Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [162]
“Done.”
Dyadya Gourdjiev held out his hand.
“Jack, you’re not really making a deal with him,” Alli said.
“I have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” she said, “you taught me that.”
“Not this time.” Jack grasped Gourdjiev’s hand, and at that moment they all heard the clatter of rotor blades descending.
“What’s happening?” Gourdjiev said.
“The cavalry,” Jack said, “has arrived.” Just as Dennis Paull promised.
THIRTY
FROM THE back of the immense, ornate salon in the Kremlin, Jack watched as Alli stood on one side of the First Lady, Lyn Carson, Mrs. Yukin on the other, as President Edward Carson and President Yukin used pens specifically designed for the historic signing of the U.S.-Russian security accord. Alli was wearing a long sapphire blue dress that made her look very grown-up. While video and still cameras dutifully recorded the momentous occasion Jack’s gaze fell on Yukin’s face, alight with pleasure and a certain amount of secret triumph, the origin of which only he, Carson, Annika, and Alli knew. An hour from now, when Ukrainian national television broadcast Dyadya Gourdjiev and President Ulishenko jointly announcing that the tract of land in the country’s economically ravaged northeastern section was sold to Alizarin Group, Yukin’s demeanor would change markedly. Alizarin would pledge thirty-five percent of the profits to Ukraine and immediately begin hiring thousands of unemployed citizens to work the largest uranium strike in Asia.
After the signing, the seemingly endless photo ops and interviews began, neither of which Jack chose to be a part of, despite Carson’s requests to the contrary.
“I can serve you best,” Jack told the president, “by remaining in the shadows.”
Uncharacteristically Alli had agreed to stay by her parents’ side during this tiring and dreary process, or rather, Jack reflected, it was a new characteristic, one that spoke to her recent adventures, insights, and sense of herself. As he watched her move about the room with the Carsons and the Yukins he felt a great surge of pride for who she was and what she might now become.
He spent the time with Annika, who had flown back with him and Alli from Kiev, where the helicopter manned by Paull’s people had let them off.
“I don’t think I’ll ever speak to him again,” Annika said.
Jack knew she meant Gourdjiev, a man whose name she no longer spoke, much less called dyadya.
“He was trying to protect you.”
“Really, is that what you think?” She looked at him skeptically. “Or are you just trying to make me feel better?” She held up a hand to forestall an answer she did not care to hear. “The truth is he was trying to protect himself. As long as I remained ignorant of the facts of my conception he didn’t have to answer awkward or embarrassing questions.”
“It seems odd that Batchuk didn’t tell you he was your father when you were with him.”
They were standing by a window that must have been fifteen feet high. She looked away from him, out onto Red Square, where it had begun to snow again, according to the weather forecasters the last snow of winter.
“The truth is as simple as it is ugly: He didn’t want me to know I was his daughter, not then, anyway. He was too busy mourning my mother’s death and staring into my eyes—studying my face brought her back to him as nothing else could. And, of course, there was the other thing.” Tears glittered beneath her lashes. “To tell me that he was my father would have destroyed the sexual bond he tried to establish between us.”
Jack felt a sudden chill render him all but speechless. “When you were five?”
She continued to stare out at the snow, she neither answered nor moved her head, there was no need.
She wiped her eyes with her forefinger and turned to him suddenly with a thin smile. “I’m sorry, Jack, sorry for lying to you, deceiving you, putting you through the wringer with Gurov’s supposed death, but it was necessary.”
Was it, he wondered. He supposed