Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Also by Richard Montanari
Acknowledgements
Prologue
The Devil’s Garden
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part Two
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Part Three
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Epilogue
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Copyright © Richard Montanari 2009
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ALSO BY RICHARD MONTANARI
Deviant Way
The Violet Hour
Kiss of Evil
The Rosary Girls
The Skin Gods
Broken Angels
Play Dead
The Devil does not always wear boots – he sometimes comes barefoot.
–Estonian proverb
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Meg Ruley, Peggy Gordijn, Jane Berkey, Christina Hogrebe, Don Cleary, and everyone on the front line at the Jane Rotrosen Agency; thanks to Kate Elton, Jason Arthur, Susan Sandon, Rob Waddington, Trish Slattery, Oli Malcolm, Jay Cochrane, Louisa Gibbs, Emma Finnigan, Lucy Beaumont, Claire Round, Chrissy Schwartz, and all at Random House UK; thanks to Darin Brannon and Tiina Fischgrund; and a special thanks to Robert Masters, Esq. of the Queens County District Attorney’s Office, and Detective Rick Torelli, NYPD. As always, grazie mille di cuore, Pop.
PROLOGUE
NORTH-EASTERN ESTONIA – MARCH 2005
Elena Keskküla knew they would come at midnight, bathed in the blood of ancients, just as she had known so many things in her fifteen years. As the ennustaja of her village – a fortuneteller and mystic whose readings were sought by believers from as far away as Tallinn and St Petersburg – she had always been able to glimpse the future. At seven she saw her family’s small potato farm overrun by vermin. At ten she saw Jaak Lind lying in a field in Nalchik, the blackened flesh of his palms fused around the face of St Christopher. At twelve she foretold the floods that washed away much of her village, saw the peat bogs choked with dead livestock, the bright parasols adrift on rivers of mud. In her brief time she had seen the patience of evil men, the heartbreak of motherless children, the souls of all around her laid bare with shame, with guilt, with desire. For Elena Keskküla the present had always been past.
What she had not seen, what had been denied the terrible blessing of her second sight, was the torment of bringing lives into this world, the depth to which she loved these children she would never know, the grief of such loss.
And the blood.
So much blood . . .
HE CAME TO HER BED on a warm July evening, nearly nine months earlier, a night when the perfume of rue flowers filled the valley, and the Narva River ran silent. She wanted to fight him, but she had known it would be futile. He was tall and powerful, with large hands and a lean, muscular body marked with the tattoos of the villainous vennaskond. Drug lord, usurer, extortionist, thief, he moved like a wraith in the night, ruling the towns and villages of Ida-Viru County with a ruthlessness unknown even during Soviet occupation.
His name was Aleksander Savisaar.
Elena had first seen him when she was a child, standing in the place of the gray wolf. She knew then that he would come to her, enter her, although she was far too young at the time to know what it meant.
At morning he stole away as quietly as he had come. Elena knew he had left his seed in her, and that he would one day return to reap what he had sown.
Over the many months that followed, Elena saw his eyes every waking moment, felt his warm breath on her face, the cruel power of his touch. Some nights, when the air was still, she heard the music. Those who whispered of him said on these nights Aleksander Savisaar would sit on Saber Hill overlooking the village, and play his flute, his long fair hair blown back by the Baltic winds. They said he was quite learned in Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. Elena did not know of these things. What she did know was that many times, when his song soared over the valley, the lives within her stirred.