Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (32 page)

From the moment he’d left the White House, Noland had struggled to contain his fury. The massive dragnet to locate the bomb was ongoing. Every moment that passed without finding it was agony. Still, he believed he’d triumphed over his rage. Until now.

With no shots fired, the boarding team had surprised the sleeping crew and subdued the two bridge personnel on watch. Hours earlier, after federal authorities had informed Vandoren of the capital-offense nature of his crimes, he’d displayed a pitiable desperation to reduce the sentence by cooperating in every way conceivable. That meant spilling as much information as he knew, which included the number of Ivan’s crew and the layout of his yacht. With that, the boarding team had gone straight to crew quarters and Ivan’s stateroom.

The cutter that had dispatched the team now idled along the yacht’s port side. Once all three levels of the ship had been thoroughly searched and secured, its entire crew accounted for and restrained, the second cutter eased up to the starboard side. Its own Zodiak was launched from the stern ramp and cruised cautiously toward the yacht, its path bathed in light from the vigilant chopper. Like the first boarding party, the six men on the Zodiak wore bulletproof vests.

Once a boarding ladder was secured to the yacht’s gunwale, three men armed with assault weapons scrambled up and over the side, followed by Travis Noland, whose footing was as sure and swift as his soldiers’. Two more men followed him.

“Where is he?” the president demanded the moment he stepped foot on deck.

“This way, sir.” Blended with the two Coast Guard boarding teams were three Secret Service agents. A shield of men and weaponry surrounded the president as he was led to the forward stateroom on the upper deck.

Strapped to a chair in the middle of the room, Volynski was hurling insults and threats on those guarding him when the president entered the room.

At first sight of him, Ivan flinched as if struck, his words chopped off, his shock profound. Then something inside him shifted. The open mouth slowly closed and spread into a malicious curl. The eyes flared and burned like coals. “Well, look who came down from his throne.” Now the eyes fairly danced. “How worthy I must be of his presence.” Ivan looked pointedly toward the windows and the ferocious beat of the chopper. “And you brought your toys with you.”

But the president heard past the verbal swagger. Devastation sounded just below the surface.

Travis Noland glanced around the room. A walker stood in one corner. He turned toward the open door to the bedroom and spotted the wheelchair, then back at Ivan.

“What’s wrong with you, Ivan?”

“Said one caring brother to another.” Ivan sneered, squirming against his restraints.

Noland turned to one of the guards. “Loosen the straps.”

“Don’t pity me!” Ivan snapped.

“You pity yourself,” Noland returned. “Is that what this is about? The poor, illegitimate son who spent his whole life hating the father who rejected him and the brother who had everything he didn’t? Is that why you kill?”

“I won’t dignify that with an answer.”

“Dignify?” The president charged. “What do you know about dignity? You’ve tried three times to kill a woman who just stumbled onto the name of your little mole. You killed two men just doing their jobs at the Supreme Court. Did you know that the little boy who was injured in that blast died? And guess what? He didn’t have a father either. Just a mom who loved him. A mom like yours.”

“Then you pity them, not me.”

Noland looked into the seething face and tried to understand that level of hate. But there was something more urgent for him to know.

“Where’s the bomb?”

The mouth curled again as the face relaxed. Ivan looked at him with unmasked contempt. “You’ll know soon enough.”

Noland’s mind spun with options for breaching this human barricade. How long did he have before this man murdered again? This time thousands.

Noland straightened. “We will soon return to Washington, and you will go with us. Right to the seat of government. The
temple
, as you wrote in your last cowardly message to me. If we don’t find the bomb in time, you’ll know what it’s like to die at your own hands.”

Ivan erupted in laughter, long and loud. “It doesn’t matter to me if I die here or there. The symptoms of Lou Gehrig’s disease and a good saturation of sarin are almost the same.” He laughed with acidic victory. “Clever of me, wasn’t it? Now you and I, the anointed son and the bastard, will share the same fate. Finally.”

Noland swallowed hard and glanced at his watch. It had come to this. He gestured toward one of his Secret Service agents who nodded understanding, retrieved a small folder from his backpack, and handed it to the president.

“Anointed?” he asked calmly. “Is that what you thought I was?”

Ivan didn’t respond.

Noland took a few photographs from the folder and approached Ivan. He held up one for the man to see. “Recognize the man in this picture?”

Ivan refused to look at it.

“Are you afraid?”

Though the eyes blazed defiantly, they soon turned to the old photograph.

“It’s our father,” Noland said, “in bed with someone who wasn’t my mother, although it was her bed, too. You see, she was visiting her sister out of town and I was supposed to be asleep. But I heard the noises from my parents’ bedroom. When I cracked open the door and saw what was happening, I hurried to get my camera. I was just nine.”

“Stupid child,” Ivan snapped.

“I guess I was, because he heard the click of the camera and saw me before I could run.” The president held up another photo. “It took three surgeries to repair my leg, and I still had to wear that cast for almost a year.”

Ivan only glanced at him, then looked away.

“My father threw his anointed son down the steps.” He waited a moment to compose himself, offering an apologetic glance at the others in the room, then kept going. “My mother warned me not to tell a soul, that he’d be in jail and we’d be destitute. So she and I learned to lie about our injuries. All of them.”

Ivan’s expression didn’t change, but he remained silent for several moments. Then, “And that story is supposed to move me to tears? To feel sorry for you? How pathetic.”

“You’re right, Ivan. It is pathetic. You and I carry pathetic wounds. Just like this woman.” The president lifted the last photograph and forced Ivan to look at it. “See the young boy in her lap? Cute kid. Blond hair and chunky little cheeks, like you had in that picture you sent me.” Noland leaned close to Ivan’s impassive face. “That’s the boy you killed!”

Ivan stiffened and pulled away from him.

“Where’s the bomb, Ivan?” the president demanded again, his patience at an end.

But Ivan turned to the window and stared as if listening for voices. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his nose and still he waited, for something. Then he began to cough and gasp for breath. He inclined his head toward his bedroom and rasped, “My medicine. Please.”

Please?
The president nodded toward one of the officers.

“Where is it?” the officer asked Ivan.

“My bathroom. In the shaving kit. A pill bottle marked Guaifenesin.”

The officer retrieved the medicine and returned with a bottled water.

“Untie me?” Ivan ventured, his gaze falling oddly on the president.

“No,” Noland answered firmly. “Help him,” he told the officer.

“There’s only one pill in here,” the officer told Ivan.

“That’s all I need.”

The president noticed he wasn’t coughing anymore.

“I’m going to drop it into your mouth,” the officer said, lifting the pill.

Ivan looked once at the president, then at the ceiling. “Hallelujah to the other son.” He opened his mouth wide.

“No!” Noland yelled, suddenly understanding. But the pill had already fallen into Ivan’s mouth. It took only seconds for the cyanide to kill him.

S
hortly before the president returned to the White House, a Coast Guard helicopter swooped low over a cargo ship off Cape Hatteras. Within the hour, a cutter engaged the ship head-on, ordering it to stop. When it didn’t, the cutter fired across the ship’s bow as two 45-foot CG response boats came screaming over the waves, each taking a flank position on either side of the huge ship. The helicopter returned and lowered a boarding team onto the deck of the tossing ship. Reinforcements from the cutter boarded minutes later.

They found the bomb beneath a false bottom to the ship. It was still crated and contained. A bomb crew, hastily dispatched to the cutter before it left port, boarded the cargo ship and dismantled the weapon. The entire crew was arrested.

Word of the president’s daring raid on Ivan’s yacht reached Max and Ben mid morning in Berlin.

“So Volynski’s really dead,” Ben said as the two men poured over the rest of the bulletin from Mossad. “This time, there’s no doubt about it. It’s been confirmed by the president himself.”

Max was still scanning the report. “So that day on the East River, according to interrogation of Curt Vandoren, Volynski changed his mind about leaving New York and got out of the helicopter just before it took off.” Max read on, paraphrasing the official script. “The heliport guard was so distracted by the NYPD assault on the tugboat about to take down the Brooklyn Bridge, he didn’t see Ivan leave the chopper and climb back into the car. And he sure wasn’t watching the car after that chopper exploded right in front of him.”

Ben, too, was buried in the report. “I don’t see any mention of Arkady Glinka.”

“You won’t until the Americans are pretty sure of what they’re dealing with. They can’t afford to cast hear-say incriminations against the sitting president of Russia by a guy like Vandoren. Evgeny spotting Maxum Morozov leaving Glinka’s dacha doesn’t prove anything. Even though it screams collusion to me. If my father was hinged to Volynski, so was Glinka.”

Just then, another communiqué streamed online to Max’s laptop. “Okay, here we go. The White House says we can step down the guard over Liesl and a certain fiddle player from Israel. Seems like Noland would like us to keep our concert date in Nuremberg.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

“He’s dead?” Liesl asked in disbelief. Max had led her and Cade outside the apartment to unfold as much of the CIA/Mossad report as they were cleared to know. Mainly that the man who’d worked hardest to eliminate Liesl Bower had just ended his own life.

“We leave for Nuremberg this afternoon,” Max announced with unabashed relief as the three now strolled away from the apartment building.

“You don’t think it’s too soon to just run outside and play?” Cade asked. Liesl saw the apprehension in his face. “Could there be remnants of Volynski’s network still operating?”

Max looked into the trees overhead as they passed near a deli whose menu was handwritten in the window. “I’m certain that, as remnants go, we’ll never account for them all. Who knows the scope of his reach or the number of minds he’s infected. But how many of them care a whit about a couple of musicians?” Max was in no mood to belabor the possibility that between his father and Glinka, the likelihood of a remnant was probably worth fretting over. But would he, and Liesl, continue to live their lives in such a fret?

Max breathed long and deep. “It’s a clean-start day for us. Let’s not muddy it with lingering fears and uncertainties.” He stopped to read the menu then clapped Cade heartily on the back. “I would like to linger, instead, over a hot pastrami sandwich.”

Liesl saw beneath the mask. She’d known Max too long to miss it. Something brewed dark and thick beneath the light in his face. There was no doubt in her mind that he, indeed, concerned himself with Ivan’s remnant, particularly his father. She knew he always would. The man had long impaired his son in ways few could detect. But Liesl was one who could.

“What about the others at the apartment?” Cade asked.

“About this time, Ben is probably sitting Anna and Erica down and informing them that there’s no longer any need to smother under the security blanket. Of course, in private, he’ll divulge a bit more to Anna, who knows of the man who tried to assassinate her husband and why.”