It got dark south of Tezonco. It was a Thursday night, everyone had gone up to the city for some action. New York would be the same tonight, she thought. The Thursday parties getting ready for the weekend. No one gave a damn if they stumbled around in a daze on Friday, because the week was over and they had Saturday and Sunday to sleep in. But it depressed the hell out of her, the meaningless rat race. Monday came along and she hardly wanted to open the club. Sometimes just for the hell of it she didn’t because on most Mondays there weren’t enough customers to pay for the staff let alone the building mortgage or any kind of a profit. They all lived for the weekends, Evita most of all. Or maybe an occasional couple of days down in Atlantic City. Once, she’d even thought about going down to Florida in mid-February. But something had come up. Something always comes up, doesn’t it, she thought. And it was a sweltering July before she realized that she had missed her chance. She was babbling to herself now, but she couldn’t help it. She always got this way when she was frightened. The mountains shimmered in the distance. Along some stretches of highway they seemed so close she felt she could reach out of the car window and touch them. As she drove she was alternately freezing cold and boiling hot. Partly from fear, partly preliminary withdrawal symptoms from her cocaine habit. Just a little longer she told herself between bouts. She could hold on because she knew that she must.
Ixtayopan was all but deserted when she drove down the main street and then turned southwest up into the mountains, the air decidedly chillier here than it had been down in the valleys. The car’s exhaust rumbled and crackled off the mountainsides as the narrow macadam road switched back and forth, rising higher and higher toward the peak of Cerro Tuehtli. She crossed the bridge and suddenly she could see the house above. There were not so many lights as before when she was here with McGarvey and a party had been in progress, but someone was in residence up there. She had been up this road hundreds of times. Yet she didn’t feel as if she were coming home, or even returning to a place that once had been her home. This time she felt like a complete stranger. An intruder, in fact, come with intent to do harm. The law was on his side.
She had trouble downshifting and ground the gears badly coming through the trees. She headed up the steep driveway to the plateau on which the house and grounds had been constructed. All of a sudden, coming over the crest of the driveway into the front courtyard, it struck her what she had done and why she had come here tonight. The car bucked and stalled out, rolling to a stop in the middle of the parking area twenty yards from the house, the headlights shining on the front veranda. Very little had changed in twenty-five years. The rambling one-story ranch-style house still seemed new and modern and prosperous. The living room windows were dark, but the east wing where Darby’s study had been located and where the master suite looked back toward Mexico City, was lit up. There were no cars parked in the driveway. The garages were around back. He was probably in the city at the embassy. Tonight had been a fool’s errand. Her hands shook very badly as she opened her purse and pulled out the automatic. She toyed with the safety catch, switching it down and then up and then down again. She couldn’t remember about it and she could feel panic rising in her chest. He would have a staff out here. Perhaps even bodyguards. He was an important man. They would probably shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe she didn’t care. She opened the door and got out of the car, standing for a moment on wobbly legs before she started up to the house, the pistol in her right hand hanging at her side.
“Trust in me,” he had told her. “I have enough strength for you as well as for Darby.” His words seemed to hang in the crisp mountain air. “Someone is coming,” he’d told her in New York. “I need your help. It’s time now to repay old debts.” She’d laughed then and she laughed now, because if there had been any debt owed it was his debt to her for everything he and Darby had done to her. Yet she had done exactly what he had asked of her. She’d told McGarvey everything. She’d even slept with him. And now she felt truly dirty for the first time in her life. It was even worse for her now than it had been in the old days.
The sliding glass doors to the living room were open. Baranov stepped out of the darkness onto the veranda. Evita stopped short. He had changed and yet he hadn’t. He was short and stocky, his thick neck was like a bull’s, his features were dark and broad and very Russian. But even from a distance of twenty feet, she could feel heat radiating from him as if he were a furnace. She could feel his power, his self-assurance, and even a bit of his humor from where she stood. He wore khaki trousers and an open-necked shirt. A bit of gold chain around his neck was illuminated in the already fading glow of the Volkswagen’s headlights. She felt a silly urge to run back to the car and switch off the lights before the battery was fully dead. It would be hard starting the engine when it was time to return to town.
“You are a wonderful girl,” Baranov said softly. “I thank you for your help. You did good.”
Just let go, she thought, and there was a certain comfort in the notion. Give in. Don’t fight him, because winning is impossible. She closed her eyes, and she could see a kaleidoscopic image of her entire life; Valentin, Darby and Juanita. All ruined. All gone. All harshly used.
“McGarvey knows about Darby,” she said, opening her eyes again. “And about you. Everything.”
“I know,” he said.
“That doesn’t matter to you?”
“On the contrary, it matters very much to me, Evita. In this you must believe me. Before this night is over, we will have triumphed, you and I.” He smiled. She could clearly see his perfectly white teeth. He beckoned to her. “Come. We’ll wait together.”
“They’re going to arrest Darby,” she said.
“I know.”
“They know that he’s working with someone inside the CIA.”
“Worked,” Baranov corrected her.
Evita felt light headed. “What?”
“Darby hasn’t been active for years and years, my dear. Didn’t you know? Hadn’t you guessed?”
“Then why …?”
“It wasn’t him I was after. It was someone else.”
“There were people killed.”
“Not Darby’s doing, believe me.”
She shook her head.
He smiled sympathetically. “I’d sincerely hoped you would show up here tonight, you know. You can wait here. In the morning I’ll drive you down to the airport. I don’t think Mexico would be such a good place for you just now.”
“You bastard,” she said. She raised the gun and switched the safety catch down and fired, the pistol jumping in her hand. Baranov didn’t move a muscle. She fired again, breaking something inside the living room. She started forward, firing a third time and a fourth, still Baranov didn’t move, his eyes locked into hers, a slight smile creasing his features. She fired a fifth and sixth time, her elbow aching from the recoil, her ears ringing from the noise. He was invincible, invulnerable; nothing could hurt him. He was God, he was untouchable. She had known that from the very first day she had laid eyes on him, and here, now, the wild thought ran through her mind, was the living proof. He was not an ordinary mortal man. He could not be killed with bullets. He would live forever.
She held the pistol in both hands and sighted on the middle of his chest. She stood flat-footed about fifteen feet down from the veranda. He held up a hand, like a benediction.
“It’s enough, Evita,” he said sadly.
She squeezed slowly on the trigger, like McGarvey had told her to do, tears slipping down her cheeks, a great big hollow feeling inside of her. Her life had come down to this one act: either she would kill him and continue to live, or she could not and she would have to die.