Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [26]
“WE’LL BE landing inside of twenty minutes.” Annika smiled into Jack’s face. “I’ve made this flight before, a number of times.”
“Then you know Ukraine.”
“Intimately.” She turned, looked back at Alli’s sleeping form. “For a young girl—”
“She’s twenty-two.”
“She can’t be just seven years younger than I am,” Annika said. “She looks sixteen.”
“Alli has Graves’ disease. It screws around with the pituitary gland.” He pointed to the side of his neck. “Her growth process was compromised when she was a teenager.”
Annika showed some surprise, or perhaps it was pity, it was difficult to say with her, a woman trained to be guarded even when she didn’t have to be.
Then she shrugged. “Well, no matter. I will be leaving you as soon as we set down.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jack said.
She raised an eyebrow. “No? Why not?”
“You said yourself that the FSB might be sending people after you.”
“I can take care of myself,” she said stiffly.
“Of that I have no doubt.” Jack pursed his lips in thought. “On the other hand, you’ll be easier to track down if you’re on your own.”
Annika tossed her head, dismissing his words. “I have many friends in Ukraine.”
“Friends or colleagues?” His pause was deliberate. “Ex-colleagues now. And if Batchuk is as powerful as you say, if he’s even half as vengeful as most Russians in high places, he’ll have compromised some, if not all, of your contacts.”
In the ensuing silence, both became aware that the aircraft was slowly losing altitude. Annika had been right on the money as to the length of the flight.
A range of emotions passed across her face like clouds brushed by a freshening wind. She seemed to be digesting his words, or possibly considering the range of her next moves. “Do you have an alternative to suggest,” she said slowly, “or are you simply stating a fact?”
“I’m doing both.” Jack led her to glance at Alli again. “Look, maybe her coming aboard is a godsend for us.”
Annika appeared on the verge of laughing in his face. “How could that possibly be?”
“We enter Ukraine as a family: mother, father, daughter. That will throw your FSB pals off the scent, at least for a while.”
“Really?” Annika cocked her head to one side. “And what passports are we going to use, Mr. McClure?”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“No, I thought not.” Annika nodded. “But that’s all right. I’ve been working out a plan while you and the girl were huddled together in the back. Assuming we’re flying to Kiev . . .”
“We are.”
“At least something’s gone right tonight. I know someone there.” She held up her hands, palms outward. “Don’t worry, he’s not an ex-colleague, he’s someone I unearthed on my own, the head of the airport immigration staff, who’s always in need of money to feed his gambling habit. You have money, I take it.”
“Don’t leave home without it.”
“Dollars, not, God forbid, rubles, which don’t do anyone any good, not even us Russians?”
Jack nodded.
“All right, then.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Let me get to work. Once my greedy friend escorts us past Immigration, there’s someone else I know who can forge us documents so we can become your mythical family and move about the city. Names?”
Jack thought a moment. “Mr. and Mrs. Charles. I’m Nicholas, you’re Nora.”
“Nora.” Annika wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t think I like this name.”
“Would you prefer Brandi, or maybe Tiffany?”
“Nora it is,” Annika said, already dialing. “And the girl?”
“Emma,” Jack said without thinking, because in this instance thinking would be fatal; thinking would point out all the flaws in this insane plan, just as it would put into glaring headlines the terrible risks he’d chosen to take the moment he’d decided to try and protect Annika from Ivan and Milan.
They took their seats and strapped in as the Fasten Seatbelt sign came on.