Father night, p.25
Father Night, page 25
“Nothing is the way we want it to be, nothing is the way it seems today. Even the snake, even Via Veneto. What lies around tomorrow’s corner? You must have faith.”
“Ah, now I understand you.” He nodded. “But faith cannot exist without love. And you must understand what I mean because you have read the file that…” He faltered, his voice trailing off as he looked away again.
“That was the point of the experiments,” she finished for him. “But I also know that we’re all human beings, not machines.” She touched his heart with her forefinger. “Somewhere in there is the child, no matter how damaged, who was born to Marion Oldham and Oriel Jovovich.”
He made an animal sound in the back of his throat. “And what about Grigori?”
“Grigori is not like you.”
“But that’s the whole point of the experiment!” Radomil cried. “To make us identical in every way, to make us killing machines who would think alike, take orders—any orders—without question.”
“And I repeat, Grigori is beyond redemption, but you are not. You are loved, Radomil. Your mother loves you, I love you.”
He looked at her.
“Yes, it’s true. You’re my brother, my flesh and blood.”
His eyes narrowed. “And Grigori?”
“We have spoken too much of your brother.”
“He, too, is your flesh and blood.”
“He has chosen his path, Radomil. You have chosen your own.” She smiled gently. “So you see, love is alive. Only you can kill it.” The bow of her lips parted. “Is that what you want? To destroy the thing you desire most?”
Radomil’s hands curled into fists, the skin across the knuckles stretched and white. “This was the test to which Grigori and I were put. It was so easy for him, so difficult for me. We were meant to destroy the thing we loved most. That was our final exam.”
“Good God!” she said, almost physically recoiling from his words. “Does my grandfather know this?”
Radomil shook his head.
“Then you must tell him,” she said, linking her arm through his and leading him back to the restaurant.
Radomil peered in through the window. “I am afraid of him.”
“Yes,” she said. “We’re all afraid of him.”
* * *
VERA WATCHED, stunned, as Chris Fraine picked his way toward his twin. On the way, he paused, turning toward her.
“Don’t move,” he said.
She nodded mutely.
Alan Fraine lay where the bullets had propelled him, his back propped against the shop’s side wall. He was still alive, breathing like a bellows full of holes, which just about summed up the state of his lungs.
Chris Fraine squatted down in front of him. “So it’s come to this.”
Alan Fraine opened his mouth, but only a low gurgle emerged, along with a thin drool of blood.
“This is your reward for taking the high road,” Chris said. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you. I wanted you with me, despite what Vater Nacht planned for us. I went against the program and he never forgave me. But you—you were his bully-boy, weren’t you? Bad genes reversed by whatever infernal methods he used. I’d kill him if I could, but I can’t. His infernal methods are at least that strong inside me. Alan’s breathing abruptly turned more labored. Chris sighed. “But I did the next best thing. I killed you.”
He stood then and, turning on his heel, addressed Vera. “And what, might I ask, is your part in this passion play?”
By this time, Vera had regained a measure of both her equilibrium and her bravado. “I didn’t know your brother and I don’t know you. My concern is—was—Moses Malliot. It was his Town Car into which my … friend … Alli Carson was bundled.”
Chris Fraine approached her, clearly intrigued. “Bundled?”
“She was abducted,” Vera said, unsure how much to tell him. “Near the Titanic Memorial, by a man named Werner Waxman.”
Chris shook his head. “Who?”
“The man with the limp,” she said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He moved even closer. “But because you being here at the same time as Alan can’t be a coincidence, I want to know.” He reached out and grabbed her just as Nona burst through the front door, service pistol at the ready.
* * *
REGGIE HERR, racing down the hallway, realized that he had unaccountably lost the Carson girl. He brought himself up short. How had that happened? He was right behind her as she turned the corner, but now the hallway leered emptily at him.
Three doors, three possibilities. Methodically, he kicked open one door after another, checking the offices, the windows, any places the little rat could hide. Nothing. But in the last room, he found a window that had been cranked open. Leaning out, he saw that an intrepid person—especially one with minimum body weight like the little rat—could leap into the water without a problem.
Cursing under his breath, he turned on his heel and belted out of the room, along the corridor, clattering down staircase after staircase, and out the slipway door. He prowled the shoreline for a good ten minutes without seeing a sign of her. At last, forced to face facts, he stopped looking. She was gone.
* * *
THE MOMENT Chris Fraine saw Nona, he turned and fled into the rear of the shop. She might have gone after him, but she saw Alan propped against the wall, blood pooled around him, and she immediately dropped to her knees in front of him.
“Alan,” she whispered. And then, as she placed two fingers against his carotid, “Alan!”
Vera started after Chris, but froze when Nona commanded her to stay right where she was.
“But that man—”
“Forget him,” Nona said. She was already speaking to central dispatch, identifying herself. “Officer and civilian down.” She wept as she gave their location. When she was done, she punched in Paull’s number. He wasn’t answering, so she left a message on his voice mail.
She put a palm against her boss’s cheek. “What man, Vera?”
“You know who I am?”
“I don’t know much of anything right now,” Nona said, “but I know that.”
Vera came toward her. “I need protection.”
Nona gently closed Alan’s staring eyes, and somehow thought about Frankie, lying dead to the world in his hospital room while a complicated mechanism breathed for him. “Christ almighty,” she breathed, “don’t we all.”
* * *
ALLI, SUSPENDED above the open window, gripped the narrow overhang with the tips of her curled fingers. The toes of her shoes desperately scrabbled for purchase on the wooden siding. She sensed, rather than saw, Reggie Herr stick his head out the window and peer down into the Washington Channel. When she risked a circumspect glance down, she saw the window was clear, and, arms and shoulders aching, she clambered down and let herself back inside.
For a moment she sat on the sill, head between her legs, taking deep breaths. Then she rose and, crossing the room, opened the door and peeked out. The corridor was clear. She stole out, listening with every part of her body—voices, footfalls, vibrations, the small, sharp noises of metal on metal, like rats scurrying in the walls.
“Get the hell out of Dodge!” Jack had said to her, a coded message, one of several he had insisted she memorize. Knowing full well that at any moment she could be in danger, the two of them had set up a number of contingency codes. Get the hell of Dodge meant that he had left something for her—something that would help her escape. However, as she moved stealthily down the corridor toward the back stairs, she knew that she had no intention of escaping—not until she had found Jack and freed him. He had come for her twice, at extreme peril to himself. There was no way she was going to leave him here and run back to Fearington. As she picked her way along, she thought of Jack, of everything he had taught her, and she thought of Sensei and everything he had pounded into her.
Whatever she knew now wasn’t going to be enough, she had no illusions about that, but for the moment, at least, it would have to suffice for the job at hand.
Reaching the narrow set of stairs, she cocked her head, listening intently. She heard no one moving up or down, so she began to descend from the top floor. Where would Jack have left whatever it was he had left for her? It had to be somewhere he felt would be safe; it would also have to be a place he had come across. She knew how Jack’s mind worked, knew he would never have attempted to infiltrate this place without having a clear idea of the interior. If he’d seen architectural plans, Secretary Paull surely would have procured them for him, which meant Paull could very well be involved in the mission. But she also knew Paull never would have agreed to send Jack in alone. This meant that Paull’s people must have already thrown a cordon around the area. All she and Jack needed to do was get themselves outside and Paull’s men would do the rest.
She reached the landing of the next floor down. Jack had appeared near the other end of the corridor—he hadn’t come this way. She began to creep slowly along, then paused, turning around. What made her think he hadn’t come this way? She was thinking like Waxman’s security people, not like Jack.
Retracing her steps, she peered down the back stairway to the next level. The brick wall was covered with graffiti. Midway down was a fuse-box door, set flush with the wall. The fuse box seemed to ripple and distort, and, the next moment, the image of Emma appeared, translucent, wavering, as if shivered by an invisible wind.
“Emma?”
Alli had only taken a couple of steps down when a security guard trotting up the stairs came into view. Seeing her, he opened his mouth to shout, but Alli threw the knife she had taken off Reggie. He put up a hand as it hit his cheek a glancing blow, but that was enough to give her the opening she needed. Flying down the stairs, she kicked him backward. He fell heavily, bouncing down the treads, and she followed him. It was well that she did, because his hand came up, pointing his gun at her. Her left leg flicked out, the side of her foot knocking the weapon out of his hand.
He leapt up and came at her, and she let him, just as Sensei had taught her in aikido class. As he reached out to grab her, she used his own momentum, grasping the extended arm, pulling him into her. Locking her leg behind his knee, she landed an elbow strike to the nape of his neck. His face crashed into the metal stair beside her, and he lay still.
Alli took possession of the knife and the fallen guard’s CZ, searched for extra bullets, and pocketed them, then turned away to look for Emma. She was gone. Only the fuse box stared back at her, silent and enigmatic. Did it mean something? She stepped closer and saw a chalk mark, a small circle.
“Cut your losses and chalk it up to experience,” Jack had shouted at the end.
Chalk. Reaching out, she rubbed off the chalk mark with her fingertip. Then she inserted the end of the broken blade into the door’s lock and worked it gently back and forth.
The instant the door popped open, a nearly empty duffel bag, folded in on itself, fell into her arms. She moved beneath a light, unzipped the duffel, and peered inside.
* * *
“YOU’RE ON the wrong side of history,” Grigori said. “Again.”
Caro frowned. “Explain yourself.”
He looked away, out the limo’s smoked window, at the murky morning. “We’ve been in here for hours and I have to empty my bladder. Do you plan to hold me prisoner forever?”
“The quicker you give me answers, the faster I’ll let you go.”
“Not until you put away the gun. I’ve had enough of you waggling it in my face.”
Caro set the gun down on the seat next to her, but she didn’t put it away. Caro had driven Grigori’s limo out of the construction site before the workers showed up. They were parked in a spot overlooking the World War II memorial. Caro wore a black baseball-style cap with a white FBI embroidered on it she had purchased from a vendor on Constitution. The bill was pulled low on her forehead, throwing her face into deep shadow.
When he leaned forward, peering through the partition at the weapon lying on the seat, she said, “Best I can do. Now spill.”
“‘Spill.’ What’s become of you?” He shook his head. “You sound so damn American.”
She shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“I assumed—incorrectly, I see—that your time with the Syrian taught you things.”
“Oh, it did, but not what you think. I learned I don’t like being allied with the wrong people. I don’t like getting their shit all over me.”
“We’re all tarred with the same brush, Caro. It’s a matter of survival.”
She made a face. “For you, maybe. Not for me.”
“You’re no better than the rest of us, Caro. You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise.”
“If making my own decisions is fooling myself, then bring it on!”
“Sooner or later, the Syrian will catch up to you. And when he does—”
“Is that who you’re taking orders from now, Grigori? The Syrian?”
“God, no! I steer as clear of him as I possibly can.”
“And when that becomes impossible?”
“I go down on one knee and look away.”
“Bravo! The perfect vassal!”
“I have a lot of my life left to live, Caro. What would you have me do?”
She snorted. “Please.”
“So I should adopt your solution? Become a fugitive?”
She looked hard at him. “You still don’t get it. For people like you and me, there is no solution. We’re doomed by both genes and circumstance. The most we can hope for is a decent life until the violent end comes.”
“You! Unlike me, you have an out. You can always go back to your father.”
“With my tail between my legs!”
“But what a magnificent tail it is!”
She laughed then, puncturing the mounting tension that had risen between them like a medieval wall bristling with spears, catapults, and boiling oil.
“Always the charmer,” she said, “even when holding a knife to my throat.”
“It’s you who has the weapon,” he pointed out.
She waved away his words. “You were speaking about history and taking sides.”
“I’d meant it as a threat, actually.”
“Something’s changed?”
He shrugged. “You have inexplicably aligned yourself with Alli Carson.”
“She is my cousin.”
“I can’t see the relevance.”
“Then look again.”
“I’ve seen all I need to. She and Jack McClure are tight.”
“And?”
“McClure is fucking Annika Dementieva. Her grandfather is Dyadya Gourdjiev.”
“Who someone has convinced you is evil incarnate.”
He ignored her. “McClure is the key—to everything.”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
“Fuck you, missy!”
For an instant, her eyes flicked down to the gun. But as she reached for it, Grigori slammed the back of his hand across her cheek. She rocked backward while still scrabbling for the gun, and Grigori was upon her, launching himself through the open partition, his superior weight bearing her down onto her back. He knocked the gun away, but in such close quarters it was far too dangerous to fire.
He glimpsed his driver, dead in the footwell, as he hauled his legs through to the front seat. Then his hands fitted around her throat as if they were always meant to be there.
“You stupid, stupid bitch,” he said as he throttled her. “I see you for the predator you are. You’re heartless. You never loved me. And I loved you so very much.”
His face was empurpled, his features distorted by the force of this rage erupting from the depths. “You stupid, stupid bitch. I gave you every opportunity to change your mind, to keep yourself safe, and what did you do? Did you accept? No. Did you ignore me? No, again. You mocked me.”
He pressed down with a gathering strength that bordered on the berserk. The spark of reason had fled from his eyes, his mind was mired in a red haze that extinguished his connection to everything else, dislocated him from society, conventions, even history. He was exiled, alone with his rage—manufactured rage that, too late, Caro understood had been grafted onto him at an early age. He had become something else, something beyond or below human.
Her eyes were protruding, her lungs were burning, her windpipe nearly crushed. She stared up into the face of a creature completely unknown to her.
NINETEEN
APART FROM a Magic Marker and a piece of chalk, the duffel was empty. Alli plucked out the Magic Marker, curious. Then she turned the duffel inside out and discovered the map Jack had drawn of the interior of the warehouse abutting the Washington Channel. Not only had Jack shown her where Waxman had taken her, but he also had given her a way out. For the third time, she traced the route he had outlined on the map, committing it to memory. Then, returning the duffel to its original state, she zipped it up and stowed it back in the fuse box.
She wasn’t going anywhere without him. Mounting the stairs, she reached the penultimate floor without encountering anyone. The corridor was eerily silent. She heard no voices as she approached the vertical ladder up to the floor where Waxman had kept her locked away and where she now assumed they were holding Jack. Moving hand over hand, she ascended, pausing on each rung to listen for voices or footfalls on the bare concrete. Nothing. But she knew only too well how Jack had been ambushed in the hallway, so she proceeded with extreme caution. She was so focused on what might be waiting above her that she was taken completely by surprise when someone grabbed her legs from below, ripping her from her perch.
* * *
REGGIE HERR strapped Jack to a gurney.
“I’ve learned over the years the human capacity to feel is as difficult to kill as a cockroach or a tick,” Waxman said as he bent over Jack.
Reggie guided the gurney toward the open cell door. They crossed the threshold, into the corridor.
Waxman continued, “But imagine that ungainly mess of feelings burned out of you. Imagine what you would be like then. The purity of purpose to which you could dedicate yourself, like a monk or a guru, cleansed, ennobled, at last able to reach for perfection.
