The trails were mostly wooden boardwalks over the wet earth, about four feet wide. Tall, narrow trees overhung the paths, almost shutting out the waning sunlight, despite the fact that most of the leaves had deserted their posts. The group walked at a brisk pace while Hannibal opened his cell phone.
“Rissik.”
“Hey, Chief, it’s Hannibal. I got a long, fascinating story to tell you, but it will have to wait. Right now, I need some help and I’m pretty sure I’m on your side of the Potomac.”
“What kind of help?” Rissik asked. “You sound kind of out of breath.”
“That’s because I’m out here hiking with a couple of friends, including Viktoriya Petrova.”
“The girl you said you were protecting.”
“That’s right,” Hannibal said, “but it’s turning out to be more challenging than I thought. Right now a couple of cars full of Russian mob muscle is chasing us and I could really use a little police assistance here.”
Hannibal heard Rissik’s chair squeak as he stood. “Moving now, buddy. Where are you?”
“We’re trying to lose them on Roosevelt Island. Make lots of noise when you get here, okay?”
As Hannibal ended the call he heard Viktoriya say, “I’m cold,” to no one in particular. He turned long enough to see Ivanovich, bringing up the rear, holster his weapons long enough to pull off his sport coat and hand it to the girl. Then he drew his Browning Hi-power from the holster under his right arm, and pulled a smaller Colt Commander from a holster in the back of his waistband.
“Hannibal, I wonder if you realize the irony.”
Right then all Hannibal could think of was turning at random points in the trail so there would be no pattern for their pursuers to guess. “Something here strikes you funny?”
“Not funny, my friend, ironic,” Ivanovich said. “We Russians, we are very sensitive to irony.”
“Oh yeah,” Hannibal said, his breathing getting deeper as they hiked into the gathering darkness. “Dostoyevsky and Chekov and all those guys were into it. But we’re not being chased by wolves we think are friends coming to save us.”
“No, but consider this,” Ivanovich said. “Jamal Krada murdered three people. “Two of his victims died slowly of gunshot wounds that would not have been fatal if they’d gotten immediate medical attention. And he didn’t hate these people; they were just in his way.”
“I see. He got his comeuppance in a similar way. I suppose that’s ironic. Or maybe it’s just fitting, in a karmic kind of way. Like my dad used to say, what goes around comes around.”
They lost the hollow sound of their feet on wooden planks as they moved onto a branch of the path that put them back on hardpacked earth. A bench invited them to stop and rest for a while. Hannibal declined.
“All right then, consider this,” Ivanovich said. “We have come to Roosevelt Island to find peace and avoid war.”
“Going to have to explain that one to me,” Hannibal said.
“You Americans are so ignorant of history,” Ivanovich said. Hannibal could hear a smile in his voice. He was enjoying this. “Just after the turn of the century, my country was at war with Japan,” Ivanovich went on. “Your President Roosevelt offered his good offices as mediator between Russia and Japan to negotiate the conditions of peace. With his help, they worked out a peace settlement in a couple of months.”
“OK, that is ironic,” Hannibal said. “Was it a fair settlement?”
“Well, I’m sure the Americans thought so. It led to a loss of face for us, and eventually to the downfall of the czar, but it saved many lives.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to negotiate a peace here, between us and the Red Mafiya, and maybe save a few lives?”
“With Roosevelt’s own island helping us, maybe.”
After covering about twenty minutes of trails, Hannibal came to a crossroads with a large tree at its center and walked into a heavy branch hanging over the road. He stopped and tucked his sunglasses into his jacket. A bench on the other side of the trail offered a comfortable resting place. He turned to face his followers. It was getting dark now, but he could still make out the maroon stain on Viktoriya’s dress below the sport coat she had wrapped around her. Behind her, Ivanovich didn’t seem to mind the chill at all. Unlike Hannibal, he was bred for this.
“This is a good place to leave the trail,” Hannibal said. “Then we just hunker down and wait for the police to search us out. This way.”
Again Hannibal led. He stepped down about a foot to the marshy land off the hard packed trail. Five steps off the path the ground became very wet. His feet sank ankle deep into the muck, but six steps later he came to a mound surrounding a tree trunk. The tree was nearly a foot thick, and he figured the mound was the top of its root ball and therefore was relatively solid. He turned to face the trail but could not see it. If he didn’t know what direction he had come in, he would never have found it. As he dropped to a seated position, he saw Ivanovich approaching, with Viktoriya in his arms.
“Her heels would have sunk into the marsh so deep she’d never have gotten free,” Ivanovich said. Hannibal decided to say nothing. Ivanovich lowered the girl onto the mound on the other side of the tree. After settling her in place he bent and kissed her very respectfully on the cheek. Then he walked around to Hannibal and held out his hand.
“What’s this?” Hannibal asked, looking up into the Russian’s ruddy face and making out a smile.
“Probably good-bye,” Ivanovich said. “I’m going to a better position to watch over you two. When the police arrive you will say, with complete honesty, that you do not know where I am. It is unlikely that we will meet again. So this is my chance to wish you well, and say that it was a pleasure to work with a man I could respect.”
Hannibal seized the offered hand in a fierce grip. “Likewise, brother. And if you ever want to find a better path, let me help you.”
“Thank you for the offer,” Ivanovich said, “but my path is set and I know what lies at its end.”
Then Aleksandr Ivanovich took two steps back and disappeared into the darkness.
Now that he was sitting still, Hannibal realized that it was getting cold. Not the cold of his youth, not Berlin- in-the-winter cold, but maybe approaching the freezing mark. It didn’t get a whole lot worse than that in what passed for winter in the District. He sat with his back against the tree and his hands on his upraised knees and wished his behind wasn’t wet from the marshy ground. But the slip of a girl behind him wasn’t whining, so he certainly wouldn’t either.
Besides, he knew it wouldn’t be long. He figured twenty minutes for Rissik to assemble a team and get on the road. Maybe a half hour to get to the island. They’d search with lights and loud hailers and that would be enough to discourage even rabid Russian mobsters. Viktoriya would support his story, as convoluted as it was. And whatever coroner had Krada would tie the bullet to a Russian mob gun. So he had a few minutes, and only a few more questions.
“Viktoriya,” he whispered.
“Yes?” There was a slight shiver in her voice. She was cold too.
“You attacked Krada for killing your parents, but you never mentioned your husband, Dani Gana.”
Silence.
“That same weird little gun Jamal killed your mother with was used to kill your husband. You knew Jamal shot Dani, didn’t you? You knew before I did.”
“Yes.” Viktoriya said. It was cold confession, but now that the door was open he could draw more out with less effort.
“How did you know?”
“Because Dani told me,” she said. “The doorbell rang and he answered it and when he opened the door, Jamal shot him. He told me when I found him in the living room. Before I called for help.”
“How did he even know where to find you?” Hannibal asked. He heard short rapid breaths, the kind that precede sobbing.
“It was my fault,” she said, almost too low to hear. “I always called Jamal when I was scared or in trouble. I didn’t know that he would…”
Hannibal fell silent as something tiny drifted past his nose. It was followed by a second speck, then a third, and then a steady falling flock of them. White flakes were landing on the back of his gloved hands and disappearing as soon as they touched him, only to be replaced by others.
“I don’t believe it. It’s snowing,” he said, although he knew it was unnecessary.
