The Last Secret, page 35
I spin to face her. “Go where?”
“Do you want him to tell the police? Jeanie, you’d be sent to prison for life.”
Pat frowns briefly, seemingly unaware of Kay’s plans. “What are we going to do with him?”
“That ampule held a dose meant for Jeanie,” Kay says, her voice sharp, “not someone fifty pounds heavier. He won’t be out for long. Grab him.”
Taras groans as Pat takes his shoulders, and Kay his feet. When they hoist him, I notice his eyes flicker slightly and feel a rush of hope. “Where are you taking him?”
“Down to the ocean,” Kay orders. “He’s going for a little swim.”
“No,” I scream.
“We’ve protected you all these years,” Pat shouts back. “We protected you from life in prison. Are we going to stop now?”
Crab-walking across the drive, Pat and Kay swing Taras around to the path that leads down to the beach, me stumbling desperately behind them. Kay walks backward, Taras’s booted feet in her hands. Wind sweeps in from the sea, wrecking Pat’s salon coiffure. I choose the moment to lunge at her, grabbing a good amount of her hair in my fist. “Let him go!” I shriek.
Pat scrambles to tighten her hold but drops Taras’s upper body against her knees. “You bitch!” she cries, as I jerk her head back and Kay drops his feet, scrambling to pull me off Pat. Kay tries to get me into a headlock, but I twist away, too aware that I must stop them here. Taras won’t have a chance in the water unconscious. He’ll sink like a stone.
But Kay grabs my ear, wrenching it mercilessly. I yelp and lose my balance, sprawling across the dirt path behind them. Pat and Kay pick up Taras again and continue down, as if I’m merely a mosquito buzzing around their ears.
Kay’s sweater has ridden up in the back and I see the handle of Taras’s father’s gun stuck in the waistband of her trousers. Mollify Kay, I plot, pretend you agree with her plan, then snatch the gun. Do I have the courage to use it?
I run ahead of them onto the beach and stand swaying in the wind, as if I can somehow stop them from drowning Taras in the rolling waves that crash against the rocks on the headland in plumes of white. Gusts of wind tear across the water and the air smells of fish and rotting seaweed, it smells of death.
“I remember hearing Russian words,” I try to convince them. “Someone followed Marko Kovacs into my room. An assassin—you saw him yourself.” I pause for a moment, my pulse quickening. “Why did you come into my room anyway? You’d already given me my medications.”
Pat and Kay drop Taras onto the beach. “I went down the hall,” Pat says, her nose red and congested. “Making sure Kovacs’s Russian brother had gone down the back stairs—”
“She doesn’t need a bleeding explanation.” Kay’s voice contains an ominous warning, but Pat takes no heed.
“I thought I’d check on you,” Pat says, rummaging in her coat for a handkerchief. “When I opened the door, I found that bloody arsehole Kovacs lying across your bed, groaning and flailing about.” She loudly blows her nose. “You can imagine how upset I was—a girl I’d looked after for two years beating a man half to death.”
The nurses are facing the ocean and I have my back to it, looking up toward the house. “The Russian assassin did it, not me,” I cry, fighting my way out of the dark to some kind of clarity.
I flinch at sudden movement from the driveway.
Two men have just come out of the trees and are running toward the beach path, guns in their hands.
49
TARAS
Salt Spring Island
december 12, 1972
As if he’s surfacing from a deep dive, Taras floats up through consciousness.
Lying on his side, where the nurses have thrown him, he tries to move his arms and hands, but only his fingers answer his brain’s command. He’s trapped in his body and can’t shift his head to dislodge a few crushed clamshells stuck to his cheek. His tongue feels like cotton in his mouth, incapable of speech. But he has heard everything. Jeanie killed his father? He doesn’t believe it.
Yet Kay’s threat is more worrisome. Your little friend has to go.
He opens his eyes to slits. Lightning strikes at the horizon, and the sky has visibly darkened by the arrival of threatening clouds. A great blueish-white bird skims the surface of the ocean, heading for the treetops, which sway in the wind like a lament. He yearns to leap up and grab Jeanie, but he must wait for the drug to wear off, wait until he can move, stand, walk, fight.
He stares at Kay through his lashes. She’s looking up with dismay at the house. “Who the bloody hell is that?” she cries, reaching into the back of her slacks and drawing out a gun.
Taras tries again to move his head, but the muscles will not respond. Who could have arrived that made Kay pull out a gun? Which he’s certain is his father’s revolver. With a sinking feeling, he knows who has come: Mama. Did she catch the next ferry and follow him to Salt Spring?
Beckoning Pat to stand behind her, Kay levels the barrel of the gun at whomever is coming down the path. “You’re trespassing,” she shouts, backing away slowly. “Get out.” Although the nurses might now be outnumbered and there’s only a revolver for their protection, Kay’s eyes—magnified behind a pair of plastic framed glasses—spark with anticipation.
Taras can hear the crunch of clamshells as one person, then another arrives on the beach.
“You have killed Taras Ivanets?” a man says just out of Taras’s field of vision, calm and collected. “Give us the gun.” A Russian accent. And a voice he recognizes. Taras’s heart grows cold, and he’s taken back to Siberia, remembering the aftermath of a mine explosion, shortly after he’d arrived in the camp. Late in the night, he’d jolted from a deep sleep in the infirmary, his ears still ringing, yet suddenly alert to clipped Russian voices unsettling the air around him.
“You were to keep him out of danger,” one of the voices said.
“We didn’t know the shaft would collapse,” another answered.
A shadow morphed into a monster that coiled in the corner of the room as if at the gates of hell, waiting for Taras to weaken. That monster was Lieutenant Belyakov, whose gloved hand had been at his shoulder in the Carpathians. The same hand had pushed him onto a train that took him to Moscow, where other hands had shoved him into a black van, then a cattle car, and finally to a ship that carried him and thousands of other prisoners up Kolyma River and into the heart of darkness.
How long has he waited to find Comrade Lieutenant Belyakov? Twenty-eight years, fantasizing with great detail how many times he’d stab the man who he believed had killed his mother. And now Taras lies helpless before the Russian, with a shiv he’d made to do the job still in his breast pocket.
Belyakov has moved into his sightline, and Taras’s eyes fasten on him, still seeing the look on Mama’s face when he told her Kay mentioned a Russian had visited her after she’d had emergency surgery. Her panic. The nurse is lying. I can’t remember a Russian visitor. And her frank denial when Taras asked if the Soviet was still here, if he was following him. When Mama did watch Tato for this beast.
“You are nurse from hospital,” Belyakov says to either Kay or Pat. “What have you done with Taras Ivanets?” A pause. “Did you do something like this to his father?”
Taras forces the muscles of his neck into obedience and can turn his head slightly, enough to truly study, through eyes half-lidded, the small Soviet agent who’d sent him to purgatory. Belyakov, perhaps shorter than ever and spider-like, his thin, wiry frame clad in black leather jacket and slacks. With a pistol in his hand.
Kay’s upper lip curls in disdain. She’s pointing Taras’s father’s gun at the Russian. “I remember you,” she says. “When I saw you leave after visiting Mrs. Kovacs, I thought—here is a sad, short little boy dressed up like a man.”
Taras watches a dark cloud cross Belyakov’s face. He nods to his accomplice, who appears and nudges Taras with a booted foot. He swallows a groan as the man says in Russian to his master. “He’s out cold.”
Ilyin. He’d memorized Belyakov’s ruthless thugs’ names, too, repeating them over and over in his mind in Siberia, until Belyakov, Ilyin, and Yeleshev had become a kind of desperate chant.
“Leave him alone,” Jeanie shouts at Ilyin. She flies across the beach as if she’s on a soccer pitch and kicks the Russian in the shins with her clogs. Jeanie shrieks when he shoots out a hand and grabs her. Taras’s heart stutters as he watches Ilyin restrain her, while training his own gun on the nurses. Jeanie looks terrified, bent almost double, staring blindly down at the shell beach.
Then he hears the slow crunch of those shells as Belyakov approaches him with confident, cat-like steps. Up close, he looks different, older, his hair long and combed carefully over his forehead and ears. Taras panics as the KGB operative squats and leans close. “We wondered,” he whispers in Russian. “Why would Taras Ivanets return to Salt Spring Island a day after he’d just come from there? This Fire Bride, does she have the list? We shall see.” The Russian rests his pistol on one knee, his gold tooth gleaming in the low light. “You did not see us following you? We parked on the ferry, only three cars back.” He cocks his ear, as if expecting Taras to respond. Belyakov clucks his tongue. “I am disappointed. You are like a son to me. A son—he would notice such things.” Taras’s body screams. Criminal! I have never been your son, but Belyakov is still smiling, absently stroking one of his carefully trimmed sideburns. “Perhaps you did notice our car, when you took off at the terminal, leaving us to scramble to find the Fire Bride’s house.” The Russian draws a thumb across Taras’s lower lip, and he wants to retch. “Does she mean that much to you?” Belyakov frowns when a gust of wind tears into his helmet of hair. “I will always find you, little mule,” he says, attempting to palm it back into shape. “You will always be mine.”
Taras wants to crawl away, but he forces himself to meet the Russian’s oddly affectionate gaze. You never owned me. You never will.
Belyakov straightens and brushes off his black leather coat. “Give me that gun,” he says to Kay, “or my man kills the Fire Bride.”
Jeanie’s lovely features are contorted in an expression of horrified confusion, and Taras’s heart races as he struggles to tame a paralyzing fear. What will the Russians do to her if Kay can’t come up with this list they’re after?
His eyes shift to Pat and Kay, who look at each other, weighing their choices. Kay turns back to the Russian and says with finality. “Do what you like with her. Jeanie is dead to us.”
Belyakov cocks his gun and points it directly at Kay’s head. “Where is the Rimini list?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she snaps back.
Taras notices Ilyin drag Jeanie sideways, in an attempt to edge closer to Kay, his weapon trained on her and his dark eyes not leaving the barrel of her gun. What was Belyakov talking about? Had he followed Taras’s parents to Canada because Tato was in possession of a list?
Belyakov carefully studies Kay’s weapon. “Where do you get this Webley—British issue?”
“It’s…Taras’s father’s revolver,” Jeanie tells him.
“You took it off Marko Kovacs’s body,” the Russian says, a light dawning in his eyes.
“Pat had it in her room,” Jeanie adds, with a glance up at the house. Taras smiles inwardly. Brave girl, he thinks. One less Soviet to deal with on the beach.
And Belyakov takes the bait. “Ilyin,” he shouts. His man releases Jeanie and turns, breaking into a run up the path, almost tripping over the wide flare of his blue jeans on his way to the house.
50
JEANIE
Salt Spring Island
december 12, 1972
i can still feel Ilyin’s rude hands on me as I watch him yank open the front door of Gladsheim and disappear inside. A few barks come from Tuna, still in the house, and then eerie silence. I freeze, expecting a gunshot. I wanted to get rid of him so I can help Taras, but would the Russian hurt my old, defenseless dog?
Kneeling beside Taras, I start rubbing his arms and legs, anything to bring blood back into his numb extremities. He looks up at me with pleading eyes that break my heart, and I remember him telling me about the NKVD agent who had turned his mother. “Is it him?” I breathe into Taras’s ear.
“Belyakov,” he whispers, nodding slightly, and I almost gasp with relief. The chlorpromazine is wearing off.
“Belyakov,” I repeat to myself. “The bastard who took you from her. What should I do?”
Without moving his mouth, Taras says, “Run.”
“I won’t leave you,” I tell him. Belyakov doesn’t appear to have heard us. He shifts the hold on his gun and fixes his cold, dead eyes on Kay, who seems to flinch, as if she’s seen something there that unnerves her. Jeanie is dead to us. The words still smart, even though I already knew yesterday that my old nurses were committing me to a slow death by mental institution. There’s something about having it confirmed in this moment, when a gun is involved, that puts a finer point on the truth.
“What happened to Marko Kovacs in the hospital that night?” Belyakov demands of Kay.
Her skin has turned so pale, I can see every blue vein crawl over her cheek and neck. “What a shrimp.” She laughs in his face. “I could squash you like a bug.”
“Don’t make him mad,” Pat interjects. “Do you want him to shoot you?”
“Coward,” Kay hisses at her.
I watch the two collaborators, now turning on each other, and decide to level the playing field even further. If Taras continues to recover and I can drive a wedge between Kay and Pat, we might stand a chance against this Soviet. I get to my feet, leaving Taras briefly, and face Pat. “Kay told me about your little crime at the hospital.” She starts violently, and I try on a disdainful smile. “The terrible thing you did, that got you fired.”
There’s a long silence as Pat grapples with this new, surprising bit of information. Overhead the clouds are murky, dark, yet muted light still moves like the hand of God far out to sea. In the damp, cold air even the silhouette of Vancouver Island seems very near. A storm cloud has opened up in the distance, and it pours a curtain of rain upon the ocean, joining heaven to earth. I shiver and hug myself as Pat recovers and levels a glassy stare at Kay.
“Why would you tell her, Kay? Why?” she says, her voice subdued, hurt. Then she turns back to me. “You always got your proper morphine dose, Jeanie. Nobody missed the little extra.” Pat sends Kay another insolent glare. “You should tell this Ruskie just what you were up to in the surgery ward at the hospital. Before you convinced me to transfer with you to Gynecology.” Kay sends her a warning look, which seems to make Pat more incensed. “You had to work in a place without male patients to tempt you into yielding to your dark urges.”
Her pronouncement sends shockwaves through my body. Is she saying that Kay preyed on men in some way?
“Shut up,” Belyakov shouts at Pat, waving his gun in the air. Even he looks uneasy at what she’s suggesting. He glances up at the house, as if he regrets sending his man away to face these two alone.
“You lie.” Kay’s eyes have not left Pat. “You were the one seeking revenge after Kovacs knocked you down before leaving his wife’s room.”
Pat is speechless for a moment. Finally, she finds her words and shouts, “You bitch!”
Belyakov shifts nervously on his feet, seemingly frustrated at this disturbing sidebar, and I falter, remembering the day Kay arrived at Gladsheim. When I asked what Africa had done to her, she’d said something that only made my pulse leap in the moment, but somehow seems like a huge red flag now: Africa did not appreciate the lengths to which my duty drove me… And all that bullshit about me being the only one to understand her genius. Why didn’t I send her away when she started following Taras and me, like she meant to off us both?
Despite Belyakov’s warning to shut up, Pat isn’t done with Kay. “I kept the letter you wrote me, when you were hauled before an African tribunal.” Pat has a hand at the small of her back, as if she threw it out dragging Taras to the beach. “Angel of Death they called you. But you managed to pin it on someone else. Only escaping a few years later when it got too hot for you.”
Kay adjusts her grip on the gun. “I came back because you wrote that Jeanie changed her will.”
“That’s right, you have a big dream for this place, don’t you? And for Jeanie.” Pat turns to me. “Kay had me tell Dr. Reisman you were losing it. It was Kay that suggested chlorpromazine. She got the idea to declare you insane and snatch this place out of your hands.”
Breath heaving, I charge at Kay, but the Russian shoves me back and takes a few steps toward Pat. “Stop,” he yells. “Or I’ll shoot.”
Kay has let the barrel of her gun droop slightly as she glares at Pat. “I seem to remember you enthusiastic about that plan. No more working as a slave for Jeanie in this gorgeous place.”
A muffled bark comes from inside the house, and I let out a relieved gasp. My dog might be unsettled by Ilyin’s rampage, but he sounds okay.
“What happened to Marko Kovacs?” Belyakov demands.
Kay stares through a curtain of hair at me, in a cold rage, livid to have her dirty laundry aired in front of so many people. “Why don’t you ask Jeanie?” she says, a shred of reluctance sneaking into her tone. “She’s the one you want.”
I reel back as though she’s struck me. Does Kay still think she can blame me? Whitecaps frost the surface of the ocean, the waves crashing at our feet like a thousand voices of accusation. I have the sensation of floating, as if I teeter at the very razor’s edge. Despite Kay’s betrayal—learning of her and Pat’s deliberate plans to take Gladsheim from me and send me to a mental hospital—I still held out some small hope that she’s simply misunderstood, that all of this hasn’t really happened. But seeing her standing there, a look of rabid hostility on her face, I finally awaken from the long enchantment I fell into on the day of my wedding, like Sleeping Beauty shaking off the witch’s evil spell. “All those eight-hour shifts you spent as my vigil nurse in those early days,” I say to Kay. “When I was discharged, you told me you loved me. When you’re incapable of love.” Suddenly Pat’s words return to me, after she’d injected Taras and he lay at our feet.
