by Jenni Wiltz
“I don’t understand.”
“We didn’t either. But Beth found out that a German-owned manuscript copy of the Divine Comedy had come up for auction at Sotheby’s, theoretically penned by Dante himself. They’d authenticated it with lasers and Raman spectroscopy, and the starting bid was set at $15 million.”
“What did that have to do with your dream?”
“The man who owned the manuscript was named Feigling.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It means ‘coward’ in German.”
He felt the blood drain from his cheeks. “You’re kidding.”
“I never kid about medieval poetry. Beth raised hell at Sotheby’s, telling them they had a forgery on their hands. They asked the seller for another round of tests and he cracked. He said he’d paid a forger in Berlin.”
“Christ, I remember that case. The forger was a former East German. We flagged him when he faked exit visas for several members of the Bolshoi.” He shook his head, staring at her with begrudging respect. “He got caught because of you? How did you know the manuscript was a fake?”
“I didn’t.”
“You must have known something about it. Something that triggered your dream.”
“I didn’t know the fucking thing existed. Did your file say anything about me?”
“Just that Elizabeth Brandon has a sister who’d been in and out of sanitariums as a child. How did this all start?”
“Belial showed up and put me in a coma when I was nine. When I came out of it, I asked the doctors if I could see him on the x-ray. That’s when they shipped me off to the funny farm for kids. Someone decided I was schizophrenic and it stuck.”
“Did they give you any medication?”
“They gave me all of it. I barely knew my own name for five years.”
“What happened?”
Her features relaxed into the purest smile he’d ever seen. “Beth. She saved me.”
“What does she think about all this? Does she think you’re schizophrenic?”
“She thinks I’m like Joan of Arc, visions and all. Maybe it’s the same thing.”
“What do you think?”
She shrugged and twisted away from him. “It’s bigger than me. I’m just the puppet.”
“Who’s the puppeteer? God?”
“Fuck if I know. If I think about it too much, it makes me hate everything. You know what happened to Joan of Arc, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know.” He recognized the bitterness in her tone and knew just where it came from. Lana believed that what happened to her was her fault, too—that she deserved to be beaten and raped and left for dead, even though he was the one Lazovsky wanted. “It’s not your fault. You know that, right?”
Her smile was like a jack-o-lantern, scooped out and hollow. “I know lots of things.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“I don’t.”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
She shrugged and shifted position on the bed. “Sometimes I burn myself with a cigarette lighter.”
“To be like Joan?”
“To see if I can feel it.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Then I do other things.” She dropped his gaze and picked at the decaying chenille bedspread. “I just wish I knew why Belial picked me. Beth thinks I’m so smart, but she’s a million times what I’ll ever be. Maybe it had to be this way so she could be who she is. That’s okay.” She blinked rapidly and sniffed. “I would do anything for her. But I still want to know, you know?”
Her words hit him in the gut like a punch. She’d accepted what had happened to her as a trade for her sister’s more successful life. “Jesus,” he said, “Natalie, look at me.” He put two fingers under her chin and tilted her head back up towards him. “None of this happened as some sort of cosmic trade for your sister’s success. It’s not your fault. Believe me, sometimes things happen for no reason.”
“Not this.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“You don’t know anything.”
She tried to pull away but he held her face in his grasp, brushing her cheekbones with his thumbs. “It’s not your fault.”
“But how do you know that?” She leaned her forehead against his and suddenly, her lips were just inches away. “You can’t know that.”
“I do.” He held her gaze. “Somewhere inside, you do, too.” He watched her eyes thaw like the ice they resembled, slipping from something hard and cold into something liquid, something he couldn’t grasp if he tried. He closed his eyes and gently brushed her lips with his own, intending to pull away when she was comforted.
But something happened. Instead of pulling away, she opened her mouth to him. Hungry and angry, her tongue swept his in a honeyed frenzy. She slipped shaking hands around his neck and pulled him closer. The heat from her body swept through him, setting his blood on fire in an instant. He kissed her back and imagined pressing her down into the creaking bed. “Natalie,” he said, pulling back. “You shouldn’t do this.”
Her heavy breaths moved her hair where it had fallen over her face. “You asked me to believe you. Do you believe me?”
Her eyes, melted pools of Siberian ice, held more fear and more pain than he could fathom. Maybe, he thought, the best way to help her wasn’t to try and change her. Maybe the best way was simply to do what she asked—believe in her.
He let her pull him down onto the bed and covered her body with his.
Chapter Eleven
July 2012
San Francisco, California
Beth Brandon lay in bed with a book in her lap. On the cover, a half-naked redhead writhed in the arms of a pirate who looked like Fabio. She wished she were the type of professor who read Foucault or Goethe for fun, but on most days, she could barely manage Jared Diamond. Life was already full of guns, germs, and steel. If there happened to be a shortage of any of these, Roosevelt filled in with an admirable second-place trifecta of dog drool, poop, and urine.
In the past week alone, she’d picked Seth up from the principal’s office for fighting, disciplined a grad student for writing sexual comments on a freshman girl’s paper, badgered Scott into sending May’s child support, hired a contractor to fix the leak in the second bathroom, and miffed a speech to the university regents after Natalie hijacked her cue cards.
To top it off, someone had prank called the house twice that night. Occasionally an enterprising student found her phone number and begged for an extension on a paper or a higher grade on the final exam. These calls weren’t like that. The other person never said a word—all she could hear was calm, soft breathing. She hated to think that someone might be watching the house, trying to learn her schedule. Seth was never home alone, and even if he were, Roosevelt would surely bark at any intruder. Still, she couldn’t bear to think of her son being in danger even for a moment.
She glanced at her nightstand to make sure the phone was in reach and added another item to her to-do list: test the security system. Maybe I need to ask for an upgrade, she thought. Maybe I need to get Seth a panic button.
She turned back to the pirate book and read one paragraph before a noise in the hallway caught her attention: slippers shuffling on polished hardwood, making their way to her door. Seth’s small fist knocked twice before he turned the knob. “Mom?” he said, poking his pale head into her room.
“Yeah, baby?” she said.
“I’m not a baby,” he said, frowning.
“I know.” She patted the empty space beside her. “What’s wrong?” Her heart still hurt when she thought of how often he’d come to her with questions about his father, why he never called, and when he would get to go down to L.A. and visit. She arranged her face into a smile while her brain formed quick answers to a barrage of dangerous questions.
He shuffled inside and scrambled up onto the bed. “I can’t sleep. I tried listening to my iPod, but it didn’t work.”
“Wanna sleep in here
tonight?”
“Maybe. If Roo can come, too.” His soft blond hair fell diagonally across his forehead and he brushed it up out of his eyes.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “Are you busy?”
She held up the romance novel so he could see the cover. “Babe, I’m reading a book about pirates that doesn’t mention anything about vitamin deficiency, disease, rats, or the lack of basic hygiene on a pirate ship. I think it’s safe to say I’m not busy.”
Her son nodded, well versed in the falsehoods of popular representations of pirates. “Shark Week started tonight, Mom.”
“Did they talk about great whites?”
He shook his head. “It was hammerheads. Aunt Natalie said she’d watch it with me, but she never came.”
Beth felt a quiver of arrows pierce her heart. Every doctor who’d reviewed Natalie’s file had insisted she be kept away from Seth, but Beth could never bring herself to obey them. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, forcing a smile. “I think it was my fault. I’m sorry.”
Seth’s brown eyes blinked at her solemnly. “Did you tell her not to come?”
“We had a fight. She probably thinks I’m still angry at her.”
“You’re not, are you? I mean, you said you’re sorry, right?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why not? You make me say I’m sorry all the time.”
“I guess I thought I wasn’t sorry,” she said. “But I am.”
“Then you need to tell her. I don’t want you guys to fight.”
“I don’t want to fight with her, either.”
“So can you call her? And find out if she’s coming over tomorrow? It’s really important, Mom. They’re gonna talk about megamouth sharks.”
Beth sighed. “It’s not that easy, babe.”
“Yes, it is. You just pick up the phone and call her. Ask her if she’s coming tomorrow…please.”
“All right.” Beth put down her book, wondering why she needed her eight-year-old son’s prompting to apologize to her sister. I should have done this myself, she thought. Why is it so hard for adults to say they’re sorry? Her cheeks burned as she realized how stupid it all was. So what if her speech had been less than stellar and received a tepid response? If she was that dependant on cue cards, the problem was hers, not Natalie’s.
She reached for the phone and hit the speed dial for Natalie’s number. “It’s ringing,” she said to Seth, watching her anxiously. It rang four times before Natalie’s answering machine picked up. “Nat, it’s Beth. Look, I’m sorry for getting mad at you the other day. I know you’re just trying to help, and I shouldn’t have snapped like that. I just want to make sure you’re okay. I’ve got someone else here who really wants to know if you’re coming over to watch megalomaniac sharks tomorrow—”
“Megamouth!” her son yelled. “Mom, get it right!”
“—so call me, or just come over, okay? I love you, sis.” She hung up the phone and smiled for Seth. “You’re my witness. I invited her over for sharks.” She glanced at the clock radio on her nightstand: 2:30 a.m. It was odd that Nat wouldn’t answer this late at night. She should know Beth wouldn’t call this late unless it was important, in which case she would pick up. Natalie couldn’t be out and about this late, could she? What if something had happened to her?
“Hey, kiddo, why don’t you go back to bed now?” she said, in a voice that sounded falsely bright, even to her. “If Nat calls back, I’ll tell her you say hi.” She held her breath, wondering if Seth would call her bluff.
He looked at her for a moment, the questioning expression in his eyes so much like that of his father that she felt tears gather beneath her lashes. I wish you could have seen the best of him instead of the worst, she thought. Then he nodded, and slipped down off the bed. “See you in the morning, Mom,” he said, smiling as he closed her door softly behind him.
“I love you,” she said thickly.
Beth lay back and listened for the click of Seth’s door latching shut. It came just as the phone rang again. She snatched it up, eager to tell her sister how brave her son was in the face of her absence. “Nat?” she said. “Is that you?”
But no one answered. All she heard was slow, gentle breathing. “Who is this?” she asked. “If you don’t stop harassing me, I’ll call the police.”
In the background, she heard something familiar—a foghorn, blaring out into the night. One, two, three blows. She held the phone away from her ear and realized she heard the same noise outside her window. The caller was watching the house.
She slammed the phone down and ran to her bedroom window. She threw aside the curtains and looked down at the street. It was empty—no cars, no pedestrians. “I know what I heard,” she said. “I know you’re there.”
The next number she dialed was 911.
Chapter Twelve
July 2012
San Francisco, California
Constantine watched Natalie sleep, curled in a fetal position on one of the grimy beds. Her lips were rosy and softly swollen. After one frantic embrace she’d drifted off in his arms, lulled to sleep as his fingertips traced the Cyrillic alphabet on her skin. Part of him felt relieved. No matter how beautiful she was or how hypnotic her stories, she couldn’t separate fact from fiction. He had no business sleeping with her, even if she thought it was what she wanted.
His eyes drifted down to the puffy silver scars on her arms. It can’t be true, he thought, remembering her story about Dante and the German forger. But why invent such a lavish story to explain a suicide attempt? Lana never explained anything—she just kept trying.
He remembered the day his sister came home from the hospital after Lazovsky’s attack. She smiled, went into her room, and closed the door behind her. Without a sound, she calmly sliced the flesh from her cheeks and fed it to her tiny dog. It was morning before they found out what she’d done.
Constantine understood certain kinds of death—the star-bright explosion of pain delivered so well by bullets, bombs, and knives—but he didn’t understand it when it came from the inside out, attacking the mind before it attacked the body. How did these women silence the scream of their own flesh, the cry for life when confronted with death? Obeying that cry was all that had kept him alive in Chechnya.
He shook his head to clear away the images of blood and death. It was time to do his job. He picked up his phone and dialed Vadim. He needed to check in and find out what the hell had gone wrong. “We have problems,” he said as soon as his boss picked up the phone.
“Greetings to you, too, Constantine Alexandrovich.”
“Vadim, are you alone?
“What happened?”
“You’re not going to like anything I have to say.”
“Then let me pour a drink. Start with the least objectionable item on your list.”
“Make it a double.”
“Is it that bad?”
“I didn’t get Elizabeth Brandon.”
“Jesus, boy, I thought I told you to start slowly.”
“I did.”
Vadim paused. “Go on.”
“I want you to find the analyst who did the intelligence work for that file.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t do his homework. He sent me to Natalie Brandon, not Elizabeth.”
“Are you telling me you kidnapped the wrong woman? Constantine, we’re not even supposed to be in that goddamn country! How the hell can I keep this a secret if you’re kidnapping people everywhere you go?”
“That’s the other thing. It’s not a secret. Someone followed me here.”
“That’s impossible. No one knows about this but the two of us and the ambassador.”
“Then the leak came from inside. Whoever gave us that address is on Starinov’s payroll. They followed me straight to the girl’s apartment.”
“Starinov! Why do you suppose he’s the one following you?”
“Because the men I killed were Vympel.”
“J
esus Christ, boy, are you sure?”
“I saw their insignia, Vadim. There’s no doubt.”
Originally a KGB special ops squad, Vympel disbanded amid the confusion of communism’s fall and Yeltsin’s messy assumption of power. In the late 1990s, the unit was resurrected by Maxim Starinov, a protégé of Putin who was also an FSB director before becoming prime minister. Starinov returned the squad to its roots—a brutal spetsnaz unit specializing in foreign espionage. The squad functioned as Starinov’s personal army, with no government mandate or oversight. During the second Chechen war, Starinov sent Vympel men dressed as Chechen rebels to kidnap and murder Red Cross workers. When he ordered Vympel to end the hostage situation at School Number One in Beslan, they fired thermobaric rockets into a school full of frightened children without hesitation.
Nine months ago, the bureau’s hackers had intercepted an email from Starinov to the heads of the GRU and the SVR, informing them that the reconstituted Vympel unit would fall under his personal jurisdiction, not theirs. With government status, Starinov could funnel as much funding into Vympel as he wanted. His personal army would now be paid for by Russian taxpayers and given unprecedented access to the country’s best weaponry and technology. It was a nightmare of epic proportions.
“You know what I’m up against,” Constantine said. “I need your help.”
“So it’s true,” Vadim said softly. “How many of them were there?”
“I killed two. I don’t know how many more he sent.”
“They’ll come after you with everything they have.”
“I know, but that’s not what scares me. They’re watching us from the inside, Vadim. If they had their own intel, they’d have gone for the right sister.” Constantine thought about the brief he’d been given—information about the Romanov execution and portions of the Rumkowski file. If he was right about the leak, Starinov knew everything the bureau knew. The man ran the FSB for years before becoming prime minister; he could be in no doubt as to what it meant. “That bastard is using us to find the Tsar’s money, isn’t he?”