by Duffy, Sue
“It already is!” Evgeny snapped. “There are other things about to happen that no mere set designer and a shoe salesman have any control over. Unless—”
“What things?” Liesl demanded. Evgeny looked into the golden brown eyes that three times over the years he’d seen flash with unveiled terror—in a Moscow alley, in Schell Devoe’s house after Evgeny had pumped three rounds into the spy, and that night in Liesl’s dressing room. Now, the eyes were just angry.
Evgeny finally lowered his gun. “I will not hurt you,” he told the young couple. “But you must step outside, and stay where I can see you. I need to speak to Miss Bower in private. And do not be so foolish as to run away.”
When the couple had closed the van door and walked a short way off, Evgeny faced Liesl. He saw that she’d drawn as far from him as possible, pressing herself into the door. He looked down at the gifted hands now balled into twitching fists in her lap. He was sorry for the torment he’d caused her so many times over.
“Why do they want to kill me?” she asked plaintively. “I have no more code. I’m no threat to them. Why?”
Evgeny looked deep into the stormy eyes. “My country and yours are in grave danger from one man and his powerful generals who convene in the hidden corridors of the Kremlin.”
Liesl didn’t move.
“He is called the Architect. He will try again to assassinate our president, and with military forces already secretly moving into his camp, he will take control of Russia. I am convinced that in the process, he will destroy my homeland. His Russia will rule over a new world order. He will sweep through the Middle East at the height of its vulnerability and claim it for a Russia our people will no longer recognize. Then he will turn to devour other countries. But the Architect will work from the inside out. Infiltrating. To stir fear in the people, topple economies, pit one country against another until they render each other powerless.”
“Who is this man?”
“I do not know. Only his generals and loyal soldiers know who he is, though many, I am told, have never seen him.”
Liesl looked doubtful. “Well, whoever he is, he can’t do these things in our country.”
After all she’d been through, how was she still so naïve? he wondered. “He already has! For many years, he has cultivated a legion of sleeper agents throughout the U.S. Some of them are Americans so disenfranchised from their own country that they would do anything to see her fall. Others are Russian plants.”
Liesl turned fully in her seat to face him, but remained quiet.
“They are saboteurs in key positions in transportation, energy, banking, the military, communications. They have each been trained in one particular act of terrorism. At the Architect’s command, they will act simultaneously. There will be massive devastation. And your country will retaliate against mine.”
Her distrust was palpable. “How do you know these things?”
“My contacts run deep, but the Architect’s new regime, the one he will fight so viciously for, is quickly outpacing my old comrades. All I know at present is that a series of terrorist acts are planned to convince Washington that when the time comes and the Architect is in control of Russia, your government must cooperate with him, or else he will unleash more attacks. He commands a Red Army already on American soil.”
“But how does a dead Liesl Bower figure into this?” she asked bitterly.
“Among the infrastructure and landmarks his secret insurgents are to destroy is one living treasure—you.”
The hands jerked involuntarily, and the golden eyes closed.
Evgeny found himself contemptible. Every command he’d obeyed without question, every motive to kill, every pursuit to elevate himself in the eyes of his superiors, every lie he’d perpetrated—all detestable in his sight. Had Liesl Bower done this to him?
“You are the president’s favorite musician,” he continued.
“He has other favorites.”
“But none of them ever crossed Pavel Andreyev and Vadim Fedorovsky.”
Liesl gaped at him. “But they’re in prison.”
“Irrelevant. They remain the Architect’s top generals, in full command of their secret forces. And soon, I am told, they will be free.”
“They tried to assassinate their own president, and he’s going to let them go?” Her voice grew shrill.
Evgeny shook his head. “There is so much you do not understand, and there is no time now to explain.”
“Why did you come here?”
He studied the face that had peered at him from the CD cover in the shop window, only this one had lost its radiance. She’d suffered too much. And he was about to hurt her again. “After their failed attempt last Monday, I learned they would try again on your wedding day.” He watched her mouth quiver, but he had to make her understand the course of things. “They wanted the world to watch. They wanted your countrymen to see what they could do. That’s why they chose the inauguration. Now, they are content to work without an audience.” His voice had lost its abrasion. “I could not just call you and hope you would listen. Or alert the police, who still want me for murder. Not your CIA friends, who would love to capture me. I had to come myself, just like your friends out there.” He motioned toward the young couple, deep in discussion.
“I don’t know them,” Liesl objected. “I barely know you. I don’t know why you came. Was it just to save me from a bullet? Or is there more?”
How did she know? Yes, there was more. “You must go with me, Liesl.”
“What do you mean? Where?”
“To New York. I am quite certain the Architect is there.”
“And you believe the two of us can find this man and stop him?” she asked, her voice rising to disbelief.
“I can’t involve anyone else, not yet. I have to show you what’s happening, to convince you. Your CIA friends will listen to you. They’d just hang me.”
Liesl shook her head. “This is crazy.”
Evgeny lost his patience. “If you do not think you can help me stop this madness and save our countries, then you might as well go back home and wait for the bullets. They’ll hit you and your family!”
Liesl threw open the door to the van and stomped off toward the deserted street. She ignored Cass asking if she was all right and held up a stand-down hand to Jordan when he made the first move toward her, his arm outstretched as if ready to assist.
Evgeny got out of the van and started after her. “You cannot outrun them,” he called, watching her stride furiously away. His head moved side to side, scanning their surroundings. “You must help me end this! But we have to go now!”
Finally, Liesl slowed her pace, then stopped. She turned slowly to Evgeny, who kept coming, kept searching for any unwanted arrivals to this spot. He had learned long ago that no place was completely safe.
“Why should I trust you?” Liesl called to him.
“I do not expect you to, not now. You have seen too much.” He stopped. “But trusting me is the only way to stay alive.”
She met his steely gaze. “You’re wrong, Evgeny. The only one I can trust with my life is God. And if I’m going anywhere with you, I pray he’s got your back, too.”
She headed back to the van, stopping when she drew even with him. “And by the way, thank you.”
He understood.
Chapter 20
Mama, what do you do in that place?”
“I’m a secretary, Rudy,” Melanie Thompson answered, adjusting her sunglasses.
A swell rocked the boat, and ten-year-old Rudy gripped his fishing pole tighter. “Do you have to work in all those buildings?” he asked, looking toward shore.
“No, Son, but I can go most anywhere I want.’” Melanie Thompson cast an amused glance at her husband, who kept watch on his bobber floating on the clear waters of this South Florida bay, but the corners of his mouth curled upward all the same.
Pete Thompson looked toward the sun almost straight up in the cloudless sky, set down his p
ole, and removed his light sweater, exposing pale arms. “I’ll bet your mom is the only secretary in that whole place who is also a brilliant scientist,” he told his son proudly. Then he looked at his wife and winked. He picked up his pole and cast the untouched bait back into the water. “It doesn’t look like the fish are hungry today, Rudy. Maybe they don’t eat on Saturday.”
“My friend Sammy says you’re not supposed to fish at lunchtime. He and his dad go real early in the morning.”
Pete frowned. “Well, I guess I’m not real good at this.”
“That’s okay, Dad. Math teachers don’t have to know how to fish, just how to add and subtract stuff.” He looked up at his dad. “But know what Sammy’s older brother says?” He went straight to his own answer. “That it’s hard to understand what you say in his math class. He doesn’t like your accent like I do. I think it’s cool.”
Pete reached over and lightly yanked on the bill of his son’s Dolphins cap, then reeled in his line and opened the cooler. As he pulled sandwiches and sodas from the ice, his wife sat quietly studying the sprawl of buildings before her, making notes and drawings on her legal pad.
Later, Melanie turned to her son. “You like your friend Sammy a lot, don’t you?”
“Yeah, we’re buddies … when he’s not bossing me around. He thinks that just because we haven’t lived here as long as him, he knows more than me about fishing and surfing and all the stuff other people do here. They even have their own boat. They don’t have to borrow one from the marina like we do.”
Melanie nodded. “Well, how would you feel if we had to move away from here? Real soon.”
Rudy squinted up at his mom. “You mean before baseball starts again?” he squeaked.
“Probably. But what if we moved someplace where there’s lots of snow and you could ride snowmobiles and ski?”
“Oh cool!”
“It would be someplace where everybody talks like Dad. Would that be okay?”
“You mean Russia?”
“That’s right.”
“Would I have to talk like that, too?”
Melanie laughed. “No,” she said. “I don’t. You know that my mother and father were Americans.”
“But you grew up in Russia.”
She nodded. “Yes, your grandparents were in something called the diplomatic corps. And even though I went to school in Russia, I don’t talk with their accent.” She reached for a sandwich.
Rudy looked thoughtfully toward shore. “What do they do in all those buildings, Mom?”
“They make nuclear power.”
Chapter 21
Confident that the young couple were exactly who they said they were and wouldn’t be reporting the van to Charleston police, Evgeny had decided to keep the roomy vehicle, but only after replacing the license plate on the off chance a witness had noted the number during the incident on Tidewater Lane. Now, he and Liesl were driving to New York, public transportation out of the question.
Cass and Jordan had left for the airport and the flight home. They were to await contact from their new friends, the fugitive KGB agent and the pianist marked for murder.
It had been a surprisingly smooth transition. Finally convinced that helping Evgeny was the best way to protect her mother, Cass had divulged her stepfather’s identity. She and Jordan then presented their copies of Hans’s incriminating files and related Jordan’s visit to the curious couple in the apartment near the UN, finally clenching Evgeny’s trust that the young couple were not the enemy. Their evidence and naiveté, he’d told them, had convinced him that they were as hapless and confused as Liesl, therefore harmless. Only then had he confided in them as he had Liesl, inextricably drawing them into the hunt for the Architect.
Evgeny had been grateful for Jordan’s descriptions of the man and woman he’d confronted, but stopped short of declaring the man the likely Architect. There was too much they didn’t know, he’d said.
Later, Evgeny had warned Cass and Jordan not to use their phones, which could be traced. Instead, Evgeny gave them another. Like the one he’d provided Liesl, it was stripped of its GPS locator and as secure a communications device as he could procure on the run.
Plans were made for the four of them to reconvene in New York. There was much to do and the time was short.
Cass and Jordan arrived at their apartment building, the cab dropping them at the side entrance. They carried their backpacks with the evidence against Hans Kluen stuffed inside Jordan’s. At this bedraggling hour, they both needed sleep and lots of it.
But the moment she and Jordan stepped from the elevator and started for their separate apartments, Cass suddenly stopped. Lying on the floor just a few feet from her door was an elaborate sketch she’d drawn of the Wicked time dragon. She’d kept it in an open portfolio of set designs next to the drawing table in her bedroom. There was no reason it should be lying here on the floor unless someone had dropped it on their way out of her apartment. She looked fearfully at Jordan, who was staring down at the sketch.
“It’s yours, right?”
“Yes.”
He spun toward her door and advanced cautiously. Over his shoulder, he said, “Hide in the alcove at the end of the hall and wait for me.”
She not only refused but was fast on his heels, wishing she had her handgun with her.
Seconds later, Jordan pushed open the breached door and they both stopped to listen. Nothing. But Cass could already see the damage, the contents of her home slung about as if monstrous hands had shaken the apartment loose from the building.
Jordan gripped her arm and whispered firmly. “Stay here. I mean it, Cass.”
Against her confrontational instincts, she remained in the doorway as Jordan eased into the room. It didn’t take long for him to search the whole apartment. Afterward, he motioned her inside.
She stood at the epicenter of the quake, surrounded by overturned furniture and ransacked cabinets and drawers, their contents spilled and raked. Even the paintings and tapestries had been yanked from the walls and pawed over.
Rachel. Cass wrenched herself from the ruins and spun toward the old oak desk. Its drawers were upside down on the floor, but the framed image of a young girl with rich brown hair sat upright, smiling back at Cass. An indestructible taunt. Would Cass ever be free of it? Would she ever take down the picture she wore like a hair shirt?
Jordan looked past her at the photo on the desk. “Cass, there’s enough hurt for today. Let’s deal with what’s here.” He went to the windows and closed all the curtains.
She dropped her backpack on the sofa and wandered about her violated home, unable to summon words. She remembered something she’d read about the Titanic survivors taken on board one of the rescue boats. A witness had commented on how still and quiet they were, huddled inside warm blankets, their eyes glazed. They were beyond words, beyond anything that might convey what they’d just endured. Cass understood that.
But Jordan urged her on. “We can’t stay here, Cass. They might come back, unless they’ve already hit my apartment, too.”
But Cass was already moving up the steps to her bedroom. It was the sight of her Serengeti oasis that brought the first cry from her. Only the stars on the ceiling remained intact. Her portfolio files with all her designs were gone.
“It’s them, Cass,” Jordan called from below. “We both know that. That woman knows where I live, and it was my license plate they traced to this building. She was even casing us that day in the rain.” Cass moved to the railing and looked down at him. “But this isn’t about my visit to them that night,” he continued. “These people were looking for something.” He whirled around to survey the mess. “And what is it we have that they could possibly want?” he prompted.
Cass leaned against the railing. “What we took from Hans’s study. But how could they know?”
“Unless he told them,” Jordan said flatly. “Would he do that?”
“No.” Though she’d never loved Hans or regarded him as more th
an the kindly man who was devoted to her mother, Cass knew he cared deeply for her, too. “No, he would never do anything to harm me. There has to be another reason for this. As far as I know, Hans hasn’t been to the beach house in weeks. He couldn’t know we were there.” She looked at Jordan, his chin propped on a fist, deep in thought. “I think we did exactly what Hans warned me about that day at the restaurant.” Jordan looked back up at her. “He said we shouldn’t go knocking on strange doors because we couldn’t know who might answer, or what they might be in the middle of.”
Cass stepped quickly down the stairs. “Jordan, I think we just surprised these people in the middle of something. Made them suspicious that we knew something—even before we did! So they searched us out.” Cass sighed. “Hans was right. We did this to ourselves.”
“And now they’ll think Hans betrayed them to us,” Jordan reasoned.
Cass’s head jerked up. What have I done? Again. What harm will come to him because of me?
Betrayal carried a stench. Like ammonia, it took the breath away and singed the inside of the throat. Cass knew its stinging condemnation. And then it came—a face swimming up from the deep, its convicting eyes, its gurgling voice. Adam was the one I loved. And you took him from me. Then the face sank slowly away. Cass felt a cold weight press against her chest, as if this time she had followed the face to its airless crypt. But Jordan’s insistent voice pulled her back.
“Cass, we have to get out of here. Pack up whatever you need for a few days. I’m going to check my apartment.”
“Wait,” she told him, then went quickly to the third step of the staircase she’d built herself. She tugged lightly on the tread, which looked like crudely laid flagstones, and raised it like a lid on a box—which it was. She reached into the hidden compartment beneath and brought out her small revolver. “Take this,” she urged, carefully handing off the gun to him. “It’s loaded.”
