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By Root 1418 0

he held it loosely, pointed at the ground. His size made it look like a child’s toy. The man continued to walk heavily across the road toward the Zil. Jack’s mind was working on the appearance of this man in the same way it had calculated the vectors of their run toward the oncoming jet, trying to find explanations in the extraordinary, working backward from the moment the Toyota exploded to the filthy back alley in Moscow. He came up with various explanations, possibilities, conflicting judgments, and fantastic speculation, but, unfortunately, no definitive conclusions. He had come to one of those moments when assumptions are derailed by a reality you could not have imagined, like turning a Rubik’s Cube and finding a fourth dimension you hadn’t calculated into your reasoning. In fact, for the moment the rational had been obliterated, logic was of no use whatsoever. Death and life had merged, or changed places, and everything else had come to a standstill.

“Stay inside the car,” he told Alli.

She turned and, peering out the driver’s side window, saw the man coming across the road. “Who is he? Jack, what’s going on?”

“Please, Alli, just do as I say.”

As if in a trance he opened the door and got out. The large, bearlike man came on, his slicked-back hair shining in the sunlight, and Jack experienced an eerie chill that went clear through him. The fourth dimension of the far side of the Rubik’s Cube was almost upon him. In an attempt to make sense of the present his mind flashed back to the hotel bar in Moscow, where the man facing him had been arguing with Annika and her friend; the back alley where the bearlike man and his partner had lain in wait to kill Annika; the pitched battle that had followed, at the end of which the bearlike man lay in a pool of his own blood.

In self-protective reflex Jack pointed the gun at him, but Annika, having emerged from the collapsing automobile, strode quickly up to him and pushed down the barrel.

“This isn’t possible,” Jack said as the hulking figure stopped in front of him. “I shot you dead in the alley behind the Bushfire club.”

“Aren’t you going to thank me? No?” Ivan Gurov waggled the M72 slightly. “Don’t be rude. Without me you would have gone over the cliff instead of the American agent sent to kill you.”

PART THREE

Portia:

“Think you I am no stronger than my sex,

Being so father’d and so husbanded?”

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

Julius Caesar

TWENTY-TWO

“DAD, EVERYONE is lying to you.”

With the echo of Emma’s voice in his head Jack turned on Annika. “What the hell is going on?” He was so filled with fury his voice had turned guttural. “What are you playing at?”

“There’s an explanation—,” Annika began.

“Of course there’s a fucking explanation.” His voice rose even more. “You and Gurov were in on this from the beginning. Do you think I need an explanation from either of you now? I used Gurov’s gun to shoot him, but it couldn’t have been loaded with live ammo. That scene in the alley was a con.” He turned on Gurov. “The other man, your pal . . .”

“Spiakov.”

“Yes, Spiakov, where is he?”

Gurov shrugged. “Six feet under, I imagine. We required verisimilitude.”

“Verisimilitude.” Jack turned back to Annika. “You murdered a man for verisimilitude?”

“It had to be real,” Annika said. “At least part of it.”

Jack was only dimly aware of Alli getting out of the car and approaching them, precisely what he told her not to do. “What I want to know is why you lied to me. Why are you offering an explanation now, at this late date?”

“Because now we’ve gotten you here,” Annika said simply. “Because, dammit, it’s time.”

“You told me you hated Gurov, that he was an assignment.”

“He is part of my assignment.” Annika was getting worked up herself. “I only lied to you when it was absolutely necessary.”

“And that makes it okay? That’s a forgivable offense?”

“Don’t confuse me with your ex-wife, who lied to you constantly,” Annika said hotly. “Believe me, I haven’t confused you with anyone else. You’ve made that quite impossible.”

“What is that, your idea of a fucking compliment?