“Tell me, Max,” says Kat, “why it would be necessary for a cop to leave a murder victim?” He doesn’t answer right away. She rubs her right eye with the heel of her hand. “Unless it’s to protect the murderer, who happens to be the cop’s sister.”
“I’m not so familiar with the British police. Loyalties are divided about Project Peace. We saw it at the checkpoint—”
“I don’t want a lecture,” says Kat. “Just answer the fucking question.” She takes a spoonful of soup without taking her eyes off him.
“I knew about Stephen Cranley from the old KGB files in Moscow. I knew he was a friend of John Polinski and that he would have known about Suzy. He’s an assistant commissioner, and he had the power to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. I called him before returning to the concert. He told me to go inside and do nothing. Later that night, he called and said he was going to lead the murder investigation. He had arranged for it to be classified as international organized crime, which would automatically involve me.”
“Did either of you know Yulya did it?”
Grachev shook his head. “Not then.”
His cell phone rings. When he answers it, he walks to the porthole and looks outside. “How long . . . You’re in contact . . . Fine. I’ll deal with it then.”
He ends the call with a pensive pause. “Sorry. We might have a problem.”
“No, Max,” says Kat forcefully. “No new problems until we’ve solved this one. When did you know Yulya killed Suzy?”
“Know?” he says loudly. “I knew when Yulya sent me the ring.”
“And you didn’t arrest her?”
“Grow up, Kat.” He stiffens and holds his leg as he limps to the table and sits down. “Stop looking for easy explanations. It’s very American. Either you’re a friend or an enemy. We’re different.”
“I’m not interested,” Kat says quietly. “Only in Yulya.”
Grachev’s hand slams down on the table. “There is not just one Yulya. There are Yulyas all over the world. You think RingSet can pull this off all by itself?”
“I’m only interested in one Yulya, your sister.” She’s been clutching the ring so hard that the sharp edges have cut into her and drawn specks of blood from her palm. “Did Stephen Cranley tell you that John Polinski is still alive?”
“He did, yes,” Grachev says in barely a whisper.
“That Tiina’s keeping him alive, but when Yulya takes over, he’ll be killed?”
Grachev nods weakly.
Kat leans back in the chair. “So what did you plan to do about it, Max? Sit on your butt listening to Beethoven’s Ninth?”
Grachev touches his lips with his fingers. His eyes move toward the porthole. Raised voices come from the deck. Grachev’s phone rings again.
“How far? . . . Okay,” says Grachev. The launch engine slows, making the cabin quieter. Kat gets up, goes to the porthole with Grachev. She hopes to see dawn, perhaps land, instead of blackness with the water indistinguishable from the sky.
Grachev ends the call, drops the phone into his pocket, and wipes the heel of his hand across his eyebrow. “The Americans know where you are.”
“Shit,” she mutters.
“They have an international warrant out for your arrest. They’ve sent a launch to intercept us.” His hand touches his forehead, then runs around the cold metal rim of the porthole. “I was using whatever credit I have left to get you to Europe. But we’re in international waters, and our use of this launch is unauthorized.”
A silent streak of lightning cuts across the sky, showing up clouds so thick with rain that it seems they’re being set alight.
Kat pushes past him to look out the porthole. A small olive green, flat-bottomed raiding craft comes into view. A U.S. marine sits behind an armored shield at the stern, manning a mounted machine gun.
FIFTY
Thursday, 5:07 a.m., BST
Marine Sergeant Mason is at the door, an M16 slung around his shoulder to keep his hands free, and his breath stale from a cigarette.
“You again,” says Kat.
“You have to come with me, ma’am.” He steps inside the cabin and to one side, giving her room to pass.
On deck, the smell of marine oil hangs in the summer night air. The moon breaks through the clouds and douses light onto the blackness of the sea, showing Nate Sayer on deck with Grachev, who steps into Sayer’s space.
Grachev touches Sayer’s chest with two fingers, but Kat can’t hear what he says. She gets close enough for Sayer’s answer.
“Did you ever ask yourself why Russians are always crying about their souls?” Sayer says. “Getting drunk or heading off to kill people? Or themselves?”
He’s wearing a beige suit, white open-neck shirt, no tie, everything newly pressed and laundered as if he’s dressed specially to bring Kat in.
“You think it’s some kind of genetic conspiracy? No, it’s because you don’t try. You weep and drink because it’s too difficult to think and act. What makes you think you can do anything to help Kat when you’ve messed up everything I’ve ever seen you try to do?”
He raises his eyebrows, pushes Grachev’s hand away, and says to Mason, “Let’s go.”
Grachev doesn’t move. He looks across to Kat, shaking his head. She has the ring and the jump drive with Suzy’s History Book from the Media Axis computer. Grachev didn’t search her, didn’t even ask about it.
Mason’s hand is on Kat’s elbow as he guides her to a rope ladder that hangs down from Grachev’s launch to the raiding craft.
She doesn’t resist, but says to Grachev, “Europe—nice thought.”
“Careful here, ma’am,” says Mason. He climbs down first and keeps it steady for her at the bottom.
Four of them are in the raiding craft: Kat, Sayer, the marine at the mounted gun, and Mason at the helm.
Mason gives the engine enough power to raise the bow slightly, and as they round the stern of Grachev’s boat, they see him leaning on the rail, looking down at the water, his expression leaden but pensive.
Wind hits her straight in the face. Sayer says something Kat can’t catch. About 200 yards separate Grachev’s launch from Sayer’s.
Sayer’s is bigger, an armed military vessel with a speedboat lashed to the deck and another raiding craft, she now sees, moored to the hull. As they come alongside, hydraulic steps are lowered from the deck of Sayer’s vessel.
Mason gets off first, then Kat, then Sayer, then the marine, who ties down the machine gun. The two raiding crafts are left knocking hulls in the swell.
“You want some coffee?” asks Sayer.
“No,” says Kat. “I don’t want coffee. I want to know what’s happening.”
A throb from the engine vibrates the deck, and a gust cuts around the wheelhouse. Sayer walks to the stern, where the American flag is cracking back and forth in the wind and the engine noise is loudest. “The audio and visual activities on this launch are being relayed straight back to Washington,” says Sayer. “This is the only place we can speak privately, and after that number you pulled with Nancy, we need to.”
“Don’t kid either of us,” says Kat. “They’re not sending you out here because there’s trouble in your marriage.”
As they were climbing the gangway, Kat began working out what she had to do. Some of the main shipping routes to Europe come from ports on Britain’s east coast, the same area where Stephen Cranley still may have some influence.
Kat watched how Mason turned off the engine of the raiding craft. The mechanics aren’t complicated. There’s no key, only a button for power and a fuel lever. The deck of the launch is low enough in the water to jump into one of them.
The problem is Mason, watching from the gangway.
Dawn is coming up so fast that the sea is turning from black to silver. Once it’s broken, escape will be impossible.
Sayer looks skyward; Mason, too, who checks his watch.
“Since that incident with your mom,” shouts Sayer above
the noise, “you’ve never trusted me, and I don’t blame you. But that has nothing to do with what I have to say to you now. There’s a bunch of people who’ll tell you your dad’s alive. Suzy thought he might be in some Third World labor camp. But he’s dead, Kat. Your father is dead. And we’ve got to . . .”
His voice trails off against the cry of gulls swooping down over the stern.
He jerks his thumb toward the outline of Grachev’s launch, which is disappearing into a low cloud bank.
“Grachev’s a tortured soul. Can’t get his tiny head around the thought that no one knows who the hell his father is. I met Tiina. You can see her in that Moscow photograph. Even back then we could tell she was a handful. She would have slept with a number of men.”
“How do you know Dad’s dead?” interrupts Kat, her voice nearly a scream to make Sayer hear. “Suzy believed he was alive enough to die for him.”
Mason steps into a sheltered area behind a lifeboat to light a cigarette. Kat moves back along the deck to get above the raiding craft. Sayer keeps talking and moves to keep up with her.
“Suzy drove herself half insane. First she thought it was murder, then when she couldn’t prove that, she got this crazy idea that John had been kidnapped.”
“It’s easy enough to fake a death in a plane crash,” she challenges Sayer.
Kat tests the strength of the rail. It’ll take her weight. She practices the escape in her imagination. Over the rail and down into the raiding craft without breaking an ankle; flip the fuel on. She can see the lever. Red button starts the engine.
“The day he died, your dad was in Lancaster with your grandmother. It was a last-minute visit. No one knew he was going. No one could have planned such a professional killing so quickly. You tell me how you abduct someone with a reputation like John’s. You’d need people to have taken control of the whole damned airport to do it.”
“It’s a small airport.”
“Fine. But what do you do about the air-traffic controllers, fire crew, janitors, pathologist? Pay them all off?”
They did with Mom, thinks Kat.
The swell of the sea rocks the boat. A beam of cabin light catches a metal clasp dipping in and out of the water on the rope holding the raiding craft to the launch. Kat will have to jump, unhook it, and start the engine, all before Mason gets down to stop her.
“So if Suzy was nuts, why did she get murdered?”
“Because she had other information.”
Mason, half hidden from view behind the lifeboat, head lowered, back to her, is talking to a member of the crew. Someone is smoking up front. Two people in the wheelhouse stare straight ahead.
“What do you want from me?” she says.
“I want you to let me save your ass. Together we can beat the charges against you. You were working for Cage. Cage is the U.S. government. You know about the file Suzy compiled.”
A flickering shift of expression is all Kat needs. She’s seen it before, in Sayer’s study, the face, as it falters, feeling he’s won and becoming lazy. Glancing down, out of the corner of her eye, she estimates the distance between the deck and the raiding craft.
“I don’t have anything, Nate,” she says.
“You got it that night in the embassy when Cage sent you in. You got it again from Media Axis.”
Kat tilts her head toward him, feigning surprise. “Yeah, well, it’s all made up, isn’t it, Nate? That’s what you just told me.”
“You have it, Kat. And you’re the only one.”
“Bill Cage has it, not me,” she says.
“Bill’s being an asshole,” says Sayer.
“What do you mean?” The breeze is up again. They’re yelling in short sentences, voices raised.
“Head in the sand. Taking the Fifth. All that shit.”
If she can land and keep her balance, she’ll be ahead of them. She’ll have to lean into the water to get the clasp, start the motor at the same time, and head for the fog.
“For John, for Helen, I’m trying keep you free. That’s what this is all about, not letting you make the same mistakes as Suzy.”
Kat’s nodding. “Okay, Nate. I’m with you. Lot of things I don’t know. But whatever it is you’re after, I don’t have it. And if I don’t have it, does that mean you’re going to throw me into jail?”
“Then let me know where it is. After the CPS is signed—”
Kat grasps the rail, tenses the muscles in her shoulders, and vaults over the side. She can’t hear him anymore. Her eyes are on the raiding craft directly below, trying to match her fall with its shifting in the water.
She lands on the raiding craft’s planked decking, falls backward, starts to get up, and slips on the wet planking.
Sayer shouts. A deck light snaps on, and Mason’s shadow falls across Kat.
Don’t look up, she tells herself. She scrambles back and reaches the cockpit. She glances up as Mason jumps down.
Kat barges into him. The marine falls heavily, hitting his upper thigh on a metal stay halfway down the hull. She hears a scream, thinks that Mason is hurt, but realizes it’s her own scream from somewhere deep inside.
He’s on his feet again, lurching toward her.
Kat leaps like a long-jumper, propelling herself across to the other raiding craft.
She lands in it, gets her balance, and scrambles to the stern. She pulls the mooring rope out of the water and unhooks it. The starter button fires the engine. Her hand is on the wheel. She has to get the boat moving to put enough sea between her and Mason.
Back in the first craft, Mason sees what Kat’s trying to do. He uses the machine gun platform to lever himself toward her.
She eases the throttle slowly, making the gap too wide for him to jump between the two craft. Kat turns the wheel to get her bow away from the launch and head out to sea.
But the wheel is locked. No movement left or right. Two more marines jump down onto Mason’s craft. No one’s shooting; they don’t think she’ll get away.
There has to be a catch for the wheel—or a button. Something simple. Mason starts his engine and shouts a command. She glances up. A marine stands at the bow of the craft with a boat hook to bring Kat’s raiding craft in.
The roll of low fog is thickening. Kat opens the throttle and leans out as far as she can, as if she’s hard tacking on a sailboat. The craft tilts enough to change its path, fiberglass scraping on metal. She knocks Mason’s craft to one side, slews in the water, and shoots forward.
Kat drops herself into the cockpit. She tries the wheel again. No give at all. She’s heading out to sea at 15 knots and rising. Mason’s craft casts off. He’s at the wheel. Two marines are up front. They’ve drawn their weapons.
To her left, on the cockpit panels, there’s a first aid locker. Farther up, two green bilge handles. In the corner, gauges for temperature, pressure, oil. In the panel above, a red button. Kat slips her finger over it but hesitates, as it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the wheel. She checks the boxes. On one side electronics, each piece neatly clipped to the edge: cell phone, Global Positioning System, short-distance radio, satellite transmitter, two flashlights, TV monitor. But nothing to free the wheel. On the other side, survival gear: ready-to-eat meals, wet suits, blankets, sleeping bags, parka jackets, helmets.
The craft hits a swell, jolting her. She looks back at the lights from Mason’s boat. On her boat, there’s Kat and not much else. On Mason’s, there are three heavy men, a large-bore machine gun, its platform, and ammunition. She’s a feather compared to them, but not fast enough to be free of them.
He’s not gaining on her; she’s not losing him, either. She doesn’t know how much fuel she has, but if she keeps going, she’ll just head farther out to sea. All he has to do is keep up with her.
Back inside the cockpit, she sees a piece of almost-transparent wire clipped to the bottom of the wheel. Right hand on the wheel, she reaches with her left to find the clasp and frees it, bracing herself to heave the craft around agains
t the resistance of the waves. But it’s power-steered. Feet astride and balanced, she turns back toward the coastline and eases on the power.
She runs parallel to the land, angling toward the fog bank. As she enters the fog, she hears the high-pitched throb of a helicopter.
FIFTY-ONE
Thursday, 5:48 a.m., BST
Yellow streaks appear in the lead gray sky, throwing a dawn light across the water. She looks for the helicopter, but it’s above the fog to seaward.
She’s speeding past the curved, algae green, wooden timbers of a sunken boat’s hull protruding from the mud like the arms of the dead.
She can’t shake off Mason’s boat and needs to find a place to land—the mouth of a river, or a stretch of shoreline near human life. The landscape is empty, with barely a tree, a sparse and desolate coastline of mudflats and marshlands. With the sea flat like a racetrack and the current moving north, she increases the speed.
Kat wedges herself in and switches on the GPS. The coordinates come up, meaning nothing to her until she orders up a map, which she zooms out until she can read clearly that she’s off the east coast of Britain.
From the locker, she unclips the electronic gear and drops it into a waterproof bag and puts that into the survival bag with food, water, blanket, flashlight, GPS, and cell phone—all stored on the raiding craft.
She pulls out a jacket, bag, helmet, and goggles. She bundles up the jacket, stuffs it into the helmet, and straps the goggles around. From a distance, it would look like a human head. She secures it just to the left of the wheel, then tapes two gloves over the wheel itself.
Kat edges the craft inland, keeping her speed, until she’s running just a few yards off the mudflats. Beyond that lies brackish water and clumps of grassy mud. She secures the survival bag to her back.
Inland, all she can see is water and marshland. She has no idea how deep or soft the mud is and whether she can walk through it.
The History Book Page 21
