Beloved Enemy (34 page)

Galina turned a well-ironed page. “Say this for him, your son made an adequate duck blind.”

“If he
was
my son.”

“Well,” Galina said conversationally, “now you’ll never know.”

Legere took his cup in his two hands, tipped some more coffee into his mouth, and swallowed. It tasted like bile, but, then, these days most things did.

“Doubtless,” Legere said, “the Syrian will be coming now.”

“Who can blame him? But he and Annika Dementieva won’t be the only ones coming.”

Legere’s brows knit together. “What do you mean?”

“There are more layers to this than you can imagine.”

“Explain, please.”

Galina directed a smile at her newspaper.

Legere put down the cup with a clatter.

“Careful,” Galina warned.

“You seem inexplicably unconcerned.”

“Unconcerned? Hardly.” Having reached the end, Galina folded the paper in two and set it aside. “On the contrary, I’ve been planning assiduously for this day.”

Legere blinked heavily, like an owl in sunlight. Legere looked nothing like Pyotr, which added to his angst. He was big, his face aggressively mobile with its long, patrician nose and close-set eyes. Once heavily muscled, he had now turned to fat, especially around his middle. His body was still powerful, though not as much as it had been in his prime. Unlike Galina, time had been unkind to him—exceptionally so, by his lights. His body wasn’t the problem, though; his mind was. He was in the early but unmistakable stages of Alzheimer’s.

Ever since he had been diagnosed, Galina’s contempt for him knew no bounds, but, he thought ruefully, perhaps she had always felt this way about him. Then why, he wondered, did she keep coming back to him after all her fucking around in high places? It was a mystery to him, like the many things around him that had become opaque, unrecognizable.

“What about Annika?” he said, struggling to keep his thoughts from squirming away from him.

“What about her?”

Galina’s eyes seemed like miniature suns, burning his face. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t.

“She’s as dangerous as…” He groped for the name he knew so well.

“The Syrian.” Galina’s voice felt like acid thrown in his face. “She’s far more dangerous, Giles. You once knew that.”

He looked away, ashamed despite his resolution not to allow her that victory.

“When the time comes,” Galina said more conversationally, “Annika Dementieva will be dealt with, as well.”

He believed her. He had to believe her, she was all he had left to anchor him to the shifting ground that each moment threatened to swallow him whole. There would come a time, he knew, when he would ask himself the question,
Who am I?
, and not know the answer. That moment terrified him far more than death.

“I can feel them coming,” Giles said, because since the onset of the Alzheimer’s he thought he could feel the advent of future events—of death, really—the way others felt the first raindrops before a storm. The future plucked at him with a plangent tone, causing long-buried emotions to swirl into his consciousness, roiling it like heavy weather.

“How soon?” Galina said, because she had learned to take note of his presentiments, using them to her own advantage.

“Soon. Very soon,” was all he could manage, before his head lowered, chin resting on the bow of his chest, as he fell away into a deep sleep.

*   *   *

Radomil drove a large, late-model Audi sedan the color of oxblood. Jack, sitting beside him as they left Zurich and the rich, reflective light of the lake behind them, was sunk deep in thought. Radomil drove very fast, but also as expertly as a professional.

“I must have some Italian blood in me,” Radomil said, but having failed to garner a smile from Jack, he lapsed back into silence.

In this desultory way, the miles sped by. They stopped to refuel and to grab a bite to eat, then pressed on. Neither of them was in any mood to linger.

“When Annika ordered you to save me that night at the Syrian’s villa,” Jack said at last, “what did she have in mind for me?”

“How d’you know she had anything in mind?” Radomil said. “She loves you.”

“If you continue to treat me like a lovesick suitor, you can pull over and let me out.”

“What, here, in the middle of nowhere?”

“At least here I can see where I am,” Jack said, “and where I have to get to.”

Radomil grunted. “You know, the thing of it is, even though she’s my half-sister, I’m not of Gourdjiev’s blood. I’m only part of this because she needs me.”

Jack turned to him, and when he spoke his voice was sharper than he had intended. “Needs you for what, exactly?”

Radomil’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror before returning to the road ahead. “Ah, well, I suppose you could say I run interference for her.”

“In other words, you’re the djinn who lights the way.”

Radomil’s black brows knit together. “I beg your pardon?”

“There’s a legend concerning an Arabian prince. He was young, this prince, and his father had been murdered—poisoned, I believe, an excruciating death—by his trusted vizier, who, it turned out, was in the pay of the family’s enemies.

“Given the circumstances, the prince wasn’t inclined to name a new vizier from within his father’s court. Instead, against his advisors’ wishes, he went outside the walls of the palace, into the worst part of the city. Hiding out there for three weeks, he learned the meaning of poverty, thirst, hunger, pain, and humiliation, while witnessing all manner of violence and mayhem.

“At the end of this instructive period, he chose the most violent and unrestrained of the villains he had encountered. Bringing this man back to the palace, he offered him an end to his own poverty, thirst, hunger, pain, and humiliation if he followed the prince’s orders.

“The villain said, ‘What makes you think you can trust me?’

“‘I am going to ask you to do what you like best, in perfect safety. Furthermore, I will reward you for it.’

“‘And why,’ the villain said, ‘did you choose me?’

“‘You are not blood of my blood,’ the prince replied. ‘You know no one inside the palace walls. Therefore my will becomes your will, pure and unbiased. And when you are finished, you will teach me both to defend myself and to kill those who wish me harm. I would not have you do it all yourself.’

“This pleased the villain no end, and he readily agreed. Within twenty-four hours, every advisor, courtier, and nobleman hanger-on inside the palace walls lay dead. That night, for the first time since he had come to power, the prince slept deeply and dreamlessly, guarded by the djinn who lighted the way for what would be his long and fruitful reign.”

Radomil, who appeared impressed by this tale, pursed his lips. “I think you give me too much credit.”

Jack stared out the window. “Like the villain in the story, your entire purpose is to bring the hammer down on enemy after enemy, after they make the mistake of giving you no credit at all.”

Radomil shook his head. “At last I know why she loves you.”

“While it’s true that on occasion Annika can give the impression of loving someone,” Jack said, “I seriously doubt she’s capable of actually loving anyone. In that, as in many other ways, she’s just like her grandfather.”

“I have to disagree.” Radomil’s gaze flicked again to the rearview mirror. “There’s a very good reason why she can only show you how she feels in tiny segments.”

“What’s that?”

“Her husband,” Radomil said, slowing for a moment.

Jack felt as if he were in a plane that, wing over wing, was going down in flames. For a moment, he felt weightless, then gravity slammed into him with the force of a pile driver, setting up a fierce pounding in his head.

“Annika is married?” he said in a voice he didn’t recognize.

Radomil nodded. “Her husband almost died in a terrorist attack some years ago. His brain was damaged. He’s been in a psychiatric facility ever since.”

“She never told me.”

“His incarceration is a secret,” Radomil said. “Gourdjiev wanted it that way. I suppose Annika does, too.”

“You know.”

“Only because she needed me to bring something to him when she couldn’t get to the facility.”

“She’s married,” Jack murmured again, scarcely believing it. “She’s lied to me again.”

“About Rolan, she and her grandfather lied to pretty much everyone.” Radomil shifted uneasily in his seat. “But right now we have a more immediate issue. I wasn’t sure before, there are so many of them on the road, but a moment ago I got a second look at the license tag. The same silver BMW has been following us from the time we left Zurich.”

*   *   *

As the cop’s BMW was fueled by gas, Redbird was fueled by rage. This was unfamiliar territory for him, a man who made his living detached from all human emotion save lust. But for him there was no going back. His desire to kill Jack McClure consumed him like fire.

He did not like having the Swiss cop with him, liked even less that he himself wasn’t driving, but he had been trapped by his subterfuge. A first. He’d wanted the cop to drop him at an auto rental office, but there had been no time. McClure, accompanied by another man, had exited the gallery minutes after the cop had pulled up in his BMW. When they got into the Audi, Redbird knew he’d have no chance to ditch the cop without also losing McClure. This he could not tolerate even though he was aware of the heightened risk posed by his not being alone. These Swiss cops, he thought, run totally by the book. No deviation was possible. Redbird was not foolish enough to offer the cop a bribe—leaving a loose end on a commission was simply not in his vocabulary.

But, hours later, he saw his opportunity when the Audi pulled into a gas station. The cop pulled in as well, steering well clear of the Audi. Redbird directed him to a remote corner of the lay-by and, as the cop rolled the BMW to a stop, reached over and snapped his neck like a dry twig. The cop’s body arched up, his limbs twitching for a moment.

Redbird got out of the car, stretched his cramped muscles, then went around the front of the BMW, opened the driver’s side door, and hauled the cop out. He wound one arm around him, as if providing support for an ill companion.

At the rear of the lay-by were three huge Dumpsters, shielded from sight by two concrete buildings. Hoisting the corpse onto his shoulder, he threw him over the lip of the Dumpster farthest away from the buildings. He spent the next couple of minutes transferring armloads of trash from the adjacent Dumpster until the cop was covered completely.

Then he slid behind the wheel, backed up, and, engine thrumming, followed the Audi as it nosed out into the rocketing traffic. When he had slipped fully into the traffic he called Gensler on his mobile.

“There’s one more thing I need from you,” he said.

*   *   *

“There’s no reason to hurt her,” Annika said.

Iraj, who had hold of Noemie by her hair, said, “There’s reason and there’s need.”

Annika looked at him askance. “Not everything has to be accomplished with brute force.”

“Brute force works.” He jerked Noemie’s head back, exposing the vulnerable length of her throat. “Always.”

Annika tried another tack. “It’s messy, Iraj. We’re in a high-end art gallery in Zurich—in
Switzerland
, for God’s sake, not Waziristan. Mayhem will likely be more dangerous to us than it will be to her.”

The Syrian appeared to consider this for a moment. “I have a better idea.” He tossed his head in Rolan’s direction. “I’ll let the zombie off his leash. Let him do the damage, our hands will be clean.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Annika said, successfully hiding both her alarm and her outrage.

Blood filled Iraj’s face. “You talk to me like that again—”

“What?” she said. “What will you do?”

He spat on the floor between her feet.

God, I hate him,
she thought.

“Let me have a crack at her,” she said in her sweetest voice, seeking to calm the waters she had foolishly roiled. “If she knows what happened to Pyotr and where Galina is, I’ll get it out of her without the mess.”

She did not look directly at Noemie, nor had she since they had entered the gallery, locking the door behind them.

“All right,” he said at last.

He shoved Noemie into Annika’s arms, then grasped Annika’s shoulder. It was like being snatched at by a reptile. Annika could barely hold down the vomit. Instead, she smiled winningly at him. “You won’t be sorry.”

“I know I won’t,” he said, every word a naked threat.

*   *   *

“They’re going to Méribel,” Annika said, ten minutes later.

“She’s playing you.” Iraj shook his head. “Why the hell would they be going there?”

Annika produced an ironic smile. “Giles Legere is still alive. That’s where he’s living.”

The Syrian smashed his fist against a wall, making a good-sized crater between two paintings.

“Your grandfather knew all along, didn’t he?”

“Possibly.”

Iraj advanced on her. “Don’t give me that. He probably arranged the whole thing.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

He glared at her. “But you didn’t know.”

“Will it matter what I say?”

“Answer me,” he grated.

“I’m as surprised as you are.”

Iraj turned away. Annika wished she knew what he was thinking.

“We’d better get going,” he said, turning on her.

Here was the moment she had been waiting for. “Let me go on ahead.”

Iraj laughed. “Why would I do that?”

“Because Jack is here. You need him and I know where he is.”

“Another one of your secrets.” He shook his head. “How am I ever to fully trust you?”

“All right,” she said. “You tell me all your secrets and I’ll tell you mine.” She waited, but not for long. “No? I thought not.”

“I don’t want you out of my sight. I’ll go with you.”

“You won’t, he’s too smart, he’ll suss out you’re there,” she said with a certainty that stopped him cold. “I can deliver him, Iraj. Only me. I know how he thinks.”

He stared at her.

“Plus, he trusts me.”

“After what you’ve—”