And he supposed he knew the woman, Catherine Ling, who Rakovac called his mother. But he only knew her face and Rakovac’s ugly words and that faint memory.
“You’re a fool, Luke,” Mikhal said softly. He turned on his heel. “Come and see your precious books go up in flames.”
Thirty minutes later, Luke stood on the bank of the lake and watched the black smoke curl up to the gray sky from the pile of books heaped on the shore. The wind was whipping sharply, stinging his cheeks and causing the fire to leap higher.
Don’t cry, Luke told himself.
Mikhal was staring hungrily at his face, waiting for him to break, for the tears to come.
He wouldn’t cry.
He stared defiantly at Mikhal across the fire. If he looked at Mikhal instead of the burning books that had been his only friends, he could hold the tears back.
And he would never let him see how much it hurt.
“The skull wasn’t Luke,” Kelly repeated. “I’m so glad, Catherine.”
“So was I. I wanted to fall down at Eve’s feet this morning when she brought me in to see the reconstruction.” Catherine poured a cup of coffee from the fresh pot that Natalie had just made. “But the problem still exists. I have to find him.” She sat down at the table. “We can’t just wait for him to call and hope that he’ll let something slip or give us our chance.”
Kelly nodded as she lifted her orange juice to her lips. “The surveillance report. I’m doing the best I can. You’re reading it, too. You can see that there isn’t anything that you can put your finger on.”
“I thought you said there was always a pattern.”
“The pattern is there, but it’s hard to define.” Kelly frowned thoughtfully. “But lately I’ve thought I’ve caught glimpses.”
Catherine tensed. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve tried to fill in Rakovac’s background, so that I could get a handle on him. In the past nine years he’s been involved in all sorts of corruption. Bribing of officials in the Russian Parliament, drugs, vice, arms deals. His manipulation of the members of the parliament is what made him golden in the eyes of the U.S. Congress. He seems to have a magic touch where that kind of dealing is concerned. He used bribery, intimidation, even murder to get what he wanted from them.”
“Which is why Ali Dabala hired him to set up his Armageddon project.”
Kelly nodded. “He came highly qualified.”
“But none of this is doing us any good,” Catherine said impatiently. “I read the reports of the agents shadowing him and every meeting he’s had with his so-called clients was purely business. They were all checked out, and none of them had anything to do with Luke. It’s as if once he took my son, Luke no longer existed.” Her hand tightened on her cup. “And that scares the hell out of me.”
“He had to know he was being tailed,” Kelly said. “The agents even mention that they had no problem keeping track of his movements. You tell me he’s very clever. That means he didn’t care whether Venable knew about those meetings or his activities with all those other criminal groups. Until he started meeting with Ali Dabala. One meeting, then we start to see more holes.”
“Holes?”
“Periods when the agents appear to have lost contact with Rakovac. Sometimes for as much as forty-eight hours.”
“You said more. You noticed other periods like that?”
“The first time I went through the report, I skimmed over them. The holes didn’t appear with any regularity and some of them might have been periods that weren’t at all suspicious. Times when Rakovac might just have stayed in his villa for twenty-four hours or more. But I was getting desperate and decided to go back in and examine them more carefully.” She added, “They’re definitely worth looking at and seeing if I can see any pattern. We have to assume that Rakovac knew and let himself be followed when it didn’t matter to him. He had protection from Venable as long as he gave him what he wanted, and no matter what other dirtiness he became involved with, the CIA wasn’t going to step in.”
“Until they had information he might have become involved with terrorists.”
“That was too much for anyone to swallow. Rakovac conveniently disappeared.” She took a sip of her orange juice. “But he left the holes for me. That may help.”
“Then what are you doing just lolling here drinking orange juice? Get to work.”
“I’m working. I’m thinking about the sequences and how I can tie it together with what I know about Rakovac.” She took another drink. “But I don’t know enough about him. I know the filth he became later in life, but I don’t know how he started out. Most patterns start in childhood and stay in effect throughout life. What do you know about his early years?”
“Not much. He was born in the Republic of Georgia and involved in that short vicious conflict that involved South Ossetia and Russia. He was jumping from one side to the other all during the war. I wasn’t interested in his early years. I was too busy trying to fight the hell he was creating all around him as an adult.”
“I’ll see if Venable can e-mail me more details. I do know that he was only a teenager when he was first fighting the Ossetians, and he was exceptionally brutal and ugly. He’s had no permanent relationship with a woman. He prefers to have a variety of affairs with the kind of sadistic sex that he put Natalie through.”
“Oh, I can believe that. He’s mentioned in detail what he has in store for me.”
Kelly nodded. “But I’d like to find out more about his childhood. Maybe Kelsov can help me. No one should know more about him. After all, they did fight together before Rakovac betrayed him to Moscow.” She finished her orange juice and got to her feet. “I think I’ll go and find him. I saw him going toward the barn with Natalie.”
“You’re wrong. There’s one person who knows more about Rakovac than Kelsov.”
“Natalie?” Kelly nodded soberly. “I tried to do a little probing, but she shut down right away. I may try again. Or ask Kelsov to question her.” She opened the front door. “She seems willing to do anything for him.”
“Wait. You think these holes are really important?”
“Don’t you?”
“They could be. I’m hoping we’re not grasping at straws.”
“Sometimes grasping at straws can be productive. They’re a consistent in a multichanging landscape in Rakovac’s life. I have to look for consistencies and what events and personalities they’re associated with.”
“And then?”
She smiled. “Then I may see a pattern that may help you find your son.”
“I couldn’t make him do it,” Mikhal said when Rakovac answered the phone. “Luke’s become very stubborn. He’s beginning to defy me.”
“The little viper is like his mother. He’s just getting his teeth. You punished him?”
“In the most painful way possible for him. He’ll regret not obeying you.”
Rakovac was still disappointed. The idea to have Luke murder in cold blood had been pure inspiration. Though he had made sure that Luke was involved in Mikhal’s most brutal raids, there was something much more horrifying about a deliberate murder. It would have been agony for Catherine to realize what her son had become.
“You told me that you were coming to get him,” Czadas said. “When?”
“Is he becoming too much for you, Mikhal? After all, he’s only a child.”
“He’s not too much. At times, it’s been amusing…and profitable.”
“And you’re wondering if the profits will continue after I take Luke away from you.” Boarding Luke with Mikhal had been expensive but safe. Mikhal was the last person that Venable would suspect Rakovac of using to hide Luke since Rakovac had betrayed Mikhal’s precious cause to the Russians when he’d left the Republic of Georgia. Supplying Mikhal and his small group of freedom fighters with weapons periodically had been worth the price.
Besides, Mikhal had the streak of sadistic cruelty he had been looking for in a guardian for Luke. It would not have been safe for Rakovac to come often to Savrin House, but he had to be sure that Catherine’s whelp had the proper upbringing.
He smiled at the term “proper.” Not the word usually applied for the way Luke had been raised in the violence and blood of Mikhal’s savage attacks on the South Ossetia villages protected by Russia. Rakovac had grown up in
