Riptide

“Damn,” Adam said, “now the bastard’s pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket. It’s small, looks like a Glock sub-compact 27. He’s pointed it straight at Thomas. Oh God.” And he concentrated, readied himself, saying over and over, Let Becca go, you crazy fuck. Just twitch.

“Turn on the bedside light, Matlock.”

Thomas walked slowly into the bedroom, leaned over, and switched on the light. He straightened.

“Now, don’t move. Those draperies are open. There’s probably a sniper out there, and I don’t want the bastard to have a clean shot. He’ll get you, Rebecca, if he pulls the trigger.”

Thomas said, “I wanted very much for you to be my old enemy, but you aren’t. You’re something far more deadly than Vasili, something deadly and monstrous that he spawned. Perhaps after he brainwashed you, he realized what he’d produced, realized that he’d unleashed uncontrolled, unrelenting evil, and that’s why he kept you away from his new family. He didn’t want the evil he’d spawned and nurtured to live in his own house, to be close to all those innocent, pure lives. Pull off the mask, Mikhail, we know who you are.”

Stone-dead silence, then, “Damn you, you can’t know, you can’t! No one knows anything about me. I don’t exist. No records show me as Vasili Krimakov’s son. I’ve covered everything. It isn’t possible.”

“Oh yes, we know. Even though the KGB tried to erase you, to protect you, we found out all about you.”

“Damn you, pull those draperies closed, now!”

Thomas pulled them closed, knowing that now Adam was blind to what was going on in the room. He turned and said slowly, “Take off the mask, Mikhail. It really looks rather silly, like a little boy playing hoodlum.”

Slowly, his movements jerky, furious, he pulled off the black mask. Then he shoved Becca over toward the bed. Thomas caught her, held her close to his side. But she moved away from him. She sat down on the bed, drew her legs up.

Thomas stared at Vasili Krimakov’s son, Mikhail. There was some resemblance to his father in the high, sharp cheekbones, the wide-set eyes, the whiplash-lean body, but the dark, mad eyes, those were surely his mother’s eyes. Thomas could still see her eyes, wide, staring up at him.

Becca knew Mikhail had wanted shock, but it was denied him when he realized they knew who he was. Still, he threw back his head and said, “I am my father’s son. He loved me. He molded me to be like him. I am here, his avenger.”

His dramatic moment got nothing except a laugh from Becca.

“Hi, Troy,” she said, giving him a small wave. “Cute, preppy name. Tell me, what if I’d decided to go out with you that night after you planted that little micro homing chip in my upper arm? How would you have gotten out of it?” She said to her father, “I told you how he managed to have the arm of that big old chest machine swing into me as I was walking by, and then he was right there, patting me, making sure I was okay, flirting with me. That was when you planted that little chip in my arm, isn’t it, Troy? You were good. I didn’t feel a thing, just the sting from that machine arm hitting me. It hurt a little longer than it should have, but who would really notice?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “This isn’t possible. You couldn’t have found that chip. It’s plastic mixed with biochemical adhesives, almost immediately becomes one with your skin. After just a few minutes, no one could even tell it was there, least of all you. No, you weren’t even aware of it. You and everyone else were just worried about that dart in your shoulder. I fooled you, I fooled all of you. You were all so worried about that ridiculous dart in her shoulder, about that stupid note I wrapped around it.”

“For a while, that’s right,” Thomas said. “But actually, it was an analysis of handwriting by some very smart FBI agents that started your downfall. I had samples of your father’s handwriting. They compared yours to his. Remember the notes you wrote to Mr. McBride in Riptide? There was no comparison, of course, so it couldn’t be Vasili.

“Then Adam remembered that your father had traveled to England quite a number of times. He wondered why, particularly since the visits were always at the beginning of the school term or at the end. He knew your father had remarried, so it probably wasn’t a woman he was visiting. He’d purged files, even your mother’s name, and we wondered why he would do that. After all, who cared if he had a wife, now dead, or any children?

“It wasn’t tough then to track you down, the son whose father had sent him to England to be educated, so that one day he could avenge the murder of his dearest mother. You were at that private boys’ school at Sundowns.”