Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set (57 page)

Alli lowered herself into the chair, her arms placed where the older woman’s had been moments before. Her heart beat so hard it was almost painful, and she felt as if she were on fire, as if at any moment she would spontaneously combust. But gradually she became aware that what she felt was a seething energy that coincided or perhaps was the aftermath of the cresting of her terror. She felt the chair beneath her buttocks and thighs, her elbows and wrists. She looked at the restraints and they were just pieces of leather and metal, they weren’t talismans of voodoo or black magic that forced her back into that week of despair and fear. At least for the time being, that memory became manageable instead of overwhelming. Still, she couldn’t look at it for long without feeling blinded or perhaps plunged into a darkness beyond all comprehension.

She got up from the chair because she wanted to, because she could. She still felt her flesh tingling where it had made contact with the wood through her clothes.

“Would you like some tea?” Milla Tamirova asked. Her face held an expression that might have been tenderness or even solace, that Alli couldn’t quite digest. “Or perhaps something stronger to celebrate your small victory.”

“Where’s my father?” Alli said.

“You said you need his protection. From what—or should I say, from whom?”

“Nothing,” Alli said. “I lied because I was afraid you wouldn’t see me otherwise.”

Milla Tamirova frowned. “You were probably right. Not that it matters, I don’t think it would be a good idea for you—”

“I want to see him.”

“I understand.” Milla Tamirova shook her head. “But your father is a very dangerous man, there’s no telling how he’ll react to the news that he has an illegitimate daughter. Better for you to stay away.”

“Okay, you’ve done your duty, consider me warned.”

Milla Tamirova closed the door to the dungeon behind them as they walked out into the hallway. “You just took a first step, that’s all it was. Don’t mistake it for a silver bullet. You have a long, dark journey ahead of you.”

Alli would not meet her penetrating gaze. She wished she understood; she’d rather bite her tongue than admit she didn’t.

“I wish you’d take my advice, even though you don’t like me.”

“That’s not true,” Alli said, “or, at least, it isn’t now.”

“I appreciate your candor.” Once again, the rueful smile played across Milla Tamirova’s lips. “You still won’t take my advice, will you?”

Alli shook her head. “Where is he holed up?”

“Excellent choice of words.” Milla Tamirova swept them both across the living room to the front door. “That would be his brand-new dacha, just outside the city. Here’s the address.” She pulled the door open. “Go to him, then. Perhaps you’ll be in time for the christening.”

9

Why does memory persist, Jack asked himself, long after the details of an event or a person become frayed or indistinct? The core of memory remains like a dream or a stain on a photo that is rapidly growing blank.

Karl Rochev’s dacha, deep in the thick woodlands past the far boundaries of Kiev’s eastern suburbs, blighted with hideous Soviet-era apartment complexes marching to nowhere like the undead, bore the dimensions and hallmarks of an old farmhouse. The wooden frame had been augmented and, in some places, replaced by massive fieldstones, lending it at once a more stolid and more militaristic aspect.

Jack, sitting with Annika and Alli in the car he had rented, could easily imagine the structure the dacha must once have been, because it was eerily similar to his own house. He felt a shiver run through him as the image in memory overlaid the image he stared at now.

The dacha sat at the end of a winding driveway, newly planted
with evergreens yet to reach a height sufficient to completely screen the house from the road. It was ablaze with light, every window emitting a cheery butter yellow that held at bay the gloom of the failing afternoon. A cool wind ruffled the feathery tops of the pines, creating a dreamy sound not unlike the surf. Otherwise, the stillness was absolute. Clouds had rolled in with the twilight, obliterating both shadow and birdsong.

Jack rolled the car off the road and into the low overhang of hemlock branches. Rooting around, he found an old toothpick in the glove compartment, which he leaned up against the gearshift. As they got out, he made certain that the vehicle could not be spotted by someone driving by. He had already taken the precaution of switching license plates on the car with one they’d found parked on a suburban side street, so he felt that he’d done all he could to protect them. Then he looked around in all directions. Nothing but close-knit stands of evergreens greeted him. There was not another house in sight, the only vehicle theirs.

As they were about to start down the driveway, Annika said, “This man is dangerous. Maybe we leave the girl with the car.”

“Stop calling me ‘the girl,’” Alli said sharply.

“Stop calling me ‘psycho-bitch,’” Annika responded.

The two women glared at each other for a moment, then Alli turned away and snorted in disgust.

“I’m not leaving Alli alone out here,” Jack said. “She comes with us.”

Annika shrugged, as if to say,
It’s her funeral,
and they went down the driveway, following Jack, who, as much as possible, kept to the lightless areas nearest the line of six-foot evergreens.

Jack signaled them to halt when they were more or less three-quarters of the way to the dacha. Again, he looked around. Apart from a large black crow high up, guarding his nest, the edge of which Jack could just make out, the view was scarcely different than it had been
at the driveway’s head. The sense of isolation or desolation was acute, the atmosphere as far from the bustle of Kiev as you could get, which, Jack supposed, was the point, especially if you planned to use the dacha as a trysting spot.

It wasn’t until they were on the broad veranda that Jack saw that the window on the far left was wide open. He tried the knob of the front door, but found the door locked. Motioning the two women to stay put, he moved along the veranda until he was beside the open window. Deep red curtains rippled like sails, and from inside he heard the sound of a stereo or radio playing Sergey Rachmaninoff’s sumptuous
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,
which conjured up images of Karl Rochev and his new mistress on an oversized bed covered with satin sheets.

For a time, he listened for other sounds: voices, footsteps, the clink of crystal and cutlery, but apart from the silky music, there was nothing. Ducking his head, he climbed over the sill. Inside, he drew the Mauser, the thick curtains still concealing him from whoever might be in the room. The scents of wood smoke and a perfume sweet and sharp came to him. With the Mauser slightly raised, he parted the curtain and like a magician appearing on stage found himself in a living room dominated by the kind of massive stone fireplace one found in old hunting lodges. A fire was crackling along merrily, providing a warm glow. Twin sofas faced each other, a low table between. The room was deserted, as was the adjacent dining room. He checked the rather large kitchen with its simple trestle table around which were grouped four ladder-back chairs. To the left was the back door. No one lurked in the small, windowed pantry on the right. In the entryway, a huge spray of dried flowers, garlanded with pinecones, filled a globular ceramic vase on a narrow wooden side table. He walked to the front door, unlocked and opened it for the two women. Then he headed for the stairs to the second floor.

Putting his back against the wall, he ascended without a sound.
The second floor consisted of three rooms and a bath. The first room was set up as an office, the second as a library, wood-paneled, redolent of the two snifters of cognac and a half-smoked Cuban Cohiba in a heavy cut-glass ashtray. Jack stepped into the room, picked up the cigar, and smelled its tip. It had only recently gone out. Back in the hallway, he saw Annika and Alli making their cautious way up the stairs. They looked at him inquiringly and he shook his head, indicated that he was heading toward the third and last room, doubtless the master bedroom suite.

The door was ajar. Rachmaninoff’s
Rhapsody
was nearing its end. While he still had the music for sound cover, he crouched down and opened the door with the barrel of the handgun. It swung open on a room almost as large as the living room, but carpeted and somehow cozy. To one side stood a delicate-looking escritoire on which was a photo of a man past middle age, still handsome in a rough-hewn Russian manner, dressed in a hunting jacket, standing in front of the dacha—Karl Rochev. A sitting area with a love seat faced a pair of windows that overlooked the deep forest and the fall of night. Porcelain lamps in the shape of graceful women were lit on either side of the bed, which was even larger than the one Jack had imagined. Not that it mattered.

The sheets were rucked back like foamy surf to reveal the lower sheet, rumpled and stained, on which lay a woman’s naked body in an angle of repose so relaxed that, apart from the arrow or spear sticking up straight from her left breast, she might have been asleep.

Behind him, Jack heard the women enter the room. The nude girl was very pretty, angelic, even. With her golden hair and blue eyes she might have been Annika’s sister.

“Take Alli out of here,” he said to Annika.

“Too late,” Annika replied. She went into the en suite bathroom and when she returned said, “No one’s in there. Where the hell is Rochev?”

“Maybe he fled after he killed her,” Alli said. And when the others turned to look at her, she added, “Isn’t that what killers do?”

“Assuming the murder was premeditated,” Annika said.

Alli turned ashen, and ran into the bathroom where they heard her retching and vomiting.

“She’s right about one thing, Rochev isn’t here,” Jack said. “The faster we get out of here the better.”

“In a moment.” Annika knelt on the bed.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She was peering at the murder weapon, which had a slender shaft perhaps three feet or a little more in length. “There’s something odd about this thing.”

Jack heard the sound of running water, then Alli appeared, looking whey-faced and red-eyed. He held out a sheltering arm and she came to him, putting her arms around him and hugging him tight. Her face was averted from the mess on the bed and she was trembling violently.

“Can we leave?” she said in a small, lost voice.

“Absolutely,” Jack said. “Annika, what’s odd about that thing, it’s an arrow, right?”

“No,” she said, touching the end. “See here, there’s no fletching.” Then, quite shockingly, she grabbed the shaft in both her hands and, with a grunt, pulled it so violently from the victim’s chest that for a moment the corpse rose up, its white back arched, until Annika could tear the murderous tip from the flesh.

Backing off the bed, Annika brought the weapon over to him and held aloft its business end, steeped in blood and viscera. “You see, the tip is diamond-shaped. Very unusual, very distinctive.”

Alli caught a glimpse of it and began to whimper.

“Let’s go,” Jack said, heading to the bedroom door.

He heard Annika following him down the stairs. In utter silence, they crossed the entryway. The Rachmaninoff was done, and a viscous,
choking silence pervaded the dacha. Alli had begun to hyperventilate, and Jack urged her to take slow, deep breaths. He pulled open the door and they stepped out onto the veranda. The gathering wind had brushed away the late-afternoon clouds and now, in the aftermath of sunset, the sky was a deep pellucid blue. He looked up into the evergreen, searching for the vigilant crow, but it was gone from its perch, leaving the nest unprotected.

“Back!” he said. “Back inside the house!”

Floodlights snapped on from the tree line on either side of the driveway, blinding them. Then came the furious shouts, followed by gunfire.

10

“SBU, Annika shouted over the hail of gunfire as they retreated into the dacha. Ukrainian Security Service. “Shoot first, ask questions afterward. This is their method of operation.”

“They were waiting for someone to show up,” Jack said, “and we obliged them.”

Annika slammed the door shut and locked it. Jack was holding on to Alli, shielding her from the possibility of a bullet that might find its way through the wooden door. Handing a reluctant Alli off to Annika, he ran to the hearth. Grabbing fire tongs, he picked a burning log off the fire, brought it back to the entryway, where he kicked over the side table. The ceramic vase crashed to the floor, spilling its contents. The hail of bullets had ceased, but the shouts of the SBU operatives were growing louder as they ventured nearer the veranda. Jack kicked the dried flowers up against the front door, making sure the pinecones were visible.

Jack dropped the burning log onto the highly flammable pile.
With a whoosh, the pine pitch in the cones ignited and flames exploded. Almost immediately, the paint started to peel off the door, smoldering, catching fire itself. Soon enough, the wood was starting to burn. Jack ripped the curtains off the nearest window and threw them onto the pyre.

“Annika, your lighter,” he said. “The fluid.”

She nodded, fished in her handbag, and drew out the lighter. Unscrewing a knob on the bottom, she emptied the lighter fluid onto the curtains, then stepped back as the flames roared upward so intensely they began to lick the ceiling. The heat was fierce; paint was peeling and melting everywhere. The side table was afire.

“Let’s go!” he said, grabbing Alli’s hand and, with Annika on his heels, ran through the house. In the darkened kitchen, he said to Annika, “Take Alli into the pantry and open the window. The high hedge will protect you.”

Annika nodded in understanding. “What about you?”

“I’ll follow you,” he said. He gave Alli a smile of encouragement. “Get going. Now!”

He waited, watching through the open pantry door as Annika opened the window and climbed through, then turned back, helping Alli over the sill. Then he went through the drawers until he found a flashlight and a roll of black electrician’s tape. The flashlight was military issue, large and heavy, with a thick waterproof coating. He attached it to the end of a broom handle with a length of the tape. Then he positioned two chairs in front of the door and rested his makeshift contraption on the top slat of the chair backs at a height that he estimated was the one at which he would hold the flashlight if he were coming through the door. He unplugged the toaster, then carefully crept to the door and tied the end of the toaster’s cord to the knob, then unlocked and unlatched the door. He crept back to the flashlight, paying out the cord as he went.