Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [28]
“Dmitri and I have an understanding,” Annika said calmly but firmly. “The transaction has been consummated.”
“With him,” Igor said, “not with me.”
“I’m not giving you more money.” Jack would have said more but Annika’s raised hand stopped him.
“It isn’t money Igor wants,” she said. “Is it?”
Igor continued his obscene scrutiny of her. “There is the matter of consummation.”
Taking a step between them, Jack said, “I won’t allow—”
“Stop it!” Annika was looking at him. “Stop it now!” Her voice, though very soft, had about it the unmistakable steel of command.
“Annika—”
She smiled ruefully and, on her way past him, placed her hand briefly against the side of his face, so that he felt burned or marked in some mysterious way. “You’re really quite sweet.” When she took Igor’s hand she was still looking at Jack. “Stay here now, yes? Stay here with the girl. When we return, all will be well.”
Then she led Igor back down the aisle to the rear of the aircraft, where they vanished into the restroom.
Alli came up beside him. She looked disheveled, smaller than usual, as if her unhappiness had altered her, or had diminished her presence. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and dark circles had already risen like bruised half-moons beneath them. She glanced up at him. “Jack, you’re not actually going to let her bang this sleaze-bucket.”
“This is Russia; I can’t interfere.”
“Jesus,” Alli said, “do you believe this psycho-bitch?”
SEVEN
THEIR FIRST view of Kiev in the flickering gold-and-blue dawn light was of wide boulevards, vast circular plazas, monumental buildings guarded by Doric columns or crowned with blue and green cupolas. Golden domes, burning in the first rays of dawn, rose above the rest of this city that straddled the banks of the wide, periwinkle blue Dnieper River. The streetlights were still on. A tepid rain had recently ceased falling, the cobbles of the streets sleek and shining as snakeskin.
Their taxi from the airport dropped them at the Metrograd shopping complex in Bessarabskaya Square, where Annika directed them toward the modern facade of a branch of a restaurant chain. On the way into the city, Annika had assured them that it would be open for breakfast at this early hour. Stretching their legs, Jack and Alli had been surprised and pleased to find the weather here far milder, though more humid, than it had been in Moscow. Alli unzipped her coat and already had it off before they entered the restaurant. She looked different now, with her hair cut short. Not wanting to take chances after the scare with Igor, Jack had insisted she cut her hair before they left the aircraft. In the taxi, he’d told Annika that they needed to find hair dye for her before the day was out.
In the cheerful interior, amid brightly colored balloons and cartoonlike paintings of dva gusya, the two geese of the popular folk song that gave the restaurant its name, they sat on café chairs at a blond-wood table and ordered the first food any of them had had in twelve hours.
“We must wait several hours for the documents—the passports—that Gustav is preparing for us.”
“Can I sleep here?” Alli said.
Outside the plate-glass windows, the sky was clearing, revealing a cerulean sky as the city stretched, yawned, and came to life around them. The rumble of traffic rose and fell like a drowsing giant periodically clearing his throat.
Annika ordered more coffee, drinking it black this time. It steamed like a stoked engine. “Stop looking at me that way,” she said.
“What way?” Jack’s voice held the rueful tone of voice of a child caught at the cookie jar.
“Like I’m an exhibit at the zoo, or the sex museum.”
“Was I doing that? I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
She was partially right. “I don’t—I don’t know how you could have done it.”
“It’s not for you to know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is, but you don’t want to acknowledge it.” She sipped her coffee as if it weren’t scalding. “In any event, we’re safely here, just as I promised.”
“But the price—”
She put down her half-empty cup. “You want me