Father Night (7 page)

Alli’s expression clouded over. “Why should I believe you? You lied to me about your real reason for being at Fearington.”

“That’s so unfair! I told you your uncle contacted me, pulled strings to get me into Fearington as your roommate.”

“After the fact, Vera!”

“Really, Alli? Are we going to do this again? I confessed. Mea culpa. What else can I do?”

“Trust doesn’t come so easily, not after what happened. It takes time, it has to be earned.”

Some strange, dark thought seemed to flicker behind Vera’s eyes, and she opened her mouth, about to say something. But at the last instant she clamped her mouth shut and, nodding, stomped on.

Following her, Alli said, “So, okay, tell me what you know about my vanishing cousin.”

“Caro’s weird. I haven’t a clue what’s going on in her head. She contacted me several weeks ago when she got back to D.C.”

“Where was she all these years?”

“Here, there, she didn’t say, except that it was as far away from her father as she could get, so maybe Asia?”

“My cousin,” Alli said in wonderment. “She’s gone and now she’s back. Why?”

“Who knows?” Vera shrugged. “Maybe she’ll tell us tonight. Caro doesn’t seem like the kind of person to do anything without a very specific reason. She’s kind of scary, really, like a human incarnation of a logic bomb. She’s got a mind like … well, you’ll see.”

They met Caroline Lynette Carson outside a twenty-four-hour convenience store down the block from the First New Hope Baptist Church on the corner of Seaton Place and Third Street NE. At this hour of the night the church was closed and the sidewalks were deserted. Now and again, vehicles turned into the convenience store parking lot, a man or woman would get out, go in, make a purchase, and drive off. No one stayed very long and they certainly didn’t look around. It was a perfect place for a clandestine meet, Alli thought.

Caro was waiting for them in the shadows at the rear of the lot. As they exited their car, she appeared like an apparition. She wore black jeans, boots, and a thick, sheepskin-lined jacket. Her hands were in her pockets, and for a moment Alli couldn’t help but wonder whether she was gripping a pistol. In her maturity, she had blossomed, but her beauty took an altogether different form than her friend’s. Whereas Vera was dark-haired, full-figured, with vaguely exotic, sensual features, Caro’s face was bare of all makeup, almost ascetic, with a high, broad forehead and hair so blond it was almost white. It was pulled back from her face in a long ponytail that seemed to turn her slender, boyish figure gaunt as a snowy tree branch.

For a moment she stood frozen, as if shy or unsure as to how to proceed. Then she came forward and kissed Vera lightly on both cheeks in the European manner. When she turned, Alli felt struck by the intensity of her emerald-green eyes.

“Alli.” Her voice was deep, somehow rough, as if with that single word she were uttering a threat.

Alli did not know what to say or do. She had not seen Caro since they were both children, and then only once or twice when she had come to her uncle’s house. She had to remind herself that she had no real memory of Caro, yet she carried with her a sense of her cobbled from the bits and pieces she had heard when Henry Holt Carson had spoken of her to Alli’s father.

Now it seemed to her that this real, flesh-and-blood Caro had nothing to do with that wild child who had either been kidnapped or had run away from the amoral father she despised, depending on whom you believed, but who, at any rate, had seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.

Caro cocked her head to one side. “You seem startled.”

“‘Startled’ is an understatement,” Alli said. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a tidal wave.”

Caro laughed, the deep, raspy sound of the inveterate smoker, and now Alli could see the lines at the corners of her mouth and across her forehead, and she wondered how hard Caro’s life had been in the intervening years, what she had done, where she had been, who her friends were. It was, she reflected, as if Caro had been beamed down from Mars. She was an alien creature, completely unknown, as if, like Artemis, the powerful goddess of the hunt, she had sprung from the head of a god. She was a myth, come alive.

“We don’t know each other at all, do we?” Caro’s eyes studied Alli’s face. “I know that look, I’ve seen it many times before.” She shook her head. “Don’t even try to figure me out.”

Caro gestured and she turned, leading them to her car. It smelled of stale smoke and seemed charged with adrenaline. Caro sat alone in the front seat, her back against the driver’s-side window, her legs draped over the center console. Alli and Vera made themselves comfortable in the backseat. Caro shook out a cigarette and lit up. As if intuiting their objection, she cracked a window, letting in a knife blade of frigid air. She smoked slowly and languidly. She certainly didn’t act like a fugitive, Alli thought, unsurprised at her feeling of admiration. She herself was an outsider. At its deepest level, this was what had bonded her with Vera. She suspected that, whether Caro knew it or not, it would be the same with her. Outsiders had a knack of instantly recognizing one of their own and liking them. They could scarcely help it.

“So,” Caro said, picking a piece of tobacco off her lower lip, “you wanted my help?”

Vera handed her the iPad, which was already open to the screen shots she had taken of the Web site when it was still up.

Caro glanced back at them. “You’re kidding, right? This is junk, amateur stuff.”

“The Feds haven’t been able to run down the perp,” Alli said.

“‘Perp.’” Caro chuckled. “Listen to you.”

Alli pointed. “You see the chair the girls are on? It’s identical to the one I was bound to when—”

“Yeah,” Caro said, sitting up. “I heard about what happened to you.”

“That date of my supposed death, it’s when I was abducted.”

Caro frowned as she studied the screen shots more carefully. Then she took out a notebook computer and fired it up. Caro had customized it to her own specifications. From what Vera had told her, this notebook was unlike any other in the world.

Caro inputted some information from the screen shots and then did some cyber-digging. “I see what’s baffled the Feds,” she said. “This guy has sent them bouncing around the world.”

“Can you find him?” Alli said.

“No doubt.” Caro looked at her. “But not here, not now. It will take a bit of time and craftiness. Plus, I need tools I don’t normally carry with me.”

“So you’ll do it?” Vera said.

Caro looked from one to the other. “Quid pro quo. I want something in return.”

“Name it,” Alli said immediately. She had a sense that Vera would hesitate, perhaps because she knew Caro.

Vera sighed. “Out with it.”

Caro grinned. “I want something that…” Her eyes cut toward Vera. “Henry Holt Carson has something I want.”

Vera’s cheeks flushed deeply. She seemed disconcerted for a moment, before regaining her equilibrium. “You want us to steal this thing, whatever it is?”

“We’ll do it!” Alli said, and ignored the venomous look Vera shot her.

“And there you are,” Caro said with a good-natured smirk. “The Hardy Girls are born.”

*   *   *

J
ACK DROVE
the funeral home van several hundred yards farther into the industrial park until it was hidden between two buildings. Then he got out and sprinted back toward the warehouse into which both the driver and Annika had disappeared.

Finding the side door ajar, he slipped inside. Annika was retreating from a forklift that rumbled relentlessly toward her. Jack shouted, but could not make himself heard over the sound of the forklift’s engine. He lifted his Magnum, squeezed off a shot that cracked the driver’s-side windshield. Jack glimpsed Annika, making the most of the distraction, leaping up onto the side of the forklift.

*   *   *

A
NNIKA GRABBED
the operator’s door handle as she swung herself all the way up. She saw the shadow of the gun and ducked just as a bullet shattered the side window and whistled past her right ear.

Jack ran toward the forklift. Annika used the butt of her handgun to chop away the shards of remaining glass. She wanted to keep the driver alive, but he seemed determined to kill her.

The driver’s thick, muscular arm shot out, his fingers gripping her throat. He began to shake her head back and forth, harder and harder. She lost her sense of balance first, then her vision, which became nothing more than a smeared blur.

Jack, approaching, tried to get a sense of what was happening inside the forklift’s cab.

For Annika worse was to come. The driver slammed the side of her head against the cab door. Stars exploded behind her eyes and she felt her gorge rise. He knocked the gun out of her hand and slammed her head into the metal with even more force. A warmth trickled into her mouth, and the taste of copper told her she was bleeding. If he managed to slam her again she felt certain she would lose consciousness. Then she surely would be done for.

Jack raised the Magnum, but Annika and the driver were too closely entwined for him to have a clear shot. He sprinted toward the forklift.

As the driver shook her a third time, Annika managed to raise her arm up as protection, buffering the blow. Then, straining, she leaned in, plunging her forefinger into his right eye. He screamed, and she dug it in farther. His grip on her throat loosened, and she gasped in air, wrenched his hand away.

Jack leapt up onto the forklift, but, clinging with one hand and with the Desert Eagle in the other, he had no leverage. He tried to climb higher to gain better purchase.

Annika saw the gun as the driver brought it to bear on her and knocked it sideways. She had blinded him on her side, forcing him to turn his head full on to her. She smashed his nose with the heel of her hand, and she was totally free. Swinging away, she wrenched open the cab door and kicked him in the face. As he fell back, she grabbed hold of the edge of the roof and wrapped her legs around his neck. His meat-hook hands tore at her, frantically trying to free himself and, at the same time, gouge her. Feeling him prying apart her legs, she locked her ankles behind his ears and exerted as much force as she could muster. For what seemed like endless moments, they were locked in a struggle as much of will as of strength and endurance. Then Annika, using her advantage of leverage, squeezed her thigh muscles with all her force. Still, she was losing the battle; his superior strength was a heartbeat from overwhelming her, freeing himself from her vise.

Leaning in, she smashed her hand into his throat. He coughed, then gagged. Jack, having gained the cab from the other side, jerked open the door and hauled the driver out, dropping him to the concrete floor

Annika, her breathing labored, her heart racing, went slack. “Shit,” she said, slipping backward in exhaustion.

*   *   *

J
ACK CARRIED
her down off the forklift. The moment he set her down he got a good look at her face.

“I’m fine,” she said.

He took her around the front of the forklift to where the driver, semiconscious, lay on his back.

Jack hauled him into a sitting position, slapped him hard on both cheeks. “Who hired you?”

The driver’s eyes fluttered and he sucked in air. Jack repeated the question.

The driver shook his head.

Jack hit him on his right ear.

“Damnit,” the driver said, cowed. “I don’t know.”

Jack slammed him again, this time with the barrel of the Magnum. “Don’t fuck with me, I don’t have the time.”

“Don’t kill me.”

Jack pressed the muzzle of the Desert Eagle against the driver’s right nostril. “I’m not going to kill you,” Jack said, “but I will rob you of all your five senses, one at a time, unless you talk.”

Jack ripped the gun’s muzzle through flesh and skin. The driver cradled his ruined nose with both hands. His eyes were rolling manically. “I was con-contacted by someone who said he worked for the old man. I believed him.”

“What did he tell you to do?”

“Just what I did. Take Gourdjiev to this warehouse.”

“And then what?”

“Drive the van inside.”

“That’s it?”

The driver nodded. “Then we were supposed to get out as fast as we could.”

Jack shook him. “Who gave you your orders?”

“He said his name was Omega.”

Jack looked at him skeptically. “And you took that at face value?”

“I took the ten thousand dollars that arrived at my door at face value.”

“Who delivered the money?” Annika said.

The driver shrugged. “A kid. I never saw him before or since.”

Remembering the conversation he had had with Annika in her apartment, Jack wondered whether Omega might be Grigori Batchuk. “And this Omega,” Jack said, “what did he look like?”

“He was a voice on the phone”—the driver winced in pain—“nothing more.”

“Did he call you at home?”

“My mobile,” the driver said. “I don’t have a landline.”

Jack held out his hand. “Let’s have it.”

The driver took one hand away from his nose and dug in his jacket pocket. As he was about to extract his hand, Jack grabbed his wrist, moved the hand out slowly. It was gripping a mobile phone.

Jack took it from him and turned it on. When the screen lit up, he checked the call log. “What language did you and Omega speak?”

“Russian,” the driver said.

“His accent?”

The driver shrugged. “I’m from Moscow and so is he.”

Jack was scrolling through the list of recent incoming calls while the driver watched.

“That’s the one,” the driver said, pointing. “He always called me from that number.”

Jack showed it to Annika. “It’s a Moscow exchange,” she said, “but that’s all I can tell.”

Jack handed the phone to the driver. “Call it.”

The driver glanced up at him, sniffling heavily. “What? I’ve never contacted him.”

“Why not?” Annika asked.

“He told me not to.”

“Do it now,” Jack said.

Fright leapt into the driver’s eyes again. “What d’you want me to say?”

“Tell him the truth—or a version of it. You’ve run into a problem, your compatriot is dead. You’re broken down. Give him your location.”