Last Snow

Looking back, Alli broke away from Jack’s grip and ran back toward Annika. She ignored Jack’s yell, closed her ears to the pounding of his feet behind her. Neither Annika nor the cop were as yet aware of her, and she dropped her gaze to the field across which she ran. At last finding what she was searching for she slowed and scooped up a rock. Planting her feet with her left leg forward, she threw it with unerring accuracy. It struck the cop on the forehead, just a glancing blow, but it was enough to stop him in his tracks, enough time for Annika to come up on one knee, aim, and shoot him twice in the chest.

“MY GOOD Riet Medanovich,” Dyadya Gourdjiev said, “you should know there are two members of Trinadtsat downstairs even as we speak.”

“So after all this time you were playing us.” Boronyov drew a small-caliber pistol from his vest pocket. “You’ve betrayed us and everything we stand for.”

“Don’t be idiotic, I’ve done nothing of the sort,” Gourdjiev said dismissively. “Do you actually think you know what Trinadtsat is all about?”

“I know they’re after the same prize we desperately need if we’re to align ourselves with AURA and rise again as a dissident force Yukin can’t stamp out or bully.”

“Then you don’t know anything. Do us both a favor and keep your mind on what you’re meant to do. AURA needs your expertise and your contacts.” Gourdjiev put his back against the window and leaned on the broad sill. “Now please tell me what I want to know about who gave the FSB orders to assist Harry Martin and who Martin’s handler was.”

Boronyov said, “Let’s go down and talk to Batchuk’s ambassadors of pain.”

Gourdjiev was genuinely alarmed. “And announce to them that you’re still alive after all the trouble we went through to ‘kill’ you? That’s the last thing we’re going to do.” He came off the windowsill. “Where is this sudden aggression coming from?”

“Your relationship with Oriel Jovovich Batchuk. You two go way back, you grew up together, had each other’s back for years.”

A whiff of a revelation came to Gourdjiev. “This suspicion isn’t your style, Riet Medanovich.”

“No? Whose style is it?”

“Kharkishvili.”

Boronyov stared at him, silent as a sphinx.

“You understand what he’s doing.”

“He’s questioning the special relationship you have with Batchuk.”

As a gesture of frustration Gourdjiev jammed his hands into his coat pockets. “I’ve explained that.”

“No, you’ve explained nothing, or at least not to anyone’s satisfaction.”

“Be truthful, Riet Medanovich—”

“Have you been truthful with us?”

“I set you all up,” Gourdjiev said. “You, Kharkishvili, Malenko, the others. And now you think—”

“Kharkishvili says it’s all a con—a long con you cooked up with your good friend Batchuk.”

“That’s insane,” Gourdjiev said. “And furthermore don’t tell me you believe it, because I’ll laugh in your face.”

“At this delicate stage, when everything is at stake, it really doesn’t matter what I think or believe.”

“I see. All that matters is what Kharkishvili believes.”

“Think what you will.”

“Oh, I know what he’s done, Riet Medanovich, I’ve known it for some time,” Gourdjiev said. “Ever since I brought him on board he’s sowed the seeds of distrust in order to gain power, in order to displace me. It’s a ploy as old as time, but what it will do is rend us asunder, in civil war we will all fail.”

“He has a better plan.”

“That’s what all would-be tyrants and usurpers say.”

Boronyov appeared unmoved, or at least unconvinced. “We can end the speculation, distrust, and suspicion right now. All we have to do is go downstairs and talk to the ambassadors of pain.”

“Who was Harry Martin and who was his handler?”

Boronyov stared at him unblinkingly for a moment. “You know who I’m going to have to call to get the answers.”

Gourdjiev waved his hand in the air, Boronyov punched in a number on his cell phone, and spoke briefly to Kharkishvili. “All right,” he said finishing up. “Five minutes,” he said to Gourdjiev, who turned to stare out the window.

The kids and their mothers were gone but the lovers were still there, holding hands, talking perhaps about wedding plans. Their whole lives were ahead of them, Gourdjiev thought. His legs had begun to ache.

He did not turn around even when Boronyov’s cell burred. A moment later Boronyov said, “Harry Martin is a deep-cover assassin out of the American National Security Agency. His handler is General Atcheson Brandt.”

Good God, Gourdjiev thought in mounting agitation, now I know why he was after Annika. However, when he turned back to Boronyov his face was serene and untroubled.

“Now let’s forget all about you going downstairs. Yukin and Batchuk think you’re dead. You’ve got to remain in the shadows.”

Boronyov lifted the gun. “That assumes we’re going to allow these men to walk away.”

Gourdjiev’s mind was working overtime. “You want us to kill the deputy prime minister’s men?”

“No,” Boronyov said, unlocking the door, “I want to watch while you kill them.”

JACK GRABBED Alli around the waist, swung her off her feet, and ran with her toward the far side of the field where, on a rise, a chain-link fence separated it from the parking lots. No one followed them. Annika was up and running after them. As she came abreast of them she gave Alli a fierce grin. Fifty yards still separated them from the fence. Kirilenko was scrambling up the slope toward it. Gaining the crest, he hooked his fingers through the links and began to climb. There was no razor wire at the top so he had little difficulty reaching it.

They were close to him, having reached the slope themselves. They were scrambling up it when they heard the sharp crack. Kirilenko’s body arched backward as he lost his grip. The second bullet took part of his skull off, and he tumbled backward toward them. His trousers caught on a link, and he hung there, upside down, his rageful eyes glaring at them fixedly as blood turned his hair black and shiny as oil.

MONDAN LIMONEV folded the butt of the SVD-S Dragunov sniper rifle. He spent precisely twenty seconds admiring what he’d done to Rhon Fyodovich Kirilenko, whose corpse hung like a plastic sack of garbage from the chain-link fence. Without conscious thought he broke down the lightweight Dragunov with its polymer furniture. It was gas-operated, quieter yet more deadly than other rifles, and it fit in a case small enough to carry beneath one arm, like a baseball bat or a pool cue. The 7.62x54R steel-core rounds he’d fired into Kirilenko had done a satisfying amount of damage.

For precisely ten seconds he listened to the rushing of blood in his inner ears, the tympani of his heart within his ribs, and he felt the familiar exhilaration. There was nothing like the proximity to death to make him feel alive, vibrant, potent. What was life but mastery over others? He inhabited a universe of gods, who could snuff out mortal life with the slow pull of a trigger or the flick of a shining blade. What was Kirilenko now, nothing his mother would recognize, that was for certain.

He rose from his position on the top of a parked car and, clambering down, walked through the lot at a measured pace.

_____

“CHRIST, IS he dead?” Annika said.

“As a doorpost,” Jack, who was in a better position to see, answered.

“We’re pinned down here,” Annika said.

It was Jack who saw the figure rise from the top of a car in the parking lot and, with a small case under one arm, leap down and begin to walk away.