The Last Secret, page 27
Savka jolted in her bed, her eyes burning, hardly able to lift her head from the pillow. It had to be late, yet Belyakov’s visit still reverberated in her bruised and frail body.
Marko placed your safety below that of his compatriots.
How much time had passed since her Russian handler had been chased out by the nurse, leaving Savka to cry soundlessly at all the ways her husband had betrayed her? And yet Marko had somehow got past the nursing station after visiting hours were long over. He closed the door quietly and stepped toward her bed. Had he just come from Natalka’s apartment, discovering her body on the floor? In the dim light from the recess behind her, Savka watched, terrified, as her husband circled the bed, his tormented, hateful eyes gleaming like a hawk tracking a mouse.
“Before I left, I had to see you for myself, see the traitor to Ukraine,” he said, in a level voice that she found more disquieting than his usual shout. “You deserve to be as dead as your useless womb for losing Taras.” Earlier, an orderly had wheeled in another patient, and Marko turned to look at her sleeping soundlessly in a bed by the window. He yanked the curtain around Savka’s bed, but it snagged on a broken track, and he lost his temper, jerking it into place. Her heart jumped in her throat as her husband loomed over her. “When Natalka arrived in Vancouver, she told me how you were turned, how Kuzak gave you the chance to kill the man who made you a Soviet spy.”
With trembling fingers, Savka drew the hospital blanket up over her chest, as if it might protect her from Marko’s wrath. The pain in her incision was unbearable. “Don’t you think my handler knew the underground would demand I kill him?” she cried weakly. “He’s responsible for Natalka’s death. Not me.” Her husband looked stunned. He doesn’t know, Savka thought, losing her nerve when Marko made a strange, low noise in his throat, as if he were choking off a scream. Had he loved the banderivka? “My handler’s man…killed her. I—”
“It was that Moskal’ who interrogated me in Rimini!” Marko raged. “He sent you to England, and he followed us to Canada.” His hand shot out and snatched her wrist, twisting mercilessly until she begged him to stop. “Your handler hoped to finally get his puny hands around my neck and find the list. But I’m standing here because he’ll never succeed.”
She let out a gasp when he finally released her, feeling the little strength she had left fading rapidly. Marko knew everything; it was time to make demands. “Do the right thing—give the list to me and save Taras.”
He looked away, unable to meet her eyes. “You think your Soviet will honor his part of the bargain?”
She drew down a deep, painful breath and marshaled her emotions. “You’re here only to punish me before you leave.”
“You’re surprised I should want to leave a wife who watched my every move for the chance to betray me?” His voice was sharp, almost shrill. “You think I should not leave that wife’s spawn—a Soviet man’s child? No, Savka. You left me the moment you agreed to become a Russian spy.”
“You think I could say no?” The pain medications were wearing off and she felt herself descend into a cold, white rage. “You sent me and Taras into danger.”
“A Ukrainian fights Russia or dies,” he exclaimed, then fell silent, watching her. She could not clearly see the look in his eyes, but imagined it narrow and unforgiving, as though he’d planned this moment.
“I took you back out of love,” he said, his voice hoarse. “But in England, when I found you searching my coat pockets, I should have known you’d been turned in Ukraine. That boy was my soul, and you lost him! The Soviets keep me alive until they find the list, which will never happen. I have been free to do my work for the underground.”
“You had an opportunity,” Savka said, possessed and insanely wretched with fury, “when you were in the Rimini camp, to take Belyakov’s offer and save me and Taras. But you chose to save your men.”
Marko practically convulsed with indignation. “Can you blame me?”
“You sacrificed me, Marko,” she said coldly, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You sacrificed your own son to the devil himself.”
“You wished me to save one boy for all those men?”
If she was not so feeble and in pain, she would shoot from the bed and take her husband by the throat. “Those men could defend themselves. Taras is an innocent. You sent him to hell.”
“Taras is dead!”
“I have photographs—Belyakov moved him out of danger—”
“And you trust your handler’s word?” Enraged, Marko swept the dinner tray off her rolling table, sending it clattering across the floor.
The door opened suddenly, revealing the form of a nurse whom Savka had not met, a taller nurse who stood like a statue, a white cap on her head and a pair of glasses glinting in the light from the hall. “How did you get past the nursing station?” she asked Marko in a British accent. “Crept up the back stairs, did you? Visiting hours are over.”
He rounded on her. “Why is my wife not in private room?”
The nurse glided in, ignoring the spilled tray, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor. She handed Savka a white medication cup and a glass of water, then turned on the bedside light, watching as her charge obediently swallowed the pills. Savka glanced at her nametag. “The ward is crowded; every private patient has to share,” Nurse Lewis responded without turning. “Except for Jeanie, of course.”
Marko stared defiantly at her. “What is special of this Jeanie?”
“You haven’t read about the Fire Bride?” The nurse said quietly, almost baiting him. “She’s famous, you know—burned forty percent of her body in an awful accident. And she’s on this very ward, in a special room with special care.”
Marko pointed at the other patient, lying so still, she could very well be dead. “This woman can go in special room, too.”
“Stop!” Savka cried, dismayed when the admonition came out much like a kitten’s mew. But Marko was glowering at the nurse and disregarded his wife.
Nurse Lewis turned slowly to face him “You were told earlier—you can’t come in after visiting hours, getting your wife riled up. She needs rest, not argument.”
“I was not here earlier.” Marko’s dark gaze shifted to Savka. His eyes clouded over as though he were possessed. “Get out,” he said to the nurse.
Nurse raised her hands. “You’re the one who has to leave.”
“Get out,” he repeated.
Her back stiffened, and she became very still, then she took her time rearranging Savka’s pillows and did not look Marko in the eye before leaving the room. Savka watched her go reluctantly. In the light cast by the lamp, her husband looked more dangerous than he ever had.
Marko glanced at the other patient, then eyed the pillows beneath Savka’s head, as if he contemplated removing one to hold over her face. “Poor Savka Kovacs—who would argue if she died suddenly, so soon after having her barren womb cut out of her?”
Fear thundered through Savka like an earthquake. If this had been a private room, Marko would have smothered her—a brutal farewell to the wife who had lost his son, spied on him, and betrayed his lover to the Soviets.
Marko turned to go, then stopped in his tracks. She followed his savage glare to her bedside table. He snatched up a newspaper Nurse O’Dwyer must have brought in earlier with the dinner tray. “What is a picture of Bandera doing on the front page?” He scanned the English words. “Stepan Bandera has been assassinated in Munich.” Marko’s face went deathly pale. With plaintive exclamation, he threw down the paper. “KGB murdered him. Next, they will come for Lebed, then for me.”
“Run away to New York—leave me,” she shouted as the door opened again and Nurse O’Dwyer charged into the room.
“What’s all this commotion?” She pointed at Marko. “You’re disturbing my patient.”
“I am going!” As he strode past the nurse, he clipped her with his broad shoulder, and she lost her balance. Marko was already gone, the door swinging closed, when she hit the floor with a sickening thud. Savka watched in horror as Nurse O’Dwyer leapt to her feet like a cat, dusted herself off, and with a cry of outrage, rushed from the room.
35
DANEK
Salt Spring Island
december 10, 1972
No boat motor can be heard in the distance, and Dan exhales with relief, thankful to be on dry land. Kay can’t bother them here. If Jeanie’s old nurse was confident she’d solved the mystery of Marko Kovacs’s disappearance, why did she climb into a leaky boat to follow them after drinking the better part of a bottle of wine? Something’s locked in Jeanie’s memory—something so damning that Kay and Pat will do anything to keep him from discovering it.
Jeanie is wringing sea water out of her long dress. She rubs her shoulder and looks up at him for a weighted moment. “A desert island and thou…” she says softly, her long hair lifting in the cool breeze.
He gazes into those spectacularly sorrowful eyes and his lips curve in a wry flash of a smile that makes him feel as though he’s arisen. But the smile fades quickly when Kay’s voice comes back to him.
…there was something strange that night Marko Kovacs disappeared. A girl not more than fourteen showed up. She just stood there outside Mrs. Kovacs’s door.
Dan sits upon a large piece of driftwood burnished almost white from years in the sun, and turns to study a low bank of limestone to their right, the circular, cave-like formations etched by ocean waves pounding it smooth with the surf of many storms. Zoya Kovacs was surely too young, too small to have killed her own father and disposed of the body. Kovacs was disappeared by the KGB. Still, he cannot dismiss Zoya Kovacs from his list of suspects.
He looks up at Jeanie, wishing he could tell her why he’s really here. “You remember Marko Kovacs came to your room. You must have seen an assassin follow him in.” He waits breathlessly for her answer. “You are key, Jeanie. You were there.”
Jeanie’s rapturous expression has vanished. “I obviously blocked it out.” Dan explains that Kovacs had fought with the Germans during the war, and the KGB could have finally caught up with the ex-SS officer and assassinated him, yet she doesn’t seem to hear him. “I can’t remember.”
“But your nurses do. They’re trying to make sure you don’t remember anything else.”
Jeanie is fanning the hem of her dress to dry it and he glimpses her delicate ankles, those fantastic scars snaking up her calf, which pull at him like a map to the constellations. “If he was killed in my room,” she says with a frown, “what happened to his body?”
He shakes his head. “The assassin overpowered him, dragged him down the stairs to an accomplice, who helped get him into a car. How do two nurses not see anything?”
“Maybe I saw Mr. Kovacs killed?’ Jeanie says, glancing at him with wide, startled eyes. “And Kay and Pat are making sure I don’t remember, to protect me. I didn’t have a chance to tell you, but Pat’s been lying about my commissions, she’s been giving me anti-psychotics and locking me in my room.”
At the sight of a tear rolling down her cheek, his heart lurches in his chest. They’re twin volcanoes the two of them. The containment of their grief like a lava flow that threatens to burn everyone around them alive.
“Pat has an agenda,” he says, “to make sure you do not remember.”
“An agenda?” Jeanie’s voice is barely more than a whisper, as though an unreasonable fear has seized her by the throat and won’t let go. “Pat’s not protecting me. She wants me to seem crazy to Dr. Reisman!” Jeanie paces the beach like a jungle cat. “Pat’s seeing him in Vancouver right now. If he believes her, he has the power to commit me. She wants Gladsheim.”
He’s sure that not just Pat is plotting to commit Jeanie. How far will Pat and Kay go to shut her up? Send her to a sanatorium? The thought of her in one of those places…He grits his teeth. “You are evidence,” he says. “Your nurses plan to be rid of you and hide it forever.”
Jeanie stops pacing. Shivering, she rubs her arms, her face pale. “But you said Mr. Kovacs was killed by an assassin.” Dan stands to float his leather jacket over her thin shoulders. “When Kay arrived, I was in Pat’s bedroom.” Jeanie gratefully clutches the coat around her, color rushing back into her face. “There was a gun in her bedside table.”
“A gun?” Dan takes her by the arms, surprised at the feel of her, the frail bones beneath his jacket and something else too, a heat he can’t ignore. He imagines taking her chin between his fingers, drawing close enough to smell her intimate perfume. She’s gazing up at him, tears not dry on her cheeks, her lips open slightly and enticing, inviting his kiss. He finds himself leaning until he feels the softness of her mouth against his, then he lifts his hands from her shoulders, shocked at himself. He cannot lose focus on the investigation, he must keep his mind sharp. “What did Kay do with this gun?” he manages.
Jeanie blinks rapidly. She’s just as surprised as he is. “I…she checked to see if it was loaded—which it was, but she just slung it back into Pat’s side table. You know, it was weird seeing someone’s initials engraved on that gun…” She trailed off. “What’s wrong?”
“What were these initials?” he asks, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
“I can’t remember.”
“I must see this gun, before Pat comes back,” he says, noticing that Jeanie is looking over his shoulder at the channel behind them, the water calm and flat and still.
“It’s too still,” she whispers. “Pat watches the tides when we go out on our sketching paddles but look—the levels are low right now. It’s slack tide, I’m sure of it.”
He studies the ocean, his senses on high alert. “What does this mean?”
“Why didn’t I pay attention to Pat’s annoying lectures about the pull of the moon on the waters?” Jeanie says, in a panic. “Those harangues about timing our sketching forays to avoid large tidal exchanges and powerful rapids. All these bays and small islands make such things complicated. The tide is about to change—”
He still doesn’t understand. “What is wrong?”
“The term ‘flood current’ is woefully inadequate to explain the force of the incoming tidal stream.” Shading her eyes, she studies the ocean, her lips moving, as though she’s praying silently that this flood current hasn’t happened yet. But even Dan can see there’s a slight disturbance in the water at the center of the channel. He can’t tell if it’s the wind.
“There,” he exclaims, pointing at what looks to him like low rapids.
“It’s the current. Rushing in like a tidal bore.” She looks up at him helplessly. “And we must cut directly across it to get back.” He follows her at a run toward the kayak. “It’s only going to get worse,” she says. When she hands him back his leather coat, their fingers touch briefly, and a jolt of anguished longing passes through him like an electrical charge. As Jeanie struggles with the paddle, her face colors. Did she feel it too? “When flood tide progresses,” she says, “all the water that left the channel at ebb tide flows right back in. Why didn’t I bring lifejackets? We’ll be hooped if we tip. Can you swim?”
Of course I can’t swim, he thinks as they splash their kayak into the water. The old rowboat suddenly appears off the point of the island, Kay plowing the oars with determination. He’d not thought he would feel trapped again, but here he is on a wide ocean, heart pounding, and fearful of what this woman might do.
Kay hefts one oar when she sees them, almost losing the other. “Pat called,” she yells. “She’s coming back tomorrow morning.”
He and Jeanie slip into the kayak. Digging deep, they’re soon away from the island and passing Kay’s boat. She half stands, as if they will somehow ask her to come aboard.
“Get back to shore,” Jeanie shouts to her. “The tide’s coming in.”
Then they hit the full force of the current. Dan dips his paddle low and applies his weight to the shaft as though the hounds of hell are after them. And maybe they are. He can hear Jeanie frantically work the rudder, but the current violently shoves the front of the kayak sideways and waves splash over the deck, almost swamping them. Coughing sea water, he glances back at Kay, sitting quietly now in the motorboat, oars cocked, and a chill comes over him. The watcher, watching. Jeanie shouts as the boat tilts and pitches. He pictures them flailing in the frigid ocean. Would Kay help them? No, she’d watch them drown and sink below the waves, a smile on her face. Dan throws himself to the right and slices the paddle left. Finally, the bow of the kayak points into the waves instead of across them. Scooping the paddle’s blade, he feels the boat right itself and shoot past the current and into calmer water.
His hands tremble at the close call. When they beach the kayak fifteen minutes later, exhausted, Dan can see Kay struggling about five hundred meters offshore. Is it his imagination that the hull of her boat seems lower in the water?
“I may have to call the Coast Guard,” Jeanie says, biting her nails.
“She will make it. Her kind always do.” The persistence of the truly evil still astounds him. He looks up at the house, then back out to the bay, where Kay is rowing with effort, her back to them, pulling hard, even as the boat fills with water.
Dan draws a deep, shuddering breath. They won’t have time to search Pat’s room. He turns to Jeanie. “Do you have pills to make you sleep?”
“Pat’s still toying with the dosage,” Jeanie says, as if wondering why he’s suddenly interested in her medications.
“Slip one in Kay’s wine. Then we go to find this gun.”
“I could never drug Kay!”
They watch her row closer, and Dan catches a glimpse of Kay’s expression when she turns her head to gauge her progress between strokes. She looks at him directly, as if she knows that he also has history, and perhaps some unfinished business with Marko Kovacs.
