Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set (65 page)

“I agree, but Brandt has been urging me to rush past minor points in the negotiations.”

“Ignore him, get what you want out of Yukin,” Paull said firmly. “But I must point out with the security accord signed Yukin’s hands will be tied, he won’t be able to follow the scenario Bob has outlined, not with us as allies. No, the best way to stave off Russian expansion is to follow through on your promise as quickly as possible.”

Carson threw the dossier aside. “In office less than ninety days and already my hands are dirty.”

“The nature of politics is to have dirty hands,” Paull astutely pointed out as he lit the cigar. “The trick is to govern without being concerned with your dirty hands.”

“No, the trick is to wash them constantly.”

Paull puffed away contentedly. “Lady Macbeth tried that without success.”

“Lady Macbeth was mad.”

“It seems to me that madness is inherent in politics, or at least a preternatural ability to rationalize, which can be a kind of madness.”

“The ability to rationalize is a trait common to all humans,” Carson observed.

“Maybe so,” Paull said from within a cloud of aromatic smoke, “but surely not on such a massive scale.”

Carson grunted. “Anyway, it’s not the first time I’ve gotten my hands dirty.”

“And we both know it won’t be the last.”

Reaching over, Paull pressed a button and the privacy glass slid into place, ensuring that their conversation couldn’t be overheard even by the driver or the Secret Service escort riding shotgun.

“Speaking of which,” he said in a soft voice, “I want to run an investigation on everyone in the cabinet.”

The president sat up straight. “You suspect someone? Of what?”

“Of nothing, of everything.” Paull took the cigar from between his teeth. “Here’s how the situation looks from my particular vantage point, Edward. Frankly, I don’t trust anyone in your inner circle. It’s my opinion that Benson and Thomson have taken steps to ensure they know what your moves will be before you implement them.”

“Denny, what you’re saying—”

“Please let me finish, sir. Consider: Your first two initiatives have been shot down in Congress, embarrassing defeats for a newly elected president. Recall that Lloyd Berns had assured you that he’d have the votes from the other side of the aisle to ensure the bills’ passage, but unaccountably he was wrong. It was as if someone had spoken to the right congressmen before Berns, which could only have happened if the opposition had knowledge of the decisions of the inner cabinet.”

The president blew out a little puff of anxious air. “Come on, Denny. I’ve known you a long time, but this sounds preposterous. What you’re intimating is that a member of my cabinet is leaking information to my enemies.”

“I’m not intimating it, sir, I’m stating it straight out.”

“On the basis of what? Circumstantial evidence, a series of setbacks that are normal—”

“With all due respect, Edward, the string of setbacks we’ve suffered are anything but normal.”

The president made an exasperated sound. “But there could be any number of explanations, all of which might be perfectly innocent.”

“Innocence doesn’t belong in politics, you know that. And, if I may say, in the position you’re in you don’t have the luxury of kicking suspicions into the gutter. If I’m right, your enemies have already started to poison your presidency. We’ve got to short-circuit your enemies, and I mean right now.”

Carson considered for some time. At length, he nodded. “All right, Denny. Begin as soon as you get back to the office. Pick your team and—”

“No. All the work is going to be done by me alone, unofficially, outside the office. I don’t want to leave a trail of any kind.”

The president rubbed his temples. “You know this is the sort of assignment Jack ought to be handling.”

“Naturally, but you and I have sent him on what I trust is a parallel course.”

“I detested lying to him.”

“You didn’t lie, you withheld knowledge, and for a damn good reason.”

“Jack is a friend, Denny. He brought my daughter back to me. I owe him more than I can ever repay.”

“Then trust in his abilities.” Paull stubbed out his cigar. “For the moment, that’s all we can do.”

Entwined, cradled by the softly breathing night, Jack and Annika spoke in the secretive tones of ghosts:

“What do you think is happening beyond these walls,” Annika said, “in the hallway, the other apartments in this building, out on the street, in other sections of the city? It’s impossible to know, just like it’s impossible to know who’s thinking about us, thinking about following us, extracting the secrets we keep so close to us, who harbors thoughts of murder and mayhem.” She turned in his arms. “What are your secrets, Jack, the ones you keep closest to you?”

“My wife left me—twice,” Jack said with a vehemence that was almost like menace. “Who the hell knows what secrets are held inside the human heart.”

Annika waited a moment, possibly to allow his anger to subside, before she said, “What happened on the sofa beneath the Tibetan mandala?”

Jack closed his eyes for a moment as he felt his heart beating hard. “Nothing happened.”

“So you were talking to a ghost, is that it?”

“I was talking to a secret.”

“A secret Alli knows.”

“She and I, yes.”

“This just underscores what I said. We know so little, less than what seems apparent, less even than we believe.” She placed her hand on his arm, moved it down to the back of his hand, tracing the veins. “So you won’t tell me your secret, but I’ll bet it has nothing to do with your wife, or ex-wife, because she’s just a word now and words fade with incredible quickness. It has to do with your daughter, with Emma.” Her fingers twined with his. “Was she out there on the sofa? Is she there now?”

“Emma is dead. I told you that.”

“Mmm. Is she one of the things we don’t know about?”

“What do you mean?” He knew exactly what she meant, but Emma was too intimate, too precious to share.

“I’ve killed a man, as you know, but still I know nothing about death. Do you?”

“How could I?”

“Yes, how could you. I have asked myself that very question many times since I saw you on the sofa, and the answer I’ve come up with is this: I think you know more about it than I do. I think you were talking to death, or something like death, under the Tibetan mandala.”

“What an insane notion.”

He halfheartedly sought to disentangle himself, but she climbed on top of him, reached down for him, her fingers encircling. “We all have insane notions, now and again.” She squeezed gently, bringing him to readiness. “It’s the human condition.”

Dyadya Gourdjiev was in the midst of making coffee, strong enough to keep him up for the rest of what remained of the night, when a pounding on the front door set his heart to racing. Setting down the plastic dipper full of freshly ground coffee he stepped out of the kitchen, padded on slippered feet across the living room. The pounding came again, more insistent this time, if that were possible.

“Who is it?” he asked with his cheek nearly against the door.

“Open up,” came the voice from the other side, “or I’ll have the damn knob blown off!”

Figuratively girding his loins for what was to come, Dyadya Gourdjiev flipped open the lock. No sooner had he begun to turn the knob than the door fairly exploded inward. Had he not stepped nimbly aside the edge of the door would have cracked the bone above his eye socket.

Two men rushed inside, one of them slammed the door shut behind them. He was the muscle, the one with the Makarov pistol. The
other man was Kaolin Arsov, the head of the Izmaylovskaya
grupperovka
family in Moscow. Dyadya Gourdjiev had been expecting him more or less from the moment Annika and her new friends had left his apartment.

Arsov had the eyes of a predator and the complexion of a dead fish, as if he preferred darkness to sunlight. Perhaps he was allergic or in some perverse fashion averse to natural light of any sort. He looked like the kind of man you wouldn’t want to cross, a man whose strong arm you’d want with you in, say, a knife fight or a street brawl, even if his judgement was suspect. He’d sell his brother to the highest bidder—Dyadya Gourdjiev knew that he had, in fact, done just that—in order to gain territory and prestige, but once given he’d never renege on his word, which was, in his neck of the world, the only true and lasting measure of a man.

“Gospodin Gourdjiev, what a pleasure it is to see you again.” His lips were smiling, but his eyes remained as cold and calculating as any predator.

“I’m afraid I can’t say the same.” Dyadya Gourdjiev held his ground, which was the only way to play this situation. Arsov could smell fear and indecision from a mile away. Weakness of any kind or to any degree was what he sniffed out, using it like a cudgel against his prey, because for him the world was strength and weakness, nothing existed in between. Not that Dyadya Gourdjiev thought that Arsov considered him prey, but in the end the difference was negligible. Gourdjiev was someone to intimidate, knock around a little, someone from whom he could get information. That was how Arsov would play it, anyway; there were no surprises with men like him, who were akin to steel girders, neither bending nor breaking, thinking themselves invincible.

Arsov shrugged as he swaggered around the living room, picking up a statuette here, a framed photo there, studying them with blank eyes. He returned them in deliberately haphazard fashion, a silent
warning to Dyadya Gourdjiev that Arsov had the power to turn his world upside down. “No matter. I’ve come for Annika. Where is she?”

“In the back of beyond,” Dyadya Gourdjiev said. “Far away from your clutches, I expect.”

“And of course you helped send her there.” Arsov paused in his perambulation and grinned with teeth that were preternaturally long, wicked as a wolf’s. “Wherever
there
is.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

Arsov leered. His breath was sour from vodka, cheap cigarettes, and a stomach that could tolerate neither. “I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t help that.”

Arsov’s head flicked only slightly, but his muscle cocked the hammer on the Makarov

“That’s not a good idea.” Dyadya Gourdjiev held his ground like the front line against a putsch.

Arsov beckoned his man with a wave of his hand that was almost perfunctory, or negligent, as if the life or death of Dyadya Gourdjiev was of little moment. “I’ll decide whether it’s a good idea or not, old man.”

“He’s right, Arsov, it’s not a good idea.” The man who spoke had emerged from the kitchen as silently as an angel, or a demon. He was wide shouldered and slim hipped. With his wire-rimmed glasses he looked like a professor, or perhaps an accountant. And yet there was something in him that made the observer wary, set him back on his heels, as if struck by a sudden fistful of air. A discernable chill invaded the room, as if the man had sucked the oxygen out of it.

Arsov’s eyebrows arched in hateful surprise. “I had no idea you might be here.”

Oriel Jovovich Batchuk spread his hands. “And yet, here I am.” His basilisk gaze alighted on the muscle. “Put that idiotic thing away before you hurt yourself.”

The man, mumbling something, looked to his boss for guidance.

“What’s that?” Batchuk said.

“I said I don’t take orders from you.”

Everything happened at once then. The muscle lifted the Makarov, Arsov started to speak, and Batchuk raised his left arm as if he were about to direct traffic, or hail a friend on the street. Something small launched out of the space between his sleeve and his wrist, blurred through the air, and buried itself in the center of the muscle’s throat. The man dropped the pistol, clutching at his throat with his trembling fingers. He gasped, his lips took on a distinctly bluish tint. A white froth foamed out his half-open mouth as he collapsed in a heap.

“Who do you take orders from now?” Batchuk said with contempt rather than irony. Then he turned his attention back to Arsov, smiling without revealing a single iota of emotion. “Now, Arsov, what were you saying?”

“I have a legitimate grievance,” Arsov said, his gaze magnetized by his own man, now nothing more than flesh poisoned by a dart coated with hydrocyanic acid. “Annika Dementieva must pay for the murder she committed.”

“You leave Annika to me.”

Arsov’s eyes at last engaged Batchuk’s. “You yourself guaranteed me complete noninterference.”

“I said I will deal with the matter.” The deputy prime minister cleared his throat. “There will be no more interference in Izmaylovskaya business.”

Arsov nodded. As he was about to step over his fallen bodyguard, Batchuk said, “You brought it in, you take it out.”

Grunting, the mob boss dragged the corpse to the front door and opened it. As he was about to drag him over the threshold, Batchuk added, “A grievance doesn’t excuse vulgarity. You’re in society now, Arsov, you’d do well to remember that.”

The door slammed behind the two men and, in three strides, Batchuk crossed the room, locked the door, and turned back to his host.

“The vermin that comes in off the street these days.” He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Perhaps I should send an exterminator over for a week or so.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Oriel Jovovich.” Dyadya Gourdjiev returned to the kitchen to continue preparing the coffee.

“Still,” the deputy prime minister said as he leaned against the doorway, “it might be prudent.”

“I’d really prefer not.” Dyadya Gourdjiev set the coffeepot on the fire ring, took down two glasses as large as beer steins. “You’ll do what you want, in any event.”

“It’s a deputy prime minister’s prerogative.”

“I’m talking about long before you rose to that position.” Dyadya Gourdjiev turned to face Batchuk. “I’m talking about the young man I knew, the young man who—”

“Stop! Not another word!” Batchuk raised a hand, a singularly violent gesture that might have been directed as much at himself as at the older man.

Dyadya Gourdjiev smiled, much as a father might at a mischievous child. “It does my heart good to know that all the feelings haven’t been squeezed out of you by Yukin and his murderous kind.”