Final Winter

Imad spat on the metal deck and went towards the lit windows of the main cabins of the ferry. The other man stayed behind, hands in his pockets, feeling the cold breeze around his ears and hair, wondering and thinking. Just how far he had traveled in these years, to finally have the opportunity to come here and do what he had trained to do, years ago, when he had been a proud member of the greatest empire the world had ever known.

Recently he had been living in some Third World shit-hole country, advising the Health Ministry — and, Mother of God, the laboratories they had there were nothing more than children’s chemistry sets, set up proudly in rooms that had no consistent heat or air-conditioning or pure water — when the first messages had arrived. At first he had thought that it had been an elaborate trap: some enemies of his out there — no matter the news of reconciliation and understanding — still had long memories and even longer-lasting hatreds.

But the messages had intrigued him. He had answered the first one, waited. And his Caymans bank account had seen a dramatic increase within a week. Then he answered another one, replying to a highly technical question that established the bona fides of whoever was on the other end of the line. And with that answer, another bump in the bank account. One test after another, to see if the message sender had actually been for real, including one particularly deadly request on his part, just to see how serious the message sender was.

Sure. That had been something. In the Health Ministry was an even more corrupt-than-usual doctor, who had been distilling cancer medications supplied by the United Nations and selling them on the black market. The adviser’s own wife, years ago, had died of cervical cancer, and the sheer greed and evilness of this particular doctor had galled him. So he had requested of his message giver his own test of that person’s abilities. Remove the doctor from the scene.

And it had happened, just a week later. A car bomb.

A few more messages, here and there, and here he was now, on the deck of a ferry, heading towards his enemy of so many years, now face to face, with a childish Arab at his side to help him along.

He coughed, shifted his weight from one leg to another. Strained his eyes, looking out at the fog.

There. Coming clear. One light, then another, and then an entire constellation, appearing now ahead of the ferry, and, as if on cue, the ferry horn sounded. His chest tightened with glee and pleasure. The enemy he had sworn years ago to smite was finally in front of him.

‘Hello, America,’ the man called Vladimir Zhukov, once of the Kromksy Institute of Infectious Diseases, murmured, as the lights of Washington State finally appeared through the fog off to the starboard side of the craft. ‘So nice to finally be here.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

At home again, Adrianna Scott took one more shower — for luck, she whispered to herself, as she scrubbed her body clean one more time — and with a towel about her hair and a bathrobe about her body, she went over to the mantelpiece where the photo of herself and her aunt was placed. Even knowing that she was home alone, she looked around to make sure no one was watching. She took the photo down and deftly undid the snaps at the rear, holding the cardboard placement against the frame with her fingers. Now she could stick a fingernail behind the loose cardboard and drag something out.

The something, of course, being another photo. Of a very young Aliyah Fulenz and her mama and papa, seated on a couch in some photo studio for a formal portrait. Mother and daughter were wearing identical dresses, some white and black lace piece of magic that mama had gotten from Paris, and father was in his Ba’ath Party uniform, standing firm and proud behind the two of them, his protective hands on their shoulders. Father hadn’t been much of a party member — to go anywhere in that society, you had to belong to that gangster organization — and the tales he told could have—

Enough, she thought. Quite enough. No time for reminiscing. She gently kissed the faces of her dead parents, replaced the photo in the frame, and put the frame back up on the mantelpiece. Another touch to the glass and wood, and then she went down to the basement of her condo unit. The floor of the basement was concrete and it was cool and slightly damp. In one corner was a workbench, unused since she had moved in — the previous owner had had a woodworking hobby, making toys for underprivileged children, how sweet — and most of the rest of the basement was taken up by old moving boxes and bits of furniture that she had never had the energy to sell or donate to Goodwill.