Igor had finished his story by demanding that his brother be avenged. But Yvgeny had waved him to silence before pressing the buzzer on the intercom and asking one of the men outside the door to enter. He turned to Igor and told him that he was sending him to a safe house. "You're not to leave until I give you permission," he said. "If you do, I cannot protect you anymore."
Igor started to protest that he needed to seek out the killers of his brother, and if he had to, he'd go by himself. But again, Yvgeny interrupted. "All in time, nephew," he said. "In the meantime, you'll do nothing that might make the authorities look into our activities here, do I make myself clear?"
The young man had stopped complaining and nodded his head. He wiped at his eyes and nose with his hand.
"Leave us," Yvgeny said, his voice softening. He pointed to the bodyguard. "Stefan will take you somewhere for a nice dinner. Then to your new apartment, where you should mourn your brother and get some rest if you can. We'll talk later of these other things."
When Igor and the bodyguard had left, Yvgeny had settled back in his chair when his father cleared his throat and brought him out of his contemplation. "So what do you think?" Yvgeny asked.
"I think he should go to the authorities and tell them what he knows about these men who did that terrible thing to that woman," Vladimir said.
Yvgeny frowned. "We don't need the attention if they ask him questions and he makes a mistake," he replied. "Besides, you heard what happened after he wrote to the authorities. They betrayed him and it nearly got him killed…as it did his brother."
Vladimir sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if seeking inspiration. "We have family who might help…," he started to say but was interrupted by a snort from his son.
"And why should he?" Yvgeny asked. "He is family in blood only. You haven't seen him in years, and he and I have never met. Not to mention our 'occupations' are not exactly compatible."
Yvgeny shook his head. "I cannot allow it. I am sorry for what happened to this woman, but it was a long time ago and I have responsibilities to our people that I cannot jeopardize. You taught me that."
The old man held up his hand. "It is your decision," he said. "I asked you to sit in that chair, and these decisions are yours to make. But you asked me my opinion, and I gave it to you."
Yvgeny smiled. "Actually, I was asking you what should be done with these blacks who killed Ivan."
Using a cane, Vladimir stood up with a grunt. He fixed his son with the family look and said, "You know what needs to be done. You don't need the advice of an old man anymore." He shouted for his bodyguard, who appeared in an instant, and then left without another word.
Yvgeny sat back in his chair and picked up a remote control and pointed it at the video player for the security camera that monitored the restaurant. He backed the video up to the point before Igor had rushed into the restaurant until he could see the two women who'd been sitting at the table near the door. He'd been surprised that he knew both of them but more surprised that they'd shown up together and wondered what that might mean.
7
Sunday, December 12
Lucy knew she was dreaming by the way she seemed to be floating above the cave floor, following along behind like a tethered helium balloon as four men and a young boy ran for their lives below. Yet, she could smell the dank rot of the air in the narrow space and felt its cloying chill in her bones. She heard the crunching of feet running on gravel and the panicked gasps. Gunfire echoed behind her…and something else…a scurrying sound from side passages they ran past. As if large rats ran there in the dark, just out of sight.
The light was dim, and she could not see the boy clearly, but she could the men. She noted the fear in their eyes whenever they turned to look at whatever pursued them.
The men were dressed in insulated mustard-brown jumpsuits of the sort road crews wear in the winter, but these were no laborers. Their faces were swarthy, bearded-Middle Eastern, she thought-and they carried AK-47 rifles. She sensed that they were not good men, but those who delighted in bloodshed and murder.
Terrorists. The word flashed in her dreaming mind like a cheap motel Vacancy sign.
Yet Lucy almost felt sorry for them as they stumbled ahead, crying out to each other in Arabic, one of nearly sixty languages she understood. "Hurry, he's coming," shouted the leader, a pockmarked man who pulled the boy along by his arm. The others picked up speed as they frantically muttered prayers, beseeching Allah to save them.
Then she sensed that whatever it was the men feared…He…was right behind her. There was a fury in the air, as palpable as her heartbeat, which drummed even louder in her ears as He passed beneath her. She felt that she should be afraid, but while a coldness enveloped her, there was no fear. Then He was ahead of her-a hooded shadow in the darkness that caught up to the slowest of the men. A large knife flashed, and then a headless body stumbled forward two more steps before collapsing into a pool of fetid water.
Horrified, she wanted to reach out and touch the darkness and ask Him to stop. But she knew she was powerless to halt the relentless, deadly pursuit. She could only follow and witness the carnage.
He overtook the second man. The man cried out, "Shaitan." Satan, her mind translated. The darkness obscured her vision for a moment; then a round object flew through the air in slow motion-a bearded head, the mouth still gaping in a soundless plea-and landed with a splash.
Lucy tried desperately to wake, but the dream pulled her along. The third man stumbled and fell against the cave wall near one of the side openings. He shrieked as thin white hands, white as bone, reached out of the opening and grabbed at him like vines. "Help me, the rajim have me."
Rajim, the outcasts, she thought. The cursed ones. Then he was pulled into the fissure, his screams mixing with strange, excited whispering voices, then dying off completely.
The last man and the boy ran on, then stopped. Beyond them stood another dark figure of a man, and behind him were hundreds of barrels arranged neatly and in their center was a scaffolding on top of which was a…a menace; the dream was unclear about its nature but when she saw it she shuddered in her sleep.
The pockmarked man turned back to face his pursuer. "Stay where you are, Iblis," he shouted.
Iblis? Lucy wondered in her dream. Satan's Islamic name from before his fall from grace.
The muscles of the man's pitted face twitched with fear, his eyes as wide and luminous as twin full moons, almost insane with hatred and terror. He pulled the boy's head back, exposing his neck with one hand, and with the other pulled a long knife from his belt.
Lucy gasped. Only now did she recognize the boy, her brother Isaac. "Zak," she tried to scream. But he could not see or hear her.
The presence below her-Him-stepped slowly toward the man and the boy. Somewhere a dog-or a wolf, she thought with a shiver-howled. He threw back his hood and she recognized the thin, haunted face. "David," she whimpered in her sleep.
Then the pockmarked man shouted, "Allah Akbar" and placed the knife at her brother's throat. "Allah Akbar," Zak said and began to howl.
Lucy woke trembling, her body covered in sweat. "David," she whispered in the dark. As if in answer, there was a sudden howling that made her heart jump like a panicked rabbit's. "Allah Akbar," she prayed in Arabic. "God is great."
It took her a moment to realize that she was lying on a bed at the Sagebrush Inn on the outskirts of Taos, New Mexico, and that the person sleeping next to her was her boyfriend, Ned Blanchet. The howling was provided by a choir of coyotes out in the desert singing in the moonlight, which streamed in through the window. She looked at the clock on the nightstand. Dawn in an hour, she thought. Recalling the dream, she shuddered, but then chided herself for being a baby, afraid of nightmares. The He in her dreams, the man with the gaunt face and burning eyes, David Grale, was dead. He wasn't chasing terrorists through a cave, slashing their throats in an apocalyptic fury.