by Greg Wilson
After Yorktown they’d taken a drive out to Croton-on-Hudson, spending a couple of hours wandering around the grounds of Van Cortland Manor, lazing away the late afternoon on the brick pathway they called the Long Walk, winding their way through the magnificent eighteenth century gardens. Then they’d headed back to the car and struck south again and now they were coming up to Mount Pleasant, which meant it would be another half hour to Pocantico Hills.
She watched Alex as he drove. Since the call he’d taken on his cell phone as they were pulling back onto the highway he had been unusually quiet and detached. She made a play now, to restart the conversation.
“You looking forward to it?” Kelly asked.
His lips pursed a moment. ‘To what?”
She kicked off her sandals, lifted one leg and crossed it under the other thigh, nestling back down again. “Meeting my dad.”
One side of a delayed reaction smile pressed across Alex’s profile. “Of course.” he answered. “I feel almost like I know him already.”
Her question came apropos of nothing. “I never asked you. How come you were in the pizza shop that night?”
His reaction seemed to follow on delay again, as if he had to think about the response. He shrugged. “I’ve been there before. They make great pizzas.”
Kelly studied him. Passable pizzas maybe, but great? Maybe Russian tastes were different.
He glanced at her. Must have decided himself that the explanation didn’t quite cut. “We have a customer nearby. I had a late appointment. I just decided to pick up something to eat on my way home. That’s all. No big deal.” He wrapped it all up with a dismissive shrug. Given the velocity with which their relationship had developed it seemed to Kelly there was something offhand about that. When it came to his explanation of their chance encounter she’d been hoping to hear words like destiny and fate. Instead she got No big deal. Curious.
They were on a long straight stretch of highway now. Where the wedge of perspective narrowed up ahead other cars were slowing, tail-lights flaring as drivers hit their brakes. When she peered more closely beyond the slowing traffic she could see the whirling flash of blue and red lights. Alex had seen them as well. A tight grimace was puffing at his face. Kelly looked back to the highway.
“Looks like a jam up ahead. Accident maybe.”
They were closing in now, slowing into the tail of a dozen propped vehicles. Ahead of the line two white police cruisers were chevroned across the traffic, dome lights swirling. Maybe twenty yards further on another cruiser stood at the center of the road holding back the traffic from the other direction. In the section of roadway cordoned off by the three police cars she could see the outline of a twisted overturned wreck. Alex eased off the gas and switched pedals and Kelly felt the tug of the brakes. From behind she caught the rising shriek of a siren. Her eyes traced across to the wing mirror, picking up the tinted reflection of more flashing lights coming up from behind.
Alex brought the car to a stop, his eyes falling to the console clock. Kelly heard him curse sharply under his breath.
“Hey,” she waved a hand aside dismissively. “No panic. At least it’s not us. No problem if we’re a little late.”
Her smile was met by a rigid silence. Alex was staring straight ahead through the windshield, his knuckles closed tight around the wheel. He was somewhere else. Another world, not this one. She reached her hand across and set it down on his thigh.
“What’s the matter?”
She peered at him, shaking her head at his silence. “Alex, tell me. What’s the problem?” His head turned briefly, his blue eyes glancing off her with an unfamiliar coolness. Kelly’s hand drew back.
“Alex…?” Her tone was suddenly cautious. “Alex, what is this? Talk to me. You’re scaring me.”
Wherever he had been for the last minute he suddenly returned. His face softened and the coolness lifted from his eyes as he swung towards her, reaching across to take her hand.
“I’m sorry, Kelly.” He pretended to look sheepish. “I’ve never liked surprises, that’s all.” He paused a moment then squeezed her fingers.
Kelly studied him with a bemused expression. Turned back to the road again, puzzling over his reaction.
Hartman checked the clock on the oven. Fifteen minutes or so and dinner would be ready. He just hoped everyone arrived on time. The chime came as he was finishing stacking the dishwasher. He closed the door, pulled the towel from his shoulder and wiped his hands then slung it back again, making his way around the kitchen bench, into the living room and on to the hall. Through the patterned sidelight he could see Gina standing on the veranda, slipping her car keys into her purse. When they’d completed the security audit on the house a few years back they’d gone crazy on locks. He supposed it made sense but it was a pain in the neck. Brass bolts and chains and catches everywhere, like a downtown hotel. He slid back the bolts, unhooked the chains and twisted the handle, hauling the door back into the foyer. Gina rolled her eyes at the performance. She stood on the stoop a moment shaking her head.
“Sometimes, Jack, I think you’re completely paranoid. I know the sort of stuff you’re into is top secret and everything but really, this is Sunday evening in Westchester. It’s not like we’re in Beirut.” She sighed with mock exasperation then switched to her deep dimpled smile, leaned towards him kissing him lightly on the lips then rocked back again and marched past, setting down her purse on a sideboard as he closed and bolted the door. As always, she looked terrific. This was her West Side Story ensemble. Tight black leggings that started six inches above her ankles and hugged her legs and hips all the way to the narrow belted waist: above them a black summer blouse dotted with tiny white spots, with a stand-up collar that traced the lower edge of her thick gleaming bob of almost black hair. She looked around with an expectant smile.
“So… I’m the first?”
He moved towards her, sliding an arm around her waist. “Yep. You’re early. Just us kids for now.” His gray eyes crinkled in a grin. “Wanna fool around a little?”
She prodded a bright red nail into his chest. “Behave yourself, buster. You’ve had your share today.” She turned around, giving herself a quick check over in the mirror, flicking back a stray strand of hair.
Hartman shrugged. “Okay. Please yourself.”
She turned again and traced a hand lightly across his crotch, grinning. “Why would I need to do that when you do such a terrific job.” She winked. “So,” her brows peaked. “How about a glass of wine?”
He pulled the towel from his shoulder and set off towards the kitchen. “Right this way, ma’am. Follow me.”
She held down the counter while he poured, touched glasses then took a sip. “Mmm,” she approved. “That’s good.” She lifted her nose to the air. “And so is whatever’s cooking.”
“Rack of lamb with olives and anchovies. Specialty of the house.”
Gina dipped her head in approval. “Smells terrific.” She sipped her wine, swallowing quickly, then set the glass down. “I almost forgot. I have something for you. Just give me a second, I’ll be right back.”
She slid around the counter and disappeared into the lounge, returning a few moments later carrying her purse, opening it and reaching inside, extracting a small, foil-wrapped package and setting it down on the counter.
Hartman looked at it. “For me?”
“For you,” she smiled. “Just a little good luck gift for Monday.”
She knew what he did for a living, of course. She’d never pressed him for details but over the months they’d spent together he’d sketched it out. And there was no secret about his forthcoming appearance before the organized crime hearing; anyone who read the papers knew about that. He picked up the package, turning it around in his hand with a questioning look, found the end of the blue ribbon and tugged it. The knot unwound and the ribbon slithered to the bench as his fingers worked the turn of the wrapping. Inside was a small black leather box. He flipped the lid back on a set of
gold monogrammed cufflinks nestled in a velvet pad. Loosened one onto his fingers and studied it with an expression of surprised delight.
“Gina, they’re beautiful.”
She gave a pleased shrug. “Just a little something for a very special man.” She held her smile and Hartman felt himself blush. He shook his head in embarrassed dismay.
“I’m overwhelmed. Really.”
She held his gaze for a moment then winked. Tucked her purse under her arm, picked up her glass and carried it across the room to the basement staircase, peering down the single flight to the door below, taking another mouthful of wine.
“You know, you’ve never showed me what it is you’ve got down here. How about a peek?”
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 do
wn 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.
