Palace of Treason (58 page)

“What instructions?” she said shakily.

They stirred again after several minutes. They were both stifling as a result of having just carnally coupled while wearing winter clothing, including sweaters and outer coats, in an overheated hotel room, the premises having been last used as a sweat bath in 1634. When Nate proposed a shower, Dominika countered with a suggestion that they go back outside into the cool night air and walk around the romantic little island, perhaps crossing a bridge into Saint-Germaine-des-Prés to find a late-night Left Bank bistro to have a glass of wine. Nate saw that Dominika was tense and keyed up—it wasn’t just the usual sewing-machine legs after coition—and going back on the street was a subconscious tonic for her. The unspoken thought was that this life of espionage could very suddenly end for her, and she was prepared to have a fight about it.

Dominika put her arm into Nate’s and they exited the hotel—as usual checking both ways down the length of the deserted main street. They turned right toward Île de la Cité—the cathedral would be lit, and they could cross the “Lovelock” bridge with hundreds of lovers’ padlocks hanging from the railings. They were the only ones on the street as they neared the little square at the western end of the island. The bistros and brasseries were all dark, sidewalk tables and chairs stacked and chained together. It was near midnight and the air had grown cold. A river barge steamed down the left channel, blocking the reflected lights of the grand siècle lampposts along the embankment, its diesel thrumming.

Dominika suddenly spun Nate by an arm, took his head in her hands, and kissed him. Nate kissed her back but then began to pull away to say something smart, but Dominika wouldn’t let go of his head and brought his face down to hers again. Her eyes were open and she shook her head slightly, still holding his head. Nate didn’t move, but put his arms around her. He could see her looking at something out of the corner of her eye. He was conscious of someone walking by, but Dominika’s hands blocked his view. She jerked her hands and shook her head again. Finally she broke free. Her eyes were wide.

“Zyuganov,” she whispered, “that was Zyuganov.” She turned and started moving in the direction the little shadowy figure had gone, along the Quai d’Orléans, along the southern side of the island. Nate reached out and grabbed her hand.

“Stop. I’ll follow him and call in reinforcements,” he said. “Gable will be here in fifteen minutes.” Dominika shook her head and twisted her hand out of his.

“If he gets away, I’m finished,” said Dominika.

“Not if you’re back in the hotel,” said Nate.

“
Zabud’ pro eto,
forget it,” she said. “He’s trying to kill me, and I will not take a back door. Don’t even think of trying to stop me.”

“You mean take a backseat,” Nate said.

Dominika shook her head. “There’s no time,” she said. “Zyuganov is moving. TRITON is on this island. They could slip into a building and we’d never find them.” She started moving, looking back at him. “Come on,” she hissed.

They walked tight against the wall of the buildings, pausing in doorways to let Zyuganov maintain his distance. His silhouette ghosted along the opposite sidewalk. He was not hurrying—he occasionally looked out over the water—and he certainly wasn’t looking for surveillance.
Jesus,
thought Nate,
we cannot blow this.
Zyuganov’s head and shoulders appeared, then faded, and then reappeared, as he passed through light reflected off the river. Halfway down the street, Zyuganov slowed and turned to walk down one of the broad ramps leading to the river-level landing, his head descending out of view. Nate and Dominika quietly crossed the street and peeked over the wall. Zyuganov was standing at the bottom of the ramp, leaning against a lamppost. River water swirled blackly past him.

“We wait for TRITON to show, or go now?” asked Dominika. Nate pulled her sleeve and dragged her back into a shadow cast by a tree growing out of the sidewalk.

“Zyuganov’s not going anywhere on that landing. And TRITON has to come right by us to get down to him,” said Nate. “We want them both.” Dominika nodded, and took out two lipsticks.
Christ, the lipstick gun again,
thought Nate.
Russians.
They stopped talking and watched the top of the ramp. They were cold waiting two, three, five minutes.

They suddenly heard voices from the riverside platform. They peeked over the wall again to look down on the tops of Zyuganov’s and Angevine’s
heads. Nate pulled up straight.
Fucker came around the other way along the lower river-level promenade,
thought Nate. Dominika was looking down at them and started tugging at Nate’s sleeve. The two men were arguing, and their voices grew louder. Angevine reached out and collected a fistful of Zyuganov’s jacket lapel. The dwarf pulled away angrily, turned, and started walking up the ramp. Angevine followed him, shouting as he caught up. Nate heard the word “euros” repeated twice. Zyuganov ignored him and continued walking up the ramp.

“TRITON just told Zyuganov my name,” said Dominika, starting to move.
And Zyuganov just told him he had no money,
thought Nate, coming up behind her.
Maybe they’ll kill each other.

At the top of the ramp, Angevine spun Zyuganov around—the American towered over the Russian—then both men stopped as they saw the silhouettes of Nate and Dominika standing in front of them. They were five feet apart, looking at one another, frozen in place. Angevine passed his fingers through his hair. Zyuganov’s face was crazed, his chest heaved.

“
Suchka,
little bitch,” said Zyuganov, meeting Dominika’s eyes. “I knew it was you,” he said in guttural Russian. “Are you ready to come home to die?”

“I’m more interested in whether you know you will never set foot in the
Rodina
again,” said Dominika. “The Paris pauper’s cemetery is called Thiais,
zhopa,
asshole.” Listening to the Russian, cool and deadly between them, Nate was once again reminded that the only people Russians hated more than foreigners were themselves. Then everything broke loose.

As if it were a starter’s gun, a river barge sounded its air horn, and Angevine spun and ran back down the ramp, sliding on the uneven cobbles as he descended, and Zyuganov simultaneously darted to his right past Dominika. Spurred perhaps by their respective instincts, Nate and Dominika reacted simultaneously. Nate pounded down the ramp to chase Angevine along the landing. Dominika moved toward Zyuganov and tried a foot sweep, but the poisonous dwarf agilely skipped over it and sprinted down the darkened Quai d’Orléans. Dominika ran after him down the center of the midnight-empty street. She flashed that there were two spans of the Pont de Sully on the eastern corners of the island into either side of the city proper. She could not let him escape. Zyuganov knew she was the mole.

Zyuganov was surprisingly fast, and Dominika could not gain on him, even as she vaulted over the hood of a parked car to try to shorten the distance.
Zyuganov sensed she had drawn closer and he veered wildly away from the bridge and instead vaulted the waist-high fence of the little Barye park, tore through hanging willow branches and blindly down the broad steps to the platform on the river. A hoarse call from a watchman sounded from the shadows. This was the eastern tip of Île Saint-Louis, and the Seine endlessly plowed into and flowed around the prow-shaped breakwater. Zyuganov stopped short and turned around. Dominika stood at the top of the stairs, breathing heavily. She was dressed in a dark pleated woolen skirt with tights, a sweater under an oiled jacket, and jogging shoes. Her hair was halfway down from the running, and she absently brushed it behind an ear as she slowly came down the steps toward him. She could still feel Nate on the inside of her thighs. She was immeasurably tired.

Rounding the corner of the landing, Nate slipped on a slimy cobble and went down hard on his butt, which saved him from the ten-foot pipe—one of several discarded scaffold stanchions that had been stacked against the wall—Angevine swung at his head, but which instead rang like a bell off the stone wall. Angevine swung it again like a broadsword, over and down in a log-splitting stroke, directly at Nate’s head. Still on his back, Nate twisted to avoid the massive skull-caving blow and rolled into the freezing Seine, all sewer-sweet smell and bitter taste. He could immediately feel the scour of the water as it boiled past and he got his fingers and the toe of one shoe into a masonry seam before the current could pluck him off the stone and whirl him downriver—he’d be around the Orsay bend and past the Eiffel Tower in three minutes. That’s if he wasn’t sucked into some vortex or pinned under a dock and drowned. He tried a quick grab at the pistol in his belt but almost lost his grip and had to hang on as the river tugged at him.

Angevine stood over him, legs apart, seriously winded but lining up a final swing to smash Nate’s face or shatter his clinging hands. “You fucks underestimated who you were dealing with,” he panted, resting the pipe across his shoulder, as if he were waiting his turn in the batting cage.

“Yeah, you’re right: You’re a bigger traitor than
any of us
imagined,” said Nate.

Angevine fumed at the insult, choked up on the pipe for more accuracy,
and stepped closer. Nate risked being taken by the river as he reached out with one hand, grabbed Angevine’s pant leg, and pulled. Unbalanced by the big pipe he held over his head, Angevine’s feet shot out on the slimy blocks and he tumbled into the river, the stanchion bouncing off the stones into the water next to him. He came up spluttering beside Nate and reached for a handhold, but was a foot too far and was instantly swept away from the embankment, turning in the water, arms feebly paddling for stability. In three seconds he was in the middle of the channel.

One of the late-night
Bateaux-Mouches
boats—long, wide, gaily lit, and glass-topped—thrumming downstream sounded its whistle as the dot that was Angevine’s head bobbed over the bow wave and down into the trough, bouncing along the hull until bobbing again over the stern wake, and with an audible scream was sucked into the foaming prop wash. His body disappeared underwater, then was thrown back up by one of the propeller blades, followed by his severed head. The frantic ship’s horn kept sounding its bass note while Japanese tourists on the upper rear deck turned night into day with flash photography. Angevine’s body continued floating downstream in the shimmer of embankment lights, eventually disappearing around the Île de la Cité.

With considerable effort, Nate scrabbled back up onto the landing, shivering, his clothes streaming river water. As he pounded up to the street, his thoughts raced. Angevine was gone. The prick never got his final payment for betraying his country, and now he was dead. Gable would kick Angevine’s fished-out head back into the river and say, “Our grief can’t bring him back.” Then Nate flashed to Zarubina floating facedown in a fountain. Dominika. He sprinted down Quai d’Orléans, his breath ragged and his shoes squishing, the river stink in his nose. Down at the other end of the island there were lights and sirens.

As Dominika came down the steps toward Zyuganov, she knew she would kill him. Taking him back to Moscow in chains had been an appealing option—Putin would have been impressed—but not now, not after he had heard her name from TRITON’s lips. She fingered a lipstick tube in her pocket, feeling for the end with the trigger plunger. She would walk to within an outstretched-arm’s distance and aim for center mass. With the
explosive bullet even a hit in the hand would vaporize it to the wrist and cause massive blood loss. A torso hit and the subsequent hydrostatic shock would turn the thoracic cavity into an inflated bag of sweetmeats.

Zyuganov stood watching her, darting glances to the left and right—there were no stairs or ladders, no other way off the platform. The river? He was not a strong swimmer and did not think he could survive a plunge into the water. Egorova had a reputation, had killed men, had gone through hand-to-hand
Sistema
training, but was she that good? As he waited for her, the diminutive Zyuganov experienced the old familiar sensation of the assassin’s prickling impatience to get up close and stick pointy things into soft places. His instincts told him to wait, get her close, blind her, or cripple her, then finish her. Zyuganov wanted to see Egorova’s face as she died.