Charity would never forget the sight till the end of her days. She’d pulled back the living room curtains and turned on the porch light before setting herself to reassuring Uncle Franklin.
He was aging so fast. His skin hung from his jaws with the weight he’d lost in the week since she’d last seen him and he was paper white. The bone structure beneath was easily visible. Any more weight loss and his head would resemble a skull. He ran a bony hand over his face and she could hear the rasp of his white beard stubble. “What’s taking him so long?”
Charity took his hand and winced at the tremor. “It’s only been about ten minutes since he’s gone out, Uncle Franklin, even though it feels like more,” she said gently. “Don’t worry. Nick will find her.”
At one level, the words were empty reassurance, but Charity was astounded to find that she meant it. How was that? How on earth could she be sure Nick knew what he was doing? She couldn’t. And yet every instinct she had told her that she could trust him to find her aunt.
He was a businessman who led a soft life, making money in the city. There was nothing about him that suggested he’d grown up on a farm or hunted in some way. Most hunters, in her experience, tended toward the tedious about their guns. Nick had never once mentioned hunting or safaris or anything of the sort. What could an investment broker possibly know about tracking someone in the snow?
And yet, when he’d told her to stay put, she’d instinctively obeyed, instantly, though it went against common sense. She knew her aunt and the area around the big house, and he didn’t. If she didn’t have a bone-deep sense that if anyone could find Aunt Vera, it was him, she would never have stayed behind.
It had been an instant, a flash of something like steel. She’d met his serious, beautiful eyes, sensed the power he was keeping leashed while trying to convince her to stay put. And the moment she’d let him go out alone it was as if something had lit up inside him, as if she’d freed him somehow. Like a wild animal let out of a cage to do what it did best—hunt.
It was crazy, but it was true. There had been a blast of—something. Something almost frightening. Something potent. Primordial and utterly male. As if Nick had been infused with an otherworldly power and was only now letting it show.
She shook her head. Wow. Massive amounts of sex and lack of sleep were driving her crazy.
Still, she did what he said. A big pot of water was on the stove, almost at boiling point. Two mugs of tea with three teaspoons of sugar apiece were in the microwave, waiting to be nuked. A pile of blankets, a clean nightgown, and several towels were on a kitchen chair.
“Sit down, Uncle Franklin,” Charity said gently. She guided her uncle to a chair, putting her hands lightly on his shoulders. He sat abruptly, as if she’d pushed. Or as if his legs wouldn’t carry him any more.
Head bowed, he covered his eyes with his hand, weary and despairing. His voice was a whisper. “Look out the window, honey, and tell me if you see anything.”
More to humor him than anything else, Charity walked to the kitchen window. All the outside lights were on, including the spotlight under the huge oak in the back garden. The snowstorm had left almost a foot of snow on the lawn. It had spent itself in the last hour and was now slowly abating. A few minutes ago she could barely see the oak she’d spent her childhood climbing. Now the stark, bare, black branches stood out in the field of white.
“Well? Can you see something?”
Charity turned to her uncle, pained at the dejection in his voice. Be cheery, she told herself. The last thing he needed was to hear her own desperation.
“No,” she said, injecting false confidence in her voice. “But I’m sure—”
She broke off, peering out the window. Could it be—oh God, yes!
The lawn sloped sharply down on this side of the house, so she saw his head first as he approached.
It was a sight she’d never forget, till the end of her days.
A coatless Nick, walking up the slope, with Aunt Vera wrapped up in his coat and clasped in his arms. The snow and dim light blurred perspective, so it looked like he was rising up from the bowels of the earth instead of walking up toward her. The snow was halfway up his shins but he moved forward easily—a warrior coming home from battle, carrying a wounded comrade in his arms.
Wounded, please God. Not dead.
Nick shifted Aunt Vera in his arms and Charity clearly saw her aunt tighten her arms around his neck.
She was alive!
Charity’s breath left her lungs in a whoosh and her legs trembled. She shot out a hand and gripped the counter, otherwise she’d have simply tumbled to the floor. For the first time, she admitted to herself how terrified she’d been that they would find a corpse in the snow. Her eyes burned and she blinked to keep the tears at bay.
“There they are—” The words came out a dry croak, inaudible. She cleared her throat and coughed to try to ease the tightness and speak, but then it wasn’t necessary. A sharp intake of breath behind her told her Uncle Franklin could see them outside the kitchen window.
Charity lost the battle with her tears and could feel the wet cold on her cheeks as she threw open the door, just as Nick reached the steps up to the porch.
In a second they were inside and Nick was barking orders.
“Get those wet things off her and wrap her in as many blankets as you can. Charity, bring that pan of water over to the table with a big towel.”
Charity and Uncle Franklin scrambled to strip her aunt. Somehow, Nick was there, helping, while making sure he couldn’t see Aunt Vera’s naked body.
It was at that moment that Charity fell in love with him. As charmed as she’d been by him up to now, she’d managed to keep a little something of herself apart.
It was so over the top, having an outrageously handsome, incredibly rich man sweep her off her feet, and ply her with out-of-this-world sex. Deep in her heart, Charity knew that Nick was too good to be true.
What could she possibly hope for? He was passing through Parker’s Ridge on business, his mind probably already on the next thing. Charity would be insane to think that their time together was anything more than a brief affair.
She’d had quite enough pain for one lifetime, thank you. Losing her parents at the age of twelve. Almost a year in the hospital with a broken body and all of her teens spent doing rehabilitative physical therapy so she could walk again. Oh yeah, she’d had quite enough pain. She hadn’t suffered in love, because she hadn’t given herself in any significant way.
Sex hadn’t meant all that much up until now. Pleasant, comforting at times, a little boring at times. She’d always gotten out of bed the same person who’d tumbled in.
Sex with Nick was an order of magnitude stronger than anything she’d ever had. Mind blowing, frighteningly intense. She’d had to work to keep herself together, to keep the whole thing as casual as possible. Physically exciting, yes, but that was it.
And now, watching her lover walk into the kitchen with Aunt Vera in his arms, helping to disrobe her gently and discreetly, Charity felt a huge hole open up inside and all the little defenses she’d put up simply crack wide open.
Inside a couple of minutes, her aunt was cocooned in a thick bundle of blankets, drinking hot tea while Nick held a finger to the pulse of her other hand.
He met Charity’s eyes. “Pulse is almost normal. Temperature is a little low, though. We need to raise her core temperature.”
“How?” What more could they possibly do?
Nick put the big pot of boiling water on the table and took a towel in his hand. Gently, he positioned Aunt Vera so that she was breathing in the steam, then put the towel over her head like a cowl, directing the steam toward her. “Breathe deeply, ma’am.”
To Charity’s relief, her aunt did just that. By some miracle, the clouds in Aunt Vera’s head parted and some meaning shone through. It was erratic. You never knew when she’d understand you and if she did understand, whether she’d respond.
But perhaps something in Nick’s tone penetrated what was dulling her mind because the deep breaths she was taking were audible under the towel.
“That’s right, ma’am,” Nick said reassuringly. “Just keep breathing.”
In all of this, Uncle Franklin sat, spent and passive, head bowed. Exhausted and frail.
“Why does she need this?” Charity asked.
“Core rewarming by inhalation. Sends heat directly to the head, neck, and chest area, which is the body’s critical core. It warms the lungs and the hypothalamus, which regulates the body’s temperature. She’ll need to do this for at least ten minutes.”
Nick sat back down next to her aunt and kept a finger on her pulse. Charity walked to her uncle and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The bones beneath her hand felt fragile, like bird bones. She leaned down to whisper to him. “She’ll be all right, Uncle Franklin.”
He looked up and forced a smile. It occurred to Charity that now she had Uncle Franklin to worry about, not just Aunt Vera. He’d been such a rock for her, all her life, especially after her parents’ death. He wasn’t a rock now. Now he was a tired, anxious old man who was barely keeping it together.
Okay. Time for her to step up to bat. She shifted mental furniture and included caring almost full-time for elderly relatives into the parameters of her life.
It was daunting. She was only twenty-eight and had hardly begun to live. She hadn’t traveled at all as much as she’d like to and now knew that she never would, as long as Aunt Vera and Uncle Franklin were alive.
If her love life had been difficult before, now it would be impossible, since her priorities would be wrapped up in care-giving. What man would put up with that? Once Nick left, she could kiss even a semblance of a love life good-bye.
She nearly sighed at the thought.
When she looked up, Nick caught her eye and winked.
Then again, for now she did have Nick. He’d leave, but he wasn’t leaving right this minute, and so there might be a little more of that spectacular sex in her immediate future. Oh yeah.
Twenty kilometers south of Budva
Coastline of Montenegro
5 a.m. November 21
She was a rusty freighter flying the flag of the Union of Comoros, stinking of rotting fish and cabbage. The North Star was just one of the hundreds of thousands of vessels making a marginal living by trawling in overfished waters, destined to be decommissioned by her owners as soon as she cost more to run than she earned by her catch.
No one paid any attention to her at all, in a world of huge, sleek container vessels making 20 knots an hour.
She lay quietly at anchor in a deserted cove, rocking gently on the calm Adriatic. It was the darkest moment of night, just before dawn began. American satellites had excellent tracking abilities but night maneuvers eluded them. So the transfer from the truck to the boat was made in the dark. The crew seemed to have a supernatural ability to see in the dark, for they didn’t need flashlights as they went their quiet, efficient way. There was a half moon and that seemed to be enough.
After twenty-four hours in the back of the truck over pitted back roads, Arkady was stiff and a little disoriented. He tripped twice, once emerging from the back of the truck and once on the gangway up onto the ship.
He felt a thousand years old, particularly in front of the crew, who were all young and strong. The four crewmen who preceded him made their way back onto the ship like agile monkeys.
Below, on the rocky shore, hired hands manipulated the canisters from the truck, ready for boarding on the rusty fishing boat.
No one would look twice at the North Star, which was a good thing. Because beneath the rotting boards of the deck lay a gleaming, stainless-steel heart driven by a Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine and a new retrofitted hold designed for the transport of humans.
The human cargo wasn’t meant to be transported in comfort but in safety, to be delivered alive at the port of destination. They were goods, after all, and worth money at the end of the journey. So there were toilets and spigots to hose them down at the end, before delivery.
The hold was designed to carry 150 passengers. Its last cargo had been 200 Senegalese who’d boarded north of Kayar and been locked in for two weeks. The man responsible for stocking food had run off with the money and the men had been on starvation rations for the trip. Two had boarded with tuberculosis. Only eighty survived.
The Vor’s stipulations had been clear. The hold had been completely cleaned and disinfected. Arkady could smell disinfectant over the smells of the food on a small table.
A simple meal. Local sausage, goat’s cheese, bread with a bottle of Vranac wine and rakija, the Montenegrin brandy. The Vor had thought of everything.
A space built to hold 150 people was more than roomy enough for one lone nuclear scientist.
Two seamen silently brought in the canister and started fixing it to special brackets in the wall. They spoke quietly to each other as they worked. Arkady recognized a few words from the many operas he’d listened to.
They were speaking Italian, though not the Italian of Verdi. It was a rough dialect of Italian, probably Pugliese, the language of the Sacra Corona Unita, the local mafia of the area right across the straits, Apulia.
The Vor had been making strategic alliances all over the world. Indeed, right now, he probably had diplomatic relations with every criminal group on earth—like a potentate—which was what he was—with embassies spanning the globe. Vassily was the new Tamburlaine. On his way to becoming the most powerful man on earth. It was Arkady’s duty and pleasure to help the Vor to this position.
The two seamen departed and Arkady went back above deck. He walked to the railing and stood for a moment. The familiar scent of pine overrode the unfamiliar scent of the sea. He’d only seen the sea once before in his life, on a family trip to Crimea. That was before his father was taken away and destroyed in a Siberian camp. They never found out which one. Arkady had no idea where his father’s remains lay.
Arkady was second-generation zek. There were some families who had lost a member every generation since the Revolution.
He pulled in a deep breath, savoring the night air, before closing himself again down below. He knew the trip would take around a week and this would be his last chance to see the stars and smell the sweetness of fresh air for a while.
He pulled out the blue cell phone, punched a number in, and waited. There was a delay as he imagined the signal bouncing off a satellite and down to a small town in Vermont.
“Hello.” Arkady’s heart leaped at the sound of Vassily’s voice. It was as strong as ever, even though it was three o’clock in the morning, Vor time. His master was well, but not sleeping.
No zek ever slept easy. The memories came with sleep.
Though no one was listening, Arkady curled around the cell and lowered his voice. “It’s me. So far so good. Things are going well. The sea is calm.”
“Good. Very good.” And Vassily cut the connection.
Arkady smiled and leaned over the railing. The moon left a bright path to the horizon. Just a few short miles away was Italy. He’d never been to Italy but he loved art and music and had always dreamed of seeing Florence and Venice.
There were still 100 canisters of cesium 137 left back in Krasnoyarsk and Vassily had plans for every single one. For a total of a billion dollars. But after they were all gone, Arkady would ask the Vor’s permission to spend time in Italy. Perhaps be the Vor’s ambassador to the various mafias in the country.
He looked down. The Adriatic was completely calm. He dangled his hand over the railing and let go of the cell phone. A second later it disappeared into the sea with a soft plop.
Arkady watched the rings of disturbed water flow outward and then waited until the water was calm again.
With one last look at the starry night sky, he made his way below deck, ready for the long journey.