Flight of the Raven (20 page)

Julie felt tension coil inside her until she found herself moving against Aleksei with a frantic urgency—an urgency that could be assuaged in only one way. It was the same for him. A few hours ago they had found the heights of ecstasy together. Now the joining took them even higher. As the first streaks of dawn stole through the window, Julie cried out, overwhelmed by a fulfillment that was all the more intense because it was tinged with anguish.

Chapter Twelve

S
lava Bogolubov had also spent a sleepless night. But the reasons were quite different, though no less pleasurable. He’d finally gotten the proof he needed to put the Raven in a steel cage, and he’d spent the small hours of the morning documenting his facts.

Leaning back and lighting a thick Havana cigar, he allowed himself to savor his victory. It was all the more sweet because—though he would never admit it publicly—the Raven was a worthy opponent. The man was crafty, with an uncanny ability to sniff out traps—like the dead drop at the Prado. But he had finally made a fatal mistake by tampering with the infrared seal on that diplomatic pouch. The lab in Moscow had pinpointed the hour when the seal was broken. The only suspect staffer who was still in the building was the Raven.

Reaching for the phone, the general dialed Yuri Hramov’s hotel. “I have the authorization I need. The Raven’s identify has been confirmed. Go pick him up.”

Hramov’s steely eyes lit. Getting even with a bigwig who had thwarted him in the past was always gratifying. Shifting the phone to his shoulder, he opened the bedside table and took out a set of brass knuckles. “You don’t mind if I settle a few scores of my own before I bring him in?”

Hramov was a barely controlled savage, the general thought. While savages had their uses, they weren’t known for thinking through the consequences of their actions. “You’re underestimating the man,” he snapped. “He’s hidden his identity for this long because he’s a crafty son of a bitch. Be very careful or he’s going to slip through your fingers.”

The henchman patted the automatic pistol in his shoulder holster. “I never knew a man who could run very far with a shattered ankle.”

“I want the bastard alive and wishing you’d sent him to hell. He’s going to give me some answers if it’s the last thing he does,” Bogolubov shot back, already anticipating the interrogation to come.

“Understood, Comrade General.”

* * *

A
LEKSEI DRESSED
quickly. He had already stayed here with Julie dangerously long, yet there was still some unfinished business between the two of them.

Turning back from the doorway, he caressed her with his gaze. Though her body was covered by a sheet, he knew its contours intimately now. The pleasure of holding her in his arms would have to warm him for many a long night. But at this moment the pain in her eyes made his breath catch in his chest. “Do you remember that I came to leave you something?” he asked softly.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, because she knew she would ask him to stay.

“I’ll get it from my knapsack.”

She was propped up against the pillows when he returned from the living room with a small tissue-wrapped package. Sitting down on the side of the bed, he placed it gently in her hands. With shaking fingers she unwrapped the paper. Nestled inside was one of the exquisite Russian wolfhound figurines they’d seen the day they’d met for lunch.

“Oh. It’s beautiful.”

“I bought them both and kept the other one.”

She clutched his hand, knowing that in a few moments he’d walk out of her life forever. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“You’ve given me more than you can ever know.” He looked down, unable to meet her gaze. The impulse to lie to her, to tell her that there was some chance they might meet again, was overwhelming. Yet he understood that false hope was more cruel than no hope at all. There was one more thing, however, to leave her with—something that might bring her some measure of peace.

He turned his hand up to grasp her fingers. “You were drawn into danger by your loyalty to your friend Dan Eisenberg. Julie, the trust in Dan wasn’t misplaced. He was an honorable man, not a traitor to his country.”

“How do
you
know?”

“I can’t tell you, but it’s true nevertheless.” Leaning over, he brushed his lips against her forehead, knowing that if he dared to kiss her mouth he wouldn’t be able to leave her at all. “Goodbye,
dushenka.
I leave part of my soul with you.”

“And mine with you,” she whispered.

He stood up, turned away, and walked rapidly out of the room.

She strained her ears, listening for the sound of the door closing. It was very faint. But when she heard it, the tears she’d held back through the night began trickling down her face one by one.

* * *

A
MHERST
G
ORDON
put down the Teletype printouts and slapped his hand on the leather arm of his desk chair. “The crafty son of a bitch did it,” he chortled.

“I take it the Madrid crisis has finally broken?” Constance McGuire inquired evenly, swiveling from her computer screen to face her employer.

She might look calm, the Falcon thought, but he knew she was just as eager as he was for any news of their beleaguered operative.

“According to my information sources, all hell broke loose at the Russian embassy early yesterday morning.”

“Has the Raven made his move?”

“Yes, he flew the coop and he left a mess of chicken feathers flying.”

“Oh?”

“Well, we can start with Yuri Hramov. He was admitted to a Madrid hospital with a bullet in his ankle. The official reason was ‘an accident cleaning his gun,’ but if you believe that, you’ll believe the Soviets have just dismantled their nuclear arsenal.”

“So he
was
in on this.” Connie grimaced. “The comrade general likes rough company.”

“Well, he’s not going to enjoy the company he’s keeping now quite so much. Our sources report he was called back to Moscow to explain how the diplomatic pouch that was in the Madrid embassy safe for fourteen hours was tampered with.”

“Do we have any further word on the others who were supposed to be closing in on the Raven?” Connie questioned.

“Yes.” He permitted himself a grin as he held up a Kremlin report U.S. intelligence had just intercepted and decoded. “Aleksei Rozonov is also officially listed as being detailed back to headquarters. The agricultural attaché, Feliks Gorlov, is another one who’s in trouble,” he continued, his voice tinged with something that was close to glee. “It seems that besides dealing in wheat, he was also turning quite a personal profit in the Iberian drug market. Our sources now believe he was the real target for the San Jeronimo bombing. One of the local distributors wanted to get even for the Russian’s muscling in on the action. Eisenberg’s being there was nothing more than a tragic coincidence after all.”

Connie’s face registered a mixture of regret and relief. “It’s a damn shame they got Dan in his place. But at least the news on Gorlov clears up the drug connection.”

“Thank God, yes. That’s another one we owe the Raven.”

“I still can’t believe Gorlov was the ringer in this. The man was really taking chances.”

“Yes. The Raven must have ferreted out his underworld involvement and used it as a diversion to cover his escape. I think he also raised some questions about Georgi Krasin having had an affair with a British agent. But I’m not sure what that’s all about yet.”

Connie studied her employer’s face, knowing he was keeping back a critical piece of information. “Do we know the Raven is safely away or are they secretly holding him somewhere for interrogation?” she finally ventured.

Gordon’s expression became serious. For a few minutes he’d allowed himself the luxury of enjoying the Russians’ embarrassment. Now he could no longer ignore his own problems. He sighed. “Dammit, Connie, there’s no way to know for certain yet. There was no escape tunnel in Madrid. If he makes it out of Europe, it’s going to have to be by a circuitous route. We’ll have to keep the contacts open and pray that he surfaces soon—and with the Topaz documents.”

* * *

H
E WAS ON THE RUN
and he knew how a lone wolf must feel hunted across the tundra. Of course, he wasn’t in the frozen north, but still, at night, there was simply no way to keep himself warm.

The first thing the hunters would have done was lay traps at all the obvious routes out of Spain. That was why he had headed cross-country for the mountains.

The Raven had been prepared to disappear almost since the moment he’d put the Topaz material back in the embassy safe. But he hadn’t expected to find Yuri Hramov tiptoeing across the main room of his apartment quite so early in the morning. On the other hand, Bogolubov’s thug didn’t know his target had taken the precaution of installing a silent alarm at the front door. The sixty-second warning had determined who ended up on the floor writhing in pain.

After tying up the intruder, he’d even had time for a little question-and-answer session. Hramov had gasped out a very interesting piece of information about one of the Raven’s fellow embassy employees that fitted in perfectly with his plans to leave in a cloud of thick Madrid smog. Even though every second counted now, he’d stopped to put in a call back to KGB headquarters that would give them another quarry to chase besides himself.

It had always struck him how quickly modern civilization vanished in Spanish countryside. The hilly terrain northeast of Madrid was crisscrossed with goat and sheep trails. Now, dressed in a well-worn peasant outfit, he was following a trail to Navarra and the Pyrenees. The rough clothing made him look like a local. In addition, he had used other tricks to change his appearance. He’d stopped shaving, and his heavy beard had already begun to conceal his strong jaw. The dark bangs he had combed downward almost met his thick eyebrows, making his forehead disappear.

His plans were flexible, but the first step was to get out of Spain. During his tour in Iberia he’d made some contacts in the ETA, the Basque separatist group, and cultivated them on a personal level. He wouldn’t turn his back on the Basques for a minute. But he knew the terrorist organization had ways of getting people across the border and even out of Europe entirely. They also needed funds. His passage could be bought with some of the money the Falcon had transferred to his secret Madrid bank account.

Of course, the transaction ate at his conscience. Giving money to terrorists was tantamount to buying them guns and ammunition so they could kill someone else. He wasn’t sure his hide was worth it. But the information he had was. Even though he’d left a copy of the Topaz report in a safe place, he couldn’t be sure it would make it out of the country. With his most reliable Peregrine links broken, his only way to alert the Falcon that something was coming had been to mail an encoded letter to a post office box in Virginia. But he had no way of knowing whether that route was still open.

Night turned into day, and the June weather was hot. Pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he took a drink from his canteen. He could have walked the whole two hundred miles in about eight days if he’d pushed. Luckily, he had the offer of an occasional ride on a hay wagon.

There was still plenty of time, however, to think about his predicament as he hiked the uneven terrain, his few possessions in a canvas rucksack slung over his shoulder. He’d told himself for years that he wouldn’t be leaving anything behind, but now that he’d actually made the break with everything he’d known, his heart was heavy. He didn’t really know what kind of life he was going to. Right now he wasn’t even sure how he was going to contact the Falcon. But that would be of no importance if he failed to get out of Spain alive.

He avoided the towns, except for brief forays to replenish his food supply. Any contact with civilization made him jumpy. It was no paranoid delusion that the KGB had informers in the most unlikely places. The reward for turning him in was probably more than a peasant’s yearly income. So he slept in the open on the hard ground, not daring to allow himself the comfort of a campfire. His daily ablutions were made in the icy water of mountain streams.

The inhabitants of the ETA encampment he found on the eighth day might have dismissed him as a tramp to be robbed of any valuables and disposed of—except for his manner of arrival. Because he knew the clandestine community’s approximate location, he discovered the position of the southwestern sentry before the man discovered him. They came walking into camp together, the lookout moving carefully to avoid being shot by the automatic pressed firmly against the small of his back. The bravado entrance was a gesture calculated to win instant respect among men who lived as outlaws in the rugged mountains on Spain’s northern border. It had the desired effect.

Not long after demanding to see the leader of the group, he was sitting in a snug mountain cave eating his first bowl of hot stew in over a week. Between bites of goat meat and onion he explained what he needed. His major disappointment was that the head man he’d met with in the past had been killed by the Spanish civil guard during a raid on Pamplona just weeks earlier. His short, fair-haired replacement was a stranger who obviously viewed this new arrival with extreme mistrust.

At the mention of ample payment for services rendered, the expression in the blond man’s calculating gray eyes changed for the better. Yet he still failed to inspire any genuine trust. For a moment the Raven considered walking out of camp and trying to find another group of rebel Basques. But he suspected he might well be tracked and his throat quietly slit the moment fatigue forced him to close his eyes. These were men who dared not trust the location of their camp to a hostile stranger.

The Raven repressed a sigh. With his ties to the Peregrine Connection temporarily severed, coming here in the first place had been one of his very few escape options. He was a man hunted by his own people—and for all he knew, hunted by the other side as well.

Tipping his stool back against the wall of the cave he wiped up the last of the stew gravy with a piece of coarse bread and chewed it thoughtfully. He had been in worse situations and come out alive. His best strategy—probably his only strategy—was to play his cards as though he dealt from a position of strength, and hope that there was some honor among thieves.