Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (19 page)

Before opening the door, Max punched in a quick call to the police escort just pulling in behind his car. He issued a standby directive to them and asked that they remain in their car with full attention on Liesl.

Now turning from her, Max looked squarely at the driver in the small sedan across the street and raised a surrendering gesture with both hands. Then slowly, he stepped from the car and stood still, his hands dangling at his sides, clearly free of what Liesl knew to be a gun in his waistband. Surely Evgeny knew it too, she guessed. Why was he just waiting there?

Max moved steadily, confidently across the street, waiting now and then for a car to pass. Liesl watched the distance between the two men close. When Max reached the car, he stopped and waited. The man at the wheel hadn’t moved since Liesl first sighted him. But now he did. She watched him lean toward the passenger door and open it.

“The last time I saw you, you were running from me through the airport in this city,” Evgeny said after Max settled into the passenger seat and closed the door. “Besides myself, I never knew anyone to drop from sight as quickly as you did that day. I was impressed.”

Max noted the gaunt severity of the man’s face. His was the pallor of one who’d lived too long without light. “Well, I can’t tell you what that means to me,” Max bristled. “Maybe another time, though. Right now, we’ve got some talking to do. Let’s start with this: Thank you for saving Liesl’s life in Charleston. Why did you do it?”

A placid smile rose on the thin lips. “I owed her.” The smile vanished. “But the better question is, why are you parading her around in your father’s sights? Quite possibly Ivan’s?”

“So you heard.”

“Ava told me about the photo your president received. Perhaps I failed my mission that day on the East River. Perhaps not. We will see. Meanwhile, why do you think a couple of impotent cops trailing you is all the protection you both need?” Evgeny looked toward the unmarked car parked behind Max’s. “What did I save her from in Charleston? A danger that is still there.”

Max knew it was true. But it was also true that Liesl was vulnerable anywhere. “She won’t hide under an armored blanket, Evgeny. You know that, don’t you? Because you know her.” Max said something else he knew to be true. “And like me … you love her.”

Evgeny rounded on Max with flashing eyes. But at once, the eyes paled and turned away. Toward Liesl. For a silent moment, the two men watched her sitting alone in the car across the street, her face in shadow but the sunlight catching a strand of golden hair. Max wondered how much more pathetic he and the lone-wolf Russian could be.

“Forgive me, Evgeny. I spoke out of place.”

Evgeny flipped a hand of dismissal. “We have much more to discuss. I know of your search for your father, for the sordid truths about our new president and the link between the two. Tell me what you have uncovered.”

Evgeny’s long, deep tentacles into Russian intelligence, his well-documented turn against those who would overthrow the government and endanger his homeland, and his extraordinary covert skills all made him an invaluable asset to the U.S. government and to Israel. That’s why Ava Mullins and the Mossad had already given Max clearance to share such things with Evgeny Kozlov, should the occasion arise. Such as now.

So began Max’s brief review of Arkady Glinka’s secret life in the occult, of his and Volynski’s yet-undetermined connection with the Anhinga Bay Spiritualist Camp, and most critically, of the recent detection of suspicious activity in and around a suspected weapons factory deep inside a Ural mountain. When he finished, Evgeny continued to stare at Max’s car and the sedan still parked behind it, the muscles of his jaw working, grinding as if hashing his options.

Finally, he looked back at Max. “You have done well. But what you do not know is that the ‘suspicious activity’ you speak of is not at all suspicious. It is a certainty. A chemical weapon left Russia days ago on a private plane, its destination yet unknown. The bomb contains sarin. Colorless, odorless, a nerve agent capable of massive death.

“How can you be sure?”

“I don’t question your sources. You don’t question mine. As long as they keep us both alive—and her—we must act on them.” His eyes strayed back to Max’s car. “Look.”

Max turned to see the passenger door open and Liesl emerge. The two security officers sprang from their car and approached her, but she waved them off and strode purposefully across the road. Max flung open his door and jumped out. “Liesl, go back!” But she kept coming until she stood before him with her eyes on Evgeny.

“I’m tired of waiting to see what international incident you two are hatching inside this car.” She smiled tightly at Max and pulled him with her into the back seat.

Evgeny made no move to turn around until she and Max had closed the door, then he faced her squarely, his eyes piercing through some membrane that seemed to separate the bilious spy from every other living being, Max observed. Except Liesl. Now, he wondered at the change.

She didn’t have to say a word, only look at Evgeny with the knowing eyes that smoldered with disarming compassion. His tired old face relaxed and his hand reached palm up for hers. She gave it fully to him, leaning forward and closing her other hand over his, locking him in something secret and hidden from Max, who could only guess at the times the two had known together. The rampage and reconciliation, the haunting and the peace forged between them during those days in New York.

She released Evgeny’s hand and sat back. “Only six months ago, Evgeny, I thought I would never see you again. That you would finally be free of me.” She smiled thinly. “Yet here you are again. Why?”

Evgeny looked toward Max then back at Liesl. He shrugged. “Because you remain an impetuous child dashing into harm’s way.”

“What should I do?” she probed. “Surrender to people I can’t see? Can’t talk to or even place on a map? Maybe they’re here, or back in Charleston. Or maybe they don’t exist at all.”

She looked at Max. “Right now, you and I are late for a rehearsal. Cade is on his way here to join us.” She looked out the window. “The sun isn’t hiding behind clouds today, and neither will I.” She turned back to Evgeny. “I believe that the dangerous things you and Max discuss, those classified things I’m not supposed to know, matter greatly. But so do the things that aren’t so dark and classified, like playing the music that lifts us higher than that. Can’t we just do that, Evgeny? Can’t we just play the music?”

Max thought he’d never seen more yearning hope in a human face than what shone in Liesl’s that moment. He longed for such hope. Why would it not come to him? Was her God its composer?

Evgeny straightened before them. With an unwavering eye on the two officers watching him from outside their car, he finally replied. “Go and play it, Liesl. You and Max. Wherever it takes you. And leave me to what I do best.”

Liesl stared at his profile, at the eyes now refusing to meet hers.

“Go now,” Evgeny commanded them both, and turned fully around in his seat, both hands back on the wheel. Silent.

Max hovered by the open back door as Liesl slid across the seat to exit the car. Then she paused and spoke one last time to Evgeny. “Will I see you again?”

With only a trace of sarcasm, he spoke into the windshield. “You always do.”

A
s Cade, Ben, and Anna were led to their seats inside Mann Auditorium, Cade noticed his phone light up inside his coat pocket. Risking a peek at the caller, he grinned at the bushy beard filling the tiny screen but dared not answer the summons. Once they were seated, though, he bent over the silenced instrument and tapped out a quick text:
Concert starting. Talk later.

Slipping the phone into his pocket, he calculated the time in Charleston. It would be noon on that Monday. At that hour, his grandfather and Henry were either nosing the
Exodus II
back into the harbor after a half-day charter. Or O’Brien Charters was headlong into the Gulf Stream with all-day customers tracking wahoo, tuna, maybe a trophy marlin. Cade glanced about the auditorium and smiled to himself at the memory of Ian O’Brien’s last visit to a major concert hall. It had been Avery Fisher Hall in New York a year and a half ago. As clearly as if his grandfather were sitting beside him now, Cade could see him stuffed into a dress shirt barely containing his thick, whiskered neck, his hooked forefinger tugging at the starched and bedeviling constraint. But when Liesl had emerged from the wings and took her place on stage, resplendent in an emerald green gown, both O’Brien men had lost all concept of discomfort—and in Cade’s case, alarm over what had delayed her entrance into the spotlight that night. Now, recalling what that delay had been, the smile vanished from his face.

Where is he?
Cade wondered as he scanned the audience, now settled and waiting for Liesl Bower and Max Morozov to appear on stage. Cade was certain that Evgeny Kozlov was there somewhere. Inside, outside. Disguised, most certainly. He would have to be if those he guarded her against were present. Max Morozov’s elusive father. Ivan Volynski, alive or not, because his faithful followers might kill more than their own president out of vengeance. The pretend-postman who carried fake mail and a real gun in his pouch. And all the shadowed ones who’d harassed Liesl with dead-air phone calls and stalkings. They would know and recognize the Russian turncoat who’d forsaken his duty to their cause, in part for the sake of the young woman Cade O’Brien had married.

Cade had come to grips with the hovering threats to his wife, resolving to protect her as best he could. But he knew the insufficiency of that, and that God would have to remain her greatest defender. He’d also reconciled himself to the Russian spy’s singular devotion to the preservation of Liesl Bower. If Kozlov was in love with Cade’s wife, so were others. He’d read it in the unmasked eyes of Max Morozov. Cade also knew that love to be as innocent as Liesl’s returned affections. He’d long forbidden jealousy to take root in him, but couldn’t help savoring Liesl’s every valiant effort to assure him how crazy in love she was with him and him only. Just like the lyrics of a song, he thought.

Cade turned to see Ben watching him closely. The former White House staffer and expat leaned toward Cade and whispered. “Spotted him yet?” Cade shook his head. “You won’t,” Ben assured him. “But the others are plain to see.” Ben’s eyes roamed side to side. Cade had already counted at least ten of Tel Aviv’s finest, both in and out of uniform, at the ready to defend the pair about to perform.

And that time came.

The lights dimmed and the curtain rose on the Israel Philharmonic. To a crescendo of applause, Liesl entered from the left, the sequins on her pale blue gown catching the lights and star-dusting her entrance to center stage. Max and his violin approached from the right wing, his tux neat and crisp, unlike the errant thatch of red on his head. They were a study in contrasts until they began to play. Only then did Cade relax and let the melding of these great artists wash over him, soothing his fears and lifting him to a higher place, as always happened when Liesl performed. But his cautious eyes never stopped roving the theater.

Taking her seat at the concert grand, Liesl allowed the briefest dart of the eye toward Cade and an almost imperceptible nod of the head. All was well, he interpreted from the gesture. For now.

He leaned back and propped his elbows on the armrests. There would be music in Tel Aviv, he mused, and fish in Charleston. He smiled to himself, picturing the two intrepid fishermen of O’Brien Charters just heading back from sea, their ice lockers full of fat catch. They’d collect their pay, hose down the boat, then head home to a peaceful evening on Tidewater Lane. At least some things were predictable.

Heavy seas off Florida’s east coast tossed
Exodus II
through white-foam troughs as Ian struggled to maintain a southerly course. Henry had grabbed the binoculars to track a waterspout just reported by an outgoing tanker over the marine radio. “Yeah, I see it,” he told Ian. “Kind of dancing around out there.”

“Well, keep an eye on it. I sure don’t like the looks of these skies. We may have to pull in at Ft. Lauderdale.”