The photograph had been grainy, but that hadn’t disguised the drooping left eye, the overprominent brow.
His nose must have been broken many times in Lefortovo because its aquiline shape is mangled; it bulges at the bridge and veers sharply to the left. He is also now missing an earlobe.
But it is, unmistakably, him.
A tremor ascends my throat.
“Abramovich,” I breathe out, stunned. “You’re Sergei Abramovich.”
CHAPTER 59
“Sergei Abramovich is dead.” I stammer, “H-He died in Lefortovo.”
Yet, the dead man before me runs a pudgy finger along the rim of a crystal tumbler. Tiny particles of condensation sweat from the glass.
He raises the tumbler to me and savors a slow sip of vodka. “I am not a medical miracle, I assure you.”
“How are you alive?” I want his blood test. I want dental records. I want to be wrong.
He switches to his native Russian, and with it his voice shifts—throatier and deeper.
“For five years I was tortured, until, finally, they released me. They offered me a new name and a new position, Dmitri Yesnev, assistant to the sub-director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service in the Caucasus. They couldn’t let a highly skilled officer like me simply retreat into civilian life.”
“Why change names?”
“Russia does not admit to torturing the wrong man for five years,” he laughs. Then abruptly, he stops. “I died when they said I died.”
Bekami continues circling the perimeter of the room, pretending to admire the Ottoman art, the brocade draperies, the ornate eighteenth-century molding. But holding a hand to his bleeding nose, watching me, like a viper ready to strike.
Assessing Abramovich as the more powerful of the two, I focus on him. “What do you want from me?”
“From you?” Abramovich drains the last of his vodka. “Everything.”
He puts down his tumbler and walks toward me, taking off his immaculately tailored suit jacket. Though older, he is a strong and fit man. He lifts his hand. It hovers on my cheek. I refuse to flinch, to give him the satisfaction of terrifying me.
“You’ve become a pretty girl,” he says. “Strong, slender, like Katarina.”
Katarina—I look like my mother? For one moment, I want time to stand still. I want Abramovich to tell me everything he knew about Katarina.
With his thumb, he tilts my chin back. When he touches my scar, he makes a tsk tsk sound in his throat. “I told him not to damage you,” he says, indicating Bekami. To my surprise, Abramovich sounds almost upset.
“Well?” Bekami lets go of the brocade drapery. He shoves the cloth he’s been holding up to his swollen nose into his pocket. “Are you satisfied it’s her?”
Abramovich’s eyes linger on mine, the way my father’s do when he is waiting for me to understand, the way he tells me everything, without telling me anything.
“Most certainly,” says Abramovich. “It is her. You did well. Finally.”
“Then our deal is done,” Bekami says.
Abramovich walks behind his desk. In the center of the wall is a gilded ornate frame encasing a painting of a ship. Abramovich opens the frame, reaches his hand into a concealed, hollow spot in the wall behind it, and removes a dusty, aluminum case.
He pauses, holding the case above the desk, and stares at me. “I’ve always appreciated irony.”
I purse my lips, frustrated I don’t understand what he means.
“After my life was destroyed, and the program I’d spent a decade developing was dismantled, I searched for you. Sixteen years I searched for you.”
Abramovich grins with his cosmetically restructured mouth. “It was Mr. Bekami who found you the first time. My offer was simple. I would give him what he wanted most, if he brought me what I wanted most.” Abramovich lays the aluminum case flat on the desk.
“You see, before I was imprisoned, my enemies did not entirely dismantle my program. A few Kosheleks remained. So, it’s ironic, isn’t it? The weapons that once destroyed me …” He bends forward and takes an antique key from his breast pocket.
Click.
The case unlocks; the lid opens.
“Those weapons now save me”—he pauses—“because I get you back.”
Bile rises in my throat. Bekami never wanted my father. Never cared about revenge. Never intended to use me to “get to him.” From the time he kidnapped me in Istanbul, he has only wanted me.
Me. To trade me.
Bekami leans forward over the case, scanning the contents. Then he opens a Louis Vuitton briefcase, sets it on the desk, and cautiously reaches both hands inside.
He lifts out a simple metal canister thirty centimeters tall by eight centimeters