Free Last Snow by Eric Van Lustbader Page B

on that thought. You understand that, don’t you? You’re not going to kill yourself, there’s far too much life inside you.”
    He waited until he felt her nod wordlessly against him before going on. “Whatever happened to you, you’re still who you always were. Morgan Herr didn’t have the power to take that away from you. In fact, it was in those dark days that you found your own courage, you found out who you are.”
    “But he programmed me. I did what he wanted me to do.”
    She looked up at him, a little girl again, stripped of her tough young woman’s armor, her smart mouth, her arrow-swift rejoinders learned in a culture that grew its children into adults before their time, a culture that moved far too swiftly, becoming fixated on the glossy surface of things. He saw her as her father never would, an unspeakable tragedy that Jack, a man who had lost his only child, was struck by more deeply than most.
    “No one knows the future,” he said, “we all accept that, but we don’t really know the past very well, either. We know only what happened to us, not what happened to those around us. We have no idea, for instance, how what they did or didn’t do aff ected us. Once you accept that we’re aware of only a sliver of what happened, you can seehow nothing is simply how we remember it. We create our own past, our own history, it’s all fractured, pieced together, and yet this is who we become, imperfect but human.”
     
    “W E ’ LL BE landing inside of twenty minutes.” Annika smiled into Jack’s face. “I’ve made this flight before, a number of times.”
    “Then you know Ukraine.”
    “Intimately.” She turned, looked back at Alli’s sleeping form. “For a young girl—”
    “She’s twenty-two.”
    “She can’t be just seven years younger than I am,” Annika said. “She looks sixteen.”
    “Alli has Graves’ disease. It screws around with the pituitary gland.” He pointed to the side of his neck. “Her growth process was compromised when she was a teenager.”
    Annika showed some surprise, or perhaps it was pity, it was difficult to say with her, a woman trained to be guarded even when she didn’t have to be.
    Then she shrugged. “Well, no matter. I will be leaving you as soon as we set down.”
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jack said.
    She raised an eyebrow. “No? Why not?”
    “You said yourself that the FSB might be sending people after you.”
    “I can take care of myself,” she said stiffly.
    “Of that I have no doubt.” Jack pursed his lips in thought. “On the other hand, you’ll be easier to track down if you’re on your own.”
    Annika tossed her head, dismissing his words. “I have many friends in Ukraine.”
    “Friends or colleagues?” His pause was deliberate. “Ex-colleagues now. And if Batchuk is as powerful as you say, if he’s even half as vengeful as most Russians in high places, he’ll have compromised some, if not all, of your contacts.”
    In the ensuing silence, both became aware that the aircraft was slowly losing altitude. Annika had been right on the money as to the length of the flight.
    A range of emotions passed across her face like clouds brushed by a freshening wind. She seemed to be digesting his words, or possibly considering the range of her next moves. “Do you have an alternative to suggest,” she said slowly, “or are you simply stating a fact?”
    “I’m doing both.” Jack led her to glance at Alli again. “Look, maybe her coming aboard is a godsend for us.”
    Annika appeared on the verge of laughing in his face. “How could that possibly be?”
    “We enter Ukraine as a family: mother, father, daughter. That will throw your FSB pals off the scent, at least for a while.”
    “Really?” Annika cocked her head to one side. “And what passports are we going to use, Mr. McClure?”
    “I hadn’t considered that.”
    “No, I thought not.” Annika nodded. “But that’s all right. I’ve been working out a