Wilderness of Mirrors (33 page)

Vasily obliged. “You will not mind if I prop this fiendish device up? Only just now – ” He swung his foot onto the chair beside him. “I think I might change my mind and kill that bastard. It would go far in making the pain absolutely more reasonable.”

C leaned in, elbows bracing clasped hands. “I appreciate your restraint on his behalf. And, despite what you may think, I am quite relieved to find you vertical.”

About the closest thing you’ll ever get to a thank you, Vasily.

The corner of the Russian’s mouth, the side that worked, lifted. “Your Dr. Brothers has a good pair of hands. Quick. Efficient. I could use her.”

C glared under the fluorescence. “She’s not for sale.”

Demidov chuckled.

The cement had turned slurry.

“Ah well. So long as he’s dealt with eventually, and as long as I can be there to pull the damn switch or trigger, then we can sit a while.” There was no glitter in that basilisk stare.

“You have my word.”

Demidov continued, adjusting the clipped edge of his once-elegant suit. “You’ll change the records too?”

“Yes.” C made a note, long scrawling penmanship at odds with such tightly strung expertise. Kirstin would rest easy now. “Anything more?”

“I’ll let you know. See that you keep some ink in that ballpoint of yours.” Demidov opened his palms. “What about you?”

Nigel took the reins. “We bring Ivan back to Moscow. Serve him up as Wellington’s second in command. Hand him over to the politsiya.”

“We?”

Nigel nodded at Demidov. “You and me both.”
She’ll be fine. The apple falls not far from the apple-tree.

“We need Andrus Sepp considered beyond reproach.” C capped the Conway Stewart, leaving it at a 45º angle on his steno pad.

“Why?”

“Raul Fernandez. Nasty Colombian piece of work. We have reason to believe he’s supplying arms to one of our South American targets.”

“By selling drugs to the Kriminalnaya?”

“Exactly.”

“And you want him and this cartel, how do you say, wrapped neatly with tied corners?”

“Yes.” Nigel wanted it almost as badly as he did Sam. It would have to be his penance for Irina. Jaak and Ivan’s deaths by him would have done more harm than good. He knew that now.

Demidov studied him with a numismatist’s eye. “You’ve worked on this a long time. I respect that. You’re good too. If Ivan hadn’t spotted you at Heathrow, ‘Sepp’ would have passed through my barriers in the end.”

“You’ll do it, then?”

“Da.” He paused, looking pointedly at Nigel. “But…if you’ll give an old man some latitude?”

Nigel gestured agreement.

“Perhaps you leave when it’s done? I’m too old. It’s all I’ve known for the last twenty years.” His finger swung back to his own chest. “This leopard cannot change his spots.”

“You are welcome to what you deserve. To what you should have had.” C was nothing if not fair. “British Citizenship. A pension.”

But Demidov drew an invisible circle around his face. “There was a time for that once. You and I both know it has passed.”

“For whatever it means,” C said, “I am sorry about what happened to Kirstin.”

“It is a dangerous Game. Always. Unfortunate, yes, but I don’t think if time were to rewind itself much would have changed.”

Nigel let his eyes wander the purple crags and valleys of Vasily’s face.

“You must understand, Kirstin was an unraveler. She unraveled languages, puzzles, math problems. Anything. And she caught the skein of a nearly invisible thread. Carefully, she mapped bits of it. Wellington was a part. Only a part though. It’s an old web, perhaps from before the Great War. She felt it had Polish connections. Old anger as a foundation. In any case, bomb or not, she would have poked in dirty holes and peeked through evil cracks until it ended some bad way or another.

“We had the chance. Many times we had it. But I never left Moscow. Not once. Not even for Kirstin. And she wasn’t willing to come to me.” He pushed away from the table and nodded toward Nigel. “You and I will see each other soon. For weeks or months even. But when it’s done…”

“Your daughter won’t need to wait for me.”
I will not make that mistake.

Demidov sucked a deep breath of relief and massaged his leg. “I wondered today what the fates were thinking. Two people, so very good at what they do, yet so very unhappy about doing it. I think, perhaps, with you both, God has been telling a long joke.” He lifted a brow and shook a knowing finger. “Best to laugh with him.”

Sam considered the chip of burnished cherry resting in her palm. It was the letter ‘A’ from a game of Scrabble. A small smile tipped the corner of her mouth. She looked into the familiar eyes.
My
father’s.

“Demidov
a
.”

He smiled, warm, crooked and just right. “I should have gifted it to you a long time ago. Forgive me?”

“Yes.” She touched his hand shyly. Suddenly she needed to know something tangible, something absurdly real. “Do you like skating?”

His laugh vibrated through their connection. “No. Why do you ask?”

Her laughter was a bad choice and it took her a moment to recover from the unholy pain of it. Demidov’s eyes changed. “Here.” He wrapped her hand around a bottle of water. “Drink some. There will be time for this later. Right now, you must rest.”

She sipped at the water. “You’ll stay?”

He folded a big hand over hers. “I will be here when you wake. Do not worry, dochka.”

Then the bottle was gone and she fell away, aware only of the slight weight inside her hand and the large one around it.

She was laughing like she hadn’t laughed in a pocketful of years. Jane’s get-well card rested in her hand beside the gift from her father. The postmark was Rome. Obviously the date with American Guy had gone quite well.

Nigel’s eyes were enjoying themselves as well. His feet were propped on the thin-mattressed hospital bed, resting against her legs. “Want to let me in on the joke?”

She smiled at him. “You haven’t met Jane yet. She’s my partner in design, handles the soft side. Her card is well…exactly Jane.” He dropped his feet and reached toward the note. She tipped it back. “Upon consideration, I better not. Men find her tantalizing.”

“Men in general or men like me?” Bemusement looked lovely on him. “Depressed, crazy bastards.”

I’ll peel that away. Give me a bit of time and some sanding paper.
So she let him read the card as she examined the Scrabble piece. “I’ll put it on a black silk choker.” Her father had gone back to Russia that morning, and already she missed him.

Nigel set the card down and touched her hand. Her eyes found his, and then moved to the fullness of his beautiful mouth as he said, “You look like him. That’s how I knew. Around the eyes. Your hair too. I love your hair, Sam.” His fingers moved to a long piece. They brushed her breast as they twisted the golden curl.

Honey, heavy and warm, flowed inside her.

“In Hong Kong, it touched your lower back. I could have wrapped it round my fists several times at that length.” Blue eyes drilled that point home. Then he took the ‘A’ from her and ran a thumbnail along the white grooves. A smile came faintly to one corner of his lips. “Demidov
a
. Congratulations.”

She felt herself blush without really knowing why. “I never felt I had the right before.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s perfect.”

“That reminds me.” He dipped a hand into his hanging coat. It was the black and white photo of Tamar.

She touched it, glad the edges were the only bits damaged by its fall. “When did they say we could take him home?”

“Two more days. I think he’s driving them insane whining about the lack of ball chasing routine.”

“I bet he’d love a visit with Kate’s labs.”

Nigel’s nod was slow. “Maybe.”

Sam touched his hand. Her gaze visited purple and black bruises. There would always be a great hollowness inside her. “I’m so very sorry about everything. I should have told you…maybe he’d still be alive.”

Nigel leaned in along his bent knees. “No apologies. Let’s just talk for now. How old were you when it began?”

“I was a sophomore at Parsons.” She let him play with the dented band on her middle finger. Had it been only four days since she’d shattered the counter with it? The ring spun off her finger as he played with it. Round and round, tiny bursts of blue and gold light. “When I went to Hong Kong for the first time, thrilled because I could speak the language and had some freedom and pocket money.”

“Your uncles didn’t mind?”

Sam remembered the three-way fight with fondness. Maybe they hadn’t minded raising her. “John thought it was a grand chance. It was Loch who went ballistic.”

“Knew too much about the bloody business himself, I expect.” Absently, Nigel slipped the ring onto his own finger. “How long were you there?”

The scent of Hong Kong’s tropical heat. The honking stink of a million cars passing immaculate sidewalks.
I could have taken a nap on those walkways, a wallet full of cash on my chest, and no one would have dared take it
. “A month the first time. That was during Hong Kong Fashion Week.” She had worn a Wolfgang Joop black and charcoal suit that must have been made with Marlene Dietrich in mind. She still remembered the flow of the rather irregular cape. “Then, quite coincidentally, there was a national push toward making sign language both uniform and socially acceptable.” Somewhere there was a picture of Lily and her. Petite, acrobatic Lily photographed with unabashed joy because now she could ‘talk’ instead of being hidden within her family’s rural home.

“I was chosen for their campaign. Commercials this time. Media interviews and lots of events. I stayed several months. There was a big job with Cartier too.”

“So you were hobnobbing with important people.”

“Yes.” The rest of the story was new to her tongue. “One morning, I found a note stating that someone close to me would be killed if I didn’t do what it asked. There was going to be a party at one of the royal houses where a small, exotic tiger figurine was held. I simply ignored the demand.” She watched as he slid the band onto her right ring finger. Too big. He tried her pinky next. Her thumb and forefinger too.

“And you learned of Marc’s death.”

There was a coldness in her chest despite the warmth of his hands and the ugly slate blanket. “I didn’t believe he could have committed suicide. What could I say though? ‘
Marc wouldn’t have done that.’
Everyone believes it impossible of their loved ones.”

She could still see his sister’s condemning eyes. “They showed me a photo ripped from a magazine. In it, I had my arms around a fellow model. It was in Marc’s wallet when they found him. I tried to point out that it hadn’t meant anything. To explain that Marc wouldn’t have cared. Only none of it mattered.”
And yet, all along, it hadn’t been ‘them’ at all, just Turner and his wish for vengeance.

“So you went to work for AG.”

“That’s when everything changed. I stopped drinking and smoking. Began to run. Started watching over my shoulder. Let myself have a sparkly outer persona at work and a rabbit hole for a home. I didn’t want anyone else caught up in my mad net.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

Sam bent her hand to push the ring into place. Her fingers closed over Nigel’s. He hadn’t moved his hands. “Amazing what you don’t notice when you’re a dumb, deaf blonde.”

His mouth quirked, self-mocking. “It does have its benefits.” She eyed his hand-stirred, golden head and knew exactly why she would always want him beside her.

There was a long silence. “I never once fed them information about you or Brad. Whatever I may be, I’m not a traitor to friends or country.”

Slowly, he flipped her hand so that her wrist caught the light. “Turner should have paid better mind to your accessories.” He traced the wolf tattoo. “Not an animal that changes filial love.”

“No.” She pulled a deep breath of air-purified oxygen into her lungs.

Nigel put his mouth to her wrist. For a moment she was terrified of Marc’s reaction.
I won’t let him if you can’t bear it.
But he was silent. For the first time in a decade, he was gone from her.

The thought was both frightening and freeing.
I’ll always love you, my friend. Be at peace.

She blinked at the heavy weight of more tears and instead let herself feel Nigel’s teeth along the edge of her tendons. The vibration of it shook her to the core. He looked up at her, his eyes alive with emotion. “Your solicitor called HQ just after you left the vet. His instructions demanded we protect Tam and Loch and shadow Jane in exchange for Kirstin’s books and Wellington’s capture.” He played with her fingers.

“Did your people send her to Rome?”

His shrug was enough. How odd it was to know MI6 or SIS, whatever they called it, had done as she’d asked.

“And Loch, was he in Italy?”

“Yes. Though it took us a while to find him.” His compliment rolled over her warm as a Caribbean breaker. He’d not been a fool even one day, her uncle.

Nigel touched her cheek, his fingers fluent in tenderness. His words a murmur even to her deaf ears. “Just inside the cover of
Blue.
Blown up and mismatched like a quilt. Pages of your mum’s notes.” He paused. “You’ve planned this for a while, haven’t you?”

He loves me, despite everything.
“Planned on catching Turner?” she said at last, when she could speak, “I hadn’t intended to do it while Tam lived, but after what happened –”

“You know that bastard could have shot you in the head.” There was a lot of anger back behind that icy blueness. Some of it was directed at her.

“Or the neck or stomach.”

“He’s a capable man.” It was not a compliment.

Sam tilted her head and tried to make light of the self-doubt creeping around inside her. “But he’s been looking at my tits for the past ten years.”

Nigel went rigid as bridge cabling. “I should have killed him. For your mother. For William. Letting him live was a mistake.”

It wasn’t though. You did the right thing in spite of everything.
She felt the weight of William then, heavy upon her conscious. “You need to tell Kate. I can’t bear it for her to believe you’re responsible. Tell her about me. About Turner. Tell her if I thought for one moment he had targeted your family, that he would kill your nephew…”