Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (35 page)

How could you do this, Ben?
she silently railed.
I loved you like a brother. What happened to you?

Ava’s voice jerked her from her gloom. “Liesl, try to pull out of this mood you’re in. None of us can afford the luxury of self-pity. Not now.”

The words caught in Liesl like grappling hooks. Is that what this was? Was it all about Liesl? Again? She straightened herself against Ava’s bluntness but couldn’t fault her for it. Because it was true.

A bedroom door opened, and Cade walked out, fresh from a shower. He went straight to Liesl, who leaned into him, hoping his love would refresh her. He embraced her and stroked her hair.

The same bedroom door opened again, and Ian loped into the living room in overalls. “Uh-oh,” he said, looking toward Liesl and Cade still wrapped in each other’s arms. “Since it’s getting all cooey in here, I’m going outside to talk to those marines in the hall.”

“They’re NYPD, Pop. And there’s no cooing.”

“Yeah, well you kids deserve some privacy.” He looked at Ava, answering her phone. “Hold your fire,” he announced as he opened the front
door
. “The only weapon I’ve got is a toothpick.” His voice trailed as he closed the door behind him. “Hey, you guys know how to play canasta?”

Liesl welcomed the chance to laugh. “I’m so glad you brought him.” She looked thoughtful. “I hope Dad was okay with staying behind. He was my unseen protector through all those years.” She was still dumbfounded by his admissions that in Boston, Washington, and New York he had watched over her. Because he’d always disguised himself, she had passed him on the street several times and never known it.

“But your grandmother needed him more,” Cade said. “Him and the Charleston police patrolling the house.”

Liesl grimaced. “What is it about us Bowers?” she asked. And there it was again. Self-pity. She recoiled at the touch of it, then thought of Cass. She had suffered as much.

“Liesl,” Ava said, approaching with the phone in her hand. “You have a call.” Her eyes fairly danced.

Liesl took the phone and answered. “Hello?”

“Hey girl.”

Surprise brightened her face as she looked back at Ava. “Max!”

“So you just couldn’t stay out of trouble, could you?” he teased.

She didn’t respond right away.

“Liesl?”

“I’m here, Max. Tell me how you are.”

“Still fiddling around and anxiously awaiting my appearance on stage with the lovely Liesl Bower.”

“I wish we could fast-forward to next year, Max.”

“It’ll come soon enough. By then, surely you and Cade will arrive at the Nuremberg Music Festival as husband and wife. I regret that little white-lace ceremony has been postponed.”

Wishing to change the subject, Liesl asked, “Max, have you heard anything about your father?”

“Ah, the renegade Russian mole who had to flee Israel for his disgraceful life? The underground Russian insurgent who schemed to kill his own president and wipe out my whole country? That father? Well, just when I think he’s met President Gorev’s firing squad, rumors surface about a
Maxum
Morozov sighting somewhere in the Urals. Or is that urinals? I get them confused.”

“Max, be serious.”

“Do you realize how long you’ve been telling me that? What you don’t realize is that I’m deadly serious too much of the time. Something about juxtaposing the philharmonic violinist with the Israeli intelligence officer in the same body. It’s enough to make me seriously schizophrenic.”

Liesl envisioned her wiry friend with the unmanageable red hair. “Just talk to me, Max. Tell me you’re all right. And your mother, too.”

“Oh, Mom’s having the time of her life. Freedom from tyranny, from the brutal reign of Maxum senior. She didn’t grieve his abrupt leaving too long.”

“And you?”

“A far-too-complicated subject. I’d much rather talk about your own harrowing life. How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay, but do you know about Ben?”

There was a long silence. “I learn of too many things in my intelligence role. Some things I wish I didn’t know.”

Liesl waited for more, but it didn’t come. She pressed. “What made him turn on us, Max?”

“I can’t answer that, Liesl.”

Again, she waited for more, but Max divulged nothing. “Ava told me he just sent Anna and their two girls to Tel Aviv,” Liesl confided. “Like that’s going to spare them the shame of his treason.” Liesl lost her battle against anger. “After seeing what that did to Dr. Devoe and his wife, how could Ben do this to his own family? I thought I knew him!”

Cade reached to steady Liesl, gesturing for her to calm down.

“Liesl, I wish I could make this easier for you, but I can’t,” Max said gently. “And now I have to go. Try to behave, and do as you’re told.”

Liesl swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Be careful, Max.”

“Always.” He hung up.

Liesl cupped the phone and lingered over the voice now gone. But seconds later, it rang again. She gave it to Ava and returned to the window. There was so much to sort out and so few answers. She looked over her
shoulder
and saw Cade in the kitchen, opening a box of cereal. Then she caught some of Ava’s words from the bedroom where she’d retreated with her call …

“Something’s not right. Why there? Why now?”

Soon after Ava returned to the living room, her phone rang again. But this time she just listened and said, “I’m on my way.”

Liesl saw something she didn’t like on Ava’s face. “What’s wrong?”

But Ava only waved a hand behind her as she dashed out the front door. Liesl moved to the windows overlooking the alley behind the building. Moments later, she watched Ava run from the building and hop into the back seat of a waiting car.

Liesl leaned her head against the glass as the car sped away.
How much more?

Chapter 41

A
t the wheel of the white Nissan, Jeremy talked distractedly about what a momentous occasion this was. “Ben, you’re about to meet the Architect! I mean, savor it, man. The big guy wants to shake your hand.” Jeremy finally looked back at the road, but the ebullience continued to bubble. “I mean, he never asked to meet me. But I’m okay with that. You’re my brother. Close enough.”

Ben sat slouched in the seat that was too small for him. The bulk of his jacket wedged him in even tighter. But that was the least of his discomforts. Unlike Jeremy, he couldn’t take his eyes off the road. Its borders might as well have been the never-intersecting lines of eternity, routing him toward a point he couldn’t see, a fate without end. And it was all his doing. No one forced his decision. The president’s trusted advisor was about to personally profess allegiance to an enemy of the state. Had Ben Hafner gone completely mad?

At least Anna and the kids were safe in Israel, though he realized the irony of that notion. No place in Israel was safe. At least they wouldn’t have to suffer a media feeding frenzy if he was compromised.

Checking his GPS, Jeremy routed them into a Brooklyn industrial park with too many empty, overgrown buildings to suit Ben. “He couldn’t have found a better place to meet?”

Jeremy grinned at him. “You would have preferred the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria?”

Ben didn’t feel like dueling with his brother-in-law. But there was something he wanted to know. “You still don’t know what job Cyrus Neale is supposed to do for this guy?”

“Not yesterday. Not today. The Architect believes the less any of us knows about the other, the better. My only job right now is to get you settled into the network. When you’re ready to start transmitting the information we need, I’ll show you how to do that. Simple.”

Jeremy slowed and checked his course.

“You’ve never been here, I take it.”

“No. The Architect has property everywhere. This was once a legitimate business, I believe. You know he’s still an arts dealer.”

“But you don’t even know his name.”

“Don’t need to. All I need to know is that he’s going to protect Israel … and keep my paychecks coming.” Jeremy laughed, then slowed into the last turn. It was a dead-end street that led to a two-story metal building with barren tree branches scraping against its sides. When the wind rose, the fingernail-on-blackboard screech made Ben’s skin crawl.

“I don’t see any cars.” Ben checked his watch. They were ten minutes early for their noon meeting.

Mark Delaney and three other FBI agents ran low between two buildings. Half a block away, hidden from anyone approaching the industrial park, plainclothes officers in unmarked NYPD cars waited to assist.

Delaney led his team within sight of the white Nissan, now parked in front of a lone warehouse at the end of the street. The agents crouched behind a line of bedraggled shrubs and watched the car’s two occupants. Delaney raised his radio close to his mouth and reported their position to the backup teams.

A young man stationed at an upper-level window overlooking the entrance to the industrial park spoke quietly into his phone. “You were right, sir. The cops are everywhere.”

“How far from Mr. Rubin?” Ivan asked.

“Four of them about fifty yards. More cars waiting behind.”

“Are he and Mr. Hafner parked close to the warehouse?”

“Right in front, sir.”

“Very good. Stay where you are.”

Ben glanced at his watch. “They’re fifteen minutes late. I’m not happy about this.”

Jeremy shifted nervously. “We can’t just leave. If we passed them on their way in, it would look bad.”

“They should be here already, waiting on us. After all, aren’t I the prize mole?”

“Ben, you’ve got to—”

The first bullet pierced the driver’s side of the windshield with hardly a sound. Jeremy’s head snapped backward with the force of it. The arterial spray hit Ben full in the face, clouding his eyes and choking off his scream.

Ben lunged toward the floor an instant before the second shot plugged the back of his seat. Blindly, he felt for the door handle above him and yanked. Shoving the door open, he rolled onto the ground and scrambled on his belly across the pavement toward an old shed.

But it was too far. He was too slow. He didn’t even hear it when it came—when the bullet entered his chest. When another sliced through his neck. He heard nothing as life’s sweet serum poured from him. Would Anna hear? In a fading, gurgling whisper, he spoke to her. “Anna … I … love …”