Beloved Enemy Read Free

up, one by one, in, neat, orderly progression.
    He began to read:
    Pyotr Legere grew up in Moscow, the only child of Galina Yemchevya, chief translator for the Kremlin, and Giles Legere, a trade legate for a prestigious Parisian and New York art gallery, in permanent residence in Moscow. An attached client list included everyone from the president, select Kremlin ministers, and FSB top-tier officers, to the oligarch overlords, who, in league with the Kremlin, ran the major businesses in Russia.
    Jack came to a photo of Pyotr. Though black-and-white and slightly blurred, the photo revealed a darkly handsome man in his late twenties, with a long face. A distinctly Gallic nose and deep-set eyes leant him the curiously anachronistic demeanor of an eighteenth-century swashbuckler.
    Pyotr owned a bookstore in central Moscow, a shop specializing in technical manuals, but occasionally he also sold paintings, doubtless left over from his father’s personal collection, though he had been seen purchasing the odd painting at auction. In addition, he operated a Web site, connected with the store, which offered specialized technical apps for mobile phones and tablets. Very cutting edge.
    Jack now turned to the transcript of the debriefing. He went through it slowly and painstakingly, contrasting the words to what he had heard coming from the tape, so that he could almost taste them. He added to this the memory of Pyotr’s photo contained on the micro SD card. This image was most helpful when he came to sections he hadn’t heard. Paull had only played him the relevant parts; he absorbed the complete debriefing as it scrolled slowly across his mobile’s screen.
    It was after two a.m. when he finished. Rising, he crossed the living room and went down the short hall, but when he stepped into Paull’s study his boss was nowhere to be seen and neither was the dossier, though Jack performed a thorough search. Probably Paull had gone up to bed. Shrugging, Jack went silently back through the house, letting himself out the back door. He spoke briefly with Lenny, one of the men on guard duty that night. Lenny told him a dirty joke and both men laughed, then Jack got into his car and drove home. Twenty minutes after he turned the key in his front door he was fast asleep, having only partially undressed.
    *   *   *
    He dreamt of walking down a seemingly endless corridor, dank and so poorly lit he could not make out any significant details. His rhythmic footsteps echoed off the bare walls. At some point he became aware of another set of footsteps, but whether they were behind or in front of him he could not tell, though he peered in both directions. His heart rate increased with his anxiety, until …
    He awoke with a start, the sound of the other set of footsteps still in his ears. Then, as the last vestiges of sleep cleared, he sat up. There were the footsteps—they were in his house, moving stealthily about. Reaching out, he drew open the drawer of his night table, but his gun wasn’t there. Where had he last left it? He passed a hand across his forehead, came away with a slick of sweat. He couldn’t recall. He grasped the LED flashlight in the drawer instead.
    Rolling off the bed, he crossed to his closet. Reaching inside, he grasped the baseball bat Gus had given him years ago and, turning, stepped out into the darkened hallway, moving to the head of the staircase to the ground floor. The house was pitch-black. It stood at the end of Westmoreland Ave, just over the Maryland border. There was no moon, and the nearest lights were streets away.
    He stood stock still, listening to the movements. At first, he thought they were random, but soon enough he discovered that whoever was in his house was performing a formal grid search. Not a burglar or a street punk high on crack cocaine, then; a professional.
    He slipped down the staircase, placing his bare feet carefully to avoid the old, dried-out wooden treads he knew creaked. It was an old