“Meet?”
Willowicz gave him his instructions. “One hour,” he concluded. “Don’t be late.”
“When am I ever?”
Willowicz cut the connection, grabbed the paraphernalia he’d need, jammed it into the voluminous inside pockets of his custom-made overcoat, and went out into the hallway. As he pressed the call button for the elevator he thought about his partnership with O’Banion. It went back many years. Sometimes it seemed as if they had plowed through every shithole backwater of the Middle East, had climbed every dust-strewn mountain, stuck their necks out in every cave, and blown up half the Taliban. And still they came, like cockroaches overrunning an open box of sugar. He and O’Banion shared everything, there were no secrets in the mountains of Afghanistan and Western Pakistan where they had plied their bloody trade. They were closer than brothers; there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for each other.
But all bloody things come to an abrupt end. At some point, he and O’Banion had said fuck it. They had salted away enough money and they were tired of offing ignorant fanatics. Time for a change of scene. Which was when they’d come home, and almost immediately had hooked up with Gunn. He had shit for brains, just like all the ex- Marines who were now milking the government for millions. What they were doing wasn’t exactly rocket science. All you needed to do was produce torture and death, no questions asked, and the money showered down like manna. Oh, yeah, you needed the one thing he and O’Banion didn’t have—political connections. Gunn had them in spades, example in point: Henry Holt Carson’s patronage. On the other hand, as shit-for-brains bosses went, they could’ve done a lot worse than Gunn. At least he paid them top dollar, and he’d always been straight with them.
The elevator was still on the top floor. Cursing under his breath, he turned to the stairs door, pulled it open, and started down. Swinging around the landing, he saw a woman on the floor below. She was bending over, after having cracked off a heel of her lace-up boots. She was wearing a breathtakingly short skirt under which he could see that she was wearing nothing at all. Immediately, his second brain—the tiny, reptilian thing low down in his body—was activated. He felt a stirring in his trousers and, licking his lips, he strolled down the stairs.
She heard him coming and whipped upright. As she turned around to face him, he saw that her cheeks were flaming. She was hot—dark and exotic-looking. He thought she might be Eurasian.
“Good Lord,” she said, “how long have you been there?”
“Don’t worry.” He grinned. “Your secrets are safe with me.”
At which her cheeks continued to redden, which inflamed him all the more.
“Can I help you?” he asked before she could reply.
“Damn five-inch heels.” She held out the one that had broken off.
“I think you’d better take off your boots,” he said. And then with a wry smile, “Or I could carry you down.”
“That’s all right,” she said hastily. And, unlacing the boots, she handed them to him. “Would you be a gentleman?”
The moment he took them from her, the door to the hallway opened, Gunn came silently through, armed with a handgun fitted with a noise suppressor. Maybe Willowicz saw something in Vera’s eyes, but he was too besotted with her, and his reflexes failed him. He was in the process of turning when Gunn shot him twice; once in the back, once in the head.
Vera’s fuck-me boots clattered to the raw concrete. Stepping over the corpse, she picked them up. As she brushed past Gunn, she said, “You owe me a new pair of Louboutins.”
SOMETHING, PERHAPS his reptilian brain, remained alive after the girl and his murderer had left. His heart was barely beating and he lacked any sense of where he was. Nevertheless, the organism knew it was dying. This is, in the end, what separates man from beast. The foreknowledge of death.
Blunt or Willowicz or whatever his name really was became dimly aware of his cell phone lying against his cheek. It must have dropped out of his pocket when he fell. The shot to his back had severed major nerves. His legs felt paralyzed. He could scarcely move a muscle, yet he had just enough life left in him to move one finger. Trembling, it struck the side of the phone. As if on its own, it moved a fraction to the left and hit the autodial key.
The call went through and O’Banion’s voice echoed in the staircase.
“Willowicz? Hello? Willowicz?”
Blunt’s lips moved, forming pink bubbles that looked like membranes. Three times he tried to speak and failed. Then, at last, as the light began to fade, as even he lost his desperate hold on life, he managed two agonized words.
“He’s coming.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“WHAT ARE you doing with this phone, Jack?”
“Calling you, apparently. I assume the other number on it will connect me with Dyadya Gourdjiev.”
Annika sighed in his ear. “It would have, yes. Unfortunately, my grandfather is in the hospital.”
“Don’t worry,” Jack said, “the old boy’s too tough to die.”
There was a small silence, during which Jack saw Alli watching him like a hawk. He tried to smile, but it came out a grimace, which only amped her obvious anxiety.
As if divining the direction of his thoughts, Annika said, “How is Alli?”
“I think you know as well as I do.”
“I miss her.”
“I doubt that.”
“Now you’re being peevish. I’ve never made a secret how I feel about her.”
“Annika, you’re keeping one secret after another.”
Her laugh sounded forced, a small explosion of mixed emotions. “It’s true.”
Jack felt tongue-tied. He had been certain he’d never see or speak to Annika again, and here he was on the phone with her.
“Don’t come after me, you wrote me,” he said, “don’t try to find me.”
“And now I’ve found you. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, Jack?”
He wasn’t able to reply.
“Did Emma warn you I would come back into your life?”
Jack’s heart turned over. He recalled his conversation with Emma, her telling him that she wasn’t a seer. And yet, she had spoken of his continuing connection with Annika.
“Something like that.”
“She’s a smart girl.”
He was gripped by a sudden selfish impulse to sever the connection, but instead squeezed his eyes shut.
“What do you want, Annika?”
“What I’ve always wanted, Jack. To win.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, but you do. I need you, Jack. I need you and Alli.”
His eyes snapped open and he looked at Alli, who was standing not twenty feet away. She was staring at him, her head cocked to one side. At that moment, she looked so small, infinitely fragile. Damaged. Just like Annika was damaged. And for the first time, the thought hit him: Was Alli on her way to becoming another Annika? God forgive him, if that were true.
“Jack, I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating now. We’re all soldiers in the night, and because of this, like it or not, we’re pawns. No matter how strong we are, no matter how powerful our mentors and friends, there are always forces that wield more power. The more powerful they are, the deeper their cover. So on the surface this shadow war we wage seems impossible to win. We’ll always be defeated by those deeply hidden forces, no? But you and I know there is a path to beating them, because we know that the deeper these forces are buried the more secrets they hold. We only need one of those secrets to defeat them, yes?”
