Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [145]
“I need to ask this guy some questions,” Jack said, rising. “I’ll be right back.”
He was halfway to where Kharkishvili was standing, working an opener under the crenelated cap of the bottle, when the floor began to tilt under his feet. He took a step to correct it and felt as if his knees had turned to jelly. He began to pitch over, but before he hit the floor he heard Alli screaming. Then he plunged headlong into oblivion.
TWENTY-SEVEN
IT WASN’T often that Dyadya Gourdjiev thought about Nikki, in fact there were entire months when she never entered his mind. She was, however, never far from his heart. The essence of her filled his mind now as he stepped off the plane into Simferopol North Airport. He’d made no secret of his plans, booking the seat and traveling under his own name. He thought this would make it easier for Oriel Batchuk to follow him; he didn’t want anything to impede his enemy’s progress.
Gourdjiev took his time even after he picked up his weekend bag from the luggage carousel and walked outside to the long-term lot and got into the car he always left there when he was on his way back to Kiev or, every once in a while, Moscow. It was an ancient Zil that wheezed every time he stepped on the brakes, but he loved it anyway. It smelled like home.
He could not get Nikki out of his mind, perhaps he didn’t want to because thoughts of her brought him back to Batchuk. He recalled with startling detail the moment Batchuk had first seen Nikki because that was the moment death had attached itself to him, and from that moment forward a shadow followed in Batchuk’s wake. Other people would experience it as intimidation, but Gourdjiev was not so easily fooled, because when he looked into Batchuk’s eyes all he saw was catastrophe and death.
From time to time he had mentioned Nikki to Batchuk—after all, there were occasions when it was impossible not to—but he had bent over backward to make certain the two never met. He made dates for Batchuk to come over to the house for dinner only when he knew that Nikki would be busy with her girlfriends or, latterly, with Alexsei Mandanovich Dementiev, to whom he had introduced Nikki at a gala at the State Opera House. He had no notion as to whether they would take to one another, but he was immensely relieved when they did, and it was only when Alexsei asked for her hand in marriage that Gourdjiev contemplated allowing Batchuk to catch a glimpse of her.
In fact he had orchestrated their meeting so that Batchuk would see Nikki and Alexsei together, see how much in love they were, and no matter what he thought of Nikki would understand that that path was closed to him forever.
Now, driving away from the airport in the Crimea, Gourdjiev could scarcely believe the lengths to which he had gone to keep Nikki and Batchuk from meeting. Had it been a dream, a premonition, or simply intuition, he could no longer remember. But it seemed to him that he had awoken in the middle of the night with a vision of Nikki and Batchuk together, Nikki weeping bitterly, inconsolably, and it was as if he had been afforded a glimpse of a tragic future so that he could ensure that it would never happen. He knew Batchuk’s taste in women, knew just what he liked most to look at and to feel, and there was no doubt in his mind that Nikki fell right into that category. What she might have felt about him he couldn’t say, but over and over again he had seen Batchuk pursue what he wanted, persistent, implacable until he got it. It might be an exaggeration but Gourdjiev had come to believe that there was scarcely a woman Batchuk wanted who would not eventually accede to him. Long experience had taught him that the only way to view Batchuk was through a cynic’s eyes because Batchuk was at his most dangerous, his most disingenuous when it appeared that he was being sincere.
He swung onto the highway without it fully registering. His mind was back at that meeting when he’d seen the dreadful expression on Batchuk