Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [113]
Possibly to better allow him to absorb her news, Naomi left the identity of her mysterious benefactor until the end, but when Jack heard Annika’s name his blood ran cold. He sat down on a tree stump. His heart was racing; he felt icy hot, a sensation that threatened to annihilate his thought processes.
Annika had resurfaced, and, of all places, in Washington. Then he heard Naomi in her last line: “I think she’s behind everything, and she knows where you are.”
Jack, realizing that he’d been holding his breath, struggled to get oxygen into his lungs. He felt as if he were trapped underwater. He tried to calm himself, to figure out what the hell was going on, but it was as if his brain had shut down. Annika, the rogue Russian FSB agent whose life he had saved, only to find out that she was not FSB and the man he thought he’d saved her from was a confederate of hers. She had been working for her grandfather, Dyadya Gourdjiev, all along. He’d accepted that because for a brief time, at least, he and Gourdjiev were on the same side. He’d been powerfully attracted to Annika from the moment they’d first met in the bar of his Moscow hotel last year. And that attraction had turned into a love he’d believed was mutual until on his last day in Moscow he’d received an e-mail from her telling him that she had killed Senator Berns, a murder that had created a political firestorm and had been the starting point of Jack’s investigation into political corruption at the highest level in both the American and the Russian governments.
I neither regret what I did nor feel pride in it, she had written. In peace as in war sacrifices must be made, soldiers must fall in order for battles to be won—even, or perhaps especially, those that are waged sub rosa, in the shadows of a daylight only people like us notice.
So you hate me now, which is understandable and inevitable, but you know me, what I can’t stand is indifference, and now, no matter what, you’ll never be indifferent to me.
God damn her, he thought now. He put his head in his hands. Over the intervening months he had tried to put her out of his mind.
My grandfather warned me not to tell you, but I’m breaking protocol because there’s something you have to know; it’s the reason I haven’t come, why I won’t come no matter how long you wait, why I’m not being melodramatic when I say that we must never see each other again.
Her involvement all but paralyzed him. It threw the entire scenario into another arena entirely, and all at once, pieces, tiny and disparate, began to fall into place. Another murder that set an entire group of people into motion, most notably him—and Alli. Could this be another elaborately staged setup choreographed by Annika? It had her hallmarks, certainly, but there were marked differences, not the least of which was the brutal torture of Billy Warren. That wasn’t Annika at all. Her rage at her father had exploded quickly and definitively. Annika had been the victim of physical abuse; there was no circumstance under which Jack could imagine her torturing someone, unless the person had done grievous bodily harm to her or to someone she loved. This was not Billy Warren’s profile.
All at once, he became aware that Paull had broken away from Alli and the girl, and was standing beside him.
“Everything all right?”
“Fine,” Jack muttered.
“You look as if someone just walked over your grave.”
All Jack could manage was a wan smile.
Paull cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m useless here,” he said. “If I’m being perfectly honest with myself, worse than useless. I almost got us all killed.”
“Could have happened to anyone,” Jack said.
Paull smiled and clapped Jack on the shoulder. “You’re a good friend. I appreciate the support, but you’ll have to continue on without me.” His eyes cut away for a moment. “The truth is my field days are behind me. I’ve lost the feel. Wet work takes a different