Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (4 page)

Glinka’s voice slit like a blade. “Surely you understand these things, Mr. President. We must gather the evidence at the scene and respectfully tend to the victims of this horrible crime before releasing the news to the public.”

“I apologize if my inquiries offended you, Prime Minister. I only wished to offer our sympathies and our willingness to help in any way we can.” Then he fired his next round. “Do you have any idea who is responsible for this?”

The reply came too quickly. “Do you, Mr. President?”

The hostile insinuation struck Noland broadside, the suggestion of U.S. complicity barefisted. But Noland didn’t miss a beat in answering. “I choose to ignore the audacity of that question and hope you soon regain your diplomatic balance. You will need the support of all of us in the global community through the difficult days ahead.”

Seemingly unfazed by the rebuke, Glinka said, “And I trust I will have it. Thank you for your call, Mr. President.” He hung up.

Noland replaced the receiver, barely containing his outrage, though knowing he had deliberately provoked the encounter. He looked up at Bragg. “There’s your confirmation. Gorev, the polished diplomat with an honorable vision for his country, is dead. A very different era has begun. Glinka will assume the presidency until a new election is held. But that’s time enough for him to usher in whatever’s lurking in the wings. I can’t put a face on it. Not a living one, now that Ivan’s dead.”

“But he left his clones in place.”

“Is Glinka one of them?” the president posed.

“Possibly. I’ll need to move into his world to know for sure.”

The president thought that over. “Okay, Don. I’m going to ask Max to step up his investigation of Glinka, and suggest that he welcome a CIA assist.” He paused. “But there’s something else. You said one of your field agents learned of the assassination from a contact at FSB? What does that mean? Do you think the attack came from FSB?”

“Not necessarily. I’m waiting for the details, but I understand that the FSB source was alerted by someone at the scene.”

“Who?”

Noland watched the CIA director hesitate one second too long.

“Answer me, Don. Who was there?”

“Evgeny Kozlov.”

Noland stared at him in disbelief. But Bragg was quick to add, “We understand from our Russian contact that Kozlov was there to warn or otherwise aid the president.”

“Where is he now?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know how to reach him?”

“No one reaches Kozlov unless he wants them to, sir.”

Noland knew it was true. “Right. Just keep me informed of every development. And thanks for coming.”

Bragg seemed eager to leave. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

As soon as Bragg left the Oval Office, Noland’s thoughts turned to the only person he knew who’d broken through the armored plate encasing the whole of Evgeny Kozlov. An unlikely pairing if ever there was one—the ruthless Russian spy and the classical pianist from Charleston. As much as the president wished Liesl Bower asylum from Kozlov’s world, she was about to reenter it.

E
very morning should be infused with Beethoven, Liesl thought as she lifted her hands from the Steinway grand. Performing the German master’s music was more invigorating than a wake-up run along the Charleston Harbor, more cleansing than even the salt-scrubbed winds off the Atlantic. Like that one skewering note of a tuning fork that takes dead aim at perfect pitch, Beethoven pierced through all the layers to strike at the very heart of Liesl Bower and to make it whole and well again. God, she believed, had given her the gift of regenerative music when she was a small child because he knew what was to come.

She looked around the airy studio with its twin grand pianos, one for her and the other for the students she taught at the College of Charleston. There would be no lessons today, though, nor the rest of the summer. Besides the upcoming concerts in Israel and Germany, she wished nothing else to intrude on her repose against the cushion of her graceful old home and the arms of her new husband. Cade O’Brien had nurtured her, rescued her from herself, and she loved him unconditionally and completely, allowing him to love her back.

Still, she had struggled to properly shelve the scarring events of the last two years. There had been little rest between the frantic hunt for the sonata code and the blind chase to find the terrorist who might have ruled Russia. Now, almost six months after the man’s death, she was still trying to heal from the emotional scourging. The family she had gathered about her, the old house on Tidewater Lane, and the soothing harmonies of vintage Charleston promised to do what surely God himself had called them to do. That and the concerto she would soon play with her old friend and violinist Max Morozov during their program at the Nuremberg Music Festival. That’s why she’d been hard at practice since six thirty that morning. Rather than disturb the peace on Tidewater Lane, she had opted for her soundproof studio on campus.

She’d just launched into a lilting passage of the concerto when the landline phone next to her rang, yanking her from her reverie. She glared at the insistent instrument then glanced at the clock. Just after nine. The office would be open by now on this Thursday morning, but rarely did the music department’s secretary disturb her with calls to her studio.

She sighed and picked up the receiver. “This is Liesl,” she said distractedly, her eyes still scanning the sheet music before her.

“Miss Bower, uh, I mean O’Brien—sorry, I keep forgetting …” the secretary began.

“Either one is fine, Tina. How can I help you?” She was afraid her impatience was showing.

“I have a gentleman on hold who says it’s extremely important that he talk with you. Do you want me to put him through?”

Liesl sorted quickly through any possible urgencies. Cade or anyone else at the house would have used her cell number. But
extremely important
? “Yes, Tina. Thank you.” She heard the holding line click open. “Hello, this is Liesl Bower.”

No one spoke.

“Hello, who is this?”

Still nothing. Liesl heard the sound of a car passing nearby, the chatter of birds, and a slow, fairly exaggerated intake of breath. She tried once more. “Hello.” Then the line went dead. She pulled the receiver away from her ear and stared at it as if it owed her an explanation. Perhaps something in the school’s rather antiquated phone system had failed to transmit her voice. Probably a student anxious over a grade. She’d handed out a few failing ones at the end of the Maymester. She replaced the receiver with hardly another thought about the aborted call.

There was far more to think about that morning. She would need to prepare her wardrobe for the trip and phone Ben. He and Anna were supposed to join them in Tel Aviv. She wanted to make sure of it. Since barely surviving the attack that killed his brother-in-law in January, Ben had resigned his White House position and joined the rest of his family in Israel. “I think I’m finally home,” he’d told her. She was eager to see him and how well he’d healed.

Her mind continued to drift. She fingered the keys before her, plunking out nothing in particular, thinking only about Cade now, and how she longed to rest in his embrace, protected and loved. He’d decided to work from home today, as his downtown office was being recarpeted. Charleston’s new metro magazine had hit the stands with a flourish and the tempo hadn’t diminished. Advertisers had liked what they saw inside the glossy pages filled with more than just Lowcountry interiors and recipes. Managing editor Cade O’Brien had pumped a growing number of pages full of “talkers”—features that plumbed beneath the surface streets of Charleston, stories no one had ever heard before and were eager to pass along.

Liesl realized her session that day was over. She would make up for the lost practice the following day. But for now, her mind was already home. She might as well follow.

When she stepped from the contemporary, cubic-faced School of the Arts, the morning threw its warm June wrap around her and made her long to stroll barefoot with Cade through the cool grass of their garden. She walked single-mindedly along the sidewalk to the old white Volvo she’d kept far too long. She could afford a new car, but the thought of abandoning the trusty chariot that had carried her through the highs and lows of the last ten years wasn’t on her agenda.

Only when she stopped to insert the key in the door, did she look behind her. Students in flip-flops and shorts crisscrossed the street in the slouching choreography of the summer term, moving slower toward class than away. Cranking the Volvo, she pulled away from the curb and navigated down the narrow street, lined on both sides with cars. It was one of the pretty streets skirting the campus. Old Victorians and single houses were bedded down with lush gardenias, hydrangeas, and heirloom altheas rising to touch the lower limbs of crepe myrtles already ripe with great panicles of sherbet pinks. Distracted by their frothy canopy, she almost didn’t see the cat that suddenly streaked in front of the Volvo, whose brakes Liesl now stomped to avoid hitting the creature. Fearing a rear-ender, Liesl winced toward the rearview mirror. The car behind, a bright green Volkswagen, screeched to a halt just off her back bumper. A small SUV behind that, something brown with a roof rack, also managed to stop in time. The cat safely on the other side, Liesl moved on to the corner and took a right turn.

In Charleston, it can take just a single turn to leave one world for another. Now, the sidewalks scrolled past a row of shabby storefronts. As she gazed into the windows of one, she saw the reflection of the brown SUV behind her and glanced at her rearview mirror. The man at the wheel waited calmly for the light to change.

At the next corner, she turned right again and headed south toward the tip of the peninsula and Tidewater Lane. At the next light, she glanced at the rearview mirror and spotted the same SUV, two cars back. Just ahead was the hub of town where all roads led. The traffic had grown to a torrent and Liesl was anxious to clear the congestion and wind her way back toward the harbor. That meant bypassing town. She signaled a left toward the Cooper River and a less traveled route. But halfway into the turn, she caught sight of the brown SUV in her side mirror. It was now directly behind her. Somewhere inside, a familiar alarm sounded. She hadn’t heard it in six months, and wished never to hear it again. But it persisted. With it came the same acidic spasm in her stomach, the sweat beads on the forehead. Was it just the body’s unfailing memory, its involuntary response to the alarm she’d failed to disengage? An alarm no longer necessary. Right now, she would prove it true.

Liesl eased off the accelerator and began a series of turns. The SUV stayed with her through all of them. But just as the alarm grew louder, as more drastic measures sprang to mind—like stopping in the middle of the street and brazenly confronting her pursuer, which she’d done before—the brown vehicle peeled away at the next intersection and headed in the opposite direction.

Shaken, Liesl pulled over and parked at the curb. She needed time to think. There was something familiar about this scenario. It had happened when she and Evgeny had been tailed in New York. The car that had followed them from City Island all the way to Manhattan suddenly turned off and vanished, only to reappear later. That it proved to be CIA agent Ava Mullins, now one of Liesl’s most trusted friends, didn’t matter. She’d used tactics surely nonexclusive to U.S. agents.

Is that what this was? Or was six months simply not long enough to smother old fears?

Liesl looked around, checked all the mirrors, and waited. No brown SUV. Only tourists with cameras strapped about them. A woman in running clothes holding a leash to a massive Harlequin dane crossed the street in front of the Volvo, her countenance bright and confident. As Liesl’s should be.

She had to restore herself before returning home. As she reached for the ignition key, a seagull squawked overhead and Liesl turned to watch its dance upon the capricious thermals that whipped about the city. “Yes, I’m coming,” she said aloud to the bird. The one place that had long fused itself to the core of her now called with the voice of the gull.

Exodus.
She envisioned the old boat slumbering in soggy contentment at its slip, not quite mothballed but seldom called into service since the breathy runs to and from the cabin had ended. As if some overriding homing device had suddenly engaged, Liesl started the Volvo and headed straight for the Ashley River, whose waters stroked the peninsula’s west side.

Driving headlong to her respite, she couldn’t help but flick a searching glance here and there for the brown SUV, smiling each time she didn’t see it. Already, her peace had resurfaced.

She looped around Charleston’s waterline and eventually turned north toward the Metro Marina. She rolled down her window and heard the river exhale, its briny breath running hot through the forest of masts sprouting from the marina ahead. She turned into the parking lot, still scanning for the brown vehicle and wondering, with a twinge of amusement, if its driver had any inkling of the start he’d given her. Surely he hadn’t.

She parked and got out. Now focused only on the long dock before her, she grabbed her backpack and hurried over the rough, splintering boards. Here and there a fellow mariner tending his vessel looked up and waved. They knew her here; some since she’d been a young girl drawing gape-mouthed surprise at her masterful, solo handling of the thirty-six-foot, twin-screw Grady-White.

“Hey, Liesl,” one bronzed old man called from his live-on sloop. “Sure good to see you here.
Exodus
has been awful lonely.”

Something about that made Liesl flush with guilt over fleeing her past and the boat that had sailed her through it, through seas that had both calmed and slashed. “I hope you’re doing well, Gus.” She smiled brightly at him as she passed, remembering the sure countenance of the woman walking the dane.

“Better than I deserve,” the man called after her. “You take care of yourself.”

This time a chorus of sea gulls summoned Liesl on until she caught sight of
Exodus
, the light merciful on her fading beauty. She was still regal, though, still willing to shelter those who’d lost their footing on solid ground. Liesl had rescued the boat too many times from the hands of her drunken father, only to thrust it into the midst of her own desperate battle. But that was over now.