He heard a sharp intake of breath from Viktor and he twisted around in his seat, motioning for Misha to keep driving. “What’s going on?”
The boy handed him the laptop, pointing wordlessly to the screen, the image live from a Google satellite miles above Yuri’s last known position. Flames bloomed across the image, leaping skyward. A pillar of fire by night.
Devastation.
“Can we see what happened?”
The boy leaned forward, his dark eyes shining as his fingers worked their magic on the keyboard, back-timing the satellite footage almost thirty minutes before beginning to play it forward once again
Korsakov watched in morbid fascination as the scene unfolded, leaving no doubt in his mind what had happened. No doubt that his men had failed. Perhaps irredeemably this time.
He watched the helicopter go down, exploding as its rotors hit the target and tore themselves apart. Watched as the fireball engulfed the men he had sent with Yuri.
Movement. His finger tapped the edge of the screen, a vehicle moving away from the inferno.
A sedan. Away from the others, from the chaos of the stampeded herd.
“That’s him,” he whispered, old instincts taking over. “Can we get the license plate?”
The boy brushed his hair back out of his eyes, excitement written once more on his face. “I can try.”
“…live this morning in Los Angeles, where this story is still developing. I’m standing here in front of the estate of Russian billionaire Valentin Andropov. As you can see, the police are keeping us back, but we’re hearing that Mr. Andropov is dead, and unconfirmed reports suggest that he was not the only fatality in what appears to be a mass murder overnight in Beverly Hills.”
What? Roger Hancock set down his spoon, resting it on the pink flesh of the grapefruit in the bowl before him as he reached for the remote.
Surely he hadn’t heard that right.
He turned the volume up all the way, fear gripping his very soul as the camera panned over the house, the mansion he knew so well. A mansion now lit with police floodlights.
The brunette onscreen continued her report, but she had nothing further to say, nothing that interested the President.
Valentin was dead? He could have rationalized it, could have convinced himself that it was nothing. Andropov had made enemies over the years, powerful enemies even within the mafiya.
But it rang hollow within his own heart. The man he had hired to make his problems go away…was now himself dead.
The door opened, and Agent Hawkins entered. “Ian Cahill to see you, Mr. President.”
Hancock looked down at his untouched plate, making a mighty effort to compose himself. To stop shaking. Despite the years of their alliance — their friendship, if one wanted to call it that, this was one problem he couldn’t trust Cahill to solve.
Not when he had gone this far.
There were few things worse than a night without sleep. Kranemeyer wheeled himself over to the window, adjusting the shades to allow the light of the morning sun to come streaming into the apartment.
He’d never had such problems as a young man, he thought, spinning his wheelchair back around toward the apartment’s kitchen.
But he was no longer young. Things were no longer so simple. No longer so clear-cut. Black and white had faded to a gray the color of soot — and just as defiling.
He plucked a small, unmarked vial off the counter, holding it up to the light. It might as well have been filled with water, by the look of it, but it was nothing so harmless.
Carter had masked his entrance and exit from the labs of Langley’s Directorate of Science & Technology, or “Q Branch” as some of the local wags called it.
Covered his theft electronically, Kranemeyer thought, a sad smile on his face. The analyst was still in the dark concerning what he had actually helped accomplish, and it was safest that way. For both of them.
Coftey’s promise of air support only went so far. And he intended to push it to its breaking point.
He replaced the vial with a sigh and rolled back to the window, looking out upon the city. A city which took men’s souls and fed them into the meatgrinder of others’ ambition. Democrat, Republican, none of that mattered. Perhaps it never had.
How far are you willing to go? The senator’s question, still ringing in his ears. Kranemeyer glanced at the vial of poison sitting there in the kitchen, reflecting on his own answer, an answer he was as certain of now as when he had uttered it.
As far as it takes.
Day was coming, the first faint rays of sunlight breaking across a cloud-streaked horizon. Abandoned derricks littered the oil field, standing silhouetted against the dawn like the skeletons of creatures from a time gone by.
Carol adjusted the cracked venetian blinds to let in the sun, moving back toward the center of the room. She’d set her laptop on the cheap metal desk that had once been the centerpiece of the office and she moved to boot it up, checking to see how much battery power she had left. Enough to send their signal for help.
Death and taxes — the two things of which every man was assured…and taxes had brought death to California’s oil industry. A slow, painful death as the state continued to grasp for more and more revenue to stave off its own slide into the abyss. Keynesian economics in their finest hour.
The oil field that had once employed hundreds now sat desolate, everything worth hauling off long since taken by metal scavengers and other thieves.
No more running, Harry had said when they had arrived, and she’d found his grim certainty frightening. Perhaps this oil field would bear witness to their own demise.
Listening to the computer whirr, she moved back to the window, catching sight of him out near the car, his tall form moving swiftly through the semi-darkness. Assessing his tactical environment. He hadn’t spoken a word to her since they had arrived, hadn’t spoken a word beyond necessity since the death of Pyotr.
You swore that he would come to no harm — does this look like ‘no harm’ to you? She would never forget the way his face had looked in that moment — pale, drawn…as if she had struck him. In a way, she had.
And then that man had disappeared — replaced by the man who had dragged her out of that house and placed her forcibly in the panel van as the police closed in. The man who had driven into a hail of gunfire to protect her, and the lives of others on the freeway.
The man outside.
In the end, was he truly responsible for the murder or Pyotr…or was she?
Who had set them on that course?
You want to find the man behind your father’s murder? This is the most linear path. She could still see the look on Vasiliev’s face as he had uttered those damning words.
The door to the office trailer opened and he was there, his blue eyes fixed on her face. The way she was standing, he had to know she had been watching him.
“I have the connection established,” Carol said finally, breaking the awkward silence between them. “You can upload your message any time you’re ready.”
She drew the jacket tighter around her body as she moved toward the desk, covering up the bloodstains on her blouse. Pyotr’s blood.