“Before we go any further…”
“Yes, Jack?”
“I need to know about Senator Berns. I need the whole truth.”
“And nothing but the truth, so help me God?” Her tone was mocking.
He didn’t laugh. “You don’t believe in God.”
“Not after what’s happened to me.”
The sun was shining in her eyes, and he knew that he had dreamed about them. He’d only known that he’d woken in the morning drenched in sweat, sad beyond bearing. He’d put every emotion he possessed on hold, throwing himself into tending to Alli and to his job, which kept changing shape like a chimera. Now he understood his sorrow, and his paralysis. Somewhere inside him, he’d been waiting for this moment; somewhere inside him, he knew it would happen.
“Senator Berns wasn’t one of the good guys, Jack.”
“Meaning?”
“He was dealing with a very nasty element here in Eastern Europe.”
“Enemies of your grandfather.”
“Enemies of mine,” she said. “And now enemies of yours.”
Jack was shocked. “Arian Xhafa?”
“Berns was facilitating the arms deals with Xhafa. Cutting-edge stuff, just off the DARPA assembly line.” She cocked her head. “Evil comes in all flavors and guises, Jack. It’s a sad fact of life.” Her smile turned rueful. “You don’t believe me. Berns was chairman of the Senate Military Appropriations Committee, which includes DARPA. Check for yourself.”
Jack didn’t have to; he’d already discovered this fact for himself. And now he was angry. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this last year?”
“You weren’t ready to hear it.”
“Damnit, Annika, how could you know that?”
“I made a reasonable assumption. Was I wrong?”
“Stop, for pity’s sake, making decisions for me!”
Her extraordinary eyes watched him closely. “This is what you do with Alli, no?”
Yes, it certainly was, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of admitting it. “That’s different.”
“I disagree. You and Alli are both adults.”
“The analogy is spurious. I have far more experience.”
“And that means you know what’s best for her.”
“Yes.”
“At all times.”
He clamped his mouth shut.
“Jack, consider how you bridled when I told you you weren’t ready to hear the whole truth about Senator Berns.”
She was as maddening as ever. Somewhere inside him was a burst of laughter because this maddening trait was one of the things that caused him to fall in love with her with a passion that turned him inside out.
Taking a deep breath to center himself, he said, “What happened after you killed Berns? Xhafa’s still getting armaments—even faster and in more bulk.”
“It’s the devil-you-know theory. The person who stepped into the vacuum is worse than Berns. Far worse.”
“Who is it?”
In the last failing glimmers of sunlight, Annika’s carnelian eyes seemed so lucid it was possible to believe he could see clear through them into her soul. This was one of the unique assets with which God and her mother had blessed her.
“Tell me, Jack, have you ever heard of the Syrian?”
“ANNIKA DEMENTIEVA has entered Albania.”
The Syrian, listening to this news, found that his knuckles had gone white where they gripped his satellite phone. Involuntarily, he moved farther away from Arian Xhafa, who was embroiled with Caroline in another of their religio-political-postfeminist debates. The Syrian found them amusing, but Xhafa, true to his nature, took them as deadly serious.
“Where in Albania?” he said, when he’d gone outside.
“Vlore.”
To the man on the other end of the line, he said, “Do you have a specific fix on her?”
“She’s been shadowed from the moment she flew in.”
The Syrian made an instant decision. “Then take care of the situation at once. I don’t want Xhafa getting wind that she’s nearby. Take her to the safehouse. You know which one.”
There was an instant’s hesitation. “She isn’t alone.”
The Syrian closed his eyes. “How many?”
“Three. A man, a girl, and a boy.”
“Your will, my hand.”
The Syrian put away the sat phone. He spent about fifteen seconds wondering what Annika was doing with a girl and a boy, but soon a landslide of business matters dismissed the thought from his mind, and it did not resurface until much later.
“I THINK we ought to move to a more secure location,” Annika said. She gestured. “I have a car waiting.”
“I promised Alli I’d let her talk to you about Liridona.”
Annika looked around. “In the car.”
“Why did you want to meet in such an open space?”
“Trust,” Annika said. “I wanted you to feel perfectly comfortable.”
He nodded, but said nothing. Gesturing to Alli and Thate, he walked with Annika into the deep shadow of a thin line of trees within which an enormous car was waiting, its engine thrumming in a deep register.
“I should introduce the kid,” he said, as Alli and Thate came up to them.
“No need.” Annika grinned at Thate. “He works for me.”
Thate and Alli got in the front seat with the driver, leaving Jack and Annika standing beside the open rear door.
“One of these days,” Jack said, “you’re going to give me a heart attack with your surprises.”
“God forbid!”
She placed a hand on his arm. It was a spontaneous gesture and yet it set off a fireworks display inside him. She must have somehow felt the ripple because she smiled.
“Oh, Jack, I never want to hurt you again.”
“But you will.”
“Not deliberately, this I swear to you.”
She leaned in and the kiss she gave him was as tentative as that first enigmatic smile. She drew back, but he caught her behind her neck, pulled her to him, and kissed her as he’d dreamed of kissing her in a reality he’d never thought could exist again.
He felt the world drop away from him. All that existed was the two of them, locked together, falling through space and time, back to when they had been together in the Ukraine last year, before the betrayal that was still a betrayal, but on another, slighter order of magnitude. A betrayal that could be forgiven without damages being assessed.
The pines above them shook and shivered, clouds passed by overhead, and the velvet evening seemed to
