For Anton, it was about the money. For John, it was about atonement. He had left Northfall to escape himself. He had been given a second chance at life, and he was trying to decide if he was worthy of it. Every mile he traveled from Minnesota felt like a necessary distancing. And every punch, every blade, every bullet he took from there on out had a chiseling effect, so the plaque of who he used to be gradually fell away. In Afghanistan, he took a flamethrower to a field of poppies and the men who guarded it. In Brazil, he crashed a truck going eighty miles an hour into a convoy carrying the kingpin of a human-trafficking network. In Nigeria, he detonated C-4 charges in a warlord’s compound, and in the South China Sea, he sank the yacht of an online scammer. One way to be absolved in the judgment of the world is to become the judge yourself.
Then came the job in Russia. A member of the Bratva—a man known as Ox—had broken away and formed a splinter group, and the two factions were warring over money, drugs, territories. Anton wasn’t sure who contacted Ronin via the Dark Web but guessed it was a government official who needed the street violence to end. At a luxury spa and steam bath in the Khimki Forest, Ox would be celebrating his birthday, and John and Anton were hired to make it his last.
But a warning came with the job: Ox wasn’t a standard target, their client said. Something about him was different. He had changed, and the change had inspired him to leave Bratva and go it on his own. “What is this supposed to be meaning?” Anton asked, and their client sent them a file that included photos and a message: He calls himself Ox for a reason.
They staged the hit in the steam bath because, as Anton said, “Does not matter how big of a sausage you are having between legs, when naked, we are all vulnerable as babies.” The entire facility had been rented out by Ox’s group, and guards were stationed throughout the building. But Anton and John didn’t have to sneak by anyone. They were already there. They had broken in before dawn and hidden in the laundry room, where they’d donned the white uniforms of the staff.
They carried in their arms stacks of towels inside of which they’d tucked Berettas snouted with silencers. They made it as far as the steam bath before a man with a buzz cut held up his square hand and said, “No farther.” “But the party just called the front desk and requested towels,” Anton said in Russian, and the man said, “Then I’ll deliver them myself.”
Anton shrugged and made as if to pass the towels. A muffled thump sounded—the cough of the silenced bullet. Blood fronded the wall behind the man. His face registered disbelief just before he crumpled to the floor. John and Anton dropped their towels on him in a messy shroud. When they opened the door, steam oozed out, and it was as if they were walking into a cloud. Their noses tingled with the smell of eucalyptus. Their sneakers squeaked on the tile as they crept forward.
They heard laughter up ahead, but the first man appeared from the side, his bare feet slapping the floor, their only warning. He had a peacock tattoo on his shoulder and wore a towel wrapped around his waist. He screamed when they double-tapped him, and that was when everything went to hell.
It was difficult to tell how many of them there were. Maybe four, maybe ten. They kept ghosting in and out of sight. Mostly they attempted to throw punches or sweep kicks, but someone broke a bottle of vodka and came at them with the sharded butt of it. Another used a wet towel to snap Anton’s pistol out of his hand. Gunfire clapped off the walls and made their ears whine. Blood misted the air and reddened the tiles.
And then Ox appeared. The pictures hadn’t done him justice. He stood so tall that he had to hunch to avoid the ceiling. His body was brutish, a hairless slab of muscle and fat. His gut was swollen and his cavernous bellybutton could have accommodated a cannonball. With a single hand he snatched up Anton by the waist and smacked him against a bench and then the wall until there came a sickening crack. Anton’s body flopped lifelessly when it was tossed aside.
John had two bullets left in the clip and fired them both into Ox, but they seemed to have no effect; they were simply absorbed into his bulk. He charged naked toward John. The floor might have shook or it might have been the pounding of his heart. A hand vised around his legs and he too was swept up and battered against the floor, the wall, even the ceiling—again, again, again. But he did not break. The tile did. And then the concrete beneath. And then the rebar within the concrete.
Eventually Ox tired and dropped him and heaved with breath. John lay at the bottom of a shallow crater with shattered tile edging it like broken teeth. He looked up at the giant looming over him. Though his head was massive, his eyes and nose and mouth were small, pinched into the center of his face. Ox was young. Maybe even younger than John. His voice was high when spoke. John didn’t know the language but understood him all the same: You’re like me? That’s what he’d said.
Slowly John rose. His chest and arms pulsed. A stardust glow shone through his skin. There was something inside him that had to get out—and he threw his arms forward as if to hurl something. A big block of kinetic energy came rippling out of him, and the cannon strike of it pulverized skin and muscle and bone. The giant did not fall but he flew back, vanishing into the steam and smacking some distant wall with enough force to shake the building and make the lights flicker.
That was the day John decided to accept his family’s invitation to come home at last. The ronin had wandered far and long enough.
32
* * *
After John’s mother died, all of her bad habits were forgiven or banished from his memory altogether. Her tendency to cry and throw things when she got drunk on red wine. Her inability to get out of bed for days at a time every January and February. Her refusal to allow anyone in the kitchen when she was cooking. None of that mattered. She became faultless, ethereal. She was the one who’d brought them all together for meals. She was the one who’d organized vacations. She was the one who’d demanded that family come before business. She left behind so much neediness, a terrible vacancy and insubstantiality that made John feel, as a teenager, like he was collapsing in on himself.
He was depressed to realize that he hadn’t truly loved her until she died. To make something valuable to someone, you had to take it away. Or at least threaten to. That was the way of things. That was certainly the case with his own life. And his father’s. And now with Northfall itself. He hadn’t given a damn about any of them until they were in danger of vanishing.
Now he sits by his father. The air smells of menthol and old sweat. His father’s PEG tube gurgles. His skin has mostly healed, but some bandages remain. John combs his thin white hair. He rubs lotion into his father’s hands, trying to be gentle, mindful of his arthritis. He pauses to spin the omnimetal ring along his father’s finger. The skin beneath it is red and swollen. He tries to slip it off but can’t. He and his father are the same in that way—they cannot unwed themselves of the metal grafted to them.
So many years ago, after his father sent him away to Stone Mountain Leadership Academy, John opened up his duffel to find a letter tucked into it. Neither he nor his father was inclined to heart-to-heart discussions, so this was a way for the old man to unload on his son without anyone raising his voice or slamming a door. Several days passed before John could bring himself to read it. In careful square handwriting—his father used only capital letters—Ragnar wrote, EVERY NEW BUSINESS VENTURE REQUIRES PATIENCE, AN UNWAVERING BELIEF IN THE INVESTMENT. THE PAPERWORK YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH RIGHT AWAY—THE LOANS, LICENSES, CONTRACTS, DECLARATIONS—IS THE EQUIVALENT OF A LOVE LETTER WRITTEN TO THE FUTURE. IT WILL TAKE SEVERAL SETBACKS AND SEVERAL YEARS BEFORE YOU SEE SUCCESS. THIS FAMILY IS A BUSINESS. YOU ARE ONE OF MY MOST VALUABLE INVESTMENTS. I BELIEVE IN YOU.
He was trying to say I love you but didn’t know how. John kept the letter for years, the stationery becoming wrinkled and yellowed and torn along the creases. He thought about responding several times but never did. Until now.
“I’m sorry,” he says to the silent figure. Not dead, but not really alive either.
/> He’s sorry about his mother. He’s sorry about his wild, reckless behavior as a teenager. He’s sorry for leaving Northfall. He’s sorry for lying. He’s sorry for being such a shitty son.
He’s sorry for what happened that night, the night the sky fell. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. He wouldn’t give it back, he wouldn’t tell me where he had hidden it—but I still shouldn’t have done what I did.” He holds his father’s hand as he talks. “I’ve had my share of setbacks, Pops. You were right about that. But maybe I’m on my way to becoming the man you hoped I might be. When you wake up, you’ll see.”
* * *
He doesn’t have much of a plan when he finds his sister in her office. She’s sitting behind her desk, staring out the window with a faraway look on her face. She doesn’t seem to notice him until he clears his throat. She tips her head in his direction and says, “That’s enough.”
At first John thinks she’s talking to him. Then her hands reach below the desk and she drags up her husband. “I said that’s enough.”
Her husband glances at John and wipes his mouth and stands unsteadily.
“You can go now,” Talia says and hitches up the elastic waistband of her track pants. “My brother and I need to talk.”
Another minute and it’s just the two of them. Wind wobbles the windows. A few snowflakes ride the air. The light outside is gravestone gray.
Normally Talia goes heavy on the makeup—smoky eye shadow, thick foundation, purple lipstick—but her face is scrubbed of it now. She looks older and more severe than he’s ever seen her. “I got bad news,” she says.
Whatever she has to say, he’s not here to listen. He speaks breathlessly to get it out: “I know what you’ve been doing to Pops.”
“What?” She curls a lip at him when he holds out his phone and pulls up a video. “What am I even looking at?”
“I bought it at Walmart for thirty-five bucks. A nanny cam.”
The screen displays Ragnar as he lies in his medical bed connected to IVs and monitors. His eyes flutter beneath his lids. He mutters in his sleep. A nurse sits beside him reading a Hollywood gossip magazine. She sets it down when Talia enters the room. Talia dismisses the nurse and says she would like some alone time with her father.
“That’s enough, Johnny,” Talia says from the other side of the desk.
But he keeps playing the video. It shows her holding a pillow over her father’s face—experimentally, for thirty seconds—releasing him, and studying his labored breathing. Then she tucks the pillow back under his head and neatens his hair and walks away.
She turns her chair to face the window. “I said that’s enough.”
John pockets the phone as he says, “I’ve got more, if you like. One time you crimped his IV and stopped the fluids. Another time you shut off the enteral pump. Another time you emptied his feeding bag into the toilet. Another time you changed the incline of the bed to decrease the infusion rate.”
“What do you want from me? You want me to cry? You want me to say I’m sorry? I won’t. I’m not. We got bigger shit to deal with than your sneaky-little-bitch ass recording me with a nanny cam.”
“Bigger than the contract you signed with the Department of Defense?” There. He’s laid it all out.
In response Talia blinks at him several times, like a camera changing its aperture, finding its focus. “Like I was saying before, I got bad news.”
“Did you just hear what I —”
“It’s Yesno. They got him.”
This is not the response he expected, and he doesn’t like the way his voice goes high when he says, “What?”
She pushes away from her desk and stands and stretches. “Have a drink with me, Johnny.”
“I don’t want a drink.”
She has a wet bar set up on a metal cart and she goes to it and grabs a bottle by the neck and pinches two tumblers between her fingers. “Macallan Thirty. Dad’s favorite. Come on. Drink with me.”
“Why did you do it?”
“They’re probably beating Yesno with a lead pipe right now and this is what you want to talk about? Business?”
“Dad isn’t business.”
“This family is a business, Johnny. That’s what Dad always taught us.”
“You started the fire, didn’t you?” he says. “You tried to kill him?”
She clinks the glasses and bottle down on the desk. “He should have retired a long time ago. The world has moved on. We had to move with it.”
“Talk to me like a human being.”
“Says the guy who’s the farthest fucking thing from a human being.” She sweeps an arm out so violently, he imagines he can feel the breeze of it. “What the fuck do you care, anyway, you sneaky little cunt? Since when do you give two goddamn cents about the old man? Go fuck yourself. I’m sick of your face.” Here her rage recedes and her voice softens. “But I’m willing to put up with it because I need you to help with Yesno. That’s what’s important right now. Are you hearing me? Yesno needs us.”
“Who—who has him?”
“What kind of a stupid question is that? Black Dog, of course.”
John doesn’t know what to do or what to ask or what to focus on. There’s too much coming at him at once. “Do you know if he’s okay?”
“Guessing not.”
“You ask for proof of life?”
“I asked. They haven’t answered.”
“Jesus,” John says. “Did they say what they want?”
“To parley. They’re proposing we meet someplace public. The Lumberjack Steakhouse.” “I don’t care if it’s land, equipment, money. Whatever it is, just give it to them. Who cares. We can’t let them —”
“We got a lot to figure out.” She uncorks the bottle and splashes each tumbler a quarter full. “And everything makes more sense with whiskey.”
She shoves the glass into his chest until he takes it. Then she returns to her desk. Absently he lifts the tumbler and drains it in one swallow. He licks his lips. His chest is full of fire. Normally the sensation ebbs to a pleasant burn, but right now his stomach and his lungs feel stacked with kindling soaked in kerosene. He clears his throat several times. Then coughs. He can’t seem to catch his breath.
Talia studies him with her head cocked. Her own glass sits on her desk. Untouched.
“Macallan Thirty,” he says, then coughs again. “That’s the same bottle Pops was drinking from that night.”
“You got it,” she says. She’s not smiling. She seems to take no pleasure in what’s happening. She watches him with clinical detachment. Even disappointment. “They say poison is a woman’s weapon. I personally prefer bats, but those wouldn’t do much good against you, would they, baby brother? Sometimes you need a softer touch.”
His vision grows uncertain. Every cough knocks him off balance.
“I was going to pin his death on you. The old man’s. The cop’s in the basement too. The prodigal son comes home and everything goes to hell and I’m on a jet to Mexico.”
“Fuck,” he says between coughs, “you.”
“I drilled a hole in the log, filled it with gunpowder, sealed it with putty. I figured if the poison didn’t get him, the fire would. Old man was a creature of habit. Started every day with his salad and coffee. Ended every night with his scotch and fire. Didn’t expect him to get out of here alive. Didn’t expect you to squirm your way out of the investigation either. But that IED stuffed into the floral arrangement sure helped you. Whoever the hell sent that didn’t do me any favors. All of a sudden you’re a hero.”
His brain feels like it’s flickering on and off. He doesn’t remember falling, but now he’s on the floor.
“Even I changed my mind about you. Maybe you could do some good after all, I’m thinking. Maybe my hell-raiser of a baby brother could be more than a patsy to me. Maybe he could be a defender, a soldier. But no. No, that’s not going to happen. You fucked that all up with your bullshit righteousness, Johnny boy.�
�
It’s unclear how much time passes, but he’s dimly aware of Talia knotting something at his wrists and ankles.
“Things didn’t work out exactly how I planned, but maybe that’s for the best.” She pats his cheek. “Because I think I got somebody who will take an interest in you. And Uncle Sam, he’s got deep pockets. You might be a worthless piece of shit, Johnny, but you’re a valuable weapon all the same.”
33
* * *
Talia is told to meet them at six. They made a reservation for supper at the Lumberjack Steakhouse. Table for four. At such a busy time, in such a public setting, she doesn’t think Black Dog’s people will dare make a scene, but if they try anything, bet your ass she’ll be ready.
Snow is falling. It melts on the roads and clings to the trees. Talia already spoke with Jenna on the phone to confirm she was working the shift. “Some shit might be going down,” Talia said, “and I need you to be looking out for me.” She promised to make it worth her while. “You and me, we have an understanding—am I right?”
Jenna said of course, but had Talia seen Johnny? He wasn’t responding to her calls or texts.
“No,” Talia said. “But I’m sure he’ll turn up.”
“He said he would go house-hunting with me. There’s an open house in that new development, Eagle Ridge? He said he wants to help us find —”
“That’s great,” Talia said. “I’m happy for you. See you tonight.”
She arrives at the restaurant an hour early. In the center of the dining room is a screened fireplace with a brick bottom and a metal chimney that pipes through the ceiling. Lit logs crackle and snap and scent the air with wood smoke.
Jenna shows her the table Walter Eaton reserved for them. Next to the window. “No,” Talia says. “Not there.”
She stations herself at the rear of the dining room at a round table below a mounted rack of elk antlers. Her back is to a corner. She can watch everyone come and go. “They don’t know you know me,” Talia says. “Keep it that way.”
The Ninth Metal Page 24
