Limbo Man

by Blair Bancroft

  And yet there was a fascinating beauty in so much exquisite craftsmanship assembled in one place. Robey proudly named them all. Lantern clocks, bracket clocks, mantel clocks, carriage clocks, and grandfather clocks, housed in cases that ranged from elaborate ormolu to scarlet and gold chinoiserie and intricate marquetry inlay. Some clocks played songs, her eager tour guide informed her. Some had mechanical figures that chimed the hour—a bird singing, a soldier playing a trumpet. There was even a lighthouse clock whose top rotated to display a barometer as well as a clock.

  One of the clocks finally managed to knock every thought of bombs out of Vee’s head. “Louis Quinze,” Robey declared proudly. “Eighteenth century ormolu rococo. The figures are Meissen, the flowers by Sèvres.”

  “It’s exquisite.” Vee heard a suspicious rumble from Sergei. Probably a warning that she was getting too wrapped up in making nice with their subject. But, dammit, it was the most gorgeous clock she’d ever seen. An incredible work of art, just sitting on top of a cabinet in the living room. How on earth had Robey managed when his son was a toddler?

  Sergei tugged her arm, steering her toward another room, manuevering Robey to cut short his lecture and follow along. And reminding Vee she really had to keep her mind on why they were here. Robey was a traitor, a willing participant in mass murderer, she had to remember that. She couldn’t allow him to become human, couldn’t allow herself to be swayed by the beauty, the intricate design, the antiquity of his vast collection.

  As they entered the next room, Robey shut the door behind him. The sudden silence was a shock. No furniture in this room, just neat rows of tables displaying an almost infinite array of mechanical toys, some, Vee guessed, from the same era as Robey’s collection of eighteenth century clocks. Carousels, Ferris wheels, carnival swing rides, and toy trains. Music boxes with musicians who played and danced. A metal peacock whose tail opened from folded to full display. Horse-drawn coaches that rolled along the tabletop. An incredibly detailed early twentieth century battleship that actually rolled along on miniature wheels. A chess-playing automaton, a magician who conjured a head out of box. Even a Mickey Mouse hurdy gurdy, probably dating from the 1930s.

  A lot easier to think of Robey as a traitor before she’d seen his toys. Before she caught a glimpse of the man behind the collector.

  As they returned to the living room, Vee assured the professor, with true sincerity, that she thought his collection magnificent. He offered a grateful, if diffident, smile before settling into a brown leather lounge chair that appeared to be the most well-used piece of furniture in the room. Vee sat on the couch, and Sergei joined her. It took considerable concentration, she discovered, to focus on a conversation punctuated by the sound of swinging pendulums, large and small.

  Robey’s wide-eyed, little boy face faded to the bleak visage he’d displayed when he answered the doorbell. “Is something wrong, Tokarev? I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  Sergei accepted the remark without a blink, but inwardly he winced. Evidently, his business with Robey was finished. He’d taken delivery of the U-236, authorized the pay-off . . . or had he? “There was no problem with the money transfer?”

  “None.”

  Sergei drew a deep breath and took the plunge, partial truths rolling easily off his tongue. “I am here because I was involved in an accident in New York—head trauma which has put gaps in my memory. I needed to make sure that all went well with our arrangement. Since that is so, I wonder why you are still here.” He raised one shaggy brow in a look that seemed only mildly curious.

  The professor hunched down into the confines of the brown leather as if trying to escape Sergei’s question. “I know you told me to leave the country,” he mumbled, “but it’s not easy to arrange transportation for my collection. These things”—he waved a hand around the room—“they are my life. All I have left.” He plunged his head into his hands, his voice barely audible above the steady chorus of tick-tocks. “I never thought . . . it will takes months to pack them properly. And I don’t have months, do I?” he added even more softly.

  “No.”

  Evidently resigned to the inevitable, Robey nodded, drooping lower in the lounge chair.

  “Govnó!” The room erupted into a cacophony of bird song, trumpet blasts, cuckoo calls, and ding-dongs, punctuated by the low-pitched bongs of the grandfather clocks. Sergei groaned, Vee bit back a giggle, while Weldon Robey sat calmly silent, accustomed to the hourly madness of his noisy timepieces.

  When the last note had died away, and miniature doors had clicked shut on the intricate mechanisms inside, Sergei waited a beat, two beats. Ensured of at least fifteen minutes of relative silence, he began his interrogation. “Robey, I need you to think very carefully. Any little thing you can recall might nudge my memory. And—look at me, dammit!—I don’t have time to explain the why of it, but I am not simply chasing myself. I’m on a hunt for life for a great many people. This is your chance to redeem yourself. Think! Did I give any hint at all about where I was taking the isotope, about the location of the bomb? Any hint of the target or when zero hour might be?”

  Blood drained from Weldon Robey’s face, leaving it stark white against the brown leather chair. “Bomb?” he gurgled.

  “Well, hell, professor, what did you think I was going to do with the U-236?”

  “You said it was for an experiment—”

  “An experiment in blowing up several square miles of the U S of A,” Sergei shot back. “Or . . . perhaps I’m assuming too much,” he added, thinking fast. “Maybe it’s not happening here at all . . .”

  “Oh, God,” Robey groaned.

  “Come off it, Professor. You’re not that naive. Now tell me. I must have said something.”

  “Not a word. You are very good at your job.” The professor’s bitterness sliced through the room’s heavy atmosphere.

  “This is not easy for me to admit,” Sergei said without having to fake his embarrassment, “but I need to know if I gave you instructions for the delivery of the isotope, or did you give it to me directly.”

  “You really do not remember?”

  “I really don’t remember,” Sergei confirmed. Fuck it, fuck, fuck it, mindless idiot that he was. Frustration ate at his vitals.

  Robey shook his head sadly, as if feeling Sergei’s pain. “I gave the package to you.”

  “And I gave no hint—”

  “I have told you no!”

  Sergei struggled with his temper. He had to keep trying . . . one more question. “The last time I was here, did I act any differently? Did I seem anxious, in a hurry?”

  “You mean other than speaking with a heavy Russian accent?” Robey inquired sweetly.

  Sergei could almost feel the slap of the glove in his face. Robey had caught him in a basic mistake and was almost gleeful about it. “Gotcha” was spread all over his face.

  Outmaneuvered by a traitorous professor. Time to hang up his gun and bomb-hunting license.

  Without so much as a glance at Vee, Sergei stood up. “Thank you. I am sorry to have troubled you. Good luck with your move.” The men did not shake hands.

  Just as they reached the front door, Robey called them back. “Uh, sorry,” he said softly, looking over Sergei’s shoulder at Vee, “but I’d like to speak with Tokarev alone.”

  Vee continued on toward the car. Sergei’s pulse surged. Was this the breakthrough he needed, or . . . He turned back to Robey.

  “How much time?” the professor asked.

  “None. You live next door to an airport. Be on a plane within the hour.”

  “I cannot—”

  “You must! I am more sorry than I can say that I got you into this. Your only hope is to go now. You have enough money to live in luxury in any country without extradition.”

  “They’ll send Special Forces,” Robey countered in a voice of doom.

  Sergei sighed. “Yes, they will.” The scope of the crime was unimaginable.

  “You must give me a gun,
” Robey hissed, his demeanor suddenly taking on the frenzy of a hunted animal. “I must have a gun.”

  “You’re five minutes from the terminal,” Sergei snapped, grabbing the professor’s arm. “Grab your passport and go!”

  Robey broke away and dashed into the living room, where he threw himself down in his favorite leather lounge chair. He took a few gasping breaths, then calmed as he looked around, focusing on his treasures. “You carry a gun,” he said quietly, “I know you do. You will give it to me. You owe me.”

  Sergei made one last try, pointing out the obvious. “You can’t take a gun on the airplane.”

  Sadly, almost mockingly, Weldon Robey shook his head. “You’re an odd one, Tokarev. I look at you and see the man who offered me vast sums of money for U-236. I look again, and you are someone I have never met before. I know only that you are Nemesis. My executioner—”

  “No!” Idiót! What faint scrap of humanity compelled him to lie just one more time?

  “Don’t spoil the moment by denial. You have destroyed me, and it pleases me to make you squirm, if only a little.”

  “No one made you do it. You destroyed yourself.”

  “Give me the gun and go . . . before I ask you to pull the trigger for me.”

  Sergei took Vee’s Glock out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. Another black mark for Sergei Ivanovich Zhukov. “Goodnight,” he murmured.

  He was nearly out the door when he heard Robey’s soft reply: “Goodbye.”

  Chapter 17

  Ominous silence all the way back to Amalfi Garden’s wrought iron gate. Seryozha had gone so cold she could feel the chill in the passenger seat. Was he appalled he’d had the U-236 in his hands, then lost it? Simply disappointed that Robey knew so little? Or . . . was it possible Robey had divulged a vital key during their private conversation?

  No, not good news. Vee rejected the thought as quickly as it surfaced. Seryozha had gone grim, thrown up a wall. She could almost see a dark aura pulsing around him as he drove. What had Robey said to plunge him into such gloom?

  Her only recourse, a head-on assault with a blunt instrument. “Well,” Vee said, “what did he want?”

  “Men talk. Not important. No more questions. Must think.” To his grim wall of silence Sergei had just added the shield of Tokarev’s broken English. Vee subsided into her seat and didn’t say a word all the way back to their motel.

  “Is that it?” Cade asked as he pulled into the parking lot directly after them. “I made the long drive to do nothing but sit on my ass?”

  “We talk,” Sergei said. “My room, ten minutes.” He motioned Cade and Vee into the elevator ahead of him and simply stood there while the doors slid closed. What the . . .? If he tried to slip away, she’d kill him.

  Calmly, Cade escorted Vee back to her room, wiggled his fingers for her key card, and opened the door. “Sit,” he ordered, waving a hand at the bed. “You haven’t lost him.”

  “Something’s happening,” she ground out. “I can feel him refocusing, surging toward some new goal. He could be running this very minute and—”

  “It’s okay,” Cade said. “It was bound to happen one of these days.”

  “Hm-m?” Vee dragged herself back from her dire speculations.

  “You and Tokarev.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a job.”

  “Sure,” Cade mocked, giving her a wry smile. “That’s why I can actually hear the air crackling between you two. Don’t kid a kidder. I know the real thing when I see it.”

  Slowly, Vee shook her head. “No way, no how. I’ve never seen a situation more likely to come to a bad end.”

  “Planning to go out in a blaze of glory, are you? Immolated in a sea of hormones?” Cade waggled perfectly sculpted eyebrows. “Not a bad way to go actually.”

  “You mixed your metaphors,” Vee grumbled.

  Just as she was about to ask Cade to check on Seryozha, he returned, looking so innocent she knew he’d been up to something. He took a sip of the single malt scotch Vee had mixed for him. “Our papers include passports, right?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Good. I have just made reservations for an early morning flight to Moscow.”

  “Moscow?” A shiver spiked all the way down to her toes. Moscow? He was taking her onto his home turf, half a world away? Or was it his home turf? Was Seryozha a Russian-American imitating a native-born Russian? Or was it the other way round? Were they venturing into dangerous territory, or was he dragging her off to the lair of some growling, teeth-baring Russian bear?

  While Vee absorbed the shock, Seryozha turned to Cade. “It is necessary for us to trust someone, and because Vee vouches for you, you’re it. There are times we will need a liaison with an agent who can help us without every last person in the FBI or Homeland Security knowing about it. Are you willing to do this?”

  “Hey,” Cade said, his amber eyes showing only minimal reserve, “the cause is righteous. And back at you—if Vee vouches for you, I’m in.”

  Seryozha gave an infinitesimal nod. “Good. That is why I will tell you where we are going and why. If something should happen . . .” He broke off. “Nichevo. I am sorry, but I cannot share the person I seek. I can trust no one with his name. But in case my plan doesn’t work, I will tell you that I expect the terrorists to smuggle the bomb into the country on a container ship, lost among all the other containers exactly like it. About as anonymous as it gets. The bomb may be here already, maybe not. The less time on U. S. soil, the less likely anyone is to pick up on the radiation.”

  Cade’s brows almost reached his hairline. “And you’re planning to handle all this alone?”

  “A big anti-terrorist operation would send all the bad guys scurrying for cover, only to emerge a few months later to do it all over again, when, like 9/11, no one is looking. And, besides,” Seryozha added, “I am not alone. I have Valentina.”

  Cade laughed out loud. Vee winced.

  “There are three parts to the bomb equation,” Seryozha said, evidently adjusting his hard-line attitude to accommodate his helpers. He ticked each part off on his fingers. “One, the isotope, which is needed to trigger the bomb. Two, the bomb expert needed to remove the spent U-236 and replace it with the fresh isotope. And three, the bomb itself. We tracked the isotope first, and all we found was a circle which comes back to me. I had it. I have no idea what happened to it. Best case, I hid it somewhere. Worst case, Leonov has it.”

  “Then why are they chasing you?” Vee asked.

  “They need the name and location of the bomb tech?” Seryozha ventured.

  “Maybe you gave them that too,” Cade said. “Maybe they’re just tidying up loose ends. Obviously, this Leonov guy doesn’t like you.”

  “Think back to the last thing you remember before the meeting,” Vee urged. “What were your plans for the U-236? Were you just going to hand it over to the terrorists?”

  Seryozha frowned, fighting his way through the mists of memory. “The U-236 was the bait; the bomb, the goal. So I planned to keep it in my possession until the bomb turned up.”

  “Then you hid it before you went to that meeting,” Cade interjected. “That’s what I would have done. Too much of a risk to have it on you.”

  Vee frowned. “I can see torturing Sergei for the information, but not beating him to death and dropping him in the river. Makes no sense.”

  “Hot heads. Nasty tempers,” Cade suggested. “Do now, think later.”

  Seryozha nodded. “Is possible. And in Wyoming the fire might have been to smoke us out, not roast us alive.”

  “There was enough gunfire for World War III,” Vee protested.

  “Nichevo.” Sergei shrugged. “Is no matter. We change directions now. Follow another thread.”

  Moscow, Vee thought. And that was likely just the first leg of their journey through a country vastly larger than the United States, though much of it covered by permafrost. Like Sergei Ivanovich Whatever. And what good was a
GPS locator in her bra when she was buried in a country that stretched over half the northern hemisphere?

  “Vee?” “Vee?” Both men were looking at her, expectantly.

  “You will please give Doucette the new cell number,” Seryozha said. For a moment after Cade entered the number in his cell phone, their eyes met and held, reaffirming the silent vow of partnership. Then Vee watched as her sane, sensible best friend, walked away.

  “A good man,” Seryozha said. “You would be wise to come back to him when this is over.”

  “Optimist,” Vee muttered.

  “Valentina?” Seryozha paused, waiting for her to look up. “I would be very unhappy if you do not survive this. I will do my best to return you to Daddy and Doucette in one piece.”

  “You’ll be dead, and none of it will matter.”

  “If the bomb does not go boom, it matters very much.”

  Vee acknowledged Seryozha’s remark with a very long sigh.

  She was watching the eleven o’clock news when there was a knock on the door. Vee grabbed her revolver, wondering why Seryozha didn’t seem the least bit alarmed. He hadn’t even reached for the Glock. He did, however, peer through the eyehole before opening the door.

  Vee stared as he plopped a gift-wrapped package onto his bed. What on earth . . .?

  Fascinated, she watched him open it, revealing three guns. One was a Glock remarkably like her own; one, a Sig-Sauer, and the third, a .38 with an ankle holster. Seryozha was looking remarkably satisfied with himself until Vee made the connection.

  “Where’s my Glock?” she demanded.

  “I no longer have it.” He waved a hand toward the bed. “Replacement.”

  “You acquired three guns at eleven o’clock at night on almost no notice,” Vee declared flatly.