Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [102]
“CHRIST, IS he dead?” Annika said.
“As a doorpost,” Jack, who was in a better position to see, answered.
“We’re pinned down here,” Annika said.
It was Jack who saw the figure rise from the top of a car in the parking lot and, with a small case under one arm, leap down and begin to walk away.
He led Alli and Annika to a spot along the fence far enough away from Kirilenko so Alli wouldn’t have a clear look at the aftermath of the murder. “I don’t think he’s interested in us.”
Peering through the fence he waited until he could no longer see the figure, then he said to Annika, “Okay, it’s safe. Up you go.”
She scaled the chain-link fence without question and, as soon as she was on the other side, Jack boosted Alli up. Climbing and scrambling, she rolled her body over the top and descended until she was met with Annika’s outstretched hands. Jack followed, ascending and descending as quickly as he could.
Once in the parking lot Annika took them to the area cordoned off for airport personnel. Fortunately, there weren’t that many cars, as a majority of the workers used public transportation to and from the airport. With less than twenty-four cars to check, they found the one they were looking for within five or six minutes, a beaten-up Zil. By that time, however, more sirens were tearing through the afternoon, pitched louder as the police cars approached the airport from the city of Simferopol.
Annika slid behind the wheel with Alli beside her. Jack took possession of the backseat, armed with the pistol they’d taken from Kirilenko. Annika started the car without difficulty, eased out of the parking space, and drove to the exit as the convoy of police cars careened by. Jack noted that her hands were perfectly still on the wheel, not even the hint of a tremor visible.
After the police cars had passed, she waited, breathing deeply and slowly. The tension mounted to almost unbeatable levels, Alli squirming in her seat, but it was imperative they avoid the danger of calling attention to themselves by appearing to flee the scene. In this way, three minutes crawled by while their hearts beat furiously and their pulses pounded in their temples.
At last, Annika put the Zil in gear, took a left turn out of the lot, and drove south toward Simferopol and, eventually, the coast around Alushta. Jack, with his back to them, kept an eye out behind them for any sign of a police vehicle. He counted six civilian cars on the road behind them, but nothing official. With a sigh of relief he swiveled around, watching, as Annika and Alli did, the unlovely countryside that would, at length, lead them to Magnussen’s villa on the Black Sea coast, where, he hoped, many questions would be answered.
THREE CARS and a hundred yards behind them a man known only as Mr. Lovejoy drummed his blunt steel-worker’s fingers on the steering wheel of his rented car. Though it might be something of a conceit to think of himself as a steel worker, his blue-collar Detroit background dictated his way of thinking. Uncomfortable with the suits he’d been obliged to rub shoulders with when he’d come to D.C. as a very young man, he had transferred out of the office and into field work with what some around him had deemed unseemly haste. But he was happy now and never looked back.
He’d asked for and by the grace of God had received a rental with a cassette player, an old but serviceable Toyota. The first thing he did after starting up the car was to slide in a cassette, turn the volume up to maximum, and when the first few bars of Breaking Benjamin’s “Evil Angel” ripped and roared through the interior, his lips drew back from his teeth in a contented grin.
His gaze fixed on the Zil, he saw himself as a winged creature who, having caught sight of its prey, rides the thermals high above, following, following in twists and turns, dips and rises, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
RIET BORONYOV accompanied Dyadya Gourdjiev out of the brothel. In the elevator Gourdjiev pulled out his gun and replaced the three bullets he’d fired earlier. Boronyov looked on with