Last Snow

the end of which the bearlike man lay in a pool of his own blood.

In self-protective reflex Jack pointed the gun at him, but Annika, having emerged from the collapsing automobile, strode quickly up to him and pushed down the barrel.

“This isn’t possible,” Jack said as the hulking figure stopped in front of him. “I shot you dead in the alley behind the Bushfire club.”

“Aren’t you going to thank me? No?” Ivan Gurov waggled the M72 slightly. “Don’t be rude. Without me you would have gone over the cliff instead of the American agent sent to kill you.”

PART THREE

Portia:

“Think you I am no stronger than my sex,

Being so father’d and so husbanded?”

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

   Julius Caesar

TWENTY-TWO

“DAD, EVERYONE is lying to you.”

With the echo of Emma’s voice in his head Jack turned on Annika. “What the hell is going on?” He was so filled with fury his voice had turned guttural. “What are you playing at?”

“There’s an explanation—,” Annika began.

“Of course there’s a fucking explanation.” His voice rose even more. “You and Gurov were in on this from the beginning. Do you think I need an explanation from either of you now? I used Gurov’s gun to shoot him, but it couldn’t have been loaded with live ammo. That scene in the alley was a con.” He turned on Gurov. “The other man, your pal . . .”

“Spiakov.”

“Yes, Spiakov, where is he?”

Gurov shrugged. “Six feet under, I imagine. We required verisimilitude.”

“Verisimilitude.” Jack turned back to Annika. “You murdered a man for verisimilitude?”

“It had to be real,” Annika said. “At least part of it.”

Jack was only dimly aware of Alli getting out of the car and approaching them, precisely what he told her not to do. “What I want to know is why you lied to me. Why are you offering an explanation now, at this late date?”

“Because now we’ve gotten you here,” Annika said simply. “Because, dammit, it’s time.”

“You told me you hated Gurov, that he was an assignment.”

“He is part of my assignment.” Annika was getting worked up herself. “I only lied to you when it was absolutely necessary.”

“And that makes it okay? That’s a forgivable offense?”

“Don’t confuse me with your ex-wife, who lied to you constantly,” Annika said hotly. “Believe me, I haven’t confused you with anyone else. You’ve made that quite impossible.”

“What is that, your idea of a fucking compliment?”

Jack took a threatening step toward her, and the confrontation might have degenerated into physical violence if Alli hadn’t stepped between them before Gurov could make a move.

“Stop it, the two of you!” she cried.

“If you’ll only give me a chance to explain,” Annika said, taking her cue from Alli.

“Jack, don’t you want an explanation?” Alli chimed in.

“I already have an explanation.” It was clear he was furious. “She’s been lying to me from the moment I met her.”

“Maybe she had a good reason.”

“There’s no good reason for lying,” he said.

“You know that’s not true.”

“Why are you taking her side?”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” Alli said. “Anyway, even if you don’t want to know what’s really going on, I do.”

That slowed him down a bit, at least enough for Annika to say, “I’m sorry, Jack, really and truly sorry.”

He saw a change in her, perhaps because she was asking for forgiveness, but, probing beneath the surface, more possibly because of her proximity to Alli, or Alli’s palliative words, as if being near Alli or even hearing her voice changed her subtly, brought her back to herself, whatever lay under her mask, in her unknown and unknowable heart Jack had talked about last night.

“If this could have been done another way,” Annika continued, “I promise you it would have been. But we had no choice.”

“We?” he said, more calmly in response to his probing. “Who is ‘we’?”

“AURA,” Annika said.

But immediately his anger fired up. “The entity or business or whatever you claimed to know nothing about.”

Alli put a hand on his arm. “Let’s not go there again,” she said.

“It may be necessary.” Jack’s eyes were on Annika.

“We’ll deal with that then,” Alli said as if she were the smartest person in the group. Certainly she was the calmest.

He looked over at her, and taking in her tentative smile, nodded his assent. “All right,” he said to Annika, “who or what is Aura?”

She said, “It’s an acronym for the Association of Uranium Refining Allies. It’s made up of—”

All at once, Ivan Gurov stepped forward. “Annika, no. This is a very bad idea.”

She shook her head. “He has a right to know, Ivan.”

“This could lead to dire consequences.”

“Your job is done. Stay out of it.”

Addressing Jack again, she continued: “AURA is made up of a group of Ukrainian businessmen, certain international energy interests in the Ukraine, and a small circle of dissident Russian oligarchs.”

The moment Ivan Gurov had returned from the dead Jack had seen the nature of the universe into which he had plunged. Now, at last, he saw its structure, as clearly as if he were looking at a scale model of Earth’s solar system.

“So we have AURA on one side,” Jack said, “and Yukin, Batchuk, and their creation, Trinadtsat, on the other.”

“Observe, Ivan, this is a man who sees more than you or I,” Annika said. “A man who—how shall we put it?—sees around corners. How much he has gleaned from only the stray bits and pieces he’s picked up along the way, he’s a chess master who sees the endgame forming the moment his opponent makes the first move.”

The sound of an approaching car brought them all into awareness of their surroundings.

“I think,” Gurov said, glancing dubiously at the wreck of the Zil, “I’d best get the car.”

THE CAR in question turned out to be a clunky cab, decrepit but, because of that, absolutely