Azrael (10 page)

She was going to lose everything, in spite of her power. Because of it. She was going to lose her children. How comforting
were
a mother’s arms? If the woman who had become Petra Hudson was the mother in question.

It had been a simple adventure when it started. Training, then a possibly dangerous assignment overseas in the service of her country. The Motherland.

Cronus had sent her out; Cronus now claimed her. The children who had been killed in this town, the town she dominated, the children of her employees, had been killed as a message to her, with no more concern for them than for a sheep killed to have parchment made of its skin.

Those poor parents. She shared their grief; the guilt was hers alone. With the greatest guilt yet to come.

This was not a society where a mother could order her children into her protected home with her, or force bodyguards on them, or restrict whom they saw. Regina and Jimmy were in horrible danger, and she had put them there. Simply by giving birth to them, she had endangered their lives. She had been an agent of Cronus, and Cronus had been the Titan, the father of the Greek gods of Olympus, who had swallowed his children.

There was no way to protect her children except by persuading them that caution was necessary. There was no way to do that without telling them the truth.

And if she told them the truth, she would lose her children as surely as if Borzov, or his successor if Borzov had finally died, had them shot in the back of the head in the cellars of Lubyanka.

For all she knew, the killers were already in place. Her children might hold hands with their killers before her eyes. They might lie naked next to them. Charles was using all his contacts to check into this Allan Trotter and this Hannah Stein, but she needed to know
now.
Hannah Stein was young, but no younger than the girl who was to become Petra Hudson when she went to work for the Chekists. Hannah Stein was under Petra Hudson’s roof at this moment.

Petra looked up for a second, and saw that wasn’t true. From her window, she could see Hannah Stein appear through the columns of the front entrance. Her son’s fiancée cast a guilty look back at the house, and Petra, with an instinct born of a lifetime of deception, pulled her head back from the window. When she looked again, Hannah was disappearing down the drive, walking off to one side, on silent grass instead of crunching gravel.

Petra had to know where she was going. There was no time to dress, no time even to call Charles. She went barefoot through the house and out after Hannah.

Petra never left by the main door at night—she hadn’t known how bright the security lights were. She squinted against them, but she could see no sign of the young woman from Queens.

Petra ran. Too fast, she kept telling herself. Too fast. The idea of this whole performance was to learn something,
something
that would give her the slightest edge, show her some way to hold on to her life and dignity. It wouldn’t do her any good to arrive whistling like a teakettle from lack of breath, warning the very person she wanted to surprise.

But, she told herself, it wouldn’t do any good to let her get away, either.

Petra felt knives in her at the bottom of both sides of her rib cage; her feet kept thudding into the night-wet grass because she couldn’t form her thoughts well enough to make them stop.

Once, she slipped on the wet grass, and on the way down she almost said “Thank God” at the thought of an opportunity to stop, but the cold and wet hit her face and body like a slap, shocking her back into the knowledge of what was at stake. She got up and ran again.

Another two hundred yards, she could see the gate, and the road beyond. Hannah was framed between pillars. She had just grabbed the door handle of a big, dark car that was idling in the road. Petra saw the girl open the door and get inside.

Petra kept running. She’d get the license number, at least.
Something.
She thought she would die before she made it to the road, and then she knew it, but she kept on. She got to the gate just in time to see the car disappear. She couldn’t read the license number.

Petra stood there, grabbing the white stone of the pillar, retching, sobbing. Knowing that she was a failure, and that she was going to lose everything.

“M
ADE IT!” HANNAH SAID
as she pulled the car door closed. “Did anybody see you?”

Hannah smiled. “I don’t think so. Nobody said anything, and I think they would have if they’d seen me.”

“Makes sense to me. Just making sure.”

The smile widened. “Thank you for doing this,” she said. “All of it. Especially for helping me keep it all a secret. I know it’s silly, but it’s important to me.”

“I understand.”

“I thought I’d have a heart attack, though, crossing the grounds under those lights. I don’t think it gets that bright in the daytime. There’s a lot of electronic security stuff—Jimmy’s mother just had it put in a little while ago—but it’s all designed to keep people from getting in.” She laughed, something between a snort and a giggle.

The driver found it charming. She was a lovely girl.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked.

“I was just thinking it’s a good thing Mrs. Hudson doesn’t go in for Dobermans.” She said “Mrs. Hudson” as if she liked the sound of it. “I’m not sure we can keep doing this at night, though. I don’t know if this was such a good idea.”

“When else?” her companion asked reasonably. “You’re with your fiancée all day, aren’t you?”

“That’s true. He even wants to come shopping with me these days.”

“There you go. You just can’t
do
something like this, you know. You have to prepare. We need some time to work together.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s just that I think it might have been a mistake to try to do it this way. Not only with Jimmy. My parents would kill me if they knew I was doing this.”

“I hope you’re not getting cold feet,” the driver said. He had never been more sincere.

“No, of course I’m not getting—hey, we’re downtown, right? I recognize the statue. The guy on the horse in the middle of the fountain.”

“That’s General Sherman.”

“We ate at a restaurant near here tonight.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“The food was all right. Jimmy and my future sister-in-law’s boyfriend put on territorial displays. But where are we going? I thought it was in the other direction entirely.”

“One brief stop first. I have other people depending on me, too, you know.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I’m just a little jumpy. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff seems so incongruous.”

“Please, don’t trouble yourself. As I said before, I understand. Besides, it will all be over soon.”

Hannah brightened. “That’s good news. How soon?”

The car rolled up to the curb and stopped. Roger smiled at her. “Before you know it,” he said, and reached for her neck.

R
EGINA LOOKED AT A
disk of dim light on the ceiling and said, “I didn’t need this.”

Trotter kissed her on the belly, sternum, throat. “I did.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” she said. She managed to make it sound like a command instead of a plea, but that didn’t change the fear.

“I’m not, Bash,” Trotter protested. “I wouldn’t.”

She kept looking at the ceiling. If she looked at the man whose bed she had climbed into so willingly an hour or so ago, she would have burst into tears.

“You would. You’re doing it now.”

“No, I’m not.” The beginnings of a laugh were in his voice.

“You called me Bash.’

Now he did laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Really. It’s just that since we met in New York I’ve been trying to figure you out, and it turns out your father had already done it for me.”

“Leave my father out of this. You can’t use my father against me.”

“What are you talking about, ‘against’? I’m just saying that he was
perceptive
when it came to his children. You’re one of the most visible young women in America, what with your job and your family and your money; you do a highly visible job very well, a job you like. Don’t you?”

“You’re doing the analysis,” she said, “Dr. Trotter.”

“You only need a doctor if there’s something wrong with you. But I’ll go on. You
love
your work. You actually believe in the stuff most journalists only give lip service to. You know what it takes to be a good editor, and you do it,
but you’re bashful.
You have maybe twenty percent of the self-confidence you deserve to have.”

“That’s enough,” she said.

“Not quite. Why did you come home with me?”

“You were driving.”

“That’s not an answer. I know why I brought you here. Why did you get out of the car? Why did you come upstairs? Why are you naked in my arms right now? Hard as a statue at the moment, but naked in my arms all the same. I hope you’re not going to claim I raped you.”

Why had she come here? Why had she let it all happen?

With herself she could be honest. It was because she had wanted this since she’d first seen him. He was big, and handsome enough, but more important, he was intelligent and confident. And dangerous and mysterious; any woman who denied the attraction of danger and mystery was lying.

And he seemed attracted to her. From the very first. Regina had never thought of herself as the kind of woman who would be attractive to that sort of man. Regina had had two love affairs in her life, a number so low compared with some of the other girls at school, she refused to speak about it at all, even with her closest friends. They probably thought she was a virgin. One was with the son of the president of a lumber company, who saw their relationship like some kind of arranged marriage of the Renaissance, with the son of the King of Pulp Production marrying the daughter of the Queen of Newsprint—a sort of Ferdinand and Isabella of the paper world. The other had been with a poor but honest boy from Buffalo who (and Regina would always love him, at least for this) had asked her out without knowing what Hudsons she belonged to. It was wonderful until he found out. Then he spent two thirds of the time intimidated to the point of impotence at the thought of her wealth and his unworthiness to share it, and one third of the time acting like a hunter who has brought down a record trophy. He seemed almost relieved when Regina had called it off.

She had dated other men, but they had all been variations on a theme, and Regina had made her retreat each time before things got as far as the bedroom.

The worst of it was, she
liked sex,
and she suspected she had a natural flair for it. But self-respect was more important, and if who and what she was meant that she had a choice among being seen as a commodity with an incidental vagina, being held in something like awe, or resorting to cheap anonymous pickups, she could do without.

But it got difficult. She got lonely and she got horny, and whatever there was to say about Trotter, one thing she was sure of was that he couldn’t be placed in one of the three categories.

He kept her guessing; he drove her crazy. She wanted nothing to do with him. But she also started taking the pill again. She stayed angry with him for a week, but when he said he wanted her to come to his apartment to talk, she had gone willingly.

They’d talked. He liked her brother, in spite of his naive politics. He liked Hannah Stein.

Regina had said she liked her, too, Jimmy needed someone like her.

Trotter hadn’t asked her what she needed, he just gave it to her. He took her in his arms and kissed her gently, then hard. Regina seemed to remember that hers had been the first tongue to cross the frontier. Then she was in the bedroom, naked against him, coming, more than once, almost before she knew what was happening.

A thought—something about loving this man—flashed across her disarranged mind just before sanity set in, and she realized this man was some kind of undercover agent. Deception was his livelihood, his way of life. Convincing a woman he wanted her, and “proving” it, were probably all part of a day’s work. She wondered how she could have been stupid enough to hide that from herself all this time. She stared at the circle of light on the ceiling and wished she were dead.

“I’m leaving now,” she said, and started to get up.

One strong hand on her shoulder forced her back to the mattress. “Not yet,” Trotter said. Regina felt a small tickle of fear.

It must have shown on her face, because Trotter said, “Don’t be afraid. You can go in ten seconds. You can go now.” He let go of her shoulder. “I’ll drive you home, if you trust me. Just answer my question or tell me positively you won’t.”

She looked at his eyes, close to hers because of his myopia. They were eyes that had seen too much and had given up everything but hope.

No actor could put that much in his eyes, no matter how practiced at deception. Could he?

“If I trust you,” she whispered. Part of her brain called the rest fool; if she didn’t get up, dress, walk out the door, and call this whole business off this second, she’d have only herself to blame for anything that happened after.

“Don’t hurt me, Allan,” she said. This time, it
was
a plea, and she didn’t care.

“I won’t,” he told her. “I wouldn’t.” His hands were gentle.

There was a noise on the stairs. Trotter froze. Regina felt the tension in him and froze, too.

“What’s the matter?” she whispered.

“There shouldn’t be anyone out there. There’s only this apartment over the garage, and the people I rent from are away for a couple of days.”

Regina watched, fascinated, as Trotter went into action. He was out of bed and into his pants in seconds. There had been no sound; he hadn’t even made the bedsprings creak or the change in his pockets jingle. He went silently to the door, listened at the crack as he eased off the lock and the chain bolt, then threw the door open and plunged into the stairway. She heard his voice yell, “Call the police!” then the slamming of the outside door.

Call the police and tell them what? Regina would have to look at whatever it was in the hall, and quickly, but she was naked and didn’t want to be. As she stood up, she pulled the bedspread free and wrapped it around herself. Shaking under the rough cotton, she went to look at the stairs.