During the high-speed drive to Viktoriya’s motel, Hannibal was locked in a heated argument with himself. The smart money was on calling the police. Of course the smart money put Ivanovich in jeopardy and might scare Krada enough to drive him underground. Hannibal had to see that man in jail. Actually, if what he believed was true, he had to see that man in the electric chair.
The lot was almost empty at midday, but he knew three people who would be home. After shutting off the car he sat for a minute to center himself and bring his blood pressure down. It wouldn’t do to rush in, agitated and short-fused with a man like Ivanovich standing guard.
Cooler, his story clear in his mind, Hannibal got out of his Volvo. He took three steps toward the motel building before he realized that someone else might have already made the mistake of approaching the room in some unacceptable manner.
Hannibal could see a man on the second-level balcony, standing at the door to the apartment where Viktoriya and Dr. Sidorov were supposed to be hiding in safety. The man raised his hand as if to knock but before he could, Aleksandr Ivanovich popped out of the door to the left and in three long strides was beside the newcomer. He drove a fist into the man’s side, bounced the man’s forehead off the door, and shoved him inside.
Hannibal had a pretty good guess of who it was, and sprinted up the stairs to the second floor. When he reached the door he called out his own name before trying the knob. It was unlocked and he pushed in, to find himself staring into the barrel of Ivanovich’s pistol.
“Be cool, Aleksandr,” Hannibal said, raising his hands. He stepped back, using his shoulder to push the door closed, then paused to take in the situation. Yakov Sidorov was in the chair beside the round table, almost exactly where Hannibal had left him. But now his veined hands gripped the arms of the chair. Viktoriya crouched on the far side of the far bed, looking over the edge of it, half her face hidden from view. At the front of the room Ivanovich stood with his pistol thrust toward Hannibal and his left foot on Jamal Krada’s throat.
“It’s me, and I’m alone,” Hannibal said. Ivanovich relaxed a notch and lowered his gun so that it pointed at Krada’s face. The Algerian went pale and Hannibal saw a wet stain begin to spread on the front of his pants.
“You don’t want to kill him,” Hannibal said, slowly lowering his hands. “Well, maybe you do, but you shouldn’t. Do you know who you got there?”
“All I need to know is, he’s the man who came here to kill Viktoriya,” Ivanovich said. He reached into the back of his waistband and flipped a small handgun to Hannibal. It matched the picture on the box Hannibal saw at Krada’s house. “He killed her mother and her husband with that, and here he is to finish the family.”
“Not likely,” Hannibal said. “She’s the reason he killed the other three.”
“Three?” Viktoriya asked, standing and walking just far enough around the beds so she could see Krada. “Jamal, did you kill them all?”
“Wait a minute,” Ivanovich said, sitting on the bed. He kept his gun on Krada even though he was looking at Hannibal. “I thought Boris Tolstaya killed Nikita Petrova.”
Hannibal wondered why these people always used first and last names. “For a while so did I. Boris sure thought he killed Nikita, and Dani Gana held it over him to get what he wanted, a trip to North Africa. They both described a fight and a beating Nikita took. But nobody said anything about throwing him off a roof. I think he was still alive when they left. And when they left, they didn’t know that someone else was looking for him and had followed them to the building.”
“This is silly,” Viktoriya said, leaning back against Sidorov’s arm for support. “Why would he kill my daddy?”
“Because he found out that his wife told your father about your pregnancy,” Hannibal said. “She gets talky when she drinks. See, he couldn’t afford for the word to get out that he had gotten another student pregnant.”
“Another?” she whispered.
“He followed your father from the Russia House that night, hoping to persuade him to remain silent. What he didn’t know is that his wife never named him as the father. She just wanted you yanked out of school, and figured that letting your dad know you got knocked up would do the trick.”
Now Krada sat up. “He didn’t know it was me?”
“No, asshole,” Hannibal said. “Actually, he accused Boris. That’s what set off the fight they had before you got there. But you didn’t see any of that, did you? You just hid in the shadows like the coward you are until Boris and his boys were gone. Then you went up, expecting to talk to Nikita, maybe threaten him, I don’t know. But instead you found him beaten, battered, maybe unconscious. Your problem was 90 percent solved.”
“Nikita was helpless,” Ivanovich said, poking the side of Krada’s head with the muzzle of his pistol. “So you pitched him off the roof, you heartless bastard. You even took his watch off and took his wallet.”
“And you said he killed Mama too?” Viktoriya asked. “That’s impossible.”
“No, girl, it ain’t,” Hannibal said, pulling a chair over and dropping into it. “Aleksandr just took the murder weapon off him, an exotic caliber you don’t see much around here.”
“But there was no reason,” Sidorov said, holding Viktoriya’s arm as if she might faint and fall.
“You’ve got to understand,” Hannibal said. “When Nikita died he left far less than anyone expected, and the mob did nothing for her. Boris sent her money out of guilt, but had to stop when the half million disappeared and he had to go underground. Dani Gana sent her money from a bank back home, kind of a bribe to get her to keep other men away from Viktoriya here. But that stopped once he was certain the girl would marry him. So things were getting a little tight for Raisa. She had no more pockets to tap. But then Viktoriya called this bum again.”
“You were calling him?” The hurt in Ivanovich’s voice was palpable. To her credit, the girl met his eyes without blinking.
“I’m thinking she told him every time anything important happened,” Hannibal said. “But again, Mrs. Krada heard it and figured she’d try the same trick twice. Only this time, when she called Raisa, she told her who the culprit was. Raisa was more desperate than angry. Her daughter was about to leave her in the dust.”
“Oh dear,” Sidorov said. “She tried to blackmail him.”
“Bingo,” Hannibal said. “She called him to demand money, and let him know why. Now, Krada here is no killer, but once a man kills another human…”
“For some, it gets easier each time,” Ivanovich said.
“So he took his little, quiet, easily concealed target pistol over to Raisa’s house, plugged her, and ran off. And you never even suspected it was him, did you?” Hannibal turned to Viktoriya.
“Daddy and Mama?” she said, looking at Krada as if he was a new kind of lizard she had not seen before. “How could you? I love you. I loved you.”
Ivanovich looked at her face, now with tears streaking down it, and then looked at Sidorov’s shocked expression and Hannibal’s look of contempt. Then he looked down at Krada, who forced a terrified smile. Ivanovich nodded and grinned back.
“Smiling in their faces,” he said, “while filling up the hole. So many dirty little faces, in your filthy little, worn-out, broken-down, see-through soul.”
Hannibal knew he was the only person in that room who recognized the Nine Inch Nails lyric, and he knew what came next. Ivanovich pulled Krada to his feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Hannibal asked.
“You are not a killer,” Ivanovich said in a very level, businesslike voice. “I will take this one to a good place and dispose of him. He won’t be found for days and even when he is, he won’t be identifiable.”
Krada’s eyes flared wide, as if it had never occurred to him that such a thing could happen to him. He turned to Viktoriya, who looked at the carpet. Hannibal got to his feet.
“No, Aleksandr. I have to take him to Rissik. He deserves the collar for bending the rules for us the last few days, and this man needs to face justice.”
Ivanovich dismissed Hannibal’s words with a puff of air. “Your justice system isn’t worth shit. My way, the world is rid of a cockroach for good. Your way, he probably goes free.”
“Come on, Aleksandr,” Hannibal said. “I’ve got the murder weapon in my pocket. Besides, he’s going to confess to everything. Won’t you, dickhead?”
Krada looked from the pistol in Ivanovich’s hand to his eyes, swallowed hard, and moved his head up and down like a drinking bird. Hannibal wrapped his hand around Krada’s arm. He hadn’t seemed so small when Hannibal was sitting in his house.
“Let me take him, Aleksandr,” Hannibal said, ignoring the gun and fixing his attention on the real danger, Ivanovich’s eyes. It was one of those times when six seconds felt like a lifetime and Hannibal forgot to breathe.
“All right,” Ivanovich said. “But not without me.”
Hannibal let out a long breath, filled his lungs again, and nodded. He pulled the door open.
“You can’t just leave us here,” Sidorov said. Hannibal had forgotten the other two were in the room.
“I must go with you,” Viktoriya said. “Aleksandr will kill him if he gets the chance, but not if I am there. And I need to hear Jamal confess to his murders so there can be no doubt.”
All eyes turned to Viktoriya, showing varying degrees of surprise.
“All right, I guess my car can hold us all. It’s a fitting way for this to end, anyway.”
“The only fitting way for this to end is death,” Ivanovich said.
Rolling west on Capitol Street en route to Rissik’s office in Fairfax, Hannibal had Sidorov in his rearview mirror. His face jiggled as they bounced over potholes, but he stared straight ahead, his hands on his knees. He probably felt useless, but he served an important purpose. He separated Viktoriya, behind Hannibal, from Krada. This was good, because from the way Viktoriya was staring at Krada, she would be touching him if she could. And then Ivanovich would kill him.
Ivanovich sat beside Hannibal, literally riding shotgun. He held his automatic pressed against the deep tan upholstery of the seat back, its muzzle just below the top edge. He sat turned toward Hannibal with his eyes locked on Krada’s face. Krada sat with his hands folded in his lap, perspiration dripping down his mahogany face.
“I thought you were taking me to Fairfax County,” Krada said to Hannibal in the rearview mirror. The smell of his fear filled the car. “Isn’t that where you said the detective was that you could trust to keep me alive for trial?”
“Waste of time,” Ivanovich said.
“We should be on the beltway, then,” Krada said.
“Just making a little detour,” Hannibal said. “Dr. Sidorov doesn’t need to ride with us into Virginia. I offered to take him home, but he asked to be dropped at the Russia House.”
“How could you?” Viktoriya asked, seemingly out of nowhere. “How could you kill my parents?”
The traffic lights on C Street gave Hannibal ample opportunities to turn and talk to his passengers. “You got an answer for that one, Krada?”
Krada broke eye contact with Ivanovich long enough to turn to Viktoriya. “You think it was selfishness? No. I had to protect my job so that I would be able to make a life for you.”
“For this you pushed my father off a roof,” Viktoriya said. But why did you take his watch off him? Why take his wallet away? ”
“I’m sure he heard somewhere that suicides often leave their valuables behind,” Hannibal said. “Not that he’d have been very worried about that. He knew damned well that if the suicide story didn’t stick, someone else was already set up to get the blame. In fact, even Boris Tolstaya himself thought he was responsible for Nikita’s death.”
“You imagined that a woman would love you after you destroyed everything she loved?” Ivanovich asked. Then he turned to Viktoriya.
Hannibal couldn’t see what Viktoriya’s face might have told Ivanovich. He was fully occupied scanning his three mirrors and traffic ahead. The hair on the back of his neck tingled and stood erect. He crept up on a yellow light on Constitution Avenue, and then pressed the accelerator to the floor, pushing the Black Beauty through the intersection as it turned red. He changed lanes without signaling and lodged his car between two slow-moving vehicles. Ivanovich never looked at Hannibal, but he did draw a second pistol and turn around to watch out the passenger window.
“How many?”
“What’s going on?” Sidorov asked.
“We’ve picked up a tail,” Hannibal said. Even as he said it, he spotted what he believed to be a second car pacing him just a little ahead of his car. “My fault.”
“Not the time,” Ivanovich said. “Get us someplace private.”
But passing between the National Mall and the Museum of Natural History, Hannibal knew the sudden danger was his fault. He let his guard down after he was certain he had the murderer. They could all die for his carelessness.
“I’ve picked up the second car,” Ivanovich said. “Silver Honda Civic, right? The backseat man is holding an auto pistol.”
“They’re serious,” Hannibal said.
“Who do you suppose?” Sidorov asked, with a calm that surprised Hannibal.
“Mob,” Ivanovich said. “Still looking for the money. If they think Viktoriya has it they will take her. And kill me and Jones for interfering.”
“I have nothing to do with any missing money,” Krada said. “Let me go.”
“This was your choice?” Ivanovich asked Viktoriya. “At least Gana tried to protect you. And I have always been here.” Hannibal could hear the depth of the pain in Ivanovich’s voice. He tried to focus on driving through downtown DC at the start of rush hour, the two cars pacing his own.
“I’m not willing to let you go, Krada,” Hannibal said, driving a little faster. “You’re the prize at the bottom of the box. But the doc here, they don’t need him any way.”
“Agreed,” Ivanovich said.
“Can’t you just call the police?” Viktoriya asked.
“Maybe,” Hannibal said, easing to a stop at a light. “But there’s no point getting Dr. Sidorov mixed up in that either. I’m going to pull over at that next corner. We’ll just let you out and let them follow us all the way to a police station.”
Hannibal had cut left on Fifteenth Street and followed it around, keeping the Washington Monument on his right. Part of him wished he was out there with those camera-carrying tourists, or the homeboys involved in some fierce Frisbee tossing. He figured the closer he stayed to the monument area, the safer they all would be. What kind of an idiot would start trouble just a few blocks from the White House? The loop segued into Seventeenth Street, which was a traffic squeeze with cars that had just come into the city over the Memorial Bridge. He no longer saw either of his chase cars.
“We might have caught a break, gang,” Hannibal said, turning right to get back on Constitution, which at that point was a wide two-way street. There were three lanes going each way but the cars parked on both sides made the two outer lanes useless. After another five blocks he pulled over to double-park in front of the Federal Reserve Building and issued instructions to each of his passengers.
“Viktoriya, sit tight. Krada, get out and stand by the car with your hands on the trunk. Dr. Sidorov, get out and walk straight into the Federal Reserve. There are armed guards in the lobby, and there’s also a phone. Wait ten minutes and call a cab home. Aleksandr, watch Krada. If at any time he loses physical contact with this vehicle, shoot out his right knee. Everybody got it? OK, move.”
The door opened and Krada moved with care to the side of the car, resting his palms on the trunk. Sidorov patted Viktoriya’s knee the way an uncle would. Then he leaned forward to address Hannibal.
“Thank you for everything,”
Sidorov stepped toward the building at a normal pace without a backward glance. Hannibal took those few seconds to consider where he was. The black granite Vietnam Memorial stood just over the hill in the park across the street. It was designed like a slash in the earth. If he walked across the street and down the path he could point to the exact spot where his father’s name was engraved on that wall. And that led him to consider the nature of devotion.
“You’re still hooked on her, ain’t you?” he asked the back of Ivanovich’s head.
Without turning, Ivanovich replied, “Sometimes, when nothing seems worth saving, I can’t let her slip away. All right, Krada, back in the car.”
Hannibal knew the sound that came next, although most people would mistake it for a loud cough. Krada’s body snapped backward as if pulled by invisible wires. Before Hannibal could turn he heard Ivanovich’s elbows hit the Volvo’s roof and two guns roared as one. When Hannibal did see the black BMW moving down the road, its back window was spider webbed from the impacts of two bullets. Then Ivanovich bounced back into his seat.
“Move!”
“Not without the prize,” Hannibal said.
Ivanovich said something rude in Russian, snatched Krada off the sidewalk, and tossed him back into the car. Viktoriya was lying across the seat, so Krada landed partially on top of her. She screamed and sat up, slapping at blood in her hair.
Hannibal ground the gas pedal into the floorboard and pulled out into traffic the instant Ivanovich was back inside, letting his forward momentum slam the doors shut. His jaw was clenched tight as he spurred the car forward.
“You have them again?” Ivanovich asked.
“Black Beemer ahead. Silver Civic behind. They’re a lot ballsier than I thought. Gunfire in broad daylight in front of the Federal Reserve Building? A couple blocks from the Lincoln Monument? What’s the matter with these morons? And why the hell shoot Krada?”
“He was with us,” Ivanovich said. “Guilt by association. And I’m sure he never saw it coming. Will you call the police now?”
Hannibal grinned. “They’d hang you up by your thumbs, buddy. I’m pretty sure you don’t have licenses for those two handguns you just discharged in the middle of the city. Besides, we got to keep on the move. If these guys find us waiting for the cops, they won’t hesitate, they’ll just shoot. So by the time the cops found us, it would all be over anyway. Unless…”
“Yes?”
“Unless we find a safe place to sit for a while.”
Hannibal hit the ramp to I-66 with everything the Black Beauty could give him. As he reached the top of the curve he was staring at a bank of dark, forbidding clouds. Hannibal rarely prayed, but he did at that moment. He prayed that they would not be hit with another cold rain that afternoon. He expected to be outdoors for quite a while.
Traffic was only moderate, so on the downhill run he was able to slide into the farthest left of the three lanes as they hit the Roosevelt Bridge.
Behind him he heard Krada coughing and Viktoriya sniffling. In his rearview mirror he saw her stroke Krada’s head in an affectionate way. Then she slammed her fist down onto his right shoulder and shouted, “You bastard!”
“Hang onto something,” Hannibal said. The bridge was less than a half-mile long and the first exit was coming up on the far end. The BMW was not far in front of him, the Civic only one car behind. Traffic was moving at a smooth seventy miles per hour, despite the fact that they were driving directly into the setting sun.
“Come on, baby,” Hannibal said under his breath. Then he slapped the shifter down into second gear, popped the clutch, and yanked the wheel to the right. He could almost hear the other drivers cursing him as he shot across two lanes of traffic onto the off ramp. In the past, in New York or even in Germany, his maneuver would have raised a chorus of horns, but for some reason Washington drivers rarely honked at idiots.
Hannibal’s tires squealed only a little as he pulled into the parking area and rolled to the far end. When he cut the engine he noticed that Ivanovich was staring out the back window.
“I think that worked,” the assassin said. “Between your speed and driving into the sun, neither of them could get to the ramp in time to follow us.”
“They’ll be back,” Hannibal said. “Uspensky doesn’t pay these boys to quit. Come on.”
He got out of the car and opened the back door to help Viktoriya out.
“Where is this?” she asked, looking around at the parkland surrounding the parking area and the welcome center at the far end.
“Welcome to Roosevelt Island,” Hannibal said. “Ninety acres of woods and marshes and swampland. By the time those clowns figure out how to turn around and get back here, we’ll be well hidden in those woods and waiting for help to come.”
“We might not be moving too quickly,” Ivanovich said. He had Krada out of the car, but the Algerian was leaking life into a little pool. Lucky for him, he had passed out. Lucky for him, but real bad news for Hannibal.
“How bad?” he asked, walking around the car.
“Two inches high and to the left of the heart,” Ivanovich said. “Without care real soon, he will never be able to confess to anything.”
“Shit!” Hannibal’s eyes darted around. The parking lot was empty but for the cars he assumed belonged to the employees. Roosevelt’s memorial was not very popular during the week, especially after summer ended. The island officially closed at dark anyway, which wasn’t all that far off. Taking Krada with them seemed pointless. Leaving him to die seemed inhumane. The Russian mobsters had stolen his neat, tidy ending and Hannibal wanted to hate someone for that. He chose Krada.
“Sit his ass next to that Land Rover,” he said, pointing at a nearby vehicle. “If he’s still alive when the owner comes out, maybe he’ll get medical care. If not, he gets the sentence you’d have given him anyway.”
Ivanovich was quick to comply, wiping his hands on the dead man’s jacket afterward.
“And now?”
“Now we head for the trails,” Hannibal said, moving off at a slow jog. “There must be a couple miles of trails wandering all over this place. It will take your pals hours to find us in here.”
The trails were mostly wooden boardwalks over the wet earth, about four feet wide. Tall, narrow trees overhung the paths, almost shutting out the waning sunlight, despite the fact that most of the leaves had deserted their posts. The group walked at a brisk pace while Hannibal opened his cell phone.
“Rissik.”
“Hey, Chief, it’s Hannibal. I got a long, fascinating story to tell you, but it will have to wait. Right now, I need some help and I’m pretty sure I’m on your side of the Potomac.”
“What kind of help?” Rissik asked. “You sound kind of out of breath.”
“That’s because I’m out here hiking with a couple of friends, including Viktoriya Petrova.”
“The girl you said you were protecting.”
“That’s right,” Hannibal said, “but it’s turning out to be more challenging than I thought. Right now a couple of cars full of Russian mob muscle is chasing us and I could really use a little police assistance here.”
Hannibal heard Rissik’s chair squeak as he stood. “Moving now, buddy. Where are you?”
“We’re trying to lose them on Roosevelt Island. Make lots of noise when you get here, okay?”
As Hannibal ended the call he heard Viktoriya say, “I’m cold,” to no one in particular. He turned long enough to see Ivanovich, bringing up the rear, holster his weapons long enough to pull off his sport coat and hand it to the girl. Then he drew his Browning Hi-power from the holster under his right arm, and pulled a smaller Colt Commander from a holster in the back of his waistband.
“Hannibal, I wonder if you realize the irony.”
Right then all Hannibal could think of was turning at random points in the trail so there would be no pattern for their pursuers to guess. “Something here strikes you funny?”
“Not funny, my friend, ironic,” Ivanovich said. “We Russians, we are very sensitive to irony.”
“Oh yeah,” Hannibal said, his breathing getting deeper as they hiked into the gathering darkness. “Dostoyevsky and Chekov and all those guys were into it. But we’re not being chased by wolves we think are friends coming to save us.”
“No, but consider this,” Ivanovich said. “Jamal Krada murdered three people. “Two of his victims died slowly of gunshot wounds that would not have been fatal if they’d gotten immediate medical attention. And he didn’t hate these people; they were just in his way.”
“I see. He got his comeuppance in a similar way. I suppose that’s ironic. Or maybe it’s just fitting, in a karmic kind of way. Like my dad used to say, what goes around comes around.”
They lost the hollow sound of their feet on wooden planks as they moved onto a branch of the path that put them back on hardpacked earth. A bench invited them to stop and rest for a while. Hannibal declined.
“All right then, consider this,” Ivanovich said. “We have come to Roosevelt Island to find peace and avoid war.”
“Going to have to explain that one to me,” Hannibal said.
“You Americans are so ignorant of history,” Ivanovich said. Hannibal could hear a smile in his voice. He was enjoying this. “Just after the turn of the century, my country was at war with Japan,” Ivanovich went on. “Your President Roosevelt offered his good offices as mediator between Russia and Japan to negotiate the conditions of peace. With his help, they worked out a peace settlement in a couple of months.”
“OK, that is ironic,” Hannibal said. “Was it a fair settlement?”
“Well, I’m sure the Americans thought so. It led to a loss of face for us, and eventually to the downfall of the czar, but it saved many lives.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to negotiate a peace here, between us and the Red Mafiya, and maybe save a few lives?”
“With Roosevelt’s own island helping us, maybe.”
After covering about twenty minutes of trails, Hannibal came to a crossroads with a large tree at its center and walked into a heavy branch hanging over the road. He stopped and tucked his sunglasses into his jacket. A bench on the other side of the trail offered a comfortable resting place. He turned to face his followers. It was getting dark now, but he could still make out the maroon stain on Viktoriya’s dress below the sport coat she had wrapped around her. Behind her, Ivanovich didn’t seem to mind the chill at all. Unlike Hannibal, he was bred for this.
“This is a good place to leave the trail,” Hannibal said. “Then we just hunker down and wait for the police to search us out. This way.”
Again Hannibal led. He stepped down about a foot to the marshy land off the hard packed trail. Five steps off the path the ground became very wet. His feet sank ankle deep into the muck, but six steps later he came to a mound surrounding a tree trunk. The tree was nearly a foot thick, and he figured the mound was the top of its root ball and therefore was relatively solid. He turned to face the trail but could not see it. If he didn’t know what direction he had come in, he would never have found it. As he dropped to a seated position, he saw Ivanovich approaching, with Viktoriya in his arms.
“Her heels would have sunk into the marsh so deep she’d never have gotten free,” Ivanovich said. Hannibal decided to say nothing. Ivanovich lowered the girl onto the mound on the other side of the tree. After settling her in place he bent and kissed her very respectfully on the cheek. Then he walked around to Hannibal and held out his hand.
“What’s this?” Hannibal asked, looking up into the Russian’s ruddy face and making out a smile.
“Probably good-bye,” Ivanovich said. “I’m going to a better position to watch over you two. When the police arrive you will say, with complete honesty, that you do not know where I am. It is unlikely that we will meet again. So this is my chance to wish you well, and say that it was a pleasure to work with a man I could respect.”
Hannibal seized the offered hand in a fierce grip. “Likewise, brother. And if you ever want to find a better path, let me help you.”
“Thank you for the offer,” Ivanovich said, “but my path is set and I know what lies at its end.”
Then Aleksandr Ivanovich took two steps back and disappeared into the darkness.
Now that he was sitting still, Hannibal realized that it was getting cold. Not the cold of his youth, not Berlin-in-the-winter cold, but maybe approaching the freezing mark. It didn’t get a whole lot worse than that in what passed for winter in the District. He sat with his back against the tree and his hands on his upraised knees and wished his behind wasn’t wet from the marshy ground. But the slip of a girl behind him wasn’t whining, so he certainly wouldn’t either.
Besides, he knew it wouldn’t be long. He figured twenty minutes for Rissik to assemble a team and get on the road. Maybe a half hour to get to the island. They’d search with lights and loud hailers and that would be enough to discourage even rabid Russian mobsters. Viktoriya would support his story, as convoluted as it was. And whatever coroner had Krada would tie the bullet to a Russian mob gun. So he had a few minutes, and only a few more questions.
“Viktoriya,” he whispered.
“Yes?” There was a slight shiver in her voice. She was cold too.
“You attacked Krada for killing your parents, but you never mentioned your husband, Dani Gana.”
Silence.
“That same weird little gun Jamal killed your mother with was used to kill your husband. You knew Jamal shot Dani, didn’t you? You knew before I did.”
“Yes.” Viktoriya said. It was cold confession, but now that the door was open he could draw more out with less effort.
“How did you know?”
“Because Dani told me,” she said. “The doorbell rang and he answered it and when he opened the door, Jamal shot him. He told me when I found him in the living room. Before I called for help.”
“How did he even know where to find you?” Hannibal asked. He heard short rapid breaths, the kind that precede sobbing.
“It was my fault,” she said, almost too low to hear. “I always called Jamal when I was scared or in trouble. I didn’t know that he would…”
Hannibal fell silent as something tiny drifted past his nose. It was followed by a second speck, then a third, and then a steady falling flock of them. White flakes were landing on the back of his gloved hands and disappearing as soon as they touched him, only to be replaced by others.
“I don’t believe it. It’s snowing,” he said, although he knew it was unnecessary.
“Things happen,” Viktoriya said.
“Yeah, I know,” Hannibal replied. “It’s just that I prayed it wouldn’t rain tonight. Guess I should have been more specific.”
He heard her stifling a laugh and for some reason that made him angry. He let a few minutes pass while he watched the world grow a tiny bit brighter and examined his new information to see where it might lead. After a while he turned his head so that he could at least speak in her general direction.
“You loved Krada, didn’t you?”
A long sigh. “Yes.”
“So what was the plan, Viktoriya? You could have had his baby, but instead you went to another man. Didn’t you want to marry Krada?”
“I loved him, but I could not see myself living on a college professor’s salary.” Her voice was matter of fact, as if she was discussing stock options or the price of gasoline.
“Did you ever care for Aleksandr?”
She snorted in the darkness. “He was the solution to my problem, that’s all.”
“Your problem?” Hannibal asked. “You mean the money.”
“The mob paid him huge sums to do their dirty work. I planned to marry him. Then, after a couple of years I could divorce him, take half his money, and then live with Jamal in the manner I had become accustomed to.”
Sitting on the ground, the smell of decay in the swamp was harder to avoid. “Why didn’t you?”
“The fool was accused of killing my father,” she said after another snort. “Everybody thought it was him, hired by a rival. Dani and Uncle Boris made sure everyone thought it was him. And I couldn’t marry a man who killed my father, could I?”
“I see,” Hannibal said. “So you just had to change your target. Dani was plan B.” Hannibal thought he heard an animal approaching on the trail.
“Yes,” she said. “Plan B. Different man, but the intent was the same. Do you hate me now?”
“Hate you?” Hannibal asked. “I hardly know you. But I got to admit, I can admire your focus. You knew what you wanted and you went after it.”
“You mean Jamal.”
“I mean the life you wanted to lead,” Hannibal said. It sounded as if the animal on the trail was getting closer. “I’ll bet you understood what Dani was doing for Boris Tolstaya. Yeah, and you convinced him to steal that money. The whole idea of him going to Africa instead of you, then coming back under another name, that was all you, wasn’t it? All that so you and he could live happily ever after. Except you planned to dump him and make off with the cash, and your happily ever after was going to be with Krada. Too bad you didn’t share your plan with the professor, because he sure screwed things up for you. Now he’s probably dead. And Dani knew it would be easier if he and his fortune traveled separately, so now his mother’s got the money.”
If she had an answer for all that, Hannibal never found out. A flashlight beam lanced across the ground a dozen feet away, pulling an involuntary gasp from her throat instead. Hannibal sat very still. The police would be shouting for them. That meant that the wolves had arrived before the rescuers first after all.
“We know you are there,” a man called. The voice carried a strong Eastern European accent and seemed familiar. “This need not be messy. Show yourselves. We take your weapons, tie you, and leave you here to be found in the morning. We take the girl for questioning. Nobody dies.”
Hannibal wanted to respond to that disembodied voice, to say that he knew the kind of questioning his people did, that he could spend the night hidden in those woods without their help, and that anyone trying to take his gun would pay dearly. But he knew the wise course was to stay silent.
Snow was just beginning to stick to the frigid ground around him, and in the distance he thought he saw a ghostly form, or maybe two, on the trail. And then he heard the calm, assured voice of Aleksandr Ivanovich.
“You can leave now.”
His voice seemed to come from everywhere, and Hannibal could hear the smile behind the words. He was ready.
“You know better,” the other man said. Hannibal waved to Viktoriya to stay still. Then he slowly rolled forward to his knees and began inching toward the trail.
“Vladimir?” Ivanovich asked, his voice drifting through the trees like that of an angel.
“Yes, Aleksandr.”
“How many?” Ivanovich asked.
During a pause, Hannibal moved again. The damp ground sucked at his gloves as he crawled forward. He wondered if other men were moving just as carefully around in the muck near him, trying to get better position.
“Seven,” Vladimir said.
“You underestimate the black one,” Ivanovich said. “And you insult me.”
“Is the girl worth so much?” Vladimir asked. Hannibal could now just make out a form, standing near the crossroads. Both his hands were full of pistol. At least two stood behind the front form. Hannibal was not sure which form was talking. Nor could he figure out the source of Ivanovich’s voice when he answered the question with a question.
“Must we kill each other, old friend?”
Hannibal rolled to his right side. Now he lay only a few feet from the trail, looking up at the front figure in the darkness.
“I cannot simply walk away,” Vladimir said.
“I cannot simply surrender the woman,” Ivanovich replied.
“Well then,” Vladimir said. “Here we are.”
Hannibal heard a deep sadness in both voices. He had heard it before, sitting next to Yakov Sidorov in the Russia House. Grudging acceptance. This is the way things are. Ivanovich knew his path, and he knew what lay at its end. And now Hannibal knew too.
Silence fell with the snowflakes. For a few seconds the night held its breath. And then one cloud shouldered another aside and a moonbeam laid a soft glow on the forest. Tree branches like bent, gnarled fingers reached for the figures on the path.
A concussive burst of sound set off Hannibal’s startle reflex as a pair of flame jets burst from the tree at the crossroads. Two bodies sprang off the path and into the marsh as if yanked by wires.
Hannibal pressed his back against the ground as a roar of gunfire answered the first two shots. Five or maybe ten guns lit up the night as their bullets chewed the top half of the tree to kindling. Shell casings bounced along the ground all around him. In the muzzle flashes Hannibal could see no joy in those stern faces, no excitement. This was business. And this was survival.
The gunmen stopped and seemed to be appraising the damage to the tree they had assaulted. Hannibal drew his pistol and aimed at the nearest man, knowing that firing would make him a target. Before he could squeeze the trigger, Ivanovich leaped from behind the tree with both guns blazing. In that seemingly slow motion that Hannibal sometimes experienced at moments of extreme tension, he watched Ivanovich float in a horizontal arc across the path and down into the swamp on the other side. Two more men crumbled to the ground. Hannibal could not see the remaining shooters, but thought he could get close to their last positions based on the location of the muzzle flashes. If Ivanovich would stay down for a moment, they might get out of this whole.
But then, Ivanovich rose up out of the swamp and began walking slowly toward the path again. Someone fired at him from ten yards off to the right. He fired back. A man howled in pain.
“It didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to,” Ivanovich said. Hannibal wasn’t sure if Ivanovich was talking to his attackers or himself. He stepped up on the path and started walking in the direction the killers had come from. As his foot touched the first section of wooden boardwalk, another man fired at him from farther down the path. He raised his left hand slowly and fired back. Again he was rewarded with a shriek of pain.
“It didn’t turn out the way you wanted it, did it?” Ivanovich asked. More damned Nine Inch Nails lyrics even in the face of death. Then Hannibal noticed a movement ahead of him. Down off the path on his side, a man raised a gun to shoot Ivanovich in the back.
Like hell! Hannibal ran toward the man, firing at the vague shape in the darkness. His target turned in surprise, dived away from the path and fired at Hannibal. He also missed and suddenly they were too close for guns. Hannibal screamed out as his shoulder hit the man’s chest and they went down into the mud.
The other man was bigger, and skilled. He punched Hannibal hard enough to crack a rib. Then he managed to gain the top position, straddling Hannibal’s waist. Hannibal managed one solid right cross before his enemy locked fingers around his throat. The starless night sky was a solid deep purple shroud, threatening to cover Hannibal permanently. He heard his own breath rattling in his throat. His hands and feet scrambled for leverage, but the mud beneath him offered no purchase. He could feel the welts rising on either side of his larynx.
Rage shook him when he glanced at the impassive face of the man strangling him to death. Then his right hand hit something that was not mud. A root? No, a stone. It was small, but it made a sickening crunch when Hannibal swung it up and slapped it into his enemy’s temple. The fingers weakened and the man fell to the side.
As the stranger crumbled to the earth, Hannibal felt an unexpected joy. He struggled to his hands and knees, gasping to suck in as much of the frozen air as he could. Then he felt around until he found his pistol and clambered up on the path to follow in Ivanovich’s footsteps. Ahead of him, two shots came from the right, out in the swamp. Ivanovich jerked to the side, returned fire, and dropped to his knees. As Hannibal reached him, he could see the shooter off to the side, crouching in the mud behind a mound of earth. Hannibal dropped low beside Ivanovich, who wavered and tumbled to his side. Blood poured from his chest and neck.
“Hang on, man,” Hannibal whispered. “Help will be here soon.”
Ivanovich shook his head, and offered Hannibal a half smile. “Only one left. We saved her. Finish it for me.”
“Fuck that asshole, and the girl too,” Hannibal said, pressing a gloved hand against Ivanovich’s neck wound. “You need to focus on saving yourself.”
“No,” Ivanovich said, staring into Hannibal’s eyes in the darkness. “This time, you know the song. I’ve held it for my final words for years.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ivanovich swallowed hard, clenched his teeth as if accomplishing his next task was vital, and mumbled out, “I try to save myself but my self keeps slipping away.”
“Are you crazy?”
Ivanovich continued, as if it was a mantra to guide him into Valhalla. “Try to save myself but myself keeps slipping away. Try to save myself but myself keeps slipping…”
When life slips away, a human body feels different. Startled by the change, Hannibal dropped Ivanovich’s head to the path. These were not final words to be remembered by, so he mentally stepped over them to Ivanovich’s previous words. Finish it for me. He stood straight up and stared at the last man. He thought it was Vladimir, the man they met at Boris Uspensky’s office.
“Just you and me now.” He said it softly, but he was sure the other man heard him. “Soon, just me.”
He stepped over Aleksandr Ivanovich and off the boardwalk. His foot sank ankle deep in the soft earth but he kept going. Vladimir fired at him and Hannibal had no idea where the bullet went. The clouds jostled each other again and the moonlight vanished.
He could make out the other man’s form on the ground in front of him now. Vladimir fired again. Pain lanced through Hannibal’s right arm but the bullet didn’t throw him down. That meant it had not encountered bone, but just dug a divot of flesh out of the side of his arm. Too bad for Vladimir that Hannibal was lefthanded.
In the distance he heard a loud hailer asking for whoever was in the park to identify themselves. He kept going. Left foot, right foot, like he remembered his father saying when he was small. That’s how you get where you need to go. Left foot, right foot.
A dozen feet away, Vladimir raised his gun and Hannibal raised his as well. As Hannibal stepped closer, waiting to be in certain one-shot-kill range, the two men looked down their sight posts into each other’s eyes.
A light beam slid between them and Vladimir squeezed his trigger. Hannibal heard the hollow clack of a hammer falling on an empty chamber. It seemed that Vladimir had lost count. Vladimir turned on his back, watching Hannibal between his own feet. Hannibal continued on until he stood inches from Vladimir’s shoes. Now he could see that Vladimir was bleeding from his right side. His face was calm, placid, as Aleksandr’s had almost always been. Did this man understand that Hannibal had to finish his friend’s business?
“He was already mortally wounded you know,” Vladimir said. As if that made any difference.
“You don’t want to shoot me,” Vladimir said. “You are not like us. You are not a killer.”
Hannibal lowered his weapon, took a deep breath, and raised it again.
“You think you know what I am? I’ll tell you what I am.” Hannibal took another deep breath, and heard Ivanovich’s voice in his head. Or Trent Reznor’s.
“Broken. Bruised. Forgotten. Sore. Too fucked up to care anymore.”
Vladimir nodded slightly, indicating that he recognized the lyrics. Hannibal squeezed, but never felt the trigger let off. The slide rocked back and slammed forward, but Hannibal never heard the blast. Vladimir’s forehead offered no resistance to the jacketed hollowpoint on its way into the ground. Then Hannibal dropped to his knees. Some number of seconds later he heard a familiar woman’s voice scream. Then a cluster of light beams flashed around him, illuminating the entire swamp. There was a lot of conversation, but it all seemed muddled to him. A coat fell around his shoulders and he heard Orson Rissik’s voice.
“Hannibal. It’s Orson. I got here as fast as I could.”
“Seemed like all night. Is it midnight yet?”
“Midnight?” Rissik asked. “Son, it’s barely six. We had daylight until we arrived but finding you out here in the dark was a bitch. Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” Hannibal said as Rissik and another man laid him on a stretcher. “At least, better than anybody else out here except…did you find the girl?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. Not a scratch on her.”
“Yeah, that figures,” Hannibal said, rummaging through his jacket for his phone.
“Hey, we need to get somebody to look at that arm,” Rissik said. “Whoever you’re thinking of calling, it can wait.”
“No,” Hannibal said as they bounced him along the boardwalk toward the parking lot, “no, it can’t.”