Beloved enemy, p.33
Beloved Enemy, page 33
Iraj Namazi, the Syrian, was dead. Into Jack’s mind came something that Gourdjiev had said to him: “Words mean nothing, an actor’s lines.”
Turning away, Jack made his stumbling way out of the wreckage and into the late-day sunshine, where already a crowd had gathered. Sirens were wailing, and someone put their arm around him to keep him from falling.
* * *
When he found her, she was lying in the snow where she had fallen. At some point she had moved her arms and legs, making a snow angel.
Jack hunkered down next to her. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Numbs the pain.”
“Annika, I’m sorry.”
“Is he dead?”
He knew she meant the Syrian. “I made sure of it.”
“Thank Christ.” She closed her eyes for a moment.
He waited for her to speak.
At length, she said, “I thought I could handle him. As it turned out, I couldn’t.”
“You know, your grandfather made me promise to look after you.”
Her eyes grew big. “When?”
“In the hospital, before we left Moscow.” His gaze seemed to penetrate through her. “He was dying, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. He hadn’t long to live.”
“So he sacrificed himself.”
“It was the endgame he always envisioned.” A lone tear leaked out of the corner of her eye. “Only I wasn’t strong enough.”
“So he enlisted me.”
“And yet—”
“You pushed me away,” Jack said, “so violently I didn’t know what to think, say, or do. It seemed you had become my enemy. You made it impossible to keep my promise.”
“And yet you’re here with me now.”
“Yes.”
“You never lost faith.”
“I suppose that’s true. Deep down.”
When she made no comment, he said, “Don’t you want to get up?”
“Not now,” she said in a small voice. “Not yet.”
Jack looked at the snow angel she had made. Perhaps, he thought, she was remembering the one good moment of her childhood.
After a time, he said, “I had to choose between your husband and your brother. He was about to shoot Radomil. I tried to save at least one of them, but I was a second too late.”
“I know.”
“Now they’re both gone. Annika, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Rolan’s life ended when he was hurt. He emerged from that a changed man. Better he should have died in the explosion.”
“You must have still felt something for him.”
She smiled sadly. “We all harbor dreams. Some of them are impossible dreams. Why do you think that is?”
“It’s one of the things that makes us human, isn’t it?”
She nodded mutely.
“And Radomil.”
“Yes, Radomil. I’ve tried to shed a tear for him, but I can’t. Why is that, do you think?”
Jack said nothing, knowing it was a question she was asking herself.
“Maybe,” she said, after a time, “the tissue binding us was too thin. Maybe it wasn’t there at all.”
She stared up at him for a moment. Then she held out her hand and he took it. Together, they regained their feet.
She placed a hand on his arm. “I feel as if I failed him.”
“Your grandfather.”
“Yes.”
“I imagine he felt he failed you.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“You don’t want to,” Jack said. “But the truth is he failed to protect you from your father. He never could forgive himself for that.”
She smiled again, warmly this time. It was clear she had turned her mind away from Dyadya Gourdjiev and her life with him.
“I did okay in the plane, didn’t I?”
“You did great,” he said. “I was able to get you out of harm’s way. That’s all that mattered.”
“No,” she said. “Without you it wouldn’t have mattered whether I lived or died.” She leaned her head against the crook of his shoulder. “You see? My grandfather finally succeeded in protecting me.”
He put his arms around her. A bout of dizziness threatened to overwhelm him, but this time it was purely emotional. He kissed her—on the forehead, both cheeks, and, finally, on the mouth. Her lips opened under his.
The electrifying, familiar taste of her melted everything inside him, a balm that banished his aches and pains, an affirmation that everything he had been through was worthwhile.
EPILOGUE
May 5
Paris, France / Washington, D.C. / Altindere, Turkey
CARO HAD once read a novel about a man who had been sent to jail because he had hit a girl who had darted out in front of his car. He’d had no chance to stop, and yet, as an object lesson, he had been convicted and incarcerated in a hard-time prison. During her time in Paris, on the run from Iraj Namazi and his people, Caro had read and reread the description of his life there, recognizing his feelings of fear and despair, reconfirming to herself that not all prisons had high walls, razor wire, and steel bars.
Now, as she sat on a bench in the Place des Vosges, near the beating heart of old Paris, she tilted her head up to the early afternoon sky, realizing that, from the time she had fled Namazi’s compound until this moment, she hadn’t truly felt pleasure from the sun on her face.
The wind brushed her lips, ruffled her hair, and she bit into a buttery pain au chocolat with all the joy of a child on Christmas morning.
Iraj Namazi, the Syrian, was dead, his entire network destabilized and rapidly unraveling, as his lieutenants fought each other like hyenas over a corpse.
She had been living under his curse for so long she knew it would take some time for her to fully comprehend the width and depth of her freedom. She could go anywhere, do anything she chose. Freedom was such a new concept for her, for the time being it took her breath away.
She finished her pastry and, brushing the crumbs and bits of chocolate off her lap, decided what she wanted now was a large steaming cup of café au lait.
Rising, she crossed the magnificent square, past the fountains, the children playing, watched over by knots of young mothers, gossiping with one another. There was a sudden burst of babies in Paris, as if life were returning to a field that had lain fallow for years, patiently waiting for this moment.
As Caro walked, she breathed in the scents of the city she had grown to love and knew that, at least for the foreseeable future, she would stay here. As she passed the last bench before the swinging iron gate leading out of the square, a young man glanced up, looked at her, and smiled. He had a handsome, open face, with wide-apart eyes that regarded her inquisitively.
He was finishing a pain au chocolat as well, and she paused, wondering whether he, too, wanted a café au lait.
* * *
Toward dawn, Jonatha, exhausted from staying up all night checking and rechecking her proprietary intelligence, fell into a shallow sleep, slumped over in a chair at her kitchen table. Slowly, her mind sank into a dream-reality in which she had never met and, therefore, never fallen in love with Lale. She stood by the edge of a lake. Somehow, in the manner of dream logic, she knew the lake was very deep. Far out, she saw a ripple, repeating.
In her hands was a fishing rod. She lifted her arm up and back, casting the line far out into that part of the lake where she had observed the ripple. For some time nothing happened. Then, she felt the tug on the line, and she lifted the rod. The tugging grew in intensity as the hook was taken, and she reeled in the line a little bit at a time.
But at some point, the resistance on the other end of the line began to alarm her, and she could no longer reel in the line. The rod was bent almost double. And, now, with a terrible strength, whatever creature was on the other end began to drag her into the lake.
The water rose above her ankles, then to her thighs. When it reached her waist, she began to panic. She tried to throw the rod away, to free herself, but somehow she was unable to let go, as if it were she who had been hooked.
She was into the lake to the level of her breasts when she grabbed the line and, drawing it to her, began to gnaw on it with her teeth. Every second brought another slip, as she was dragged farther and farther into the lake by the unknown creature, which now seemed monstrously huge to her.
A jerk, more powerful than the others, almost wrenched her off her feet, and she dug in her heels with a desperate strength she didn’t know she had. Then she bit through the line and the rod snapped back to its normal shape. The line whipped away from her, vanishing beneath the surface. But now something dark and menacing seemed to coalesce in the deepest part of the lake, rising up, coming toward her …
And she woke with a gasp and a shout that brought Lale at a run.
“What is it?” She stood naked, hands on hips, her dusky skin burnished in dawn’s rosy light. “What happened?”
“I dreamed I never met you. I dreamed I never loved you.” She turned. “Lale, there’s so much I can’t tell you.”
“Your job, I know.” Lale perched on the edge of a chair. “But I wonder what it’s doing to you, what it’s turning you into.”
She held out her hand, aware that it was trembling slightly. “It’s you I love, Lale. Only you.”
Lale rose and began to walk away. Jonatha felt a terrible sadness grip her, and a terror of the dream lake whose inhabitant wanted to draw her into it, drowning her.
At the doorway to their bedroom, Lale turned, looked at Jonatha, and said, “I know.”
Jonatha watched her disappear into the shadows of the bedroom, a tightness in her throat. But her anxiety was not simply for her relationship with Lale.
She punched in a number on her mobile and waited, a hole widening in the pit of her stomach, until her call was answered.
“Thank God you’re okay.”
On the other end, Nona laughed. “Of course I’m okay. All in a day’s work.”
“Almost being burned to a crisp is definitely not in a day’s work. I owe you—big time.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Nona said. “I couldn’t find out who was killed at the house, nor could I discover a thing about Longformz, Ltd.”
“But you did scrape up something of note. My contacts tell me that SouthEast Fashion is a legit business in Bangkok that Leroy Connaston used as a drop. He must have sent that package to Longformz, perhaps on the day he died.”
“But we don’t know what was in the package or who was murdered at the Longformz address.”
“Just a matter of time now,” Jonatha said. “The fact of the fire means we’re getting close.”
“Speaking of that fire, I’ve been working with the local fire department. We’ve confirmed that the fire at Longformz was deliberately set. Traces of butane and bits of foam, which would spread the fire in a heartbeat, were found in the rubble. I’m following up with the arson squad.”
“So you’re still willing to help me?”
Nona laughed again and said in her best street accent, “Sistahs gotsta stick togethah.”
* * *
“So you’re Jack McClure.”
Dr. Karalian studied Jack’s face as if he were a student trying to work out the complex formula chalked onto a blackboard. Then he pushed back his chair and crossed to the window of his office, staring out at the steep cliffs of Melá mountain and the ancient ruins carved into them.
“Tell me, Mr. McClure, have you ever been to the Sümela Monastery?”
“This is my first visit to the national park,” Jack said, “and I came directly here.”
“Pity.” Karalian stood with his hands behind his back. “It’s a remarkable place, not only historically. It’s a power spot. Do you believe there are places in the world that radiate great power?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’ve never encountered one.”
“Then you must go up the mountainside and stand inside Sümela.”
Jack said nothing, waiting.
“I’ve been here over thirty years,” Karalian said. “Apart from the renewed influx of tourists and Greek Orthodox clergy, the place is much the same as I imagine it’s always been.
“It was founded in 386 AD, but it wasn’t until nearly a thousand years later that it gained its present size and shape. Since then, the monastery has been overrun many times; the last time was in 1916 by the Russian Empire. The monks of Sümela were entrusted with a sacred icon, which they buried for safekeeping under the vaults of St. Barbara Chapel. It was smuggled out in 1930 by an intrepid monk. I’ve never seen it, but I wish I had.”
Karalian turned from his contemplation of the past. Jack, expecting to see his eyes glazed over with the memories, was startled to see the doctor’s keen, piercing gaze leveled at him.
“How do I know you’re Jack McClure? These days, anyone can claim virtually any identity.”
“I could show you my passport.”
“It could be forged, as can any other piece of ID you might have on your person.”
Jack spread his hands helplessly. “I am who I say I am.”
Karalian grunted. “Tell me, why did you come here?”
Jack inclined his head toward the chessboard. “You were Gourdjiev’s playing opponent, as well as his friend.”
“There weren’t too many things he was passionate about.”
“Chess was one of them.”
Karalian continued to study Jack. “So you came on a hunch.”
“My mind told me that you would be the one person Gourdjiev would trust, that this place would be the one he deemed safest.”
“Illyusha.” Karalian shook his head. “He said you’d come.” The doctor walked over to his desk and sat down. “He left something for you.” His eyes did not waver. “If you are Jack McClure.”
“How shall I prove it? A DNA test?”
Karalian ignored him. “Give me the number.”
“Come again?”
“There is a number—a code, I suppose Illyusha would call it—you must give me. Without it, I cannot hand over the envelope.”
Jack had no idea what he was talking about. Gourdjiev—or Illyusha, as Karalian called him—had never given Jack a number. Jack was certain of this. Or was he? Unbidden, from the depths of his subconscious returned a portion of the last conversation he had had with Illyusha.
“This is the depth of my trust in you, Jack,” Gourdjiev had confided. “Words—words mean nothing, an actor’s lines. I want you to remember that. No matter what may occur, you must remember that you love each other, that that love will never change, that it is your true strength, your only salvation.
“You don’t understand this now, but I have faith that one day you will.”
Perhaps, Jack thought, this was the day.
Making a rapid calculation, he said, “Twelve, fifteen, twenty-two, five.”
L-O-V-E.
Dr. Karalian’s face broke out into a smile. From a locked drawer he drew out an envelope sealed with red wax, which he handed over.
“You must be a very special man, Mr. McClure.”
Jack held the envelope in both hands, as if it weighed far more than it actually did. “Why do you say that?”
Karalian nodded toward the envelope. “Illyusha trusted you absolutely.”
“I didn’t believe him when he told me that.”
“And yet”—Karalian spread his hands—“here is the proof.”
“‘Words mean nothing—an actor’s lines.’”
Karalian leaned forward. “I beg your pardon?”
Jack shook his head. “Nothing.” He looked over at the chessboard. “May I?”
Karalian lifted an arm. “Be my guest.”
As Jack stepped over to the chessboard, Karalian rose and followed him.
“Do you play chess, Mr. McClure?”
“Some. I’ve read the books of the grand masters.”
Dr. Karalian produced an indulgent smile. “Not the same, I’m afraid.”
“Whose turn is it?”
“I play against myself now. I like to imagine Illyusha to be the black, however.”
Thirty seconds after surveying the board, Jack moved the black king’s knight.
“Have you suckered me?” Karalian said as he moved his knight.
They played six more moves until Jack moved his queen.
“Checkmate,” he said, and Karalian laughed like a delighted child.
* * *
Annika was waiting for him outside. She sat in the car’s passenger seat, studiously ignoring the building where her husband had been incarcerated for so long, where he had died and been born again as someone both less and more than he had been, a terrifying being without a soul.
“Was it there?” she asked when Jack slid behind the wheel.
When he nodded, she said, “So it’s real—it isn’t a hoax. My God.”
He put the car in gear and drove off.
* * *
Jack could smell the eons of history the moment he stepped into the Sümela Monastery, could see it, as well, briefly held in the bright flashes of sunlight that filtered in through the roofless outer chambers.
He and Annika ignored the troupes of tourists, their respective leaders holding up small flags as if they were the standard bearers of the various armies that had conquered Sümela, only to be themselves conquered. In the end, only Sümela survived, mostly intact and now in the process of being restored to its thirteenth-century glory.
Taking her by the hand, he threaded their way through the hordes. He did not stop until they were in the St. Barbara Chapel. Its hand-hewn stone walls were covered with religious paintings of saints, crosses, and God on high, clutching what appeared to be the tablets of the Ten Commandments.
The doorway down to the vault had nothing to commend it, being small, of plain wood, cracked in places. It was almost invisible, hidden in deep shadows, and, therefore, bypassed by the tour guides and ignored by singleton tourists. The moment they slipped through, he was greeted by a waft of frigid air, sharply redolent of minerals, stone that had never been warmed by the sun. He switched on the flashlight Karalian had given him. He had asked for it after reading the letter Illyusha Gourdjiev had left for him.
