The Domino Game (45 page)

He looked at her, still smiling at the thought behind the unexpected gift. His eyes lifted to the wall clock. Quarter before seven. They still had a while before Kelly was due to arrive. Why not?

Nikolai played the wheel loosely, guiding the Jaguar through the bend, onto the empty stretch of road. Beside him Yuri sat studying the folded paper he had drawn from his jacket as they passed through the town. He frowned, interpreting the directions.

“It says we go just over a mile along here. Then when we see a red letterbox we make a turn.” He lowered the paper and gazed ahead through the bug-smeared windshield into the softening light. They were winding upwards through lightly wooded hills; spaces cleared every so often, defining driveways leading to houses nestled amongst the trees. Not exactly an appropriate setting for replicating the kind of insurance scam he and Sergei had staged last night, Nikolai reflected.

Yuri seemed to anticipate the thought.

“We meet here. Then they take us to where we do the job.”

Nikolai threw him a sideways glance. “Meet who?”

Yuri shrugged. “No one I know. I just do my job, okay? Do what I’m told to do. The fewer people I know the better.” He squinted through the glass and stabbed a finger to a point up ahead.

“That’s it. Take left there.”

When his hand lowered, his fingers slid beneath the edge of his jacket. Nikolai eased back on the accelerator as they came closer. The clearing was bracketed by a set of open post-and-rail gates, a milk can on its side, painted bright red, fixed to the fence on the left. Above the mail slot was a number, below it a name, the letters painted in white with neat precision.

HARTMAN

Nikolai read it and blinked. Looked across at Yuri. He was flexing his bare fingers, the glove he had peeled from his right hand lying in his lap. Nikolai looked back to his own bare hands clasping the wheel and felt the cool shiver of comprehension.

The passport. The stolen car. His fingerprints everywhere.

He hit the indicator, turning into the space between the gates, his expression fixed, betraying nothing. In front lay a graveled driveway that rose gradually through a treed perimeter; beyond the woods a gentle grass slope climbed to a plateau, a big shingle-roofed, white clapboard house capping the rise. Nikolai lowered his right hand slowly to his side, the low growl of the car’s engine and the soft rolling crunch of the tire treads tracking across the gravel fading behind the rushing pulse of the blood in his ears. This wasn’t New York anymore. Or America, or any physical place. He had entered another dimension: a suspended void where life hung on intuition and speed and the exactness of action and reaction. Kill or be killed. Strike first or die.

His right hand slipped into his side pocket, his fingers closing around the metal barrel of the pen, easing it free below the shield of the center console, spinning it around until he held it clasped like a dagger in his grasp. He hit the brakes and the vehicle lurched to a violent stop, throwing Yuri forward. His head spun towards Nikolai in shocked surprise and their eyes connected, his startled expression fading in an instant to the cast of raw fear Nikolai had seen so many times before in the eyes of other men who had recognized their misjudgment too late. There was no need to look down: he had already precisely measured distance and angle by instinct. Before Yuri’s fingers could close around the grip of the pistol Nikolai struck backwards, stabbing the pen into the back of his hand, its barrel splitting skin and glancing off bone and plunging on through flesh and sinew. There was a moment of startled silence as the nerves relayed their panicked message to Yuri’s brain, then the cabin erupted with a chill, tearing shriek of pain.

With the cry still ringing in his ears Nikolai’s left arm arced through the air, the heel of his hand slamming down like a hammer against the top of the pen’s silver barrel, forcing it on through the other man’s palm and driving it like a stiletto into his gut. The second scream was different, a low choking howl of drawn breath and surprise. With his right hand Nikolai worked at the splayed, pinned fingers, forcing them aside, dragging the pistol free and bringing it up hard against Yuri’s throat.

Yuri’s chest was heaving, his lungs clutching for breath. His terrified eyes stared down to where his bloodied hand lay pinned to his stomach. The only emotion in Nikolai’s voice was a trace of disgust.

“It’s a mosquito bite, that’s all. I haven’t killed you.” He twisted the pistol sideways, grinding the barrel into the other man’s windpipe. “But I will, I promise. Unless you start talking, you understand me?
Now!

Yuri tried to edge back but the gun followed. He closed his eyes and winced with pain, his words falling out in short fractured gasps. “I don’t know… anything. I was… told to… bring you here… Someone else handles the rest.” His eyes opened, flashing wildly, his oily dark fringe scattering across his forehead, his brain, stalled somewhere between pain and fear, trying to measure how far to go. “If… if you cause trouble… they say I am… to shoot you. To kill you because it won’t matter. I just… I just have to get you here… that’s all.” He fell silent, breathing heavily, his small dark eyes alight with panic.

Nikolai stared at him, quiet and impassive. He was back in prison again. The grime-smeared walls. The dim gray light. The stench of filth and hopelessness and fear. The fate of someone who would have killed him locked in his own hands. No pleasure in the power but no room for weakness. No second chances. To live or die the only options. His finger closed around the trigger, drawing it taut, then for some reason an image of Larisa swam into his brain… Larisa, his daughter. No longer an abstract concept but a reality. Alive and frightened and alone in a strange apartment in a foreign country. Trusting in him. Relying on him. Waiting for him to return.

And if he didn’t? What then would become of her?

His gaze locked on the cowering figure beside him, this creature who would have taken his life without a second thought, without knowing or understanding the slightest thing about him. How different was he, he wondered. In the final analysis, perhaps not at all.

He eased back the gun and lifted it to Yuri’s temple. There was a look of empty resignation in Yuri’s eyes now, the instinctive comprehension of how this would end. The knowledge that there was nowhere to hide but within himself. His eyes fell shut a split second before the impact, a blinding explosion that lit his brain with bursts of energy and light that flared suspended for a long moment then faded to black. To nothing.

In the luggage compartment Nikolai found a five-gallon can of gasoline and a roll of duct tape. He set the can aside on the grass. Wrestled Yuri’s unconscious form to the back of the car, unpinning the stapled hand from his stomach, dragging the bloodied pen free and tossing it aside, then hauling the body upright and rolling it over the sill and into the trunk. He paused then to catch his breath. Blood had begun seeping again from Yuri’s wounds. Nikolai pulled out the knife he’d found in the glove compartment and flicked it open, cutting two lengths from the tape, winding one around the hand then ripping back Yuri’s shirt and slapping the other over the puncture hole in his gut. He used the tape again to bind the other man’s wrists and ankles then wrapped what was left across his mouth. A bloodied grazed lump had already risen on Yuri’s right temple where the butt of the pistol had broken the skin as it slammed down across his skull. He would be sore for a while, probably have a massive headache for days, but he’d fared well by comparison with what he deserved. Nikolai rolled the body aside, slammed the lid and turned to look around.

He had brought the car to a stop at the side of the driveway – two hundred yards, he calculated, short of the house. He snagged the keys from the ignition, pressed them into his pocket and started up the slope, moving away from the road circling across to the remnant of woodland at the edge of the grass. Halfway to the top of the rise the woods fell away to nothing. Up ahead, across the final expanse of lawn, the big house rose from its commanding knoll. The main building was two levels: white timber walls and shuttered windows and a steep pitched roof, the lower floor wrapped in a wide veranda three feet or so above the ground. Off to one side was a long single-level structure: a garage, added later, by its appearance, connected to the rear of the house. Out front two vehicles stood abandoned on the wide gravel apron between the building and the lawn: a small green sedan, a big gunmetal gray Mercedes propped behind it.

Nikolai calculated the shortest route and dropped to a crouch, sprinting across the final distance, skirting around the parked cars and pulling up flat against the wall of the garage. For a minute he waited and listened. Everything was curiously silent. Not just the house but out here as well. No insects No birds. No sounds, even in the distance. Just the hollow muted stillness of a deserted world. He looked back across the valley where a handful of other houses lay dotted randomly in clearings carved from the trees, the nearest, he judged, half a mile away at least. Beyond them a range of low hills traced a shadowed silhouette against the distant river, its surface shimmering in the lowering light.

There was a doorway to the garage near the place where it connected to the main house. He moved across to it, trying it quietly, grimacing as the turn of his wrist met the resistance of the lock, looked around again, weighing options, then started edging forward, tracking towards the house, working his way along the length of the veranda, softly climbing the five front steps.

The door lay ajar. He eased it inwards slowly onto an empty hall. A spacious living area extending beyond, timber floors and rugs, sofas and sideboards mounted with framed photographs, a dining table laid for four, empty glasses neatly bordering the settings. The scent of cooking hung in the air: the rich thick aroma of roasting meat. Nikolai paused to glance down at the pistol, checking that the safety was off, then started forward again, moving forward quietly, stepping through the doorway into the kitchen.

A steady stream of smoke was curling upward from the vent above the oven. The bite of the fumes caught the back of his throat and his lungs erupted in a sudden, violent cough. He threw a hand across his mouth to choke it back as a tense, sharp voice rose from somewhere below.

“Yuri? Yuri, is that you?”

The voice spoke American English but beneath the veneer it was Russian, there was no doubt about that. Nikolai drew upright, tightening his grip on the pistol. His brain processed options faster than he could think, his instincts in control. He called back, muffling his voice through his cupped hand, the inflection and phrasing as close a copy of Yuri’s as he could remember.

“Yeah. It’s me. Something’s burning up here. I can hardly breathe. Where the fuck are you?”

It worked. The response came back without hesitation.

“Down here. The staircase in the corner.” The voice stopped a second then called again. “Where’s Aven?”

Nikolai played for time, pretended to cough. The voice came again. Impatient. Demanding. “I said…
where is
Aven
?”

Nikolai sidestepped to the oven, flicking the thermostat back to zero, flinging open the door. A cloud of blue-black smoke filled the room. “In the car. Dead,” he called back. “He knew something wasn’t right. I had to shoot him.” He could see the balustrade in the corner now. A staircase leading down to the voice that rose from below. It paused then started again.

“Alright. My hands are full here. You’ll need to get the body downstairs by yourself. And make sure you bring the weapon down as well. They need to find it with the bodies… And the gasoline.”

Nikolai froze, thinking. “Okay,” he called. “I need a minute. I can’t do it all at once.”

He stood for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest, then spun around, re-tracing his steps to the entry. At the bottom of the veranda he propped, trying to think.

What the hell was happening here?

The sign at the gate… HARTMAN.

This house belonged to Jack Hartman. There was just no other possibility. Jack Hartman: the man he was certain had betrayed him. But who was it down there in the basement and what the hell was going on? His brain stumbled through the maze, grappling for answers.

This was Hartman’s house. And they – whoever
they
were – had wanted Nikolai Aven here at this precise moment. Dead or alive, Yuri had confessed. It made no difference which.

…
Why?

His eyes fell to the side as the pieces fell into place.

Someone wanted Hartman dead – maybe he was dead already – and he, Nikolai Aven, was to be the scapegoat. They would find him at the scene. Find his passport, his fingerprints in the stolen car, his body, and it would all make sense. The man Hartman had betrayed – imprisoned for treason, his life and family lost, his wife dead – a hardened murderer who had escaped then somehow found his way here to track down his betrayer and exact his revenge.

The train was whirling around the track again, passing everything by in a crazy blur. Was he on it? Was he a passenger or something more? He willed himself to concentrate. To slow everything down. Slow it all down so he could see it. Where he had been and where he was going and the faces of the silent figures that lined the platform.

Ivankov and Kolbasov. Vari Vlasenko, his partner and friend, smoothing the way. The ease of his escape from prison and the course of events since. Larisa delivered back to him. The inevitability that he would have to escape Russia. The seamless way he had been eased onto the track, passed from one set of hands to the next, barely feeling their touch.

The anger inside him rose to a crescendo then settled back slowly into a liquid white rage.

35

Nikolai slewed the
Jaguar to a stop in the gravel at the foot of the steps, flinging the door open and racing back to the trunk, springing it, hauling the still limp body over the edge and dragging it up the stairs to the door. At the threshold he rolled Yuri over, his hands working rapidly through the other man’s pockets, taking the cell phone. The cigarette lighter rolled free with it and tumbled onto the painted timber planks. He looked at it for a moment then scooped it up as well, rolling the body back again, hauling it through the house. He had already circled the building from outside to look for another way into the basement. If there was one he couldn’t find it, so this was his only chance. He could have left. Could have taken the car and found his way back to Brighton Beach and Larisa but where did he go from there? Besides – he dragged the body across the threshold into the kitchen, dumping it at the top of the stairs – there was unfinished business here. Questions to be answered. Answers required for the settling of accounts.

He peered down the staircase, calling out to whoever it was, waiting below, “I’ve got the body. I just need to go back for the gas.”

The voice answered, sharp with impatience. “Hurry up, for Christ’s sake. I’ve had problems down here. We need to get this finished.
Fast!
”

Nikolai hesitated. “Okay, okay,” he called. “Don’t panic.”

He hurried back to the car and hauled the gasoline can from the passenger seat where he had dumped it, hoisting it up to the veranda, carrying it back inside. What had been Yuri’s response when Nikolai had asked him who they were to meet?
No one I know. The fewer people I know the better.
So was that the truth or wasn’t it? In all probability his life now hung on the balance of the answer. At the top of the stairs he paused again.

“Okay. I’m coming down.”

If whoever was waiting downstairs had never seen Yuri before, then maybe he had a chance. He checked the pistol, slipped it into his belt, hoisted the gas can and started forward into the stairwell.

At the bottom there was a vestibule finished in tile, the steel door that led from it hanging open. Beyond it there was a second foyer, another door. Nikolai steadied his grasp on the can and edged forward from the first lobby to the second. Beyond it a soft light glowed from the space ahead, cool conditioned air pumping through the doorway. It was as he stepped through the second doorway that he noticed the blood. It occurred to him that the floor wasn’t level or otherwise it would have pooled. Instead it had run backwards, forming a dark, gleaming lake that spanned the threshold. He went to step across it but the weight of the gasoline can broke his balance and his heel skidded through it, streaking the tiles. He caught himself and stopped, moving aside carefully, glancing down at the figure that lay sprawled across the floor at his feet. One leg was straight, the other buckled, one arm folded beneath the torso, the other outstretched, fingertips extended towards the edge of a patterned rug, as if reaching it had seemed, in the instant before death, some final act of consequence. The head was twisted to one side, the mouth pressed open, the single blue eye turned towards Nikolai, opaque and lifeless. The man’s chest rested in a dark liquid sea that trailed backwards to the door, the front and side of his white cotton shirt soaked red where the fibers had swelled to saturation.

‘So, you are Yuri?”

Nikolai’s head spun around, searching for the woman’s voice.

She was standing on the far side of the room propped against a set of steel shelves, one hand lifted across to the opposite shoulder, her fingers wrapped around the heel of a black automatic. Her head tipped aside as she inspected him, the crisp, upturned collar of her shirt snagging her hair. Her expression was blank. Unsurprised by what she saw.

Nikolai nodded.

So she didn’t know Yuri. At least he had that to his advantage.

In front of the woman, seated at a desk behind a computer, a silver-haired man sat motionless. His wrists were bound with cord to the arms of the chair. A trail of dried blood traced around his left eyebrow and down to his jaw, but his shoulders were square and he sat erect, his eyes clear and alert. Gray eyes. Eyes Nikolai remembered comparing to the color of the Moskva at dawn. Impenetrable but for the slightest hint of recognition as they stared back at him across the room. Then they slid aside just a fraction and Nikolai followed them to the other figure. The other woman was lying on her side on the floor, propped against a bookcase at the edge of the rug, her ankles and wrists bound with the same thin cord. Her shirt was torn open down the front, one striped sleeve ripped away from the shoulder and used to gag her, stretched between her parted lips then knotted so tight at the back of her head that her entire face was drawn back in a grotesque distortion. The woman with the gun regarded her as well. Added her observation without emotion.

“Stupid fucking
suka
wouldn’t stop screaming.”

Nikolai’s eyes traced back to the bound woman. Her chest heaved sharply, rising and falling against her shirt. Her shoulder-length brown hair fell forward across her face. She tried to toss it away to look at him but it fell back again and she gave up, staring instead through the strands.

Where did she fit in? Was she Hartman’s wife?

Then through the twisted maze of her hair he noticed her eyes. The same gray as Hartman’s. The only difference the unconcealed fear that flickered openly across their surface as the light played against their movement. Nikolai turned back to the woman with the gun, his eyes glancing past Hartman’s as they tracked their course.

“Who are they?”

The woman tilted her head back a fraction. “Why should it matter to you?”

Nikolai set down the gasoline can and eased upright, glancing at Hartman again, then back to the body at his feet. He shrugged. “It doesn’t.”

The woman with the gun took a step sideways, following Nikolai’s gaze to the body sprawled at his feet.

“That one was a surprise,” she mused. She reached across to the desk beside Hartman, her hand settling on a second pistol, lifting it to the light. “He came expecting trouble. What I don’t know is,
why
?” She pondered her own question for a moment then snapped back to business.

“Let’s get on with this and get the hell out of here.”

She nodded at the weapon in Nikolai’s belt. “That’s the gun you used on Aven?” Nikolai glanced down. Nodded. The woman tucked the second weapon into her belt and extended her hand across Hartman’s shoulder. “Give it to me.”

Nikolai’s mind weighed opportunity and risk. Whether by chance or calculation the woman had placed Hartman between them. Even at this close range there was no possibility of a clear shot. He let the moment pass; eased the pistol from his belt and stepped forward, passing it, grip first, towards her, his eyes tracking across the open black purse at the corner of the desk, the cell phone lying beside it. The woman leaned forward and took the gun, her eyes never leaving his. Her head tipped aside towards the can of gasoline.

“You go and get Aven. I’ll fix everything here.”

Nikolai nodded cautiously, his gaze tracing past Hartman again as he turned. For the first time he noticed the cork-lined wall behind him: the maze of pinned documents linked together with colored twine, interspersed with grainy blown-up images, the clearest of them all at the end… Marat Ivankov. His face dressed with the same complacent smile Nikolai had seen in the photograph he had seen in the gallery at Prechistenka a few days before. His brow furrowed as he turned away, stepping over the dark crimson lake that marked the threshold to the basement room, his own blood pounding relentlessly in his temples.

Had he convinced the woman that he was Yuri?

His hands closed to fists at his side as he started up the stairs. But what did it matter, anyway? The gun had been his only chance and she had it now, along with the others. He moved forward, his mind racing. Behind him he could hear the sound of metal being dragged across tile.

He had said he’s killed Nikolai Aven. Given her the gun he had claimed to have used and he could see her plan now. Every detail. She would clean the weapon of prints and place it in Hartman’s hand. But not while he was still alive. First she would kill Hartman with the weapon she had used already and then she would kill Hartman’s daughter – if that was who the other woman was – then she would place the weapon she had used in Nikolai Aven’s hand and the equation would be complete.

The sharp smell of gasoline fumes rolled through the air behind him, carried upwards through the stairwell bringing clarity to the next scene.

…And after that she would set the house on fire and it would be left for the police to link the facts with their own assumptions.

But there were two extra wild cards in play now. The first was the other apparently unexpected arrival who now lay dead at the foot of the stairs. Who was he and where did he fit in? And the second more immediate problem, for Nikolai, anyway, was that if the woman checked Yuri’s gun she was going to find it hadn’t been fired. So how could Nikolai Aven be dead?

He was at the top of the landing now, Yuri’s motionless body crumpled at his feet. From the basement the woman’s terse voice called up to him again.

“What the hell’s taking you so long?”

…And the walls? The trails of diagrams and the photographs of Ivankov and all the others. Nikolai shook his head. What was that all about?

He could walk away now. Walk outside, get in the car and go, but if he did he would never know the answers. If he left now there was no doubt Hartman would be killed and not just Hartman, his daughter, as well. Another innocent victim sacrificed in whatever incomprehensible game was being played out here. From somewhere within himself Nikolai felt the cool fusion of determination taking hold, a pillar as hard as granite growing at his core. Kill or be killed. He was in familiar territory now: a world he had come to understand.

“I’m bringing him down now,” he called back, stalling for time. Pulled Yuri’s cell phone from his pocket and started frantically working the dial.

A risk and a guess. There was no way he could be certain whose number Yuri had called when he had stopped the car but if he was right – if it had been her – the moment of distraction might be enough.

He dragged Yuri’s body backwards, his forearms locked under the armpits, the heels bouncing from one tread to the next as Nikolai edged his way down the stairs. At the bottom he paused to rearrange his grasp, taking the body with one arm now, so that the other hung free. He didn’t bother trying to step across the blood this time, just stepped through it, pulling Yuri’s unconscious form behind. As he looked back his eyes touched Hartman’s daughter’s. The fear that he had seen in them had subsided, replaced by a still resignation, then for the briefest second they flickered, responding to something they must have seen in his own.

At the other side of the room the woman was using her free hand to empty the last of the gasoline across one of the bookcases that lined the far wall. So far, at least, she mustn’t have checked Yuri’s gun. She finished and tossed the empty metal can aside, wiping her hand against her slacks, nodding across the room.

“Put him there. Where I was standing when I shot their friend.”

Nikolai nodded. She had the three guns now: one in her hand, one at either side of her belt. He started hauling the body backwards again, his free hand, obscured from her view, sliding the cell phone from his pocket and down to his side, feeling across the keypad with his thumb. Hartman was watching him, a questioning frown tracing his eyes. Nikolai ignored him. Found the redial button and dipped it. The woman had been following his path back across the room. When the shrill tone bit the air she stopped in her tracks, distracted, staring towards the open purse at the edge of the desk. She reached forward for her phone and as she did Nikolai let go of the slumped body and tossed Yuri’s phone aside, sending it skittering across the floor. The woman stalled at the unexpected movement, spinning towards Nikolai with a look of surprise. Yuri’s phone was gone from his hand now, the long, slender black torch locked in its place. In the second that it took for the woman’s brain to assess and respond he was already behind her, the wrist that held the weapon locked in his grasp, driving it down against the edge of the desk, his other arm wheeling in an arc, plunging backwards towards her, gouging the end of the torch into her left eye. She screamed in agony as the metal tube drove home, her head snapping back, crashing against his jaw with the force of the blow, the pistol bursting free from her grasp and bouncing to the floor as the cell phone shrieked again. He had her left wrist as well now. He wrenched it behind her and brought the other arm back to meet it, pinning them together then slamming her forward, smashing her head down against the desk, dragging her upright and slamming her down again. He felt her body fall limp in his grasp. He held her long enough to drag the two pistols from her belt then cast her aside, sending her sprawling backwards across Yuri, her face turned up towards him, blood streaming from the dark socket of her eye. Nikolai fell against the desk, propping himself with his hands, gasping for breath, his head rising slowly, his eyes meeting Hartman’s across the space that separated them, remembering… The night in Mira. The taut upturned face staring back at him from the window of the dark sedan as it rushed past. His shoulders heaved with exertion as he drew the gasoline-drenched breath into his lungs, weighing the judgment of betrayal.

Hartman drew a long breath and finally spoke.

“It’s been a long time, Mr Aven.” A grim expression settled across his face. “I think maybe you and I need to compare notes.”

Nikolai’s mind fell back to the image of the train plummeting forward around its track; to the station with its silent row of figures looking on, watching as he passed. The world froze and for an instant Nikolai was back in Mira again, Natalia’s fingers closing tight around his own as he pressed the gold crucifix into her palm.