The Altar Of Bones Part 18

"The tat's real. I earned it in a Tajikistan prison cell, but that story is for another day. What did you do with the film? Put it in a safe-deposit box?"

"Such aptly named things-safe-deposit boxes. As in safe from guys like you and Ms. CIA and Mr. Ponytail. Well, it's the icon that he seems to want." She waved a hand. "But details, details."

"We need to take a look at that film, Zoe."

"I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't like that movie from a while back-the one with Naomi Watts. The Ring The Ring? Once you look at it you die."

"You don't have to look at it to be killed."

Zoe said nothing. The church was dark and silent and cold, like the proverbial grave, she thought.

"You know what's on it, don't you?" she said. "On the film."

"Yes. But I need to see it."

Zoe blew out her breath in a sigh. "Oookay. So why don't we just bop on down to the nearest video store? I'm sure they have one of those old-fas.h.i.+oned projectors we can rent. On the shelf right next to all the Betamaxes."

His mouth did the twisting thing again. "It so happens I know a guy whose hobby is collecting prints of old, uh, movies."

"p.o.r.n, you mean?"

"Not all of it's p.o.r.n. Anyway, he owns the kind of projector we need, and that's where I went this morning-to his place to pick it up."

"And left me handcuffed to the bed."

"Using the best, state-of-the-art handcuffs, by the way. And being stupid enough to leave the film behind, too. Man I waaaay underestimated you there."

"I'll choose to take that as a compliment."

"It was meant as one.... Look, I'll make you a deal. We go back to the apartment and watch your grandmother's movie, and afterward if you want to take it and walk out the door, I won't stop you."

Zoe sat in silence a moment, then said, "I wouldn't even make it as far as the airport alive, would I?"

"Probably not."

ZOE GOT THE film and her icon out of the safe-deposit box, and they crossed the river to the ile St.-Louis and the apartment of Sergei's ... of Ry O'Malley's friend. The projector was there. He'd told the truth about that at least. film and her icon out of the safe-deposit box, and they crossed the river to the ile St.-Louis and the apartment of Sergei's ... of Ry O'Malley's friend. The projector was there. He'd told the truth about that at least.

They took a couple of hunting prints off the wall to clear a s.p.a.ce. Zoe let him handle the film, since he seemed to know what he was doing, threading it through sprockets and around spools. She pulled the shade down over the window, darkening the room.

She felt an odd mixture of excitement and dread. She knew what she was about to see would probably change her life forever. But her life was already changed, her life was already in danger, and at least now she would be getting some answers.

And once she saw what was on the film, maybe she'd know better how to handle Sergei ... Ry. And all the rest of the hunters.

The projector was noisy, with a whirring fan, and the film made a clatter as it fed through the sprockets. Black marks danced on the wall and suddenly there was her mother's face, close-up, a big grin splitting her small mouth. Her eighth birthday party, according to the brightly penned banner across the wall behind her. She pointed to her cake with its flaming eight candles, frosted white, but Zoe knew it was chocolate inside, her mother's favorite, her own favorite.

And there was her grandmother Katya, so pretty, so happy, almost dancing around the table. It was like seeing herself, dressed up in a play, how much she looked like the two of them.

They watched the girl blow out the candles on her birthday cake and open her presents. Katya was always there, helping to untangle a bow, adjusting a paper hat. Zoe tried to imagine what awful thing had driven this seemingly adoring mother to abandon her child, but she couldn't. And who was the person behind the camera? The stepfather Anna Larina could barely remember?

The birthday party faded to white, more black sprocket marks danced on the wall.

Then suddenly, a splash of color. Blue ...

23.

THE CAMERA pans along a wide boulevard, buildings on one side, a park of sorts on the other, the sun s.h.i.+ning beneath the big blue bowl of a sky. And there are people and they're cheering, although you can't hear them. Motorcycle cops and cars are driving slowly toward the camera, a cavalcade pans along a wide boulevard, buildings on one side, a park of sorts on the other, the sun s.h.i.+ning beneath the big blue bowl of a sky. And there are people and they're cheering, although you can't hear them. Motorcycle cops and cars are driving slowly toward the camera, a cavalcade.

Suddenly the lens zooms in on a dark blue stretch Lincoln convertible with American flags flapping on its fenders. Two men are sitting in the front seat, a couple in the middle seat, and another couple in the back, and they're smiling and waving to the crowds lining the sidewalks.

The camera closes in on one face. His thick hair is s.h.i.+ning in the sun, his large white teeth are flas.h.i.+ng.

It is John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The camera moves slowly as Kennedy turns his head and looks at the woman beside him. It is the first lady, Jackie, wearing a pink suit and her trademark pillbox hat. They seem to share a moment of what? Intimacy? Triumph? The camera rests on both their faces and they are so alive, so beautiful. They look on top of the world.

But the camera is veering away from them now, leaving the motorcade in the distance, panning over a curved, white pergola, its columns looking cla.s.sically Greek and a bit strange under the bright Texas sun. Then leafless early-winter trees come into sharp focus, and globe streetlights along an open gra.s.sy knoll. The crowd is spa.r.s.er here, almost eerily calm as they wait for the motorcade to pa.s.s by.

The camera lingers awhile on a handsome, bareheaded man, all dapper in a dark suit, standing next to a freeway sign. He carries an umbrella in the crook of his arm, odd for there is not a cloud in the sky, but now the camera is leaving him, moving on to an all-American family who could have walked straight out of the pages of the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. The mother looking Jackie-like in her red, sleeveless s.h.i.+ft dress and matching red heels, the father holding his boy on his shoulders, telling him, maybe, how he is going to remember this day forever. The day he saw the president of the United States of America.

The camera jumps now, over to a wooden picket fence that separates the gra.s.sy knoll from what looks to be a parking lot near a railroad yard. Stopping suddenly to focus on a man in a brown suit and a hat who is standing behind the fence, using it as a blind, because he has a rifle in his hands.

The camera is resting on his profile, studying his thoughtful expression, when the man suddenly turns and stares directly into the lens, and his eyes light up, as if he knows he's the star in this macabre home movie and he wants everyone else to know it, too. But after a moment his face hardens, turns cruel, and he looks away, back toward the gra.s.sy knoll.

Slowly, he brings the rifle to his shoulder and sights down the barrel.

Then it's all a blur-pergola, trees, gra.s.s, asphalt, people-nothing but a whirling kaleidoscope of color until the camera freezes again on the dapper man with the umbrella. The man seems tense, waiting for something. Suddenly, he snaps open the umbrella and raises it high above his head. Is it a signal to the man with the rifle? Because the camera is jumping now, down the street, and the president's car is coming into view, closer and closer. The camera zooms in on that famous, smiling face, locking in so close it fills the apartment wall.

He looks happy, he's playing to the crowd, loving the adulation, the cheers. Then his hand stops in midwave, and he half turns to Jackie. Has he heard something? Seen something?

Suddenly, he reaches up and clutches at his throat with both hands. He looks so surprised, and Jackie is reacting now, too, glancing over at her husband, not understanding what has already happened, what else is going to happen soon now. Then she understands and horror twists her face.

The driver, too, is turning to look over his shoulder and the car is slowing, slowing, stopping ...

And the president's head explodes in a red mist and pieces of something white-is it his skull?-are flying through the air.

The camera jerks, then quickly moves over the crowd, recording the hysteria, the terror, the screaming mouths making no sound. Then the camera s.h.i.+fts back to the Lincoln as it madly picks up speed, and a Secret Service agent is running alongside it, jumping onto the trunk, where a piece of the president's skull has landed, and where Jackie, in her bright pink suit and pillbox hat, is climbing out to get it, as if all she has to do is stick it back on and he will be whole again running alongside it, jumping onto the trunk, where a piece of the president's skull has landed, and where Jackie, in her bright pink suit and pillbox hat, is climbing out to get it, as if all she has to do is stick it back on and he will be whole again.

The camera closes in on the president, slumped over onto the seat, no longer moving. It lingers on him, almost lovingly, almost with a mad flourish, as if to show- Look, he's dead, just look, the back of his head is gone. Look, he's dead, just look, the back of his head is gone.

And then the camera, as if suddenly repelled, jerks away from the carnage, back to the killer just as he is stooping to pick up the spent sh.e.l.l casings. As he straightens, he looks directly into the lens, and he grins really big, like, f.u.c.k you, I got it done, didn't I?

Then he spins away and runs toward another man who's standing, waiting, a man in some kind of uniform. Not a cop, though, for he has on pin-striped overalls and a beaked cap, like a railroad worker in a children's book. The a.s.sa.s.sin pitches the gun to him as he pa.s.ses, then he disappears out of the scene.

The camera records every movement of the man in the overalls as he breaks down the rifle, smooth and fast, putting it in a toolbox, and then he is walking along the railroad tracks toward some parked boxcars.

Slowly, the boxcars fade to white.

24.

ZOE STARED at the blank wall, as the tail end of the film flapped around and around on the spinning spool. Her brain refused to work, but her mouth did. at the blank wall, as the tail end of the film flapped around and around on the spinning spool. Her brain refused to work, but her mouth did.

"Holy bejesus."

She kept looking at the wall, as if expecting it to show her more, to continue with the carnage, to show her Lee Harvey Oswald's arrest and his murder by Jack Ruby, maybe show LBJ getting sworn in as president with Jackie in her bloodstained pink suit standing blank-faced beside him.

But there was nothing more. It was over and she'd witnessed history. The real history, not the cooked-up report of the Warren Commission.

She looked at Ry, who stood motionless, staring just as she had at the now blank wall. Then his hand came up, startling her, and she jerked back. But he was only reaching for the switch on the projector to shut it off.

The cold, empty look on his face terrified her.

Carefully, slowly, she said, "What in h.e.l.l is going on here? How did you know my grandmother had this film? Why did did she have it? I know it's real. Nothing like that could be faked ... could it?" she have it? I know it's real. Nothing like that could be faked ... could it?"

Ry put the film back into its can and tossed it on the bed. "No, it's real."

"I want to look at it again," Zoe said, as she watched him pack up the projector. "That man with the rifle, the a.s.sa.s.sin, I think I've seen him somewhere before. And there was another guy, the one with the umbrella? He's the spitting image of this photograph Yasmine Poole just showed me back at the cafe. She said his name is Nikolai Popov, and that he was once a big muckety-muck in the KGB. Of course she could've been lying through her teeth."

"That's always possible," Ry said, though he didn't seem at all surprised to be told that the KGB might have been behind the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination. "We'll talk it through later. Right now we should get out of here."

She took a long, hard look at him. "You know, I had a real nice life back in the day. All I had to worry about was some wifebeater or deadbeat dad going all postal on me, and then the next thing I know my long-lost grandmother turns up murdered, some guy is threatening to pluck out my eyes, I get a letter that sends me to Paris, where I find this icon and end up jumping off a d.a.m.ned bridge and land on piles of soggy newspapers before I nearly drown, and then, just to put the cherry on top of the sundae, I'm lucky enough to meet up with you. But that's not the grand prize, oh, no. I've just found out there really was a second gunman on the gra.s.sy knoll. It's like I went to bed and woke up in the middle of some moonbat conspiracy theory, and right about now I'm thinking you can take your silent act and ... well, I won't be indelicate. Who are you? Just who in h.e.l.l are you? What is going on here? Spit it out now or I'm going to kick you in the b.a.l.l.s."

"I told you who I am."

"Right. Ryland ... no, let's get all cozy here. It's Ry O'Malley with the DEA. But what does-my G.o.d, are you telling me Kennedy was killed over drugs?"

"No."

He snapped the lid on the projector case and pushed to his feet, his eyes dilated, wild. She half-expected him to pull out a gun and shoot her.

Instead he shoved his fingers through his hair and spun away from her. She saw the muscles of his back expand as he drew in deep breaths, got himself back under control. Then he turned to face her again.

"Technically I'm not working for the DEA at the moment. I took what you might call a leave of absence a year and a half ago."

"And decided wouldn't it be fun to join the Russian mafiya mafiya? You must be quite the agent to come up with a cover story good enough to fool my mother and her security investigators, because she's no dummy. She's many other things, but no dummy."

"If you have the means and the know-how to do it, it's easy enough to create a background for yourself-a Social Security number, false immigration papers, a prison record. Get some skell to vouch for what a bada.s.s you are. Stuff like that. It's called creating a legend. We do it all the time in the DEA."

"I bet. So somehow you discovered that my grandmother Katya had the film, and when you couldn't find her, you went undercover as one my mother's vors vors, hoping to pick up a lead from her that would put you on Katya's trail. Have I got that right?"

"Yeah, that's about it in a nutsh.e.l.l."

She waited, but he said nothing more. "Okay. Then there's one or two other things I'd like to know. How did you know my grandmother had the film in the first place? How did you know it even existed? And the man with the rifle, the killer? You know who he is, don't you?"

"Yes, I know." His eyes met hers. The violence was still there, but it was being banked by something that looked oddly like pain.

"Then tell me."

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a photograph. It was her photograph, or rather her grandmother's, the one she'd found tucked inside the casket. The one of Katya Orlova and Marilyn Monroe and- "Hey, that's where I've seen the shooter before!" Zoe took the photograph to study it more closely. Mike and Marilyn and me ... Mike and Marilyn and me ... "Yesterday in Boris's shop, I was so focused on my grandmother and how cool it was that she knew Marilyn Monroe, I didn't really look at this Mike guy in the booth with them, but it's him, it's Kennedy's a.s.sa.s.sin and-oh, my G.o.d, I can't believe I didn't put it together before. "Yesterday in Boris's shop, I was so focused on my grandmother and how cool it was that she knew Marilyn Monroe, I didn't really look at this Mike guy in the booth with them, but it's him, it's Kennedy's a.s.sa.s.sin and-oh, my G.o.d, I can't believe I didn't put it together before. O'Malley O'Malley. My mother's stepfather, Katya's husband, his name was Mike O'Malley and ..."

She looked from the photograph to Ry O'Malley's harsh face, back to the photo again.

"Yeah," Ry said. "I look like just like him, don't I?"

RY WENT TO the window, lifted the shade, and sunlight filled the room. He pulled aside the lace curtain to check out the street below. She knew what he was feeling. She was the the window, lifted the shade, and sunlight filled the room. He pulled aside the lace curtain to check out the street below. She knew what he was feeling. She was the pakhan pakhan's daughter, after all.

"The kil-the man in the film ... He's your father."

Ry said nothing, so Zoe went on, "And Yasmine Poole wasn't lying, was she? I could tell by your reaction when I told you about the photograph of Nikolai Popov. He really was in the KGB, which means your father probably worked for the KGB, too. The KGB killed Kennedy."

"Apparently so."

"Why?"

Ry gave a short, bitter laugh. "That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?"

She stared at his back. She was sure he knew way more than he was telling, and it was starting to p.i.s.s her off because while his father may have been the killer, it seemed to be her neck on the line here now.

"That was no home movie taken by some random person who showed up to watch the president of the United States drive by that day in Dallas. Whoever had that camera in his hands-no, scratch that. The camera was in her her hands, wasn't it? My grandmother's. That's how she ended up with the film of the a.s.sa.s.sination. She was hands, wasn't it? My grandmother's. That's how she ended up with the film of the a.s.sa.s.sination. She was there there."

Ry said nothing, so Zoe went on, "And your ... the a.s.sa.s.sin. He knew she was there. You could tell by the way he was mugging for the camera. But why film it in the first place? Certainly it wasn't to show that he'd pulled off the job, because Kennedy's death would've been proof enough for that-"

"Life insurance," Ry said, cutting her off. He let the curtain fall back into place and turned to face her. "Because once the a.s.sa.s.sination went down, the triggerman would be a loose end to whoever ordered the job, and loose ends get whacked."

Whacked. That sounded like something out of GoodFellas GoodFellas, except it wasn't funny.

"I guess that's what I am now. A loose end," Zoe said, not trying to hide how scared she was. "I think I want to go home now."

"Hey." His face softened, his eyes squinting into his version of a smile. "For an amateur, you've been handling yourself pretty well. Don't wimp out on me now."

"Thanks, I guess.... The one thing I'm not getting, though, is where the ponytailed man fits into this. He's got a Russian accent, so you'd think he'd be working for this Popov guy and the KGB, or whatever they're calling themselves these days, trying to get his hands on the film. But, no, he kills my grandmother, then he comes after me with a bicycle chain, but with him it's all about the altar of bones-"

Ry closed the distance between them so fast, Zoe didn't even know what was happening until it was too late. He grabbed her shoulders, spun her around, and pushed her against the wall. He spoke softly, but each word was distinct and deadly. "What do you know about the altar of bones?"

She tried to knee him in the b.a.l.l.s, but he had the whole length of his body pressed up against hers and she couldn't get any leverage. She said, "I'll give you two seconds to put me down, and then I'm going to scream so loud they'll hear me on top of the Eiffel Tower."

He put her down.