Judge & Jury - James Patterson [65]
“Father!” Pavel gleefully shouted as Nordeshenko stepped through the door. He was two days early. His wife, Mira, ran out of the kitchen. “Richard! Is that you?”
“It’s me,” Nordeshenko answered. He hugged both of them tightly, each in an arm. Three days before he didn’t know if he would ever see them again. “It’s good to be home.”
And it was. Through the glass doors, the deep turquoise of the Mediterranean was like a welcome, mood-lifting tonic to him. And the tender embrace of his family. He would never deceive them again. He had all the money he needed; his career was over. This was a young man’s game, after all.
“Father, come see.” Pavel pulled him by the hand. “I’ve found a defense against Kasparov’s Spanish opening. I’ve solved it!”
“What an Einstein we’ve raised,” he joked to Mira.
“No, what a Kasparov,” said Pavel.
The boy tugged him into his room. Nordeshenko was exhausted. And not just from the flight. He had dropped Cavello off at a safe house they had arranged near Baltimore. The bastard was to be crated up and put on a freighter. And to where? Nordeshenko found some amusement in his destination. Even Interpol would not go there.
He was happy to part ways. The malicious animal killed for sport, not for business or necessity. It was his nature. Back in Russia they would spit and call him a devil. Well, he had done his job. He hoped he would never see that piece of garbage again in his life.
“Look, Father.” Pavel dragged him over to the chess set. The boy held up a queenside bishop. “You see?”
Nordeshenko nodded, but in truth, he didn’t. He was so incredibly weary. The board was a jumble to him. Chess was a young man’s game, too. But he smiled, tousling the young child’s hair. “Look in the bag. I’ve got something for you,” he said.
The boy hurriedly undid the wrapping. His eyes grew wide.
World Championship Poker. Pavel’s face erupted in joy. “Come,” he said, pushing the chessboard aside. “Let’s play.”
“My little Einstein wants to play poker? Okay. We’ll go best out of three. Then I get to sleep for about a week!” Nordeshenko pulled up a seat, recalling his great bluff back in New York, which seemed a lifetime ago. “And I’ve got quite a poker story for you, Pavel.”
His feet felt like twice their normal size. “Just let me take off these shoes.”
Chapter 81
FOR A WEEK straight I never left my apartment. I kept replaying the tape from Cavello’s escape. The scene in the elevator. I even timed it—exactly forty-seven seconds. I’d watch it over and over. Then I’d rewind it and play it again. And again. And again.
The phone would ring. My doctor checking up on me. My department head from school. The Bureau—there was still an inquiry going on. And Andie—she called my cell phone a couple of times.
Finally, I stopped picking up, even my cell. All I did was watch the tape. Each time it was the same. Cavello lunges out, hits the button. The two marshals try to rein him in. The doors open. In steps the guy with the beard, surprising them. No time to react. He takes out the marshals, flips Cavello the disguise. In a moment they’re gone.
I focused on the guy with the beard. Zoomed in on his face. I tried to memorize every line, every feature. I kept running through the Homeland Security photo books I’d been given. I didn’t know what I was looking for. But something. There had to be something.
Cavello was gone. Probably already out of the country by now. You could get aboard a freighter out of Newark or Baltimore; you could hop a private jet to some landing strip in Mexico, without filing a flight plan. Passports could be doctored.
I kept reminding myself I’d been an FBI officer for thirteen years. It had been my world, my life. The vows I took, to uphold the law—these were sacred vows.
But something Andie said had got me thinking.
You can’t make the world come out right just because you want it that way,