I nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have sent more men to the back of the warehouse. Olaf should not have got away.” He pushed the magazine into the gun with a vicious snap.
“It’s okay,” I said comfortingly.
He jumped to his feet. He wasn’t quite as big as Luka, but his size was still intimidating, especially when he was angry. “Is not okay.” He stared at me. “Bastard takes Luka, takes you...he needs to die. He’s pure poison. Always has been.”
There was something in his eyes—a more intense version of that sadness that always seemed to be there. I suddenly knew who’d given him the scar across his face.
I put a hand on his arm. “You did great, Yuri,” I said softly. “You rescued us. Without you….”
I didn’t want to think about what would have happened without him. I could still feel Olaf’s hands, cutting my dress away. Before I was even aware I was going to do it, I pulled the big man into a hug, wrapping my arms around him and patting him on the back. He responded awkwardly, as if no one had hugged him in a very long time.
When I unwound myself, he said, “Luka likes you.”
I nodded.
“I think that maybe you are what he needs,” said Yuri.
I nodded again.
“But I’m there to protect him,” said Yuri, the loyalty fierce in his eyes. “From everyone.”
“I understand,” I said levelly.
He nodded solemnly, as if to say that we’d never mention this conversation again, and went back to cleaning his gun.
***
I found Luka and Vasiliy in the drawing room, looking at something on a laptop. Blueprints of a house, presumably Olaf’s. Luka reached for the lid to close it as I walked in....and then relaxed and left it open.
He trusted me. He finally trusted me enough to have no secrets from me. Just as I was about to destroy his life.
He came over to me and put his arms around me. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look worried.”
I stared into his eyes and drew in a long breath. “I—” Tell him. “I—” Tell him!
Vasiliy was looking at me, too. He walked around from behind his son. “Arianna,” he said, his accent rolling around my name like rocks grinding it smooth, “I owe you an apology. When you came here before, when you indulged me by playing chess...I did not trust you.”
He suddenly grabbed my hands, squeezing them in his. I felt as if I was contaminating him with my sins. My own hands felt like cold, dead flesh. “Luka was right about you,” he said. “And I am honored—honored—to welcome you into our family.”
My mouth moved soundlessly. I could feel the tears rushing towards my eyes. God, no! Don’t do this to me! Not now!
“Leave her alone,” Luka muttered. “She’s been through enough without being pressured.”
Vasiliy smiled kindly at me and released my hands. They throbbed from his warmth. “I’m sorry. Don’t mind me, Arianna. I’m not looking for you to marry him.”
“Father!” Luka’s cheeks were flushing.
“Not yet, at least.”
“Father!”
Vasiliy’s eyes were twinkling. Any other time, it would have been funny and wonderful. Now, it just made me want to vomit up all the darkness inside me. No, I wanted to run to the stairs and hurl myself over the edge, down to the bare stone floor below. Maybe I’d crack my skull open and maybe then I wouldn’t be a threat to them anymore.
But even that wasn’t an option. Ever since Adam’s phone call, we’d all been locked into our fate. The only question was how many of them I was going to kill.
And really, there’s only one answer to that. I’m a geek at heart. I know how to do math. One death is better than two.
“Maybe we could have a drink,” I said, surprised at how level my voice was. “To celebrate.”
Luka looked at me, surprised, but then smiled. Vasiliy led us down the corridor to the tiny room where he’d questioned me, and poured whiskey for himself and vodka for us.
I had the tiny capsule in the palm of one hand. The two of them were so happy, it was easy to pick up Vasiliy’s glass for a second and crush the plastic against the rim so that the clear fluid dribbled into the whiskey.
“To family,” Vasiliy said, picking up his glass.
“To family,” Luka repeated.
“Family,” I said in a hollow voice.
We all raised our glasses to drink.
Time seemed to stop. I was in the car again, the wheels sliding over the snow. Falling and falling, the ground coming up to meet us.
I couldn’t do it.
I slapped Vasiliy’s glass away from his mouth, cracking it against his teeth and spilling the drink down his shirt. He cursed in Russian and frowned at me.
The glass hit the floor and shattered.
With anyone else, in any other country, Luka’s next words would have been What are you doing?! But he was Luka Malakov and this was Russia, and both he and Vasiliy had been living this life for far too long.
I turned to Luka to see his face going pale. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes, too powerful to stop. “I’m sorry,” I managed to get out.
“What did you do?” said Luka.
I shook my head.
“What did you do?!” Luka thundered.
“They’re going to kill you,” I whispered. “They’re going to kill you both.” I looked at Vasiliy. “Killing you was the only way to stop it.” I looked back to Luka, trying to drink in a last glimpse of him through the blur of tears. “I’m sorry. I’m CIA.”
He stared at me for three quick breaths. Then he stepped behind the table, pulled open a drawer and grabbed a handgun. He pointed the barrel right at my head.
I closed my eyes and waited for the bullet.
“Get out,” I heard at last. Luka’s voice, but choked up with so much emotion that it barely sounded like him.
I opened my eyes and stared at him, tears coursing down my cheeks. “They’re going to kill you!” I sobbed.
“GET OUT!” he screamed. I saw his finger tense on the trigger.
I turned and ran, blundering down the stairs. I staggered on my heels, half-blinded by tears. I finally made it to the front door and out, past the bewildered guards.
I ran. I didn’t know where I was going or even where I was. I had nothing but the dress I was wearing.
I was still running when the cell phone Adam gave me rang. I stared at it in disgust for three rings before I answered.
“I had someone watching the house,” he said. “They saw you run out. I’m disappointed, Arianna.”
“Fuck you,” I told him with bravery I didn’t feel.
“No,” he said coldly. “You see, you no longer work for the CIA. You’ve been officially recorded as switching sides to the enemy. You’re on your own. Arianna Ross no longer exists. If you try to use her passport or credit cards, the authorities will pick you up for fraud. And, as far as we know, Arianna Scott is an unemployed languages graduate who’s still in the US.”
I shook my head. “You can’t do this—”
“So really, Arianna, it’s fuck you.” And he hung up.
Seconds later, the cell phone went dead, its number disconnected.
I staggered to a stop by a payphone and tried calling the CIA main switchboard. None of my access codes worked. I’d been completely erased.
The CIA had disavowed me as a traitor. And that meant that I could never convince them of what Adam had done.
Vasiliy was still going to die and now, Luka as well. I’d condemned him with my own weakness. And Adam was going to get away with it. He’d keep on making millions from the gun trade and that bastard Olaf Ralavich would take control of the whole of the North American gun trade—only his smuggling would have all of the violence Luka had been working to end.
I was only wearing a dress. It was starting to snow, the flakes turned into little daggers of ice by a bitter north wind, stabbing the cold into my exposed arms and
face. But I was past caring. The cold soaking into my body from the outside was nothing compared to the way I was freezing up inside. All the parts of me Luka had brought back to life were shutting down again, this time forever. I’d lost him, the one man who could have saved me.
I slumped down beside the payphone, hugged my knees and sobbed.
The wind scoured my skin and pushed the warmth inside me deeper and deeper, like an animal withdrawing into its burrow. I could feel myself losing feeling in my hands and toes, but the loss of caring was worse. I no longer saw the people passing by on the street—my eyes just stared fixedly ahead. I no longer felt the sidewalk under me as I sat, or smelled the exhaust fumes from the traffic as it rushed past. I felt as if I was floating.
The warmth receded and receded inside me. My head grew swimmy and my thoughts slowed and became big, lumbering barges creaking through ice. I don’t know how long I sat there—an hour? More? I shivered at first, but then I stopped and just felt sleepy.
I was sitting in the snow on a windswept street with the temperature well below zero. My thin dress was soaked through and just made the cold sink in faster.
Somewhere, on a very distant level, I knew I was going to die.
But I’d been there before, trapped in a car, screaming, and this creeping cold was easier and quicker. I could just let my eyelids close and go to sleep.
There was a particle in the darkness of my mind. Orange-red and glowing, defiantly alight despite the freezing wind that whipped around it. I couldn’t go to sleep until it flickered out and it was taking its sweet time.
That little spark of warmth hadn’t been there, back in the crashed car. It was something new. And the more the coldness pressed in around it, the brighter it burned, until it glowed bright enough that I could see its shape.
Luka.
Insane. A man who hated me. Who never even knew the real me. Who I’d used and betrayed. Who I’d thought of as a monster and tried to change, when the real monster was me. To cling onto his memory was pathetic. If he was here right now, if he found me like this, he’d probably put a bullet in my brain.
I waited for the spark to go out...but it wouldn’t. Not even the thought that he hated me stopped me loving him.
I didn’t want to see him die. It wasn’t much of a wish, even as deathbed wishes go, but it was all I had. I knew I’d lost him; I knew I was as good as dead myself, from the cold or Luka’s people or Ralavich’s people, if any of them saw me. But I didn’t want to take Luka with me.
The cold was welcoming me with open arms, drawing me down into it. But I couldn’t give myself up to it completely. My love for him wouldn’t let me.
I opened my eyes.
At some point, I’d slumped onto my side. I was half-covered in snow, huddled up against a low concrete wall. The sun had set.
I tried to move and found I couldn’t. Nothing worked. My muscles wouldn’t respond. I lay there like a puppet with her strings cut.
A woman walked past and didn’t even look at me. I was just another passed-out whore sleeping off the drugs, or dead.
I tried to twitch a leg and felt the sick, lurching fear of being paralyzed. My body had completely shut down. My heart had probably slowed so much it had almost stopped, my breathing, too. Anyone finding me would think I was dead. In another few minutes, they’d be right.
I thought of Luka and the ballet and the stateroom on his yacht. Of the restaurant and the ice rink and the party and the way he’d held me that time in the car.
I heaved with every ounce of will I had and my left leg shifted a few millimeters. It felt like lead. And then the pain started, exploding up through my calves and thighs. Every nerve felt as if it was being shredded. But pain was good. Pain meant I was still alive.
It took long minutes, but I managed to roll onto my front and then get to my knees. My legs were too shaky to carry me. The wind was whipping the snow into a full-on blizzard, my clothes plastered white.
I crawled to the edge of the sidewalk and knelt there, my arms held straight up above my head, and prayed a cab would stop. I was about to give up hope when headlights bathed me and an aging Mercedes pulled up. The driver looked at my dress, filthy from lying in the street, and at my snow-soaked hair. He must have wondered whether I was a well-dressed hooker or a debutante who’d been mugged. “You have money?” he asked in Russian.
I had nothing. I’d run out of Vasiliy’s house without my purse. But I was wearing the necklace Luka had given me and I managed to lift it away from my neck to show him.
He grumbled and then got out and lifted me into the back seat of his car. We drove through the streets with the heater on full blast and, gradually, I thawed out. More pain, as the feeling came back, and then the shivering started. I took off the necklace and gave it to him. “Thank you,” I said in English.
He stared at me in surprise. “You American?” he asked in English. He looked again at my bedraggled appearance. “You want go embassy?”
I shook my head. My brain was finally starting to work again. “I want you to take me somewhere there’s a payphone,” I said in Russian. “And I need you to loan me a little money.”
Given that the necklace probably cost more than his car, the cab driver didn’t grumble too much about handing over the equivalent of fifty dollars. He even took me to the taxi company and let me use the phone there and bought me a cup of coffee. It was scalding hot and strong and the best thing I’d ever tasted.
I knew it was no good going through the CIA switchboard—I didn’t exist anymore, to them. But I’d called her at home before and I only need to see a phone number once to memorize it.
“Hello?” said Roberta.
It was the middle of the day, there, and she was at home. That was good for me and almost certainly bad for her.
“I fucked up,” I croaked. I hadn’t been ready for how hard it would hit me. Hearing a familiar voice was a reminder of everything I’d lost. If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend I was back in the safe little languages department again.
“Where are you?!” Roberta said. Then, just as fast, “No! Wait!”
Seconds ticked by as she thought.
“Stay by the phone,” Roberta said. And hung up.
Thirty seconds later, the phone rang. “OK,” said Roberta. “This is one of my emergency cell phones. Bought it for cash so I’m pretty sure it’s not tapped. Now what the fuck is going on?”
She kept “burner” cell phones around, just for emergencies?! I’d always thought of Roberta as a mother hen, as comfortable in her safe little world of languages as I was. This was a reminder that she’d been a field agent, once.
“What do you know?” I asked. “What’s happening there?”
Roberta took a deep breath. “Adam says you switched sides and ran off with Luka. Everyone’s been told not to speak to you. I shouldn’t be speaking to you. Hell, I’ve been suspended while they investigate!”
“Roberta, that’s not what happened! Adam’s working with Luka’s rivals—I think he has been for years. He tried to get me to kill Luka’s dad. He’s going to have both of them killed.”
Roberta went very quiet. “Do you have any proof?” she asked at last.
I bit my lip. “No. None.”
Silence.
“Do you believe me?!” I begged.
Roberta sighed. “Yes. I knew you were in over your head, but I did’t think you’d betray us.” Her voice hardened. “Jesus...Adam. I always hated that prick.”
The tears started. I think it was hearing that she believed me. That someone out there was still on my side. “You were right all along,” I whispered. “You tried to tell me. You tried to persuade me not to come. I’m sorry, mom.”
I sniffed and then realized I’d called my boss mom. It hung in the air between us, but she was nice enough not to mention it.
“Roberta,” I said, “he’s going to have Luka killed. His dad, too. I have to save them.”
“No. The smartest thing you can d
o is get far, far away. Get outside Moscow and wait it out. I’ll wire you money—”
“I’m in love with him.”
When Roberta spoke again, her voice was soft. “Arianna—”
I cut her off. “I know it’s wrong, okay?! I know I haven’t known him long enough! I don’t care! I know how I feel and I have to save him! Now, are you going to help me or not?”
There was shocked silence for a moment.
“I may have underestimated you, Arianna,” she said, a hint of a smile in her voice. “Okay. What do you need from me?”
***
Roberta had been suspended, but she had enough loyal friends at the CIA that she could get me what I needed: satellite imagery of Vasiliy’s house, earlier that evening. I needed to know if Luka was still there. When she told me that he and Vasiliy had left an hour ago, my stomach contracted into a tight little knot. Vasiliy spent most of his time cooped up in that fortress of a house. Why would he leave it now?
And then it hit me. I’d told Luka that his life was in danger and he had responded with exactly the sort of arrogant swagger that made everyone fear him. He and Vasiliy weren’t going to hole up at home. They were going to go right out in public, where everyone could see them. And with most enemies maybe that bravery would have worked. The gangs kept most of their violence off the radar. Even Ralavich had taken us off to a warehouse to kill us.
But they didn’t realize how determined Adam was, or what levels he’d stoop to.
“Find out where they went,” I pleaded.
Minutes later, Roberta had followed the car to its destination. She said the name of the restaurant and started to give me the address, but I was already running to the cab driver and pleading with him to take me on one more trip. I knew the restaurant. It was where we’d had lunch, our first real date.
I was going to finish this at the same place we’d started it. And I knew there was a very good chance I wouldn’t come out alive.
I’d managed to clean my face up a little. But my dress was still soaking wet, my hair was a tangled mess and my face was almost as white as the snow outside. I saw the doormen hesitate as I walked up the steps to the restaurant.
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