Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (23 page)

Jordan pulled to the curb near the pharmacy, not far behind Evgeny. “Not something,” Jordan said, craning his neck toward the upper floors of the building. “Some
one
! Cass, it’s her!”

Chapter 25

T
he sun had most certainly risen that Sunday morning, though no one in Manhattan had seen anything of it. When Hans left the apartment just after seven, a dusky tarp of clouds covered the city. He’d returned to New York the day before, immediately after the Supreme Court debacle, but couldn’t bear to confront Jilly. She wouldn’t have known his complicity in the bombing that, according to the hail of news reports, had killed two people and maimed that young boy. Ivan had told him no one would be there, no one in the building, and the outside blasts would be too weak and too far from the sidewalk to injure anyone. Ivan had said it was just a demonstration.

Still, the blood had gushed from the young boy’s head, and his mother had asked Hans to pray for her son. How trusting. How absurd.

From JFK, he’d taken a cab straight to his office. No one was on his floor, so he’d closed his door and settled into his calf-leather executive chair with nine-way adjustments and looked out over the city. His expansive office window faced the East River. He’d worked hard and risked everything for the chair and the view, for the tony Tribeca apartment, the European vacations, the Tiffany baubles—all of it for the hand of the woman he’d loved since those early Bronx days when he’d barely spoken English. How quickly she would eject him from her charmed life, though, if she knew what else he had done.

No, he hadn’t planted the devices, not personally. Hans the overseer was paid exorbitantly to manage his saboteurs, to recruit and coddle the bomb makers and deliverymen who infiltrated the target sites. For several years, he’d run the Secret Service agent who facilitated the installation of the piano device. Likewise, Hans had shepherded the renovations contractor who’d planted the Supreme Court explosives. Hans knew the man like family and had paid him like an NBA athlete.

Other saboteurs just waited for their fortune. For some, though, it was their chance to stick it to the red, white, and blue. Across the country, they waited for different reasons. But none of it mattered to Hans anymore, not even the money that funded his dream life with Jilly—because he could still see the boy’s cranial blood smeared across that mother’s cheek. And hear his own little brother’s screams at the hands of someone no different from himself.

No, it was all over now.

So on this Sunday morning, it was fitting that the light of day had been all but extinguished. People like him worked best in the dark.

As he strode wearily along the sidewalk, he took note of no one else. No need to. Though surely no one had missed the relentless television recounts of the Washington bombings, who among the viewers could possibly associate those crimes with the man now passing them on the street?

Just a few blocks to go. If the signal was there, he would meet Ivan one last time. Then Hans would arrange for his own disappearance. But how best to do that without drawing incriminating attention to Jilly and Cass? That was his greatest fear.

He regretted wrapping himself so heavily against the weather. He felt hobbled. If he’d had to move quickly—to flee—he couldn’t. One more block and he would turn at the corner and survey a certain fourth-floor balcony in the apartment building ahead. In the past, he’d irrationally feared some overly observant local would note the regularity of his visits to the street, every other Monday at half past noon. He rarely had to pause in his casual stroll down the street, only glance up at Sonya’s balcony. She was as punctual as he. If she appeared on her balcony wearing solid black, there was no meeting the following night. If solid white, Hans was to report to
the
apartment. If she wore a matching scarf around her head, the meeting would be aboard the trawler instead, though that was rare. Even though Ivan was often out of the country, Sonya expected Hans’s attendance at the biweekly check-ins. Sometimes another overseer would be present.

In the seven years since Ivan had recruited Hans to his network, there had never been a Sunday-morning signal for a same-day meeting. There had never been events such as those in Washington this week. No need for battlefield strategies. Until now.

At the corner, Hans turned and immediately looked toward the fourth-floor balcony ahead. He didn’t see her at first and slowed his pace, casually surveying the street. A young woman pushed a stroller ahead of him. From behind, he heard a clanging and turned to see a man raising the lattice security screen from over his restaurant. Farther down the sidewalk, a man dressed in black was window-shopping at the pharmacy.

As he walked, Hans kept looking toward the balcony. Finally, she appeared, stepping from the shadow of the door overhang into the open. In a white coat and matching scarf, she busied herself with the rearrangement of porch chairs, giving no apparent attention to Hans or anyone else in the street below. The color-coded signal meant he would meet the boat that evening. It would pick him up at six, as was customary with river meetings, and return him to the dock before eight. Ivan craved precision. He also craved little games, like making Hans walk to Sonya’s porch signal instead of receiving a simple text message. Except for the final signal he would text to his field agents across the country, Ivan preferred the old-school covert techniques to techno-communications, which he claimed were too easily intercepted. But Hans knew that Ivan just wanted to run his agents through their hoops, testing their obedience and endurance, working them like trained monkeys. For his own pleasure.

Traffic was just beginning to pick up. An old white van passed slowly by him, giving him only momentary pause.

At the next corner, he turned down a side street and headed for home. He knew his wife would object to his leaving for any reason that night. There was no excuse he could give that would satisfy her. So it didn’t matter what he told her. He would endure her anger and distrust. If she would
let
him, he would hold her until she uncoiled. He would kiss her tenderly. And he would never return to her.

When Evgeny caught up with the van a few blocks from the pharmacy, he climbed into the passenger seat beside Jordan and told him to drive out of the neighborhood. “I do not want Hans spotting this van again and getting suspicious.” He turned to face Jordan. “You are certain that was the same woman from the apartment?” It had been Jordan’s immediate call to Evgeny, still stationed in front of the pharmacy, that alerted him to the woman on the balcony.

“Positive,” Jordan said. “Who is she?”

“A ruthless old babe who used to hover like a raven over the KGB offices. The fact that she’s here in New York means we don’t have long. She’s a closer.” He then turned in his seat and looked directly at Cass.

“In a little while, I want you to call your mother and tell her you are coming over. I need someone inside, watching Hans and listening. We know who just sent the signal to him, but not what it meant. I need eyes and ears on him. Can you do it?”

Cass nodded distractedly, her mind whirling through options for getting her mother out. She could leave the city and move to the beach house, but it wouldn’t take long for someone to track her down. Who, though? Who are these people?

“Cass, acknowledge,” Evgeny said impatiently.

“Yes, I’ll call. But I’ve got to get my mom somewhere out of reach.”

Evgeny looked thoughtful. “I know a place. It will not be up to her standards, but no one will find her. Afterward, you will need a very fine lawyer to prove her innocent of involvement in her husband’s crimes.”

“Afterward?” Liesl interjected. “What does this afterward look like, Evgeny?”

Cass watched Evgeny turn a surprisingly compassionate eye on Liesl.

Liesl kept going. “I’ve been in the afterward too many times before, only to find the threat still there. You were that threat once, Evgeny. No,
make
that three times. And here you are again. Only this time, the threat is from someone new.”

Cass didn’t move, her eyes finding Jordan’s in the rearview mirror.

“If I ever make it home,” Liesl persisted, “will Cade and I be walking along the beach one night and hear footsteps behind us? Will there be bullets in this afterward?” She looked out the side window and lowered her head against the pane. No one spoke.

Evgeny turned completely in his seat and pointed to a spot just below Liesl’s chin. She flinched as if he’d grabbed her.

“Does that cross you wear mean nothing to you?” he asked sharply.

Cass stared at the necklace, then back at Liesl’s colorless face.

“Didn’t you just tell me yesterday that your God shows you things?” Evgeny demanded.

Liesl didn’t answer.

“Well, ask him what to do with all that fear.” He spoke as if Liesl were the only one in the car. “Or don’t you trust him?” Evgeny didn’t lower his sights on her. “If I believed in a trustworthy god of any kind, I’d believe
all
the time.” Then he turned around.

Cass looked away from Liesl, an attempt to offer some modicum of privacy. Then she heard Liesl exhale a quivering breath. “Thank you, Evgeny,” she said softly.

The air in the van spread like a hot blanket on them all. Cass stared at the floor, hoping for some spotlight to fall on a way out of this muddled mess of emotion and peril. She wanted resolution—and quickly. Willing to dispel the throbbing vibrations in the van, she turned efficiently to the issue at hand.

“Give Hans time to get back to the apartment, and I’ll call Mom,” she told Evgeny. “Jordan and I will head there as soon as we can.”

“Not Jordan,” Evgeny instructed, quickly reverting back to his detached authority. “You’ll learn more if there’s no outsider making Hans nervous. You must go alone.”

“Now wait a minute, Evgeny,” Jordan said. “Whoever came looking for Cass at her apartment probably knows where else they might find her. How do you know they’re not staking out her parents’ place this minute?”

Evgeny gave this thought, then turned to Cass. “Make the call, and I will get you safely inside the building. Then we will—”

His phone vibrated. He listened at length to the caller, then asked tersely, “When?”

The call ended. Evgeny turned to Jordan. “You and Cass will return to the church and remain there. Liesl and I have someplace else to go.”

Liesl looked uneasy.

“Keeping secrets?” Jordan asked.

“Of course,” Evgeny answered tersely.

“Well, since Cass and I seem to be on your dragon lady’s seek-and-destroy list, perhaps you might offer us just a glimpse of your plans for the day. You two going roller-blading?”

Evgeny sighed deeply but didn’t budge. “I understand your frustration, Jordan. But for your own protection, there are things you must not know.”

“Ignorance has never protected me before.”

It was the first time Cass had heard Evgeny laugh. It was more a fleeting rattle in his throat and a crumpling of the brow, but it was genuine. When the face returned to its static composure, Evgeny ended the conversation. “They hunt me for what I know. They would kill me for what I know. You and Cass will wait safely for us at the church, and that is all.”

The sanctuary was filled with disparate voices singing a hymn when the foursome returned to the church. Liesl used a key Rev. Scovall had given her to open the side door, and they all slipped into his private apartment unnoticed by the congregation. Liesl would soon leave with Evgeny on the mission he had yet to explain. But she hadn’t objected, Cass observed, as if Liesl were numb to all that came hurtling toward her. Cass knew such numbness to a depth that threatened permanence. Only Jordan could fish her from the deadening spiral. She wanted to help Liesl if that was possible. Then Cass caught the glimmer of the cross necklace lodged in a fold of the scarf still loosely wrapped about Liesl’s neck.
Maybe she doesn’t need my help, after all
.