He turned off the compact and stretched out again, pillowing his head on his arms. To him, Krimakov was like the bogeyman, a monster trotted out to scare children. To Adam, the man had never had any substance, even though he’d seen classified material about him, been briefed about his kills. But hell, that was over twenty-five years ago. Nothing, not even a whiff of the man since then.
Twenty-five years since Thomas Matlock had accidentally killed his wife. So long ago and in a place that was no longer even part of the Soviet Union—Belarus, the smallest of the Slavic republics, independent since 1991.
He knew the story because once, just once, Thomas Matlock had gotten drunk—it was his anniversary—and told him about how he’d been playing cat and mouse back in the seventies with a Russian agent, Vasili Krimakov, and in the midst of a firefight that never should have happened, he’d accidentally shot Krimakov’s wife. They’d been on the top of Dzerzhinskaya Mountain, not much of a mountain at all, but the highest peak Belarus had to offer. And she’d died and Krimakov had sworn he would kill him, kill his wife, kill anyone he loved, and he’d cursed him to hell and beyond. And Thomas Matlock knew he meant it.
The next morning, Thomas Matlock had simply looked at Adam and said, “Only two other people in the world know the whole of it, and one of them is my wife.” If there was more to the tale, Thomas Matlock hadn’t told him.
Adam had always wondered who the other person was who knew the whole story, but he hadn’t asked. He wondered now what Thomas Matlock was doing at this precise moment, if he, like Adam, was lying awake, wondering what the hell was going on.
Chevy Chase, Maryland
It was raining deep in the night, a slow, warm rain that would soak into the ground and be good for all the summer flowers. There was no moon to speak of to shine in through the window of the dimly lit study. Thomas Matlock was hunched over his computer, aware of the soft sounds of the rain but not really hearing it. He had just gotten an e-mail from a former double agent, now living in Istanbul, telling him that he’d just picked it up from a Greek smuggler that Vasili Krimakov had died in an auto accident near Agios Nikolaos, a small fishing village on the northeast coast of Crete.
Krimakov had lived all this time in Crete? Since Thomas had found out about his daughter’s stalker, after the man had murdered that old bag lady, he’d put everyone on finding Krimakov. Scour the damned world for him, Thomas had said. He’s got to be somewhere. Hell, he’s probably right here.
Now after all this time, all these bloody years, he’d finally found him? Only he was dead. It was hard to accept. His implacable enemy, finally dead. Gone, only it was too late, because Allison was dead, too. Far too late.
Was it really an accident?
Thomas knew that Krimakov had to have enemies. He’d had years to make them, just as Thomas had. He’d gotten messages from Krimakov back in the early years, telling him he would never forget, never. Telling him he would find his damned wife and daughter—yes, he knew all about them and he would find them, no matter how well Thomas had hidden them. And then it would be judgment day.
Thomas had been terrified. And he’d done something unconscionable. He escorted a very pretty young woman, one of the assistants in his office, to an Italian embassy function, then to a Smithsonian exhibit. The third time he was with her, he was simply walking her to her car from the office because the skies had suddenly opened up and rain was pouring down and he had a big umbrella.
A man had jumped out of an alley and shot her between the eyes, not more than six feet away. Thomas hadn’t caught him. He knew it was Krimakov even before he’d received that letter written in Vasili’s stark, elegant hand: “Your mistress is dead. Enjoy yourself. When I discover your wife and child, they will be next.”
That had been seventeen years before.
Thomas had considered seeing Allison that weekend. He had canceled, and she’d known why, of course. He sat back in his chair, pillowing his head on his arms. He read the e-mail from Adam. Consider Krimakov.
But Krimakov was finally dead. The irony of it didn’t escape him. Krimakov was gone, out of his life, forever. It was all over. He could have finally been with Allison. But it was too late, just too late. But now someone was terrorizing Becca. He just didn’t understand what was going on. He wished he could learn about Dick McCallum, but as of yet, no one had seen anything out of the ordinary. No big deposits, no new accounts, no big expenditures on his credit cards, no strangers reported near him, nothing suspicious or unexpected in his apartment. Simply nothing.
Thomas remembered telling Adam how there were only two other people—besides Adam—who knew the real story. His wife and Buck Savich, both dead now. Buck had died of a heart attack some six years before. But there was Buck’s son, and he was very much alive, and Thomas realized now that he needed him, needed him very much.