Father Night (45 page)

As she stepped over one of the bodies, Vera reached down and took the gun. They moved on.

“What the hell happened here?” Caro said.

Vera peered into every room. “Where’s Alli?”

They found her in a room farther down, where Henry Holt Carson lay. Alli turned, Glock at the ready, but she relaxed visibly when she saw them.

“You two okay?”

Vera nodded. They all looked so odd with their snouty masks on.

“We’re isolated up here for the moment,” Alli said. “All the lines have been cut or bypassed and they must have set up a cell blocker like what’s done at some hotels, because my mobile won’t work.”

Vera stood stock-still. “There he is.”

Alli nodded. “Henry Holt, yes.”

Caro turned away, shaking her head. “I don’t want to even look at him.”

“He’s dead,” Alli told them. “He died on the operating table.”

Vera stared down at him. “I don’t feel anything—not a fucking thing.”

Caro shuddered. “Why should you? He was a monster.”

Caro, staring into the corridor, cried out as a figure emerged from the elevator service door. Vera lurched past her as he aimed a handgun at Caro. Alli pushed Caro aside, saw the figure, heard the shot. Even as Vera was spun backward into Caro, she squeezed off two shots, both into the left side of the man’s chest. He dropped as if poleaxed, and did not move again.

Agents in gas masks and riot gear, brandishing assault rifles, now began pouring out of the fire stairs and elevator service doors.

Caro sat, her legs beneath her. Vera’s head and shoulders were cradled in her lap. Alli came and knelt beside them. She reached out, pushing Vera’s damp hair away from her face.

“It’s nothing.” Vera smiled, raising her left arm and wincing. Despite her bravado, her face was very pale. “Just a flesh wound.”

There was a stricken look in Caro’s eyes. “Damn me, Vera, I don’t know what I would have done if—”

Vera raised her good arm, her hand caressing her sister’s cheek. “Look at her,” she said softly.

Alli ripped off a sleeve from her own shirt and, using it as a tourniquet, wrapped it tightly above the spot where Vera had been shot.

“Alli,” Vera said, “does it still hurt?”

Alli called to one of the agents for an emergency medical team, then looked at Vera steadily. “I imagine it still hurts both of us.”

Tears, glittering at the corner of Vera’s eyes, spilled over, running down her pale cheeks.

*   *   *

“I
CAN’T.
”

In the hallway of the villa, Annika pulled away from him.

Jack stared at her. “You can’t what?”

“I can’t go with you, Jack.”

“What?” He heard heavy footfalls. “What are you talking about? Come on, Annika, the Syrian is coming.”

“I know he is, Jack. That’s why I have to stay.”

“I don’t—”

“Get out of here.” She shoved him toward the front door. “Now!”

Jack came back for her. Reality was shrinking down to the space between the two of them. “Forget it.”

She glanced nervously over her shoulder. “He’ll kill you.”

“He wants too much from me to kill me.” Time seemed to slow, grinding to a dreadful halt. “Anyway, I don’t care about him. It’s you—”

“Jack, you don’t understand.”

“I’m not going to leave you here.”

She looked at him with something akin to pity. “You never did.”

At that moment, he got it, reality collapsed like a house of cards, and his heart shattered. She wasn’t coming. She didn’t love him. Like her mysterious grandfather, she had aligned herself with the enemy. It seemed incredible, and yet, as the Syrian had said, he was confronted by the truth.

And still a part of him clung to hope, though hope seemed to have abandoned him. “Annika—”

“Good-bye, Jack.”

“You fooled me completely,” he said, before racing out the door, onto the villa’s brightly lit grounds. The gates were locked up tight. Dogs began howling and a pair of German shepherds came racing around the corner of the villa, eyes set on Jack. Radomil Batchuk emerged from beneath a pencil pine and, as if he had been waiting for Jack, stepped into his path. “This way!” he said.

Jack stood rooted to the spot, undecided until Radomil put a strange-looking whistle to his lips. Jack couldn’t hear the sound it made, but the dogs were brought up short.

“Come on!” he urged, as the dogs began to snuffle and back away.

Jack had no choice but to follow Radomil as he threaded a devious path through the pines. Shouts rang out behind them, and among them Jack recognized the Syrian’s voice. Radomil headed out of the pines and straight toward the villa’s perimeter wall. He unlocked the gardener’s door.

“There’s a black Fiat parked off the road five hundred yards to your left, the keys are in the ignition,” he said, standing back. “Good luck.”

“Why are you doing this?” Jack asked, but Radomil had already disappeared into the shadows, and Jack sprinted through the door, vanishing into the enfolding night.

EPILOGUE

December 20

G
ENERAL
T
ARASOV
had arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh right on time.He breathed in the curdled Egyptian air, dense with palm and cardamom and diesel fumes. The hub of the city was an insane cacophony of noise and movement, but at the coast, where the waves lapped against the piers of glimmering luxury hotels and the hulls of sleek pleasure craft, a luxuriant sense of ancient calm prevailed.

General Tarasov had checked into a glitzy resort and went immediately to Room 202, which had been preassigned. Twice a day, he used his mobile to call Werner Ax, as planned. Ax’s line went directly to voice mail, which was odd, since Ax was expecting his call. Tarasov could not move ahead with Acacia’s final deployment without Ax’s go-ahead.

He left a coded message, then picked up the hotel phone and ordered room service. Levering himself off the bed, he went into the bathroom to relieve himself and wash up. Refreshed, he pulled a beer out of the minibar, snapped open the can, and took a long slug. There were no messages on his mobile. While he pulled open the sliding glass door, he redialed Ax’s number. Voice mail again. Stepping out onto the expansive terrace, he felt the warm, wet air wash over him. Moonlight gilded the crests of the small waves. He could smell salt and phosphorus. By long-ingrained habit, he once again checked the terraces to left and right; they were empty. He wondered why Ax wasn’t answering his mobile. For security reasons, Tarasov had no other way of contacting him. How long could he continue to wait? Ax must have his reasons for staying out of touch this long—he always did.

Off in the distance, a muezzin began his call to prayer, the tinny loudspeakers distorting the voice. Others took up the call. A pair of guards, one tall, the other quite small, strolled down the beachfront toward his side of the resort. They seemed to be chatting with each other, their faces in shadow. Tarasov took another long swallow and belched deeply. He was beginning to relax. He knew Koenig and the Lintel twins were here at the resort, but, again for security reasons, he was enjoined from contacting them. Not that he wanted to. What he wouldn’t give to bed another female tonight. He had just decided to go down to the bar to see what was available and at what price when there was a knock on the door. His stomach rumbled emptily, reminding him that he had ordered a meal. Hopefully, these Egyptians wouldn’t fuck it up. Setting the half-empty can on the top railing, he turned and went inside, crossing the room to open the door.

A waiter pushed a laden cart into the room and Tarasov closed the door behind him.

“Where would you like it?” the waiter said with his back to the general.

“Just leave everything where it is,” Tarasov said, coming toward him.

“As you wish, General.” The waiter turned, a CZ, suppressor attached, in his hand. “Everything where it is now.”

Just before the bullet tore through his chest, Tarasov’s eyes opened wide in shock. The waiter was no waiter at all, but Reggie Herr, grinning at him like a death’s-head as he pumped another round into his victim. The General fell to his knees.

“What … what?” was all he managed to get out.

“Shutting down the pipeline.” Reggie happily stood over the soon-to-be corpse. “Orders from Father Night. Three-thirteen is out of business.”

Those were the last words General Tarasov heard, in this world, at least. His eyes grew fixed and he toppled over onto the carpet. Reggie bent over and checked his pulse. Happily, there was none.

Reggie turned and, a moment later, had vanished through the open slider onto the terrace. Once there, he climbed atop the railing. He crouched, about to leap to the terrace to his left when an unopened beer can came flying at him, striking him on the temple. At once, he lost his balance, tumbling down to the sandy beach below.

Even as he was gaining his feet, he saw the tall guard rushing toward him. As the man passed through a pool of light, Herr recognized him as Jack McClure. He raised his CZ 75 Phantom, but McClure swerved just as Herr squeezed off a shot. The bullet, intended for the chest, struck the shoulder instead, spinning McClure around. Up on one knee, Herr took careful aim and was just about to fire a second time when a figure crashed down onto him from above. He writhed on his back, but all he got for it was a mouthful of sand. He saw Alli straddling him, and swatted at her, as if she were a fly or a gnat. She rocked back, but kneed him in the throat. Using the suppressor as a cudgel, he swung at her again and again. With satisfaction, he heard her grunt in pain. He had never wanted anyone dead more than he wanted her dead. She wrestled the suppressor away from her face, just as he supposed she would, and he grabbed her throat with his free hand, clutching her so hard she started to retch.

Now I have you,
he thought.

*   *   *

A
LLI’S EYES
were watering and there was bile in her throat. She felt her consciousness wavering, a blackness coming and going. The area around her fractured clavicle throbbed dreadfully, weakening her further, but at the moment that seemed the least of her worries. The pain from Herr’s grip was so excruciating she wanted only to cry out, to have it end.

Then the pressure came off her and she saw Jack hauling Herr up, Herr turning to deliver a blow.

To have it end.

She saw Herr attacking Jack again, Jack striking back so ferociously that Herr stumbled backward against her. She jammed her thumb into his eye. Herr leapt like a fish on a line and almost threw her off him. Jack slammed his solar plexus. As Herr doubled over, she fought to keep her grip, twisting her thumb harder, deeper, her breath hot in her lungs, sobs coming out of her. There was a timeless moment when she met Jack’s eyes, and in them she understood what she needed to do to purge herself of the nightmare the Herr twins had thrust her into.

Jack hit Herr again, staggering him. This was her chance! She snatched the CZ out of Herr’s grip, pressed the muzzle to his chest, and pulled the trigger again and again. Then Jack was prying her gently away from her nemesis, who lay unmoving, unseeing, on the sand in a widening pool of his own fluids.

“It’s done,” Jack said in her ear as he held her with his good arm. “It’s done.”

*   *   *

F
INALLY ALONE,
in the cold room of the coroner’s building, Annika stood over the white corpse of her grandfather and wept without restraint or self-pity. Cradling his cool head in her hands, she placed a kiss on his forehead and thought of all the days and weeks and years of their life together. He had served as her father, mentor, savior, protector, and now he was gone forever. There would never be another Dyadya Gourdjiev, nor did she want there to be.

“I did what you asked,” she whispered, tears streaming down her face. “I’ve always done what you asked. But this is so very hard, harder than I thought possible. I’ve trusted you my whole life. I still trust you, but goddamn you for what you’ve done to me, what you made me do to Jack. You knew I loved him and yet you persisted. I understand, but I don’t understand you. I don’t know how you can use people the way you have—people you love, people who love and trust you.”

She stood up, wiping her eyes. But the tears came again, harder this time, and she sobbed out her pain and misery, safe within these four windowless walls, where no one could hear or know her anguish. By the time she left here, she would be dry-eyed and iron-willed again, but now she was lost, alone, vulnerable, and so very, very sad.

Reaching out, she touched her grandfather’s temples, where, inside, his brain had been eaten alive by cancer. She was the only one he had confided in; everyone else believed him to be invulnerable. He had known the end was near; he chose the way he would die, the way that would serve him best by bringing her closer to the Syrian. That had been his plan—the long con, something he was so adept at. Her acting had convinced Iraj that she had bought his fiction of the hit-and-run. She knew the truth; that was all that mattered.

At least she had instructed Radomil to ensure Jack got out of the villa alive. But it wasn’t nearly enough; she could never tell him, and he must despise her for betraying him. How thin the line between love and hate, like tissue, shredding.

She bent, as if genuflecting, and kissed her
dyadya
’s stone-cold lips. She had done everything he wanted. Now she was at the end. But also at the beginning, the last phase of Dyadya’s grand design. If, in the coming months, all went well, she would gain the world. But in the process she had lost everything.

B
Y
E
RIC
V
AN
L
USTBADER

THE JACK M
c
CLURE
/
ALLI CARSON NOVELS

First Daughter
(2008)

Last Snow
(2010)

Blood Trust
(2011)

Father Night
(2012)

THE PEARL SAGA

The Ring of Five Dragons
(2001)

The Veil of a Thousand Tears
(2002)