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 Dunaburg, 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.”
