Firebird

by Helaine Mario

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You must understand, my Prince. The only path to Russia’s return to greatness is with the Shestidesyatniki. No one can get in our way. We will do everything necessary to protect your mission. As we already have.” Panov stepped closer. “Here are your instructions. I will see you at the Rhodes gala.” He bent and murmured a name in Ivan’s ear. Then he turned and left the room without looking back.

  The man called Prince Ivan stared in horror at the closed door.

  “No -” he whispered. “He is my friend. I cannot betray him.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “...dangerous times.”

  John Selden

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28

  Following a sleepless night, Alexandra was dressed before dawn and at Sam’s Gym by 7:30 a.m. The seventh floor windows of the work-out room looked down on the treetops of K Street. Early morning sunlight shimmered in the last autumn leaves and on newly bare branches.

  A wall of mirrors reflected the crowded gym behind her. Alexandra pedaled hard and fast on the stationery exercise bike, punishing her body to the limit in the vain hope of drowning out the thoughts that swirled in her brain. The towel looped around her neck caught the sweat that rolled like tears down her cheeks. Her exhausted muscles were on fire, her pumping lungs ready to burst. But the work-out wasn’t working.

  Tension coursed through her body. Only hours to go until her brother-in-law’s gala benefit at his horse farm in Middleburg. Only hours until she might discover Ivan’s identity…

  She hadn’t yet told Garcia what she planned to do. Probably wouldn’t. He’d never go for it. And he’d already told her in no uncertain terms that she’d bought a ticket on the crazy train. Okay, so be it. She didn’t need him.

  CNN’s 8 a.m. news program was now running on the small television suspended from the gym ceiling above the row of bicycles. An African woman’s regal face appeared on the screen, reminding her of Billie Jordan. Billie had called her just before she left for the gym.

  “You listen to me, Baby Sister,” Billie had said in a shaken voice. “My brother was a patriot, not a traitor! So it’s up to us to clear Charlie and Eve’s names. Come to the shelter in the morning, we have to talk.”

  Alexandra pedaled faster. The news screen flashed, and now focused on the popular Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Senator David Rossinski, who was winding up an interview with a heartfelt call for a successful Nuclear Summit in St. Petersburg scheduled for early December.

  “America wants, and needs, to re-set our relationship with Russia,” he said into the cameras. “But this is not easily done. It takes time, and trust building. There is an enormous amount of hard work ahead of us.” The Senator’s voice dropped, became even more serious. “I am deeply concerned,” he warned, “that Gulf countries with a long nuclear shopping list and billions in U.S. dollars are turning increasingly to Russia for technology and weapon-grade materials. And too many of the old-guard Russians, men who insist on clinging to a life that is no longer sustainable, are still in positions of power...”

  She watched Rossinski push a veined hand through thinning silver hair while his eyes moved constantly back and forth. He was a tall, slender man with an interesting, fox-like face, a sad smile and those burning hooded eyes. She’d read about him in a profile her sister Eve had compiled for a People Magazine story on Washington’s ‘rainmakers.’ His grandfather had been a rabbi in a village north of Moscow. His parents had emigrated to New York City just before World War II. Born on the day Nazi Germany surrendered, he had worked his way from the cement sidewalks of Canal Street to the marble corridors of the Capitol. Now the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, David Rossinski had been asked just weeks before to join the Republican ticket when the current Vice President suffered a stroke.

  She stared at the face on the small television screen above her, unable to decide if it was passion or ambition that she saw in those bright burning eyes.

  She’d be meeting the Senator - as well as Garcia’s ‘person of interest,’ the philanthropist Yuri Belankov, and several members of the ‘Club’ – tonight at Foxwood. The Lions, she told herself. Almost all in their early to mid sixties, with strong political connections. At least three of them had Eastern European genealogies. Fitting Ivan’s profile.

  Gasping for air, she slowed her pace on the exercise bike and checked her watch. Eleven hours until the benefit.

  She felt the way she did when she stood too close to a cubist painting at the gallery. “One piece of the puzzle at a time,” she reminded herself, “until you can step back and see the whole picture.” Charles Fraser’s letter, and now, with any luck, Eve’s taxi cab driver on the night of her death, were all parts of the pattern. Tonight, at Anthony’s reception, perhaps she could step back and see, like the Picasso on the Baranski’s wall, the face of the man she sought.

  “It’s my day off, Ms. Marik.”

  The cab driver who had driven Eve to the Maryland cliffs had been reluctant to meet with her when she’d called him.

  “Please, Mr. Goldberg. It’s so important.”

  “I dunno. I was planning on taking my grandkids to the Hirshhorn.”

  “The museum?”

  “No, the deli. Of course, the museum. Who says cab drivers can’t like Henry Moore?”

  “Not I! I asked because the Hirshhorn is a competitor, Mr. Goldberg. I’m a curator at the Baranski Gallery in New York.”

  “Zat so? Maybe you’re okay, then, Ms. M. I might have a little time tomorrow morning. Do you work out?”

  “When I can find the time, Mr. Goldberg.”

  “Sam’s Gym on K Street, 8 am. Tell them you’re my guest. I’ll be the short guy in the Red Sox cap, looking like I don’t belong. You can’t miss me.”

  “You Alexandra Marik?”

  She turned. True to his word, Lou Goldberg was short and stocky, with the broad shoulders of an aging football player. The baseball cap was pulled low over bristly white brows. His hand was warm and rough as it gripped her own.

  She stopped pedaling, wiped the sweat from her forehead. “I’m so glad you came,” she smiled.

  He returned her smile as he swept his arms toward the city beyond the windows of the gym. “Great view from up here. You like our city?”

  “Very much, Mr. Goldberg.” Although I’m not so fond of being seven stories up…

  “Call me Lou.” He eyed the small hard muscles in the slender arms. “And you like resistance.”

  She thought of Garcia and smiled grimly. “Oh, yes.”

  “C’mon, then.” He moved to the free weights against the mirrors. “Waddya lift?”

  “Five pounds. Maybe eight on a good day.”

  He offered her a blue hand weight, hefted a much heavier barbell for himself, and began to do curls. “I’m sorry about your sister, Ms. Marik. But I don’t know what I can tell you that I didn’t tell the cops.”

  “How did she seem to you, Lou? Angry, frightened? Desperate?” Alexandra breathed in and out, raising and lowering the weight in her hand. “Was she drinking?”

  “Hard to say.” He shook his head. “Maybe. She didn’t seem herself. Real slow, like she’d taken a sleeping pill or two, you know? And quiet. But women alone, late at night, don’t usually want conversation.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “No one at all. Just like I told the cops.”

  “Lou.” She set down the weight and turned to him. “You seem like a really nice guy. Not the kind of man who would leave a woman alone in the dark in the middle of nowhere.”

  She could see the angry stain flush his neck.

  “I’m not.”

  “It wasn’t the first time, was it?” she said. “You were her friend, you’d driven her before -”

  He continued to lift his weights, breathing hard, considering. “Yeah, lotsa times,” he admitted finally. “Always to the same place. The River Falls Inn, near the Potomac
river, in the Maryland countryside. Very swanky.”

  “You told the police about the inn?”

  The taxi driver pressed his lips together. “Sure. But - only about that night,” he said finally. “Not about all the other times. The thing of it is, someone was always waiting for her those other nights. And she would seem so happy.”

  Charles Fraser. “Did you ever see who it was?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, never a face. It wasn’t my business, you know? She trusted me. And I liked her.”

  “Was there someone waiting that night?”

  He set the heavy weights down and turned to her. “I’ve asked myself that over and over. You think I can sleep at night? There was a shadow, a form, I dunno. Come to think of it, I saw headlamps come on, blink. She said she’d be fine, just like always. The lights in the inn were lit, she walked toward the door.” His breath came out. “Cops said the folks at the inn swore they never saw her. She musta turned back after I pulled away, and gone through the woods down to the river.”

  “It’s not your fault, Lou,” she said gently.

  The driver shrugged. “The ‘ifs’ drive you crazy, you know?”

  “I know.” Alexandra shivered suddenly, as if a stranger’s eyes were watching her once again. She glanced at the mirror, then looked over her shoulder. The steel machines behind her crowded together like giant tangled insects.

  She took a deep breath. “I found her taxi receipt. Almost $200. A lot of money to drive to an inn only a few miles west of Georgetown. Did you take her anywhere else first, Lou?”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Horse country,” he said finally.

  “Middleburg? Are you talking about the Rhodes’ estate?”

  Another doll.

  “Yeah. Like always, Mrs. Rhodes called and told me to meet her at the Marvelous Market in Georgetown. That night, she asked me to swing by her place in Virginia - Foxwood, across the Potomac River. It was late, and about an hour’s drive, but, hey, what the lady wanted, she got. So off we go. Forty-five minutes later I’m parked on the side of the house. She tells me to wait, goes in alone. No problem, I had the meter runnin’, mouths to feed, you know? She was real generous, your sister. And - it seemed real important to her.”

  What was so important, Eve, that you had to go to Foxwood?

  A sudden shadow danced across the mirror, and again Alexandra felt the warning shiver against her spine. She shook her head. “The detectives didn’t tell me any of this. I talked with them for an hour yesterday afternoon.”

  The cab driver looked sheepish. “They never asked me about anyplace but the inn. Their questions were pretty basic, Ms. M. And I’m a ‘if-you-don’t-ask-I-don’t-tell’ kinda guy.” He took her arm, began to steer her toward the door. “As I said, your sister trusted me. And I liked her, God rest her soul. For months, I’ve kept her secrets.”

  “God knows she had more than her share.” Again, out of the corner of her eye, Alexandra sensed a figure moving through the maze of machines. She stopped, turned, searching the faces behind her.

  “Whatsa matter?” asked the cab driver.

  “I thought I saw someone I knew.”

  “Everyone in here is a twenty-something!” he snorted, drawing her toward the bright hallway. “Listen, I need to clean up before I pick up my grandkids. But I still have time to buy you a quick cuppa java. Meet me in the lobby coffee shop, fifteen minutes?”

  “An offer I can’t refuse. But it’s my treat.”

  * * * *

  Thirty minutes later, damp hair drying against her neck, Alexandra nursed her espresso alone in the small coffee shop. Where was Lou Goldberg?

  Inexplicably apprehensive, she tossed a five dollar bill on the table and hurried to the elevators.

  The elevator was crowded but she wedged on and pressed seven for the gym. Someone slipped in behind her, just as the doors closed. Mirrored walls reflected the mask-like faces. It took her a moment to see the man in sunglasses, hat pulled low, in the far corner. Fear snaked across her chest. The doors stopped at the third floor and she pushed out into the hallway.

  Just yards to the left she saw the exit door. She ran, yanked it open and disappeared into the stairwell. She started to run up the stairs. Fourth floor. Fifth.

  Somewhere below her, she heard the ominous slam of an exit door echo in the shadowed stairwell. She froze.

  Light footsteps, climbing toward her.

  She turned and ran on.

  Another flight. The soft leather soles of her boots were quiet, but her breaths were harsh and too loud in the stairwell. Without slowing down, she searched for her cell phone. Pocket, purse. There! More stairs as she tried to dial 911. But her hands were slippery with fear and the phone spun from her fingers, clattering down the steps to the floor below. Oh God.

  Sixth floor. Seventh. She hesitated just for a moment. If it was the man she’d glimpsed in the gym, he would expect her to return to the Seventh floor for help. She opened the door, slammed it closed. Would he stop to search the gym? The footsteps were louder now, faster, thudding like her heartbeat in her ears.

  She ran on. Breathless, she reached the exit door marked ‘8’. She could still hear the footsteps, climbing faster.

  With a silent prayer she gripped the door, pulled hard. The door swung open and she stumbled through. The hallway was empty. “Help!” she shouted. “I need help!”

  She pounded on a locked law office door, then ran on past orange cones and taped windows. Mother of God, these offices were under construction, cordoned off. She was alone. And if the pursuer had heard her, he would reach the floor any second!

  Panic filled her. Where could she hide?

  With a small cry she saw the red light above an emergency door and raced toward it. Another stairway, narrow and darker. She took the steps two at a time and wrenched the door open, gratified by the sudden ear-piercing alarm.

  Just as suddenly, the alarm stopped. Gasping for breath, she became aware of the sound of horns far below her, the siren of an approaching ambulance. The cool wind touched her face and she raised her head, dazed, breathless and shielding her eyes against the sudden glare.

  “Christ!” she cried. The exit led to the roof of the building.

  So high… Black wings filled her vision as terror sheered through her. She flung herself back against the door, frozen, listening to the unmistakable fall of footsteps climbing the stairs to the roof. You’ve got to go out there, she commanded herself. There’s nowhere else to hide.

  But she was so damned high up!

  What had Garcia told her in Maine? One step at a time. You can do this.

  But the paralysis held her in a vise, locking her brain and turning her legs to ice water. I can’t go out on that roof! She slammed the roof door closed against the bright sky. What, what could she use to defend herself. There!

  She reached for the weapon.

  The hallway door swung open.

  She turned to face her pursuer.

  A figure emerged from the dim stairwell and came toward her. Her fingers squeezed the trigger. The fire extinguisher sent a thick white spray into the hallway.

  The man leaped aside. “What the -? Jesus H. Christ! Ms. Marik?”

  The red emergency light blinked on a familiar Red Sox cap. “Mr. Goldberg? Oh, God, did I hurt you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me, who else would it be? You okay?”

  She ran toward him, slipping through the foam. “Thank God!”

  He caught her, shook his head. “Is there a fire? What the hell just happened here?”

  “No, no fire. Someone was following me. I found myself on the roof, but – Oh, God.”

  “Don’t like heights much?”

  She shivered in the warm hallway. “Much.”

  He handed her a cell phone. “This yours? A guy found it on the stairs.”

  “Thank you.” Her eyes searched behind him. “A guy? How did you find me?”

  “Got delayed by a phone call. Didn’t see you at t
he coffee shop, went back to the gym, asked around. Saw a guy in the hallway, told me he’d seen you bolt from the elevator, head for the stairwell. He found your phone…”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I dunno, taller than me, fair. Sunglasses.”

  She leaned back against the wall, drawing in deep shuddering breaths. Okay, she thought, I get the message.

  * * * *

  “Oh, it was a message, all right,” said Billie Jordan, her dark eyes flashing. “Lordy, I would have loved to see you aiming that fire extinguisher like some avenging angel!”

  “At the wrong person! Story of my life…” Alexandra smiled ruefully. “Needless to say, the building manager was mad as hell.”

  She sat across from Billie in the empty shelter kitchen, barefoot, nursing a cup of now-cold black coffee as she scrubbed dried foam from her boots. Lou Goldberg had driven her to the church only after extracting a promise from her to stay away from stairwells and rooftops. She smiled as the taxi driver’s final words replayed in her head.

  Anywhere you wanna go, Ms. M, I’m at your service. I owe your sister. And I carry a bat in the trunk of the cab.

  “No harm, no foul.” Billie’s voice broke into her thoughts as she felt a gentle hand on her arm. “Whatever happened to make you so afraid of heights?”

  “It was a long time ago, Billie. I was just a kid. It’s hard to talk about –”

  “So what you’re not saying is, Eve was involved up to her chiseled reckless chin.” She rose to stir the huge pots of soup that steamed on the old commercial stove behind her.

  “It’s more complicated than that. Everything with Eve was more complicated!”

  “Isn’t that the truth!” Billie leaned back against the counter and fixed her with an assessing look. “I see her in you, Little Sister,” she said quietly.

  Alexandra’s head came up. “You see Eve in me? Those heavy earrings of yours are messing with your head, my friend.”

  “You listen to me, Alexandra. I do see your sister in you. Glimpses. Of toughness. Humor and stubbornness. Bravery.”