Father Night (39 page)

Tarasov knew that he narrowly missed capture, but the funny thing was that he didn’t seem to care. Staring out the Perspex window at the city of gray clouds below him, he wondered where his life had gone. It wasn’t as if the years had passed through his fingers like grains of sand. It was more that he’d taken handfuls of those years and thrown them into the sea, where they had immediately sunk, drowned beneath the waves, as if erased off the face of the earth. In a strange way, he existed only in this moment. Whatever had occurred during those years belonged to the past of some other Gerard Tarasov, one to whom he was not even remotely related. It was as if he had been born from the head of Zeus, or, more appropriately, Wotan, the sad, defeated one-eyed god of German mythology beloved by Wagner. In any case, he had erased all memory of his parents from his mind. He’d had a sister once, but she was dead, blown up on the West Bank by an Islamic extremist. It was his attempts to keep her alive in his mind that had led him to this moment in time, all the sinister threads of his life pointing the way to failure. Cause and effect, that’s all life was. He had loved his sister. He had never recovered from her death. From that moment on, his life had become a single strand he followed blindly through the darkness, looking neither to the left nor to the right.

Below him, the cloud city rolled by. But above, there was only the blue-black sky, clear and unblemished, at the apex of the world.

*   *   *

W
ERNER
A
X,
traveling under the name Werner von Verschuer, German national, arrived at Fiumicino Airport in Rome, where, the moment he passed through immigration, a car was waiting to drive him to a walled-in villa on the city’s outskirts, complete with a private airfield from which he could take off when Acacia’s mission was accomplished sometime tomorrow night. On the way, he called Reggie Herr.

“Where are you?” he said curtly.

“With the kill team.”

“Good. And Fraine?”

“Full fathom floorplant.”

Ax nodded to himself. “What’s your ETD?”

“We’re going over the architectural plans for Bethesda now. I’ve got Fillin figuring the work-arounds on the hospital’s security systems.”

“There’s bound to be extra security personnel, undoubtedly Secret Service, but you can’t discount a contingent of Marines.”

“I’m so hoping Marines,” Herr said with obvious relish.

“No fuckups this time, Reggie. That comes direct from the Syrian. You know the consequences of failure.”

“I don’t plan on dying today, or anytime in the foreseeable future.”

“Good. You need to be out of there within the hour; your expertise is required elsewhere.”

“No problem. Reeder can take it from here.”

“A Bell X-1 helicopter will pick you up at the rendezvous point. A Mirage Gulfstream is standing by to take you the rest of the way. An envelope with your instructions, encoded in the usual manner, will be waiting.”

He cut the connection, sitting in brooding silence as the car headed to the villa. It was a pity his plan to capture McClure had fallen apart. He would not now be able to find the meaning of that damnable children’s rhyme.

The guard watching the CCTV image, having identified the car and driver, opened the electronic gates, and the car rolled up the long driveway. Far to his left, on the edge of the private airfield, Werner could make out the silhouette of the Mirage Gulfstream G450 crouched like a cougar, waiting.

The car drew up to the villa’s entrance, the driver hopped out, and opened his door, and he emerged. Lights blazed from the perfectly manicured pencil pines. He trotted up the steps, the gigantic wooden door opened soundlessly, and he was welcomed into the villa by a tall, svelte blonde from somewhere in Russia, who looked like Anna Kournikova. She had a face meant for sex.
Leave it to the Syrian,
he thought, as he took the glass of champagne she offered.

“This way,” she said. “You are expected.”

He followed her, his gaze drawn to her buttocks swiveling provocatively beneath her tight skirt. Werner was quite certain she wasn’t wearing underwear. She led him into an enormous study, outfitted with desk chairs, upholstered sofas. An antique sideboard was topped with a large arrangement of fresh flowers in a cut-crystal vase.

“Please make yourself comfortable,” the blonde said with a smile.

Werner lifted his glass as he returned her smile. “Pour one for yourself, while you’re at it, and come join me.”

“Certainly.”

Moments later, full flute in hand, gazing into the blonde’s cornflower-blue eyes, he heard the front door slam and footfalls on the oak floorboards.

Werner clinked his glass against hers. “To us, my dear,” he said.

The blonde giggled and leaned forward. Her lips parted.

*   *   *

A
LLI RETURNED
to Bethesda’s eighth floor without incident. Every Secret Service agent knew her on sight and, furthermore, they had watched her accompany Jack out the front door. As an added security precaution, Paull had arranged for only one elevator to access the eighth floor, and manned barriers had been set up between the seventh-, ninth-, and eighth-floor stairwells.

The makeshift situation room held an odd, soulless feeling without Jack and Dennis Paull. Caro was working Leopard’s laptop with continuous, compulsive stabs of her fingertips. Across the room, Vera was sitting with her arms crossed over her breasts, staring at the wall. Nona Heroe had left with Paull.

The moment Alli walked in, Caro looked at Vera. She also closed the laptop as Alli came across the room. “It looks like you and I are the only ones talking to each other. Grumpy over there hasn’t said a word since you bugged out. Where did you go, by the way?”

“I wanted to make sure this place was totally secure.”

Caro nodded. “Satisfied?”

“For the moment, anyway.”

Caro snorted. “Yeah, you’ve got so much experience.”

“I stayed here to protect you,” Alli said, with such gravity the ironic smile died on Caro’s face.

Ducking her head, she opened the laptop and continued her work.

“I have something to tell the two of you.” Alli tried looking at Vera, but at that moment it was too difficult. “Your father has had a heart attack.”

“What?” Vera, rising, looked as if Alli had just delivered an electric shock.

“He’s had a double bypass.”

“Who gives a shit?” Caro said without raising her head.

Vera rounded on her. “Yeah, that would be your response.”

“Happy to hear I’m an open book to you.”

Two discs of color bloomed on Vera’s cheeks. “You really are a little shit.”

“You’re the one who flaunts herself in front of him,” Caro said, “and
I’m
the shit? What the hell did he ever do for us?”

“We’re here because of him.”

“My point exactly.” She glanced up then. “At least I don’t lie about my feelings … or other things.”

Vera’s cheeks were flaming. “Shut up!”

Alli looked from one to the other. “Caro, please—”

“I’m sick of all this adolescent sniping. I was better off when I had no family.” She rounded on Alli. “You and Vera are such buddies? Well, guess what, she’s been lying to you from the moment she met you.”

Vera blanched. “Caro, no!”

Caro’s eyebrows raised. A cruel smile spread across her face. “Tell her, Vera. Go ahead.”

Vera was trembling visibly. “Shut up!”

“If you don’t tell her,” Caro said, “I will.”

“What the hell is this?” Alli said, looking from one to the other.

“Listen, Alli, I…”

Caro snorted. “Your
best friend
has something to tell you, Alli.”

Alli did not like the way she emphasized those two words. The silence stretched on for so long she felt compelled to say, “Vera, what is it?”

Vera took a deep breath, let it out in a hiss. “I’ve been lying to you.”

“About what?”

“About who I am.” Vera’s face was bleak, her eyes pleading. “I’m your cousin. Caro’s half-sister.”

Alli stood in stunned silence before finding her voice. “You mean…?”

“Henry Holt Carson’s my father, yeah.”

“Good God!” Alli jolted away, pulling her hands free. “Now I understand why my uncle chose you to be my roommate at Fearington, why you became my friend.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Caro said.

Vera gave her sister a sharp look before turning back to Alli. “No,” she said, “you don’t.”

“It was all part of my uncle’s scheme. He wanted you to get inside my head, he wanted to control me, to—”

“Alli, stop it! Please!”

“Why? Why should I stop? Am I wrong?”

Vera’s face was contorted. “Not in the beginning. I hated you in the beginning, but, Alli, that was before I got to know you. You have to believe me.”

Alli backed away. “Who are you? I don’t know you at all.”

“But you do.” Vera came after her. “You know me better than anyone in the world. Nothing we ever shared is false.”

“Except the most important thing!”

“I wanted to tell you. You can’t imagine. Every time we were together, just the two of us, that’s all I could think about.”

“And?”

“Somehow the words would never come out.”

“Coward!”

“Yes, absolutely. I admit it. In this I am a coward. But you have to understand you’re my only friend, the only person I ever felt safe with. I couldn’t—there was no way I could jeopardize that, and then the longer the lie existed, the more afraid I became.”

“Everything we spoke about, every moment of our friendship, was based on a lie. When is a liar not a liar, Vera?” Alli turned and walked away.

“No, please, Alli.” Vera lurched after her. “Tell me what to do. I don’t know how to make this all right.”

“I don’t think there is a way.”

“Please don’t say that. Please, please, please.”

“And you talk to me of trust?” Caro said to Alli. “I learned never to trust anyone, and neither should you.”

Alli was silent.

Vera, stricken all over again, turned away.

Caro snorted. “Nice surprise, isn’t it? But what the hell, we’re all fucking liars. Might as well get used to it. Every member of this family has been living a lie, yeah?”

“That’s enough,” Alli said. “I’m sick to death of both of you.”

She stalked out into the hall and stood, hugging herself, feeling tremors race through her uncontrollably. Her mind was roiling at Vera’s betrayal. She wished she could think straight, but emotions kept clogging the lines of communication.

She felt a presence, did not have to turn her head to know that it was Vera.

“Alli—” Clearly, Vera was about to go on, but maybe she felt the frost coming off Alli, so she abruptly changed her mind. A silence fell between them. Alli was about to return to the situation room when Vera said, “Do you know anything more about my father?”

“No.” Alli’s voice was cold, as removed as her emotions.

“You’d tell me, though, wouldn’t you?”

“Why d’you even care?”

“He’s my father.”

“When has he given any of us a reason to care about him?”

Vera made an animal noise in the back of her throat. “Caro’s a fucking psycho.”

“Maybe it’s in the Carson genes.”

“Yeah, we’re all psychos on this bus.”

At any other time Alli would have laughed, but not now.

“Alli—” Vera tried to begin again.

“Don’t. Just leave it alone, okay?”

Vera nodded silently. She stood rigid, tears welling in her eyes, splashing down onto her shirt. Alli, contriving to ignore her, turned and was heading back into the situation room when Vera said very softly, “You know, just then you sounded exactly like your uncle.”

*   *   *

D
YADYA
G
OURDJIEV,
risen, showered, shaved, and dressed, used the hotel’s interior phone to ring Annika’s room. Not receiving an answer, he went out of his room and down the hall to hers. Using a spare key card, he entered her room and performed a thorough search. Satisfied that she was gone, he took the elevator down to the lobby and went out into the late Roman night. It had been a full day since he and Annika had arrived in the Italian capital. Events were moving at an accelerated pace elsewhere in the world, but they were moving forward here as well. He strolled down to the Roman Forum, stood across the wide street with its swirling traffic, contemplating the adjacent Colosseum. Astonishing, to see these relics of a bygone age risen in the middle of the modern city, retaining all their Caesarean grandeur and power, as if both the emperors and the gods of the ancient empire were still gazing down on their descendants.

He crossed the street, following a Roman, so he wouldn’t get run over. As in most of Rome, there were no traffic lights to be seen. The physical eruption of the past filled his mind with memories of Oriel Jovovich Batchuk. Once again, he wondered how, by their decisions, the divergent roads taken, two close friends had morphed into implacable enemies. Time had a way of warping one’s spirit, if not one’s soul, he thought. He wondered if the past could have happened any other way, if, by making other decisions, the two of them could have avoided the deaths from ten thousand cuts they had inflicted on one another, boiling away every emotion except hatred, distilled like a venom of immense potency.

At that precise moment he sensed that he was being followed.

He kept to the periphery of the Colosseum, which was lit up like the onion domes of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s. Iconic structures always were. Drawing a stiletto, he proceeded past the first two ancient entrances, heading around toward the flank of the structure. His bones hurt and the soles of his feet ached from walking on the Roman cobblestones, but he ignored these disturbances. Ducking behind a column, he waited for his tail to come abreast of his hiding place. Having lost sight of his quarry, the man’s gun was out, a discreet .22, whose discharge would easily be mistaken for a vehicle backfire.

Gourdjiev stepped out and, as the tail’s head swiveled toward him, he slipped the stiletto blade, angled slightly upward, between two ribs. The tip pierced the heart, and Gourdjiev withdrew the blade before the tail could topple over, taking Gourdjiev with him. He was wiping the blade down on the tail’s coat when he spotted the backup. Then the second and third men came into view, quickly converging on him.