Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [95]
She crossed her long, beautiful legs and stared at herself in the mirror. Everything about her was beautiful, and it was that incandescent beauty that from an early age had been a terrible curse. It was her beauty that had impaled her father with jealousy, rage, and, finally, unstoppable lust. It was her beauty that had allowed her to slip through her adolescence with a minimum of fuss so that she could use her brain for what she wanted most: revenge. With her grandfather’s help, she had trained herself in all forms of weaponry and espionage. From one of his closest friends she had learned the intricate byways of the con game. Lying came naturally to her; she had lied to her father from the time she was four years old. Lies had been her only protection against him, therefore she had become expert at it. As an adult, she had come to view lying in the same way actors viewed a role: It allowed her to be someone she was not, allowed her to express opinions that were not hers. It allowed her, in other words, to hide in plain sight.
Her flight was being called, but it was not yet time for her to board. She had one more task to perform. While she took out her cell phone, she thought about Alli, about how the girl had touched her so unexpectedly and deeply. The two of them shared similar histories of kidnap, imprisonment, and abuse. From the few intimate stories Alli had shared, it was clear that she and Annika were kindred spirits. And, despite Annika’s steely reserve, her fierce armor, she had fallen in love with Alli, the way, Dyadya Gourdjiev had told her, her mother had fallen in love with her the first time she had rested her tiny head on her mother’s breast.
Now both Jack and Alli were lost to her. Christ, emotion tears your guts out, she thought, as she stared at the blank face of her phone. For the first time in her life she was aware of two forces battling for possession of her soul. The knowledge set her mind to thrumming.
Then she thought, Fuck it! and dialed a local number.
“Henry,” she said, when Carson answered, “I’m leaving.”
“Everything is in place on this end.”
She could hear the relief in his voice. “This is far from over,” she warned. “You still need to exercise caution.”
“I’m covered.”
She rose and, grabbing the handle of her rolling carry-on, said, “Naomi Wilde is on a collision course with Mbreti.”
“Do you think that wise?”
“We’ll find out shortly.” She walked out of the lounge, riding the escalator down to the gates. “Henry, remember what I told you at the very beginning.”
“‘Trust eats its own children.’” His laugh was metallic. “Jesus, Annika, how could I forget such a dire fucking warning?”
TWENTY
NIGHT HAD passed its zenith. More stars appeared as the highest peaks of the Korab mountains shredded the clouds to ribbons. Dolna Zhelino was far behind. So were Arian Xhafa’s dead guerillas. Thatë’s men had found a satellite phone on one of the corpses, but it was unclear whether the man had communicated with his headquarters during the firefight.
“We have to make the assumption that Xhafa knows a force is on its way to attack him,” Thatë said.
They all agreed. They were camped on the narrow rolling plateau of the final ridge beyond which lay the outskirts of Tetovo, its lights flickering indistinctly through the black mesh of trees.
Paull looked at the kid. “Do you know what happened to the American unit sent to eliminate Arian Xhafa?”
“They were annihilated,” Thatë said. “I was in D.C. at the time, but these men told me. The American soldiers were killed within minutes. They didn’t get within ten miles of Xhafa’s headquarters.”
“Fuck me. So they’re dead, every one of them.” Paull gave Jack a sharp look. “How the hell could these guerillas destroy a heavily armed SKOPES unit in a matter of minutes? Christ, this situation gets worse by the second.”
Jack felt it imperative to move