Flight of the Raven (28 page)

Aleksei glanced to the right. He could see the lights of another car in the distance. It was probably CIA reinforcements. If he waited another minute, the odds would be a lot worse. His heart rate accelerated. His arm hurt like the very devil again, but he couldn’t let that slow his reflexes. The key turned in the lock of the steel cuffs, but still he forced his body not to betray his readiness.

The metal bracelet seemed to come off in slow motion. When his arm was finally free, he raised his good hand to his forehead, as though disoriented. Then he slumped sideways against the metal wall.

“Oh, good. Just what we need,” Borman groaned, stepping forward to take the weight of Aleksei’s sagging body. It was the move the Russian had been waiting for. With the speed of a panther, he turned, grabbing Borman around the throat and pulling him hard against his own chest.

“My ring has a poison dart in the center,” he informed the other agent in thickly accented English. “Toss your gun over to the side or your friend has an instant heart attack.”

The junior man hesitated. He knew the KGB had such poisons. Still, it could be a trick.

Julie’s eyes flicked to the ring with its serpentine pattern and sapphire stone. She’d noticed it in Madrid, but she’d never imagined its being a deadly weapon.

As she watched, Aleksei brought the sapphire stone up to Borman’s line of vision before slowly moving it toward the artery pulsing in his neck.

“Do as he says!” Borman hissed, a bead of sweat rolling down his brow.

The gun clattered to the pavement at Aleksei’s left.

“Quick, get Borman’s pistol,” he instructed Julie, “then pick up the one on the ground.” His English had returned to its normal level of precision.

Aleksei’s manner had taken her completely by surprise. For a moment she stood paralyzed.

“Julie, move,” he ordered.

The tone of his voice snapped her body into compliance. Turning toward the senior agent, she pulled the pistol from his belt and handed it to Aleksei.

As he pushed Borman to the ground, he straightened. “Crawl over there with your friend so I can cover you both.”

Breathing heavily, the agent complied while Julie went for the other weapon. As she bent down to get it, her eyes were blinded by the headlights of the van screeching to a halt in the gravel lot. Dimly, she saw a tall man jump out, and she raised the gun in his direction.

He hadn’t expected to be looking down the muzzle of a service revolver, Mark Bradley thought as he stepped out of the van and took in the tense situation. Two men, CIA agents he assumed, were on the ground. Above them stood another man with a gun. The weapon pointed at his own stomach was held by a woman.

The man in charge had to be Aleksei Rozonov, also known as the Raven. With the mustache, haircut, and weight loss, the Peregrine operative was barely recognizable. But his air of command was unmistakable. The dark-haired woman must be Julie McLean. In the State Department photographs he’d studied, she’d looked cool and aristocratic—and hardly capable of shooting anyone. But from the distraught expression on her face now, he suspected that if he went for his own weapon, she might well pull the trigger of the gun she held.

That wasn’t the only problem however. He’d expected to find Borman in charge. With Aleksei running the show, his executive order wasn’t going to be worth a counterfeit ruble unless the Russian was willing to cooperate with him. They’d only met once—in the middle of a gun battle. Would the man really remember him?

“Aleksei Rozonov,” he called out. “It’s Mark Bradley. The Falcon sent me to pay back that favor I’ve owed you since Berlin, but it looks as though you have things under control.”

“Move over into the light. Let me see your face.”

Aleksei waited as the new arrival complied. His hair was darker, and the scars on his face were less evident but still there. It could be a clever makeup job.

“Berlin, you say? Give me more details.”

“The auction gallery, the Ludendorf diary, Hans Erlich.”

The touch of self-accusation in Bradley’s voice when he said that last name was more convincing than the words themselves. Erlich was the megalomaniac East German doctor who had come within inches of controlling Bradley’s mind.

“So we were working for the same organization all along, Colonel.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

Julie found her voice. “Aleksei, who is this man?”

“A friend.”

Borman had been watching the interchange with disbelief. “Wait a minute, what in the hell is going on here?” he challenged, pushing himself to a sitting position on the ground.

“I’m taking over this operation,” Mark said.

“The hell you are.” The CIA man seemed to forget that he wasn’t in a position to demand anything.

“I have an executive order that gives me complete authority over these prisoners,” Bradley informed him. As he spoke, he withdrew a paper from his breast pocket and tossed it into Borman’s lap.

The agent hurriedly scanned the words. “You think I’m going to accept this?”

Mark glanced pointedly at the gun Aleksei still held. “It looks to me as though you don’t have any choice. Besides, it will go down a lot better than trying to explain how an unarmed man got the drop on you.”

“He had a ring with a poison dart,” Conrad interjected.

Aleksei shrugged. “A small deception.”

Borman uttered an oath. Before he quieted, Mark was standing over him with a spare set of handcuffs.

“I’m sorry to have to do this, but we can’t take any chance of being followed.” Quickly he chained the two agents together. Then, pulling them to their feet, he marched them off toward a storage room in the warehouse. “I’ll make sure someone comes to get you out in a couple of hours.”

As their footsteps faded, Julie circled Aleksei’s waist with her arms and buried her face against his chest. His good arm came up to cradle her head, his fingers stroking lovingly the thick waves of her hair.

“So cool in the face of danger, so courageous,” he murmured.

“No, I was terrified,” she contradicted.

“What matters is that you didn’t panic. If you hadn’t tricked Hramov—” He felt her shudder against him, and his arm tightened protectively. “
Dushenka,
did you understand what I said to him?”

She nodded against his chest. “Yes. But I realized why. You were trying to save me.”

“I shouldn’t have wasted my breath. Even Hramov could see how much I cared about you.”

They clung together in silence, each comforted by the steady beat of the other’s heart. Finally, Aleksei spoke again. “Julie, I was terrified too. I’ve never been so terrified as when I saw him grab you.”

She knew the admission didn’t come lightly.

“Thank God it’s over,” she whispered. Then she realized she was drawing on his strength again, and he was the wounded one, not she.

“Why don’t we get in the van,” she suggested.

A few moments later, Mark Bradley reappeared and slipped behind the wheel. Two miles from the warehouse, the threesome abandoned the CIA transportation and climbed into the back of an ambulance. “I figured we could exceed the 55-mile speed limit in this without being stopped,” Mark explained as he pulled a white jacket over his dark clothing.

He turned to Aleksei. “There’s a doctor waiting for you at the Aviary, but it’s a three-hour ride. Do you need medical attention before that?”

“I can wait.”

“You’re going to let me look at your arm and then lie down,” Julie countered.

Mark laughed as he helped the Raven into the back of the vehicle. “I can see who’s really in charge of this operation.”

The two men exchanged glances in silent acknowledgment of the critical role Julie had played.

Mark showed her where to find the supplies she needed and then started the engine as she began to delicately cut away Aleksei’s bloodstained shirt. He heard them talking softly, heads close together as she worked. It was impossible not to see how deeply they cared about each other. They were well out on the highway before Julie brought him back into the conversation.

“Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” she called out. “He wants to sit up front.”

Mark grinned silently, understanding full well the other man’s reaction to reporting to his new headquarters flat on his back on a stretcher. Yet he knew what the Raven had already been through. “Aleksei, I promise to warn you when we’re getting close to the Aviary, so you can get up. But right now, I agree with Julie. Try to get some rest.”

“You will tell me before we arrive?”

“Yes. Now get some sleep if you can. You’re going to need your strength.” Mark laughed a knowing laugh. “The old bird’s been waiting a long time to bring you over here, and patience isn’t one of his strong points.”

Chapter Seventeen

T
he Falcon and the Raven clasped hands, then embraced like veterans of a difficult military campaign meeting to commemorate the battle. When the gray-haired man stepped back, his eyes were moist.

“Aleksei Iliyanovich, at last. You don’t know how much it means to me to have you arrive safely.”

“Sir, it’s good to be here.” He stood up straighter, struggling with his own emotions, trying not to look terribly disheveled.

Constance McGuire came forward to repeat the embrace. “Welcome,” she said simply. Then she held out her arms to Julie. “We all owe you so much,” she murmured.

The young woman felt herself warmly enfolded. “I wish I could have done more.”

“No one could have,” Connie assured her quickly.

The sun was just breaking the crest of the mountains behind the Aviary, painting the eastern sky a warm gold shot through with vibrant pink. Not just a new day, Julie thought, a new beginning.

Right now, however, she was bone weary and a bit disoriented. While Aleksei had slept on the drive up, Mark Bradley had told her a bit about Amherst Gordon, Constance McGuire, and the Aviary. But the reality of the Peregrine Connection was still overwhelming.

There was a moment of panic when she and Aleksei separated in the front hall. The idea that they might really be safe was simply too new to cope with.

Gordon’s assistant seemed to understand. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “He isn’t going to leave the building. But he needs to see the doctor, and then Amherst wants to talk to him.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Let me show you to your room. You can catch a few hours’ sleep, and then we’ll all have brunch down in the solarium.”

Julie allowed herself to be led upstairs to a double bedroom beautifully decorated with colonial antiques. “I’ve put a few things in the closet for you and Aleksei,” Connie explained, opening wide mahogany doors to display a varied selection of outfits. “But you can pick some clothes of your own later.”

After her hostess left, Julie treated herself to a hot shower, then dried her hair and donned one of the satin gowns hanging in the closet. By then she was so tired that she simply turned back the brocade spread and crawled between the pastel blue sheets. She was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow.

A slight shifting of the mattress awakened her several hours later. When her dark lashes fluttered open, she found herself staring up into the deep cobalt of Aleksei’s eyes. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in a dark terry robe, his hair wet from the shower. Despite his recent ordeal, he had never looked more content, she thought.

“
Dushenka,
I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I’m glad.” She raised her arms to him, and he bent to gently brush his lips against hers, before going on to explore her cheeks and forehead. The bristly line of his mustache was a pleasure she had come to enjoy.

“How are you?” she asked softly.

“Better than I’ve ever been.”

She clasped him more tightly, feeling the strong wall of his chest, the steady beat of his heart, the quickening of his body as it pressed more snugly against hers.

“Did you come up here to make love to me?”

“Um-hum.” As his lips traveled down her neck and then found the upper curve of her breast above the satin of her gown, her body arched into his caress.

Later, hand in hand, they came downstairs to brunch. Gordon was waiting in the solarium with its shiny green tropical foliage and brightly colored birds. Julie looked around in amazement. Aleksei watched her reaction with amusement. He’d had a similar one when introduced to the parrots earlier.

“A rest seems to have done wonders for you,” Gordon observed drily.

“Yes. Thank you,” Julie returned politely, looking away so that he couldn’t see the warm flush of reaction spreading across her cheeks.

“There have been some interesting developments this morning, so I hope you don’t mind if we cover some business while we eat.”

Connie came in with briefing folders, which she laid beside the napkins while they filled their plates with eggs, country ham, and blueberry muffins at the buffet.

After everyone had been seated again, Gordon filled them in on what had happened in the early hours of the morning.

“You probably noticed,” he began, turning to Julie, “that the box you were unpacking didn’t contain your household goods.”

She and Aleksei exchanged glances. That had been all too obvious.

“Well, the box you were unpacking was a decoy. Your goods were impounded by the CIA, and Borman and Conrad did the unpacking.” He paused and carefully spread butter on his muffin.

“And—” Connie prompted.

“And one of the items they inventoried was the wolfhound.”

“Does the CIA know what they’ve got?” Aleksei questioned, putting down his fork.

“Actually, they don’t have it anymore. The film was delivered here this morning and developed.”

“It’s hard to believe Borman went along with that,” Julie observed.

“He jumped at the chance. As far as the official records show, he and Calvin Dixon get credit for recruiting a top-level Russian defector and acquiring the Topaz report,” the Falcon told her.

Julie shook her head. It wasn’t fair for Borman and Dixon to come out shining in glory after the way they’d treated her and Aleksei.