Father Night (32 page)

She reached the landing of the next floor down. Jack had appeared near the other end of the corridor—he hadn’t come this way. She began to creep slowly along, then paused, turning around. What made her think he hadn’t come this way? She was thinking like Waxman’s security people, not like Jack.

Retracing her steps, she peered down the back stairway to the next level. The brick wall was covered with graffiti. Midway down was a fuse-box door, set flush with the wall. The fuse box seemed to ripple and distort, and, the next moment, the image of Emma appeared, translucent, wavering, as if shivered by an invisible wind.

“Emma?”

Alli had only taken a couple of steps down when a security guard trotting up the stairs came into view. Seeing her, he opened his mouth to shout, but Alli threw the knife she had taken off Reggie. He put up a hand as it hit his cheek a glancing blow, but that was enough to give her the opening she needed. Flying down the stairs, she kicked him backward. He fell heavily, bouncing down the treads, and she followed him. It was well that she did, because his hand came up, pointing his gun at her. Her left leg flicked out, the side of her foot knocking the weapon out of his hand.

He leapt up and came at her, and she let him, just as Sensei had taught her in aikido class. As he reached out to grab her, she used his own momentum, grasping the extended arm, pulling him into her. Locking her leg behind his knee, she landed an elbow strike to the nape of his neck. His face crashed into the metal stair beside her, and he lay still.

Alli took possession of the knife and the fallen guard’s CZ, searched for extra bullets, and pocketed them, then turned away to look for Emma. She was gone. Only the fuse box stared back at her, silent and enigmatic. Did it mean something? She stepped closer and saw a chalk mark, a small circle.

“Cut your losses and chalk it up to experience,”
Jack had shouted at the end.

Chalk.
Reaching out, she rubbed off the chalk mark with her fingertip. Then she inserted the end of the broken blade into the door’s lock and worked it gently back and forth.

The instant the door popped open, a nearly empty duffel bag, folded in on itself, fell into her arms. She moved beneath a light, unzipped the duffel, and peered inside.

*   *   *

“Y
OU’RE ON
the wrong side of history,” Grigori said. “Again.”

Caro frowned. “Explain yourself.”

He looked away, out the limo’s smoked window, at the murky morning. “We’ve been in here for hours and I have to empty my bladder. Do you plan to hold me prisoner forever?”

“The quicker you give me answers, the faster I’ll let you go.”

“Not until you put away the gun. I’ve had enough of you waggling it in my face.”

Caro set the gun down on the seat next to her, but she didn’t put it away. Caro had driven Grigori’s limo out of the construction site before the workers showed up. They were parked in a spot overlooking the World War II memorial. Caro wore a black baseball-style cap with a white
FBI
embroidered on it she had purchased from a vendor on Constitution. The bill was pulled low on her forehead, throwing her face into deep shadow.

When he leaned forward, peering through the partition at the weapon lying on the seat, she said, “Best I can do. Now spill.”

“‘Spill.’ What’s become of you?” He shook his head. “You sound so damn American.”

She shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“I assumed—incorrectly, I see—that your time with the Syrian taught you things.”

“Oh, it did, but not what you think. I learned I don’t like being allied with the wrong people. I don’t like getting their shit all over me.”

“We’re all tarred with the same brush, Caro. It’s a matter of survival.”

She made a face. “For you, maybe. Not for me.”

“You’re no better than the rest of us, Caro. You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise.”

“If making my own decisions is fooling myself, then bring it on!”

“Sooner or later, the Syrian will catch up to you. And when he does—”

“Is that who you’re taking orders from now, Grigori? The Syrian?”

“God, no! I steer as clear of him as I possibly can.”

“And when that becomes impossible?”

“I go down on one knee and look away.”

“Bravo! The perfect vassal!”

“I have a lot of my life left to live, Caro. What would you have me do?”

She snorted. “Please.”

“So I should adopt your solution? Become a fugitive?”

She looked hard at him. “You still don’t get it. For people like you and me, there
is
no solution. We’re doomed by both genes and circumstance. The most we can hope for is a decent life until the violent end comes.”

“You! Unlike me, you have an out. You can always go back to your father.”

“With my tail between my legs!”

“But what a magnificent tail it is!”

She laughed then, puncturing the mounting tension that had risen between them like a medieval wall bristling with spears, catapults, and boiling oil.

“Always the charmer,” she said, “even when holding a knife to my throat.”

“It’s you who has the weapon,” he pointed out.

She waved away his words. “You were speaking about history and taking sides.”

“I’d meant it as a threat, actually.”

“Something’s changed?”

He shrugged. “You have inexplicably aligned yourself with Alli Carson.”

“She is my cousin.”

“I can’t see the relevance.”

“Then look again.”

“I’ve seen all I need to. She and Jack McClure are tight.”

“And?”

“McClure is fucking Annika Dementieva. Her grandfather is Dyadya Gourdjiev.”

“Who someone has convinced you is evil incarnate.”

He ignored her. “McClure is the key—to everything.”

“You’ll have to explain that.”

“Fuck you, missy!”

For an instant, her eyes flicked down to the gun. But as she reached for it, Grigori slammed the back of his hand across her cheek. She rocked backward while still scrabbling for the gun, and Grigori was upon her, launching himself through the open partition, his superior weight bearing her down onto her back. He knocked the gun away, but in such close quarters it was far too dangerous to fire.

He glimpsed his driver, dead in the footwell, as he hauled his legs through to the front seat. Then his hands fitted around her throat as if they were always meant to be there.

“You stupid, stupid bitch,” he said as he throttled her. “I see you for the predator you are. You’re heartless. You never loved me. And I loved you so very much.”

His face was empurpled, his features distorted by the force of this rage erupting from the depths. “You stupid, stupid bitch. I gave you every opportunity to change your mind, to keep yourself safe, and what did you do? Did you accept? No. Did you ignore me? No, again. You mocked me.”

He pressed down with a gathering strength that bordered on the berserk. The spark of reason had fled from his eyes, his mind was mired in a red haze that extinguished his connection to everything else, dislocated him from society, conventions, even history. He was exiled, alone with his rage—manufactured rage that, too late, Caro understood had been grafted onto him at an early age. He had become something else, something beyond or below human.

Her eyes were protruding, her lungs were burning, her windpipe nearly crushed. She stared up into the face of a creature completely unknown to her.

N
INETEEN

A
PART FROM
a Magic Marker and a piece of chalk, the duffel was empty. Alli plucked out the Magic Marker, curious. Then she turned the duffel inside out and discovered the map Jack had drawn of the interior of the warehouse abutting the Washington Channel. Not only had Jack shown her where Waxman had taken her, but he also had given her a way out. For the third time, she traced the route he had outlined on the map, committing it to memory. Then, returning the duffel to its original state, she zipped it up and stowed it back in the fuse box.

She wasn’t going anywhere without him. Mounting the stairs, she reached the penultimate floor without encountering anyone. The corridor was eerily silent. She heard no voices as she approached the vertical ladder up to the floor where Waxman had kept her locked away and where she now assumed they were holding Jack. Moving hand over hand, she ascended, pausing on each rung to listen for voices or footfalls on the bare concrete. Nothing. But she knew only too well how Jack had been ambushed in the hallway, so she proceeded with extreme caution. She was so focused on what might be waiting above her that she was taken completely by surprise when someone grabbed her legs from below, ripping her from her perch.

*   *   *

R
EGGIE
H
ERR
strapped Jack to a gurney.

“I’ve learned over the years the human capacity to feel is as difficult to kill as a cockroach or a tick,” Waxman said as he bent over Jack.

Reggie guided the gurney toward the open cell door. They crossed the threshold, into the corridor.

Waxman continued, “But imagine that ungainly mess of feelings burned out of you. Imagine what you would be like then. The purity of purpose to which you could dedicate yourself, like a monk or a guru, cleansed, ennobled, at last able to reach for perfection.

“This has been my life’s work, McClure.”

*   *   *

A
LLI FELL
against the bottom of the ladder, and almost immediately felt an arm around her throat as she was lifted off her feet. The man behind her braced for her to squirm, but instead she let herself go limp, forcing him to adjust his grip on her. Slamming the side of her handgun against the side of his head, she slipped from his grip, turned, and brought the butt of the weapon down on his forehead. He kept coming, ignoring the blood streaming down his face, so she drove her fist into his kidney. As he crumpled sideways, she struck him a vicious blow behind his ear. He went down and stayed down.

She was about to step over him to remount the ladder when she heard the whine of an elevator motor.

*   *   *

W
AXMAN PURSED
his lips. “It was your ill fortune that you landed in Annika Dementieva’s web, eh? She got to you, turned you inside out. Pity for you—but not for me, eh?”

The gurney arrived in front of an elevator, Reggie pressed the Down button, and the car lurched into service.

“Annika and her grandfather have been a thorn in my side for some time. That ancient fucker is Nosferatu—he never dies. And now he has you as well as Annika as one of his guardian angels.”

The elevator arrived and the door slid open. Reggie began to guide the gurney inside when Alli, hands gripping the top of the opening, swung out of the car, the impact of her boots slamming him backward off his feet. Reggie bounced off the opposite wall and, when he came back toward her, she scissored her legs around him, trapping his neck between her thighs.

Reggie tried to get his arms up, but Alli, gripping his ears, jerked his head around. Waxman, recovering from his shock, lifted his gun, but Jack, working his body, slammed the gurney into Waxman’s side. He eeled his body so that the left strap rode up to his biceps. He swung his arm out in a shallow arc, catching Waxman’s rib cage as he stumbled.

Alli, seeing there was no time, slammed the palms of her hands against Reggie’s ears. His jaws opened in a nearly soundless scream, and she disengaged her legs. He took two staggering steps before collapsing, hands to the sides of his head.

Waxman still held on to his gun, but Alli, chopping down hard, took care of that. She held him at gunpoint and said, “Unbuckle the straps, Mr. Waxman.” And when he hesitated: “It’s now or never for you.”

Waxman nodded and, turning to the gurney, freed Jack.

“Are you okay?” Alli asked him.

“Still a little groggy. Whatever the hell was in that cane packed a wallop.”

“Tell me about it.”

Jack swung his legs over and stood up, holding on to the gurney until he was able to try out his legs. They no longer felt like rubber bands.

Alli looked around nervously. “The sooner we get the hell out of here, the better.”

“Not without him,” Jack said, grabbing Waxman. He looked hard into Waxman’s eyes. “You have a shitload to answer for.”

He drove his fist into Waxman’s solar plexus, doubling the older man over. Grabbing a fistful of hair, he pulled the older man erect as Alli bent to retrieve the walking stick Waxman had dropped.

“Forensics will have a holiday with this,” she said.

Jack manhandled Waxman onto the gurney, strapped him down, and wheeled him into the waiting elevator.

When Alli was inside, he pressed the button for the first floor. “You got my message?”

Alli nodded. “Loud and clear.”

It was then that he noticed the CZ stuck in the waistband of her jeans. “If you had a beard you’d pass for Che Guevara.”

“Very funny.”

As the lights counted down the floors, she stowed Waxman’s walking stick under one arm, then drew out the CZ.

“Who the hell knows what we’ll meet with when this thing comes to a stop.”

“The warehouse is mostly deserted.” Jack turned. “How many men do you have in here, Waxman?”

Waxman stared up at him, stony-faced. Reaching across him, Jack hit the Stop button with the heel of his hand.

“What are you doing?” Alli said.

He held out his hand. “Walking stick.” When she handed it over, he took a quick inventory, found the button that released the dart. Hovering it over Waxman’s chest, he said, “Tell me, Waxman, how many toxins does this thing hold? Still not talking?” He tapped his thumb lightly against the button. “I know what happens when this crap is injected into an extremity. Let’s see what happens when it’s shot directly into the heart.”

“Wait!” Waxman licked his lips. “That would not be wise.”

“The hell it wouldn’t,” Jack said, puncturing the cloth of Waxman’s shirt. “You can tell me everything I want to know before your heart stops.”

Alli plucked at his sleeve. “Jack, please, we can’t stay here forever.”