Angel Eyes (76 page)

Mars stood by the pool. In his absence the ??? had awakened from his sleep, returned to the pool. Or perhaps, in this growing crisis, he had been awakened. Mars stared down at the Hero. "Here," he said. "A present for you." He swung the damaged Toshiba in a flat arc, let go of the cloth handles at the apex. The computer in its case flew into the water. The resultant splash slapped at Mars's shoes and trouser bottoms.

"You see, Odysseus, I don't need it anymore. And do you want to know why? But you must. You can read my mind, yes?'' The murderous look in his eyes intensified. "I don't need the computer because I have the real thing." He gave off a feral grin. "My men found my archenemy, as you so aptly put it. Even as I say this, they are bringing Valeri Denysovich here to me for interrogation. How does that make you feel?"

"Sorry for you," the Hero said.

Mars clenched his jaw. His fists balled into white claws.

"That's right," Odysseus said. "Why fight it, comrade? Why not jump into the gladiator's arena and have it out with me, man to man. That's what you want, isn't it? But then again, it might not be what you think. It might not be man to man, but man to . . . well, what do you think, Volkov? You can't possibly know what I am or what I could do to you in here. So go about your dirty little business on dry land. Go on."

Mars bent over the edge of the pool. "You think you know it all, that you've got all the answers. Well, we'll see just how clever you are now, Odysseus!''

Mars stalked to where Irina was watching him. He reached out in a blur, grabbed a handful of hair, yanked it back so hard that she cried out as she fell to her knees.

"Volkov!"

Mars looked at Lara and Tatiana. "If either of you interferes, I'll kill you." Then he slapped Irina hard across the face.

"Volkov!"

"Comrade Volkov to you, Odysseus."

"Comrade Volkov," Odysseus said. "Stop it."

''Oh, no," Mars said. ''It's gone too far for that.'' He yanked at Irina's hair again, bending her painfully backward. She whimpered. "I'm going to hurt her, Odysseus. I want you to know that in advance, because you're going to be the principal witness."

"She's just a woman, comrade. Leave her out of it."

"But I can't," Mars said reasonably. "She insinuated herself into my game. She got one whiff of it and she was excited beyond control. It was her decision. She agreed to play by my rules the moment she seduced me."

"She had no way of knowing."

"But she did, Odysseus. She seduced me, then she spied on Valeri Denysovich for me. She befriended Natasha Mayakova, and then she betrayed her. Did you know that? Betrayed her just like that. And then she betrayed me. No, she's as cold-blooded as any man I ever met. She accepted the violence, and now she must learn the lesson that violence begets violence. It's only fair, Odysseus. Live by the sword, die by the sword."

"It's revenge, comrade. Revenge, pure and simple."

"No!" Mars fairly shouted it. "I am speaking of justice here, not revenge."

"Your definition, Volkov. It's always your definition." Odysseus made a disgusted sound. "This is your world. It is my fate that I am stuck in a Rome ruled by a Caesar such as you. There is no justice here. We are governed by your whims. And isn't it ironic? Who really seeks to be the living god? Not me, comrade."

"Damn you and your circumlocutions," Mars said. "Who taught you to use language like a weapon?"

"I act only out of self-defense, comrade. Language is the only weapon you allow me."

"No, no," Mars said. "I have given you too much of what you want, Odysseus. I see now that I have been far too lenient with you. I have bent rules for you-even broken one or two, yes. I was like a father indulging his only child, I see that clearly now. And the result is painfully predictable. You are willful, spiteful, spoiled. But now it must end." His head snapped up. "Tatiana, come here."

Tatiana did as he commanded.

Arbat stuck her head out of the water, began to chatter frantically.

"Volkov," Odysseus said warily, "what are you up to?"

"This is the end for you, Odysseus. You will learn to behave in a proper way, to be respectful, to give full and honest answers to the questions put to you."

"Volkov-"

"Shut up!" Mars snapped. He raised the gun, aimed, pulled the trigger all in one motion. Tatiana tumbled silently backward into the pool. Irina screamed. The reverberations of the single shot echoed in the pool room.

Lara watched with wide eyes the corpse in the pool, sinking, then rising, rolling slightly with the lapping of the saltwater against the coping.

Arbat stopped her furious clicking. She swam slowly to Tatiana's corpse, poked at it over and over as if she could bring Tatiana back to life. Then she dived deep to the bottom of the pool.

''You bastard!'' Odysseus said.

''You hate me now, don't you?'' Mars said. ''Why don't you come up here and stop me, then, as a real man would?"

"You're stupid, Volkov," Odysseus said. "Like all would-be gods, your mind is limited to the precepts of power. But I think you'll find that holding on to power is far more treacherous than gaining it."

Mars waggled the gun. ''I don't believe you're in any position to offer me advice. ''His head swung around as he watched Lara walk purposefully across the room.

Odysseus, seeing where she was heading, shouted. "No! Lara, stay away from there!"

A slow smile spread across Mars's face. "I see that there are truly no secrets from you, Odysseus. I was right, in the end, to suspect these two women."

Lara had reached the far side of the room. She took out a set of keys, put one in the lock of a narrow wall cabinet.

"Somehow you worked your magic on them, didn't you? Very impressive. Both Tatiana and Lara were highly skilled KGB agents until they came under your curious spell."

Odysseus heard the past tense, shouted, "Volkov, no! It's enough now!"

"You must learn your lessons, my son," Mars said. "And they are by definition hard lessons. Your spitefulness has made them so."

Mars waited until Lara had opened the cabinet before he shot her twice in the back.

Lara's body was thrown aside as if by an invisible fist. She had been holding on to the top of the cabinet door, and it swung open to reveal the contents of the arsenal: a vertical line of loaded Kalashnikov's ready for any emergency. The well-oiled semiautomatic machine guns gleamed in the low light.

"Ah, God!"

Mars smiled down benevolently at the top of the Hero's bent head. "Good," he said gently. "You are beginning to learn the true parameters of power." He reached out, almost as if he were a prelate about to bless a petitioning acolyte.

"But not quite yet," Mars said. He twined his hand in Irina's hair, jerked her head back once again.

Irina cried out, and Odysseus's head came up. His eyes were a dull black. "What is it you want, Volkov?"

''If you have to ask the question, you still have a ways to go." Mars held Irina down with one massive forearm, pressed the muzzle of his gun into her mouth. "Soon, Odysseus, you'll give me everything I want, won't you?"

"I'll give it to you now," the Hero said dully. "Only don't kill her."

"Oh, I have no intention of killing her, Odysseus. She's far too valuable for that. And, as you will see, I can be a benevolent Caesar. No. I am going to hurt her a little at a time. In between, I'm going to ask you questions, and each time you give me an answer that is incomplete or false, I will hurt her some more. You know, I don't think you can conceive of just how long this process can be drawn out."

"Don't do this!"

"Are you pleading now, Odysseus? Oh, you are a sorry excuse for a man. You're even worse than Valeri Denysovich."

"Is that so?"

Both Mars and the Hero turned at the same instant.

"By Christ," Mars said. "It is you, comrade."

Valeri emerged from the shadows. "I'm sorry it took me so long to get here, Mars Petrovich, but there were many complications to surmount."

Mars looked around. ''Where is Pokov? Where are my men?''

"They couldn't make it, I'm afraid."

Mars let go of Irina, stood up facing Valeri. His face registered shock and confusion. "You're here by yourself? How did you get into this fortress past my guards?"

"There's a way,'' Valeri said. "It's been done often enough.'' He looked around at the carnage. "My God, what have you done to Lara and Tatiana?''

"How do you know them?"

"I know a great deal, comrade," Valeri said. "But I fear it's too late to begin explaining, and anyway, I doubt if you'd understand."

Mars looked from Valeri to the Hero and back again as understanding slowly flooded through him. "What an idiot I've been,'' he said at last. ''Natasha wasn't only bringing Odysseus limited distribution KGB files you stole, she was ferrying White Star intelligence back and forth. The two of you are in this together. Odysseus has been helping you organize White Star."

''Almost right,'' Valeri said. ''You're still the dull-witted oaf, I'm afraid. Don't bother trying. You'll never get it all."

During this exchange Irina had slowly crawled away from the arena the two antagonists had drawn for themselves. She could almost see their enmity crackling like lightning, it was so palpable. Ice-blue and indigo shadows filled the pool room; there was a ghastly sense of blood heat, as exposed as a white bone protruding through purple flesh.

She was sobbing silently. The terror that filled her seemed to leak out her eyes as tears, the pores of her skin as sweat. It racked her like a terrible ague, so that she shook uncontrollably.

Her mind was at once numb and on fire. She could not believe the depths of Mars's depravity. The thought that he had once made her so content, that she had happily contemplated becoming part of his family, made her sick to her stomach.

But there was so much more. As she watched with hollow eyes the harrowing confrontation between these two men who had once meant something to her, she saw how removed she was from the mentality of men. What drove them to such cruelty and violence? She could feel the sickness in their souls permeating the room like an inimical miasma, and she saw, horrified, how she had been infected by their hideously distorted lust for power, control, dominion over others.

She recognized at last how Mars and Valeri, each in his own way, had used her, twisted her around the force of his personality as if forging a blade out of a slab of steel. But she was not made of steel. No matter to them; they had tried, in their infinite masculine arrogance, to make her into steel.

And she saw the truth at last, that there was no difference between Mars and Valeri. In the end it did not matter what each wanted, what each stood for, because the two of them were so intent on getting what they wanted, they made certain that nothing and no one got in their way.

Irina saw them confronting one another, and this new truth said to her, Leave them alone. Do nothing. Let their violence burn itself out naturally. They will kill one another, and that will be the end of it.

Then she saw Mars raise his gun, fire. She saw Valeri stagger back, his right shoulder red with blood. It was too much.

"No!" she screamed.

Irina, weeping, could not understand what was happening inside her. She wanted to do nothing, to sit and watch these two men destroy each other. But she could not.

To her horror, she found herself next to the open arsenal cabinet. Now she was standing, reaching inside. She took down a Kalishnikov. Her finger curled around the trigger, and lowering the muzzle, she walked toward the two men.

Mars was aiming at Valeri. Dimly, she was aware of other figures in the shadows, and she thought with terror of Mars's Border Guards.

KGB. Keep calm.

"Stop it. Mars!" she said as she advanced.

"Shut up!" Mars snapped.

"Keep out of this, Irina," Valeri said.

Mars was about to pull the trigger again. Instead, Irina did.

The sound was deafening. Irina and Mars screamed at almost the same instant. Mars's body was blown forward by the force of the fusillade of bullets, and his, body slid across the floor to come to rest at Valeri's feet.

Tears were streaming down Irina's face. She dropped the Kalishnikov, rubbed the palms of her hands down her thighs. She saw the blood leaking out of Mars's back, and she slipped to her knees, began to gag.

"Odysseus," she whispered softly. "Save me."

The Hero reached up over the edge of the pool, drew her slowly onto the coping, slid her into the pool next to him. Arbat broke from the pool bottom, came to nuzzle her bottle nose against Irina's side.

"Oh, Arbat!" Irina laughed, then immediately began to cry again.

"Are you all right?" Tori said, coming up to where Valeri knelt.

He was holding his shoulder, staring down at Mars. "I don't know," he said. "Something odd has happened. I've thought about this moment for a long time. I thought I would feel elated when it came. But you know, the funny thing is, I don't. I feel deflated, empty." He put his hand briefly on the top of Mars's bloody head. ''Almost as if a part of myself has died.''

"That was a damned stupid way to come in here," Russell said from the other side of him. "That sonuvabitch could have killed you with the first shot."

"It was the only way," Valeri said, wiping the sweat off his face. "If Mars saw you, he would have shot you both without a moment's hesitation. And it was far too risky to attempt to infiltrate this room. One hint of our presence and Mars would have had two precious hostages to defeat us with."

"Bullshit," Russell said. "We would have had time to-"

"You did not know Mars as I did," Valeri said. He took a deep breath. "And, in any case, he did not kill me with the first shot." He looked away from Mars for the first time, up into Russell's face. "He was the finest marksman, you know."

"Talk to me," the Hero said to Irina.

"I feel unclean." She put her head against his shoulder. "Hold me," she whispered, and when she felt his arms around her, said, "Mars was right, violence does beget violence. Everything he said was true. I seduced and I lied, and I loved it. Then, I was in so deep, I betrayed Natasha and Valeri. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know who Mars was when I told him. But it doesn't matter. That's just a rationalization. I should never have betrayed the trust Natasha put in me. She was my friend, and surely I had a hand in her torture. And now this. I've killed someone with my own hands. Now I am truly part of Mars's world."