Father Night (12 page)

Now there was nothing between him and the General. Under the table, he felt his right leg begin its nervous pumping.

Across from him, the General took another swig of his vile liquor. When he set his glass down, he said, “Tell me about the girl, Leonard.”

The query seemed so far out in left field that Bishop could think of only one response. “What girl?”

“The girl you’re currently bedding.” The General’s fingers rotated the glass slowly, evenly. “She works for you, doesn’t she?”

Nona. “As much as the thousand detectives at Metro work for me.”

“But she’s different, isn’t she? She’s one of the thousand, but she’s not. She’s one of the chosen.”

“You are correct, sir.”

“So my question to you, Leonard, is what are you doing?”

“I don’t—”

“You’re supposed to be studying her, not bedding her.”

“She’s difficult to get to know in a professional setting. I know what I’m doing.”

The General snapped a breadstick in half and chomped into it. “That what I’m supposed to tell Waxman?”

“I’m telling you, in the office she’s like a fucking porcupine.”

“Uh-huh.” The General chewed and swallowed. It was clear he didn’t believe Bishop. “It’s been my experience, Leonard, that when men think with their pricks, something bad happens.”

“Not this time.”

“Always.”
The General sat back as the appetizers were served. “What about her brother?”

“She visits him every day, almost.”

The General closed his eyes for a moment, pressing his fingers into the lids as if Bishop’s answer had given him a headache. “I meant his condition, Leonard.”

“He’s never coming out of his coma, sir. She hasn’t given up hope, but I know she’s sure of it.”

“Well, that’s good news.” The General pursed his lips, as if about to spit. “We can’t have him regaining consciousness. You understand this.”

“Yessir.”

“But, goddamnit, we can’t touch the sonuvabitch.”

The General took to tackling his shrimp cocktail, which had been brought in a wide-mouthed martini glass. Dumping the fiery cocktail sauce over the top, he commenced to annihilate the crustaceans between his large, square teeth.

Bishop stared into the green forest of his salad without seeing it. Had the General completed his assessment of the situation with Nona or was the exquisitely humiliating interrogation going to continue? He felt like he had when he was a boy, dressed down by his father for one trespass or another, sometimes real, other times imagined. Any attempt to profess innocence only caused an escalation of whatever punishment his father had decided to mete out. Years later, in the way of life’s lessons, it became clear to him that he had been punished for sins his father had committed. His father didn’t have to admit to them so long as he punished his son for them.

“Leonard,” the General barked, “have you lost your appetite, too?”

Too?
Bishop thought with a start.
What else have I lost
?

*   *   *

“I
T’S A
relief to have you back among the living,” Jack said.

“All for a good cause,” the old man said. With Annika’s help he was regaining the use of his legs. “I had a hunch our escape wasn’t going to go smoothly.”

Jack turned his attention to him. “Because of Omega.” When Gourdjiev gave no reply, Jack continued. “We have information that Omega is Grigori Batchuk.”

“That’s right.” The old man nodded as he led the way to one particular stand of electronics, where Jack saw Boris, his fingers busy on a computer keyboard.

“How’s the pain?” Jack said.

“I’m Russian.” Boris looked up for a moment, his eyes holding steady on Jack’s. “What fucking pain?”

Jack laughed.

“Bring the first one up,” Gourdjiev said, and at once Boris pressed a set of keys. Onto the screen flashed live video of a section of the tarmac at Sheremetyevo Airport. Surveillance camera. The old man pointed. “Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words justly deserves to be lionized.”

Jack, peering over the mountain of Boris’s shoulder, saw the U.S. government jet that had transported him and Annika to Moscow.

“Second camera,” Gourdjiev said.

At once, the image changed, pulling back to show several fistfuls of plainclothes men perhaps a hundred yards from the plane, grouped around their cars. At the old man’s command, the image changed to show the other side of the plane, where the tarmac was similarly spattered with plainclothes men, chatting and smoking.

“They’re waiting for us,” Gourdjiev said, “or, more accurately, for me, though I’m quite certain they would be pleased to drag Annika into their net.” He turned to Jack. “So. Now you know. Grigori is not going to allow me access to your plane, Jack.”

The old man drifted away, hands clasped behind his back. He looked a whole helluva lot more alive, Jack thought, than he had before.

“He had people at the hospital, which was why it was imperative that you remove me from there as soon as possible. Otherwise, some bogus doctor might have slipped a fast-acting paralyzer in my intravenous, prior to having me whisked me away.”

He turned back to face Jack. “You’d have no problem boarding the plane, of course. You’re an American citizen.”

Jack’s mind was racing. “We’ll take you on board in a coffin.”

“They’ll check it.”

“Annika will put you under like she did at the hospital.”

“The drug is a strain on the system of even a young man.” Annika took a step toward them. “He won’t tolerate it.”

“The scenario is moot,” Gourdjiev said. “There’s Annika and Katya to consider. I’m not leaving them behind.”

Jack thought for a moment. “If we can’t go where they expect us, we have to go where they’ll never think to look for us.”

“Oriel trained his sons well. Grigori thinks of everything,” Annika said, hands on her hips. “By now he’ll have the city sewn up tighter than a duck’s ass.”

Jack closed his eyes and cleared his head. On the screen of his mind he brought up a map of Moscow, not as others might see it, in two dimensions, but in the three dimensions in which his mind worked best.

The “map” he reviewed included everything he had seen since he and Annika had flown in the day before. What stood out for him were colors—glorious colors. He watched again the view from the hospital corridor window: the half-stripped poster for the Red Square Circus. Today was its last day in the Russian capital.

“Maybe he does. Then again, maybe not.” Smiling mischievously, he turned to Annika and Dyadya Gourdjiev and said, “How are you at lion taming?”

*   *   *

A
LLI WAS
a bit shell-shocked when she and Caro returned to the bowling alley, where Werner Waxman sat just as they had left him, hands gripping his hickory walking stick. His head was slightly inclined toward Vera as he spoke with her, but they broke off the moment they saw the two young women approach.

“Feeling better?” Waxman said as Alli sat down.

“Of course she isn’t.” Vera cut Caro a suspicious look that asked,
What the hell happened in the ladies’ room?
“She looks like crap.”

“I’m fine,” Alli said, though she felt far from it.

Waxman nodded, apparently taking her at her word. “I’m afraid the rogue Web site went live in error. An internal investigation revealed one of our people is obsessed with you. He has been stripped from the program. My apologies for any distress it caused you, I can assure you it will not reoccur.”

“That’s not enough.” Alli ignored the tension that came into Waxman’s body. “I want to know who posted the site, who Photoshopped my face on those bound nudes.”

Waxman’s expression grew pained. “I’m afraid his identity is a matter of national security. I’m sure you understand.”

“But I don’t,” Alli said. “There are circumstances that make it imperative I find him.”

Waxman shot Caro a lightning glance. He cleared his throat. “If I may ask,
what
circumstances?” He made the common word sound filthy.

Alli hesitated a moment, glanced at Vera, who mouthed,
Go ahead
. “This man knows things—intimate things—about a difficult part of my life that make me exceptionally uneasy.”

“Really? Well, now, that
is
troubling.” Waxman frowned. “I can certainly see how that might affect you adversely.” He sighed. “Hmm, we can’t have that, can we? Give me some time. Let me see what can be done.” He patted her leg, then rose creakily. “Not to worry, I’m always cleaning up after other people’s messes. I imagine that’s why my superiors still put up with me.”

“Thank you,” Alli said, though she sensed that Waxman had no superiors.

“It’s nothing.” Waxman’s hand brushed away her words. “Just another day’s work.”

When he had left, Caro said, “Okay, it’s payback time.”

“What, exactly, do you want from Henry Holt?” Vera said.

“A notebook.”

Alli cocked her head. “What’s in it?”

Caro smiled. “Believe me, it’s better if you don’t know.”

“People say that in films all the time,” Alli said. “It’s always bad news.”

“How will we recognize this notebook?” Vera asked.

“It’s made of ray skin—shagreen, decorators call it. Black and shiny, with a raised pearl-colored oval in the center.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“If I did I wouldn’t need you.”

“We’ll take care of it, Caro. I promise.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

Vera turned to Alli. “What did you two talk about in the loo?”

Alli arched an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same. You and Waxman were gabbing pretty good when Caro and I came back.”

Vera sat back. “Waxman was telling me stories about the old days.”

“Which ones?” Caro said.

“The ones where after World War Two the OSS rounded up all the clever Nazis, hid them from the war-crimes tribunals, and hired them for counterintelligence work against the Soviet Union.”

Caro shrugged. “Old chestnuts that’ve been in the fire way past their sell-by date.”

“Maybe,” Vera said. “Didn’t make them any less hair-raising.”

“Which story was it, exactly?” Caro asked.

“He was telling me the history of Butterfly—you know, change through chrysalis and all that. Anyway, according to Waxman, Butterfly was the code name for a unit of Nazis working to create false papers—legends—for deep-cover OSS agents being sent into the Soviet Union.”

“And?”

“Butterfly also used its skills to ensure some very high-ranking colleagues escaped Germany and justice.”

Alli looked from one to the other of her companions. “I can’t help but wonder what he thought he was doing.”

“What d’you mean?” Vera said.

“I mean our Waxman doesn’t strike me as someone who makes idle chitchat.”

Caro nodded. “Alli’s right. What the hell was Waxman trying to tell us?”

Alli looked at her. “Let’s ask another question: If Butterfly still exists, what would it be up to?”

*   *   *

“T
HERE ARE
so many reasons to be happy,” Leonard Bishop said, sweat pouring down his bare chest, “why not let this be one of them?”

Nona, seeming to stare up at him with lust-glazed eyes, watched the pattern the streetlights imprinted on the ceiling. Her smile was for him, but her mind was over the hills and far away. In her mind’s eye, a big blue swamp moon was rising over Pontchartrain, the lake’s indigo water silver-tipped, shivery with a humid wind. That summer, Nona had been sixteen, in the full flower of her first real love, a tall thin biker in stovepipe jeans, cowboy boots, and with ropy tattooed forearms.

His name was Rob—she never did find out his last name—and he claimed he had the cops on his tail. According to Rob, he had held up a liquor store on the interstate, “just for giggles,” as he so succinctly put it. Whether this lurid history was true or not, Nona ate it up. She was as much in love with the legend as with Rob himself. When they were together, she was always on the lookout for cop cars—especially the state police—in order to have a hand in saving him from arrest and jail. By way of thanks he laughed at her. There was a cruel streak running through him that caused Nona to shiver with anticipation. But he was never cruel to her, or abusive. In fact, he was gentle with her, his touch always loving, his voice low and mellow. But with others, this streak emerged full-blown and ferocious. He never settled a dispute with words when he could use his fists or, even better, whatever weapon came to hand. She never witnessed him lose a fight, and there were too many to count. People soon learned to give him a wide berth, even other bikers who, unlike Rob, traveled in packs. “I’m a rogue elephant,” he told her once. “I crush whatever the fuck’s in my path.”

In bars, nightclubs, and strip joints, all the low-down, noxious places he took her, he always managed to tangle, to throw his weight around, to lash out with carefully controlled aggression and a cold, cold hatred. The people he put down were bullies—guys bigger, sometimes older than he was. Often there was more than one. Nona stood back in a kind of awe, vibrating from head to toe, while the mayhem ensued. It was like a game for her, like watching her own private 3-D movie,
House of Horrors
, southern style. Always afterward the sex was galactic, making her body arch and her eyes roll up in her head.

One rainy, windswept night, the game abruptly morphed, and it all went off a cliff. Besides his Harley Low Rider, Rob owned a Chevy, souped up and tricked out. As they were speeding down the interstate, the wipers full on to sweep aside the torrential rain, Led Zep’s
Houses of the Holy
blasting out of his eight custom speakers, the blurry night was suddenly lit by flashing red lights.

“Cops,” Nona breathed, as if this one word would save him.

Rob, singing harmony to Plant’s melody, didn’t even bother to glance in the rearview mirror. He slowed, though, gradually pulling off to the shoulder. As he did so, he reached under his seat and took out the largest, meanest-looking handgun Nona had ever seen.

“Rob, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Just sit tight,” he said with his drop-dead grin, “and watch.”