Limbo Man (23 page)

“You,” Sergei told him, “will watch our backs.”

Cade nodded, and began to check his guns.

Seryozha lowered the rental car’s window and punched four numbers into a keypad. Slowly, the black wrought iron gates to the development known as Amalfi Gardens swung open.
Except this garden grows bombs and grenades
, Vee thought, as they drove past substantial homes, now unmarketable at two-thirds their cost.

“He’s still with us,” Seryozha said as Vee turned to look for the headlights of Cade’s car, confirming that he’d made it through the gate. Odd that Seryozha’s memory was so clear about something like gate codes, even though he had no memory of his last visit to Weldon Robey.

Presumed visit. In a rare sex-induced moment of weakness in Atlantic City, Seryozha had admitted he wasn’t absolutely certain his last trip to Florida had been to meet with Weldon Robey. Undoubtedly, Tokarev had deals pending all over the world. He might have flown on to the Bahamas or the Caribbean. Robey was only his best guess.

Nor was anything about Robey certain. He might be quietly at home enjoying his toys. Or flown off to some exotic foreign spot where he could enjoy the profits of his treason. Or Sergei had talked, and Robey was lying dead among his treasures . . . with a horde of well-armed men waiting to ambush them.

Or maybe Robey was a loose end tidied up by Boris Leonov and his associates.

Time to face the truth, Vee thought, as that old sinking feeling grabbed her. There were too many ifs in this scenario. She was following the lead of a man who was still trying to break out of Limbo. A man with gaps in his brain. Seryozha could be savior of the world or mad as a hatter.

Dear God, she was losing it!
Vee made a face into the darkness outside the car window. Trapped on a nightmare carousel, she longed to take a flying leap off the monstrous beast she was riding. Longed for solid ground beneath her feet. No more on-again-off-again memory switches. No more good-guy-bad-guy qualms about her mysterious companion. No more nagging doubts about his playing her for a fool.

Pay attention, stupid! You’re approaching the man who provided—is about to provide?—one half of Armageddon
. The trigger for blowing up Chicago, Boston, Dallas, or San Francisco.
Go with your instincts. Stick with Seryozha.

Into the Valley of Death rode three idiots chasing a nightmare.

Concentrate!
Vee’s lurking nightmare clarified into an upscale subdivision in subtle earth tones. No pink or coral houses here. In fact, everything appeared to be unrelentingly, conservatively normal. Artistically winding street. Lantern street lights illuminating well-trimmed green lawns and flower beds, perfectly weeded and mulched.. The blank façade of two-car garages next to the warm windowed glow of families tucked up for a night of television, internet surfing, games, reading, pet projects, or making love. Families who shouldn’t have to worry about the possibility of bombs in the backyard.

Seryozha turned into the driveway of a home of beige stucco, with a pool cage and a glimpse of shining water barely visible behind the house. Reality, Vee reminded herself, was Weldon Robey and a far more lethal bomb than the one that injured his child and destroyed his family.

Cade parked half a block away and began his job as lookout.

Vee had tried not to stereotype the good professor, but her surprise when Dr. Weldon Robey answered the door made her realize she’d been expecting someone like Albert Einstein or maybe the wizened wizard behind the curtain in the land of Oz. Instead, the traitorous doctor was a forty-something, with a face that would have been handsome if he didn’t look so haggard. Although average height and build, his shoulders slumped, his chin drooped. His overly long, straight, mouse brown hair haloed an ascetic face, with some strands hanging low enough to flirt with the dark rings under his eyes. Vee thought she caught a momentary flash of sharp intelligence in his dark eyes, but they quickly dulled to sullen and confused. His voice, when he spoke, was almost plaintive. “Tokarev? What’s happened? Why are you here?”

“May we come in?” Sergei asked, surprisingly gently. “I will explain.”

Wordlessly, Robey stepped back, pulling the door wide, allowing them into the foyer. The first thing that struck Vee was the noise—the tick-tock, click-click, whirr-purr of more clocks than she’d ever seen in one place. Sergei interrupted her awed perusal of the display to introduce her to Robey.

The sight of a new face seemed to make the professor forget his immediate concern about their visit. His whole demeanor brightened as he shook hands. “Would you like to see my collection?” he asked, with the sudden innocent eagerness of a child.

Vee glanced at Sergei, who returned a nod of approval. “Of course, I’d love to,” she said. And was immediately plunged into a world of time keeping where the designs of the clock cases were as intricate and beautiful as the mechanical marvels of the mechanisms inside. The foyer was just an appetizer. Room after room ticked and whirred around her as she was caught up in an atmosphere almost as scary as it was fascinating. The rhythmic cacophony reminded her all too closely of a time bomb, counting down.

And yet there was a fascinating beauty in so much exquisite craftsmanship assembled in one place. Robey proudly named them all. Lantern clocks, bracket clocks, mantel clocks, carriage clocks, and grandfather clocks, housed in cases that ranged from elaborate ormolu to scarlet and gold chinoiserie and intricate marquetry inlay. Some clocks played songs, her eager tour guide informed her. Some had mechanical figures that chimed the hour—a bird singing, a soldier playing a trumpet. There was even a lighthouse clock whose top rotated to display a barometer as well as a clock.

One of the clocks finally managed to knock every thought of bombs out of Vee’s head. “Louis Quinze,” Robey declared proudly. “Eighteenth century ormolu rococo. The figures are Meissen, the flowers by Sèvres.”

“It’s exquisite.” Vee heard a suspicious rumble from Sergei. Probably a warning that she was getting too wrapped up in making nice with their subject. But, dammit, it was the most gorgeous clock she’d ever seen. An incredible work of art, just sitting on top of a cabinet in the living room. How on earth had Robey managed when his son was a toddler?

Sergei tugged her arm, steering her toward another room, manuevering Robey to cut short his lecture and follow along. And remind
ing
Vee she really had to keep her mind on why they were here. Robey was a traitor, a willing participant in mass murderer, she had to remember that. She couldn’t allow him to become human, couldn’t allow herself to be swayed by the beauty, the intricate design, the antiquity of
his
vast collection.

As they entered the next room, Robey shut the door behind him. The sudden silence was a shock. No
furniture
in this room, just neat rows of tables displaying an almost infinite array of mechanical toys, some, Vee guessed, from the same era as Robey’s collection of eighteenth century clocks. Carousels, Ferris wheels, carnival swing rides, and toy trains. Music boxes with musicians who played and danced. A metal peacock whose tail opened from folded to full display. Horse-drawn coaches that rolled along the tabletop. An incredibly detailed early twentieth century battleship that actually rolled along on miniature wheels. A chess-playing automaton, a magician who conjured a head out of box. Even a Mickey Mouse hurdy gurdy, probably dating from the 1930s.

A lot easier to think of Robey as a traitor before she’d seen his toys. Before she caught a glimpse of the man behind the collector.

As they returned to the living room, Vee assured the professor, with true sincerity, that she thought his collection magnificent.
He offered a grateful, if diffident, smile before settling
into a brown leather lounge chair that appeared to be the most well-used piece of furniture in the room. Vee sat on the couch,
and
Sergei joined her. It took considerable concentration, she discovered, to focus on a conversation punctuated by the sound of swinging pendulums, large and small.

Robey’s
wide-eyed,
little boy face faded to the bleak visage he’d displayed when he answered the doorbell. “Is something wrong, Tokarev? I didn’t expect to see you again.”

Sergei accepted the remark without a blink, but inwardly he winced. Evidently, his business with Robey was finished. He’d taken delivery of the U-236, authorized the pay-off . . . or had he? “There was no problem with the money transfer?”

“None.”

Sergei drew a deep breath and took the plunge, partial truths rolling easily off his tongue. “I am here because I was involved in an accident in New York—head trauma which has put gaps in my memory. I needed to make sure that all went well with our arrangement. Since that is so, I wonder why you are still here.” He raised one shaggy brow in a look that seemed only mildly curious.

The professor hunched down into the confines of the brown leather as if trying to escape Sergei’s question. “I know you told me to leave the country,” he mumbled, “but it’s not easy to arrange transportation for my collection. These things”—he waved a hand around the room—“they are my life. All I have left.” He plunged his head into his hands, his voice barely audible above the steady chorus of tick-tocks. “I never thought . . . it will takes months to pack them properly. And I don’t have months, do I?” he added even more softly.

“No.”

Evidently resigned to the inevitable, Robey nodded, drooping lower in the lounge chair.

“
Govnó!
” The room erupted into a cacophony of bird song, trumpet blasts, cuckoo calls, and ding-dongs, punctuated by the low-pitched bongs of the grandfather clocks. Sergei groaned, Vee bit back a giggle, while Weldon Robey sat calmly silent, accustomed to the hourly madness of his noisy timepieces.

When the last note had died away, and miniature doors had clicked shut on the intricate mechanisms inside, Sergei waited a beat, two beats. Ensured of at least fifteen minutes of relative silence, he began his interrogation. “Robey, I need you to think very carefully. Any little thing you can recall might nudge my memory. And—look at me, dammit!—I don’t have time to explain the why of it, but I am not simply chasing myself. I’m on a hunt for life for a great many people. This is your chance to redeem yourself. Think! Did I give any hint at all about where I was taking the isotope, about the location of the bomb? Any hint of the target or when zero hour might be?”

Blood drained from Weldon Robey’s face, leaving it stark white against the brown leather chair. “Bomb?” he gurgled.

“Well, hell, professor, what did you think I was going to do with the U-236?”

“You said it was for an experiment—”

“An experiment in blowing up several square miles of the U S of A,” Sergei shot back. “Or . . . perhaps I’m assuming too much,” he added, thinking fast. “Maybe it’s not happening here at all . . .”

“Oh, God,” Robey groaned.

“Come off it, Professor. You’re not that naive. Now tell me. I must have said
something
.”

“Not a word. You are very good at your job.” The professor’s bitterness sliced through the room’s heavy atmosphere.

“This is not easy for me to admit,” Sergei said without having to fake his embarrassment, “but I need to know if I gave you instructions for the delivery of the isotope, or did you give it to me directly.”

“You really do not remember?”

“I really don’t remember,” Sergei confirmed.
Fuck it, fuck, fuck it, mindless idiot that he was
. Frustration ate at his vitals.

Robey shook his head sadly, as if feeling Sergei’s pain. “I gave the package to you.”

“And I gave no hint—”

“I have told you no!”

Sergei struggled with his temper. He had to keep trying . . . one more question. “The last time I was here, did I act any differently? Did I seem anxious, in a hurry?”

“You mean other than speaking with a heavy Russian accent?” Robey inquired sweetly.

Sergei could almost feel the slap of the glove in his face. Robey had caught him in a basic mistake and was almost gleeful about it. “Gotcha” was spread all over his face.

Outmaneuvered by a traitorous professor. Time to hang up his gun and bomb-hunting license.

Without so much as a glance at Vee, Sergei stood up. “Thank you. I am sorry to have troubled you. Good luck with your move.” The men did not shake hands.

Just as they reached the front door, Robey called them back. “Uh, sorry,” he said softly, looking over Sergei’s shoulder at Vee, “but I’d like to speak with Tokarev alone.”

Vee continued on toward the car. Sergei’s pulse surged. Was this the breakthrough he needed, or . . . He turned back to Robey.

“How much time?” the professor asked.

“None. You live next door to an airport. Be on a plane within the hour.”

“I cannot—”

“You must! I am more sorry than I can say that I got you into this. Your only hope is to go now. You have enough money to live in luxury in any country without extradition.”

“They’ll send Special Forces,” Robey countered in a voice of doom.

Sergei sighed.
“
Yes, they w
ill
.
”
The scope of the crime was unimaginable.