better than an adventure.”
“Too dangerous.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said, looking her over.
“Still.”
He ignored her. “Only one way off this island.” He winked. “I know where she’s going.”
He held the door for her. When she was settled in the Maserati and he was behind the wheel, they took off.
“By the way.” He raised his voice over the risen wind, redolent of salt, sodium, and phosphorus of the sea. “Try not to bleed all over the full-grain napa leather.”
She tried to laugh, but it hurt too much.
32
WASHINGTON, DC
Five P.M. on the dot found Zahra sitting at a marble-topped table at the Smoke & Mirrors rooftop lounge, situated between Capitol Hill and Navy Yard. She had arrived precisely seven minutes ago and had one hand snaked around an old-fashioned. She was wearing a blue wraparound dress and black pumps. She had dressed with care this morning, wanting to look alluring but not obvious when she met Ben.
Because she was looking for Ben she did not pay attention to the Asian woman who entered Smoke & Mirrors, looked her way, crossed the room, stopped silently at her table. Only then did she look up.
“I already have a drink.” Her tone was dismissive, even a little annoyed. “As you can see.”
A curious half-smile might have transformed any other face but on the Asian woman it kept her expression enigmatic.
“You have made a mistake.”
She sat down beside Zahra, close enough for Zahra to breathe in her scent hinting of spice and smoked black tea. Too close for Zahra’s liking, but she wasn’t about to reveal her discomfort by edging away. Behind them a mirror flashed their reflections back at them as if mocking her.
“I don’t make mistakes,” Zahra said, slightly defensive. “Who are you and why are you sitting at my table? I’m expecting—”
“Ben has been unavoidably detained elsewhere,” the Asian woman said. Zahra found her almost intimidatingly beautiful. She felt strongly the magnetism of the woman, as if the avatars of their respective beauty were going to war. “I am here in his stead.”
Zahra’s eyes narrowed. “Again, who are you? Why should I be talking to you? Do you work for Parachute?”
“I am an independent contractor.”
“But you know Ben.”
“Why state the obvious?”
“Nothing about you is obvious.” Zahra was on the verge of raising her voice. She felt dislocated, as if a new reality had coalesced around her the moment this woman sat down beside her. “Not even your name.”
An Binh told Zahra her name. “But I am not here to answer questions.”
“Well, you damn well better answer mine.”
“Mm, I don’t think so.”
Zahra, either disgusted or frightened, she didn’t know which, rose. “That’s enough for me.”
“You haven’t even touched your old-fashioned,” An Binh pointed out.
“I’ve lost my taste for this conversation.”
“I am not surprised.” An Binh reached over, took up Zahra’s old-fashioned, took a sip. “It’s excellent, really. Why don’t you sit back down?”
Zahra shook her head, gathered up her coat. “Not a chance.”
“Suit yourself.” An Binh shrugged. “In that event shall we agree to reconvene tonight at Carat?”
At the name of the nightclub Zahra froze. She cleared her throat if not her mind, which was threatening to spin out of control. “Carat?” She cringed. Had her voice cracked? “I don’t know what that is.”
An Binh cocked her head, took another sip of the old-fashioned. “Of course you do, Zahra. You were there just last night.”
