Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  "Well, if you want to ignore the old one: 'Want a piece of candy, little girl?' "

  Jeff laughed, "I'd forgotten that." He slapped her naked thigh, smiling.

  "That's my thigh, sir."

  He was immediately contrite. "I'm sorry, darling. I'll kiss it." He untangled himself, pulled her around, and licked the red skin. "Mmm. Delicious."

  "That's not kissing."

  "You didn't mind before. Do you mind now? Do you want me to bite you instead? I'm multitalented."

  She chuckled. "Indeed. I'd testify to that in court. So now do you have a higher opinion of lawyers?"

  "Higher and lower. Inside and out. Yup. You're just about the best."

  "I have a joke for you. It covers all my obvious talents—dumb blond and avaricious lawyer."

  "Fascinating. Let's hear it."

  She sat up, her breasts naked and pink. She grinned unselfconsciously. "A male lawyer and a blond woman are sitting next to each other on an airplane. He invites her to play a game. He says, 'I'll ask a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me five dollars. You ask me a question, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you fifty dollars.' He figures since she's a blond, he'll clean up. She agrees. So the lawyer asks, 'What's the distance from the earth to the moon?' The blond doesn't say a word. She reaches into her purse and hands him a five-dollar bill. Now, it's her turn. She says, 'What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?' The lawyer thinks and thinks and can't figure it out. Finally he gives her fifty dollars and says, 'So what is the answer?' Without a word, she hands him five dollars."

  She howled. She doubled over and held her sides. She laughed and laughed.

  "That's good. Got to admit. Very good." He chuckled.

  Still laughing, she wiped her eyes. "Oh, my. You didn't think it was funny?"

  "Hilarious."

  "But you didn't laugh."

  "Yes, I did. But it was more fun watching you. You enjoy life so much. It's precious to you. I'd forgotten about that. Maybe I never knew." He kissed her, and his heart was full of emotion. It felt strange, yet. . . good. "You're teaching me to live again."

  "No. You're teaching me."

  They smiled at each other. She rested her head on his shoulder and yawned. He pulled her close. They lay in the lamplight, talking quietly, trying to shut off the danger that waited somewhere out in the city.

  "You need to sleep," he told her at last. "You've got to take care of yourself. I'll help you. I want you to live."

  The old loneliness and fear seemed to crush her. "And what if I die?"

  "We're all going to die sometime. That's the cliché, isn't it? But let's you and me make a pact. Whichever one of us goes first, the other will be right there, too. I'll hold your hand. Will you hold mine?"

  She felt tears burn her eyelids. "Of course."

  Senator Ty Crocker was on his fourth cup of hot tea in the upstairs office of his house near Dupont Circle, surrounded by his books and the quiet creaks of the old house. Flubby the cat lay curled around his slippered feet, snoring and twitching, chasing some elusive dream mouse.

  Still in his pajamas and robe, the senator waited impatiently for the phone to ring. Worries about pending Senate bills and the biopsy on his prostate—the results were due next week—receded from his mind.

  Instead, he felt a deep, nagging anxiety, and it kept him chained to his desk. He had to admit he still had some doubts about Jeff Hammond. He was ashamed, but he could not stop his suspicions. He had been in public service too long, a watchdog for the good of the country. His hand lay in a bony clutch next to the phone. He glared at the instrument, willing it to ring. He wanted Dean Jennings from the Secret Service to tell him there were tracking bugs in the two belt buckles, which would mean Jeff Hammond had not gone mad and was no killer. At the same time, he feared what the information meant. That President James Emmet Stevens was in mortal danger.

  In his long life, the senator had learned seldom did anyone's character change overnight. Something he had, for the last few days, forgotten in his zeal to protect the nation. He had known Jeff since infancy, watched him grow into an athletic and intelligent young man, and seen his pride when he joined the Bureau. Seen the pride in his parents and older sister, too. None had understood why Jeff had left the Bureau, and the fact that he had gone to work at the Post had been little compensation. After Jeff's parents died, the senator had made it a point to have lunch with him every two months or so. It was the least he could do for Henry Hammond's son. At no time during those long, ranging conversations had he seen any erosion in Jeff's character.

  In fact, Jeff had thrown himself into his work at the newspaper. He had quickly become the Post's Russian and Eastern European expert, winning several awards for his coverage and essays. It had been hard for the senator to believe he was the murderer police in two states and the District claimed, despite the seemingly overwhelming evidence. But he had believed it. To his shame, he had believed them and not Jeff.

  He was still struggling with all that, when his phone finally rang. He grabbed it.

  Dean Jennings was agitated. "You're right, Ty. There are small tracking devices in both belts. State-of-the-art. Transmit-only, with preset frequencies. Easily followed within a fifty-mile radius, and we can display their positions on geo-referenced digital maps as we go." As director of the Secret Service, his primary goal was to stop all threats against the president, and now it looked as if he had just felt the first rumble of a national cataclysm.

  "I was afraid of that," the senator said soberly, while inwardly he wanted to shout for joy. Jeff was telling the truth. "What can I do?"

  "I need every piece of information you have. And I need it now. I'm sorry to drag you out at this hour . . . what time is it? Hell! It's already four A.M. Sorry, Ty. But you understand. Can you drive over here so we can tape your debriefing? I'm assembling a team right now. We'll start with the identity of that secret source of yours."

  "I've got to dress. Give me a half-hour. Less, if I can slip out without my wife catching me."

  "Thanks, Senator. Thank you very much. Meanwhile, we're going to start throwing out our nets and see what bottom-feeders we snare."

  In the brightly lit conference room in the dark Federal Triangle, Dean Jennings slammed back in the desk chair, his unshaved chin bristly black in the harsh overhead light, the wrinkles around his gray eyes deep with uneasiness.

  "Senator Crocker will be here shortly," he told the top men and women he had assembled from the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshal's office, and the FBI. "According to his source, there are around fifty people believed to be wearing these belts. He claims he has no idea where they are, only that they're ultra-nationalists who've targeted the president sometime today. I want everyone in position to move as soon as we debrief the senator. We're going to surprise the whole lot. Take all of them simultaneously, if possible. I don't want even a shortpeckered crow to escape. Questions?"

  Drinking black coffee, the twenty specialists and heads of departments shot questions back and forth, examined what few facts they had, and speculated, all in preparation for whatever problems and disasters lay ahead.

  When the discussion at last slowed, one man excused himself to go to the bathroom. It was FBI man Bobby Kelsey. As soon as the conference room door closed, he raced down the shadowy hall, trying doors until one opened. It was a storage room. He slipped in, locked the door, and took out his cell phone.

  Soon after Alexei Berianov arrived at his secret headquarters in Bethesda, on the outskirts of Washington, he washed off his old-man's makeup and changed into casual trousers and an open-necked Egyptian cotton shirt. He put on his shoulder holster, slid in his pistol, and took a seat before the wall of windows that looked out over the sea of lights that was the nighttime metropolis.

  But his mind was once again in the past, back in Moscow, reveling in his third wife, Tamara, and her glorious flaming hair, her angular face, her green Cossack eyes, and intense presence. As far
as Berianov was concerned, the poet Aleksandr Pushkin had captured the Cossacks best: "Eternally on horseback, eternally ready to fight, eternally on guard." That was Tamara.

  She had been born in Novocherkassk near the legendary River Don in southern Russia. As she grew, she had tended walnut trees and chickens, sprinkled herbs on the family's clay floors for aroma, and helped raise ten younger brothers and sisters. In the usual way, her father had strapped a saber onto the leg of each of her brothers as soon as he turned forty days old. When she was ten years old, she finally strapped on her own saber. Horses were in her blood, and her blood was as hot as any of her brothers.

  Which was why she had escaped to Moscow. In sex, she was wild and exciting. Her eyes would be back-lighted, and her skin would smell pungent, like ripe olives. Although he begged her, she would never let him see her completely naked. And even when they had twin daughters, she refused to give up driving her troika, hired by laughing Muscovites and adventurous tourists who never realized she had no interest in them, only in her horses.

  As soon as the girls were old enough, she took them with her. She wore her flat-topped military hat Cossack style, jaunty on the back of her red hair, and she carried in her tall boot the traditional four-foot-long nagaika, her cavalry whip.

  In those days, he was gone a lot—in Afghanistan because the bitter war was dragging on, in the United States because of President Reagan's technological threats, and in East Germany because of rising political tensions. The Soviet Union was losing the Cold War, outspent and outlasted by the Americans, but only the most elite in the government knew how bad the situation was.

  Once the center of his universe, his work now made his gut ache. Low pay, plunging morale, and increasingly repressive measures were draining his agents and the state. He scrambled to make his job and his country strong again.

  The Kremlin rewarded him by giving him three promotions three spectacular years in a row until at last he headed the FCD—the KGB's foreign espionage arm—in Yasenevo. There were more whispered promises: First the Politburo, then Gorbachev's job. Yes, Berianov was that good. Loyal, smart, a natural leader. He could be counted upon to deliver, whatever the cost.

  Still, one political crisis after another made government, down to the smallest Soviet, quake as if it were built on quicksand. His agents grumbled, something they never would have dared before. Some simply disappeared, and through the Gavrilov channel—an ultra-secret communication network he had set up with the CIA—he learned they had defected to the West: Surely, it could get no worse.

  Then that spring he discovered Tamara was having an affair with a friend of her brothers', another Cossack. Jealous and crazed, Berianov stormed out of the apartment, his daughters clinging to his pant legs. He peeled off their little fingers and drove recklessly down to Red Square. During that ride, nothing made sense: The Lenin Hills were green with leafing birches. Colorful tourist boats rode the river. Families picnicked in the sun while children played. How could the world be so normal when his country and his marriage were falling apart?

  Bitterness filled him as he watched preparations for the annual May Day parade. One banner wrenched him with longing for the dreams he had once held so dear: LONG LIVE THE WORKING CLASS OF THE COUNTRY, THE LIVING FORCE IN THE BODY OF COMMUNISM!

  That was when the weight of the years forced on him a choice that had directed every decision since. He had to choose. How much did he still honor his sick country? How could he continue to honor his lying wife? That was when he knew what to do.

  He drove to his office in the suburbs, summoned his favorite assassin, Ivan Vok, and gave him orders. Just as Peter the Great had carried the head of the famed independence leader Kondrati Bulavin to Cherkassk—now Starocherkassk—to subdue its Cossacks, Ivan Vok appeared at Tamara's door with a pine box lined in plastic.

  He opened the lid for her, displaying her lover's bloody head, which Vok had severed under Berianov's orders. As she stood frozen with horror, Vok spelled out Berianov's terms: She could not divorce him. She could have no more lovers. She must raise his daughters to be loyal Communists. He would not kill her as long as she did this.

  Later, Vok reported that she had screamed and cried. That the girls had hidden as she ran to get her long whip. But in the end, she had deferred, and Berianov had conquered his Cossack. He never saw her again. He could not. He was bent on a new future with a far greater commitment than either could have given the other, far greater than he had ever had with anyone. In the end, he gave himself to his country.

  In their Bethesda hideout, Ivan Vok had spread plates of food before him on the glass-topped dining room table—cold sturgeon, dark bread, sour cream, and fresh cucumbers. The subtle scent of the good fish made Vok yearn for Moscow. He sprinkled rock salt onto the cucumbers. In between talking with Alexei, he ate with gusto—shoving bread between his thick lips, then a huge piece of sturgeon slathered with sour cream, followed by a slice of crisp cucumber.

  Their discussion had been wide-ranging, but now it had narrowed to preparing Russia to be receptive to their plans. Vok decided, "Soviets should have their history returned. No one should be without history."

  From his easy chair in front of the tall windows, Berianov nodded agreement. "Whiners and the timid don't populate the history books."

  Berianov's people were in position to take over Russia's seven storage sites for blister and nerve gases. They would easily control the nearly one hundred nuclear warhead depots, the four thousand tactical warheads for battlefield use, and all the fissile material on Soviet soil. The deal he had finessed between HanTech and Minatom would assure the nuclear program remained strong. Plus, of course, there was the pièce de résistance—the intercontinental ballistic missile bases.

  Berianov said thoughtfully, "A couple of years ago, there was an opinion poll in Novgorod. They asked, 'Who are the enemies of the people today?' There were three choices—gangsters, businessmen, or the government. Fifteen percent said gangsters. Fifteen percent said businessmen." He paused for effect. "Seventy percent said government. A compelling majority. From the tsars to Brezhnev, we have always needed our autocratic leaders."

  Vok chewed and nodded. "That's what we know. Always give the bear the honey he prefers."

  "Our comrades miss our old Soviet-style medicine—nationalism. They need a leader who will take care of them and make sure everyone has bread, work, and an education. But at the same time, they also want our country raised back up to its rightful place in the world." From his dark hair to his blue-brown eyes and apparently relaxed mouth, he exuded the kind of confidence that could lead a people. A nation. His medium height and build were attractive but nothing more. It was his presence that turned heads.

  With conviction, Ivan Vok said, "You're right, Alexei. You're always right. You're the one we need. A leader like you rises from the tundra with a sword in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. No more stealing from the people. The others don't love our country, but we do."

  Berianov nodded and turned back to gaze out the windows at the foreign metropolis in which he had lived a decade. Lights blinked off across the panorama of Bethesda and into Washington. As morning approached, the great city had fallen from restless lethargy into slumber, while here in this apartment violent resentment simmered. He was so wearied by this country. He longed to go home, where he would hear his good, strong language every day and he could work with people who understood what really mattered.

  Vok pushed away from the table, the plates clean. He stretched, his short, massive body lengthening then returning to its usual compact, vigorous form.

  Berianov waved a hand. "Ivan, bring vodka. It's a good night for vodka, eh?" As he spoke, his cell phone vibrated.

  He pressed it against his ear and listened to the whispered voice of Bobby Kelsey speaking rapidly in English. Berianov's chest clamped as if caught in a monster's grip. "And you did nothing? How could you have let it go so far!"

  Kelsey swore, "Damn it, Alexei, don't try t
o blame this on me. The senator sent the belts directly to Dean Jennings at the Secret Service. Out of my jurisdiction. I didn't know a thing about it until a few minutes ago. If anyone let this get out of hand, it was your own people. The only way I can figure those belts got to Crocker is through Jeff Hammond. They're old family friends."

  A tidal wave of anger engulfed Berianov. Hammond again. He snapped, "You've got to stop them from going after the Keepers."

  "There's no way. Not only the Secret Service and the Bureau are involved, so are local police and the marshals. The belts are already being tracked. Your Keepers aren't going to be in any position to go through with the assassination. You have to abort. Walk away while you can."

  "Nyet!" The word was an explosion from his entrails. His blood raced. An enraged flush rose up his neck. He would find a way. Too much was at stake for his people. "You've got to locate Hammond and Convey before they do any more damage. Once you know where they are, I'll send in my people. I'll keep looking, but this is your problem, too."

  "You think I don't know that?" Kelsey's voice was grim. "I killed the director of the FBI, for God's sake. You've got to abort. There'll be another day."

  "No! This is the day. This is my country's day! You hear me? And if you think your big worry is having your identity exposed, you're naive. If you try to turn back now, I'll send Vok to kill you."

  There was a shocked pause. "Alexei, you're mad."

  "And you're a small-time thinker, Kelsey. I've never been more sane in my life. Find Hammond and Convey, and wipe them out."

  He punched his cell phone's OFF button. He sensed Ivan Vok's presence before he saw him in his peripheral vision. "Go away, Vok. Goddammit, go away!"

  44

  Suddenly gunfire erupted. A man with a Russian accent was shouting, insisting she go to the address in Chevy Chase again. It was crucial. "Yes, I've taken you there many time, but it's different now. You must go!"

  She grabbed her AK-47 and ran until she spotted Berianov's estate, bathed in filmy moonlight. With a chill, she saw the garage door rise just as before. An engine roared, and a motorcycle appeared in the opening. She was transfixed, horrified. She stepped back. She would not kill Mikhail Ogust again. Absolutely not.