Father Night (13 page)

By this time the car had rolled to a stop. He kept the car in neutral, rather than park, opened the door, and got out. Nona could hear the electrified voice boom over the bullhorn. “Get back in the car, son.”

Ignoring the voice, Rob began to walk back to where the police cruiser had pulled in behind him.

Nona leaned over to the open door. “Rob, come back here! What the hell are you doing?”

He kept walking.

“Son, get back in the car!” the voice shouted. “You will not be warned again!”

Nona could see the cop with the bullhorn. In the driving rain, he was standing next to the cruiser, his free hand on the butt of his service revolver. If there was any traffic on the interstate, it was blurred and indistinct, seeming as far away as the next county.

Rob raised his handgun and squeezed off two rounds. The cop flew backward, his arms outstretched. Nona screamed. More shots, this time fired out the cruiser’s rolled-down window. A bullet struck Rob, twisting him sideways. He fired again, was hit again. He fell to his knees and kept on firing until he collapsed onto his face.

Then there was nothing but the sound of rain slamming the car’s roof and the hiss of intermittent traffic. The tarmac was stippled like a lake in a storm. Nona sat shaking and crying. Then she crawled across the seat and looked out the open door. Rob wasn’t moving and neither was the cop. The bullhorn lay in the road. There was no movement, no sound from the cruiser. Red lights kept blinking emptily.

Hands shaking, Nona slid behind the wheel and, not quite knowing what she was doing, put the car in gear and drove to the local police station, where she staggered up the stairs, crossed the lobby floor, and promptly vomited all over the desk sergeant.

“Nona?”

Because she was black, the white assistant DA tried to have her indicted as an accessory, but there was no case, and his efforts came to nothing, if you discounted two weeks of further terror for Nona.

“Nona?” Bishop slapped her gently on the cheek.

With a feral growl, she leapt up, grabbed him by the throat, shoved him off the bed, and slammed him against the wall.

“Don’t ever,
ever
touch me like that again.”

Her face was so close to his he had difficulty focusing on her.

“Like what? It was just a tap. What the hell’s gotten into you?”

“Did you hear me?” she said. She had not blinked since she had taken hold of him.

“Calm down.”

Still not blinking.

“Yes, damnit, yes, I heard you.”

Her eyes refocused slowly.

“Let’s both just back off,” Bishop said slowly and distinctly, “shall we?”

She nodded and stepped back.

“Mistakes were made.”

She stared at him as if he were a Martian.

He could not help thinking of his humiliating dinner with the General. Looking into her face, he felt like he had stepped into a steaming pile of something unsettling, something that if he was not exceedingly careful he would slip on and break his neck. What had he done? he wondered. There was a demon inside her he had never before glimpsed. But wasn’t there a demon inside everyone?

He massaged his neck, then frowned. “Do I have welts?”

“Let me take care of that.”

With a slightly abashed smile, she came into his arms and massaged his neck with a gentle touch so erotic that soon enough they were once again glued to each other. With a dreadful start, she realized that Bishop reminded her of Rob; they shared a monomaniacal look in their eyes. That long-ago night had been a crossroads for her. That night she felt her true calling. That night she decided to be a cop, to stop the Robs of the world—or at least her corner of it—from wreaking their mayhem and destruction. She was still on that path, and now she realized that she could not take another.

*   *   *

T
HOUGH IT
was late, Caro did not return to her apartment. Instead, after dropping Alli and Vera off, she drove herself to Arrows & Quiver, her favorite dive bar minutes off the interstate just this side of the Maryland border. The place was dark, smudgy, with the low metal ceiling of a submarine. She was assaulted by decades of alcohol fumes, and the desultory chatter of the same twenty or so barflies who never seemed to leave the place even after it closed at four
A.M
. This motley crew was hunched along the oak bar, swaying in a line as if its members were all suffering the same degree of inebriation. On the opposite side of the room, rows of broken-down booths afforded a modicum of privacy, if not comfort. An old juke was playing, Journey’s “Wheel in the Sky.” It was that kind of place, which was largely why Caro felt comfortable here, stuck in time like a fossil in amber, so that it seemed as if she’d never been away.

As she slid onto a stool, the bartender greeted her with the same salute he had used the first time she had walked in the place. When he pushed her drink across the bartop, she noticed a folded slip of paper, rather than the usual paper napkin, under the glass. She glanced up at the bartender, but he had already turned away, tending to the unending orders from the conga line of sloshed customers.

She lifted the glass and, while she took a lingering sip, unfolded the slip with her free hand, and read what was written on it. Immediately she crushed the note, pulled over a heavy glass ashtray that the bar now used to pile up olive pits, struck a match, and burned the crumpled ball. The flash of flame caught the bartender’s interest for maybe a nanosecond, but as it died away, he turned aside.

Caro took her time with another sip, then, glass in hand, she rose and walked across the width of the room. As she did so, she thought about getting the hell out of there as quickly as she could. Practicality stopped her. In this instance, running would do her no good, and she knew it.

She saw him sitting at the booth closest to the rear. His back was to the door and, therefore, to her. That was how certain of himself he was. He did turn his head, though, when she slid into the booth opposite him.

“Good of you to join me,” he said in his trademark deadpan voice.

For some moments, she said nothing, simply stared into his face. And what a beautiful face it was—as if sculpted by a Renaissance master, with its high, wide forehead, large, deeply intelligent eyes, Roman nose, and full lips.

“How did you find me?”

To his credit, he didn’t smirk. “I know you better than anyone.” He paused a beat for drama’s sake. “The only one who knows you at all, I daresay.” He paused. “Apart from the Syrian, that is.”

“The Syrian saw only what I wanted him to see.”

“Don’t they all?”

“But not you.”

His face was completely still, like a Cretan mask she had seen once in an Athens museum. “Not me.”

“So now you’re going by Myles Oldham?”

“Is this to be a conversation of non sequiturs?”

“Grigori.” She took another sip of her drink. “Now you’re Myles.” She cocked her head. “Are you—what?—ashamed of Grigori?”

“Myles is so British, isn’t it?” he said. “It goes ever so much better with my accent.”

“And helped you through Cambridge, no doubt. It falls trippingly on the tongue.”

“As Hamlet said.” His head dipped in a kind of mock bow. “Your sarcasm is duly noted.”

“Or could it be that you’re ashamed of your Russian heritage?”

“Half Russian,” he said, bristling. “The other half—”

“Yes, yes, your mother was English. Marion Oldham.”

“I loved her very much.”

“You never knew her, Grigori. Not really.”

“Don’t.” His voice bristled. Then he barked an unkind laugh.

“Stop!”

They glared at each other. It was clear the knives were out for real. Having pushed him to the brink, Caro turned the conversation to other matters.
Time,
she thought,
to bow to the inevitable
. “So. What is it you want?”

“What I’ve always wanted.” He reached for her hands.

*   *   *

P
AVEL
K
URIN,
a tall, slope-shouldered man with a long, theatrical mustache that turned up at the ends and eyes like a Mongol, stood amid the rich animal stink in the center of a chaos he controlled. Kurin was the ringmaster and also the manager of the Red Square Circus. Like a philharmonic maestro, he conducted the striking of tents, the feeding of the caged animals, the parade of elephants into their straw-matted boxcars, the disposition of the jugglers, tiny contortionists, brawny strongmen, lithe acrobats, bareback riders, makeupless clowns, aloof trapeze artists, little people, twins and triplets giggling in clusters.

Kurin had been born into circus life. His parents were little people, comfortably retired now in Saint Petersburg. He, however, was over six feet tall—one of those unexplainable quirks that made genetics such a fascinating field of study. He knew this troupe intimately—their loves, their hates, and, most important of all, their friendships and feuds. Despite the inevitable infighting between the acrobats and the trapeze artists, these people were a family. Which meant in times of stress all feuds were forgotten as they banded together, outsiders against a hostile world.

Any group of people who approached the circus when it was down—especially in the rail yard where it was now—were viewed with extreme suspicion. The rail yard was where the local toughs came for payback for supposed cons perpetrated by circus folk. So it was no surprise that at first Kurin refused to talk with Jack, claiming with good reason that he was too busy. Thick-muscled roustabouts appeared, converging. But then Kurin caught sight of the old man, and, thinking of his parents in Saint Petersburg, he signed for his roustabouts to return to their normal duties.

“We’ll talk inside,” he said, climbing up into his private car. It was painted red and gold, with the Red Square Circus imprint flowing over a cluster of expressionist onion domes. The car was cozy and warm, festooned with a dazzling array of circus memorabilia, as if it were a museum rather than living quarters. A least two dozen photos of Kurin’s parents in costume, with animals and with various dignitaries, including Khrushchev and Gorbachev, hung on the walls, between the paraphernalia.

Kurin guided Gourdjiev and Katya to a curvy, tasseled fin-de-siècle love seat, upholstered in worn claret velvet. He stood facing Jack and Annika.

“You have the look of fugitives,” he said in his forthright manner.

“And if we are?” Annika said warily.

Kurin spread his arms wide. “We’re all fugitives here, in one way or another. We’re misfits fleeing the everyday world with its everyday people. We are the opposite of normal; here, in this sanctuary, we can be proud of who and what we are.”

“We need safe passage,” Jack said.

“Out of Moscow.”

Jack nodded. “For a start.”

Kurin studied the four of them for a moment, then, abruptly, turned on his heel. “I sense we all could use a drink.”

He poured them a very fine vodka he pulled from a small freezer. He served it in jelly jars, but he made no excuse for the service. When they had all taken a sip, he said, “Across the border is where you want to go.”

Jack said nothing because the answer was obvious.

“We are headed to Saint Petersburg, so that is good for you. Estonia, Finland are just kilometers away.” Kurin took a longer pull of his vodka. “Well, in the circus we are used to the unusual, so anything can be arranged.”

“For a price,” Annika said.

Kurin regarded her for a moment. “We’re not
all
mercenaries, you know.”

“Apologies,” Jack said.

Kurin fluttered a hand. “I choose not to be offended. I mean, what’s the point, yes?” He revisited his jelly jar.

“But surely you understand that we’ll be putting you in danger,” Jack said.

Kurin laughed. “My dear sir, all of us are here in the circus because we’re in love with danger.” He shrugged. “What’s a little more?”

“This kind of danger is nothing to joke about,” Dyadya Gourdjiev said. “My enemies are extremely determined.”

Kurin turned to him. “What, now you’re trying to talk me out of helping you?”

“We simply want you to be aware of the possible consequences of sheltering us,” Annika said.

Kurin spread his hands. “But you see, sheltering is what we do. Without that, what are we? A group of freaks, performing for the yokels.”

“Then it’s settled?” Annika said.

Kurin smiled, then consulted his watch. “We move out in ninety minutes precisely.”

S
EVEN

C
ARO, STARING
into Grigori’s eyes, could see intimations of both his parents. Not that she would say this to Grigori—she was convinced that his feelings for both of them were pathological. Her hands were still held by his. She allowed this because she needed him to be calm; she knew she could keep him under control—that, apart from his mother, she was possibly the one person who could. But his mother was in Switzerland, in a mountain chalet from which she rarely emerged. She had more money than she knew what to do with, but apart from her son her only passions were skiing and her dogs. Grigori had taken her to the chalet once, and Caro had been introduced to the dogs, a pair of amazing black and white brindled Bernese mountain dogs from the same litter, who acted more human than many Caro had met.

The juke was playing Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield,” its fierce beat impelling a couple of the drunks into the open space for a sloppy dance. The song reminded her of Marion Oldham, a woman of a certain age who was employing every extravagant methodology at her considerable disposal to dig her heels in against the aging process. Caro found her a refreshingly uncomplicated person. She clearly loved her son more than life itself, but was not the kind of stifling mother that love often generated. She was warm and affectionate with Caro, which, truth to tell, freaked Caro out. Something inside her seemed to shrivel at the attention; all her defenses rose up like a phalanx of spear-carrying warriors. If Marion noticed this, she gave no hint of it, allowing Caro to react as she did without query or visible judgment.

“He would be cross with me for saying this,” Marion had said, “but he loves you. You’re the one woman he has ever loved.”