FIFTY-FOUR
Six weeks later, Alex was at her desk in her new office in Manhattan when her cell phone rang. She glanced at the LED and read the incoming number.
She recognized the country code: 39. Italy. She also recognized the number.
She smiled. She picked up. “Ciao, Gian Antonio,” she said.
He laughed. “I should be used to the technology by now, but I’m not,” he said in English. “You know who’s calling before you answer.”
“Consider yourself flattered,” she said. “I knew it was you and I picked up.”
“I’m deeply humbled,
She glanced at her watch. “What time is it there?”
“Evening,” he said. “So buona sera,”
“Buona sera.”
Within a minute, he moved to the objective of the call. “Your Russian has lost track of you,” Rizzo said.
“Which Russian?”
“There’s more than one? Federov. He’s been quite ill, you know.”
“I knew he was ill,” she said in a more somber tone. “I didn’t know how ill he was. Where is he?”
“Geneva,” Rizzo said. “He’s residing in a place called Le Clinique Perrault.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
There was a heavy pause. Rizzo’s voice assumed a grim tone. “He’s in a-What do you call it in English?” he asked. He switched to Italian to be clear. “Uno ospedale per i malati in fase terminale. Un ospizio.”
“A hospice,” Alex said, her chair moving forward. It took a moment for it to sink in.
“Terminale,” he said again.
“Uh-oh,” she said.
“He phoned me. He says there is something enormously important,” Rizzo continued, changing back to English. “And he will only talk to you.”
“Give him my number,” she said gently. “He can phone me anytime that he-”
“No, no. He wishes to speak to you-and only you- in person,” Rizzo advised.
She sighed and felt the weight of the news. “Gian Antonio, I’m beat. I just started a new job in New York. I don’t know whether I have another trip in me right now. Know what I mean?”
“Yes, I know, I know,” he said. He paused. “Advise me what flight you will be on. I’ll meet your flight in Geneva. Would that make it any easier?”
“I didn’t say that I was going.”
“Not yet, you didn’t, no,” Rizzo said. “But I know you very well by now, Signora Alex,” he said. “I doubt if you’d turn down the request of a man who is so gravely ill.”
“I see,” she said.
“Alex?”
“
“You should come as quickly as you can.”
Two mornings later, the February sky in Geneva was gray and grim, much as it had been almost exactly a year earlier in Kiev on a similarly fateful day. Alex had taken a direct flight from New York. Gian Antonio Rizzo was at the airport in Geneva waiting reliably for her.
Their taxi drove them through the center of the city, past the Hotel de Roubaix from which Alex had been abducted. Then, five minutes later, they arrived at the Clinique Perrault on the rue Joffrin in central Geneva. The cab pulled onto the gray gravel of a wide semicircle driveway that formed the front courtyard of the medical clinic.
The driver hopped out of the cab and hurried to open the door for Alex. A small flock of startled pigeons fluttered upward from the driveway as she stepped out. The birds took roost within the crevices of the ornate facade of the Clinique, where they lurked and watched her arrival. It was all inconsequential to them.
Alex reached for the wallet in her purse, but Rizzo, ever a gentleman around those he respected, waved her off and paid for the ride from the airport. He tipped the driver generously. They both carried only overnight bags. Then another sense of deja vu was upon her-an unwelcome flashback to Kiev again-as a slight snow had begun to fall.
Always, in her mind, there had been a light snow in Kiev. At Robert’s funeral there had been a light snow. When the RPGs had been incoming at Mihaylavski Place there had been a light snow. What might God be trying to tell her? She didn’t know.
She shivered, not from the temperature. The cold had been much worse elsewhere recently, and so had the sense of doom and foreboding and sadness. A few moments later, they were in a starkly modern but serene lobby. They presented themselves to the visitors’ desk, showing their passports. They registered properly as visitors and were directed toward a bank of elevators that would take them to Federov’s room on the fourth floor.
Rizzo continued to speak Italian. “It might be better if I waited down here,” he said.
“I think it might.” Alex agreed.
She gave Rizzo a nod. He gave her hand a squeeze. Alex continued to the elevators, and Rizzo went toward the sitting area in the lobby.
Moments later, she was on a floor of the Clinique where a middle-aged nurse named Naomi directed her toward Salle 434. The signs on the floor were in four languages. Very Swiss. French, German, Italian, and English, tacked on almost as a conceit. Every letter and word was perfect.
In the back of Alex’s mind a little spark of absurdity danced forth: Naomi had also been the name of one of the girls at the nightclub in Kiev where Alex had knocked back too much vodka and had allowed herself too much time within Federov’s grasp. This was a day, it was clear, for heavy ironies.
Well, she decided, she had come a long way from there. They both had, and it didn’t seem to matter much anymore, did it? Or did it?
She proceeded down the hall. She was on an expensive wing of the hospice.
Only the best for Federov, she mused. He had earned it, but in some ways he hadn’t. The door to Salle 434 was open. Moments later, her mind teeming, Alex peered in.
She suppressed a gasp. The vision shocked her. The man in the bed was Yuri Federov, but not the Yuri Federov that she remembered. The man she remembered was strong and vibrant. This was an extremely sick man, attached to tubes, wires, and monitors. He lay in the bed with his eyes closed, his mouth open, his head tilted at an angle as he appeared to sleep, his face pallid.
Across his chest was an open book with a Russian title. She couldn’t see it clearly yet. The book was positioned as if it had slipped from his hands when he fell asleep reading.
With a shudder, and a conscious summoning of willpower, she stepped into the room. She moved quietly. Like a giant cat, however, Federov woke instantly-first one eye opened, then the other.
It took a moment for his gaze to register an identity to go with Alex’s presence, but when it did, some of the fear and sadness washed away from his face. Under the circumstances, he looked pleased.
“Ah!” he said in English. “Bless you, Alexandra!”
“Hello, Yuri,” she said.
“Heaven exists for me after all. My angel has arrived.”
“It’s just me,” she said. “Just an overgrown American kid from California.”
His smile widened.
“You’re the person I most wished to see,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”
He motioned to the book that lay open across his chest. “I’m taking your advice, you can see, hey?” he said. “Catching up on the classics.”
She looked at the jacket of the book.
He smiled, as if in a small victory.
“Tolstoy’s
“I’m told it is the greatest of Russian novels,” he said. “And I’m told I should read it before I die.” He laughed. “Well, it might be a close call,” he said. He motioned to all the wires and tubes and monitors.
“It started with lung cancer,” he said dryly, as if announcing a losing football score. “That’s why I was in New York. Then it spread. Rather than being a typically slow and pokey cancer, mine was pure and aggressive. Presurgery Gleason scores of 9 or 10. Do you know what that means?”
“It’s not good,” she said.
“The higher the number on this scale of 10 the worse the news. So I had ten.”
Despite everything, she felt a caving, tumbling feeling within her. She bit a lip as she settled into a chair beside the bed.
His gaze traveled the length of her, up and down, toe to head, taking her in. Then it settled into her eyes.
“I’m very sorry. I’ll pray for you,” she said. “And anything else you’d like.”
Somehow he had the energy and nerve to raise an eyebrow, almost flirtatiously. “Anything?” he asked.
“Within reason,” she said.
He managed a sad smile and a laugh that was so weak that she was appalled. A rasp in his voice made him sound like a much older man. She had been ready for this but not
“Well, I don’t necessarily listen to the doctors,” he said. “I know I have more time than they tell me. And as for the book, I’ve already finished it.
