can see how nothing is simply how we remember it. We create our own past, our own history, it’s all fractured, pieced together, and yet this is who we become, imperfect but human.”
“WE’LL BE landing inside of twenty minutes.” Annika smiled into Jack’s face. “I’ve made this flight before, a number of times.”
“Then you know Ukraine.”
“Intimately.” She turned, looked back at Alli’s sleeping form. “For a young girl—”
“She’s twenty-two.”
“She can’t be just seven years younger than I am,” Annika said. “She looks sixteen.”
“Alli has Graves’ disease. It screws around with the pituitary gland.” He pointed to the side of his neck. “Her growth process was compromised when she was a teenager.”
Annika showed some surprise, or perhaps it was pity, it was difficult to say with her, a woman trained to be guarded even when she didn’t have to be.
Then she shrugged. “Well, no matter. I will be leaving you as soon as we set down.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jack said.
She raised an eyebrow. “No? Why not?”
“You said yourself that the FSB might be sending people after you.”
“I can take care of myself,” she said stiffly.
“Of that I have no doubt.” Jack pursed his lips in thought. “On the other hand, you’ll be easier to track down if you’re on your own.”
Annika tossed her head, dismissing his words. “I have many friends in Ukraine.”
“Friends or colleagues?” His pause was deliberate. “Ex-colleagues now. And if Batchuk is as powerful as you say, if he’s even half as vengeful as most Russians in high places, he’ll have compromised some, if not all, of your contacts.”
In the ensuing silence, both became aware that the aircraft was slowly losing altitude. Annika had been right on the money as to the length of the flight.
A range of emotions passed across her face like clouds brushed by a freshening wind. She seemed to be digesting his words, or possibly considering the range of her next moves. “Do you have an alternative to suggest,” she said slowly, “or are you simply stating a fact?”
“I’m doing both.” Jack led her to glance at Alli again. “Look, maybe her coming aboard is a godsend for us.”
Annika appeared on the verge of laughing in his face. “How could that possibly be?”
“We enter Ukraine as a family: mother, father, daughter. That will throw your FSB pals off the scent, at least for a while.”
“Really?” Annika cocked her head to one side. “And what passports are we going to use, Mr. McClure?”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“No, I thought not.” Annika nodded. “But that’s all right. I’ve been working out a plan while you and the girl were huddled together in the back. Assuming we’re flying to Kiev . . .”
“We are.”
“At least something’s gone right tonight. I know someone there.” She held up her hands, palms outward. “Don’t worry, he’s not an ex-colleague, he’s someone I unearthed on my own, the head of the airport immigration staff, who’s always in need of money to feed his gambling habit. You have money, I take it.”
“Don’t leave home without it.”
“Dollars, not, God forbid, rubles, which don’t do anyone any good, not even us Russians?”
Jack nodded.
“All right, then.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Let me get to work. Once my greedy friend escorts us past Immigration, there’s someone else I know who can forge us documents so we can become your mythical family and move about the city. Names?”
Jack thought a moment. “Mr. and Mrs. Charles. I’m Nicholas, you’re Nora.”
“Nora.” Annika wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t think I like this name.”
“Would you prefer Brandi, or maybe Tiffany?”
“Nora it is,” Annika said, already dialing. “And the girl?”
“Emma,” Jack said without thinking, because in this instance thinking would be fatal; thinking would point out all the flaws in this insane plan, just as it would put into glaring headlines the terrible risks he’d chosen to take the moment he’d decided to try and protect Annika from Ivan and Milan.
They took their seats and strapped in as the Fasten Seatbelt sign came on. Annika was chattering away on her cell, which meant that she had at least been able to contact her immigration official. What if he hadn’t been on duty, or was on vacation—though who in Ukraine took vacations at this time of the year?—or, worst of all, wasn’t answering his phone? But another, more benign outcome seemed to be taking place, so for the moment Jack sat back and tried to look at the situation from all angles, as he worked on thinking his way out of this jam.
His first option, once they were on the ground, was to call Edward, but he didn’t know whether that was the smartest option or the stupidest. The very last thing he wanted to do was to involve the President of the United States in what could turn out to be a major international incident. Relations with President Yukin were fragile enough as it was. Carson had spent the better part of this past week trying to undo the damage his predecessor had inflicted on U.S.-Russian relations over the past eight years. So in a clearheaded moment Jack decided that the man who could help him the most—the most powerful man in the free world—was also the most vulnerable and, therefore, off-limits to him.
His next option was to contact Dick Bridges and persuade him to use his clout in the Department of Defense to get him and Alli out of Kiev using a cadre of the clandestine agents from the CIA or the NSA. That plan also had its risks, not the least of which was Carson’s own warning not to let Bridges know what Jack’s mission was. If Bridges was working for Edward’s enemies and Jack told him what was going on, Jack would personally sink Carson’s administration before it even got rolling.
The third and last option he’d thought of involved calling Chief Rodney Bennett, his old boss at ATF. The problem there was that Bennett ran a regional office. Jack had no idea whether he had the contacts higher up to trust with this highly flammable information.
Precisely when had this situation become toxic, Jack wondered. When he’d overheard the conversation between Annika and Ivan? When Annika had been accosted by Ivan? When he’d become aware that Ivan and Milan had invaded Annika’s room? Each increment of last night was like a tiny glass tile with its own color, shape, and texture, meaningless on its own, but when pieced together they had led him to this fugitive place, where only the unknown awaited.
The aircraft kissed the tarmac with only the slightest of bumps. By this time Annika was on her second call and Jack had come to the glum conclusion that for the moment he was alone in hostile territory with the First Daughter and a Russian Security Service agent he scarcely knew, and both FSB assassins and
THE MAN who came on board with a slim-hipped swagger provided by his position was named Igor Kissin. He was not, as Jack had expected, Annika’s contact, but the contact’s emissary, a younger facsimile, who was authorized to take Jack’s money for the service Annika had been promised.
He glanced at Alli, and for a split instant Jack was terrified he had recognized her from photos in the press directly following the inauguration but then his lidded eyes moved on, tracking past Jack, who he didn’t look directly at, not even when he accepted payment. His burning black eyes were only for Annika, who he appeared to devour with his gaze. His high cheekbones and vaguely almond eyes hinted of his Asian ancestry. His skin was dark, glossy as satin, his mouth and jaw cruel and barbarous. Jack had no difficulty imagining him as a Cossack, bearing down on fleeing peasants as he set fire to their crops and houses.
“We should go now,” Annika said, after the money had changed hands.
Alli was slipping into her coat when Igor said, “Wait.” He had a deep, abrasive voice that rumbled through the cabin like mountain thunder.
They all turned to look at him.
