“Get down,” I shouted to everyone I saw.
As salespeople poked their heads out, I yelled for them to get back inside.
It took me a moment to realize why no one was doing what they were told—no one had understood a goddamn word I’d said.
Finally, I spotted the shooter, taking aim at me again.
As he fired I dived behind a directory, stayed down as it flew into pieces just above my head.
I immediately jumped to my feet, got a clean shot off but missed him by a few inches.
He began to run again.
I chased after him.
After a few dozen yards, he made a ruinous mistake—he ducked into a store.
I came to a full halt just before I reached the entrance. I pressed my back up against the wall and readied my weapon. I wiped sweat from my brow, drew a deep breath, and moved in.
It was a candy store, full of busy bright colors that would’ve easily distracted someone who wasn’t trained. But all I saw was the long black leather jacket in the rear. Then a face.
It was the face from the silver sports car that had been tailing us. The man was no longer wearing sunglasses. I stared into his dark eyes and saw no fear. No fear whatsoever. At that moment I had no doubt in my mind that I was staring into the eyes of a professional killer. And although I couldn’t tell definitively from the grainy photograph Kidman had sent me, I thought, who else could this man be but Bilal ibn Hashim, the Syrian whom the two Russians were running from.
Somehow, the Syrian had tracked us down. No doubt the rental company had a LoJack or some similar vehicle-recovery devise installed on the Grand Vitara. However he’d done it, Bilal ibn Hashim now meant to eliminate us from the equation.
If he had tracked us, surely Bilal would have tracked the Russians, too. Which meant that I needed to figure out a way to neutralize Bilal without killing him. No easy feat under the circumstances. Still, it seemed clear to me that Lindsay’s life might well depend on both of us surviving this standoff.
In front of him, Bilal held tightly to a young woman with light brown hair. A human shield. She was sobbing and saying something I couldn’t understand.
Bilal was pressing his gun hard against her right temple.
I scanned the back of the store and saw no door. He was trapped but he had a hostage.
“Drop the gun, Bilal,” I said calmly, sweat dripping down my neck, dampening the collar of my shirt.
His eyes narrowed at the mention of his name. He bared a set of coffee-stained teeth.
“Tell me where I can find the Russians,” he shouted. “Tell me, or this woman is dead.”
And that mistake, his second in minutes, would prove fatal. Up until that moment, I thought that I needed him alive. But if he was asking me where the Russians were, then he was useless. I raised my Glock just slightly and peered through the sight, centered it directly between his eyes.
“Last chance, Bilal,” I said.
“No,” he cried. “It is her last chan—”
I fired.
Chapter 51
Forty minutes later, I was gripping Ana’s hand in an ambulance. Bilal ibn Hashim was dead, but his first shot through the storefront window had struck the left side of Ana’s chest, just above the heart.
I turned to the Minsk police officer sitting at my side.
“How far to the hospital?”
“We are not to go to hospital,” he responded in a thick accent. “We are to go to clinic. It will be safer.”
I was devastated. Felt as though I had put the bullet in her myself. My hands were shaking and my gut had risen into my chest. Listening to the chirping of the machinery, my mind wanted to shut itself down, take a forever rest. My very core was collapsing.
Lying on her back, Ana stared up at me with watery eyes.
“When we get to the clinic,” she said, “please, call my brother.”
I tried to hide the worry in my voice. “I will, Ana. First thing.”
“And last,” she said. “You need to promise—as soon as you call Marek you will leave.”
“I’m not leaving you, Ana,” I said.
“You must, Simon. Or else all of this will have been for nothing. We are so close. You must go find Lindsay.”
I swallowed hard, tried to keep my eyes from welling up. Truth was, I had no idea where to go from here. My plan to allow the man following us to find us had backfired. It nearly got both of us—and a number of innocent bystanders—killed. Even the Syrian didn’t know where the Russians were, where they’d taken Lindsay Sorkin. How was I ever going to find her?
Face it, Simon. She’s gone.
“Find her and bring her back to Paris,” Ana said, staring up at the ceiling of the ambulance. “Then, go to London. Find your sister, Tuesday. Find your mother. Everyone should have a family.”
Families only break your heart, I wanted to say in my exhausted state.
They abandon you.
Steal you.
Kill themselves.
Vanish into thin air.
Ana’s eyes fluttered and the monitors she was connected to began to beep in ominous tones.
No. Can’t be.
“How far?” I shouted to the officer.
He glanced out the window and said, “We are here.”
*
The clinic was an old, one-story building that looked more like an asylum than a hospital. I drew a deep breath as the paramedics lifted Ana’s stretcher out of the ambulance and hurried her to the front door. There seemed to be no place to receive an ambulance.
I followed them inside on legs that felt like lead weights.
The interior of the clinic was no more appealing than the exterior. The lobby reeked so badly of bleach that my eyes began to water. I covered my nose with my hand and chased after Ana’s stretcher. The corridor seemed endless, its floor scuffed badly enough that I couldn’t tell what color it had originally been. The walls were a drab, dirty blue. The fluorescent lights above our heads flickered as though the clinic might lose power at any second. Loops of copper electrical wires hung out from the ceiling, only a few feet overhead.
Ana could die in here from an otherwise treatable wound, I thought with a sickening terror.
They burst through a set of double doors into an operating room.
“I am sorry, sir,” said a large woman in nurse’s garb. “You will have to wait outside.”
The nurse went into the operating room, and through the double doors I caught one last glimpse of Ana, unconscious as they scissored off her clothes.
Standing there, every last bit of energy seemed to drain from my body. I couldn’t recall how many days it had been since I’d left Bordeaux for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Eight? Nine, maybe?
Did it matter? My world had altered unimaginably since then. I’d taken the lives of at least a half-dozen men. All of them in self-defense yet troubling nonetheless. I’d made a promise to a mother that I wouldn’t be able to keep, and for that, I knew, Lori Sorkin would never forgive me. And I couldn’t blame her.
As unlikely as it was given the amount of time we’d spent together, I’d fallen for a woman for the first time since I’d met Tasha in college. And now that woman was on an operating-room table, fighting for her life. Because of me.
I bent at the waist and placed my hands on my knees.
Worst of all, I’d let down little Lindsay.
If Vince Sorkin wasn’t found, the six-year-old girl was doomed to become a statistic. Even if Davignon somehow retrieved him, no government in the West would allow Vince to deal himself for his daughter. In fact, if my suspicions were correct, Vince Sorkin hadn’t run anywhere; he’d been taken. By the CIA or MI6, maybe even French intelligence. The United States and Great Britain certainly wouldn’t risk the possibility, however remote, of his knowledge falling into the hands of terrorists, or a terrorist state.
Chances are, I thought grimly, Vince Sorkin is already dead.
Which left little to no hope for h
is six-year-old daughter.
I straightened myself up. A few moments earlier I’d admitted to myself that I’d fallen for Ana. I knew as well as anyone how dangerous that was—how easy it is to lose someone, how painful it is, and how permanent that pain is.
For all I know, Ana could be breathing her final breath right now.
No, she couldn’t be dying. I’d promised to take her to Hollywood, California.
I’d made other promises to her, too, I realized. In the ambulance. I’d promised to call her brother Marek, first thing. So I took out my phone and dialed the number he’d called me from the night Ana and I were at the beach on the Black Sea in Odessa. After six rings the call went to voice mail and I left him a message, asking him to call me back as soon as he could. I left out the details so as not to alarm him.
Ana had also wanted me to go to London, to locate my sister and mother.
Strange that after all these years I was even considering it. Sure, I’d always been curious. But what do you say to an estranged mother who, as far as you know, never wanted anything to do with you? What kind of bond can you form with a new sister when you’re both nearing forty? Yet here I was, sorting through how I could make a meeting happen. It had been about a week since I’d met Ana. Had she had that much of an effect on me already? And what did it say about us if she had?
I swallowed hard. I would go to London to look for them, I realized.
But not yet. First, Ana wanted me to find Lindsay Sorkin. She’d said we were close. So close, she’d said.
How close can I possibly be, I thought, if I don’t even know where to start?
I glanced down the hall to my right. It was nothing but a dead end.
That made things easier.
There was nowhere to go but left.
Chapter 52
I walked past the clinic’s lobby and continued down a corridor as drab and endless as the last. I kept my eyes focused on the floor in front of me but in my periphery I couldn’t help but notice that the rooms on either side were occupied by children. I permitted myself a glance into one of the rooms and saw a child who must have been around four, yet his body was that of an infant. His large head lolled from side to side, each arm as thin as yarn and seemingly moving of its own accord.
I kept walking, tried to ignore the sudden crying coming from rooms all around me. But I couldn’t ignore it. Once it invaded my mind, it conquered all other thoughts, and colonized. I had to see what hell I’d stepped into, what awful suffering surrounded me.
I stopped at the entrance to the next room and poked my head inside. There were two children in this room. One appeared to suffer from spina bifada, the other from something along the lines of cerebral palsy.
“The poor, dear things,” I whispered to myself.
A soft voice came from behind me.
“Birth defects,” she said. “And not nearly the worst of the lot.”
I looked over my shoulder and found a small, redheaded nurse standing there in the hallway, her hands behind her back.
I found myself unable to speak.
“Most of the children here were born abnormal, then abandoned,” she said with an Irish brogue. “Some suffer genetic damage: anencephaly, open spine, polydactylya, muscular atrophy in their limbs.”
“Chernobyl?” I said.
She nodded. “Even the children who aren’t born sick, most of them find their way here sooner or later, with thyroid cancer or other diseases. We see a lot of cases of leukemia.”
“Even after a quarter century,” I said.
The small nurse shrugged. “A quarter century, it’s nothing. Belarus will be lucky if it’s free of contamination in another half millennium.”
“I had no idea,” I admitted.
“Don’t be ashamed,” she said. “Very few of us Westerners do. When the disaster first occurred twenty-five years ago, the Kremlin did everything they could to downplay it. The seriousness of the accident was withheld from the people for weeks. Parents watched their sons and daughters run around on outdoor playgrounds completely ignorant of the fact that their children were being exposed to deadly levels of radiation.”
“How cruel,” I said quietly.
“Even much later, after more than ten thousand cases of thyroid cancer, scientists paid by state governments insisted that there was no link to the fallout from Chernobyl. The Russian government blamed the people themselves for unduly panicking. Moscow said changed living conditions and restricted eating caused all the cancer. Their stress caused it. Citizens didn’t go for enough walks, they said, or eat enough vegetables. That’s why everyone in Belarus was dying.”
“But surely the Western governments took some action,” I said.
“Just as they’re doing in war-torn Africa? In Darfur?”
I had no answer to that.
“Some Westerners did stand up,” she said. “Some Americans, some western Europeans. The doctor who runs this clinic, for instance, is an American, and he’s done so much good he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“What does he do exactly?”
“The medical professionals here for the most part have the knowledge but not the money. The doctor helps in that regard—his charities have raised enough funds to set up clinics all over Minsk. Many of the children here in Belarus are born with a condition we call Chernobyl Heart.”
“They’re born with holes in their hearts,” I said.
“That’s right. In most cases, correcting it is a fairly simple procedure. But it’s costly as well. We use Gor-Tex to patch the holes. Each patch costs over three hundred dollars U.S. That’s more than most doctors earn here in Minsk in a month.”
I turned my head to look back up the endless corridor, hoping to see activity outside Ana’s operating room, but there was none. Not yet.
“I’d like to help,” I said. “Is the doctor around for a quick chat?”
The nurse shook her head. “Not today I’m afraid. He’s at another clinic, near the National Library.” She sighed. “A strange twist of fate, really.”
“What is?”
“Several years ago the doctor fell in love with one of the nurses on staff at one of his clinics. They eventually got married. He knew the risks, of course; they both did. But Tatsiana wanted a child so badly. The doctor finally gave in. We had seen some healthy babies born here in Minsk, far more than in the Gomel region. So they were hopeful. About seven years ago they had a girl, named her Mila. Adorable girl.”
“She was born with birth defects?” I said.
The nurse slowly bowed her head. “A rare condition called hypoplastic left-heart syndrome. Mila’s undergone multiple open-heart surgeries, most recently a failed heart-valve procedure. Following that she was immediately put on a list to receive a heart transplant, but there are thousands of children in Belarus on that list. And Mila has a rare blood type, which in her case actually worked in her favor.”
“Really?” I said. “How so?”
Tears instantly sprang to the nurse’s eyes even as her lips turned up in a smile.
“A heart came in this morning,” she said. “That’s where the doctor is now. Replacing his own daughter’s heart at his own clinic. Amazing, isn’t it?”
“More than amazing,” I said, genuinely moved by the story. “It’s wonderful.”
“I hope you get the chance to meet him. How long will you be in Minsk?”
I thought about it. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, today, of course, he’s going to be busy, but if all goes well with his daughter’s transplant, I suspect he will be back to work by the end of the week.”
“Terrific,” I said.
The nurse smiled, then turned and started back down the corridor.
“By the way, who should I ask for?” I said. “What’s the doctor’s name?”
She stopped, smacked herself lightly on the forehead for forgetting to mention it.
“His name is Stephen,” she said. “Dr. Stephen Richter.”
Richter.
The name hit me like a brick to the head.
“Richter,” Vince Sorkin had said the day I met him. “Keith Richter in San Jose.”
As tired as I was, I couldn’t get my mind around who Keith Richter was or why he was important.
Wait, I thought.
Davignon had repeated the name just recently. Back when I was in Odessa.
“We haven’t been able to get in touch with Keith Richter,” he’d said.
“Keith Richter?”
I hadn’t been able to recall who he was then, either.
But then Davignon had reminded me.
“Lindsay’s pediatrician back in the States.”
Chapter 53
I had no choice but to take a taxi. I gave the driver the location and told him to drive as fast as possible. I didn’t think he understood my words, but he sure as hell understood my body language. He recognized that this ride was urgent.
As the driver peeled away from one clinic and headed for another, I pulled out my BlackBerry and called Davignon. He didn’t answer after four rings and I was certain the call was going straight to voice mail. Then I heard his voice.
Davignon spoke in a whisper.
“I am in Lori’s hospital room, Simon, and she’s sleeping, so I cannot talk right—”
“Wake her up,” I shouted, trying futilely to control the pitch of my voice.
“Why, Simon? Is something—”
“Just do it,” I said.
As Davignon nudged Lori out of her sleep, I watched the eerily still city of Minsk blow by me.
“Ask her about Lindsay’s pediatrician,” I said. “Does Lori have the doctor’s phone number in the room with her?”
I waited for a moment as he inquired.
“It is in her phone,” he said. “Hold on, Simon, I will get it for her.”
“Ask Lori what she knows about him,” I shouted, hoping he hadn’t set his own phone down. “Ask her if he has a son or a brother or a cousin or an uncle, anyone in his family named Stephen.”
Good As Gone (Simon Fisk Novels) Page 23