The nemesis manifesto, p.28
The Nemesis Manifesto, page 28
Butler sipped his coffee, watched a vagabond who looked like he hadn’t slept since puberty enter and order a draft beer, then pull up a chair in the insomniac section. “What we really want to know is whether Voron was under General Boyko’s control.”
“Like Marina.” Brenda dipped a French fry into a small pool of ketchup, then chewed on it meditatively. “A Nemesis action.”
“Obersalzberg. In Bavaria.” Butler’s thoughts had wandered back to Evan. “Spanish names, Russian connections of some sort … but could Nemesis be German in origin? Maybe Boyko is funding them through the GRU.”
“That makes sense.”
“And both Voron and Marina had a necklace with the double raven pendant.”
Brenda washed down a bite of steak with some Badoit. She was already starting to feel, if not normal, at last halfway human again. “So the women are connected.”
Butler took out the necklace and pendant Voron had traded for the 10mm longslide, which Brenda had turned over to him. “From the same cadre, maybe. This is certainly identical to the description Evan gave me of the pendant Marina was wearing.” He gestured. “Let’s see the texts Dave Gilly was receiving from this Alice.”
Brenda turned on Gilly’s mobile, then brought up the Messaging app. There were a number of texts from Alice, starting last September, along with a single name for each date: Lily, Rose, Tulip, Violet, Marina. The last one was Voron, three days ago. After each name was a figure, ranging from 500 for Rose to 5,000 for Voron.
“Payments,” Brenda said. “So now we have a connection between Alice, Marina, and Voron.” She frowned. “But how do we find out who Alice is? Do we have enough here to follow the money back?”
“Indeed we do.”
At last a smile out of Brenda. “Bingo!”
Butler nodded toward Brenda’s food. “Now finish your food.”
Brenda’s smile blossomed like a lotus in moonlight. “Every last bite.”
* * *
Riley Rivers’s mind was running in overdrive. He felt as if he’d had three too many triple espressos. He hadn’t been a jackal among thieves for decades without developing a sixth sense for the winds of change. He had begun to sniff that change several days ago, in Brady Thompson’s increasing belligerence. At first, he had put it down to Thompson taking his cue from the president himself who, increasingly, was going off message in his public speaking engagements, ad-libbing in whichever direction his mind wished to take him at that particular moment. So much so that there had been rumors in the back corridors of the White House, among its staff, that POTUS had had a series of tiny strokes the cumulative effects of which were beginning to show in his increasingly erratic behavior.
When he had reported this to his SVR controller, he was told in no uncertain terms not to report such rumors, no matter how pervasive they might become. In fact, he was to do everything in his power to protect the president’s standing. In between these words, Rivers, whose snout had developed the same level of expertise as a truffle-hunter, could detect the delight at the idea that POTUS might be even more vulnerable to kompromat than the Russian Sovereign had believed when he began to target him some years ago. A compromised POTUS had been the dream and the goal of the Sovereign’s top priority initiative for six years now. The long con, in its endgame phase, had become the short con.
And then there was the matter of the change in Isobel’s behavior, the urgency in her voice, in everything she did now. Most especially her insistence on intel concerning Benjamin Butler’s defamers. What was going on that he didn’t know about? The questions without answers were driving him crazy.
These questions Rivers continued to ponder darkly and deeply as he stepped to the curb in front of the Foggy Bottom building that housed his Office of Official Communications. He waited, surprised that Isobel’s Land Cruiser wasn’t already there, engine purring like a Bengal tiger, ready to be unleashed. And then, up ahead in a break in the early morning traffic, he saw the red SUV. He stepped off the curb so the driver could easily see him and, sure enough, the huge vehicle swerved to the right. Coming right at him.
But instead of slowing down it sped up. It took several seconds for Rivers to recognize this anomaly. Disbelief paralyzed him. Seconds ticked by before his brain came out of its shocked stasis. By then the SUV was almost upon him. He waved stupidly; didn’t the driver see him, recognize him? And only then did it dawn on him that the SUV was accelerating toward him because the driver recognized him; the driver meant to do him harm.
Like a battering ram, the SUV bore down on him, and even as he stumbled backward, it jumped the curb, the nearside front fender clipping him, tossing him backward as if he was as light as a feather. He lay on the sidewalk, stunned and numb. Then the pain set in—a sharp stabbing that intensified with each ragged breath he took, making him weep as he cried out.
For a long time nothing happened, and, afterward, what he remembered most vividly was the passersby. They either ignored him or gawked before hurrying on to their very important appointments.
39
Evan and Limas were stopped at the airport, taken out of line, detained in a windowless room the approximate size of a broom closet. Apart from a metal table bolted to the polished concrete floor, two chairs on one side, a single chair on the other, there were no furnishings. The room smelled of old socks and fear.
A Georgian military official of indeterminate rank paged through their false passports with hands as large as paddles. He wore tight pants, had a nose like a mushroom and eyes like a pig. He stank of boiled cabbage and seemed not to have either shaved or bathed in some days. He questioned them in somnolent fashion for perhaps an hour, then abruptly left, sweeping their passports off the table and taking them with him.
For the next hour, nothing happened. Then the door was unlocked and a very different sort of man stepped smartly in. He wore a suit and tie. The scent of lemons and sage wafted in their direction, a welcome corrective. This man, younger than the hulk who had already questioned them, was the polar opposite. He smiled thinly, offered his hand and a brief but sincere apology. He did not offer his name and Evan didn’t ask.
“In three hours a high-ranking member of the GRU will be arriving from Moscow. I don’t know what the two of you have done to warrant such attention from the Russians and, frankly, I don’t care. Whatever you’ve done or are suspected to have done is of less importance to me than my abiding hatred of Russians.” He handed Evan and Limas their passports. “Your plane has been cleared for immediate takeoff. Two of my men are waiting outside to escort you directly onto it.”
Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred lari, Evan thought, as they left the stifling interrogation room. The diplomat—for Evan concluded that was what he must be—said not one more word, and they did not see him again, until, having boarded Butler’s jet, Evan noticed him watching the plane from the departures lounge window. He did not turn away until the jet had lifted off.
* * *
She picks her way through ruins all too familiar to her—as if she is coming home. These ruins are unique in that they are people rather than buildings. People Evan knew, ones she had killed and those who had been killed because of their association with her. Ruins because they appear to her as they had in the moments after their deaths—maimed, incomplete, sometimes barely human. They speak. They speak all at once, in so many languages she can’t separate one from the other.
When she moves past the ruins she had made, she comes, inevitably, to the red-brick monstrosity …
* * *
And started awake with the single caw of ravens echoing in her head.
In the tiny toilet, she slapped tepid water on her face until she was certain she was free of the dreamworld spiderweb that seemed to ensnare her every night since she had first seen the image of the red-brick mansion. She touched the sterile pad over the wound in her cheek, found the swelling greatly reduced. Then she swallowed another antibiotic capsule, washed it down with a mouthful of filtered water.
Back in her seat, she first determined that Limas was sound asleep before taking up the mobile Butler had given her and dialing an overseas number she had memorized some years ago.
She heard the hollowness of the line, the clicks and buzzes as the call was filtered through a number of electronic screens and filter gates.
“Yes?” an electronic voice sounded in her ear.
Evan spoke the three-word parole she had been given.
“Moment,” the same simulacrum enunciated.
True to its word, a moment later, a real-life human voice came on the line. A familiar female voice. “Who is speaking, please?”
“Evan Ryder.” Of course she knew who was speaking; Evan had been given a parole specific to her.
“I have intel for you.”
“Who is speaking, please?”
“I always told you you were an amusing woman.”
“How are you, Alli?”
“More to the point, how are you?” Warmth flowed from Alli Carson, through the ether, from Interpol HQ in Paris.
“Difficult to say, at the moment.”
“I bet.” A pause. “Charles Isaacs. We sent him to DC.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“Who killed him?” Alli was not one to waste time on sentimentality.
“A bomb-maker named Voron.”
“Voron was known to us.”
“She’s dead, as well.”
“Did you kill her?”
“I wasn’t there. Back to Charles—he’s why I called.”
Alli sighed. “He was sent against my recommendation, I might add. And now what I was afraid of has happened.”
“I think it’s time we spoke directly to each other.”
Another pause. “I’ve got to get clearance, Evan. I’ll call you back within the hour.”
Evan liked Alli, but that wasn’t necessary. What was necessary was that she trusted Alli, whose intel was always right on the money. Still, there was a brittleness between them. Alli hadn’t approved of Evan’s relationship with Lyudmila.
“You’re on a secured mobile,” Alli said now. “The number is blocked. Please give it to me.”
Evan did.
“I’ll be in touch,” Alli said.
“Wait, what was Charles Isaacs supposed to—?”
But Alli had already disconnected.
* * *
“Two broken ribs” … “Contusions … Lucky no organ involvement” … “Make and model of the SUV, check. What about a description of the driver … the model year, the plate number?” Are you fucking kidding me? Rivers thought as the drugs being pumped into his arm began their undertow. Nurses, doctors, cops, all wanting a piece of him. Swirling down. Who was the Good Samaritan who called emergency services, while everyone else kept on going because their lives were so very important … And lastly: Who did this to me? Who wants me dead?
Later, awake at last, he stared at the hospital room. It was so bright and white, like the snow globe in his bedroom when he was a child. His only company were machines beeping and ticking by his bedside like grandfather clocks gone berserk. Needles in his arm, taped against his skin. Liquid in … shifting uncomfortably … liquid out. White gum-sole shoes whispering past his open door, hushed voices rising and falling like the Chesapeake tide, a half-seen elderly gent lying on a gurney parked against the far wall of the hallway, immobile. Alive or dead? Slippery consciousness, eeling its way in and out. At one point, it occurred to him that no one would come to see him. He had no friends—only a slush fund of contacts for whom he was a machine that dispensed favor for favor, and enemies, all of whom had better things to do. Except the one who had tried to kill him. And all at once his pulse began to race. He could feel his heart pounding against his damaged rib cage, painful even through the sludge of drugs in his veins.
What if that someone came here to his room while he was helpless to finish the job? Into his mind flashed the iconic scene from The Godfather, where Vito Corleone is lying helpless in a hospital bed, protected only by his son Michael and the terrified Enzo, the baker’s son-in-law. The Don was lucky to have Michael and not Sonny there; Michael had the foresight to ask a nurse to help him move his father in his bed from one room to another to hide him from the would-be assassin.
Rivers had no such son, nor anyone else, for that matter, to stand vigil or to move him, if there was, in fact, an assassin coming for him. And that led him to the chilling thought that it might have been Isobel who had ordered his death. Wasn’t the Land Cruiser the exact color as hers? But why would she do such a thing? He still hadn’t delivered the material on Benjamin Butler she had ordered him to research. Had she become impatient? Or, somehow worse still, had someone above her given the kill order? The memory of Yana Bardina’s funeral to which Isobel had very deliberately taken him as a warning was still a fresh wound in his memory. Wherever the truth lay, the fact was that he’d never felt more alone.
And then, with a clickety-clack of expensive high heel pumps, that self-same Isobel entered his room.
40
“I suppose it could have been worse,” Dr. Selsby said, “considering that over the past seventy-two hours you seem to have tussled with a series of cement mixers.” Dr. Adam Selsby’s smile had its way with Brenda. He was a robust, confident type, with a shock of blond hair and probing eyes. Because he was cleared by Fed Intel, Brenda didn’t have to hide anything from him, which was a relief.
“All your tests have come back normal,” Dr. Selsby went on, consulting his iPad. “EEG, EKG, MRI, the works.” He looked up into Brenda’s face. “But you’re not out of the woods yet. I prescribe at least ten days complete rest.”
They were in a hospital room on a secure floor. Only intelligence officers in or out. Thinking back to St. Agnes Brenda took that restriction with a palm full of salt.
“Your body’s taken a beating, Brenda. More than it had any right to endure. And that’s not even counting the psychological and emotional stress you’ve been under.” He tucked the iPad under his arm. “Frankly, it’s a wonder you don’t have a concussion. And there’s a distinct likelihood that within the next week or so you’ll begin to experience some or all of the symptoms of PTSD. Another reason I’m ordering bed rest. You notice I said order, not prescribe. I’m absolutely serious about this. Without proper rest you could do yourself more harm than the cement mixers you encountered. Clear?”
“As glass.”
That smile again, like a pod of dolphins bathing her in a particular kind of warmth. “There’s a car and driver waiting for you downstairs.” Pressing two vials into Brenda’s hand, he added, “Vicodin and Ambien. I imagine I don’t have to warn you not to abuse either.” He stuck out his hand, and Brenda took it. It was cool and dry and as firm as his voice. “Go home. Rest. I wish you peace and a long life.”
* * *
Brenda did, in fact, go home. She had no choice in the matter. Butler’s people not only walked her to her door, they went in with her, checked the apartment for, she supposed, electronic surveillance bugs. They poked everywhere.
“Find any spooks?” she said archly, as she saw them out. They made no reply. Apparently humor was in short supply, even the grim kind.
Then they remained in front of her building, in their vehicle, smoking and chatting—about what? her underwear they’d pawed through?—for a full hour after they left her company. Clearly, they had their own orders concerning her enforced sabbatical.
It should have been a pleasure to be back in her own space, but then why was she pacing back and forth in her living room like a caged tiger? At length, she padded into the bathroom, took a long hot shower, reveling in the water sluicing over her, washing away the accumulated layers of sweat, dirt, and grime. She closed her eyes, water steaming her face, the gentle, insistent pressure like the fingers of a masseuse. When, at last, she stepped out, toweled off, she felt pink and scrubbed. But that was her surface. Beneath, the darkness of the last three days continued to swirl, enfolding her in its noxious embrace.
Nevertheless, she forced herself to get into bed, sliding between the sweet-scented sheets. The softness felt good against her skin. But she was still in pain. Turning, she saw the two vials Dr. Selsby had given her. She despised taking drugs of any sort, had been brought up to believe that she could power through any pain or sleeplessness by force of will alone. Now, however, her body hurt so much in so many places, not the least the side of her face where Dave Gilly had struck her with the barrel of the Springfield pistol, that she was sorely tempted to swallow a Vicodin or two. In the end, though, she turned away, lay on her side, and thought of Evan.
Better to think of her than Peter. She had built up a mini-storehouse of knowledge regarding Nemesis and Charles Isaacs and Voron that Evan ought to hear from an eyewitness—namely her—who could relate details no one else could. But try as she might to concentrate on that aspect of the present, her thoughts kept being borne back ceaselessly to Peter. His betrayal was a violation that cut her to the quick. He had reached down into the core of her, ripped a piece out. It was not simply that he had made a fool of her, he had insinuated himself past all her defenses, had made a mockery of all her expertise. Even worse, he had caused her instincts to fail her. Love had blinded her to his perfidy, his true self. Hard as it was to admit, what she also felt was shame—the shame of being raped, which had nothing at all to do with sex and everything to do with power, control, and abuse that didn’t need to be physical. All three of these, she felt in retrospect now she knew the truth about him, Peter had wielded over her.
She wept then, feeling broken, fragile, bereft. Trembling in her bitterness, she cried herself to sleep.
It was still dark when she awoke, the anesthesia of sleep keeping the pain at bay for precisely fifteen seconds, before it inundated her all over again, making her gasp out loud, her fingers clawing the warm sheet beneath her as if it were a living body on whom she could take out her rage and sorrow.
