Firebird (55 page)

He took a deep breath, as if he could inhale one final time the world he had loved so much.  Then he turned his attention back to the theater. 

Beyond the heavy curtains, in a gilded box stage left, a beautiful white-haired woman gazed down at the stage.  He imagined that he could see his beautiful Tatyana.  And bending toward her, a handsome, dark-haired man.

If only it were true, he thought.  If only that was Tatyana, our son beside her…

His son
.

The music swelled around him.

A good man, Tatyana had said.  A good husband and father, a bistro owner, a lover of ballet -  living here, in New York.  So close!  How he’d wanted to run to him, meet his family, kiss his grandchild.  

But I could not involve you in this, my son.  I could not risk you knowing…

He felt the tears, hot on his cheeks.  This ballet completes the circle, he thought. 
One final gift
.

I will do what I have to do.  I will do the right thing.   Perhaps, the universe will forgive me. 
Perhaps, like that child’s velvet rabbit, I will finally become real
.

He forced his eyes to the faces in the orchestra.

And there, in the seventh row center orchestra, on the aisle, was his target.

Violins filled the hall with the haunting opening chords of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.

It was time.

CHAPTER 60

“No!  I am not Prince...”

T. S. Eliot

The elevator doors slid open and Alexandra stepped into another world.  The Metropolitan’s backstage area was cavernous and dark, crowded with the scenery, ropes, turntables and machinery needed to operate its four great stages.  In the pulsing, flickering darkness, costumed dancers, many wearing fantastical animal masks, whirled about like fireflies.

An antlered stag reared its head.  A silver wolf slipped through the shadows.  A raven with a sharp beak disappeared into the painted forest, its cascade of feathers black and shining.  It was a scene as surreal as a Dali painting.  And it was impossible to identify individual faces.

Where are you, Juliet
?

A young ballerina in pink tulle whirled by her. 

“Jules?”

The girl glanced at her and hurried on.

Alexandra moved on, searching the shadows.  One by one, as if the Firebird legend of her childhood had suddenly sprung to life, the lead dancers drifted past her - the Czar and his golden-haired daughter, the evil sorcerer in his flowing black cloak. 

And then she saw Prince Ivan. 

The prince strode toward her, tall and muscled in his emerald hunter’s jacket, the arrows slung across his back glinting in the shadows.

She reached out to grip his arm.  “Ivan!” she whispered.

Bold young eyes stared back at her. 

Not Ivan
.

Without speaking, the young danseur noble pushed past her.

Out in the theater, the music became more ominous.  Soon it would be time for the princess’s hand maidens - and Juliet’s role. 
Where are you, Jules
?

Her eyes searched the dancers.  There, in the tangled leaves of the forest scenery, she glimpsed, just for a moment, a leopard mask.  Pale eyes shone at her from the shadows.

She turned and ran through the cavernous darkness.

* * * *

Panov moved as steathily as a leopard behind the huge flat of scenery.  Had she seen him?  No matter.  It was too late now.

He knew how to hurt her.

His hand gripped the pistol tucked beneath his jacket.  There would be no more mistakes.

* * * *

Flushed ballerinas brushed against the hunter as they left the stage.

Once more the music quickened.

Ivan watched, frozen, as a golden beam swept the air.  There was a bright flash of light from the left.

Glorious and triumphant, the Firebird flew into the spotlight.  The fantastic creature spun and darted across the stage in a series of high dizzying leaps, shimmering and brilliant as the deep red of her feathered costume.  Her dazzling circles and flashing crimson slippers whirled in a band of flame and seemed to leave a wake of fire behind her.

The hunter stood very still, unable to take his eyes off her.

Beautiful.  But not nearly as beautiful as his Tatyana had been so many years ago.

Before the ultimate betrayal.

He reached for a sharpened arrow in the quiver on his back and took a step forward.

* *  * *

Alexandra saw Juliet, standing stage left near the great gold curtain.  Warming up in the first position, holding the barre, heels together, toes pointed in opposite directions, slowly, slowly the girl began to move to her own interior music.

Safe
. 
Thank you, God
.

As Alexandra moved toward her, a flash of silver caught her eye.  And she saw Ivan, standing just steps behind Juliet.

She ran toward him, caught at his shirt.

The hunter turned.  “Alexandra!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Juliet turning toward them.  She raised her hands toward her niece with a ‘stay away’ gesture. 

Alexandra was jerked around as Ivan caught her hands in his.  “What are you doing here?”

“Don’t do this, Rens!” she pleaded.

“I have no choice.”

“You
do
.  Don’t make me turn you in!”  Her voice was low, frantic.

“It’s too late.  You won’t stop me, Alexandra.  I know the whole truth now.  I know how your sister died.”

She caught her breath sharply and stared at him.

Waiting for her sister’s last matryoska doll to open
...

Ivan raised his head, listening.  The violins were soaring toward a climax.

She pulled him toward her.  “Tell me, damn you!”

For a brief moment, in the pulsing darkness of the vast backstage, the old Russian spy stared down at her.

The violins and percussions reached the crashing crescendo.

Ivan pulled away from her and stepped out onto the great stage.  The long steel arrow glinted like a shard of glass in his hand.  Oblivious to the dancers around him, he squinted against the spotlight and raised his bow.

She heard a gasp from the audience.  The music seemed to fade away as she ran toward him through the shadows.

“Ivan, no!”

He turned.  For one cosmic second, their eyes met.

She heard his words, murmured in Russian.  “For you, my Firebird.” 

Then he spun around and aimed his arrow toward the audience.

* * * *

In the seventh row aisle seat, Anthony Rhodes raised his head.

It all happened at once.  Shouts in Russian and English, a blur of silver.

Something hard punched him above the heart.  Hot searing fire in his chest.

He rose to his feet, staggered, fell into the aisle.  Dimly he was aware that he clutched the steel shaft of an arrow in his fingers.  Blood ran down his hand.   

It wasn’t supposed to be this way
, he thought dazedly. 

He heard the screams, felt the crowd closing around him like shadows.  He felt himself spinning down into a long dark tunnel.

Eve was riding toward him across emerald fields on Lady Falcon.  Her hair flew like a banner behind her, red-gold and shining in the dazzling white light of morning.  He reached toward the light as he called her name one last time.

Evangeline!

* * * *

“Please, no.”  Alexandra froze in disbelief as screams erupted in the audience.  Chaos.  Dancers fled across the stage in every direction.  Where was Juliet?

“Jules!”  She spun around wildly. 

Madness.  For an instant, the crowd parted.  Bright orange hair.  There, by the curtain.

She ran toward her niece.

The leopard-masked man stepped from the shadows.   He tore the mask from his face, and she saw the flash of silver metal.  Aiming at her chest.

As she spun to her left, a slight figure lunged across the floorboards, crashing into the leopard with a cry.  The thunder of a gunshot reverberated in her head.

Stunned, Alexandra tried to focus.  Saw her niece and the man tangled on the floor.   God, God.  “Juliet!”

“You damned monster,” cried Juliet, pounding his back with her fists.  “No way you’ll ever hurt us again!”

He flung her off easily and rose up to smile into Alexandra’s eyes as she stumbled toward her niece. 

“You won’t stop me,” he told her.

The last thing she saw before he disappeared was the pale blue shine of his eyes.

* * * *

In the shadows of the stage, Ivan watched as the crowd gathered around the fallen man.

“Prince Ivan!”

Ivan turned to see Panov appear from the depths of the painted forest.

He stood tall, squared his shoulders, lifted his chin.  Not Ivan.  Never again.  He took a step forward.

“
My name is Sergei
.”

“You have failed us,” said Panov.

“But I have not failed myself.”  Standing very still, he watched Panov raise the gun. 
It was time to go home
.

From the left, a sound.  Jon Garcia ran toward him from the shadows.

There was a bright flash, another!

Pain.  He felt himself falling.

Tatyana spun toward him across the stage, her young face pure and unmarked, her feathers a swirl of crimson light as she flew above the earth.  He held out his arms to catch her.

She came into his arms, and he felt peace blanket his heart like a soft Russian snow.

Only in death is one truly free
.

“Firebird,” he whispered, clasping her close at last. 

CHAPTER 61

“…answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.”

Tennyson, The Splendor Falls

Red lights flashing in the cold darkness.

Alexandra stood next to the ambulance parked just outside the stage door.

Anthony Rhodes lay on the stretcher, covered in a blanket, his carved face white and still beneath the fogged oxygen mask.

Steps away, the EMT was murmuring into a phone, scribbling on a chart. 

She bent down until her face was just above his.  “Anthony!” 

His eyes opened. 

“Eve...” he whispered.  His voice was weak, breath shallow.

“No, Anthony.  Eve is dead.  It’s Alexandra.”

“I’m sorry.  So sorry.”

“Sorry for what, Anthony?  For almost killing me?  Juliet?  What did you do?  Tell me!”  Alexandra closed her hand, hard, on his shoulder.

“I had to stop her,” he gasped.  “She knew too much.”

The truth speared into her, searing and unbearable.  There was a roaring in her ears.   “You murdered Eve. 
You
murdered my sister.  Say it, Anthony. 
Say it
!”

His eyes locked on hers, shining.  “Yes.  I took her life.”

“Why?” she whispered brokenly against his ear.  “Why?”

“The real firebird,” he murmured, “was never Ivan.”

And the smallest matryoska nesting doll opened at last.

Rhodes reached for her, gasping.  “The Firebird rose from the flames… to protect the hero from those who would hurt him.  Ivan was protecting
me
. 
I
was the mole, all along.  I had to be protected at all costs.”

She gripped his sleeve, suddenly understanding.  “The Russians never activated Ivan.  It was
you
!  You wanted him found…  you wanted us all to believe that Ivan was the mole.”

“Identify Ivan,” he whispered, “and the true mole could stay hidden forever.”  He winced, struggled to speak.  “I never expected Eve to become so close to Fraser.  When I found out...  it was over for us.  And then Charles told her about Firebird.  She came to me, for help.  To help
him
!  She was too close to finding the truth.  I had no choice…”  The words tangled in his throat.  “I set her up.”

“The deposits to her bank accounts.  The photographs in St. Petersburg.”

His breath rasped as he nodded.  “I switched her sleeping pills, laced her Perrier with strong anti-depressants.  And muscle relaxants.”

Drugs.  That was why her sister had sounded drunk.  “You filthy son of a bitch.” 

“She would have exposed me.  I couldn’t… let that happen.  I wrote the note asking her to come to the inn.  Then I wrote the suicide note, brought it with me.  I took her to the cliffs.”  Coughs wracked his body.  “She didn’t know she was meeting me.  She was there because she cared about Charles!”

She looked down at him.  “The rest, Anthony.  Say it all.”

He closed his eyes.  “I pushed her into the river.”

His voice was almost inaudible, bloodless.  “I put the note into her coat pocket and drove home.  I never - ”  He began to cough.  Blood seeped from his mouth as an alarm sounded loudly in the darkness.

She stepped back, sickened. 

“He’s coding!”  The EMT ran over, checked a monitor and shouted for help as he slid the stretcher into the ambulance.  “If you’re coming with us, Ma’am, climb in
now
.”

She stood very still.  “I’m not coming,” she said quietly.

She stood in the dark for a long time, watching until the flashing lights of the ambulance disappeared into the traffic.

“I hope you rot in hell,” she whispered.

Then she turned and walked back into the theater, alone.

CHAPTER 62

“Your daughter…”

Othello, Shakespeare

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1
.

Almost normal.

Alexandra stood alone in the center of her living room, listening to the quiet.