She nodded. He helped her back to the bed. She sat down, then lay down. Her energy was already gone.
He sat in the chair by the bed for the remaining minutes of his visit. She felt weak but inside she started to feel good. He looked at a small object in a dish by the bedside.
He reached to it. “May I?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He picked up the remains of the stone pendant that had saved her life. It was in three pieces. The center of it had been smashed into dust by the ricocheting bullet so that, if the pieces were pushed back together, one could see, right where the engraved cross came together, a deep gouge. Aside from that, the three pieces fit together perfectly, as if designed by a master carver.
“What’s this?” he asked.
She smiled.
“Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you,” she said.
He put the pendant back into the dish and then back onto the table. The pieces fit themselves back together. She admired the small cross that Paulina had carved in the stone, thousands of miles away-the small carving that had saved her life.
Distantly, she thought of Paulina.
“It’s a deal,” Ben said. “I’ll come back tomorrow. And you can tell me.”
A few minutes after Ben left, Alex’s strength again ebbed. She settled again into a comfortable sleep.
EIGHTY-SEVEN
The following morning, for the first time since her arrival at the hospital, Alex felt good enough to sit up and read. Her physician passed by at about 8:00 a.m. There were newspapers in French and a few books at her bedside. Ben’s bouquet sat at her bedside, and now a second one did too, from her former coworkers at Treasury in Washington. Word either traveled fast or not at all these days.
She reached for the papers and began to glance through them. A nurse came by shortly after ten.
“Il y a encore un visiteur,” the nurse announced. Another visitor.
“C’est qui?
” Alex asked.
“Un médecin étranger, je crois,” the nurse answered. A foreign doctor.
Alex shrugged. “Bien. Pourquoi pas?” she said. Well, why not? The more medical advice, the better. Or, she wondered, was the opposite true? Well, she would listen.
She set aside her newspapers and leaned back in her bed. She drew a deep breath as the nurse left the room.
She reached to the side table and pulled out a hand mirror. She glanced into it. To her mind, she looked tired. But, she now realized, she would survive.
Ben’s visit the previous day and the gifts he had brought from America had done more to rally her spirits than she could have imagined. For the first time since arriving there, she began to entertain a restless spirit. How long would she be in the hospital? How long before she could be discharged and go home? How long before she could resume a normal life?
She brushed at her hair with her fingers, instinctively sprucing up for her visitor, even if it was a doctor. Plus, Ben would come by later. The pain in her chest had subsided. Maybe, she wondered, if Ben were staying a few days, he could help her pack her things and return to Washington.
The door opened and a man in a white lab coat entered, his physician’s ID clipped to his lapel. Alex saw him first out of the corner of her eye.
The visitor was tall, strikingly tall, maybe six foot three. He was sturdy with a slight beard, about a week’s worth, and wore a tie. He almost looked like an old priest and he had a faint smell of cigarettes about him. And what type of doctor smells of cigarettes?
She put down the mirror, looked at him, and smiled.
He spoke softly in Russian. “Zdrastvuyeeti. Dobraye utro.” Hello. Good morning.
“Dobraye utro,” she answered instinctively. Good morning in return.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better today, doctor,” she began. “I-”
She looked into his eyes. With a surge of horror, she pegged the face.
“That’s very good, hey,” he said. “Glad to hear it.”
She sputtered in Russian. “What are you doing here? How did you-?”
She reached for the alarm button to call the nurse. “Please don’t make a sound,” Yuri Federov said. He reached under his lab coat and pulled a gun from his hip. She eyed it. It was a small compact piece, snub nosed and sleek. Chinese.
Fear shot through her. Her hand froze.
“Your security people need to do a better job,” he continued. “Both the Americans and the French. I showed the French police a fraudulent physician’s ID badge,” he said, motioning to the one he wore. “And I walked right past them. And your American guards are down at the nurse’s station, flirting with the pretty French girls, trying to get home phone numbers. What kind of security is that?”
“So you’re here to kill me?” she asked.
“It’s not that simple,” he said.
“No? Then why is your hand still on your gun?”
“Because it’s not that simple.”
He went back to the door and locked it. Then he walked slowly to the window and peered out, downward to the courtyard, as if he were looking for someone or trying to determine if he had been followed.
“Your two bodyguards are dead,” she said. “Anatoli and Kaspar. I’m sure you know that.”
“At the time of their deaths,” Federov said, “they no longer worked for me. They betrayed me.”
“Could have fooled me,” she said.
He scoffed, turning back to her. “I wouldn’t have given the order to kill you, hey? You should know that,” he said. “My competitors in the underworld purchased the loyalty of those around me,” he said. “Anatoli and Kaspar were hired away by those who wanted me out of a position of influence. I was not upset with their deaths.”
“Americans?”
“Maybe. Who knows?”
He turned back from the window.
“Who attacked me in Venezuela?” she asked.
“My competitors,” he said. “To keep the heat on me. So that your government would continue to hunt me, as they do to this day. They don’t know where I am. They don’t know what I do. They are endlessly stupid. It will take them five years to figure out I’ve withdrawn from my businesses.”
“No, they already know that,” she said.
“They tell you that,” Federov said, “but they think otherwise.”
She pondered it. “Why should I believe you?”
“I don’t know. Why should you? Maybe because I’m here. Maybe because I saved your life at least once.”
“What about the attack in Kiev?” she asked. “The attack on the president.”
“I told you at the time. Not my people. Filorusski, but not my people.”
“But you knew?”
“Everyone knew. Even your president knew. But your leader was a camera-whore who persisted with the visit.” He paused. “Don’t you realize that you were part of a conspiracy to get me killed?” he asked. He coughed. “That’s where the conspiracy began. You were to be next to me. If they knew where you were, they had a sniper ready to get me. So I moved. Can you blame me? They wouldn’t have cared much if they had killed you too!”
“Prove it,” she said.
“Why should I? You already know I’m telling you the truth.”
“You sure you’re not crazy?”
“I’m not crazy like that! I’m Russian. Now I’ll prove both. Insanity, plus a flair for the grand dramatic gesture.”
He raised the gun with startling speed and spun it in his right hand. He removed the loaded clip, checked it, and slammed it back into the magazine again.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said.
He reversed his grip on the pistol and held it by the barrel. Then he handed it to her.
“Take it,” he said. “With guards like yours, you’ll need it.”
“What?”
“Take it! This is your opportunity,” he said. She reached out and took the pistol from him. She aimed it at the midpoint of his chest.