Michael stopped, opened his eyes, and suddenly realized it was not a dream. The footsteps were real. He felt the slight buckle of the floorboards, the change in the air, and knew that someone was right behind him. Before he could take the gun from his pocket, a shadow filled the room.
Mischa, he heard his mother say. Ta tuleb.
Then there was fire inside his head, a supernova of orange and scarlet pain.
Then, nothing.
FIFTY-TWO
It took a while to realize where he was, when he was. Reality sifted back, laced with the thudding agony in his head.
When his eyes adjusted to the light, he took in the scene. He was in the front room of the bakery, sitting in a chair, next to Abby. In front of them was one of the small wooden café tables that used to be near the window of the bakery. Michael could see some of the names still carved into the surface.
On the table was a gun.
Emily sat on the other side of the room, the side on which the three counters of the bakery once were. The glass cases were long gone, but the two large ovens still stood against the back wall. Next to them were dismantled tables, chairs, bookshelves. There was no electricity, no overhead fixtures, but in the thin light slicing through the grimed front windows, Michael could see his daughter clearly. She was perched on a dusty pillow, one of three.
Michael turned to Abby. Her hands were taped behind her, around a copper water pipe bolted to the wall. Her eyes were wide, terrified. She had a gag stuffed in her mouth. Michael’s hands were handcuffed in front of him, but he was not otherwise restrained in any way.
A moment later Aleks emerged from the shadows. He stood behind Emily. “You’ve interrupted my plans,” he said.
Michael eyed the weapon on the table. He shifted himself in the chair, opened his mouth to speak, but found that the words would not come. If he’d ever needed a closing argument it was now.
“The police are already at my house,” Michael said. “You can’t possibly get away with this. They’ll figure it out. They’ll be here.”
“They are already here.” Aleks reached into his pocket, pulled something out, threw it on the floor in front of Michael and Abby. It was a gold detective badge. Powell’s shield. “Where is Marya?”
“I can’t tell you,” Michael said.
In an instant Aleks was across the room, the folds of his leather coat snapping in the still air. “Where is she?” He pulled Abby’s head back, put the knife to her throat.
“Wait!”
Aleks said nothing, did not take the blade from Abby’s throat. His eyes had morphed from a pale blue to almost black.
“She’s . . . she’s with a friend,” Michael said.
“Where?”
“It’s not far.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you. Just please . . .”
After a long moment, Aleks withdrew the knife. He reached into his pocket, took out a cellphone. He handed it to Michael. “I want you to call this friend. Put it on speakerphone. I want to hear my daughter’s voice.”
Michael took the phone in his shackled hands, dialed Solomon’s number. When it began to ring, Michael put it on speaker. In a moment, Solomon answered.
“It’s Mischa,” Michael said. “Everything’s fine, onu. It’s all over.”
Solomon said nothing.
“Can you put Charlotte on?”
Again, a hesitation. Then, Michael heard Solomon’s show, shambling footsteps. A few seconds later: “Daddy?”
At the sound of Charlotte’s voice, Michael saw Emily pick up her head. She still looked to be under some sort of spell, but the sound of her sister’s voice brought her to the moment.
“Yes, honey. It’s me. Mommy’s here, too.”
“Hi, Mommy.”
Abby began to cry.
“Are you coming to get me?” Charlotte asked.
“Soon. We’ll be there really soon. Can you put Onu Solomon back on the phone, please?”
Michael heard the transfer.
“Mischa,” Solomon said. “You are coming to collect her?”
Michael knew he had to give Solomon a heads up, but he didn’t know how to do it. Speaking in Estonian would not help.
“No,” Michael said. “I’m going to send someone.”
“Someone from your office?”
“No,” Michael said. He glanced at the gold badge on the floor. “A detective. A detective from Queens Homicide will be coming by to get her. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course,” Solomon said.
Aleks crossed the space, picked up the badge, put it in his pocket.
“His name is Detective Tarrasch,” Michael said.
Michael glanced at Aleks. He did not react to the name.
“I will be ready,” Solomon said.
I will be ready, Michael thought. Not I will be waiting. Solomon knew there was something wrong. Tarrasch was a chess term, a variation on the French Defense Solomon had taught Michael in the 1980s. If Michael knew Solomon, he knew that the old man was already preparing to send Charlotte to another location.
Before Michael could sign off, Aleks took the phone from his hands, closed it. He crossed the room, and began to put things into a shoulder bag.
Michael looked at Emily. With the index finger of her right hand, she touched the floor, and drew a straight line in the dust.
A FEW MILES AWAY, in a small house in Ozone Park, Charlotte Roman sat at the dining-room table, a fresh white sheet of typing paper in front of her, a rainbow of stubby crayons awaiting her muse. In the background, the television played Wheel of Fortune.
Charlotte surveyed the choices of colors. She picked up a black crayon and began to draw. At first she drew a long horizontal line across the bottom of the page, stretching from one edge to the other. She hesitated for a moment, then continued, drawing first the right side of what would be a rectangle, then the left. Finally, she began to complete the shape, carefully connecting the two sides at the top . . .
. . . CREATING THE RIDGE line of the roof, though Emily Abigail Roman was far too young to know what a ridge line was. To her it was just the top of the house. She ran her small finger through the dust, keeping the line as straight as possible. Underneath the ridge line she made two smaller rectangles, these of course being the windows. Each window had a cross in the center, which made four smaller windows. Beneath the windows . . .
. . . SHE DREW A pair of even smaller rectangles, wide and thin, which were flower boxes. Charlotte put down the black crayon and picked up the red one. It was almost halfway gone, but that was okay. Gripping the small crayon tightly, she made little red tulips in the flower boxes, three flowers in each. When she was satisfied, she picked up the green crayon, and filled in the stems and leaves. All that was left to do was the front door. She selected a brown crayon . . .
. . . AND MADE A doorway in the dust. With one final poke of her tiny finger, she made the doorknob. A door was useless without a doorknob. Emily Roman looked at her drawing. There was one last touch. She reached forward, and swirled her finger over the chimney. The last little curlicue was the smoke.
FIFTY-THREE
Aleks paced back and forth. He spoke rapidly, drifting from Estonian to Russian to English. He held his knife in his right hand, and as he turned he tapped it against his right leg, slicing the black leather of his coat. To Michael, who had seen his share of unhinged defendants, Aleks was coming apart.
ALEKS STOOD DIRECTLY in the front window, his back to the room.
“Things go full circle in this life, do they not, Michael Roman?”
Michael stole a glance at Abby. She was rocking back and forth, pulling on the pipes behind her.
“What do you mean?” Michael asked.
Aleks turned to face them. “This place. I can smell the yeast in the air. Once it is in the air, it never leaves, you know. I’ve heard of a bakery in Paris, a shop known for its sourdough breads, that has not used an active culture for more than a hundred years.”
He turned to glance at Emily, back. “Do you think things remain? Things like energies, spirits?”
Michael knew he had to keep Aleks talking. “Maybe. I –”
“Were you here when it happened? Did you see it?”
Michael now knew what he was talking about. He was talking about the murder of Peeter and Johanna Roman. “No,” Michael said. “I didn’t see it.”
Aleks nodded. “I read about you. About the incident with the car bomb.”
Michael said nothing.
“You were supposed to die that day, yet you did not. Have you ever questioned this?”
Only every day since, Michael thought. “I don’t know,” he said, hoping to find some common ground with this madman. “Maybe I was destined for something else. Maybe something better.”
“Yes,” Aleks said. “Destiny.” He began to pace back and forth again, now behind Emily. Out of the corner of his eye Michael could see that Abby had begun to work the copper pipe from its mooring. “Tell me. When you were about to die, how did it feel?”
“It felt like nothing,” Michael said. “It happened too fast.”
“No,” Aleks said. “It is the longest moment of your life. It can last forever.”
Michael saw the pipe budge a little more, saw the duct tape on Abby’s wrists begin to fray. Aleks circled behind Emily.
“It was in a place not unlike this that it all began for me,” Aleks said. “I know the feeling. To be brought to the edge of the abyss, and to emerge unscathed. I do not think it was an accident that you came to care for Anna and Marya. I believe it was ordained. Now I must take them home.”
Before he could stop himself, Michael rose from the chair. The words just seemed to tumble out. “I won’t let you!”
Michael glanced again at Emily, at the drawing she had made in the dust. He could not make it out from where he was.
“You should know about their mother,” Aleks continued, moving closer to Emily. “A beautiful young girl. An ennustaja of magnificent power. Elena. She was merely a child when I first saw her. She was the spirit of the gray wolf.” Aleks pointed at the table in front of Michael. “There are two bullets in that weapon. I want you to pick it up.”
Michael froze. “No.”
“I want you to pick it up now!”
Slowly, Michael picked up the pistol. It felt heavy, leaden in his hand. Was it loaded? And if it was, why was Aleks doing this? Michael wondered if he could point it at Aleks, and pull the trigger.
No, he thought. He could not take the chance. Aleks was too close to Emily. “What do you want me to do?”
“There is only one choice. I am going to leave with my daughter, and I cannot take the risk that I will be stopped.”
Michael had no idea what the man meant by one choice. He remained silent.
“First, you will take the weapon, point it at Abigail’s head, and pull the trigger.”
Michael’s heart plunged. “What?”
“Then you will take your own life. You see, it will be seen as a murder/suicide, the logical actions of a man who killed the lawyer who illegally worked for him, then a young thug with whom he had done business. Not to mention the police detective who came to investigate. In your madness, seeing no way out, you brought your wife here, to the site of your life’s greatest tragedy, and took both your lives.”
Michael’s mind began to reel. Abby sobbed. “That’s . . . that’s not going to happen.”
Aleks crouched down behind Emily. “Maybe there is another choice for you.” He took one of the small, empty glass vials from the chain around his neck, placed it on the floor in front of Emily. He held the tip of the knife just inches from the back of the little girl’s head. “There are other ways for Anna to come with me.”
Abby screamed into the gag in her mouth. She began to rock back and forth violently, pulling on the pipe.
“We do not live in your world,” Aleks said, glancing at his knife. “These things cannot hurt us.”
“No.”
“The choice is between your life and Anna’s. What are you willing to do for her?”
“Don’t . . .” Michael lifted the pistol.
“Are you willing to trade your life for hers?”
“Stop!”
“Put the gun to Abigail’s head, Michael. If you love this child you will not hesitate.” He moved the knife even closer.
“Wait!” Michael screamed.
Emily looked up at him. In that moment Michael saw his daughter as a teenager, a young woman, an adult. It all came down to this moment.
“Make your choice now, Michael Roman,” Aleks said.
Michael knew what he had to do. Aleks was right. There really was no choice.
FIFTY-FOUR
There had been other suitors over the years, many interlopers in their lives. Once, in a small village in Livonia, a young boy had dared speak with him about his daughter, Marya. The boy claimed to be the son of the town’s bailiff. This was after the second siege of Reval. Led by Ivan the Terrible, there was a sickness in the air, a state of lawlessness that swept the towns of Dünaburg, Kokenhausen and Wendenthe, and Aleks had dispatched the boy with no consequence.
Marya had been nearly seventeen at the time, a young woman of incomparable beauty. As she and Anna flowered to womanhood, they had begun to manifest small differences, not only in their personalities, but also in their looks. From a few yards away, to most people, they were indistinguishable from each other – their honey-colored hair, their flawless skin, their clear-blue eyes. But a father knows his children.
And now this man. A man who claimed to be their father. Another intruder.
Aleks stood outside the church, a bitter wind cutting along the ridge that led to the banks of the river. Anna sat before him, wrapped in fur. At her feet was a bundle, a swaddled, stillborn infant.
Aleks looked at the imposters.
Next to the dead child sat the grey wolf; primordial siver eyes set deep into the smooth dome of his head.
“Do it now,” he said. “Or I will do it for you.”
The gray wolf bayed.
The man raised the weapon, and pointed it at the woman’s head.
FIFTY-FIVE
The building was a three-store commercial block on Ditmars near Crescent, home to a bodega, a dry cleaner, and the shuttered space on the end. There was a driveway to the right, leading behind the building. Next to it was a six-suite, two-story apartment building. Powell had been by this block many times, but like so much of New York, she hadn’t noticed it.
Above the storefronts were living quarters. Along the block the windows on the upper floors were open, some with sheer curtains billowing out in the warm spring evening, some with the sounds of dinner being prepared, the evening news blaring its tragedies.
Powell stepped up to the front entrance. It was covered by a rusted steel riot gate. The windows were soaped, all but opaque. Everything seemed benign, empty, peaceful. Had she been wrong about this? She had gotten reports from her teams every minute or so. There had been no sign of Michael Roman or the girls, no sign of their cutter.
Fontova came around the corner. He had gone to check the back entrance to the building.
“Anything?” Powell asked.
“The window in the back door is broken.”
“Recently?”
“Yeah. The glazing doesn’t look weathered.”
“Any vehicles?”
“No, but there’s no glass laying on the ground in front of the door.”
“It was broken from the outside.”
“Yeah. And it’s got blood on it.”
The two detectives looked at each other with understanding. “Let’s get some backup here.”
Fontova lifted the handset to his mouth, and called it in.
That’s when they heard the gunshots.
FIFTY-SIX
The blasts were deafening in the confined space. Michael was stunned at how easy it was to do what he had done, how little pressure was needed to
pull the trigger, how short the journey between life and death. He had talked about it for many years, had sat in judgment and conclusion of those who had said things like “it just went off,” and “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” never having any understanding of the process.
Now, having pulled the trigger, he knew it wasn’t that hard. The difficult part was making the decision to aim the weapon.
Michael had pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired the rounds. He kept pulling the trigger, but it seemed that Aleks had told him the truth. There were only two bullets in the gun. Michael ejected the magazine and threw the two parts in different directions.
As soon as the echo of the gun blast began to fade, Aleks stood. Michael could see in his eyes a fierce determination to bring this all to a close. He strode with slow deliberation toward Abby, the knife at his side.
“You have made a mistake,” Aleks said. “You could have made this far less painful for your wife, for yourself, but you chose to defy me. To defy your destiny.”
He stopped in front of Abby, raised the knife. There was nothing Michael could do to stop him.
“Isa!” Emily screamed.
In that second – a moment where Emily cried out the word father in Estonian –Aleks turned, looked at Emily. Michael knew there would never be another moment. He ran at Aleks, hitting him full force in the side, knocking him backwards. The two men crashed into the drywall with a bone-jarring force. Aleks righted himself, and lashed out with his fist, catching Michael high on the left side of his head, stunning him, showing him flashes of bright white light behind his eyes. Michael went down to the hardwood floor, but was able to roll, absorbing most of the impact with his shoulder. He sprang to his feet, and was now face to face with Aleks. Aleks slashed at the air between them, closing the distance little by little. The blade came in high, but Michael sidestepped. He caught the blade flat on his upper arm.
Michael backed across the room, toward his daughter. In the background he could hear Abby screaming into her gag, the sound of the metal pipes clanging as she struggled ferociously to break free. Michael was breathing hard, the blows he had taken to the head were clouding his vision. Aleks slashed at him again, this time slicing open the back of Michael’s right hand. As Michael pulled away, he stumbled over something on the floor, momentarily losing his balance.
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