Beloved Enemy (41 page)

*   *   *

Radomil had been on the roof for some minutes, hiding behind one of the mounds of snow that had been shoveled off to the edges. He had seen the sprawled bodies of the guards. They were all unmoving, undoubtedly dead. It was curious, though, that there was no sign of weapons. He saw the helo, crouched and waiting, its rotors revolving, ready for liftoff at a moment’s notice.

There was no sign, however, of either Namazi or Annika, which meant they were still in the chalet. Then he saw a door slam open and his half-sister being dragged by the Syrian across the roof toward the helo.

At that moment, another man—big, eyes wild and staring—appeared, taking aim at the running figures. Radomil launched himself at the big man, knocking him sideways as he squeezed off a shot. Namazi and Annika ducked but kept running, reaching the open door to the helo and climbing in. He heard Namazi shout an order and the rotors began to revolve more quickly. The helo was ramping up to lift off.

The big man struck Radomil on the jaw, and he saw stars. He rose, kicked Radomil in the ribs, then aimed at the helo. Rolling over, Radomil kicked the back of the big man’s right leg. Again, the shot went wide.

Then the big man turned, aimed his handgun at Radomil and shot him between the eyes.

A split instant later, he himself was rocked back by a bullet that struck him in the chest. He whirled. Jack sped over the roof toward him. He raised his Mauser, but Jack fired again, and he was taken off his feet. Jack fired a third time, leapt over the body, and sprinted toward the helo, which was now rising off the rooftop.

For an instant, he doubted he was going to make it, but at the last moment he put on a burst of speed, then leapt, grabbing onto one of the landing runners just before the helo took to the air. Immediately, it began to bank to the right.

Jack scrambled up onto the strut. From there, he could lever himself into the interior of the aircraft. As he began this maneuver, Namazi stuck a gun out through the doorway and fired. Jack spun away beneath the fuselage just in time, but the Syrian extended himself to fire again.

“McClure!” he shouted over the helo’s noise and the rushing of the wind. “You’re well and truly fucked now. You poor bastard, you shot Rolan! You killed her husband!”

Jack worked his way around the strut, but at that moment the pilot banked and dipped the helo. Jack’s foot slipped and he began to fall backward. Lunging out, he caught the door handle just as he lost his footing altogether.

For a long, heart-thumping moment, he swung in the air, then, as the helo shuddered upward, he used the momentum to swing himself around to the fuselage. He was just scrabbling for a handhold on the rim of the opening when the door began to slide shut.

The helo banked the other way, shuddering in the wind currents as the pilot continued to try to shake him loose, but this last maneuver worked in Jack’s favor, as the door slid back open.

Seizing the opportunity, Jack swung his lower body up and into the interior of the helo. Namazi was still hanging on to the door, in a vain attempt to close it. Jack struck him on the point of the chin and he staggered backward, landing on his shoulder.

“Didn’t I warn you to stay away, Jack?” Annika, weeping uncontrollably, held her Bersa aimed at his head. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

“I couldn’t stay away.” He took a step forward. “You knew that.”

“Sadly, I did. And now both Rolan and Radomil are dead.”

“Ah, the lovebirds,” Namazi chuckled as he rose to his feet. “United, only to be forever torn apart.”

“God, I hate you, Jack!” Annika waggled the Bersa. “Stay back.”

“You’d better do as she says, McClure,” Namazi said. “Or maybe it doesn’t matter. She’s going to put a hole through you no matter what.”

Jack took another step toward Namazi. “You won’t shoot me, Annika.”

“Oh, but she will. Bank on it.”

The helo skimmed over the tiled rooftops of other chalets.

Jack moved a step closer to both of them. Annika was staring fixedly at Jack, or maybe through him. Jack saw his opportunity, saw what he had to do in a lightning flash. He faked to the left and knocked the Bersa away from her.

“Annika, Annika, listen to me!”

But she was past listening to anything he had to say. Witnessing Rolan’s death had clearly unhinged her. There was only one other choice. Fighting her every step of the way, ignoring the strikes of her fists and feet, elbows and knees, he doggedly hauled her over to the door. He kicked it open and, as the helo passed over the roof of another chalet, he moved to shove her out. As she was toppling out, she lunged back and snatched the Airweight from Jack’s hand, and it went tumbling down. She fell only six or so feet before she hit the snow piled on the canted roof tiles. She slid a bit, then grabbed on, pulling herself horizontally to the roof’s edge, where she lay, staring after the receding helo. Jack bit back every emotion that threatened to rise up and overwhelm him.

“Now it’s just you and me, Namazi.”

As he turned, Namazi fired at him. The bullet put a hole in the fuselage and, for an instant, the helo wavered. Jack sprang at him, slammed his fist into the side of Namazi’s head. Namazi turned in his seat. A thick-bladed hunting knife came whistling down, slicing through Jack’s coat and shirt, drawing a line of blood across his chest.

The Syrian tried to turn the strike into a thrust, but Jack smashed his right shoulder with such force, it dislocated. Namazi gasped but still managed to transfer the knife to his left hand. Jack grabbed it and repeatedly slammed it down onto the instrument panel.

The helo went immediately out of control, veering downward at a terrifyingly steep angle. It plowed into a deep snowdrift, slowing its momentum somewhat before striking the rocky ground beneath. The two men slammed into the helo’s windshield.

*   *   *

Jack must have passed out. He blinked, his lungs working like bellows. He looked around the shattered interior, saw the pilot crushed in his seat. Then Namazi was coming at him, both hands extended. Jack, cocking his right leg, buried his foot into Namazi’s sternum. He felt the percussion all the way to his coccyx.

The Syrian was thrust backward against the helo’s shattered fuselage. He stared at Jack, his lips drawn back from his hungry teeth. He looked like he wanted to eat Jack alive. A moment later, blood gushed from his mouth. Jack saw that he was impaled on a length of twisted metal.

“Fuck you,” Namazi said. “Fuck you.”

Jack pulled himself to his feet, every muscle in his body screaming in pain, and picked his way to where the Syrian hung. He smiled as he saw the light fading from the Syrian’s eyes. It was a terrible thing, perhaps, but he couldn’t find it in himself to feel remorse.

Iraj Namazi, the Syrian, was dead. Into Jack’s mind came something that Gourdjiev had said to him:
“Words mean nothing, an actor’s lines.”

Turning away, Jack made his stumbling way out of the wreckage and into the late-day sunshine, where already a crowd had gathered. Sirens were wailing, and someone put their arm around him to keep him from falling.

*   *   *

When he found her, she was lying in the snow where she had fallen. At some point she had moved her arms and legs, making a snow angel.

Jack hunkered down next to her. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Numbs the pain.”

“Annika, I’m sorry.”

“Is he dead?”

He knew she meant the Syrian. “I made sure of it.”

“Thank Christ.” She closed her eyes for a moment.

He waited for her to speak.

At length, she said, “I thought I could handle him. As it turned out, I couldn’t.”

“You know, your grandfather made me promise to look after you.”

Her eyes grew big. “When?”

“In the hospital, before we left Moscow.” His gaze seemed to penetrate through her. “He was dying, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. He hadn’t long to live.”

“So he sacrificed himself.”

“It was the endgame he always envisioned.” A lone tear leaked out of the corner of her eye. “Only I wasn’t strong enough.”

“So he enlisted me.”

“And yet—”

“You pushed me away,” Jack said, “so violently I didn’t know what to think, say, or do. It seemed you had become my enemy. You made it impossible to keep my promise.”

“And yet you’re here with me now.”

“Yes.”

“You never lost faith.”

“I suppose that’s true. Deep down.”

When she made no comment, he said, “Don’t you want to get up?”

“Not now,” she said in a small voice. “Not yet.”

Jack looked at the snow angel she had made. Perhaps, he thought, she was remembering the one good moment of her childhood.

After a time, he said, “I had to choose between your husband and your brother. He was about to shoot Radomil. I tried to save at least one of them, but I was a second too late.”

“I know.”

“Now they’re both gone. Annika, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. Rolan’s life ended when he was hurt. He emerged from that a changed man. Better he should have died in the explosion.”

“You must have still felt something for him.”

She smiled sadly. “We all harbor dreams. Some of them are impossible dreams. Why do you think that is?”

“It’s one of the things that makes us human, isn’t it?”

She nodded mutely.

“And Radomil.”

“Yes, Radomil. I’ve tried to shed a tear for him, but I can’t. Why is that, do you think?”

Jack said nothing, knowing it was a question she was asking herself.

“Maybe,” she said, after a time, “the tissue binding us was too thin. Maybe it wasn’t there at all.”

She stared up at him for a moment. Then she held out her hand and he took it. Together, they regained their feet.

She placed a hand on his arm. “I feel as if I failed him.”

“Your grandfather.”

“Yes.”

“I imagine he felt he failed you.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“You don’t want to,” Jack said. “But the truth is he failed to protect you from your father. He never could forgive himself for that.”

She smiled again, warmly this time. It was clear she had turned her mind away from Dyadya Gourdjiev and her life with him.

“I did okay in the plane, didn’t I?”

“You did great,” he said. “I was able to get you out of harm’s way. That’s all that mattered.”

“No,” she said. “Without you it wouldn’t have mattered whether I lived or died.” She leaned her head against the crook of his shoulder. “You see? My grandfather finally succeeded in protecting me.”

He put his arms around her. A bout of dizziness threatened to overwhelm him, but this time it was purely emotional. He kissed her—on the forehead, both cheeks, and, finally, on the mouth. Her lips opened under his.

The electrifying, familiar taste of her melted everything inside him, a balm that banished his aches and pains, an affirmation that everything he had been through was worthwhile.

EPILOGUE

May 5

Paris, France / Washington, D.C. / Altindere, Turkey

C
ARO HAD
once read a novel about a man who had been sent to jail because he had hit a girl who had darted out in front of his car. He’d had no chance to stop, and yet, as an object lesson, he had been convicted and incarcerated in a hard-time prison. During her time in Paris, on the run from Iraj Namazi and his people, Caro had read and reread the description of his life there, recognizing his feelings of fear and despair, reconfirming to herself that not all prisons had high walls, razor wire, and steel bars.

Now, as she sat on a bench in the Place des Vosges, near the beating heart of old Paris, she tilted her head up to the early afternoon sky, realizing that, from the time she had fled Namazi’s compound until this moment, she hadn’t truly felt pleasure from the sun on her face.

The wind brushed her lips, ruffled her hair, and she bit into a buttery
pain au chocolat
with all the joy of a child on Christmas morning.

Iraj Namazi, the Syrian, was dead, his entire network destabilized and rapidly unraveling, as his lieutenants fought each other like hyenas over a corpse.

She had been living under his curse for so long she knew it would take some time for her to fully comprehend the width and depth of her freedom. She could go anywhere, do anything she chose. Freedom was such a new concept for her, for the time being it took her breath away.

She finished her pastry and, brushing the crumbs and bits of chocolate off her lap, decided what she wanted now was a large steaming cup of café au lait.

Rising, she crossed the magnificent square, past the fountains, the children playing, watched over by knots of young mothers, gossiping with one another. There was a sudden burst of babies in Paris, as if life were returning to a field that had lain fallow for years, patiently waiting for this moment.

As Caro walked, she breathed in the scents of the city she had grown to love and knew that, at least for the foreseeable future, she would stay here. As she passed the last bench before the swinging iron gate leading out of the square, a young man glanced up, looked at her, and smiled. He had a handsome, open face, with wide-apart eyes that regarded her inquisitively.

He was finishing a
pain au chocolat
as well, and she paused, wondering whether he, too, wanted a café au lait.

*   *   *

Toward dawn, Jonatha, exhausted from staying up all night checking and rechecking her proprietary intelligence, fell into a shallow sleep, slumped over in a chair at her kitchen table. Slowly, her mind sank into a dream-reality in which she had never met and, therefore, never fallen in love with Lale. She stood by the edge of a lake. Somehow, in the manner of dream logic, she knew the lake was very deep. Far out, she saw a ripple, repeating.

In her hands was a fishing rod. She lifted her arm up and back, casting the line far out into that part of the lake where she had observed the ripple. For some time nothing happened. Then, she felt the tug on the line, and she lifted the rod. The tugging grew in intensity as the hook was taken, and she reeled in the line a little bit at a time.