And then, one day, the ultimate betrayal: Her mother suffered an aneurism and died instantly. She had been making breakfast for Vera, had just set down a plate of blueberry pancakes. She kissed her daughter on the top of her head, said, Eat up or you’ll be late for school, turned around, and simply collapsed onto the kitchen floor. No blood, no pulse. Emptiness.
Vera went into shock and was still sedated in the hospital when her mother was buried. Afterward, she was so infuriated that she never went to her mother’s grave. She never spoke about her again to her father, or to anyone. Outwardly, it was as if she had never existed, but inside, the grieving never ceased, the wound festered, never healed; it continued to bleed into her own life, altering it forever.
All this flashed through her mind as she drove through East Potomac Park, where her mother had often taken her on sunny Saturdays and Sundays, while her father worked or was out of town. It had always been a special place to her, the place where her dream house was situated, where it still abided somewhere in the recesses of her subconscious.
She passed the place where her hands had become sticky while slurping down a chocolate ice-cream cone, and there was the spot she had fallen while running and skinned her right knee and elbow, and over there, where the weird sculpture of The Awakening used to be coming out of the ground was where she had been stung by a wasp. The pain had been intense but she hadn’t cried. She never cried. Crying was for people without backbones, people who hadn’t screwed up their courage and found their way through her Norman Bates haunted house.
Seeing the man who fit Gunn’s description of O’Banion, she slowed. He turned as he became aware of the car approaching.
“He’s expecting his partner, so he’ll be surprised to see you,” Gunn had told her. “He’s sure to be on edge. In order to allay any suspicion, make sure you stop well before you get close to him. At that point, you can go to work.”
Under O’Banion’s stern and unflinching gaze, she stopped the car, turned off the ignition, and got out. As she did so, he produced a Glock 17, fitted with a AAC Evolution 9mm suppressor.
Vera held up her hands, palms outward. “Gunn sent me.”
“Wrong answer.” O’Banion gestured with the Glock. “Get your ass over here.”
She did as he ordered; her heart rate accelerated. Something’s wrong here, she thought. He’s reacting negatively to Gunn’s name. That can’t be good.
When she was close enough, O’Banion grabbed her and pressed the working end of the suppressor against her temple. Then he expertly patted her down with his free hand. He spent an inordinate time checking between her thighs.
“I’m not carrying.” She was thinking as fast as she could. “I’m Andy’s girlfriend, that’s all.” When playing for time, tell the truth.
“So why are you here?”
“Your friend, Willowicz”—she looked at him with a doe’s expression—“that’s his name, right?”
“What about him?”
“He’s had an accident. Andy’s with him in the ER at George Washington. He sent me to get you.”
A crack had appeared in O’Banion’s suspicion. “What the hell happened?”
“Apparently, the elevator was out. He took the stairs and fell. I don’t know, maybe he tripped or something.”
“But our assignment.”
“Canceled or postponed or something.”
“Why didn’t Gunn call me?”
“No cells allowed in the ER.”
O’Banion watched her, clouds of indecision forming on his brow.
Vera put all the urgency at her disposal into her voice. “I think your friend is hurt bad. Andy said you should come right now.”
O’Banion studied her face for several more seconds. Then he put away the Glock. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Vera turned and walked as steadily as she could back to the car where Gunn waited, curled like a serpent in the trunk.
“What happened to your shoes?” O’Banion said.
“When I was a kid, my mother took me here on weekends. The first thing I did when I got here was to take off my shoes.”
O’Banion shook his head. “Fucking women.”
* * *
CAROLINE TOOK a tiny gold key from around her neck, inserted it into the lock on the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk. Inside was a large book with a moss-green cover on which was affixed an illustration of a tumbledown shop on a tumbledown block. It was an old book, much worn, thumbed-through, and read. Its title was The Little Curiosity Shop, a heavily illustrated children’s book, full of stories of fayries and magick. Caroline pressed her palm against the cover, caressing it, as she often did when she was absolutely certain that she was alone. She had read it so often she could still recite whole sections from memory.
Locking the book away, she got up from her computer workstation and stretched. Ever since the Syrian had returned with Arian Xhafa in tow she’d found it difficult to concentrate. Walking into the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. She was the only one in the compound allowed to drink; she was the only one who wasn’t Muslim. She enjoyed drinking in front of them, just as she got a kick out of dressing as she wanted. The Syrian was lenient, even Western in his views, but she knew not to push him past a certain point. She was valuable to him—more valuable than a platoon of suicide bombers—but that didn’t mean she could do whatever she pleased. Everyone had boundaries here, even him.
Popping the top of her beer she went and leaned against the sink, her ankles crossed as she stared out the window at the two men sitting side by side in the garden. She did not need to hear their conversation to know its subject. Xhafa, like all his kind, hated women. He disguised the hatred by wrapping it in religious text, but his prejudice was plain to her all the same. She’d had a great deal of experience with men’s hatred of women—their abuse, both psychological and physical, their contempt, their complete and utter dismissal. To Xhafa and men like him women were an inferior form of human being, a second-class citizen meant for breeding or, far worse, receptacles for the release of men’s pleasure.
She watched the pantomime for a while, providing the words she could not hear. When Arian Xhafa placed the segment of blood orange in his mouth, she laughed silently.
* * *
IN THE firelight, the blood looked black. Jack ached all over, but otherwise he felt okay. He sat on a tree stump near the fire Thatë’s men had started. The heat felt good on his back. Alli, kneeling beside him, rummaged in her backpack for the first-aid kit.
When she opened it, she said, “Shit, the gauze is sopping wet.”
“Those kits are supposed to be waterproof,” Paull said, peering over her shoulder.
Her fingers ran around the rim. “One of the hinges is broken,” she said. “That’s how the water seeped in when I slipped in the river.” She plucked out a small tube. “The Krazy Glue’s fine, but we still need something to bind Jack’s wound.”
The bullet had torn a more or less horizontal strip out of Jack’s side. The wound wasn’t deep, but if it wasn’t treated there was the danger of infection. Alli cleaned the wound with alcohol and waited for it to dry. Then she handed the tube to Jack.
Jack looked at Paul. “We have to get these children to a place of safety.”
“There isn’t one anywhere near here,” Alli said.
Paull nodded. “We’ll take them on the plane.”
Jack’s face clouded. “If you take them back to the States they’re going to run afoul of INS, which, these days, is nothing more than a pack of jackals on the hunt for aliens they can imprison or deport so it can look good with Homeland Security.”
Paull grinned. “Then I’ll just have to circumvent INS, won’t I?”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“These days INS has its nose stuck up Homeland Security’s ass,” Paull said. “I put up Hank Dickerson to replace me. He’ll do what I ask him to do.”
Alli called Jack’
s attention back to the wound. While she held the two sides of the wound together, Jack applied a thin line of glue. She kept the pressure on while Jack capped the tube.
“Hurt much?” she said.
Jack smiled at her.
“We still need to protect it or it might open and start bleeding all over again.”
“I can help with that.” Edon turned her back to them, slipped her shirt over her head, and, using her teeth, began to tear it into long strips.
Jack’s head came up, his eyes fixed on the burnished skin of her back. “Wait a minute.” He stood up and went over to her. Covering her breasts, she began to turn around, but he said, “No, stay right where you are.”
He turned her slightly so that her back was more in the light cast by the flames. He touched her tenderly.
“Where did you get these scars?”
“I was punished. Once.”
“Who did this?” Though the scars were fresh, their length, the pattern was identical to those on Annika’s back. “Who punished you?”
“Arian Xhafa himself,” Edon said. “This is his mark, his punishment.”
Jack felt all the breath go out of him as everything fell into place. No wonder Annika was so interested in coming after Arian Xhafa—it was he who had marked her, just as he had marked this girl. Jack put his hand to his head. Every time he thought he had come to the core of Annika, another layer of secrets and lies was revealed.
God help Arian Xhafa, he thought.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE SYRIAN tilted his face up toward the sun. “Pity about Oriel Jovovich Batchuk,” he said. “We had a lucrative deal with him, and once he became Russia’s deputy prime minister he was our best single customer.”
Xhafa shot him a glance. “That was months ago. We’ve replaced him ten times over.”
“Ah, but Batchuk was also the father of Annika Dementieva, and she is so very special.”
Xhafa shifted uncomfortably on the hardwood bench.
The Syrian knew better than anyone the relationship between Dementieva and Xhafa, though “relationship” was an inadequate term to describe what had happened between them. The knowledge sickened him; it was no surprise that their hatred for one another knew no bounds; Xhafa was obsessed with her. This enmity would prove dangerous for him if he allowed Xhafa to go after her. Xhafa wasn’t exactly rational when it came to the subject of Annika Dementieva. He and Xhafa were tied together through Gemini Holdings, the shell corporation that Caroline, in her genius, had set up for them to make their international deals legitimate. He was at risk as long as Annika remained alive. Though Caro had assured him that no one could trace either of them back to Gemini, he was not at all certain that included Annika and her devil of a grandfather.
Caro was incredibly smart and incredibly proficient at whatever she set her hand to; he had seen that for himself many times over. She was an autodidact—she had taught herself pretty much everything she knew about business, computer programming, and the Internet. He was stunned at what she could accomplish at her workstation.
“You must let it go, Arian. This is business. You must leave Dementieva to me,” the Syrian said now. “You need to keep your eyes on the prize—and on Jack McClure. The magnitude of his interference is an unexpected complication.”
Xhafa sighed. “I suppose I needn’t remind you it was through McClure that you lured Dementieva out of hiding.”
For a moment, the Syrian went dead still, and was aware of the blood draining from Xhafa’s face. Yet that wasn’t enough for him.
“When I need reminding, I’ll ask Caro.” His words were delivered with an acid bite. He realized, belatedly, that he had confided too much of his plan to his man. He bit his tongue at the mistake; he’d not make it again. No one understood his mind, save perhaps Caro. This was her true value to him, one he’d rather die with than divulge to anyone.
“Apologies,” Xhafa managed to get out, after an oppressive silence.
These were two proud men, preeminent within their own spheres. But both were acutely aware that the Syrian’s sphere was vastly larger than Xhafa’s, and sometimes this discrepancy caused friction. But managing friction was one of Xhafa’s strong suits, even if, in this case, it meant putting his tail between his legs.
“Apologies,” Xhafa said again. “The loss of my longtime base was something I never imagined.”
The sun was gone now, the shadows lengthening, the air growing cooler.
The Syrian sighed. “Sometimes it seems to me that life is constructed only of unexpected losses.” This was as far as he was prepared to go to mollify Xhafa.
* * *
“HABIBI.”
The whispered voice from behind Caroline stopped her from returning to her work. She turned slowly, her lips turned up in a mysterious smile.
Taroq was standing in shadow, in a place where he couldn’t be seen by the two men in the garden. Like his master, he was Syrian, a distant nephew, in fact. Tall and bronzed with wide shoulders and a slender waist, he exuded a certain solidity. His full beard was light brown, almost copper-colored in sunlight, and his long eyes were gray. Still as rock, he watched her with an avidity she could feel though twelve feet separated them.
Caroline hated men, but she didn’t hate Taroq. She had cultivated him almost from the moment the Syrian had brought her to the compound. Caroline was one of those people who felt no remorse, no guilt, no sense of loyalty. She defined herself as amoral; a psychiatrist would no doubt render a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, because her major traits fit like a glove: patterns of deceitfulness, a failure to conform to societal norms, blatant disregard for the rights and safety of others. An ignorant person might call her a psycho, but that would be a misnomer; Caroline’s disorder was far more complex.
The best thing about Taroq—besides his strength, that is—was that he was drawn to her, rather than being repulsed as the other guards clearly were. Taroq was smart enough, and close enough to his master to be curious about Western civilization—not the TV shows or films or designer clothes, but the concept of having choices. For him, Caroline presented a doorway into a new world, in more ways than one.
“We’re quite alone.” His voice was already thick with lust. He held out a hand, his need shining like a beacon in a storm. “Let’s go—”
“No.” She beckoned. “I want to look at him while we do it.”
This was apparently too much for Taroq. He stood very still and shook his head.
Caroline stared into his eyes as she began to slowly unbutton her shirt. She was wearing nothing underneath and by the fourth button the inner halves of her breasts were visible. She kept opening buttons without parting the shirt. When she was finished, she unbuttoned her jeans and slowly pulled down the zipper.
Taroq’s eyes grew wide; she was naked underneath.
Her arms hung at her sides. Some mysterious inner working rolled the tiny swell of her belly.
“Come,” she said, and Taroq was compelled to do as she commanded.
* * *
GUNN, CURLED in the trunk of Vera’s car, heard the doors open, then felt the weight of two people getting into the car. This indicated that Vera had been successful in luring O’Banion. He turned and, pulling open the Saab’s pass-through from the trunk to the backseat, he crawled through, only to find O’Banion on the backseat, pointing a suppressed Glock at his face.
“Howdy-do, Gunn.” O’Banion’s grin was chilling. “You proved yourself to be a snake just like all the rest of your kind. I don’t think snakes live very long, but in any case longer than you.”
Gunn wanted to say something—anything—but, frankly, he was speechless. How had the bastard known? Willowicz was dead, so that left Vera. Where the hell was she? Probably cut and run. That fucking bitch!
O’Banion took possession of Gunn’s Sig Sauer and stuck it in his waistband without taking his eyes off his adversary. “Believe me, it’s going to be a pleasure watching your head fly apart.”
&n
bsp; At that moment, Vera’s head popped up above the front seat back. She had something stretched between her hands—the long lace from one of her boots. Before O’Banion could pull the trigger, she whipped the lace over his head and across his throat. Then she pulled mightily.
O’Banion’s body lurched up with his head and the shot he squeezed off reflexively buried itself in the seat back ten inches from Gunn’s left shoulder. Gunn grabbed the suppressor despite how hot it was in an attempt to wrest it from O’Banion’s grip.
In the front seat, Vera had her feet braced against the seat back and was pulling with all her strength. O’Banion’s face was dangerously engorged as blood pooled with nowhere to go. His free hand was clawing at the lace, but it was one of those new ones that were round and waxed, so his fingers couldn’t get a decent purchase.
Gunn pried one of O’Banion’s fingers off the grip, then bent it backward until it cracked like a rifle shot. O’Banion grunted, but would not cede control of the 9mm.
“Fuck you, Gunn,” he said in a strangled voice. “Fuck you and your little bitch.”
Abandoning his futile attempt to free himself, he chopped down onto Gunn’s wrist with the edge of his free hand, and Gunn’s arm went numb. From behind him, Vera uttered a guttural noise in the back of her throat. Lunging forward, she bit off the top half of O’Banion’s right ear. He howled in shock and pain, and in that instant, Gunn was able to gain control of the 9mm. He turned it and shot without bothering to aim.
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