Last Snow (12 page)

“T
HIS IS
why I know Karl is the man you seek.” Dyadya Gourdjiev snared a cookie between two fingers free of the crooks and unnatural bends of arthritis. As he contemplated it, he turned it, revealing first the top, then the bottom. “Politicians,” he said. “Your senator and Karl, two sides of the same coin, pulled inexorably together even from opposite sides of the world.”

The old man gave the cookie to Alli then, taking another, popped it into his mouth whole, crunching on it happily. When he’d swallowed the last crumbs, he continued, “Your senator—what was his name again?”

“Lloyd Berns,” Jack offered.

“Yes, your Senator Berns would have had to meet with Karl if he wanted to get anything accomplished in Ukraine.” He cocked his head. “Have you any idea why the senator was in Kiev?”

“So far as anyone knows, he was here on a Senate fact-finding
mission, but his very last appointment was with K. Rochev,” Jack said, “and it wasn’t official, which is what caught my attention.”

The old man eyed him carefully, listening perhaps for a misstep on Jack’s part—if, for instance, Jack had said “what caught our attention,” which would have given him the opening to ask who, precisely, Jack worked for. As a lifetime forger, he was not in the habit of asking such questions outright.

“Then it’s Karl you want to speak with.” He stood and walked across to a hand-rubbed rosewood table with cabriole legs as delicate as a fawn’s. For a moment, he rummaged through some papers until he found a much earmarked address book. He didn’t look like the kind of man to rely on Outlook. He made two quick phone calls, then turned back to his guests.

“As I suspected, you won’t find him at the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, our parliament. Likewise, it would avail you nothing to seek him out at home; you’d find only his wife and his mother, though, in truth, there’s little to distinguish them.” He shook his head. “No, if history is prelude to the present, today being Friday, Karl will be with his current mistress. He will be with her all weekend.”

“Do you know her name or where he might be keeping her?” Jack asked.

“As I said, Karl and I haven’t been in touch for years. It’s a curious thing with longtime compatriots in their old age, they sometimes have a falling out. Ours was quite bitter. He’s dead to me. However, all is not lost, Mr. McClure,
if
I can find a certain number.” He paged through the book, moistening his forefinger every so often to ease the process. “Ah, here it is. Milla Tamirova.” Reaching for a pencil, he wrote a few lines on a scratch pad, ripped off the top sheet and, turning back, handed it to Jack. “Milla Tamirova was Karl’s mistress at the time he and I parted ways. I very much doubt that she still is, since he changes girls like other people rotate the tires on their cars. But she might know who his current one is.”

“Why would she know that?” Jack asked.

“All of Karl’s mistresses came from one stable.”

“Why bother paying?” Alli asked. “So far as I can see there seem to be a hundred willing girls for every man in Moscow and I imagine the same’s true here.”

The old man smiled as he wagged a finger at her. “A clever one here. Of course, there’s a reason. The stable mistress trains all the girls in different, er, disciplines.”

“Your friend’s into fetishes,” Alli said without blinking an eye.

“Well, well.” For a moment, Dyadya Gourdjiev seemed at a loss for words, or perhaps he was busy reassessing the young woman he’d mistaken for a childlike adolescent. “And what do you know of fetishes, young lady?”

“That there’s at least one to satisfy every possible psychological itch.”

“Indeed.” Dyadya Gourdjiev stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “Karl’s into bondage, serious stuff, very unpleasant.”

“Not for everyone,” Alli said so dryly she drew a sharp look from Annika.

“Clearly not,” Jack said, already troubled by Alli’s interjections, which illuminated a topic she’d never brought up with him. “If you’ll allow me to use the phone, I’ll call her right now.”

“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” Annika said.

Dyadya Gourdjiev nodded. “I agree. A woman like that is highly likely to be suspicious of a man like you.”

“Let me do it,” Alli said.

Jack snorted. “Yeah, right.” He waved a hand. “Forget that. It’s bad enough you’re here altogether.” He held out the paper the old man had given him. “Annika, you make the call.”

Alli snatched the paper before Annika could take it. She stood in front of Jack with her legs planted firmly on the carpet. “Listen to me. This woman will get suspicious of anyone wanting to know
where her former lover is now. I mean she might not respond at all or if she does she might give us a bum address or if she gives us the right one she could call him the minute we leave.”

“Alli, stop this nonsense right now—”

Dyadya Gourdjiev took a step toward her. “Mr. McClure, what harm is there in allowing Alli to finish her thought?”

“I don’t want her involved in this.”

The old man shrugged. “It appears to me that she’s already involved.”

Alli grabbed the ensuing shocked silence by the horns. “Look,” she said, excited now, “I call Milla Tamirova—”

“And say what?” Jack asked. “You don’t even speak Russian.”

“No matter,” Dyadya Gourdjiev said. “Milla speaks perfect English.” He rubbed two fingers against his thumb. “And why not? English is the language of money.”

“I’m going to tell her that I’m his daughter and I need protection.” Alli went over to where Dyadya Gourdjiev stood, as if seeking protection from Jack’s further protests. “
That’s
why I need to find him.”

She picked up the phone.

“I’
VE SLAVED
your cell phone to mine,” Jack said. “So just press the Two button if you get into trouble.”

“I’m not going to get into trouble,” Alli said. “I can take care of myself.”

He knew that wasn’t an idle threat. One of the things he’d been doing with her was training her in physical combat. She was a quick learner, which was no surprise to him, since she’d been athletic in college. Emma had taken him to see her in several track meets. He’d also taught her how to shoot a pistol; they’d spend an hour twice a week at the ATF firing range in Virginia.

“If you get into trouble,” he repeated, “I’m only a floor away.” He
tapped the butt of the Mauser Dyadya Gourdjiev had given him, along with a box of bullets.

They were on the second floor of Milla Tamirova’s building on Andrivyivsky Spusk, a beautiful street filled with markets, steepled churches, and tiered wedding-cake buildings that wound its way up from the lower part of the city, known as Podil, to the upper city. Rochev’s former mistress occupied a corner apartment on the third floor. She refused to speak over the phone. In fact, it appeared that she was about to hang up, but once Alli broke down in tears, her voice quavering pathetically, she had agreed to see Alli. When did Alli learn to cry on cue, Jack asked himself as he watched her work over Tamirova like a champion boxer.

“And don’t get cocky, okay?”

She stared at him steadily now. “Okay.”

As she turned away to sprint up the iron fire stairs, Jack took her elbow and gently turned her back to him. “Alli, are you sure you want to do this? We can find another way—”

“I’m so sure, Jack.” Her gaze met his without guile. “Besides, it’s already set up.”

Then she gave him a quick grin. “You don’t want to queer the pooch.”

This response caught Jack flat-footed. For the first time since Emma’s death, the spark of life had returned to Alli. She was visibly excited about using her skills, being part of something other than the hurt and pain that soaked through her insides. It was at this moment that Jack understood something about her that her entire battery of doctors had missed: What she needed more than anything else was to be drawn outside herself, to be engaged by the world, to be given a challenge, to feel once again her own expertise. Morgan Herr had taken away her sense of control. Jack saw that from the moment she had formed this plan she had set herself on the road to regaining what had been snatched from her, what now mattered most to her.

He nodded to her and smiled. Kissing her cheek, he let her go, watching her scamper up the steps with a newfound energy.

“I hope to God you know what you’re doing,” Annika said.

Jack’s gaze was fixed on the place on the stairs where Alli had vanished. “That makes two of us.”

M
ILLA
T
AMIROVA
opened the door the instant Alli knocked. She must have been waiting at the door. She was another in a long line of Slavic blondes with magnificent bone structure, porcelain skin, cornflower blue eyes, and breasts with no need of being inflated with silicon. She had the kind of feral, predatory face men found irresistible, at least around the bedroom, which meant that she wore her sexuality outside her skin. Alli despised her on sight.

Nevertheless, she smiled winningly as she stood on the threshold, aware that the older woman was scrutinizing her as if she were a frog pinned to a board, its insides exposed for study.

“
Pajalyste chawdeetzye
,” Tamirova said, taking an abrupt step back. “Oh, forgive me, I forget that you don’t speak Russian. Please come in.”

She continued to peer at Alli as she shut the door and led her guest into a tastefully furnished room full of chintz and striped satin fabrics. Heavy drapes half covered the windows, the furniture was large and looked deep enough to get lost in, which, Alli thought, was probably the point.

Tamirova, her painted lips moving softly, said, “I find it odd that a child of Karl’s wouldn’t speak Russian.”

“I was brought up in America,” Alli said with an ease that amused her almost as much as lying to her doctors. “It’s only recently that I found out my origins—a photo, a name, a date, and a street name. I Googled it and came up with Kiev.”

The scrutiny clearly over, Tamirova raised her arm. “Sit down. Please.” She spoke English almost as well as Annika, one of many
languages, she said, part of her training to be all things to all clients. She wore a long sea green robe of some material that both clung to her slim curves and seemed to foam around her ankles, which were strapped into high-heeled shoes. Who wears high-heeled shoes when they’re home, Alli asked herself.

When they were comfortably settled, Milla Tamirova said, “Have you any idea who your mother is?”

“Not a clue,” Alli lied without hesitation. She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not my mother, are you?”

“Heavens, no!” Milla Tamirova chuckled deep in her throat. “I’ve never been pregnant—well, except one time and then, you know . . .”

“Don’t you ever think of what that baby would have been like?”

“I wouldn’t have been a good mother, I don’t have—what do you call it in English—?”

“A conscience?”

“A maternal instinct.” A small smile played around her full lips. “Perhaps someday you’ll understand.”

“I hope to Christ I never do.”

“Is that what they teach you in America? Religion?” She lifted a hand. Her nails were longer than Annika’s. “You can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen.”

“I’m twenty-two.”

“Good lord!” Milla Tamirova stared at her without seeming comprehension.

“I need to use the bathroom,” Alli said.

“Down the hall, second door on the left,” the older woman said as if still in a trance or plunged deep in thought.

Alli made use of the bathroom, flushed the toilet, ran water over her hands and dried them. Then she did a bit of reconnoitering. She saw Milla Tamirova’s bedroom directly across the hall, lushly feminine and inviting, except to Alli, who was revolted. Further down, where a second bedroom might logically be, was a closed door. Alli
stood in front of it for a moment then, reaching out, turned the faceted glass doorknob. And came upon the dungeon.

Along the left wall was an array of whips and crops of all kinds, made of different materials. Below it, an assortment of manacles linked by chains. In front of this display was a Western saddle, complete with stirrups and cinch, thrown over a custom-made sawhorse. In the center of the right wall was a floor-to-ceiling mirror, on either side three tiers of dummy heads on each of which was a full-head mask of either leather or black latex. Below each one, lined up like little red soldiers, were what she knew were gag balls. The one small window had been blacked out and was covered with thick metal grillwork straight out of
The Count of Monte Cristo.

This regimental exhibit was unsettling enough, but it was the object in the center of the room that riveted her attention: a massive wooden armchair bolted to the floorboards. On each arm and on each of the front legs was a leather restraint with metal buckle. The sight of the chair, so similar to the one Morgan Herr had tied her into for the better part of a week, gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Do the tools of my trade interest you?” Milla Tamirova leaned against the open doorway. She had lit a cigarette while Alli was in the bathroom, and now she exhaled a cloud of pale smoke toward the high ceiling.