Liars' Legacy

by Taylor Stevens

  Her paranoid delusions had spawned his own.

  Now he saw her hand in everything.

  That kind of mind-fuckery would be what got him killed in the end.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, pushed her as far out of his head as he could get her, and rounded toward Savignyplatz, a rectangle of prewar buildings and quaint high-end stores and restaurants that formed a town square of sorts around a small park, and he followed past awning-covered tables and waitstaff wiping off the last of the passing rain, observing the clientele, absorbing the ambience, and eavesdropping on conversations. These were his markers, the sounds, sights, and smells he’d need to replicate when the time came to vanish again. And he moved north, to Kantstrasse, the thoroughfare that divided the park where he traded euros with a street vendor for an umbrella, and followed Stilwerk, a furniture mall, around the corner.

  Buildings rose beside him, five-, six-, seven-story structures standing shoulder to shoulder, outlining a city block and forming a hollow core: ground floors occupied by restaurants and mom-and-pop stores, which opened to the street, and apartments above them, which were accessed through the Hof—the communal center courtyard, which, in this case, had been turned into tenant parking. He knew it from satellite images that he’d measured to the meter, and knew it by scent-triggered memories he couldn’t quite grasp.

  The Berlin Savoy was through that courtyard, face to the parallel street.

  It didn’t seem possible that out of all the hotels in Berlin, Dmitry would have chosen this one by chance. He assumed it was another nod, some secret handshake, like the way their birth names had been used for the Lufthansa tickets.

  But Jack had been nine the last time they’d lived in Berlin.

  The Savoy was where they’d stayed at first.

  The hotel had a long history of secrets and spies, Clare had said, and she’d navigated the halls like she’d been there before, moving through staff-only spaces as if they belonged to her.

  She owed someone a favor, she’d told them, and she’d left them for two days. Even then he’d known favors meant someone would die. Or live, depending on the circumstances and whose side she’d taken in whatever war went on inside her head.

  They’d lived in the city another three months, he and his sister confined to a flat not far from here, assigned a stack of schoolwork, while Clare disappeared for weeks at a time. That apartment had been his prison until he’d mastered what Clare said should be mastered and knowledge had earned him freedom. For him, Berlin had been two weeks of running wild, and then they’d moved again. If this hotel choice was a message, he didn’t have the means to decode it. For that, he’d need Clare and, well . . .

  For all he knew, it was Clare who’d sent the message in the first place.

  CHAPTER 9

  JACK

  HE REACHED A GAP BETWEEN BUILDINGS, A DRIVEWAY OF SORTS, AND followed it in toward the courtyard center, cautious of windows and balconies and rooftop positions he’d have taken if it were he waiting for someone like him to arrive.

  The sound of engine and tires approached from behind.

  He tracked the vehicle’s path, keying location, distance, speed.

  A silver Mercedes passed by, and he quickened his stride.

  The vehicle pulled into a reserved parking space. The driver exited for an inner entrance, and Jack followed, mental radar spinning. This was exactly the type of scenario Clare would have used to pop him in the back.

  He reached the door, grabbed it before it shut, stepped inside.

  The foyer became its multiple parts.

  Mailboxes, garbage bin, umbrella holder, elevator, stairs.

  Stairs up, stairs down.

  The driver thumbed the elevator call button.

  Jack headed up, climbing slowly, until the elevator arrived and the doors closed, and then he jogged back to the entry and down again.

  The basement door stood unlocked and open and led to a matrix of wood-framed, chain-link storage units. To the far, far left was bicycle parking and a door to the outside, and to the immediate right a laundry room.

  Twenty machines, one for each apartment above his head.

  He removed the trench coat, which had started out as a bomber jacket, removed the glasses, stuffed them into the coat pocket, tied the arms into a bundle, and strode between storage units, searching the contents from between the wood slats until he found one that looked like stuff had been thrown in at random until it’d reached capacity. He dropped the bundle over the transom where it blended in with the rest, and he continued on to the bicycles, to the basement exit, which led out to a ramp and a small set of stairs, and he stuffed paper into the door’s strike-plate hole to keep the automatic lock from engaging and then carried the umbrella back to the laundry room.

  Overhead, the elevator dinged.

  He paused, tracking footsteps across the foyer and out the front, then pressed the umbrella handle tight above a hinge and tugged the laundry room door.

  Pressure became a vise that cracked plastic.

  He tossed the pieces into the trash, shoved the bare aluminum tube against the hinge, and slammed the door. Tube became a shiv that, with enough quick force, would punch a hole between ribs. He hoped to never need it. At the sink he ran the water, traced wet fingers through his hair to strip out the gray, and then he headed up the stairs.

  The rooftop was empty but for a small seating area, where a collection of carefully tended patio trees and plants framed otherwise weatherworn cushions.

  It’d been a while, it seemed, since anyone had visited.

  He peered over the wall into the courtyard proper, and into the small private gardens and patios that nudged into it, and had a clear view of adjacent rooftops and interior-facing windows, and he stood there breathing in the cold, damp air, returning to days he’d been forced to evade Clare in an environment much like this, forced to find her before her nonlethal rounds found him.

  He’d been seven the first time she’d shot him.

  She’d brushed aside his brokenhearted protests and poked his still welting bruise. “Of course it hurt,” she’d said. “That’s how you remember there are consequences to failure. If you’re smart, you’ll learn to avoid getting hit.”

  He’d gone up against her time after time, driven by the hope of hurting the thing that hurt him most. It’d taken nearly five years before he’d managed to do it, and like an animal taunted for years by those he couldn’t reach, he hadn’t been kind when he’d managed to break free. All he’d had to do was tag her. He’d knocked her out cold with the butt of his rifle and left her cuffed to the underside of an engine block.

  She’d shown up a day later, never said a word about it, but she’d upped the stakes for the next round, proving yet again that winning was never the end and that the only way to truly win was to refuse to play.

  He hadn’t had that choice back then.

  Her world had been all he knew and all he had, and bruising, bleeding, and breaking had been easier than facing the push-pull of love and rejection, which she’d honed into a precision weapon. To rebel had always hurt more in the end, so he’d complied.

  He’d hated her and loved her—hated and loved her still.

  Had wanted to destroy her and had wanted to make her proud.

  This hunt for Dmitry was a different side of that multifaceted coin.

  He turned and headed back to the stairs and down to ground level, and all the while Clare’s voice, in his head, echoed variations of itself over the years.

  You’re answering the wrong question, John.

  No, this isn’t about tactics, it’s about strategy.

  He angled across the courtyard and past the Savoy’s restaurant garden, guarded against the hit squad, against Dmitry and, most of all, against his own damn mother, still unconvinced this wasn’t her tugging at his strings. He exited onto Fasanenstrasse, a full diagonal from where he’d gone in, and strolled the tree-lined sidewalk, past boutiques and restaurants, and pushed thro
ugh gilded glass doors into a throwback world of marble floors and wood-paneled walls.

  He spotted the first target at the edge of the lounge just off the lobby, six feet flat, well fed, poorly exercised, earpiece, bored, and only partially attentive, but no name badge and suit too nice for hotel security. Jack threaded past a large central floral display and pressed on toward the restaurant. He found his second target beside the elevator bank, five feet nine, not quite as well fed, better exercised, identical earpiece, similar suit, equally bored, and twice as attentive.

  This guy’s jacket was open, his holster partly visible.

  Sloppy.

  They were a different kind of crew than what had waited at the airports, had a different feel about them, and were easy to find because they’d made themselves easy to find. Not to scare him off, but as an invitation to approach.

  Curious.

  He made a quick pass through the restaurant and patio, returned to the cashier station, where a lean brunette in a pencil skirt flipped through a ledger. He pointed to the phone beside the register and made a go of rusty German.

  “Darf ich Anruf zu die Rezeption machen?”

  She smiled, polite and patiently forced, lifted the handset, punched in a quick code, and offered the handset to him. In his ear, a crisp male voice welcomed him to the Savoy with Teutonic efficiency.

  Jack said, “English?”

  If English wasn’t an option, French surely would be. That was the beauty of Europe, where even the lowest patron-facing staff members were trilingual at least.

  In his ear the accent remained, but the language changed.

  Jack said, “There is a man standing near the lounge. He has a shaved head, dark blue suit, and brown shoes. Could you please tell him Mr. Lefevre and his sister are waiting on the restaurant patio? We are the couple with the red dress and light blue jacket. He may not understand in English. Try Russian if you can.”

  That last request was a long shot, but it let the messenger know there might be trouble communicating and gave him a chance to accommodate.

  Jack tabbed his watch and started the clock.

  The front-desk messenger would relay information to Lounge Guy, and Lounge Guy would relay information to Elevator Guy. They couldn’t both abandon their posts, and the lobby was a critical no-miss juncture, so Elevator Guy would be the one who came creeping in.

  Two minutes from front desk to patio was his bet.

  He counted down a minute, turned back toward the restaurant tables, and made a slow return to the double French patio doors.

  Rushed footsteps at his back announced his quarry’s arrival.

  Senses engaged, feeding a composite picture into his brain, and when the body was broadside, Jack dropped umbrella shiv from sleeve into hand, jabbed shiv into waist, reached right arm over torso and into holster, gripped weapon, retrieved it, pressed muzzle to gut.

  One second.

  The speed felt unnatural, like moving on fast-forward in a world that paused to let him by. In his head he knew the difference between a lifetime of torment under Clare’s paranoid tutelage and moderate skills that had grown rusty through infrequent use, but it felt wrong all the same. Clare had taught him to hunt, to hide to kill; had desensitized him to death and pain and fear so that if, God forbid, the time came, he’d have that edge; and had then forced him to deny what he was capable of.

  Training said hide first and fight last, that the best fights were those won by never having to fight at all, and he couldn’t count the times he’d taken blows from bullies and strangers, refusing to engage, because drawing attention to his skills would result in far greater pain than getting hit.

  What he’d just done directly violated everything he knew.

  There was a thrill in that, and danger in the thrill.

  Elevator Guy stiffened.

  Jack nudged him forward, out the doors, onto the patio, past a woman in a red dress and a man in a blue jacket, who were oblivious to how helpful they’d been, and to a table in the rear that backed up against the ivy trellises, where a boost would get him over the wall as the fastest means of escape.

  Jack pointed to a chair.

  Elevator Guy sat.

  Jack took a catty-corner position, out of arm’s reach, weapon in his lap and a clear view of the door and anyone who came through it. He said, “English?”

  The guy shrugged.

  “Français?”

  Guy said, “Un petit peu.”

  Good enough.

  He’d have tried Spanish next, but no way in hell was he giving up Russian. There wasn’t a disguise in the world that could compensate for being able to understand what others thought you couldn’t. Clare had taught him that, and just because she’d turned his life into one long psychotic break didn’t make her wrong.

  Jack said, “What do you want from me?”

  Guy struggled with syntax and word choice but got the point across.

  Dmitry was delayed in Prague. He wouldn’t arrive in Berlin in time for tomorrow’s breakfast. He had made new arrangements and left the details with the front desk. This man and his partner were to confirm when the information had been delivered.

  Jack said, “Dmitry told you all this personally?”

  Guy said, “Marinov, who works for Dmitry.”

  Jack’s thumb caressed the weapon grip.

  This was all such transparent bullshit.

  Marinov or Dmitry or Clare, or whoever the hell was bankrolling this thing, knew what he was and knew suspicion, evasion, and self-preservation were part of that package. They might have hoped he’d swing by out of curiosity, just as he had, but they couldn’t guarantee it and would have never believed for a minute that he’d actually give up his location by staying in a hotel someone else had booked. If he’d never shown up, there’d have been no message. The men themselves were the message.

  Jack said, “Tell Monsieur Marinov I’ll be there tomorrow, as arranged. Anything he has to say, he can say to my face.”

  Guy hesitated, as if he wasn’t quite sure if he’d been dismissed. Jack said, “Go.”

  The man backed halfway across the patio, and when he turned, Jack boosted himself from chair to table to wall and dropped over into the center courtyard.

  He ran between cars and past the entrance he’d followed the Mercedes driver into, around the corner, down the stairs, and through the basement bicycle door. And he hurried between storage units, climbed chain link to grab his bundle back from over the transom, and raced the stairs up. He was on the rooftop by the time Lounge Guy and Elevator Guy made it to the courtyard, and he watched them search, knocking on doors and disturbing neighbors long past the point of diminishing return, and his sister’s words were in his head again, what she’d said about the Russian in Frankfurt.

  He knew who I was.

  That solitary spotter had known them both.

  The men at the Berlin airport had also known who they searched for.

  But these two had stared right through him when he’d walked in. They didn’t know him.

  Inside his head the maze shifted so hard, so fast, it almost hurt.

  —Dmitry was either Dmitry or not.

  —The solitary spotter was connected to Dmitry or not.

  —These two were something else, related but not the same.

  In response to that understanding, another beacon joined the mental maze, and Jack sighed and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes.

  The enigma of Dmitry had now split into three.

  The US government wanted to kill him.

  His sister was sabotaging him for entertainment.

  And his mother, God only knew what she was up to.

  She shouldn’t even be part of the equation.

  To survive the hit squad, he needed her out of his head. To get answers on Dmitry, he needed Jill out of the way. Last he’d seen of her, she’d been dragging her suitcase up the aisle to the front of the plane, the few things he genuinely needed but couldn’t carry stuffed i
n it. The angry half of him, the half that wanted to guarantee he got them back, had begged to GPS collar her, but she’d figure it out, and he couldn’t afford the full-blown conflict that’d hit as soon as she did, so he’d watched her go.

  The part of him that trusted her knew it was better that way.

  The part of him that didn’t trust her knew it, too.

  The maze tilted, rotated. Strategy formed.

  Here, in old West Berlin, he’d found the trail that would lead to Dmitry.

  And here he’d start another, one that would draw the hit squad to him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Friedenau

  Berlin, Germany

  JILL

  SHE FOUND THE DOOR, THOUGH NOT WITHOUT EFFORT. THE STREETS were all so much the same, four-story apartment next to four-story apartment, balconies and windows and more balconies and windows, similar colors and shapes, and tiny tidy landscaped spaces, corner stores, neighborhood pocket parks, sidewalk cafés, and tree after tree, with leaves that had turned color weeks ago and were now mostly fallen.

  The butcher shop jogged her memory.

  The awning was gone and the colors had changed, but the rest was familiar enough in the cold, wet drizzle that she found her way.

  She recognized the door soon as she saw it—door and postage-stamp garden, which wasn’t so much a garden as a few flowerpots and a trimmed-up hedge—and the ornamental gate that set the entry off from the sidewalk.

  The only thing that had changed was the graffiti.

  Even nice neighborhoods like this couldn’t escape the graffiti.

  Or the dog shit.

  That, too, was a thing with Berlin, the dog shit on sidewalks.

  She loved this city. Had loved it then and loved it now, place of outcasts and misfits, where no one belonged and everyone did, where anarchists and old Nazis, hipsters and club kids, street artists, actors, slackers, and thieves should all be at war but weren’t, because the city never let you forget what happened when intolerance set in.