“YOU MUST hate my guts,” Annika said when she and Alli were alone in the solarium.
“Not really.” Alli was watching Jack and Kharkishvili walking between the martial lines of apple trees. “But I am disappointed.”
Annika produced a rueful laugh. “Yeah, I definitely deserved that.”
“Why did you do it?” Alli asked. “Why did you lie?”
Leaning over, Annika pushed a lock of newly shorn hair off Alli’s forehead. “I had no choice.”
Alli moved away. “Don’t change the subject. That’s what my father and all his friends do when a question is too difficult or embarrassing. It’s a politician’s trick, and I hate it.”
Annika went and sat down in a teak chair, sinking back into the patterned cushions. “I explained to Jack as best I know how.” She gave Alli a rueful smile. “But I know that some actions can’t be explained away, some actions stay with you, like a stigma. I was prepared for that with him, but not with you.”
“Oh, please, don’t bullshit me.” Alli crossed the room, leaned against the glass windows, staring out at the now deserted apple orchard with its sharp, twisted branches seeming to scrape the mottled gray and blue sky.
Annika watched her as she moved, as she crossed her arms over her breasts, as she looked longingly out onto the empty grounds. “The truth is fixed, immutable,” she said, “because if it contains even a grain of a lie, it’s no longer the truth.” By examining the girl’s face she could work out just how much Alli missed Jack when he wasn’t with her, but also a terrible sadness. There was a strong cord between them, no doubt, she thought, but there was also something dark there, a lie of some measure, or perhaps something unspoken, an omission, a truth deliberately unsaid. “But a lie comes in infinite gradations, it can be judged on a scale, whereas truth cannot, you see, because a lie can contain a grain of the truth, or even a great deal of truth and still remain a lie. But of what sort, on what level?
“You can tell a, what, a white lie, I think it’s called in English, isn’t it?” When Alli didn’t answer, didn’t even move from her blank contemplation, she continued undeterred. “You’re not punished for telling a white lie, are you? You needn’t feel remorse or guilt, or wish you could take back your words.”
“Why do you say it as if it’s about me,” Alli said. “It isn’t about me.”
“I was just using a figure of speech,” Annika replied, a deliberate lie. “How would I know if you had lied, or to whom?” She paused, as if expecting an answer, then went on. “Anyway, a lie can be useful when the truth won’t do, when it’s too sad, for example, or too shocking.” Alli twitched, one shoulder rising involuntarily as she sought to protect herself from the assault of Annika’s words.
“The point is you make a choice when you tell a lie, or even when you withhold the truth—”
“Stop it!” Alli said sharply. Her face, when she turned it toward Annika, was very pale.
“—even in instances when you must tell a lie in order to protect a person you’re close to or love, or in order to serve a higher end. This is what happened to me.”
The two women eyed each other, almost, it seemed to Annika, as if they were gladiators in the Forum, overlooked by the Tarpeian Rock, the ancient burial place of betrayal. She felt energized by this electric charge, by the hope that the ongoing conflict between them would jolt the girl out of her traumatized shell.
“Every lie has its moment when it’s believed,” she said, with her teeth slightly bared, “even by those whose nature it is to doubt, or to be cynical. Lies are seductive in nature because they’re what you want to believe, or contain an element, a seed of the distrust you yourself harbor, though you may not even be aware of it.”
Alli gave a strangled little cry as she peeled herself from the glass. “Is this the way you think you can gain my trust?”
“I never even considered gaining your trust. The man who kidnapped you, who held you hostage, stole your trust, and you’re incapable of getting it back.”
Tears sprang to Alli’s eyes as she tore out the door, stumbling across the flagstone terrace, around the side of the house, blindly following some strange, self-destructive instinct that took her toward the cliff face and the falloff to the churning water below.
TWENTY-THREE
DENNIS PAULL awoke in a room full of windows. Early morning light flooded the polished wood floor, by which he knew he wasn’t in a hospital or institutional room. He wasn’t bound, either. He was, however, disoriented. Where was he? What happened? The last thing he remembered . . . Christ, his head hurt.
“I have something for that headache.”
He turned his head at the sound of a woman’s voice and immediately experienced a tightness where the dart had sunk in. The woman was dressed in a conservatively tailored suit that was too stylish to have been bought on even a G-15 salary.
“Dr. Denise Nyland. I’m a neurologist.” She smiled as she held out two pills in one hand and a glass of water in another. “Here, these will help.” When he hesitated, she added, “They’re just Tylenol, I assure you.”
He took them from her and, when he had checked the logo imprinted on each tablet, he swallowed them with the entire glass of water.
“I know you must have a lot of questions, Mr. Secretary,” she said. “All of them—and more—will be answered shortly. In the meantime, I suggest you rest while I tell you where you are.” She glanced out one of the windows, where a marble fountain plumed water into the air. Beyond were lawns and carefully sculpted shrubbery, even perhaps a small maze, though from his present angle he couldn’t be certain. He rose from the chair in which he’d been placed and at once felt a wave of dizziness, so that he was obliged to sit right back down.
“You’re in Neverwood, an estate owned by the Alizarin Global Group. I’m employed by the firm.”
Paull fought his way through the vertigo and the pounding in his head to pay strict attention. Alizarin Global was the entity that had paid for General Brandt’s off-the-grid trips to Russia. He’d never gotten around to Googling it, his mind taken up by grief, remorse, self-pity, and rage following the news of Louise’s death.
“Then you must be the one who concocted the chemical that was on the dart.” Paull had trouble enunciating, as if his mouth had been shot up with novocaine.
“Neverwood is in Maryland, precisely ninety miles from the White House,” Doctor Nyland said, pointedly ignoring his remark.
Paull frowned, which caused the pain in his head to eddy up. “Why was I brought here?”
“In a moment, Mr. Secretary, all will be made clear.” That professional smile, clean and icy as a toothpaste ad, held no malice whatsoever. “For the moment let it suffice to say that no one means you any harm. As soon as you are briefed, you’ll be handed the keys to your car. You’ll be free to go without any strings attached.”
“What is Alizarin Global?”
Doctor Nyland merely smiled. “Good-bye, Mr. Secretary. I wish you a pleasant day, wherever your journey leads you.”
And then he was left alone for precisely six minutes. He timed it on his watch, which hadn’t been taken from him. Using his time alone productively he went through his pockets and determined that, apart from his car keys, his possessions were present and accounted for.
At the six-minute mark the door opened and a young, pleasant-faced man entered the room. He was dressed in a dapper business suit, and he smelled vaguely of a cologne nearly as expensive as the clothes he wore. Clipped to the breast pocket of his jacket was a small laminated tag in the shape of a hexagon. It was orange, or perhaps a warm red. It bore no type or name; it must be, Paull intuited, Alizarin Global’s logo.
“Good morning, Mr. Secretary,” he said briskly, with the same slick smile that had animated Dr. Nyland’s face. He clipped an identical logo tag to Paull’s jacket. “I imagine you’re hungry.” Stepping back, he gestured to the open doorway. “There’s coffee waiting, and freshly baked croissants with homemade strawberry jam. I understand strawberry is your favorite.”
Without comment Paull followed him out into a hallway with hunter green walls, brass light sconces, and paintings of famous sailing ships of the 1900s. The man approached double pocket doors made of carved ebony, which he slid soundlessly open. He stood on the threshold, indicating that Paull should enter. As soon as Paull did, he slid the doors shut.
Paull found himself in an old-fashioned drawing room, complete with a marble fireplace, a baby grand piano, a pair of oversized chesterfield sofas, a wet bar along one wall opposite another filled floor to ceiling with books. An enormous bay window overlooked a pond elegantly spanned by a Japanese-style bridge. A brass ship’s clock,
