Last Snow (26 page)

And then, his mind still unable to let go of that cashmere sweater, he began to think of Sherrie because—and this was the really strange part—in the wintertime she had liked to walk around the apartment in an oversized man’s V-neck cashmere sweater. Just the sweater and nothing else, her long, pale legs emerging from the bottom, and when she turned around, a glimpse of the bottom of her lush buttocks. She liked to tease him that way, a behavior that must have been a form of revenge, because one evening when he returned from overseas—Munich or perhaps Istanbul, he couldn’t remember which—she was gone: Sherrie, her suitcase, and her cashmere sweater; the drawers in the bedroom, the shelf in the bathroom, the half of his closet he’d ceded to her empty. The smell of her lingered like a last cigarette, but only for a day or so. By that time he’d called her more than a dozen times, had gone by her apartment at night, like a stalker, looking for lights, for her silhouette against the drawn Roman shades. Nothing moved, nothing remained, and eventually he forgot her.

But he hadn’t forgotten her, because here she was now, or at least the memory of her, as he stared bleakly out into the crowded Kiev street, haunting him as if she had just left him moments before, or yesterday, instead of three years ago. He wished she were here now, though what he’d say to her he had no idea. Not that it mattered; he
was alone. There was no Sherrie, or any of the girls before or after her, whose faces folded into each other along with their names. They were all gone, they’d never actually been there, he hadn’t let them.

The waitress took his order, returning almost immediately with a small pitcher of cream and miniature bowls of sugar and honey. She smiled at him but he didn’t return it.

His eyes were red-rimmed with bloodlust, his heart a blackened cinder beyond any hope of repair or remediation. He wanted neither; he wanted only to kill someone, to steep his hands in blood, Annika Dementieva’s blood.

“
Y
UKIN IS
going to want tangible concessions,” General Brandt said as he and President Carson landed in Sheremetyevo airport. “That’s how it works here, they’re Russians, talk means nothing—less than nothing. People say things here—Yukin among them—they don’t mean. The air needs to be filled with buzzing, any form of buzzing will do, in fact, the less truthful the better.”

“I know all this,” Edward Carson said. “Lies obfuscate, and as far as the Russians are concerned, the more obfuscation the better.” He wore a neat charcoal suit with a red tie and an enamel pin of the American flag affixed to his lapel. Brandt, on the other hand, had decided to come to Russia in his military uniform, complete with his chestful of medals. Uniforms impressed the Russians, they always had. They were like the worst bullies on the block, lashing out with strained aggression to compensate for their insecurities. They knew better than anyone that the Western powers viewed them as semicivilized, as if they were apes pretending to be human beings.

Having slowed to nominal ground speed, Air Force One turned off the runway and began the long slow taxiing to the VIP terminal.

“We have prioritized the concessions we’ve put into the final draft of the accord,” Carson continued, “chief among them the revision of our missile defense deployments around Russia.”

“The conservatives are going to scream about that one,” the General said.

“They forfeited the right to complain when they fucked things six ways from Sunday when they were in power,” the president said. “Besides, General, you and I both know the technology for the missile defense system is still not in place. If we had to implement it today or next week or even six months from now it would be a joke.”

“It’s real enough to President Yukin.”

“Because it surrounds Russia like a noose.”

The General nodded. “I’ve gone on record on both ABC and CNN that our proposed MDS is the main reason for Yukin’s recent aggression into Georgia.”

Carson lifted a finger. “One thing I need to make clear. Yukin can’t expect unilateral support from us, I’m not coming to him on bended knee.”

“Absolutely not. That would give him an advantage he’d never relinquish. But that can’t happen now, because he wants something from us only we can give him.”

“I hope to God you’re right, General. Everything depends on this security accord being signed.”

Brandt sat back, never more sure of the plan he’d outlined to the president days after his taking over the Oval Office. It was crucial, he’d argued, to enlist Russia in the crusade to keep nuclear weapons out of Iranian hands. They knew through intelligence and back-channel diplomatic sources precisely what missile parts Russia was selling to Iran. Nothing the previous administration had done had had any effect on Yukin’s business dealings with Iran, a result Brandt had predicted with unerring accuracy. Carson was different, however; he’d listened to reason, had agreed when Brandt had outlined an alternative method of weaning Yukin away from the dangerous Iranian teat.

If the diplomatic rapprochement was the foundation method,
then the security accord was the cornerstone to its success. Which was why Brandt was replaying in his mind the disturbing phone call from Harry Martin. Of course he knew about the other faction in the field—that was the whole point of Martin’s mission to intercept Annika Dementieva. Annika was the key to everything. That Martin had not yet been able to find her was unsettling enough, but the fact that he had now gotten wind of the other faction meant that it was far more advanced in its plans than he knew about or had been led to believe. One of two conclusions could be drawn from this: Either the other faction had suddenly gained in power or the sources he’d been relying on had underestimated it. Neither possibility was a happy thought, especially with the accord signing imminent.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt and standing up. “I need to make a call.”

Going forward down the wide aisle, he punched in a number that was too secret to keep either on his speed dial or in the cell’s phone book. It was a number he’d committed to memory the moment it had been given to him.

As the connection was going through he reflected on just how much he hated dealing with the Russians. To a man, they were a treacherous lot, the long shadow of Josef Stalin stretching into the present. They were all Stalin’s students, the General thought, whether or not they were aware of it. His viperous double- and triple-dealing became the political template—not to mention the KGB’s modus operandi—set in the kind of monumental stone it was impossible to undermine, let alone destroy.

Brandt himself had become a secret student of Stalin’s, of his history of blood, broken bones, and broken promises, in order to prepare himself for taking on the Soviet Bear. The dissolution of the USSR hadn’t fooled him the way it had others. Russia’s power might have been broken, but he knew it to be temporary; its flinty spine, fortified by Uncle Joe’s vampiric shadow, was still very much intact.

“I have three minutes.”

The voice in Brandt’s ear caused him to bristle inwardly, but he swallowed his outrage because he knew that, in fact, he only had three minutes. “My man in the field has just informed me that the opposition is gaining ground.”

“Even if that’s the case,” Oriel Jovovich Batchuk said, “these people are no match for
Trinadtsat
. They have neither the manpower nor the resources to take advantage of the situation.”

Batchuk wasn’t denying it! Brandt massaged his forehead with his fingertips while shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand, dispelling the possibility that anyone on board Air Force One might inadvertently see the expression of consternation on his face. “It seems to me that we have to entertain the possibility that the situation on the ground is being rewritten even as we stand here talking to one another.”

“A hiccup, that’s all,” the deputy prime minister said. “We still hold the high ground, that’s all that matters.”

Batchuk had power in spades, that was indisputable, but what they were aiming for was so complex that no one man could guarantee its success. Acknowledging this reality was, after all, the prime reason he and Batchuk had forged this risky alliance and even riskier plan, why each of them was wagering their power and their influence—everything they possessed—with their respective presidents. For Brandt, however, there was another matter: money. He’d never had it, had been forced by his expertise at political maneuvering to be around those who did, and he burned with envy. He wanted his share of the gravy train and God help anyone who stood in his way.

“To ensure our success,” he said now, putting stress on every word, “I’ve put out an immediate sanction on Annika Dementieva.” He expected a response, possibly an irate one, from Batchuk, but his words were met only by silence. “I’m convinced she’s causing this hiccup, as you call it. A cure is needed, even for a hiccup.”

“I would find it difficult to disagree with you,” Batchuk said. “Who has been given the assignment?”

“Harry Martin. He’s the assassin-in-place.”

“Where is he at the moment? At Zhulyany, I assume.”

“If he was at the Kiev airport,” the General said, growing annoyed at the note of condescension in Batchuk’s voice, “I’m sure he would have told me.”

“Hmm, interesting.”

Now the General really was annoyed. “How so?”

“Rhon Fyodovich Kirilenko, the FSB officer your man Martin is supposed to be shadowing—”

“I know who the hell Kirilenko is,” the General said, beginning to lose his temper despite himself.

“Kirilenko’s name has just shown up on a flight manifest departing Zhulyany in forty-three minutes, bound for Simferopol North Airport in the Crimea.” Batchuk cleared his throat, the better to emphasize what he said next: “Either your man Martin is an incompetent or he’s decided to play both ends against the middle.”

“I know Harry,” the General said, “and he’s neither.”

“Then figure out your own explanation,” Batchuk said.

The General immediately phoned Martin and informed him of Kirilenko’s whereabouts. The moment he heard the surprise in Martin’s voice he resolved to put another man in the field ASAP. This he did the moment his call to Martin was over.

He shifted from one leg to another, his body creaky and diminished inside the perfectly pressed uniform with its splendid show of medals and commendations.

“General, it’s time.”

The president’s voice, strong and firm as always, caused him to return down the aisle at his usual crisp pace to where Carson was now standing, waiting for the door to open while the contingent of Secret Service operatives buzzed around him like horseflies.

“You look gray-faced, Archie,” the president said under his breath. “Is there anything wrong, anything I need to know?”

“No, sir,” Brandt said, struggling to regain his composure, “of course not.”

“Because we’re on the firing line now, about to go into battle and, to paraphrase Sonny Corleone, I don’t want to come out of this aircraft with only my dick in my hand.”

The General nodded. “Understood, sir. I have your back, your guns are loaded, and all your ammunition is dry and awaiting your orders.”

“That’s the spirit,” Carson said with a tight smile.

The flight attendant spun the door wheel and it opened inward. The first of the president’s agents took command of the rolling stairs, then others checked out the immediate vicinity. For a moment, they spoke with their opposite numbers in the Russian secret service, then one of them turned, gave a brief, reassuring nod to his commander in chief.

“Okay, General,” the president said. “Here we go.”

T
HESE DAYS
Dennis Paull never slept; he never stayed in one place for very long, either. It was as if he needed to keep one step ahead of the banshee that was on his trail. That banshee—or demon or ghost, whatever you wanted to call it—had a name: Nina, the woman he’d had an affair with who had almost killed Edward Carson at his inauguration. Only Jack McClure’s timely intervention had saved the president. For that Paull would be eternally grateful. If only Jack could exorcize the demon or ghost or banshee that haunted Paull’s waking life, but Jack was just a man, not a sorcerer.

Paull, who had set up a temporary office in a Residence Inn on the outskirts of the District, planned to spend his nights unearthing all there was to know about the members of Edward Carson’s inner circle. He sat at a drab desk in front of his souped-up laptop, scanning
a screen full of information from yet another government database he’d hacked into. Factoids from the public and private lives of Vice President Crawford, Kinkaid Marshall, G. Robert Kroftt, and William Rogers floated across his screen like messages from a phosphorescent universe. He was particularly interested in Crawford. Like John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson before him, Carson had been drawn into a shotgun wedding with the old-line and conservative Crawford in order to carry Texas and the other swing states in the old South. The two men never got along. Though their public face was all smiles, behind closed doors their politics was fraught with friction and, at times, animosity. Though Crawford wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the intransigent members of the party, Paull didn’t like him; he certainly didn’t trust his style of backroom wheeling and dealing. Who knew what insidious pols Crawford was in bed with.

This was the work Paull had been doing since he arrived at just after six in the evening. It was now half past eleven. To one side was an open cardboard box with the remaining two slices of pepperon-cini pizza from Papa John’s. He rose, went to the bathroom, and washed the olive oil off his hands. Then he crossed to the window, peering through the slatted blinds at the smeared headlights on the highway. The traffic’s constant drone made him feel as if he were inside a beehive, an appropriate sound track for his working environment.