Текст книги "The Swan and the Jackal"
Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Izabel
Fredrik’s front door is unlocked when I arrive with the cleaners. I got a call from Fredrik two hours ago.
He wasn’t himself:
“Fredrik, what’s going on?” I asked, surprised to hear from him again so soon.
Silence ensued.
“Fredrik?”
“I need you to come here,” he said in such a quiet, distant voice that I wondered if he was calling me in his sleep.
“Is everything OK?” I said into the phone.
“What’s going on?” Victor asked, rolling over in our bed and draping his arm over my waist.
I pulled my lips away from the phone and turned to Victor. “I don’t know—something’s wrong,” I said quietly and I couldn’t hide the worry and grief in my voice even if I’d tried. “I need to go see him.”
I turned back to the call while Victor was switching on the bedside light.
“Fredrik,” I said with urgency, “I need you to tell me what’s going on. I’ll come there right away, but I just need to know what to prepare for. If anything.”
I felt the bed move as Victor stood up and walked butt naked across the room to our bathroom.
Still not hearing Fredrik’s voice on the other end, I sat all the way up in bed and draped my bare legs over the side of the mattress.
“I killed her,” Fredrik said and my heart stopped—out of shock, but mostly it stopped for Fredrik.
I gasped and shot up from the bed.
Victor was looking right at me as he came back out of the bathroom.
“Tell him you’ll be there soon,” he said with a nod.
I thanked Victor with my eyes and said into the phone, “Fredrik, I’ll be there soon. Just stay where you are. Don’t leave, OK? Promise me you won’t leave.”
Nothing.
“Fredrik?”
My eyes never left Victor’s then and I knew they must’ve been full of worry and fear. Fear only for Fredrik.
The phone went dead.
For a long time I just held it against my ear, thinking maybe he was just being really quiet. Finally, Victor took it from my hand and it pulled me out of my worried and paranoid thoughts—would Fredrik hurt himself? Was he capable of doing something stupid? The thoughts put my nerves on edge.
“Get dressed and go see him,” Victor said softly. “I’ll make a call and have a car meet you there.”
I nodded short and rapidly and then scrambled to get my clothes on. And before I left, Victor came up to me, kissed me on the lips and said, “And when you get back, I think it’s time you tell me about Seraphina Bragado being in his basement.”
He knew all along.
I stood there frozen before him, worried about what he was thinking of me, of Fredrik—of me and Fredrik. I was scared. I don’t know why, but I was scared. Maybe because I knew that I could never, no matter how hard I tried, ever hide anything from him.
Victor kissed me on the mouth and brushed my hair away from my face with the side of his hand.
“I understand,” he said. “Now go help him and keep me updated.”
I nodded.
And then I left.
Entering Fredrik’s front door quietly, I peer in around the frame before I step all the way inside. The house is nearly pitch dark, only the faint blue hue of the moonlight beaming through few windows. It’s quiet. So quiet. Not even the dripping of a faucet or the humming of the refrigerator or the central heat can be heard. But I hear my heartbeat, pumping blood anxiously through my heart.
Two of Victor’s men start to enter the house behind me.
“Wait,” I say, putting up my hand. “Stay on the porch until I tell you to come in.”
Stopped in the doorway, they nod and step back outside, leaving the door open partway.
Walking carefully through the house, I stop in my tracks at the entrance to the den. Fredrik sits on the center cushion of the sofa with his long legs bent and his arms resting against his thighs, his hands dangling between them. His back is hunched over, his shoulders stiff.
He’s staring at the floor in front of him. I glance over to see that the coffee table has been shoved off to the side, sitting crookedly against a leather chair.
“Fredrik, I’m here,” I call out to him softly.
I approach him with caution—my heart tells me that he needs me, but also that’s he’s not in his right mind and he could be dangerous.
He won’t speak.
I step a little closer. My heart is breaking for him.
“I’m here—”
“I need her out of the house,” Fredrik says without looking up at me or moving a muscle in his body other than his mouth. “And the body in the basement.”
I want to ask who ‘the body in the basement’ belongs to, but it’s not the right time for that.
I nod even though he doesn’t see me and call out to the cleaners—men designated to clean up our crime scenes—on the porch, “Come inside! And be quick about it!” Once they’re standing at the den entrance I add, “There are two bodies. One in the basement, the other I don’t know, but just find them and get them out of here.”
They nod and walk away quickly to follow my orders.
I turn back to Fredrik, stepping up closer, the light sound of my boots tapping against the hardwood floor.
Finally, I step all the way up to the sofa, remove my long white coat and set it on the cushion next to me as I sit down. Fredrik still won’t look at me. He won’t speak. He won’t move. And I don’t know what to say because there really is nothing that I can say to make him better.
We sit quietly for several long minutes while the cleaners move through other parts of the house. Thankfully, they know better than to carry the bodies back through the den and I hear them going outside from a back door, instead.
I look over Fredrik, as still as a statue, and I feel like I’ve lost my best friend, that his mind is gone because his heart is gone, and it’s devastating to me.
Will he ever be the same?
Something tells me the answer is no.
A sort of darkness has consumed him entirely, inside and out, something so awful and merciless and unforgiving that it impregnates me with sorrow, and I feel hopeless all over again like I felt when I was imprisoned by Javier back in Mexico. I want to reach out and lay my hand upon his arm, but I’m too afraid.
Why the fuck am I afraid?
I do it anyway, relieved that Fredrik doesn’t move his arm or refuse me. But he’s not necessarily accepting of it, either, I know.
I wonder if he even notices.
“I would’ve done it for you,” I say carefully. “It didn’t have to be you, Fredrik.”
He says nothing.
“You did what had to be done,” I say even more carefully this time because I feel I’m walking a dangerous line with these kinds of words. “You gave that girl peace. I believe that.” I pause and then add, “If it had been me, it’s what I would’ve wanted.”
“I know I gave her peace,” he finally says, but still doesn’t move.
Trying to comfort him, I brush my hand across his arm once before resting it in the bend, my fingers tucked into the inner part opposite side of his elbow.
“I’ll stay here with you,” I say gently, “if you need me to stay. I can sleep here on the sofa.”
“No.” He shakes his head subtly and finally moves his arm so that my hand will fall away from it. “I’ll be fine. I just needed someone else to remove the bodies.”
“I understand,” I relent, though I know that Fredrik is anything but fine.
“Maybe you should go—”
His head jerks around to the side and finally he looks right at me; the tortured look in his eyes puts me on edge. “I said no.”
I nod.
But after a few seconds, I push away the part of me that wants to give in to what he says and I say what I really feel:
“I know you loved her. Both sides of her—I know. And I know that you feel like you’ll never be able to live with yourself for how it all ended, or that you’ll always be alone because you think there is no one else out there like her. I know.”
I stop, expecting him to have already cut in and told me to shut up and leave, but still, he offers no words of his own and I don’t know how to feel about that. Relieved that he’s listening to me? Concerned that he isn’t? Worried about what’s going on inside his head that’s so all-consuming that I have to be surprised he hasn’t spoken against me either way?
When still he shows no signs of rebuttal, I go on:
“This may sound insane—actually, I know it’s going to sound insane—but I felt that way when I killed Javier.”
Nothing but silence.
“After being with Javier for so long, it didn’t matter that he raped me or kept me prisoner, because he was all I knew. I brainwashed myself into believing that only he would ever love me, that only Javier would ever want anything to do with me. And when I killed him, I felt like I killed the other half of me. If it wasn’t for Victor—”
“One day, Victor Faust will be the death of you, Izabel,” he cuts in and I’m stunned by his words. He looks over, locking his eyes on mine. “If you want to help me, you can by keeping that in the back of your mind. One way or another, you’re going to die because of him, because you love him.”
I want to argue, to fight back and tell him that he’s wrong, but I know he’s hurting and I can’t make this about me. I won’t.
He looks away.
“Tell Victor that I’ll accept any sentence he feels fits my offensives.”
“Fredrik—”
“Please just go,” he says looking down at the floor. “I give you my word—I’ll be fine. I don’t want you worrying about me, least of all.”
“But—”
“Please, Izabel!” he snaps.
I stand up and look at him for a moment before taking my coat up from the cushion.
I don’t even bother putting it on as I begin to walk away.
Stopping at the den entrance with my back to him, I say evenly, “I’m going to help you. Just like I did with Kelly Bennings. For as long as it takes.”
Once again, he says nothing, and with a heavy heart I leave the house and step out onto the porch just as the cleaners are making yet another trip outside from the backyard. But all three of us stop mid-stride down the sidewalk when a vociferous crash, like glass breaking, fills the night air coming from inside Fredrik’s house. And then more glass. And the sound of furniture crashing against the walls.
I feel the cleaners’ eyes on me, but I can’t tear mine away from the house where Fredrik is feeling the worst pain he’s ever felt, just on the other side of those walls.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fredrik
Every last bit of furniture, I destroy, flinging chairs and shattering tables against the walls as if rejecting its right to exist if Cassia can’t exist. If Seraphina can’t exist. Anything that gets in my way, I move it with violent, resentful force.
I scream at the top of my lungs before grabbing the last standing chair and hurling it through the den and into the television screen. The glass shatters and what’s left of the frame falls over onto the floor sending pieces of glass scattered across the hardwood.
I follow suit, unable to maintain my footing, and fall against the floor on my bottom in the center of the room, surrounded by destruction—destruction of objects, but also the destruction of what was left of a man. Sitting helplessly with my legs bent at the knees, I do the only thing fate will allow me to do in this moment—I cry into the palms of my hands, letting the pain do with me whatever it wants. The same way I did when I was just a boy, after I had been beaten and raped and broken. Only this time, the pain I feel inside is a hundred times more unbearable.
Blackness. All I see is blackness though my eyes are wide open as I look downward at the floor. And in that fucking blackness I can still see her face. Her light brown eyes and plump lips. Her soft, creamy skin and near perfect complexion. Long blonde hair. Short black hair. And I know that she will haunt my soul for the rest of my days, however many of them there are left to suffer.
And I know I deserve it.
Without another thought, I jump up from the floor and rush into the kitchen, flinging open the cabinet underneath the sink. On my hands and knees, I shove the top half of my body through the opening, furiously swiping away bottles of cleaner and other various supplies. When I don’t find what I’m looking for, I jump to my feet again and do the same to all the cabinets, tossing out boxes of food onto the kitchen floor. Finally, in the cabinet above the microwave I find a bottle of lighter fluid and I storm toward the hallway with it clutched in my hand, but tripping over debris on my way and falling. My back hits the wall as my hands hit the floor to brace for the impact, but as soon as I’m in control of my body again, I pick the bottle of lighter fluid up from beside me and hurl myself down the hallway. Swinging open the basement door, I fly down the steps taking them three at a time and almost falling again, but I make it to the bottom of the stairs unscathed.
I spray the lighter fluid everywhere, starting with Cassia’s bed and when the bottle is empty I toss it on the floor and just stare at it without moving until my legs become numb beneath me. I look at the chain stretched across the floor and then at the corner of the room where I often found Cassia sitting when I came home.
Sobs roll through my body and I’m unable to stop them.
Tearing my eyes away from all that is left of her, I look around the room for anything I can use to set the fluid aflame, and when I find nothing I’m up the stairs and back down here again so fast it feels like I never moved from this spot.
Cassia’s thin white nightgown lays in a small silky pile next to my feet. I reach down and take it into my fingers, wanting to put it to my face and breathe in her scent one last time. But I don’t. I set it aflame with the lighter in the other hand and then toss the quickly burning fabric on the fluid-soaked bed. The room is engulfed in seconds.
And I realize as I stand here watching the flames lick the walls, that I’ve come full-circle and there is no going back.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fredrik
Two months later…
Victor Faust owns a fancy new building just outside of Boston and he’s quite proud of it, though one wouldn’t know by his expressionless face—oh wait, he just smiled. I walk alongside him toward his private office, impressed with the building so far with all of its Old World charm, original stone walls and newly-furnished marble floors and stunning artwork in large intricate frames. It’s certainly fitting of a man like Faust, and I have to say, as much as I love the rich, modern style, I could get used to this. But it’s a special building for all of us in Victor’s new Order, because it’s the first place we’ve been able to meet and conduct business that feels more like a business than a hideout in a back alley somewhere.
We’re out in the open—somewhat—hiding in plain sight.
The word is that Vonnegut is threatened by Victor—by all of us. And while although we still have to watch our backs every minute of every day, we’re gaining the upper hand.
Sometimes I think the only reason Victor ever chose to hide in the first place had everything to do with Izabel. He would do anything to keep her safe—of course, he can’t tell her that.
We step into the private office with scaling walls lined by bookshelves packed with leather bound books from floor to nearly the ceiling. A large elongated table sits as the centerpiece of the vast room, occupied by eight high-back dark leather chairs on each side and one at each end. Attending this meeting today other than Victor and myself are the usual: Izabel, Niklas, Dorian and even James Woodard who Victor has decided to keep with us as his official information go-to guy. Woodard has grown on me, I admit. Dorian, not quite so much.
“Well, look who it is,” Dorian says from his seat with a grin, “the guy bringin’ crazy back.”
Dorian was finally reassigned to a new member of our Order that I think might despise him more than even I did—a highly-skilled spy named Evelyn Stiles who used to work for the CIA. But she hasn’t been fully tested here yet and has no business at this meeting. James Woodard got in faster than the usual, but I trust Victor’s judgment.
I take a seat next to Izabel. She smiles over at me, but doesn’t say anything. The two of us haven’t spoken much since the night I killed my wife two months ago in Baltimore. But the distance I put between us has been all my doing. I can’t have her involved in my life the way she wants to be—or the way she used to be. I’m not the man I was when Izabel—as Sarai—and I first met. And as long as I’m in control of my life, that’s the way it will stay. I don’t want to love anyone—in any manner or situation—because to love is to be controlled. I will always care for Izabel and look after her and I will kill for her, but I can’t let myself love her, not even as my sister, or my friend. I don’t want Izabel, of all people, to end up like everyone else I’ve ever loved.
Despite the distance I keep, she still has it in her head that she’s going to help me with ‘personal’ interrogations and tortures the way that Seraphina did.
But she is very wrong.
I have other plans for that.
Woodard smiles above that double-chin of his and pushes a newspaper across the table toward me with his pudgy hand.
“You might like this news, sir,” he says—always respectful, always terrified of me.
I glance at Victor once just as he’s taking his seat at the head of the table, and then look down into the newspaper which has been folded over to the second page. It takes me a moment to realize it’s a paper from Seattle.
Scanning over the text and images, my eyes fall on two small photos in one corner set side by side of Kelly Bennings and Ross Emerson in convict-style mug shots. As I read, the paper reveals how after a ‘traumatizing and brutal kidnapping and interrogation by two unknown men’ that the couple are ‘facing years in prison after incriminating video evidence had been dropped off at the Seattle police department, which included their confessions and their crimes in full detail’.
I lean back against my chair, cross one leg over the other and say indifferently, “They’re getting what they deserve.”
I don’t look at the newspaper again. And I don’t think about it again.
“The reason I brought you all here today,” Victor speaks up with one hand atop the other on the table, “is that I have significant news.”
He has the room’s full attention.
“Seems that Vonnegut has united with Sébastien Fournier’s order in France and they’re working together for one reason.” He raises only his index finger from the top of his other hand. “I trust you all know very well what that reason is.”
“Because they’re fucking scared,” Niklas chimes in, sitting to Victor’s left; an unlit cigarette dangles from his lips.
Dorian shakes his blond head, smiling. “I say we just get it over with and take them all out.”
“Can’t kill someone you can’t find,” Izabel reminds him.
Vonnegut and Fournier have both proven elusive since Victor Faust went rogue from The Order.
“That’s not entirely true,” I speak up. “We’ve been taking them out slowly but surely by killing those loyal to them and taking control of those who aren’t.”
“Yes, Mr. Gustavsson has a point,” James Woodard says and smiles across the table at me with a little too much admiration for my tastes.
I ignore him.
“Yes, but that’s not even the most significant news I have for you,” Victor says and all heads turn simultaneously back in his direction.
Victor pauses and steeples his hands in front of him.
“I have reason to believe—and for now I will not reveal my sources—that the U.S. Intelligence somehow knows about our operations. Not only are we being hunted by The Order, but we might also be hunted by the FBI and the CIA.”
“What do you mean ‘might’?” Izabel asks from Victor’s right, her eyes filled with concern. “And what exactly do they know?”
Everyone, including me, want the same answers, so no one interrupts.
“What they know is also something I’m going to keep to myself for now,” Victor says evenly, looking at no one in particular. “It doesn’t surprise me that they know some things—operations like ours which continue to grow cannot be entirely inconspicuous—quite impossible, actually. But I will say that they know enough to lead me to believe that there might a mole our midst.”
I look at Woodard. Woodard looks at me until he realizes why I’m looking at him and he shrinks his back against his chair and opts for looking at the table instead. Izabel looks at Niklas. Niklas looks at Dorian and then looks right back at Izabel with the same accusing eyes she’s casting his way. Dorian looks at me. There sure is a lot of suspicion at this table.
We all look at Victor, though only with question on our faces.
“Someone at this table is a traitor?” Izabel asks.
“Well, it sure as fuck isn’t me,” Dorian says.
Woodard puts up his inflated hands. “I-It ain’t me neither.”
Niklas pulls the cigarette from his lips and slouches in his chair, draping one arm over the back casually and coolly. “Yeah, well other than my brother,” he says with pride and confidence, “I’m the last person at this table who’d involve this shit government in anything.” I picture Niklas spitting on the floor to show how deeply his aversion for the U.S. government and intelligence goes, but he doesn’t.
“You’re my first pick,” Izabel accuses, her pretty features twisting into a smirk.
Niklas flips her off.
“Oh, how mature can you get?” Izabel scoffs.
Victor inhales a noticeable breath and all eyes fall on him again.
“I never said the mole—if in fact there is one—was at this table. And truly, it could very well be that Vonnegut, as a last ditch attempt to get rid of us, is the one who provided the CIA and the FBI with the information. I have my suspicions, but the dilemma is that if they do know how and where to find us, why haven’t they made a move?”
“That’s a good question,” I say and then add, “If they know, how long do you think they’ve known?”
“I’m not sure,” Victor admits. “But I want all of you to be on the lookout for anything suspicious—of course, not that you don’t already do that.”
Dorian and Niklas both laugh.
“That’s daily life for me,” Dorian says.
Niklas nods, agreeing.
Victor changes the subject—a little too soon, in my opinion—and says, “Next order of business is a fifty thousand dollar hit in Miami. I’m assigning this one to Evan Betts”—he looks to his left—“and Niklas.”
Niklas doesn’t look pleased.
“You’re putting me with a newbie?” In fact, he looks outright offended.
Izabel, on the other hand, is all smiles.
“Betts may be new,” Victor says, “but he’s good. I want to see more of his work and I’ll only pair up newcomers with someone from this table that I feel I can trust.”
Niklas appears more accepting now, but Isabel’s smile turns into a sneer.
The meeting goes on for another twenty minutes and as it’s coming to a close, everyone leaves but myself and Victor, who requested that I stay.
I’ve been out of commission—by Victor’s orders—since what happened two months ago. I had expected more of a sentence than the ‘time off for personal issues’ that I feel I was given, but Victor didn’t see my keeping Cassia a secret from him, a betrayal. It only further proves that Faust is not a tyrant leader, but a man with a conscience—though he sure goes out of his way to hide that fact.
But my time off alone to deal with what’s left of my life didn’t have the sort of effect that anyone at the ‘round table’ might’ve expected. I didn’t grieve or come to terms or have any epiphanies. I didn’t remove any heavy burdens from my shoulders, or bathe in the sun, or reflect on my life and force myself to be positive and move forward.
No, I didn’t do any of that.
Instead, I stood in front of a mirror.
Naked. Still bloody after torturing and killing a man who led a notorious gang in Detroit. I stood in front of that mirror as the shower water got hot and I saw the shell of my former self looking back at me with new insides. New darkness. New demons. New memories. New everything. And yes, I did move forward, but not in the direction of the light.
That finite glimpse of light I experienced with Cassia was an illusion.
“I have to be honest with you,” Victor says standing behind me. “I’m not convinced you’re…yourself.”
I nod subtly, standing with my hands clasped together behind me.
“And you would be right,” I admit.
Victor walks slowly around the table away from his chair, also with his hands clasped behind his back just as mine are.
“If you were anyone else,” he goes on, “I wouldn’t risk it, but all I’m asking of you is to back away from our operations at the first sign you feel that something you might do could compromise us. Can I trust you to do that?”
I nod again. “You have my word.”
Victor glances at the wall and then looks back at me as if he had used that brief moment to decide what to say next.
“I have every bit of trust in you, Fredrik, but I would be fooling myself to believe that you’re not walking the thin line between sanity and self-destruction. I’ve seen that look before—in fact, I saw it in the mirror once.”
How ironic—the things we see in those malicious, mocking pieces of glass.
“I would ask how you, of all people, ever walked that line,” I say, “but I know you won’t tell me.”
Victor smiles faintly.
“And you would be right,” he says in the same even tone as I had said it to him moments ago.
“Despite my acceptance of all this,” Victor says dropping his smile, “I do have to make something very clear.”
I say nothing and just listen. This is the part where Victor hangs up his suit of understanding and steps into his threatening one.
“Izabel”—I knew he would begin his sentence with—“has it in her head that she’s going to—“he motions a hand, twirling three of his fingers as if allowing the right term to materialize on his tongue—“aide you in finding people to torture, but you and I both know that’s unacceptable. Correct?”
“Yes, you are correct,” I say with a nod. “I don’t need her help, nor do I want it. I did it on my own before, and I can do it again. If she tries to help me, I’ll tell her that you’ll be the first to know about it.”
“I appreciate that.”
I pause, wanting to ask a personal question, but not sure if I should probe.
I decide to, anyway.
“Does it bother you,” I say, “that she and I were so close?”
“No,” Victor answers truthfully. “Not in the way that you might be thinking. I trust Izabel alone with you—with any man—if that’s what you’re referring to.”
“In a way it was, yes,” I say. “But really I meant it in every way. She kept things from you in order to help me.”
“You are her family,” he states. “She’s never really had one. I’m glad that you’re there for her. You can give her things that I may never be able to give.”
I shake my head once, rejecting his words with all due respect.
“Not anymore.”
He doesn’t look surprised.
“You do know that it’ll crush her if you push her away.”
I nod.
“Better to push her away now than to be the reason she ends up dead later.” Part of that was also meant for Victor to heed, but I may never know if he understood the hidden message.
Victor leaves it at that and gestures his hand toward the tall, heavy wooden door behind me.
“It’s good to have you back,” he says.
“Thank you.”
Izabel stops me in the hallway lined by off-white walls and shiny floors. Victor walks in the opposite direction, leaving us to be alone.
She waits until he rounds the corner at the end of the hall before she turns to me and says, “I know he probably threatened you because of me, but look, Fredrik—”
“He didn’t have to threaten,” I stop her. “I told him that if you ever try to help me that I’ll tell him about it right away. And I mean that.” I hold my unwavering gaze on her.
“But you’re…Fredrik, I’m afraid for you. I just want to help.”
“And you can by staying out of my way and out of my business.”
A flash of hurt and conflict passes over her face.
“Why are you doing this?”
I start to walk down the hall, stepping around her.
“Fredrik. Stop. Please.”
Finally I do, but only to let her get it all out, to say whatever’s on her mind now because it’ll be the only chance I ever give her.
I stand still with my back to her.
“I’m not going to let you destroy yourself,” she says with buried anger and not-so-buried determination. “I don’t give a shit what kind of face you want to wear—tell me to fuck off, I don’t care—but I won’t let you fall away. From us. From me. From yourself.”
I turn around to face her with my hands folded together down in front of me, my wrists touching the fabric of my fine black suit.
“You’re a little late for that, I’m afraid,” I say, turn around and walk away; the sound of my dress shoes tapping against the floor left in my wake.
