Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [109]
Jack took a threatening step toward her, and the confrontation might have degenerated into physical violence if Alli hadn’t stepped between them before Gurov could make a move.
“Stop it, the two of you!” she cried.
“If you’ll only give me a chance to explain,” Annika said, taking her cue from Alli.
“Jack, don’t you want an explanation?” Alli chimed in.
“I already have an explanation.” It was clear he was furious. “She’s been lying to me from the moment I met her.”
“Maybe she had a good reason.”
“There’s no good reason for lying,” he said.
“You know that’s not true.”
“Why are you taking her side?”
“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” Alli said. “Anyway, even if you don’t want to know what’s really going on, I do.”
That slowed him down a bit, at least enough for Annika to say, “I’m sorry, Jack, really and truly sorry.”
He saw a change in her, perhaps because she was asking for forgiveness, but, probing beneath the surface, more possibly because of her proximity to Alli, or Alli’s palliative words, as if being near Alli or even hearing her voice changed her subtly, brought her back to herself, whatever lay under her mask, in her unknown and unknowable heart Jack had talked about last night.
“If this could have been done another way,” Annika continued, “I promise you it would have been. But we had no choice.”
“We?” he said, more calmly in response to his probing. “Who is ‘we’?”
“AURA,” Annika said.
But immediately his anger fired up. “The entity or business or whatever you claimed to know nothing about.”
Alli put a hand on his arm. “Let’s not go there again,” she said.
“It may be necessary.” Jack’s eyes were on Annika.
“We’ll deal with that then,” Alli said as if she were the smartest person in the group. Certainly she was the calmest.
He looked over at her, and taking in her tentative smile, nodded his assent. “All right,” he said to Annika, “who or what is Aura?”
She said, “It’s an acronym for the Association of Uranium Refining Allies. It’s made up of—”
All at once, Ivan Gurov stepped forward. “Annika, no. This is a very bad idea.”
She shook her head. “He has a right to know, Ivan.”
“This could lead to dire consequences.”
“Your job is done. Stay out of it.”
Addressing Jack again, she continued: “AURA is made up of a group of Ukrainian businessmen, certain international energy interests in the Ukraine, and a small circle of dissident Russian oligarchs.”
The moment Ivan Gurov had returned from the dead Jack had seen the nature of the universe into which he had plunged. Now, at last, he saw its structure, as clearly as if he were looking at a scale model of Earth’s solar system.
“So we have AURA on one side,” Jack said, “and Yukin, Batchuk, and their creation, Trinadtsat, on the other.”
“Observe, Ivan, this is a man who sees more than you or I,” Annika said. “A man who—how shall we put it?—sees around corners. How much he has gleaned from only the stray bits and pieces he’s picked up along the way, he’s a chess master who sees the endgame forming the moment his opponent makes the first move.”
The sound of an approaching car brought them all into awareness of their surroundings.
“I think,” Gurov said, glancing dubiously at the wreck of the Zil, “I’d best get the car.”
THE CAR in question turned out to be a clunky cab, decrepit but, because of that, absolutely anonymous.
“Where are we going?” Alli said.
“The Magnussen estate,” Ivan Gurov said.
“You knew this all along,” Jack said to Annika. His anger was still smoldering.
She shook her head. “I swear I didn’t know where we needed to go. It was protocol. In the event we got picked up I couldn’t tell our interrogators our destination.”
“Interrogators,” Jack said. “Charming.” And Alli shuddered.
“Mikal Magnussen’s father purchased fifty-five acres perched on a cliff overlooking the Black Sea,” Gurov said as he drove, “high up so he could look down on his neighbors, all of whom consider themselves rich.”
It was five thirty on an evening marked by towering clouds building along the horizon. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees. It was just over