Heron's Cove (18 page)

“‘Encounter’ is the wrong word. It was an innocent conversation.” One Finian now regretted bringing up; the Donovans were a suspicious lot. “Did Emma return to Boston this morning? I forgot to ask Colin.”

“I don’t know. She stayed in Heron’s Cove. Sleeping on a hard floor. The nun in her.”

“She’s a complex woman with simple needs.”

“Not that simple,” Mike said. “And you’re changing the subject. Why was Tatiana Pavlova in the nuns’ shop?”

“She was curious, she said. Mike, if you had any information about her and the Russian who owns the fancy yacht in Heron’s Cove, would you tell me?”

“Probably. If I wasn’t told to keep my mouth shut.”

“You Donovans are all good at confidences?”

Mike nodded without hesitation. “Yep. Wired that way.”

“I’m a bit on edge today. Miss Pavlova and I had a pleasant, innocuous exchange, and she returned to her cottage. She said she’s sketching birds. I’m sure all is well, and I’m sure you didn’t stop by to listen to me. What can I do for you?”

“Colin told me he ran into you at Hurley’s this morning before he headed to Boston and you seemed preoccupied. That was before you saw this Russian jewelry designer in Heron’s Cove.” Mike eyed Finian as if debating whether to get out the thumbscrews. “Everything okay, Fin?”

Finian decided the Donovans didn’t need to worry about him. And he didn’t need them worrying about him. He had little breathing room as it was in Rock Point, where everyone knew everyone else.

“Yes, everything is fine,” he said. “I admit this church supper is hanging over my head. It’s a first for me. We’re digging new bean holes this year. Have you ever dug a bean hole, Mike?”

He looked pained. “Many times.”

Finian grinned at him. “Now why isn’t that a surprise? We’ll need several. I’m told that each must be about a meter deep, lined with rocks. The beans go into them in pots and cook for hours—at least a day.”

“Nothing like a bean-hole supper, Fin.”

“Yes. So I’ve heard. This will be my first.”

“You don’t sound that thrilled,” Mike said, obviously amused.

“To be honest, I’m not.” Finian pictured cranky Franny Maroney and her blasted coleslaw recipe, but he immediately regretted his uncharitable thoughts. “I don’t want to insult anyone, though. I was going to start on digging bean holes. Would you like to help?”

Mike gave a nearly imperceptible shudder. “Bean holes. Yeah, sure, Father.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been planting tulip bulbs and mulching flower beds. Bean holes are right up my alley these days. Got a shovel?”

“There must be one here somewhere. I’ll go put on work clothes. You look for a shovel.”

14

MATT YANKOWSKI STOOD silently at the windows overlooking Boston Harbor in the conference room on the second floor of the discreet brick building that housed his hand-selected team. The harbor was gray in the late-afternoon light. Emma, as tight and tense as she’d been all day, stayed behind at Yank’s request as eight of her colleagues began to file out.

The intense, ninety-minute meeting had focused on the search for Pete Horner and his Russian colleagues and the investigation into their activities. With Colin safe, no longer operating undercover, Yank had pushed Washington hard for a role for his team.

Having Dmitri Rusakov up the road in Maine had added weight to Yank’s insistence that HIT, as his team was known, get involved.

Emma had maintained a neutral posture throughout the meeting, with the hope that none of her fellow agents would guess how uncomfortable she was with their scrutiny. They had just gotten used to the idea that she had been a novice with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. Now they were getting used to the idea that she knew Dmitri Rusakov. But did his presence in Heron’s Cove mean he had anything to do with Vladimir Bulgov and his illegal arms trafficking?

Colin’s initial undercover mission to get inside Bulgov’s network predated Yank getting him onto his team in Boston. Not one for close oversight, Colin had nonetheless agreed to have Yank as his contact agent when he went back undercover a month ago to look into anyone trying to pick up the threads of Bulgov’s network.

Yank had briefed the team on some of the details of Colin’s work the past month. The constant danger. The risks. The vigilance and the need for the days of silence to protect the mission—to stop Pete Horner and to identify and locate his buyer.

A month in hell.

As the door shut behind the last agent to exit the room, Emma subtly took in a breath, held it, then let it out, slowly, with control. Her colleagues included experts in everything from big business and taxes to cyber-security and profiling. They were accustomed to going after well-connected, well-resourced individuals whose illegal activities were often transnational in nature.

When she first arrived in Boston in the spring, Emma had felt as if she would fit right in.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

Yank continued to stare out the door windows. He had chosen Boston for HIT because he’d worked there as a young agent and liked the city, and, Emma had come to suspect, because it was close enough to FBI headquarters in Washington but not too close. His wife hadn’t yet moved up from northern Virginia to join him. Yank said she was selling their house but Emma had heard she was in Paris, shopping with her sister. She didn’t ask. Yank didn’t invite that kind of personal question or intimacy, at least not from her.

She remained seated at the conference table. “What did you tell Colin?”

“About what? The apples you brought to the office while he was away?”

“Trying to be funny, Yank?”

He glanced back at her with a grudging smile. “It doesn’t suit me, does it?”

“I’d like to know what you told Colin about Dmitri Rusakov, Ivan Alexander and Tatiana Pavlova.”

“He knows what I know.”

Emma took note of Yank’s slightly critical tone. “If you have any questions, ask me,” she said tightly.

He turned from the window. He had on a dark charcoal suit with a red tie but he looked as if he hadn’t slept well. “I haven’t done all the paperwork on making Colin an official member of this unit.”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“You two…” He bit off a sigh and plopped down in a chair across from her. “I warned you he’s independent. Straightforward. Doesn’t like games. He has a sense of humor but you can’t let that fool you. He’s a serious, experienced agent.”

“I figured out he wasn’t a pushover the day we met.”

“Right. You wouldn’t want some guy who didn’t want to drown you once in a while, or who couldn’t pull it off.”

“That’s politically incorrect even for you, Yank.”

He shrugged, not at all defensive or apologetic. “It’s a metaphor. Not literal. Donovan’s a go-it-alone type with a tight-knit family behind him. He couldn’t do what he does without that foundation.”

“Which you don’t want me to screw up,” Emma said.

“You Sharpes live in a big world compared to Rock Point.” Yank placed his elbows on the table, folded his hands and leaned toward her, his gaze unflinching. “Talk to me, Emma. Walk me through this. Twenty years ago, Dmitri Rusakov hires your grandfather to sort out this collection of baubles and perfume bottles and such that turned up in his Moscow house after the fall of Communism. How’d he know to call Wendell Sharpe?”

“Sharpe Fine Art Recovery was recommended to him.”

“Who did the recommending?”

Emma glanced past him at the view of the harbor. “Ivan Alexander.”

“He was a kid then. How did he know about Sharpe Fine Art Recovery?”

“Ivan was ambitious and my grandfather has an international reputation in his field.”

“Art theft and recovery. This collection was a discovery.”

“It could have been stolen decades ago and hidden in the walls of Dmitri’s house,” Emma said. “He didn’t know anything about it.”

“Dmitri.” Yank grimaced. “It kills me that you’re on a first-name basis with one of the richest men in the world. One of the richest Russians. I knew he’d been a Sharpe client…” He stopped himself. “Never mind. Had your grandfather had any dealings with Alexander before Rusakov?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask him, but he’s not easy to reach right now.”

“He’s in Dublin?”

“He’s on a personal retreat. Walking the Irish hills.”

Yank stared at her as if he couldn’t imagine such a thing. “On his own?”

“Yes, on his own.”

“Hell, he’s eighty.”

“He has his full faculties, and he’s in great shape. Don’t you want to hike in the Irish hills in your eighties?”

“I don’t want to now. I’ll probably be watching television in my undershorts in my eighties. If something does happen to him, at least you’ll have the consolation of knowing he was doing something he loved. If I keel over at my desk, you’ll know I died miserable.” Yank grinned at her. “Kidding.”

“It’s been a difficult autumn,” Emma said.

“Yes, it has. Back to Rusakov. He’s managed to stay out of prison, unlike some of the other Russian tycoons who made their fortunes at the same time. Those were freewheeling days. Optimists, pessimists, opportunists, idealists, scum. Former KGB operatives. They were all at work. Still are. Even a good man has to be touched by that level of chaos.”

Emma didn’t respond at once. “I had a job to do when I met Dmitri in London four years ago. My only focus was the whereabouts of the collection. My grandfather had briefed me. I reported to him—not to Dmitri.”

“You were in London a week?”

“Less than a week. It became clear early on, at least to me, that Renee Rusakov had taken the collection.”

Yank sat back in his chair. “Messy divorce?”

“Not really. It wasn’t amicable but it wasn’t messy. Renee clearly wasn’t entitled to the collection.”

“But Rusakov didn’t do anything about it. Now she’s dead.” Yank drummed his fingers on the table. “As far as we know he doesn’t have any ties to Russian organized crime syndicates. I still don’t like it that he’s had two of my agents on board his damn yacht. This Tatiana Pavlova didn’t tell you he was on his way to Heron’s Cove?”

“Not specifically, no.”

“Think she knew?”

“I’d be speculating—”

“Speculate, then.”

Emma resisted an urge to get up, pace, work off the tension that had been building since she arrived in Boston a few hours ago.
Best just to get through this.
Let Yank ask and re-ask his questions so that he could clarify and solidify his thinking.

Finally she took a breath and said, “Tatiana told me a Russian fable about a nightingale, which is the name of his yacht, so I think she suspected it was a possibility Dmitri would come to Heron’s Cove.”

Yank frowned. “A fable?”

“You know. An ultrashort story with a moral.”

“I know what a fable is. Don’t you think it’s odd she told you one?”

“She draws on Russian folk tradition in her work, and she’s—” Emma searched for the right word “—passionate.”

Yank pushed back his chair and rose. “She obviously thinks Rusakov will steal this collection from his stepdaughter rather than go through a protracted legal process to prove he didn’t give it to her mother.”

“I agree, but I don’t know for sure.”

“We don’t care about a spat about this collection. We care if Dmitri Rusakov and Ivan Alexander have anything to do with the men who just tried to kill one of my agents. Even without that, I’d want to know why a Russian tycoon has parked his yacht on your doorstep.” Yank glared at her. “Damn, Emma.”

She burst to her feet and walked over to the windows. She pictured herself spending a quiet afternoon wandering around Boston. She was still getting to know the city, make new friends, settle on her favorite spots. After three years largely in Washington, she had looked forward to being closer to home in southern Maine.

She hadn’t imagined a man like Colin Donovan swooping into her life.

Yank stood next to her. “We don’t know much about Rusakov’s early life.” His tone was softer, more reflective. “That’s not unusual since he grew up in the Soviet Union and wasn’t a big player in the Soviet military, plus he guards his privacy. Renee Rusakov was quite the black widow, wasn’t she?”

“She had her demons,” Emma said. “She was beautiful, compelling—narcissistic.”

“Think she was aware she used and manipulated people?”

“I think she just wanted what she wanted and felt so entitled to it that the rest didn’t matter. Imagine being inside her skin.”

Yank squinted out at the harbor, the water as gray as the sky. “Rusakov didn’t have anything to do with her or her daughter after the divorce?”

“Not as far as I know. Renee had already moved back to Tucson when I arrived in London. Natalie had been living in Phoenix since college.”

“But you met them,” Yank said.

Emma nodded. “Briefly. They were in London right as I got there. They stopped to pick up some things from Dmitri’s apartment. I think she’d already made off with the collection by then. I don’t know why Dmitri had it with him in London.”

“Think Ivan Alexander approved?”

“I didn’t get that far before Dmitri sent me back to Dublin. I haven’t seen either one of them since then.”

Yank thought a moment. “And now they turn up in Maine before Colin’s bruises have had a chance to heal.”

“Dmitri is there because Natalie told him she wanted to talk to us—my grandfather, Lucas, me—about the collection.” Emma tried not to sound defensive. “I know the timing raises questions.”

“A ton of questions,” Yank said half under his breath, then sighed. “If I were this Natalie, I’d give the collection back to Rusakov and forget him and the mother. Go live my life.”

“That still could happen.” Emma turned from the window, grabbed a notepad she had brought to the meeting but hadn’t touched. Her throat tightened as she thought of Colin. The timing of the
Nightingale’
s arrival in Heron’s Cove was lousy for both of them. “You knew all about my involvement with Dmitri Rusakov before I stepped foot at the academy.”

“Not all.”

But it was Colin, not Yank, who had answered. He entered the conference room. He wasn’t wearing a suit. He had on dark canvas pants, a dark sweater and a worn leather jacket that added to his air of rugged masculinity.