Angel Eyes (71 page)

Russell said, "To my way of thinking, that's damn little in the way of assurances.''

"Be fair," Tori said. "We haven't given him much, either." She said to Nikolev. "We'll listen to your proposal, Captain, but that's all we'll agree to."

Captain Nikolev nodded.

Russell groaned. "Great. Either way, I think we're about to get fucked."

At approximately the time that Tori and Russell were stuck at Immigration at Sheremetyevo, Mars Volkov was embracing Irina. Then he pushed her from him, held her at arm's length so he could look into her eyes. "I was getting worried about you," he said. "Your amateur sleuthing is all well and good-and believe me when I tell you I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude-but with Valeri and his KGB stooges on the loose, when I didn't hear from you, I feared the worst. In fact, I was just about to call the police when you showed up. How fortuitous!"

"Fortuitous, indeed." KGB. Keep calm. Irina was careful to let none of the terror she felt leak into her voice. He's not yet ready to reveal himself, she thought. That means he wants something from me. What? "It seems that the KGB were watching Valeri's apartment. They almost caught me."

"It's a good thing I'm here, then," Mars said.

The rain beat against the windshield of the car. The world was contracting into a tiny gray ball the size of a prison cell. Irina felt the irrational urge to look at the Toshiba portable to make sure it was still there. Of course it was. She stared steadfastly into the teeming mist.

"You're without wipers," Mars said.

"They were stolen. It's my fault. I forgot to take them with me one day."

He shrugged. "There are more in the trunk. I'll get a pair."

Irina watched him as he slid across the backseat, got out, went around to the rear of the car. She put her hands on the steering wheel, then let one slip to the gear lever. She saw Mars open the trunk, bend down.

All she had to do was release the hand brake, throw the car in gear, and crash out of the prison Mars was contemplating for her. Simple. Irina felt her muscles tighten in preparation for the move. Or was it so simple? Where was the Bonier Guards contingent that had had Valeri's apartment cordoned off? Surely they hadn't gone and left Mars here on his own.

Her hands were shaking so badly that she did not believe that she could drive property. Not in this downpour. Not without windshield wipers.

She heard the trunk slam, and she gave a little cry as her heart skipped a beat. Then Mars was coming around, attaching the blades. He did this with one hand. When, a moment later, he returned to the car, he slipped into the front passenger's seat. He put Valeri's Toshiba between his legs.

Irina looked down, saw a pistol in Mars's right hand. It was pointed toward the floorwell.

''I thought I saw one of Valeri's KGB men,'' Mars said when he saw where she was looking. "A kind of war has broken out between the two of us.'' He put the gun away. ''I'm afraid you almost got killed coming between us."

"I've done what you asked." Irina wondered whether her voice sounded as brittle to Mars as it did to her. She hoped not. "Didn't I discover the connection between Natasha and Valeri?"

"Yes," he said. "You did. And, as I said, I'm grateful. Valeri and I had come to an odd kind of stalemate. Surveillance on either side had become virtually impossible. We knew each other's people far too well." He smiled. "Then you came to me like an angel from heaven. For that I am also grateful."

The interior of the car had begun to steam up, and he rolled down his window a bit. Rain pattered against the edge, sending a fine spray onto his shoulder. He took no notice. "But I'm also puzzled, Irina. What were you doing in Valeri's apartment?"

"Trying to find the answer to the mystery of White Star." She turned to face him, thinking, Was it you who tortured poor Natasha until she gave up the dark secret of Valeri's daughter? And did you kill her when she was no longer of use to you? Bastard! She said, "Isn't that what you asked me for?"

"And what have you found?"

She was acutely aware of the gun in his pocket. ''I searched his apartment and came up with nothing."

"Except this," Mars said. "What is it?"

"Valeri's computer," she said.

"An illegal computer," Mars said. "That would be just like Valeri Denysovich.'' He stared at Irina. ''Why did you take it?''

KGB. Keep calm. Irina fought the numbing terror, fought to make her mind work, to figure out what she must say to him, to appease him yet not to give away-

"I 'll answer for you," Mars said. ''You thought the computer might contain White Star's secrets."

Her mind was like a sheet of ice. "Yes." What else could she say?

Mars said nothing for a time. Then he put his head back against the seat rest, closed his eyes. A slow smile spread across his lips. "Why don't we give it a try?"

Too late, Irina realized her mistake in not throwing the computer away when she had had the chance. Better it be lost to Valeri than land in the hands of the KGB. She wept inside for Valeri, for Natasha, for White Star, for herself, because this monster had won. Now she knew what he wanted from her.

She set the wipers going, and the windshield cleared as much as it was going to with the car's primitive and inefficient defroster. She held her breath, said, "Where shall we go? Your apartment?"

"No," Mars said. "Star Town."

Arbat was swimming in a circle.

"What's the matter with her?" Lara said.

"I don't know," the Hero admitted. He spoke to her in the peculiar clickings that Lara did not understand but had grown used to. Immediately, Arbat ceased her nervous circling, lifted her nose, let out with a long string of speech.

"Something's wrong," the Hero said.

"What?"

"I don't know. Neither does Arbat. But something very bad has happened."

"Volkov?"

"Yes, probably," the Hero said. He swam over to where Arbat was, put his arms around her. She nuzzled his face. "Don't worry," he whispered, then repeated it in her language.

It was then that Lara understood the depth of his concern. He had been trying to comfort himself.

Lara came close to him. ''Perhaps we need not fear Comrade Volkov as much as we have in the past. I think we have succeeded in making him believe you are turning into something beyond his ken."

The Hero smiled. "That was a neat trick, you swimming underwater to scrape his leg while I went into my 'seizure.' "

"You played your role to perfection," Lara said.

''Comrade Volkov has seen to it that I've had enough time to work out the rough edges."

Lara was abruptly serious. She touched his arm. "All this playacting is one thing, but what worries me are the real effects of the cosmic radiation you were exposed to. What happens when its effects are made manifest?"

"What happens when we die?" the Hero asked her rhetorically. "It might be interesting to contemplate, but there's no solid answer, is there?" He smiled reassuringly. "We'll just have to wait and see."

"Do you think Irina will have the courage to wait with you?"

"I don't know," the Hero said truthfully. "I've tried to explain as best I can what I'm up against. But you know as well as anyone that there is no way to explain the unknowable."

''You love her, don't you? "

The Hero was silent for a long time, hanging in his void of saltwater. "I love the color between the stars," he said. "That is where much of my mind now dwells, in the time/no time, the dimension where time is twisted like taffy around a spindle. I've been shown the limitations of being part of only the taffy. Now I long to join those inside the spindle."

"You do not need to worry about making me jealous," Lara said. "Tatiana and I would never betray you now, not after what you've done for us. You have shown us the power of our past, the weaknesses of our present. You are our family."

The Hero reached out, twined his fingers in Lara's. "If I do love Irina, it is in a way that neither of you can understand. Certainly I cannot explain what I feel."

"You talk to her without ever speaking."

"That's true."

"As you did with the entity who discovered you between the stars."

"Yes."

''What was it like, that communication?''

The Hero smiled. "I've told you so many times."

"It's like a bedtime story,'' Lara said. ''I never grow tired of hearing it."

"All right," the Hero said, and his face screwed up in concentration. "It was like lying on a bed of nails, like running barefoot across a room filled with shards of glass; it was like eating so much chocolate at once that your brain boils, like hanging in a sensory-deprivation tank, your body sloughed off like a memory, connected to nothing but the processes of your own mind." He closed his eyes, and it was as if the world had winked out. Blackness reigned. "It was like all of those things happening at once. Yet it wasn't any of that at all."

"What, then?"

"All right. Another image. I was farther out in space than any human being has ever been. But when the communication began, I knew that I had journeyed so far only to have come to the center of things, so deep inside that I had found an entirely new existence."

"But inside what?"

"I don't know," the Hero said. "Perhaps time itself."

Lara was very close to him. "I wish I could understand."

"Yes," he said softly. "I wish you could, too."

"Arbat understands."

"Arbat is special."

"And Irina. She understands, too, doesn't she?"

The Hero's eyes were like stars in the blankness of space. They radiated warmth as well as light, "Irina knows how the entity and I communicated."

"How I envy her."

Arbat was pushing her nose insistently against the Hero's hand, and a moment later Tatiana slipped into the pool with them.

"Volkov's back," she said quietly, ominously, "Irina is with him. And so is Valeri's Toshiba portable."

"Ah, God." The Hero's voice chilled them all.

On the doorstep to the villa. Captain Nikolev turned to Tori and Russell, said, "This place belongs to the man from whom I take my orders."

Russell said, "You mean your superior in the Border Guards unit."

"No. My division has been seconded to Department N of the KGB. Mars Volkov, the Chief of Department N, is the man who commands my unit."

"He's got wide-ranging powers," Tori said.

"I want you to understand that," Captain Nikolev said, "as part of your assurances. This is an enormous risk I am taking." He looked at them both, then turned, unlocked the front door.

He went immediately across the tile floor, showed them where the microphones were hidden. He opened up a blond wood console. Behind a mirrored bar with a false back was a professional reel-to-reel tape recorder. Nikolev took the tape reels from the recorder so that Tori and Russell would know nothing that was said here was being recorded.

"There's always the possibility of body mikes," Russell said. "I suppose we should all strip."

Nikolev laughed. He eyed Tori. "That's jake by me."

They looked at him, and he said, "Have I mixed up my idioms again?"

"If I were you, I wouldn't try to pass for an American just yet," Russell said.

Tori said, "You're just a little behind the times, that's all."

When they had assured themselves that none of them was taped with a body mike, Tori and Russell sat on an ugly Scandinavian couch hideously upholstered in a dark brown tweed. Captain Nikolev fixed them drinks. He was obviously nervous and in need of something to do with his hands, but neither Tori nor Russell touched their vodka. On the other hand, Nikolev knocked his back, poured himself another.

He paced back and forth, and Tori could feel his tension reaching a new pitch. She shifted uncomfortably as his nerves affected her.

Abruptly Nikolev faced them, said, "In a world full of lies, how are we able to recognize the truth?"

"Truth comes with trust," Tori said.

"Which is in short supply here," Russell added.

There was silence for some time.

Nikolev nodded. "Department N of the KGB, of which Mars Volkov is the chief, has been given a mandate to root out the elements of White Star and eradicate them.''

"Succinctly put," Russell said.

"I am trying," Nikolev said with some desperation, "to establish an atmosphere of trust." He took a deep breath. "Before we go further, I must know something. Did you come here in response to White Star's request for aid?"

''Is this your proposal?'' Russell asked.

"It is the beginning of our exchange of information." Nikolev looked pained. "I am under the gun, Mr. Slade. I wish you could appreciate that."

"We're all under the gun," Tori said.

"Keep still," Russell said as he got up. He prowled around the villa.

When he disappeared into the other rooms, Nikolev and Tori watched each other like gladiators unsure whether to fight or join forces to assassinate the emperor.

"He's a hard man," Nikolev said. "Pull of suspicion."

"That's what they pay him for.''

"And what do they pay you for, Miss Nunn?"

Tori got up, made her own slow circuit of the room. When she returned, she stood in front of Captain Nikolev, stared him in the eye. "They pay me," she said, "to know who our friends are.

Nikolev's gaze flicked to her arms. He licked his lips. "What happens to those who you decide aren't your friends?"

"I kill them," Tori said with what she hoped was an expression of great relish.

"I am a friend. Miss Nunn. Do you believe me?"

Tori said nothing.

When Russell came back into the living room, Nikolev said, "What were you looking for?"

''KGB goons,'' Russell said. ''But I guess I 'm looking at one, huh?"

Nikolev said, "You have yet to answer my question. Before I proceed further, I must know whether you have a connection with White Star."

"We do," Tori said.

"Christ almighty!" Russell was clearly not happy. "Here comes the death squad."

"Why?" Tori said, keeping her eye on Nikolev. "For all the captain here knows, we could be working for Mars Volkov. I could be lying to draw him out so that he can incriminate himself as a traitor to the state.'' She smiled into Nikolev's anxious face. "Isn't that so, Captain?"