Take Me for a Ride (10 page)

She’d have liked to have read his face with her hands, but somehow the request always died on her lips. It seemed such an intimate act, to touch his features. She contented herself with the deep timbres of his voice; with the subtle, woodsy scent of his aftershave; with the comfort of his presence as he read the morning’s newspaper to her over his cup of coffee and her cup of hot tea.

She made out the shape of the paper now and smelled the ink as he unfolded it and shook it out.

“What political antics do we have today?” he murmured.

She found his hand and squeezed it. “Ted, I cannot thank you enough for coming with me on this trip. For being my eyes.”

He let the edge of the paper fall and squeezed her hand in return. “Stop thanking me. We’re simply leaving our arthritis and heart palpitations behind and having a grand adventure. Shocking at our age, isn’t it?”

She smiled and nodded. “Terribly shocking. What will your son say?”

Ted shrugged. “He can say whatever he likes. I may be out to pasture, but I can still kick up my heels.”

“Yes, but globe-trotting with an older woman? Some hussy who unquestionably has designs on his inheritance?”

“It isn’t his unless and until I leave it to him,” Ted said with asperity. “And besides, Mme. Hussy, you’re only six months older than I am.”

She made out a blurred movement in the vicinity of his left eye. “Why, Colonel, did you just wink at me?”

“I might’ve,” he hedged.

“Flirt.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Read me the headlines, will you? And let a decrepit old hussy buy you a drink.”

“Certainly not. I’ll buy. What would you like?”

“So old-fashioned.”

“And dreadfully chauvinist. Now, what would you like?”

“Well, Colonel, since we’re headed to Russia at this ungodly hour of the morning . . . something with vodka seems appropriate, no?”

“Two Bloody Marys, please,” Ted Blakely said to the flight attendant when she came by.

A couple of hours into the flight, Tatyana pulled the St. George necklace out of her pocketbook and held it in her hands, on her lap. She stroked the old gold absently and tried not to think about the last time she’d actually seen it, in the sweaty grasp of the young Nazi officer. She tried not to think about her father, lying with a bullet through his brain on the icy country road near the Romanian border . . .

Now Tatyana peered down at the blur of gold in her lap and tightened her hand around the little horseman. She’d been unable to find the compartment her mother spoke of, try as she might—and she had, for hours.

She absently ran her index finger along St. George’s spear. She’d traced it all the way down to the dragon’s mouth when she heard a click, and slowly the entire dragon slid away from the spear. Something fell out of the horse’s hollow body and into her lap.

Ted looked over as she picked up the object. “Where did that come from?”

“Out of the necklace,” she said slowly. “It feels like a key of some kind. Is it a key, Ted?”

“Why, yes. May I see it?”

“Well, I certainly can’t,” she said wryly, and passed it to him.

“This looks like a safety-deposit key of some kind. It has the number eleven at the top, and then some letters.” He peered at the engraving in the metal. “It spells out M-o-c-k-b-a.”

“Moscow,” she said. “So it’s a bank-box key?”

“I think so. Did your parents store a key inside the necklace?”

“There was something valuable inside, but I don’t know if it was a key.” She thought for a moment. “Ted, does the key look like an antique?”

“No. I’d say this is machine cut. Definitely twentieth century.”

The young Nazi officer had obviously found whatever her mother had hidden in the necklace and confiscated it. Tatyana’s mouth hardened. “It looks as if we have a double mission, then, Colonel.”

“Let me guess: You want to hunt down the safety-deposit box that matches the key.”

Tatyana turned her head toward him. Dryly, she asked, “How did you guess?”

“Male intuition,” he said, his tone equally dry.

Tatyana took a sip of her drink. “You understand, don’t you, Ted?”

“Of course. I’m seated next to you on an international flight, am I not? I’ve asked you to marry me, haven’t I?”

She stared at the blurry rectangle of the seat in front of her. “You don’t want to tie yourself to a blind old bat like me.”

“I do,” he insisted.

“Why? Without my vision, I’m nothing but a burden.”

“Is that right?” Ted asked, an exasperated edge to his voice.

“Mmmm.”

“Well, then, Mrs. Burden, I still think you should marry me—if only so that I have something to complain about in my old age. What do you say?”

Tatyana didn’t answer. She held the necklace in her lap and pretended she’d fallen asleep . . . but she couldn’t completely suppress the smile that played around her mouth.

Oleg Litsky stood in his apartment with his back to the fireplace in a vain attempt to warm himself. He hadn’t thought about the little girls at the Romanian border in years, but now—in the absence of the necklace—they haunted him, staring at him through the eyes of his own granddaughters. The younger one, the little auburn-haired doll who hadn’t made a noise, reproached him almost more than her sister, the one who’d screamed and screamed until they’d smacked her to shut her up.

For a few weeks after the incident he’d dreamed of that family, haunted by what he’d done. But frankly, there’d been so many after them that they blended with the others into one miserable openmouthed howl of horror at the things of which he’d grown capable. Sometimes he’d acted on orders; other times he’d needed desperately to wipe out the reproach on the victims’ faces—and the more viciously he banished them, the better.

Violence was a beast that fed upon itself, and it was never satisfied. Anger and guilt and self-disgust festered into further brutality, until each twisted action and reaction created a monstrous stew that he consumed and then purged, over and over, in an agony of subconscious bulimia.

Litsky straightened and moved away from the hearth. As his mind wandered, the heat at his backside had grown unbearable, though an icy draft still clutched at his neck. He reached for the decanter of amber liquid on a side table in front of him and poured three inches into a tumbler.

Good Scotch and the passing of decades had helped, as did his long masquerade as a respectable, retired businessman. And so had the knowledge that the cursed dragon piece, wrapped in old flannel, was shoved to the very back of his safe, the key to his crimes hidden inside its belly.

But now his explosive secrets were out in the world somewhere, and an accidental brush of the fingers could expose him for what he was. At age seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen who feared death? It seemed such a remote possibility. Who feared the glare of shame? He’d had no concept of it, no real reputation to lose.

Now, at age eighty-two, Litsky feared both. Shame in this world and terror of the next. For surely a man like him was going straight to hell without appeals or apologies.

He couldn’t escape the consequences of death, but he could still avoid the scandal of discovery. His hands trembled as he waited for the gentleman named Kelso to return his call to ARTemis.

He rued the day that he’d gotten into bed with that whoreson Pyotr Suzdal, not comprehending how dangerous he was. Litsky had steered the Russian a few pieces for ready cash—a mistake. Clearly Suzdal had decided there was more for the taking . . . and his men had broken in while Litsky was in Paris.