Father Night (8 page)

“For real?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “And tell him he has to come himself.”

“He won’t like—”

“Convince him,” Jack ordered.

The driver made the call, tilting the mobile so Jack could listen in. The line rang and rang, but no one answered. There was no voice mail, either.

Jack took the mobile away from the driver. “Ten to one it’s a dead line,” he said. “Omega’s moved on.”

F
OUR

C
ARO, CYBER-DATA
in a flash drive, returned to her penthouse hotel suite, after spending the bulk of the afternoon at lunch in Alexandria and then meeting with certain people for whom she had zero affinity but who were of use to her current plans.

A breathtaking nighttime vista of D.C., the Potomac, and the Tidal Basin greeted her with the affection of old friends. She had rented the suite upon her return to the U.S. on a false passport, after having fled Albania and her former lover and boss, a man known only as the Syrian. Her name was now Helene Simpson. She knew the Syrian had put a price on her head; she knew that he would not rest until she had been hunted down, brought before him, and disemboweled while he watched, hot-eyed and smiling. Such was the price he inflicted on those who betrayed him. She had confided none of this to Vera, nor would she, ever. She had lived too long as her own, sole confidante; she saw no reason to alter that game plan. Nevertheless, she felt the pressure and anxiety of being hunted. She did not sleep well, or, for days at a time, at all, only to fall, at last utterly exhausted, into a shallow sleep, besieged by nightmares of her capture and subsequent death at the hands of her spurned lover.

The Syrian was a notorious recluse. Even those closest to him didn’t really know him at all—his origins, his family, even his real name. He had insisted she call him Ashur when they were intimate, but she had no clear idea whether or not the name meant anything, except to him.

Her terror of him provided numerous opportunities for regret; nevertheless, not once did she think leaving him was a mistake. On the contrary, fleeing had saved her from drowning in his power. But now she had become his quarry, and she had no illusions regarding either his ruthlessness or his doggedness in tracking her down. His shadow continued to move on her horizon.

For a long moment, she stood immobile in the center of the living room, studying all the subtle traps she had laid to alert her of an intruder’s presence. She had set throw pillows on the sofa in a certain color sequence and in a particular series of angles, she had left sections of
The New York Times
open to different pages, the pages overlapping one another in a specific way.

In the bedroom, the creases in the bedspread were as she had left them and there were no fingerprints or tracks on the dresser tops or handles she had coated with hair spray before she had left. In her clothes closet, she measured the spaces between the hangers over which her dresses and skirts were folded. The cleaning staff were under strict orders not to enter the suite unless she was present. Satisfied that all was in order, she returned to the living room.

Throwing her coat across the sofa, she sat down at her desk, opened her laptop, and inserted the flash drive. Then she took a small gray metal box from the floor of the hall closet, where she had secreted it in a shoe box that housed the Prada shoes she was wearing. This she took back to the desk.

Opening it, she took out
The Little Curiosity Shop
, an old, battered children’s book she and Vera had shared. Opening the book to the middle section caused a space to open between the spine and the binding. Slipping her finger into the space, she drew out a micro SD flash memory card, which she fitted into the appropriate slot in her laptop. Navigating to the icon, she double-clicked it, activating the software program of her own design. It was much too valuable to keep on her laptop’s hard drive. When she powered off the laptop, traces of the program were completely wiped, leaving not one byte behind.

Next, she accessed the starting IP address of the Web site she had downloaded from Vera’s iPad and ran it beneath her own software program. Instantly, the software used her laptop’s souped-up central processor and the Wi-Fi connection to begin its mind-bogglingly rapid calculations, following the IP’s trail as it morphed from one address to another.

Caro discovered she was hungry. She punched a key on her cell. “Number Eleven,” she said, when the discreet female voice answered. “Ten minutes,” the voice replied, and Caro disconnected.

She rose, padded into the bathroom, and scrubbed her hands and face. Toweling off, she stared at herself in the mirror for so long, with her gaze rock steady, that an outsider might have thought she was hypnotizing herself.

The hotel phone rang, and she reached for the receiver beside the sink. “Send him up,” she said in response to the query. She left the towel draped over the edge of the granite sink. On her way to the door, she glanced at her laptop’s screen. It was filled with rapidly moving calculations that scrolled down the page, replaced by others.

Grunting with satisfaction, she opened the door before the bell could be rung. She stood aside to let the man in, then closed and locked the door, engaging the security chain that she herself had replaced with one made of solid titanium. It could not be cut by anything less powerful than an electric saw with a diamond blade.

By the time she turned around, he had put down his overnight bag, and her silk blouse was already unbuttoned. She wore no undergarments; the inside semicircles of her breasts were bared. She looked into Number Eleven’s face and her nipples were suddenly hard. He smiled at her in that way she liked so much, with nothing beneath it but desire for her. She didn’t believe his desire was actually for her, but didn’t mind the pretense. Sex was all pretense anyway, so why not ride the wave? The Syrian had desired her, but that was very likely as much because she had been of exceptional use to him. Needs often got confused, especially during the sex act. During her time with the Syrian, she had become a master at identifying and manipulating the confusion. It was a distinct relief not to have to do that with Number Eleven. That was the only designation by which she knew him; she had no desire to know his name and every reason not to want to know it.

Number Eleven stood perfectly still as she approached. She clicked open a stiletto switchblade, using it to slice open his clothes layer by layer. She was as careful, as precise as a surgeon slicing through skin, fascia, and muscle, down to the bone, which, in Number Eleven’s case, was his softly pearled flesh.

When they were both standing naked in front of each other, she threw the knife across the room. “Now,” she said, “take me.”

This he did, with singular strength and grace. The first time, he had tried to kiss her. Don’t, she had said, turning her head. No kisses on the lips. Even the thought of it frightened her, as if a kiss were an intimacy she could not tolerate, as if in exhaling into his mouth she would lose a part of herself that she could never get back.

Number Eleven possessed extraordinary staying power, giving her time to climax five times, at the end of which she would allow him to abandon himself to her. Midway through this, the chime on her laptop rang. Without a word, she rose, ignoring him as he slipped out of her. Picking her way across the room, she leaned over her laptop, her skin pink with friction, glistening with their mingled secretions.

A Cheshire Cat smile stole across her lips. Her software had completed its scouring of the Web and had found the perpetrator of the Web site, despite a dizzying trip through servers around the globe that wound in concentric circles.

*   *   *

W
HEN
N
ONA
Heroe exited Bishop’s house just after dawn, she saw tendrils of smoke seeping out of a car window cracked open. As she crossed the street, her heart sank when she recognized the vehicle. The driver’s-side window slid down as she neared.

“I know you must be tired,” her boss said, “but get the fuck in here anyway.”

Sighing, Nona went around the front, hauled open the passenger’s door, and slid inside. Alan Fraine fired the ignition and pulled out into the deserted street, rolling away from what he must surely think of as the scene of the crime. For her part, Nona was sick to her stomach. What with the smell of cigarettes mixed with Bugles and Fritos, it was all she could do not to vomit.

“Nona—”

“I wish you would keep quiet,” she said.

“Sorry, no can do.” He made a left turn. “Now you’re in the confessional, it’s time to unburden yourself.”

“You unholy little shit, you followed me.”

“True enough”—Fraine nodded—“except for the ‘unholy little shit’ part.”

She grunted, folding her arms across her breasts. “You didn’t even give me the benefit of the doubt.” She turned to him. “Where did the trust between us go?”

He thought about this a moment. It was a crucial question. “It’s not you I don’t trust, Nona. It’s everyone else.”

“That’s what my daddy used to tell me when he was teaching me how to drive.”

“Nothing ever changes, does it?”

She leaned her head against the window, staring out at the street. The garbage pileup was staggering. She thought she saw a rat running between the black plastic bags.

“How’s Frankie?” Fraine said. He knew that Nona tried to visit her brother every day. Occasionally he went with her.

“The same.”

“He know you were there?”

“My heart says he did.”

Fraine made another turn. They were in a seedy part of D.C. “How about some breakfast?” He shot her a quick glance. “If your stomach’s up for it. You look a little green around the gills.”

“How the hell can you tell?”

That set them both to laughing, but Nona sobered up quick enough.

“Shit, Alan, I’m in an awful bind.”

“I figured.” He pulled up in front of their favorite greasy spoon and killed the ignition. “Come on. We’ll sort it out over eggs and coffee.”

They got out and, hunched over against the wind gusts, went up the concrete steps into the diner. The place was nearly empty and they took their usual window booth. To their left was a long counter with red vinyl stools and, beyond, past the ranks and stands of layer cakes, fruit-filled turnovers, and old-fashioned crullers, was the open kitchen. The interior looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since it had opened in the 1950s. It smelled like it, too, but the thick impasto of grease, sweat, and desperation was all part of the charm. There was even a stained photo of Eisenhower over the pass-through to the steaming kitchen.

Elsie, the old waitress who had been there forever, waddled over, pad and pencil stub clutched in her arthritic hands. “What’ll it be, young-uns?”

“The usual,” Fraine said, “for both of us.”

She nodded. “Prepare your stomach linings, coffee’s coming right up.”

Fraine pulled out a couple of paper napkins from the chrome container while Nona flipped through the offerings on the table’s remote jukebox.

“Nat King Cole or Etta James?” she said.

Fraine grunted. “Etta by a nose.”

Nona inserted a quarter and pressed some buttons. A moment later, James’s “All I Could Do Was Cry” came wafting through the speakers.

“How appropriate,” Fraine said.

“So beautiful, so sad,” Elsie said as she set the cups of coffee and the pitcher of cream in front of them. “Eggs and bacon on the griddle.”

“Bring another coffee setup,” Fraine said as she turned to leave.

Nona frowned. “Someone’s joining us?”

“I made the call when you showed. He’ll be here shortly.”

“Who?”

“Tell me what happened,” Fraine said.

Nona recounted her summons from Bishop, how he had extorted her compliance in exchange for keeping her on the street where she belonged.

“I knew he was an unholy little shit,” Fraine said, “but he’s now graduated to an entirely new level.”

Nona smiled thinly at his deliberate use of her own phrase. Elsie arrived with eggs, bacon, and whole-wheat toast, which was Fraine’s concession to good nutrition. Immediately, he tucked heartily into his breakfast, but she merely toyed with her food.

After his second mouthful, Fraine looked up at her. “Nona, eat. That’s an order.”

She nodded, eating with small, deliberate bites. She could taste nothing but ashes. “I didn’t want to get you involved, but now … I mean, what the hell am I going to do, Alan? Bishop’s too powerful for either of us.”

Fraine nodded. To her consternation, he seemed unperturbed. “That may be true, but we have friends even Bishop doesn’t.”

Her head came up. “We do?”

As if on cue, the secretary of homeland security entered the diner.

*   *   *

T
HE
Z
OLKA
chocolate factory lay in the Chertanovo industrial area, about seven miles south of the center of Moscow.

They had driven out of the industrial park grounds without incident. Annika was driving, while Jack returned to the back to check on Boris. Katya had done a remarkable job, tearing a piece of fabric and tying it in a makeshift but effective tourniquet.

Jack checked Boris’s wound, confirming that it was a flesh wound. The bullet went through the triceps and out the other side. The wound looked clean. Katya suffered all the violence and its aftermath more stoically than he could have imagined. When he mentioned this to her, she smiled sadly and said, “I’ve seen far worse.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Listen to me, I love Annika dearly, but when it comes to her
dyadya
she can be explosive. He has been mother, father, and mentor to her. He sacrificed to get her back from her despicable father, in the process creating a lifelong enemy, who might have been powerful enough to destroy him were he not so devilishly clever. He has done his best to shield her from her father, while training her to become strong enough in mind, body, and spirit to resist Batchuk. In short, Dyadya Gourdjiev is everything to her. In her mind, her debt to him can never be repaid, not that the old man wanted that. On the contrary, he has done everything for her out of love, for his love long ago outdistanced the guilt, however misguided, not anticipating the depths of her father’s depredation—kidnapped from her dying mother’s arms while Gourdjiev went about his daily business.”