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.