by Jenni Wiltz
“They’re doctors. It’s their job to lie to you.”
“It is what I deserve. God gave me one chance, and I ruined it.”
“No,” she said, as firmly as she could. “You did the right thing. I can make it right if you tell me where the letters are.”
“Letters,” he mumbled, turning his head into the pillow. “Always the letters.”
“Please, Grigori. Let me help.”
“Where do they stop? Where do I begin?” He closed his eyes and stopped breathing for a single count. Then he choked, coughed and blinked his red-veined eyes. He looked at the plastic curtain hanging around his bed and then at her, as if he were confused about where he found himself. “What has happened to us all?”
“We’re fighting a war,” she said, reaching for his hand. “A war that never ends. I swear to you, Grigori, I won’t let anything happen to your letters. I’ll help that family find the peace we can’t. Look at me, Grigori. You can trust me. You can trust Belial.”
The old man’s eyes glowed with tears and fervor. “I believe you, Natalia.” He leaned over slowly, opening the drawer of his nightstand. From the bible resting inside, he pulled an onionskin envelope that contained several folded pieces of paper. He placed the envelope in her outstretched hand.
“You?” she breathed. “You had them with you all along?”
“Of course. I was waiting for you.”
“You are a good man, Grigori,” she said, touching his cheek as softly as she could. “Thank you.”
“I am tired. Wake me when the war is over, Natalia.” The old man turned his head, letting the pillow absorb the tears streaming down his face.
She bit her lip as she placed his clammy hand beneath the thin blue blanket. What gave men like Grigori and his father the strength to defy dictators and countries and even time to do what they believed to be right? It wasn’t fair that these men died alone and forgotten when they were the best of humankind. “I wish I could be more like you,” she said.
She stood up, kissed him gently on the forehead, and pulled the blanket up over his shoulders to keep him warm and hide him from public view. Then she saw it—an old rotary phone on Grigori’s bedside table, next to a Russian-language magazine and the weekend edition of the Chronicle. She glanced out the observation window. Constantine stood with his back to it, arms crossed over his chest.
Beth, she thought. She picked up the receiver and twirled the phone’s plastic dial. After a brief click on the line, it began to ring.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then she heard the telltale click of the answering machine. “Hi, you’ve reached Beth and Seth, but we can’t come to the phone right now.” There was a brief shuffle as Seth stepped up to the recorder. “Don’t be lame and hang up. Leave us a message so my mom feels cool.”
The beep echoed in her ear.
“If you’re there, pick up. Come on, Beth, this is serious.” Natalie glanced out the observation window. “I’m all right, but I need your help. I need you to come and check on a man called Grigori Voloshin in the Seaside Oaks nursing home in Daly City. Please make sure he’s okay. Tell Seth I’m sorry I missed the sharks. I love you, Beth. Lock your doors and don’t let Seth or Roo out of your sight. I’m going to fix this. I promise.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
July 2012
San Francisco, California
Beth picked up the phone for the tenth time that morning. She held her right thumb over the “9” and her left over the “1,” promising that this time she’d tell the police about Natalie’s condition. But then she pictured Sergeant Lopez tossing Natalie into the back of a patrol car, hauling her to a county hospital, and dosing her with a month’s worth of mind-destroying drugs. She couldn’t do it. She put the phone down.
All her life, she’d protected Natalie from the clutches of the system—lying to social workers, lying to doctors, and lying to anyone who asked why her sister was “weird” or “mental.” After their parents died, Natalie was all she had. Never, she vowed, would those vultures sink their claws into her own flesh and blood. Even now, she couldn’t betray a lifetime’s worth of trust.
In the den, she kept a sideboard as a bar. She opened it up and stared at the dust-covered bottles. She reached for a bottle of single-malt scotch and took a shot straight out of the bottle. It hit her immediately—a slow burn that rose from her belly with the speed of mercury on a hot summer day. She closed her eyes and concentrated on relaxing. Then she heard the noise. A soft click, like a doorknob latching, coming from upstairs.
She’d been hearing strange noises all over the house since early that morning, like the walkie-talkie noise in Seth’s room. Every time she investigated, it turned out to be nothing. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Lopez had promised her a squad car would patrol the area until they found her sister, just in case. Images of Natalie’s bed, spattered with bullet holes, sprang to her mind. Don’t be a victim, she told herself.
Beth tiptoed to the kitchen and slid a chef’s knife out of the wooden block. Long and triangular, the blade was sharp enough to slice through a shoe. She held it at eye level and moved toward the stairs. One at a time, she crept up the stairs to the first landing and then the hallway.
The first room off the hallway was her office. She glanced at the phone, resting on a storage cube beside the desk. The handset hadn’t been removed from the console or switched off. That’s a good sign, right? she thought. Don’t the bad guys usually cut your power or your phone before hacking you to bits?
She glanced around the room. Nothing had been moved. The papers on her desk were lined up properly and the shelf of books was still in order.
Then her eyes latched onto the closet doorknob. “Fuck,” she whispered.
She tried to make her feet move forward but they held firm less than a foot from the hallway. You can do this, she thought. You gave birth without drugs. You ran a marathon. You gave the commencement speech at graduation.
She shuffled forward, gaze fixed on the closet door. If the noise had come from this room, the closet was the only place to hide. She transferred the knife to her left hand and wiped her sweaty right palm against her jeans. Then she hefted the knife in her right hand again and twisted the doorknob.
There was a face behind the door and it was smiling at her.
She screamed and slashed at the pale, ghostly cheeks. A hand shot up and grabbed her wrist, immobilizing the knife. She wasted three seconds trying to press the knife closer to the intruder’s face before she changed tactics and kneed him in the balls as hard as she could.
The man howled and his grip slackened. She pressed her advantage, double-fisting the knife and plunging it into his shoulder. Then she ran.
She took the stairs two at a time, wishing she’d kept her cell phone on her instead of in her purse. Downstairs, in the garage, there was a spare car key. She’d back straight through the garage door before she’d let this creep catch her.
Heavy footsteps thundered behind her. She felt the air move as his hands reached out for her, clasping nothing as she ducked to avoid his grasp. The lunge left him off kilter as he reached the next stair. He stumbled and fell against her, crushing her between the staircase and his weight.
Beth’s head slammed against the next-to-last stair and the world went black for just a moment. Her body contorted painfully against the stairs, but every burning nerve ending urged her to fight, get up, run. She flung out an arm and grabbed one of the stair rails, using it to pull herself out from under the man.
Kicking like a swimmer, she caused enough damage to force him up and off her. She slithered out from under him and darted for the kitchen. The phone, she thought. Call 911 and grab another knife.
Her fingers reached out for the handset just as it began to ring. Caught off guard, she paused a second too long. The attacker came up behind her, circling her neck with his arm. She clawed and scratched, kicking out behi
nd her.
The phone continued to ring. Two times. Three times.
Black spots floated across the room. She shot her hand back, hoping to poke him in the eye.
The answering machine picked up. When the voice on the other end began to speak, white-hot lightning coursed through her veins. “If you’re there, pick up,” her sister’s voice said, low and anxious. “Come on, Beth, this is serious.”
She fought the press of darkness, summoning her strength for one last attack. She slipped her elbow forward and then slammed it back into the man’s stomach. He grunted and wheezed but didn’t lose his grip on her. Her hands came up to his arm, pulling with everything she had left. Her lips shaped her sister’s name as the last gasp of air flew from her lungs.
Chapter Thirty-Three
July 2012
Daly City, California
Natalie slipped through Grigori’s door, onionskin envelope in hand. “I have the letters. Let’s get out of here.”
Constantine glanced back at the old man. “Are you all right? What did he say to you?”
“The world is a fucked-up place and I don’t want to talk about it.” She stormed back toward the reception room. Myra was gone, replaced by an Asian woman with freckles across the bridge of her nose. Run, Belial urged. The doctors told her not to let you leave.
“Go to hell,” she said. There was no hope in a world that punished a man like Grigori with a painful, lonely death. If the angels couldn’t stop bad things from happening to good people, there was even less hope for someone like her.
As she passed through the sliding glass doors of the lobby, a voice called out behind her. “Wait! Ma’am, I have something for you!”
Told you, taunted Belial.
Natalie’s blood turned to ice. She recognized the voice—it was Myra. She gulped and turned around slowly.
“Mr. Voloshin said to give you this.” The woman held out a ring with a mauve pearl surrounded by small diamonds. “He said it belongs to you.”
For a moment, the world swam before her eyes. “I know that ring,” she whispered. She reached out for it, afraid it was being used as bait to lure her back inside but still unable to resist. The woman dropped it into her palm where it lay warm against her clammy flesh and turned to go back inside.
Belial fluttered his wings and peered forward through her eyes. Oh, dear. This is getting serious. I may have to speak to someone about this.
“Constantine, do you know what this is?”
“Don’t tell me the tsar’s password has a decoder ring.”
“It was Alexandra’s,” she said, cradling it in her hand. “Nicholas gave it to her for Christmas in 1903.”
“It means he trusts you.”
She put the ring on her finger and watched the diamonds sparkle in the dreary foglight. “It feels so heavy, almost like it’s wearing me. Like a part of her has followed it.”
“Okay, take it easy,” Constantine said, pulling her back to the Monte Carlo and opening the passenger door for her. He closed it behind her, got in the driver’s seat, and started it up. “What’s our next move?”
She raised her eyebrow. “You’re asking me? I’m the crazy one, remember?”
“Look,” he said, putting the car in reverse but holding his foot on the brake. “You’re the one who figured out the letters were fake. At Voloshin’s, all you had to do was put your hands on that man’s face and you knew where the letters were. I’d have had to beat him to a pulp to get that out of him. So, no, I don’t think you’re crazy. I couldn’t have gotten this far without you.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
The smile he gave her was wide and enveloping. It lit up his eyes and made her feel as if she were perfect. “Feel free to thank me when we find the password and get rid of Vympel.”
He backed out of the parking lot and steered the Monte Carlo in the direction of I-280 North and drove into the city. He stopped just around the corner from the San Francisco Public Library’s Civic Center branch. “We’ll work on the translations here,” he said. “Then we’ll figure out what happens next.”
They rounded the corner of Larkin Street and slipped through the library’s columned entrance. Natalie looked up at the domed skylight, illuminating the central atrium. Each successive floor spiraled around the atrium, with silver pendant lights illuminating the dim passageways. She’d come here many times to pick up books or journal articles for Beth’s research. It was a peaceful place, one she felt at home in. She took his hand and led him to the elevator bay.
They rode to the third floor and wound through the stacks until they found an alcove with a beat-up table and chairs. Natalie sank into one, pulling the onionskin envelope from her bag. Constantine pulled a pen from his pocket, stolen from the desk of the nursing home. “I’ll translate them on paper and pass each one to you as I finish,” he said. “Does Belial have any last words of advice?”
“He’s quiet. It kind of scares me.”
“Why?”
She tapped her finger over the onionskin envelope. “These are people I’ve read about my whole life. I’ve obsessed over them, dreamed about them, helped Beth write a book about them. Now I’m part of the story, and Belial has nothing to say?”
Constantine slipped the envelope out from under her grasp and pulled out the letters. “Maybe once you read the letters, he’ll have something to tell us.”
“Wait,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Before we do this, I just want to say thank you. For believing in me.”
“Anyone in his right mind would believe in you.” He wrapped her hand in hers and pressed his lips to the tender webbing between her fingers. The pressure of his lips on her skin made her blood tingle in her veins. She closed her eyes and her breath came out in a shaky sigh as she imagined his lips tracing their way from her hand to the soft flesh of her inner elbow. “Don’t let go,” she whispered.
“Natalie, open your eyes.” She obeyed and found his crystalline gaze locked onto her face, so bright a blue she blinked under his scrutiny. His mouth crinkled at the corners in a bemused smile. “We’re in a library, with some of the world’s best trained killers after us. If you keep distracting me, they’re going to sneak up and kill us because I’m too busy staring at you.”
She nodded, unsure whether to feel disappointed or flattered. Then she put her arms up on the table and buried her head in them, waiting for the flames in her cheeks to subside. Get a hold of yourself, she thought.
He chuckled, caressed her bent head, and then started the translation. It took only a few moments to finish. “All right,” he said. “I’ve got it. But I don’t think it will help.”
He slid it over to her. She snatched it up and read as quickly as she could.
Dear Ivan,
Thank you for the birthday cake. I’ve never tasted anything sweeter, nor will I if my sisters are right. Olga believes we will never leave this house, and Olga is always right. Tatiana believes God will save her, and Anastasia does not want to be saved. I am the only one who wants to live! I am the only one who wants to experience something of this life before it is blotted out like a drop of ink. And I will try…I promised you I would try. If I succeed, we will run away together and pretend we are American. Papa so admires the American president and all he did for us in 1905. He told us that should anything bad happen here, America would shelter us. Some say the Americans are uncouth, but Mama also says you are uncouth. If America is a nation of people just like you, I know I can be happy there. There is nothing to be happy for here. Even my bones ache for missing you. If there were one magic word I could utter that would bring you to my side, I would speak it, every day of my life. Sometimes greater riches are to be found in a single word than in a golden palace.
--Maria Nikolaevna
Constantine frowned. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
With a shaking hand, she pointed to the first line. “None of the sources say exactly what happened, but on h
er nineteenth birthday, Marie was discovered with one of her guards in a position compromising enough to get the guard dismissed. After that incident, Marie lost her family’s trust. Alexandra wouldn’t let her carry any of their hidden jewels.”
“Doesn’t that give her even more of a reason to get the password to Ivan?”
“It wasn’t about the money. She wanted to be in love and do everything normal girls do, but her family thought she betrayed them. They punished her for it.”
The way they punished me, she thought.
After Treblinka, she came home from the hospital to find her room decorated with rainbow wallpaper and a yellow bedspread. The terrarium was gone, Medusa vanished. She knew what they were trying to do, but it was useless—after the ovens and the shootings and the snowfall made of human ash, no one could convince her that the world was a safe and happy place. It only made her parents seem stupid, like the people who lived next door to the camp and said they didn’t know what happened there.
Suddenly, a hot knife-edge of pain sliced through her occipital lobe. Stop, Belial said. This has gone far enough. You’re getting too close to things that could hurt you.
She cried out and grasped her head with both hands. Belial was pushing against her brain from the inside. “Belial, stop!” she cried.
No, little one. I care about you far too much to see you hurt any further.
“Please!”
Not until you agree to let me handle the rest of this.
“No!” Through the pain, she remembered the horror of the motel room, when Belial had killed the Vympel man using her as the weapon. “I won’t let you do that again!”
Are you trying to fight me, little one? I don’t think you’ll win. Here, let me prove it to you. Suddenly, the white-hot wall of pain vanished. It turned into a brittle sheet of glass. Belial flicked one wing and it shattered into thousands of pieces. She felt each piece slice through her as it fell. There were pieces of her everywhere, bleeding and broken, reflected thousands of time in each piece of glass. She felt herself falling, just as broken and sharp as the glass.
