Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [152]
He shrugged. “But being an expert poisoner I suppose you know the history of arsenic. However, not expert enough, it seems, because I’m still here.”
Slouched on his uncomfortable plastic seat, Ivan looked at him, trying to seem bored. As befitted his profession he had a thoroughly unremarkable face, except for his eyes, which, when Jack looked closely, were yellowish and slippery as oil. They stared out at the world with what seemed a false stoicism, as if they were lying in wait for the enemy to appear.
“Who do you work for?” Jack said. He waited for an answer, but Vlad said nothing. His surface was as bland, as blank as the surface of polished marble, calm and curiously unconcerned by his incarceration.
“I know it’s not the United States government, Vlad, so do you work for the FSB?” Jack paused again to allow Alli to make her assessment. “Perhaps it’s the Ukrainian Security Service who employs you.”
Another pause; the silence from Vlad was deafening.
He leaned in suddenly, careful not to block Alli’s view. “I know you and Ferry Lovejoy work for the same firm.” He knew no such thing, but he wanted to observe, and wanted Alli to observe, Vlad’s reaction.
Vlad’s brow furrowed convincingly. “Ferry . . . ? I’m not familiar with that name.”
Jack smiled, using his teeth. “You work for Alizarin Global, so did Lovejoy, but he’s dead now. Ivan Gurov blew him off the road to this manor house, didn’t he?”
Kharkishvili grinned wolfishly. “Absolutely.”
“Is that supposed to frighten me, because—”
“Okay, we’ll dispense with the formalities,” Jack said, standing up. “I have neither the time nor the inclination to interrogate you further, so I’m going to hand you over to the Russians, Vlad. Let them deal with you. Believe me, whatever information you have they’ll squeeze out of you.”
Jack made a motion with his head and Kharkishvili hauled Vlad to his feet.
A look of contempt hardened Vlad’s face. “You won’t hand me over to the Russians, you won’t be allowed to do it.”
“Allowed?” Jack said, pouncing on the word. “By whom? Who do you work for, who inside AURA?”
“It’s Andreyev, isn’t it?” Alli had stepped up to stand beside Jack. “You’re taking orders from Vasily Andreyev.”
Vlad spat onto the floor. “Vasily Andreyev is an old fool.”
Kharkishvili cuffed him hard in the back of the head.
“Manners,” Jack said, but Vlad had already revealed as much as he was going to. “Take him away,” he said to Kharkishvili.
When he and Alli were alone, he said, “Tell me what you observed.”
Alli considered. In that moment Jack saw no trace of the overprotected, narcissistic young woman who had been abducted at the end of last year.
“I’d say he definitely works for a private company.”
“What seemed to frighten him, anything?” Jack asked.
Alli’s face tensed in concentration. “One thing: being turned over to the Russians.”
Jack nodded. “That was my impression also, which tells me that the company he’s working for isn’t American, or at least not primarily American.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “Okay, what else?”
“I got the feeling that he doesn’t know Ferry Lovejoy, whoever he is.”
“The assassin who Ivan Gurov killed.” Jack had come to the same conclusion.
Also, who or what was going to stop Jack from handing Vlad over to the Russians?
“And what’s the deal with this mysterious company that sent them?”
“I’m not sure,” Jack said, “but I intend to find out.”
DYADYA GOURDJIEV parked his comfortably rumpled Zil outside the front door of the manor house just as the first pallid streaks of dawn light cracked open the black-and-blue dome of night. Getting