He speared another chunk of veal and cheese. “It’s not like I was running away from home or anything, but I had to get out of there. I was so upset, I didn’t think, didn’t take a flashlight or even a jacket. I ran into the forest the way you run in a nightmare, without sound, with your heart pounding so heavily you’re sure it’s going to explode and rip you wide open.
“I remember the moon, that cold light breaking through the pine branches, making little pools of light that winked out too fast. Otherwise, Jesus, it was as dark as a pit. After a while, I ran out of breath, so I stopped, bent over, hands on my knees, panting like a sonuvabitch.
“Sometime later, I stood up and looked around. I had no idea where I was. Worse, I had no idea from which direction I had come. I had no one, nothing to guide me home. Hell, right then, I didn’t have a home.”
He held the forkful of food but it hung in the air, suspended, not going anywhere. McKinsey was lost again.
“What to do? Naomi, I tell you, I’ve never been so scared in my life. I was flooded with adrenaline. I heard all these strange sounds, amplified to an almost unbearable level, I saw leaves tremble as unseen animals moved through.”
He put down his fork and looked at her. “Have you ever seen a bear in the wild?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“It’s a pretty fucking amazing thing. That’s what came out of the underbrush, Naomi, a bear. A black bear. A man-eater.”
“What happened?”
McKinsey put his elbows on the table, clasped his hands together. “Here’s the thing: you never know what a bear is going to do next. There are no signals you can read. Its behavior is totally unpredictable. And that pretty much sums up life in general: It’s so fucking unpredictable you’ve got to do everything in your power to protect yourself from being eaten alive.”
Naomi stared at him, and it was some time before she realized that he had given her his motivation for having some kind of arrangement with Fortress Securities. You’ve got to do everything in your power to protect yourself from being eaten alive. This told her why, but not what. What was Pete doing with Fortress, and was it a coincidence that this was the company whose head was in bed with Henry Holt Carson? Naomi didn’t believe in coincidences. In her world, a belief in coincidence got you killed.
“How did it end?”
McKinsey finished off the bottle. “It didn’t end, but I see what you mean.” He laughed, showing her his teeth, ivory-colored and even. “The moment it saw me the bear reared up on its hind legs. He and I, perfectly still, stood looking at each other. I was aware of something breathing just below me. Later, I realized it was my body. Abject terror had taken my mind away from the danger. How long we stayed like that I can’t even guess. Eventually, though, the bear went down on all fours, turned, and crashed back through the thick undergrowth.”
McKinsey licked his lips. Naomi was pleased to see that he’d had more than enough.
“Go on, Pete.”
“That fucking bear.” He shook his head. “I never saw the bear again.” His voice had lowered, causing Naomi to lean across the table. “But, late at night or early in the morning or just as the sun is going down, I can hear it breathing close beside me, I can smell its foul breath, feel its huge presence, like an eclipse, like death.” He looked at her bleakly, his eyes red-rimmed. “There’s no way to escape it, you know. None at all.”
* * *
JACK AND Alli sat together talking softly. All around them was the stillness of movement found only in an airplane.
“Tell me about Billy Warren,” Jack said.
Alli shrugged.
“What attracted you to him?”
“He was nice—honest. He wasn’t grabby, like the other guys around me. And there was something old-fashioned about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for instance, he liked ice-cream sodas, not Jell-O shots. And, despite what he did for a living, he was a kind of neo-Luddite. He hated computers, hated how easily data could be hijacked, substituted, even faked. Give me a pen and a sheet of paper any day, he used to say.” Her expression turned pensive. “It was horrible what happened to him. I mean, he was a good guy, Jack. He just wasn’t for me.”
“There are lots more guys out there, Alli. And you have plenty of time.”
She looked away, abruptly uncomfortable.
* * *
EMMA CAME to Jack in the darkness of the plane, while everyone around him slept and he was staring out the Perspex window at the unending darkness. Far below him, great ships plowed through the waves with their cargos of oil, electronics, washer/dryers, and cars. Men smoked and ate, slept and joked and played cards, or watched porn on their portable DVD players. That was another world, one he’d never been a part of, even when he was younger. He’d been born an outsider and an outsider he remained.
He felt his daughter first as a waft of chill air, then as a stirring of the hairs on his forearms, and then she was beside him, while, three rows back, Paull sucked in deep drafts of sleep.
“You were there, weren’t you,” Jack whispered, “in that underground house of death?”
“Yes.”
—Why?
“I have no choice in these matters. I’m tied to death, recent death, when it involves you or Alli.”
Jack ran a hand across his face, as if he could scrub away this hallucination or manifestation of his mind, or whatever it was.
—I don’t want this. I want you safe.
Emma laughed.
“If there’s a safer place than this, I don’t know about it.”
I want to hold her, Jack thought. I want her back. He spoke to her instead.
—These murders are linked. I can see a pattern forming, Emma, but there aren’t enough pieces yet to put in place. Like who tortured and killed Billy Warren. Like who killed those two men at Twilight. I’m sure Dardan could have answered those questions.
“Dad, I thought you’d have gotten it by now. I’m not a seer.”
—You can see certain things. You knew about your mother and me.
“I’m connected to both of you. How could I not know you were splitting up?”
Jack didn’t understand a thing about this arrangement. How could he; it was beyond human ken.
“You don’t miss her, Dad, do you?”
—I don’t, no.
“But you do miss Annika.”
—You’re wrong, Emma.
“I’d like to say I don’t mind that you can’t admit it to me, but the fact is I do.”
—She’s evil.
“You know that’s not true.”
—She murdered Senator Berns.
“How many people has your friend Dennis Paull murdered, I wonder?”
—Self-defense or mission-specific. All understandable, all within protocol.
“Oh, Dad, protocol? Really? Okay, if you want to go that route. Annika’s murder was protocol: mission-specific—for her grandfather.”
—Now that man—Dyadya Gourdjiev—is the devil.
“As opposed to her father?”
Jack sighed. The late, unlamented Oriel Jovovich Batchuk, who had stolen her away from her mother and kept Annika locked up, committing unspeakable acts of sexual violence on her body.
—It’s all in the past, so what’s the point?
“From where I stand, there is no past, no future, no present. It’s all the same. Time is just something human beings made up to keep themselves from going crazy.”
He smiled.
—Were you always like this? So damn philosophical?
She laughed.
—Yet another aspect of you I missed, Emma.
“Everybody missed it, Dad, except for Alli.”
He was suddenly very tired.
—I want to sleep, but I don’t know whether I’ll be able to.
His daughter smiled her translucent smile.
“That I can help you with.”
She spread her arms. His eyes closed.
THIRTEEN
MARTIAL DRUMMING sounded in Andrew Gunn’s dream. A long gray line of skeletal people with fire-bombed faces was marching toward him along the banks of a snaking river. The river was on fire, bright flames and crackling sparks shooting upward. The clouds of heat were palpable. Blackhawks whirred and banked precipitously, bristling with weaponry in the brassy sunlight, but not a single helmet was visible. The trees overhanging the river were full of flame, the skin of the skeletal people curled and blackened and fell off. Oblivious, the long gray line advanced to the beat of the invisible drum, which became more and more insistent, until …
Gunn started awake to the pounding on his front door. For a moment, still enmeshed in the dream, he sat still in a rumple of bedclothes. The pounding became more than insistent—it seemed frantic.
Rolling out of bed, he pulled on a pair of paint-smeared jeans and a cotton shirt, not bothering to button it as he passed through the living room, into the short entryway, where he pulled open the door.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “didn’t I tell you never to come here?”
“Fuck you, too.”
Vera Bard pushed past him. She wore a wide-belted iridescent black trench coat that came down so far the hem almost concealed her black high-heel shoes. She didn’t look like any FBI recruit he’d ever seen.
Sighing, he closed the door and walked after her into the living room where early morning sunlight poured in through the south-facing windows. Far below, Washington and the Potomac glimmered in a flat, hazy light patterned in grays and faded browns.
“What are you doing here, Vera? How did you get out of Fearington?”
Alli’s roommate looked a good deal better than she had when Jack had visited her in the Fearington infirmary yesterday. Her long, dark hair had regained its extraordinary luster and her upswept chocolate eyes were again bright with a fierce intelligence.
“I’m on a week’s medical furlough.” Her nostrils flared. “I got a visit from a guy named Jack McClure. You know him?”
“By reputation only.” Gunn shrugged. “What of it?”
“I think he suspects something.”
Gunn laughed. “How could he suspect anything?”
“How the fuck should I know? You’re the brainiac of this little venture.” Vera Bard’s cherry mouth turned sullen. “I don’t like him. I don’t want him anywhere near me. It feels like he’s crawling around inside my head.”
“That must be painful.”
“Joke all you want,” she said hotly. “Just make sure he stays the hell away from me.”
Gunn sighed. “You could’ve told me this using the encrypted cell phone I gave you.”
“True enough.” Her hands were at the trench coat’s belt. “But then I wouldn’t be able to show you this.”
The belt fell away, the trench coat gaped wide open, and Vera Bard’s gleaming naked body stood revealed it all its peach-skinned glory.
“Well, now,” Gunn said as he came toward her, “there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”
* * *
“YOU’RE NOT getting cold feet, are you?” Gunn said to her some time later.
“I’m not capable of getting cold feet. You know that.”
She lay on top of him, tangled in the sheets, perfumed by the musky scents of sex and sweat. Her nipples were still hard; the feel of them against his skin sent quivers through the muscles of his thighs.
“McClure sure spooked you,” he said quietly.
“One man, one spook, under God.”
Vera laughed in that way of hers that sent his pulse racing. Actually, almost everything about her set his pulse racing, especially her smell, which drew him as if he was magnetized. The moment he had first set eyes on her, he knew he had to have her. He knew he’d move heaven and earth to make it happen.
As it turned out, nothing so drastic was required of him. They had met some years ago—three, four, in the heat haze after sex he couldn’t recall—at a fancy D.C. ball given by the ambassador of Kenya. He had been invited because he had done important work there; she had been someone’s date—a fairly ordinary-looking DoD functionary. What she had been doing with him, he never discovered. Frankly, he hadn’t cared. Nor had he cared when he’d cut the functionary out of his own territory. Suffice it to say, hours later, he had taken her back to his place. Long before that, the DoD dud had faded into the scenery, the swirl of people, the babble of multi-culti voices, the endless layers of stiff Washingtonian protocol that was the hallmark of such affairs. She had been twenty-two, then, and twelve years his junior, a rose on the cusp of opening. He saw the potential in her and, to her credit, she saw it, too. They needed each other, like flowers need the rain.
Gunn threaded her thick, lustrous hair through his fingers. The weight of it thrilled him, and the vulnerable heat at the nape of her neck set his groin to throbbing. “It’s absolutely essential to know I can trust you.”
Vera snaked her arm down, her fingers reaching between his thighs. “When have I ever let you down?” She smiled. “When have you ever let me down?”
He grabbed her wrist before her fingers brought him past the edge of coherent thought. “No joke now, Vera. Don’t fuck with me.”
“I would be insane to jeopardize what you’ve taught me, what we have.” Her chocolate eyes probed his like searchlights. “I’ll never find anyone like you.” It was she, now, who guided his hand between her legs. “No one else has ever done this to me, no one else ever will.”
Feeling her wetness set Gunn’s heart to raging in his chest. He felt like he was on fire, like he couldn’t catch his breath.
“I’ll keep Jack McClure away from you.” His tongue was thick in his mouth. He rolled over on top of her. “But remember the most difficult part is just beginning.”
“How could I forget?” Vera said. “Your instructions are drilled into my brain.”
“Now all that remains is for both of us to do our jobs.”
Their lips met, tongues probing just as the doorbell rang. Gunn wasn’t thinking straight and he ignored it, until the bell became one long, uninterrupted burr in his side.
“Godammit to hell!”
Pushing off her moist heat, he rolled out of bed, jammed on his jeans, and padded out through the living room and into the foyer.
“I’m coming!” he yelled, so at least the noise would cease reverberating through the apartment. Putting his eye to the view hole, he immediately drew back. Is it that time already? he asked himself. Well, it must be.
He unlatched the door, pulled it open, and let Henry Holt Carson into his residence. Carson looked around, taking everything in. Then he sniffed twice and said, “Go wash that stink off you, Andrew.”
Gunn nodded mutely, padded into the bathroom, and shut the door. As soon as he heard the shower start to run, Carson stole silently across the living room. At the threshold to the master bedroom he paused, peering in.
“I thought it might be you.” He stepped into the darkened room, heading for the figure in the rumpled bed. “Jack McClure threw the fear of God into you, didn’t he?”
Vera raised her sullen, sex-swollen face. “How did you know?”
“He has that effect on people.” His eyes never left her face. “For God’s sake, put some clothes on.”
“I didn’t bring any clothes.” She sat on the edge of the bed, legs dangling, toes playing with the cuffs of his trousers. She made no attempt to hide the dark patch between her thighs.
Carson studiously kept his eyes on her face.
Vera laughed. “Look at you.” She stood up, brushing against him, and watched him take a staggering step back.
By now, Carson was red-faced and shaking. Each time he saw her he promised himself that he wouldn’t allow her to get under his skin, and yet somehow she always did.
She parted her thighs. “Don’t you want a better glimpse of the honey pot?”
“You have a foul mouth and a vulgar mind.”
/> She swung her hair away from her face. “Don’t we all.”
He looked away. “Not all.”
“Don’t play the hypocrite with me. I know you too well.”
Carson took an involuntary step toward her. “Where is she, Vera? Where’s my daughter?”
“I have no idea.”
“Someone has to know.”
“Yes, but who? It wasn’t Alli Carson.”
“Maybe you fucked up with her.”
“Impossible.” Her eyes locked onto his and wouldn’t let go. “I had the best teachers.”
His gaze broke away from hers. “You mistake me.”
She searched through the rumpled sheets for her thong, then remembered she hadn’t worn one. “The cruelest people are the deniers, HH. Delusion is a major component of cruelty: You convince yourself that the situation calls for certain measures. And self-delusion, well, the cruelty becomes extreme because you’re certain you’re doing what’s best.”
“And you think that applies to me?”
“No, HH. I know it applies to you. Our history is just chock-full of examples.”
He wanted to turn away, to dismiss every word she said, but he couldn’t. She had for him the dreadful fascination a serpent holds for a rodent. There was a strange strength inside her that made him want to weep.
“Keep your mouth shut,” he said with the dangerous feeling, a shortness of breath he knew too well.
“Hit me.” She leaned toward him, thrusting out her chin. “That’s what you want to do, isn’t it?” Her smile was knife-sharp and shadowed. “All that power, HH, and you can’t do anything with it. How does it feel to be hog-tied and helpless?”
Carson’s eyes looked wounded. “Why do you need to taunt me so?”
Vera’s laugh was deliberately cruel. “Who knows better than you?”
Carson gave a quick look over his shoulder. Gunn was nowhere in sight. “What have you found out?”
She contemplated him for a moment. “You’re a man who’s never satisfied with what he’s given—you have to take it all. You always want to know more, and more, and more. It never ends.” Her smile grew tiny white teeth.
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