Alex blinked. “You have a son?”
DeBruzkya nodded. “A recent acquisition. From what Dr. Orloff tells me, I believe you have met.” The general finally included Jared in his gaze. “As have you, Dr. Coleman. In fact, Orloff tells me your blood flows through the boy.”
This time, Alex stiffened. “Mikhail is your son?” Orloff stepped forward, covering for them before Jared could. “Yes. Our benevolent general has just been to visit the patients in our main hospital bay. He was so taken by the child’s plight, he has decided to adopt the boy. There will be press conference this afternoon to announce the wonderful news.” By the time Orloff finished speaking, Alex had recovered.
Her smile even looked sincere. “Congratulations, General. And I’m sure your sister will be thrilled to discover a readymade cousin for her own child—especially if she has a son. Mikhail is such a brave boy. He’ll be a great role model.”
DeBruzkya frowned. “My sister carries a girl.” He shrugged. “No matter, I will still have my heir.”
Christ. Nothing like a little perspective on life. Then again, Jared knew firsthand there were men who managed to treasure one child, while finding another eminently dismissible. However, he could still feel this particular child’s mangled flesh in his hands as he’d worked to staunch that unending flow of blood. And to know this bastard was indirectly responsible? Despite the bile scalding up his throat, Jared managed to join Alex and Orloff in a passingly polite nod.
DeBruzkya’s smile returned. The revolting gleam came with it. “So…you must join me in a celebration.”
A party? Now?
Their collective shock must have shown.
The man appeared impervious as he nodded. “Of course. We must toast the foreigner who came to the aid of my son.” If the man had been looking at the foreigner who’d provided the blood, Jared might have bought the sentiment. As it was, DeBruzkya was still focused on Alex. He finally turned to include Jared and Orloff in his gaze. “You must all come to dinner. Two nights hence. We shall dine at nine o’clock. My aides have arranged a small celebration at my private compound for my most trusted supporters to observe the anniversary of my reign. The fete shall now be twofold. Tell me you can attend.”
It was not a request.
Jared almost laughed at the irony of it.
Just like that he and Alex had managed to finagle their way back into that castle, back to that cache of gems—with Orloff in tow, no less. Jared studied DeBruzkya as the man openly studied Alex. They had an invitation, all right. A gilded one. But at what cost?
Orloff nodded first. “I would be honored.”
Jared forced himself to add his own brief, stiff nod. “As would I…and my wife.”
DeBruzkya ignored the subtle stress he’d placed on the word wife as he hooked his meaty fingers into Alex’s slender ones. The dim light flickering throughout the corridor glinted off the general’s naked scalp as he lowered his mouth, intent on pressing his fleshy lips to the back of her hand. The man spotted the ring and paused. “Beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
His head rose a fraction of an inch. His gaze shifted to Jared’s, his interest locked in.
“An antique?”
Much as he was suddenly loath to fan this man’s interest regarding anything even remotely connected to Alex, Jared nodded. “I purchased it in Bosnia.”
“Really?”
Yup, interest had definitely been fanned.
“When was that?”
“Couple of years ago, during the war. I bought it off an impoverished officer’s wife.” He gave a light, easy shrug. “She needed the money. I figured I’d eventually need a wife.” Relief seared into him as the general finally released Alex’s hand and stepped away.
“It’s set, then. Dinner at nine. You will meet my pilot at the helicopter pad on the roof here at the hospital at eight.”
“We’ll be there.”
“Excellent. I’ll let you get back to your duties. I understand the doors open soon.” DeBruzkya turned, then stopped as if he’d suddenly remembered something. From the speculation gleaming in his eyes as he turned back, he had. “You attended Stanford University with Dr. Orloff?”
Jared bit down on his curse.
Orloff had improvised without warning him. While it wasn’t impossible, it would take the information techs at ARIES an hour or two to insert the evidence to support the change. But if DeBruzkya’s thugs got on the horn quickly enough…
He nodded, anyway. “I did. I was premed at the time. Roman was already in his specialty.”
DeBruzkya nodded. “I don’t suppose either of you met a man by the name of Krazner? Doctor Gregory Krazner?”
Jared waited until Orloff shook his head, before adding a quick shake of his own. “Not that I recall.”
DeBruzkya stared at Jared for a moment, then shrugged. The speculation gone from his eyes, he turned and headed down the corridor. Back to his squad of idle thugs. Jared waited until the general and his goons and reached the granite stairs and stepped down onto them before he turned to follow Alex and Orloff into the doctor’s office. He closed the door behind himself.
“Do you know a Krazner?”
Again, Orloff shook his head.
“I do.”
They spun together to face Alex.
She nodded. “Unless DeBruzkya was referring to someone else, Greg Krazner is a colleague of mine. A geologist. Greg did his graduate work at the Colorado School of Mines, but he could have completed his undergrad stint at Stanford. I’ll check. Also, unless I’m mistaken, Greg has a more than a passing interest in—”
All three froze as a frantic knock reverberated through the tiny room. Since it was his office, Orloff stepped to the door and opened it. His nurse stood on the other side, her apron already stained with the first blood of the day. So were the sleeves covering her frantically waving arms.
“Doktor Orloff, Doktor Coleman. Come, come!”
Orloff tore out of the office before the woman could finish. Alex shoved him out after them. “Go. I’ll make the call. Find out if they’re one and the same. If so, I’ll have them create an emergency that’ll get Greg out of harm’s way until we can figure if he’s my replacement—and why.”
“…man.”
Alex paused in the middle of shaking out the thermal blanket and glanced down at the man sitting beside his slumbering wife. The same man Jared had been lying beside earlier this morning as he’d pumped two units of packed red blood cells into his arm. Abel Braun and his devoted wife, Elsa. She knew because she’d stopped to chat with him earlier this afternoon after she’d caught him staring at her. The old man was on a deathwatch and desperate for distraction.
She offered it once again, along with another smile.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention.”
The old man’s eyes twinkled, clearing the rheumy blue for a moment. “I said your husband is a good man. But I think you know this, since you have been thinking of him all day.”
She flushed.
Damned if Abel Braun wasn’t right. She had been standing here daydreaming about Jared, trying to figure out what the heck was going on with him. Because after that conversation or, rather, lack of conversation she’d had with her uncle regarding Jared earlier this morning, she was convinced something was wrong. Alex finished shaking out the thermal blanket and settled it over Abel’s wife, leaving the old man to tuck it in around her as she headed across the triage bay for the tiny cup of pills Orloff’s assistant had prescribed.
She could still hear the shock in her uncle’s voice as she finished her business query regarding Greg Krazner, then launched one last rushed question before she lost her nerve. She couldn’t believe she’d done it. She’d actually grilled Sam about an ARIES agent’s personal life. About her partner’s personal life.
She’d asked about Janice.
While she’d been tempted to abuse her relationship with Sam once or twice through the years, she’d never
actually done it. Until today. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst part was Sam had refused to answer. Why? It wasn’t as if her uncle hadn’t let a personal comment or two slip over the years. He had. She’d just made a point to let them go. She’d certainly never, ever picked up on one and used it to probe further. She hadn’t had to probe this time, either. Sam’s terse silence had said it all.
Janice must have worked for ARIES. Maybe still did.
Alex reached the nurses’ desk at the far end of the over-burdened triage bay and requested the medicine cup for bed 20A. She thanked the nurse for the two pills and water in German and headed back down the center aisle. Ironically it was DeBruzkya who’d initially planted the idea. If Greg Krazner could have bumped into Orloff at Stanford, why couldn’t Jared have met Janice through ARIES?
So she’d run her check on Greg and Janice.
Both names had popped. Greg had gone to Stanford and he was a geologist. Unfortunately there were two Janices.
Since Janice Errington was a scientist in her late fifties, as well as a recent transfer from another agency, she’d placed her money on Janice Angeline Grey. Janice Angeline was a twenty-eight-year-old, petite, blond-haired, blue-eyed, very curvaceous translator who specialized in Eastern European languages. Alex knew, because she’d viewed the woman’s electronic photograph. Alex frowned as she reached the end of the triage bay. No wonder the man’s accent stunk.
He’d been too busy honing his other skills.
“Danke.”
She flushed as she spilled a third of the water over Abel’s hand in her distraction. “I’m sorry. Please, let me—”
The old man tsked. But his eyes twinkled once again as he wiped his gnarled fingers on the edge of his wife’s thermal blanket. “Still thinking of your husband, eh?” She couldn’t help but respond to that weary, whiskered grin.
“How did you guess?”
He returned her genuine smile and patted the empty wooden chair beside his. “Because I think of my wife often, too.”
Alex passed the plastic cup of pills to the old man, sighing as she slipped into the vacant chair. She could use the break. It was late, almost 9:00 p.m., and she was exhausted. Abel glanced at the antique ring Orloff had lent her.
“The rubies are small, but beautiful.”
“You know gems?”
He shrugged. “It was a hobby of mine. I taught science and math here in Rajalla years ago.” Though he lowered his voice to a near whisper, her new hearing aid had no trouble picking it up. “Before DeBruzkya’s time.”
Intrigued, she slipped the ring from her finger and passed it over, accepting the small cup of pills so that the old man could concentrate on angling the ring against the light shining from the line of flickering fluorescent bulbs running the length of the ceiling.
He smiled as he glanced back. “Small, yes. But as I said, very beautiful. Very dark. I have seen only one stone darker. But that one was as large as these are small.”
“It must have been expensive, too.”
He surprised her by shaking his head. “Free.” He chuckled at her disbelief, clapping his hand and the ring against this chest as his laugh mutated into a hacking cough. She passed the cup of water back, waiting as he drained it. “Danke.”
“You’re welcome. Even if you are pulling my leg.”
He swung his gaze, rheumy once again, to her work boots. “Pulling your—ah, a joke. But I am not teasing. It was enormous. Eighty-five and one-half carats.” Abel paused his whispered confession long enough to wave her closer, waiting as she scooted her chair flush with his. His voice was beneath a whisper as he continued, “I found it in the Hartz forest two months ago, amid the rocks beside the river.”
She couldn’t help it, she smiled.
Either the man really was pulling her leg or one of the more debilitating effects of old age had unfortunately already set in. Rubies, as gorgeous as they were, were simply crystals formed from the mineral aluminum oxide. They owed their color to the presence of chromium. The more chromium in the aluminum oxide, the darker the red and, of course, the more precious the gem. If he’d taught science here in Rajalla, he would know that. He would also know that rubies had never been found in Rebelia. A ruby as blood-red as the one he’d described would have come from the metamorphosed limestones in Myanmar or the placer deposits in Sri Lanka. And none of those finds had ever produced quality crystals in excess of eighty carats.
“You don’t believe me.”
“It’s not that I don’t—”
“It was already cut.”
She blinked. “Really.”
That did change things. Perhaps. If he was telling the truth. “Someone misplaced a piece of jewelry that large?”
“A brooch. Antique. The ruby was oval and set in white gold, much like your wedding ring.” He shrugged. “I was attempting to fish in the river, but my line landed on the opposite shore, catching a rock, instead. I waded across.” He flashed his yellowing teeth. “It was my last hook.”
It was a wonderful story. But it was still a whopper. “I’ll bet you can afford as many hooks as you like now.” She couldn’t help but stare at the old man’s meticulously darned sweater, the painfully thin shoulders beneath. He sure as heck couldn’t afford adequate food or new clothing. For himself or his wife.
“It was stolen.”
Alex froze as her stomach bottomed out. She forced herself to count to ten. Then slowly, carefully, she swept her gaze around the triage bay. Jared and Roman Orloff had returned from surgery and were now examining a patient at the far end of the room. She didn’t dare alert them. She didn’t dare breathe. All she could do was whisper one word. One name.
“DeBruzkya?”
“One of his men.”
Sweet Mother in Heaven.
The dizziness from days past slammed back into her, but it had nothing to do with her coma or the whack she’d taken to her skull. It had to do with one-hundred-percent blinding excitement. The blistering rush of pure adrenaline flooding every square inch of her body. The thunder of blood pounding through her heart, hammering through her head, coursing through every blessed one of her veins. She sucked in her breath and forced out the next whisper, the next prayer.
“Does this stone have…a name?”
He shifted his gaze across the bay. By the time he pulled it back, the rheumy blue was careful, wary. “Why would it?”
He hadn’t said no. Hadn’t denied it. If anything, he appeared to be waiting to see if she knew. She sucked in the next breath and pushed out the next plea. “Tell me what happened. Everything that happened.”
He might be an old man marking the increasingly labored breathing of his dying wife, but he was a scientist. She didn’t doubt that anymore. Not given the light now shining within those faded eyes. The blue seemed to deepen, darken before her very gaze as his shoulders straightened. His spine locked.
“I lied. The stone was not stolen from me. But it would have been. So I traded it.” He glanced about the triage bay. His voice was still soft, but proud. Defiant. “By then, I knew what it was. Still, I traded it. I willingly exchanged it for this room and for this cot. For that cup of pills you hold in your hand. For the clean water I drank. For the right to replace that water so I can give it to my wife to aid those pills in their journey down her throat. In their journey to free her from the pain. It was the stone or her. I chose her.”
She already knew the answers to her next questions. She asked, anyway. “Why are you telling me? Why now?”
“Because she is dying. My Elsa will last another day. Perhaps two. If I am very lucky, three. That is all. And then I will no longer care. Someone must know. I bequeath the knowledge to you and your husband.”
“Why?”
Abel Braun glanced across the room, to the tiny cot that a woefully stitched-together Mikhail had already been transferred out of this afternoon. “Because you care.”
“Dr. Orloff cares.”
“He does. But he also has too many
others to worry about. The knowledge must leave this place. He will not. The stone must be located and destroyed.” He knitted the gnarled fingers of his right hand into those of her left and clamped down as he nodded. “It killed my wife. Yes, she would have died, anyway. But not so soon. Not so very painfully. And even though she was becoming little more than the shell of the woman I married, she was still my wife. I pinned the brooch to her sweater myself and within days she was ill, then dying. She wore it only once.”
Alex gasped.
He squeezed harder. “Yes, I am dying, too. Do not concern yourself with me. I have nothing left. Instead, you must find the man who took it before he learns how to use it. I met him only twice. He accompanied DeBruzkya on one of his hospital tours. I knew he could help me help her. God forgive me, I offered it to him. Find the man, and then you find the stone.”
She couldn’t move. Hell, she couldn’t think.
But she had to. Jared had finished with his post-op patients. A glance at her watch told her it was nearing 10 p.m. Well past time for them to head back to Orloff’s for the night. There, she could safely fill Jared in on what she’d just learned. She should go, grab his attention. But she was also loath to leave Abel Braun beside his wife with nothing to do but time his heartbeats against her increasingly labored breaths.
The old man reached out and patted her hand. “Go. I shall be fine.”
She nodded and traded the pill cup, now crushed, for the antique wedding band. “I’m so sorry.”
Abel offered up another of those resigned shrugs, retrieving one of the pills from the squashed cup as she stood. “It does not matter. I will keep the morphine, but Elsa is past any assistance the Reminyl could have given. Please return the tablet to the desk and inform the nurse. Someone else may need it.” He pushed the cup, the second pill still inside, into her hand before she could turn.
The Impossible Alliance Page 16