Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [154]
Dropping down off the top of the wall he heard faraway barking and he crouched down, still as a rock. If there were dogs on the property, particularly hunting dogs, they would present a problem. With the onshore wind they would already have picked up his scent, or would at any moment. Close to the front of the house he saw the Zil. As he watched, a guard emerged from the house and drove the Zil around to where a number of other cars were parked.
As soon as the guard was back inside Batchuk ran as fast as he could, zigzagging, still bent over, heading for the left side of the manor house. He reached it without incident, but now he heard a chorus of barks, close enough for him to identify them as belonging to Russian wolfhounds. Wolfhounds were not in themselves dangerous, they liked people too much, but they would certainly sound the alarm for those inside the house. Any moment now other guards would come pouring out, following the dogs who, he was now certain, had picked up his scent.
He knew the feeling, he’d had a hound coming after him the night Nikki told him that she couldn’t see him anymore, that Alexsei had found out about them and was causing a terrible row. She told him unequivocally to stay away when he said he was coming to make sure she would be safe.
“I don’t need you to feel safe,” she had told him. “I don’t need you at all.”
“You do need me,” he had replied like an idiot, as if he were seventeen, “I know you do, Nikki, no matter what you say you can’t hide it from me.”
“You are so deluded,” she shot back, “I was a fool, weak and sad, and you caught me in that moment, you took advantage of me and climbed all over me.”
“Don’t give me that,” he said, “you loved every minute of it, it was you who climbed all over me, if memory serves, you couldn’t get enough.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she shrieked, clearly terrified.
“I did what you wanted me to do, nothing more.”
“Liar! It was what you wanted.”
“You can’t fight it, Nikki, I don’t understand why you even try.”
“Idiot, because I’m married.”
“You’ll divorce him, I’ll make it easy for you.”
All at once she sounded desperate. “I pledged my heart, my life to Alexsei, don’t you get it? But, no, I don’t suppose you do, why would you? You have no soul, no humanity, you’re heartless, pitiless, you want what you want, that’s the beginning and the end of it.”
“Then why did you give in to me? Why did you scream over and over in ecstasy?” He barely got out the last word when she hung up on him.
An hour later Gourdjiev came for him, baying at his door, and he had had no choice but to let him in, no choice because Gourdjiev knew he was home, and if he’d ignored the repeated knocking he’d become a prisoner in his own apartment. He had plenty of power, it was true, but so did Gourdjiev; he had no wish for an all-out war that would bring an end to both their political careers, he had too much on the line to take that risk. And so he opened the door, accepted his medicine, the righteous indignation, the affronted anger, the howl of the animal that feels its off spring threatened.
Visibly chastened, he did not argue, he acquiesced. Whatever Gourdjiev wanted of him he did without argument or protest, let him win this battle, let the war wait in abeyance, all the players frozen in place, until the moment when he himself dictated that the next act would begin.
______
BUT THE dogs would not wait, the wolfhounds came tearing through the carefully manicured foliage—sculpted boxwood and cotoneaster, as close-clipped as a general’s hair—to where Batchuk had crouched under the eaves at the back of the house, but he was no longer there, and they ran in dizzying circles, barking and yelping, their nostrils full of his scent, but with nowhere to go.
“That badger again,” one of the guards said, after he and his companion had had a thorough look around, “or maybe this time an opossum.”
JACK WAS just finishing up his call with Dennis Paull, having