Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night. Литагент HarperCollins USD

the Carnivore’s face. His silenced pistol lashed around in a single smooth motion. He fired. Pop. The bullet slammed into Olenkov’s overcoat, burning a hole blacker than the black cashmere. Blood and tissue exploded, spraying the gray air pink.

      Rage twisted Olenkov’s features. As he staggered sideways, he swung his pistol around to aim at the assassin. The Carnivore took two nimble steps and slammed a foot into Olenkov’s knee.

      The KGB man grunted and toppled onto his back, a black Rorschach blot against the white snow. His pistol fell. He stretched for it. The Carnivore smashed a foot down onto the arm, scooped up the gun, and pocketed it, watching as Olenkov struggled to free himself, to sit up, to fight back. But his face drained of color. His eyes closed. Finally, he lay motionless. Air gusted from his lungs.

      Dmitri fought nausea and terror. He waited to be shot, too.

      The Carnivore glanced at him, showing no emotion. “The contract on you is canceled.” He opened the gate and was gone.

      For a long moment, Liz said nothing, suffocated by the past. During the cold war, government officials and private individuals on both sides of the Iron Curtain had alternately used the Carnivore and tried to eliminate him. He was ruthless, a legend. Allegedly, he had only one loyalty—to money. He always worked in disguise, so no one knew what he really looked like, much less his true identity. All of the protocols in the story were accurate.

      Still, his appearance in it was too much of a coincidence. Ignoring Arkady’s gaze, she lifted the blue envelope, examining it closely against the bright light of the floor lamp. There was no hint of a covert French opening—slitting one end of the envelope then gluing it back together. No sign of a roll-out—Soviet tradecraft using two knitting needles on the flap. And no indication of steam or one of the new chemical compounds.

      Breathing shallowly, she lowered the letter. She remembered Arkady’s strange smile before he told her the story. “You know the Carnivore is my father, don’t you?” she asked.

      “How did you figure that out?”

      Liz did not respond. Instead, she peered pointedly across the low table to the bulge in his jacket where his right hand remained near his heart. She had to know.

      Acknowledging her unspoken question, he used the other hand to push aside the lapel.

      Shocked, she stared. As she feared, he held a pistol trained on her. What she had not guessed was that it was hers—her Glock, which had been locked in her bedroom safe. She looked up into the face of the kindly man who was a close friend. A better father. His sweetness had vanished, a mask. Raw hatred burned from his dark eyes.

      A fundamental of survival was to adapt. Liz erased emotion from her face. She had to find a way to take him or escape.

      “It was the envelope,” she told him. “No one opened it before you received it.”

      He inclined his head once. “Where is the Carnivore?”

      “If you know he’s my father, then you know he’s dead.” That was a lie. It was possible he was still alive. When she was CIA, she had discovered his real work when she spotted him in the middle of a wet job in Lisbon. She stopped it, and he promised to let her take him in. But before that could happen, he was apparently killed—yet his body was never found. “Was there any truth in your story?”

      “There was a Dmitri and Nina Garnitsky, an Oleg Olenkov and a Carnivore. Olenkov was shot, and Dmitri Garnitsky escaped.”

      She thought swiftly, trying to understand. Then she remembered his words—Oleg Olenkov…a master of impersonation and recruiting the unsuspecting—and everything made a crazed kind of sense: last January, it had been no accident that “Arkady Albam” sat beside her at the faculty meeting. That was the beginning of his campaign to cultivate her, make her vulnerable to him. At some point, he wrote the “Nina” letter, and on Monday, when he claimed to be sick, he drove down to Los Angeles to mail it to himself. Tonight he set her up so she would worry and come to check on him. That was why he had been waiting, with her Glock hidden under his jacket, pointed at the chair where she always sat.

      “You’re Olenkov!”

      His thin lips curved in a smile, pleased with his ruse. Chilled, Liz listened as footsteps sounded faintly, climbing the outside staircase. He had created the envelope and story to distract her, keep her from causing trouble as long as possible because someone else really was coming—but not to terminate him.

      She kept her voice calm. “Dmitri Garnitsky, I assume.”

      Olenkov pulled a 9mm Smith & Wesson from between his back and the chair. Neither it nor her Glock was equipped with a sound suppressor, which told her he had no intention of trying to hide what he planned.

      “You think you’ll walk away from this,” she realized. “I’ll bet the sheriff’s department will find my place was tossed, too, so you can tell them that I was carrying my Glock for protection. That I’d found out somehow that Oleg Olenkov was hunting me because he couldn’t get revenge on my father.” She was beginning to have a sense the envelope and story were a test of her, too.

      He chuckled, pleased with the results of his operation. “You have given me my answer—the daughter is confirmed as a worthy substitute for the father. Naturally you must defend yourself. In the end, sadly, you and Dmitri will have wiped each other. I’ll be very convincing when I talk to the authorities.”

      A trickle of sweat slid down her spine. “But what you’re angry about happened long ago. No one cares anymore!”

      “I care! I nearly died. I spent two years in hospital! Then when I was finally able to go back to work, they demoted me because of Garnitsky’s escape. My career was over. My life was ruined. They laughed at me!”

      The most powerful psychological cause of violent behavior was the feeling of being slighted, rejected, insulted, humiliated—any of which could convey the ultimate provocation: the person was inferior, insignificant, a nobody. Olenkov was a venomous and volatile man, probably with an inferiority complex, who could easily act irrationally and against his own interests—including relating tonight’s tale, in which he appeared to be both arrogant and incompetent.

      “You have no reason to feel ashamed,” Liz tried.

      “I did nothing wrong. It was all your goddamn father’s—”

      There was a knock on the door. It sounded like a jackhammer in the small apartment.

      Olenkov rose lithely and walked sideways away, never moving the aim of the Glock from her. He lowered the S&W and unlocked the door, then retraced his steps. He sat again, pointing the S&W at her now, while he trained the Glock on the doorway.

      “Come in!” he called.

      The door opened, and fresh salt-tinged air gusted inside. A man stood on the threshold, the drab night sky and distant stars framing him.

      “Liz Sansborough?” He had a Russian accent. “I got a note to come—” He saw the pistols. His soft blue eyes darkened with fear. His boxy shoulders twitched as if he was preparing to bolt.

      Liz recognized him. He was a historian from the University of Iowa, not using the name Dmitri Garnitsky. He had a flat, tired face and large hands. Dressed in chinos and a tan corduroy sports jacket, he was probably in his late forties.

      “Don’t try it,” Olenkov warned. “I’ll shoot before you finish your first step away. Come in and close the door.”

      Dmitri hesitated, then moved warily inside. Gazing at Olenkov, he shoved the door shut with the heel of a tennis shoe. For a moment, puzzlement replaced his fear.

      “Who are you? What do you want?” Dmitri peered quickly at Liz.

      “You don’t recognize me?” Olenkov asked.

      “Your voice maybe.”

      Olenkov laughed loudly. “I didn’t recognize you either until I saw