Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [160]
“I knew you were right, I wanted to . . . but I couldn’t.”
“It’s all right,” Alli assured her, “it’s all right.”
Annika stood staring down at her grandfather’s nemesis—her father—with a kind of terrified disbelief. She was holding Alli’s hand so tightly their fingers were white. Jack knew it wasn’t healthy for any of them to remain in this abattoir.
“We need to clean up,” he said.
Annika nodded, but she didn’t move. There were bits of bone stuck to her cheeks and nose, oblique smears of blood elsewhere on her chest and face, including her lips. Gourdjiev stepped agilely over the body and stood in the hallway waiting for them, silent, wrapped in his own enigmatic thoughts. He did not look at his bloody hands.
“How are you?” Jack asked Annika.
Her carnelian eyes were pale and bleak, as if all the mineral quality had leached out of them. “I haven’t the faintest notion, my mind is numb, I feel lost and alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Jack said. “Come on, you and Alli need to clean up.”
He nodded to Alli, and she guided Annika out of the drawing room, past Gourdjiev, stoop-shouldered and gray, and into the bathroom. Jack led the way into the kitchen, where he and Gourdjiev cleaned up as best they could, using the kitchen sink.
Jack watched warm water sluice the muck off his hands. “It’s true, isn’t it, everything Batchuk said.”
Gourdjiev stared out the window over the sink. “Most of it, anyway.”
“So for years you knew he was her father.”
“Yes.”
“But she didn’t.”
“Not until a few minutes ago when you heard about it yourself.”
“It’s no wonder she killed him.”
“To be shot to death by your own child.” Gourdjiev turned back into the kitchen, slowly washed his hands as if reluctant to part with the tangible evidence of Batchuk’s death. “I wish I could say that I felt satisfied, but I fear that revenge is not all it’s cracked up to be; in fact I’m finding it’s rather meaningless. His death won’t bring my Nikki back, it can’t mitigate her pain, and now I think it’s very possible that Annika is lost to me as well. If that happens I’ll have nothing.”
Jack, aware that Annika and Alli had come into the kitchen, their faces and hands clean if not their clothes, said, “Not to worry, you still have Alizarin Group.”
“What, I didn’t hear you.”
“You heard me well enough,” Jack said. “I know you own Alizarin Group. There are six other partners, but you’re Alizarin’s guiding hand.”
“I’m afraid you’re sadly mistaken, young man.”
Jack hefted Batchuk’s machine pistol. “The only thing you should be afraid of is me.”
“I don’t understand.”
During this exchange Gourdjiev was gradually transformed from an old beaten-down grandfather to a stern, ramrod-backed businessman with the keen, knowing eyes of an expert poker player. No wonder he had outsmarted Batchuk, Jack thought. And he knew that he had to guard against succumbing to the same fate.
“The man who poisoned me was employed by Alizarin Group, your company.”
Annika stared at him. “Dyadya, is this true?”
“What nonsense, of course it isn’t.”
“He’s lying,” Alli said. “I was with Jack when he interrogated Vlad. He works for Alizarin Group.” She and Annika stood close together, as if they were sisters standing up to their parents. “Anyway, when Ivan Gurov delivers him to the FSB the truth will come out.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Gourdjiev sighed. “Ivan Gurov’s vehicle was intercepted on the way to the airport and Vlad was rescued. Unfortunately, Gurov chose to put up a fight and was killed.”
“What are you saying?” Annika looked as if she had about hit her breaking point. “Your people murdered Ivan?”
“He gave them no choice, Annika. He wouldn’t let Vlad go.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Then it was you who ordered Jack killed?”
“Not killed,” Gourdjiev corrected, “poisoned by arsenic, debilitated, perhaps hospitalized, not dead, never dead.”
“But why?”
Dyadya Gourdjiev turned to Jack and said just as if he were asking for the time, “Do you want to tell her, I’m certain you have figured it out by now.”
Jack hesitated, not because he didn’t know the answer