Last to Fold

CHAPTER 41

I overslept. I would’ve overslept more if Victoria hadn’t shaken me at eight, already fully dressed. We’d gone to bed and fallen asleep immediately, holding hands. Her only words had been “You look worse every time I see you.”

I’d taken a shower to wash off the kerosene smoke, and she’d made me ice the worst of my burns. I went along with that until she fell asleep, then tossed the ice in the sink and joined her in happy unconsciousness. The accumulating punishment was taking its toll.

She said, “You’re on your own again, which scares the hell out of me, but I figure you’ll find more trouble no matter what I do.”

I couldn’t argue.

“You know what’s good for you, you’ll get your pal Petrovin and that girl in to talk to Coyle.”

“My pal? I thought he was working with you.”

“He’s off the reservation. Just another ex-socialist to me now.”

“We do stick together.”

“That’s one thing, among many, I’m afraid of. You know who set that fire, don’t you?”

A question I could dodge, given the hour and everything that had happened. Given everything I feared could happen, a question I should avoid entirely.

I didn’t want to. Life’s not as easy as crossing a field, I’d told Bernie. “I have an idea.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. “You gonna do anything about it—other than tell Coyle, which is what you should do?”

“I’m thinking about that.”

“Sugar, I said it before and I’ll say it again, ’cause we both know you’re thickheaded. You gotta choose. You decide to pursue this on your own, you’re on your own. You can kiss me good-bye, only there won’t be no kiss. I won’t have any part of it—and no part of you. It’s gonna hurt both of us, but that’s the way it is.”

She stood and straightened her skirt, the simple motion of her hands pulling my heart harder than anything in years.

“Let me know what you decide.”

She was gone before I could respond—if I’d had anything to say.

I lay there awhile, the aches, pains, and stings picking up strength with gathering consciousness. I started an argument with myself, even though I already knew the outcome, and kept it up while I dressed. I hit the steaming street and ran three miles at half my normal pace, then stopped at the cool gym and worked the weights until everything in my body said enough. I kept arguing while I went home, showered, made some eggs, drank some coffee, and sat at the counter alone debating whether I wanted to spend the foreseeable—and quite likely my entire—future sitting at the counter alone. Physically I felt better for my exertions. Emotionally I might as well have been marooned in a Siberian blizzard.

The office was empty. Foos had taken Pig Pen on one of his periodic outings. The parrot seems to enjoy them, but he’s always glad to get home to the traffic reports. The quiet was fine by me. I pulled up the file from Ratko’s database on the computer.

Whatever else Kosokov had been—arrogant, venal, stupid, depending on who you asked and who you believed—he was also meticulous. Ratko’s hard drive did indeed include the records of Rosnobank, at least those relating to the Cheka, annotated in painstaking detail by the banker himself. Every Cheka operation financed through Rosnobank from 1992 through 1999 was there—assassinations, at home and abroad (I recognized many of the names), funds channeled to pro-Russian political parties, insurgents and militias in the former Soviet Republics, money for pro-Cheka entrepreneurs buying up government assets in the early transition years. Thousands of transactions aggregating hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe more. The only thing Kosokov hadn’t provided was a total. Every transaction carried the approval of one of a half-dozen Cheka officers identified in code, although they must have felt increasingly imperious over time— in very un-Cheka fashion, they hadn’t tried hard to obfuscate. The approval that appeared most often was ChK22. I knew that designation.

The final entries were labeled—in chilling Soviet fashion—Chechen Freedom Security Undertaking, CFSU. The list of transactions showed how the Cheka had moved money to purchase the explosive RDX, rent the rooms where the bombs were placed, compensate the bombers, and bribe landlords, janitors, superintendents, police, and others who might interfere. There was a parallel network of payments, with the money emanating from banks in Grozny—obviously to implicate Chechen separatists once the damage was done. No question, no question beyond a reasonable doubt, no question beyond any doubt, that the Cheka organized, financed, and executed the September 1999 bombings of four apartment buildings that killed three hundred people, started a bloody war, and propelled Putin to the presidency. Gorbenko, Chmil, Petrovin—they were all right, and so far, two of them had died as a result. Petrovin said he was marked. I would be, too. The evidence was all there in bits and bytes. The approvals all came from ChK22. The pain in my gut was worse than anything Sergei could have inflicted.

The door horn sounded, and I jumped eight feet. Foos and Pig Pen. I settled back to earth, my heart still pounding. It went off again. I sprinted to the kitchen and got the SIG Pro from the safe. Carrying it behind my back, safety off, I crept through the last server aisle, where I wouldn’t be spotted. The horn blew twice more. I got to the reception area to see a black guy in a FedEx uniform holding a large box. Feeling only a little bit foolish, I tucked the gun in the small of my back and opened the door. The package had a Moscow return address—Ulica Otradnaja. I signed and carried it back to my office. Inside were the old, dirty, burned remnants of a Russian peasant doll and her travel case of extra clothes. Eva’s Lena.

I dialed Petrovin’s cell phone, hung up after the third ring, and dialed again.

He answered on the second ring. “I was wondering when we’d hear from you.”

“Long night with the FBI. They want to talk to the girl, which I think we should do, if only to get me off the hook. First, though, your package arrived. We should show her the contents.”

“She’s been asking about her mother. Any news?”

“No.”

“She wants to go to the hospital.”

“Bad idea. My Cheka friends are almost certainly watching.”

“Agreed. The same could be true of your place.”

“I’ll come to you. I’ll be sure I’m alone.”

“Holiday Inn, West Fifty-seventh.”

“Big spender.”

“It was that or the Pierre. I’m a poor Russian policeman.”

“Give me an hour.”

A call to Bernie confirmed Felix Mulholland was still in a coma at New York Hospital. The doctors weren’t optimistic. The Basilisk verified I had indeed been talking to a cell phone on West Fifty-seventh between Tenth and Eleventh avenues. This was a time to be doubly careful.

Which is one reason I made it at all.

CHAPTER 42

If Five-by-Five had been Russian—or halfway competent—he would have walked up from behind as I left my building, put his gun to the base of my neck, pulled the trigger, and sent my soul to meet its maker, wherever such meetings take place, my SIG Pro still tucked securely in the back of my belt.

As it was, he tried to run me down from a hundred yards away. Then he tried to follow me back inside. While he was still in his car.

I was crossing Water Street when I heard the racing engine, accelerating fast, getting louder as it closed. A green Range Rover coming straight at me from the south. Some piece of memory reminded me Mulholland owned one of those. I ran back to my building. The Range Rover skidded and squealed into the crosswalk, turning in my direction. The engine raced again. I made it through the door just before the car jumped the curb and crashed into the steel and stone of the facade.

The front of the SUV collapsed like an accordion. The windshield shattered. The rest of the cab remained remarkably intact. Five-by-Five was conscious, if dazed, in the driver’s seat, cocooned in multiple air bags, which now hung deflated around him.

I was able to open the driver’s door. A small crowd gathered behind. Five-by-Five reached for his armpit, but he was much too slow. I yanked out his Colt automatic and tossed it to the back of the car.

“I didn’t kill no one,” he said.

“Can you get to your seat belt?”

“I didn’t kill no one. You fooking lied.”

“Okay. Seat belt.”

“I didn’t kill no one. You lied.” He was shouting.

“That’s why you tried to run me down?”

“Told you, don’t like fookin’ snoops. Don’t like fookin’ snoops who lie.”

I reached for the latch. Jammed. I pulled and twisted to no avail. His breath said he’d been drinking beer. A lot of it.

“I didn’t lie,” I said.

“He fired me. You did that.”

That stopped me. “Mulholland? Fired you?”

“I didn’t kill no one.”

“When? When did he fire you?”

“Yesterday. Said you said I killed that kid. I didn’t shoot him. He was dead.”

I gave up struggling with the seat belt. A voice behind me yelled, “We called nine-one-one. Ambulance on the way. Is he all right?”

“He’s okay,” I called back. I said quietly to Five-by-Five, “Tell me quick, what happened at that loft?”

“Don’t like fookin’ snoops.”

“I can get your job back. He’ll listen to me.”

He looked at me with blurred eyes, half hateful, half desperate. The beer, the impact, and the air bags slowed his processing ability, never swift, to a crawl. I wanted out of there before the cops arrived. They’d have me back in front of Sawicki and Coyle in no time.

“Lachlan, if I made a mistake, I’ll make good on it. I mean that. Tell me what happened last Wednesday. I’ll talk to your boss, tell him I was wrong.”

He looked me over one more time before blurting out his account of events at Greene Street. A few more pieces fell into place.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said when he finished. “Help’s coming. They’ll get you out of here.”

I backed away into the crowd. “He’ll be all right,” I announced to anyone and everyone. “More shock than anything else.”

“What’d he say?” somebody asked.

“Trying to explain what happened,” I replied, continuing to back up until I found myself at the rear of the group, which was collectively pushing forward to get closer to the carnage. I heard sirens as I walked a block south, crossed Water (looking both ways), and trotted up Wall Street. I didn’t stop until I reached the subway platform.

CHAPTER 43

I used the entire New York transportation system, excluding only ferries, to make sure I arrived at the Holiday Inn free of tails. The hotel looked out of place in Manhattan, as do almost all chains, but the white brick, balconied, utilitarian architecture appeared true to its brand. The frayed carpet in the lobby and the smell of institutional cleanser in the hallways may have been more true than the brand wanted. Petrovin had rented two adjoining rooms on the fourth floor, the door between them open. He greeted me with a handshake, Eva with a hug and tears. “I kn… know you’re trying to h… h… help, m… me, but it’s all m… m… m… my f… fault.”

I said, “Your mom’s still in a coma. The doctors aren’t sure what will happen. She was badly hurt last night—which wasn’t your fault at all. Someone else did that to her. You have any idea who?”

She shook her head. She was dressed in clean jeans and a T-shirt. Petrovin had bought her some new clothes.

“We can’t take you to see her until we figure out who wants to hurt you. You understand that?”

She nodded slowly.

“You’re going to have to talk to the police, tell them what happened last night. Okay?”

She nodded again.

“I brought you something. I’ll put it in the other room.”

I went next door and laid out Lena and her case on the bed. Petrovin followed me. I held my breath and called her.

She saw the doll and collapsed in the doorway. Petrovin and I moved to help, but she pushed herself up and fell again across the bed, holding what was left of Lena in her fingers. She started to cry. Petrovin sat on the bed, moving ever so slowly, and put an arm around her shoulders. “We know about you and Lena and that day in the barn. But we want to hear your story. Will you tell us what happened?”

She looked up at him and then at me.

“He’s right, Eva. I want to hear it, too.”

She looked back and forth between the two of us, her eyes heavy with tears. “I t… t… tried to do s… something! I d… did! I tried so h… h… hard. But the ropes… The fire was too h… hot. I t… tried…”

She collapsed again, crying without control. Petrovin cradled her.

“This was your father, right, your real father?” I asked as gently as I could. “You tried to free him. He died in the fire at the barn.”

She stopped crying just long enough to nod. Then she returned to the Gulag of memory.

Eva cried herself out and fell asleep. Petrovin and I let her rest. We ordered sandwiches from room service and ate next door, not saying much, each of us working through his own thoughts. I wondered if his were that much different from mine.

She slept for more than an hour before she appeared at the doorway.

I said, “Hungry?”

Half a sandwich disappeared in a flash. She was working on the second when Petrovin said, “Feel like talking?”

She nodded slowly and sat on the corner of the bed. It took a couple of false starts, but once she got going, the story came tumbling out. Having decided to tell it, she wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. The sandwich was forgotten. Only her stutter slowed her down.

I had pieced most of it together in my own mind—I assumed Petrovin had, too—and her account contained no surprises. As she told the story, Petrovin paced the room. At first I thought he was just antsy. He’d been holed up here for hours. In fact, it was anger. The cool customer was losing his composure, like he had last night. Or perhaps he hadn’t pieced it together after all.

As Eva wound down, I could sense him glancing in my direction, eager for action. I was forming a plan. It would require his help. But when the time came, he wasn’t going to have any part of it.

Cheka business, family business. My business to take care of.

Eva stopped talking and looked at the sandwich in her hand, as if she’d forgotten how it got there. She took a bite and chewed, took another and chewed that, but I doubt she tasted a thing. She’d kept her story bottled up for half her life, her secret—I wondered whether even Polina knew the whole tale. Now that she’d told it, she’d cut herself adrift. Disoriented, disconnected, she’d lost track of where she was. Petrovin sensed the same thing and went to the bed and put his arm around her again. She looked up at him, unsure at first—of him, of herself—then she buried her face in his chest and cried. He waited until the sobbing slowed, then disengaged himself. A few minutes later, she was asleep. He and I went next door.

“Murdering bastard,” Petrovin said, not bothering to hide his anger.

I couldn’t argue. I felt the dull ache of loss, as I had the previous night, mixed up with the pains of my other wounds. Friendship masks, loyalty blinds, and I was guilty of both.

“I have one question,” I said as calmly as I could. “He set that fire last night to mirror the fire in the barn. Eva was going to watch her mother burned alive, just like her father. If she didn’t die, the trauma would drive her over the edge.”

“The one person who can place him at the dacha that day. She knows he murdered Kosokov.”

“How did he know she was in the barn? How did he know to stage that fire?”

“Easy,” Petrovin said. “The Cheka had the whole place wired. We found the bugs in the house. I bet they did the barn, too. If he didn’t know at the time, he did when he listened to the tape.”

That sounded right. Suddenly I felt my own rage rising, as much at the calculated premeditation—against a child—as at the heinousness of the crimes themselves.

“I need a favor, some help from your pal Ivanov.”

He arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know. I can’t—”

“You can try. For Eva as well as for me. Tell him Polina’s dead. Eva, too. The papers reported one victim, in critical condition. Ivanov can break the story that there were two—and they didn’t make it. Tell him that fallout shelter was an old KGB meeting place in the 1980s.”

He gave me a long look. “I’ll try. But what are you hoping to achieve?”

“I would have thought that was obvious—flush a badger from his lair.”

“And then?”

“Haven’t got that far yet,” I lied. “Right now, we need to take Eva to talk to Coyle. She has to sooner or later, and I need her to support my story and get them off my back. Meet me downtown and we’ll figure out how to get into the hospital to see her mother, assuming she’s still alive.”

Or he could. I’d be doing something else entirely.

Bernie had yet another lawyer meet Eva and me at the FBI’s offices. Coyle was mildly surprised I’d delivered on my promise and was almost friendly until Bernie’s lawyer arrived and started making demands on behalf of his client. Coyle threw me out. I didn’t blame him.

“Russky! Where’s cutie?” Pig Pen squawked as soon as he saw me.

“Busy right now, Pig Pen. Maybe she’ll be by later.”

“Hot number!”

Petrovin had moved quickly and Ivanov even faster. A new post on Ibansk.com couldn’t have been more than a few minutes old. I took in the substance. They’d done their work well. The recipient would feel one step from liberation. He didn’t know I was that step. Not for sure—yet.

I had to admire Ivanov’s editorializing—“Murder in Moscow is an organizational right”—but it wouldn’t register where it counted. Ivanov spoke truth to the powers that couldn’t see it anymore. In a society where murder had long been an organizational right, that was one reason Ibansk.com had achieved the status it had among the rest of us.

On the other hand, the facts, the details, they would register—at least where I wanted them to. The shelter, the kerosene, the fire, the booby-trapped door—they comprised the message I was sending. He’d have to assume I was the source. Time to make sure my message was received.

I went down to the street and walked a few blocks north until I found a pay phone. I dialed Brighton Beach and put a folded paper towel over the mouthpiece.

“Read Ibansk.”

CHAPTER 44

The empty construction site at John F. Kennedy International Airport wasn’t as cool or pretty as Central Park had been ten days before—but it was as good a place as any again to contemplate irony and fate. The roar of aircraft above the Valdez, parked in a rain-rutted access road, provided a backdrop of white noise. The airport hummed with early-evening activity, but my spot was empty and lifeless—the reason I’d chosen it. Whatever happened later, I didn’t want any witnesses.

Play the cards you’re dealt, I’d told Petrovin. Here’s one that’ll change your hand, he told me. Play it straight, Victoria said, and play according to Coyle. Sometimes the straight fills or you draw that fourth queen. This wasn’t one of them. However the hand played out tonight, nobody was going to be happy with the outcome, except perhaps to still be alive.

Ivanov turned out to be prescient in one respect—Polina hadn’t made it. She’d slipped off into her own netherworld, without regaining consciousness. Probably just as well. The pain would have been unbearable, and the sight of her mutilated face would have sent her screaming into lunacy. I felt more anger than sorrow. She’d done her best to ruin my life and done an excellent job, but no one deserved the fate she got, and neither God nor predetermination had a damned thing to do with it.

I’d called Petrovin with the news. There was a long pause before he said in a quiet voice that he’d tell Eva, if that was okay with me. I told him to go ahead and felt even worse when I lied about meeting them back at the Holiday Inn.

It was still light when I got to the airport. I drove around the loop road twice before I found what I wanted—a construction site for a new terminal, I didn’t care whose, locked up for the night. I pulled into the access road, cluttered with building materials and debris, parked to one side, and put a Homeland Security card—the companion to my forged ID—on the dashboard, just in case. The Basilisk had told me what I needed to know. Air France flight 9, departing JFK at 11:00 P.M., connecting at Charles de Gaulle with AF 2244 to Moscow, had a new passenger. I’d joined the evening rush hour into Queens.

I keep the trunk of the Valdez stocked with tools likely to come in handy, such as wire cutters. As dusk lowered, I used a pair to open a hole in the chain-link fence behind a construction trailer and took a stroll around. Hot, muggy, muddy. The steel frame of the new terminal was silhouetted against the hazy orange-gray sky. Looked as though the building would follow the curve of an airplane wing, rising from maybe two stories in the back to four or five in the front. A concrete floor had been poured at ground level, covering half the space; the rest was still open to the gaping foundation below. The site itself was mud and earth, mounded and rutted by rain and trucks.

I needed a place to wait and watch, out of sight, and I found what I wanted in a row of giant concrete pipe sections, easily eight feet in diameter, not far from the building. I could stand inside any one, invisible in shadows and the darkening night, with a clear view to the fence. With luck, the pipes would echo, too, and he might not be able to tell where I was. We’d get to that in due course—or so I hoped.

My watch read 8:02. Time to make the call, before he got here. I punched in the number. He answered on the third ring.

“We need to talk,” I said.

“About what? I’m on my way home. I’m sick of this place.”

“I know. I’m at JFK. You’ve got plenty of time.”

“How did you know… Where are you?”

“Construction site between Terminals Seven and Eight. There’s a little access road on your right as you come along. You’ll see my car, black Ford Crown Victoria.”

“We can’t meet in the terminal, like normal people?”

“I have people looking for me, official people, thanks to you and last night.” The best kind of lie—plausible and uncheckable.

“What is it we need to discuss—in such clandestine fashion?”

“I have what you want.”

That stopped him cold. I think he muted the phone—the silence was complete, no background noise, just ether hum, for a good thirty seconds, maybe more. When he spoke again, his voice had changed, hardened.

“What makes you think so?”

“Gorbenko, Kosokov, Polina, Eva. They all died for it.” The hook set, I could feel it. “Three hundred other Russians died, too, for what? Putin? A war? The Cheka? They included Rislyakov’s parents, by the way. At Guryanova Street. You missed that. Not like you.”

He bit. Hard. “Stay where you are. I’m half an hour away.”

“There’s a hole in the fence behind the construction trailer. I’ll be inside.”

He hung up. I walked back to the Valdez, retrieved an aluminum baseball bat from the trunk, leaned against the back side of the trailer, and waited.

Thirty-two minutes later, a car pulled into the access road, headlights off. It rolled up behind the Valdez, and the driver cut the engine. The noise of traffic and planes hadn’t lessened. The doors stayed closed, no one moved, nothing happened for five more minutes. Then two of Lachko’s men climbed out. The driver came in my direction, and the other went behind the car. I moved deeper into the shadows.

The driver passed by me and went through the fence. His colleague lifted a flat canister out of his trunk, the size of a small trash can lid, and approached the Valdez. He put the canister on the ground and knelt over it. I covered the distance between us in half a dozen steps. He heard me when I was six feet away and got out a yelp before the aluminum bat caught the side of his face. He fell forward into a muddy puddle. I pulled him to one side so he wouldn’t drown and examined the bomb he was about to attach to the underside of the Valdez. They’d come prepared. I searched the man until I found a small radio detonation device. I put that in my pocket, took the Glock automatic he was carrying, and crouched behind the car. The other man returned a few minutes later. When he saw his partner, he ran forward, adding force when I stood and swung the bat into his gut. He doubled over and collapsed. I grabbed duct tape from my trunk and bound his ankles and wrists. I did the same to his unconscious colleague and dragged him to the back of their car. It was open. The utility light reflected off two ugly machine pistols with big silencers. I removed the clips, tossed the guns aside, and lifted the comatose weight into the trunk. I returned to the driver, who was trying to relearn how to breathe. A search of his pockets yielded another Glock and a cell phone. I hefted the car bomb and dropped it on his chest, dealing his lesson a setback. Yards of duct tape later, it was strapped securely to his midsection. He could almost breathe again, but he was shaking with terror.

I held out his cell phone. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said in Russian. “We’re going to make a call. To your boss. You’re going to talk. Then I’m putting you in the car and going inside with this.” I held up the detonator. The eyes told me all I needed to know. “Say the right words, and he shows up here, you live, maybe. Say the wrong ones, he doesn’t show, in ten minutes I push the button. Ten minutes. That’s all you get.”

He nodded hard.

“Number?”

He reeled off ten digits in Russian. I punched them into the phone and held it to the side of his head. He spoke fast. “The cinema’s open, the movie starts soon,” he said.

I had to assume that was code for all clear. He was too scared to lie. I put one more piece of tape over his mouth and shoved him toward the back of his car. A judicious tap with the bat, and he fell over into the trunk. I lifted in his legs and slammed the lid.

I used his phone to call Brighton Beach. One more check, to be sure.

Lachko came on immediately. “What the fuck now?”

“Your men fucked up. You should have sent competent people, not useless old cunts.” I used urki slang.

“What the fuck are you talking about? I didn’t send anyone anywhere.”

“Just checking.”

I cut the connection and got my vest out of the Valdez. I put it on under my jacket. It added to the heat of the night, but I ignored that. With a quick look around, I returned to the row of outsized pipe sections to wait, Eva’s story running around in my mind.

CHAPTER 45

She and her mother had moved out of the apartment they shared with Lachko a few months before the fire. Eva wasn’t sorry—Polina and Lachko had been fighting continuously for half a year. They were staying at their dacha in the Valdai Hills, which Eva didn’t like because there was little to do compared with Moscow. She was having trouble fitting into her new school, both educationally (she was at least a year ahead of everyone else) and socially. They were also spending a lot of time with Uncle Tolik, as she knew him, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She had picked up on his signals. Most of the time, he didn’t want her around, and he was sending those signals that day, even before the stranger arrived.

She went out to the barn with the doll she called Lena, despite the cold and snow. She was still exploring all the rooms and spaces of the old structure, which had horse stalls and haylofts, a workshop, garage bays and a warren of under-rooms that smelled like pigs. She was upstairs in the hayloft when Mom and Uncle Tolik and the stranger came in. The man came in first, then her mother carrying the shotgun. Uncle Tolik trailed behind as if he wanted to be somewhere else. Her mother made the man open the trapdoor—something Eva hadn’t discovered yet.

The blast from the gun was so loud she thought the whole barn had exploded. She hadn’t seen it, since she’d ducked behind the hayloft wall. When she peeked over, the stranger was gone. Her mother still held the gun. Had she fired? Where was the other man? Her mother and Uncle Tolik argued. She was too shocked and scared to remember the specifics. She heard her name—they didn’t know where she was. No way she could come out now, they’d both be mad at her. Her mother said she was going back to their dacha to pick up some things. Then she’d come back here and they’d all leave. Eva didn’t know where they were going—or why. She decided to wait right where she was until her mother got back. She was scared of Uncle Tolik and what he might do if he found out where she’d been.

She was watching for her mother’s return, out the hayloft window, when she saw another car pull in, a big limousine. She saw the driver shoot the caretaker as he came out to greet them. Now she was really scared. Then he got out of the car. The man her mother had taught her to fear above all others. “He hates you, as he hates me,” she told her whenever she mentioned his name. “Never trust him. Never trust any Chekist. He wants to see you boiled alive.”

She went looking for a better hiding place.

She was near the horse stalls on the main floor when the door opened and the light came on. The Chekist came in with Uncle Tolik. She saw the gun in his hand and ducked into a stall. She was afraid she’d been spotted, but he didn’t come to look.

The Chekist had a bottle, and he made Uncle Tolik drink. Again and again. He kept asking the same questions—“Where are the CDs? Where are the copies you made?”—over and over. Uncle Tolik wouldn’t answer. The Chekist got madder and madder. Uncle Tolik threw up. She could remember the smell. The Chekist hit him with the gun and kicked him on the floor. Then he came toward her.

She thought she’d been discovered. She climbed through a loose board into the stall next door. The gun fired. She heard the crack and the thud of the bullet as it sank into the wood—right where she’d been. He must have seen her. No. He walked on, into the garage. Terrified, she wanted to run, but even if she made it out of the barn without getting caught—a big if in her nine-year-old mind—where would she go? She huddled in a dark corner, behind an old hay trough. She couldn’t see what happened next. She heard the Chekist doing something, then smelled the petrol. He went back to the garage—she heard him go past a second time—and the petrol smell got stronger.

Finally, he spoke again, still asking about the CDs. Uncle Tolik’s voice was faint, but somehow she knew he wasn’t telling. After a minute, the Chekist said, “I’m going to light a match. I estimate you’ll have five minutes. Shout if you change your mind.”

She heard Tolik’s answer this time.

“Fuck off. You’re just another Cheka killer.”

She came out of her hiding place and saw the fire encircling the barn. She remembered that clearly—it was like a train, the fiery engine racing along an invisible track. Behind it flames climbed the old wooden walls. In seconds, she was surrounded.

She ran to Uncle Tolik, who was tied to one of the wooden columns supporting the barn’s roof.

“Eva! What the hell? Get out of here! Quick!”

She ignored him and pulled at the ropes. The heavy knots were too much for her little fingers.

“Eva! Find a knife or saw. Something sharp!”

She ran around the barn, but there was nothing she could use. The fire had already blocked off the workshop.

She went back to Kosokov and pulled at the knots again.

“Eva! Listen to me, you can’t do it. Run, while you still have time. Run!”

She ignored him. The fire had enveloped the walls. She remembered the searing heat as it started to spread across the roof. Kosokov must have used his hip to push her away as burning wood and shingle fell where she had stood. It exploded as it hit the ground, and a chunk landed in her lap. Her skirt was aflame in an instant. Panicked, she ran in circles, only serving to fan the flames.

“In the hay! Jump in the hay!” Kosokov called. She did as he said. The pain was like nothing she’d ever felt. When she stopped rolling around, she wasn’t burning anymore, but the hay was. There was nowhere that wasn’t aflame. She had no idea anything could be this hot.

“Eva! Do this for me. Please. For your mother. The shelter. Over there. The trapdoor. Go down there and close the door. It’s your only chance. Now, child! Please!”

Another piece of roof fell, this one striking Uncle Tolik on the head. He slumped sideways, the ropes holding him up as his clothes started to burn. Another load of burning wood and shingle fell next to her. The hay pile was a bonfire.

She did as Uncle Tolik said. She heard the roar of the roof giving way just after she pulled the door closed.

It was hot, but nothing like aboveground. Her legs felt like they were still aflame. She slipped on the stairs and fell, landing on the stranger’s body. His dead eyes stared at her. She screamed and screamed and screamed. There was no one to hear her but him.

She had no idea how long she was down there. All she remembered was her burning legs. She found some water and poured that on, which helped a little, but the pain wouldn’t let up. Eventually, she thought, she just passed out. She didn’t remember anything until the trapdoor opened and she screamed again, certain the Chekist had come back for her.

“Eva! Oh my God! Eva!”

It was her mother. Polina carried her up to the smoldering ruin, the snow, and the dark night above. Eva’s memory was of a full moon, dark gray and hostile behind the black clouds blowing across the sky.

Her mother took her to the house and tried to treat her with snow and creams, but the skin was already twisted and discolored, and it stank. Eva threw up.

The rest was a blur. Her mother gave her something to drink—doubtless laced—and they drove for hours. She didn’t get medical attention until two days later, the first of several attempts to deal with what must have been second- or third-degree burns to her thighs. Somewhere along their journey, Polina informed Eva that Lachko wasn’t her real father, that it was the man she hadn’t been able to save from the inferno. I don’t often give Polina credit for kindness, but I do believe she was trying to help. The main thing she accomplished, of course, was to pile an unbearable failure onto the already hopeless guilt of a nine-year-old child. She started stuttering a few months later.

CHAPTER 46

He arrived at nine twenty-four. I heard the car pull in and stop, the engine cut off. One door opened and closed. A minute later, he stooped through the hole in the fence. He was wearing a suit and tie. His hands were empty. He stopped a few feet inside and tried to scan the building site. His eyes weren’t as well adjusted to the dark as mine. I let him look for a minute before I called from inside one of the pipe sections.

“Hello, Iakov.”

He turned and moved toward the noise, stumbling once or twice on the uneven ground. He couldn’t see me. When he was about twenty feet away, I said, “That’s far enough.”

He stopped. “Where are you? Show yourself.”

“Maybe in time.”

“What do you want?”

“An accounting, to begin with.”

“Accounting? Of what?”

“Apartment bombings, Kosokov, Polina, Eva, Rislyakov, last night. You choose where to start.”

“You’re talking rubbish. You said you have something.”

“That’s right. The file Rislyakov lifted from Polina’s computer. Kosokov’s Rosnobank file.”

Even twenty feet away in the dark, I could see him stiffen.

“You’ve examined this file?” he said.

“Yes. I also know about Gorbenko. He was wearing a wire that day, a CPS wire. You missed that, too. Sloppy.”

He swore under his breath. I moved two pipes away, staying in the shadows. I’d been right about the echo. My voice bounced all around.

“What do you want, Turbo? What’s the point?”

“An accounting, like I said. I want to hear what happened. In your words. You’re the only one who knows the whole story.”

“You mean, you want a confession?”

“The Cheka has always excelled at those. Why not? You and I both know there isn’t going to be any trial. The Cheka would never allow it. You’d never allow it.”

“Then I repeat—what’s the point?”

“I lied for you twenty years ago, because you gave me a chance. I lied for the Cheka, because I took an oath. I’m prepared to hand over Kosokov’s file, and you can bury it along with him and Gorbenko. But I want to hear what happened. That’s my price.”

“There are things about you I’ve never understood, Turbo. Probably never will. Come out here where we can talk face-to-face.”

“I’ll stay where I am.”

“I mean you no harm.”

“And the two urki with their machine pistols and car bomb?”

“Shit! Those were Lachko’s men. I told him—”

“The blinders have been removed, Iakov. You took them off yourself, last night, with the box cutter, the kerosene, and the fire. Tell the story.” I changed pipes again.

He looked at the ground and shook his head. He spoke without raising it.

“It was a fuckup, a giant fuckup, from the start. Patrushev’s operation—he said he had Putin’s blessing. I never found out for sure. A number of us opposed it—if the goal was war with the Chechens, there were other ways. If the goal was to make Putin president, that would happen in due course. But some of my colleagues were impatient—he was one—and they had to have their way.

“Patrushev actually got the idea from the Chechens. They planted a bomb in July in Krasnodar. Didn’t go off, faulty timer. We caught the bombers, they confessed, they named names, and they were dealt with. We took out the whole hierarchy, almost got to Maskhadov himself. Patrushev realized what would have happened if it had exploded, the public outcry, the demand for revenge—it was a way to achieve a goal he’d been after a long time. He took over where the Chechens left off. Gorbenko was his choice to run the operation. We already knew he was a problem for us, but he had the expertise and he was a known go-between with the Chechens. When it was over, we could expose him as a Chechen agent and toss him to the wolves.”

I listened in my pipe section, glad he could not see my face. I probably could have covered my surprise, but any little tic, he would have spotted it. It wasn’t the lie that shocked. I was prepared for that. It was the indifference with which he told it—and the realization that he’d been doing so for as long as I’d known him. I should have spotted that years ago, had I been looking.

“You know the rest,” he said. “Bombs in that mall, Buynaksk, Pechatniki, the Kashirskoye Highway. Then Gorbenko got cold feet. He bungled the job in Kapotnya. It didn’t matter by that point. The outcry was everything Patrushev wanted. Even the fuckup in Ryazan—and his foolish statements—couldn’t undermine it.”

I had a minor epiphany as I switched pipes again. Iakov—the ultimate Cheka puppetmaster—had sent Patrushev out to try to deflect accusations against the Cheka, and he’d done it with a claim of innocence he knew full well would meet with disbelief bordering on incredulity.

Iakov was still talking. “There were factions within the organization, as always, but we came together, as we do when we’re under attack. No one could prove anything. I thought we were out of the woods. Then Kosokov’s problems started.

“We’d done business with that bastard for years, since ’92. He was stupid and greedy—easy to manipulate. I never trusted him, though, so we kept watch. Office, apartment, dacha, all wired. That’s how I knew about Polina. We thought he’d weathered the financial storm in ’98, but he’d been adept at hiding his losses. He made the same stupid bets as everyone else. The bank’s balance sheet was in tatters. Only a matter of time until it failed—which would bring in auditors, the Ministry of Finance, that bastard Churnin, and who knows what they’d find?”

“That’s not true—you knew exactly.”

“Fair enough. So, yes, we set the fire at Rosnobank Tower. We took care of the backup data center. I figured Kosokov would make a run for it, and we’d get him at the border, which would look good at the trial. I knew Gorbenko would turn anywhere to save his worthless skin, but the one place I didn’t count on was the CPS. They were impotent—not a factor, not even a consideration.”

Cheka arrogance.

“I heard Gorbenko at the dacha that day—on the tape. I heard him and Kosokov discussing another set of records. I listened to Polina kill him. She shot him in cold blood, if you don’t know. Kosokov didn’t have the balls to do it himself.”

“You set the fire?”

“What?”

“The fire in the barn. The fire that killed Kosokov. The fire that almost killed Eva.”

He took a step forward and peered through the night in my direction. His eyes would be adjusting. He was also buying time to think. I moved deeper into the pipe.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want me to confess to, Turbo? Then I can catch my plane.”

That’s the way it worked in the old days. The interrogator dictated the confession. The only thing the confessor caught was a bullet—in the back of the skull. “The fire, the barn—you burned Kosokov alive.”

I couldn’t make out his face, but I sensed worry, maybe even fear, for the first time.

“I set the fire, yes. I needed the CDs, the bank records he copied. For the Cheka. It never occurred to me he’d die before he talked. I always thought he was a weak man.”

“And Eva?”

“I had no idea she was there.”

“And if you had?”

“Turbo! What the fuck is the point? Shall I just confess to every supposed crime of every Chekist right now? Will that satisfy you?”

“Keep going. What happened next?”

“I followed Polina to her dacha. Just missed her. Maybe we passed on the road. It was snowing hard by then. I went back to Kosokov’s, but travel was slow. She’d come and gone. She slipped through our fingers.

“She’d put what was left of Kosokov in the shelter with Gorbenko. I left them. Better to have everyone asking what happened to the crooked banker than how the crooked banker got burned to death. Once we had Polina, we could discover the bodies and hang both murders around her neck. I never stopped looking, like I told you, but she covered her tracks well. In my mind, it was still unfinished business, and it looked more and more like it would remain unfinished. I’d almost written it off until one day she called—out of the blue.”

“She called you? When?”

“December, just before Christmas.”

Shit! I was the one who was sloppy. I’d missed that. The Basilisk had served it up, and I’d ignored it. The trips to Hammersmith. She’d gone expressly to make untraceable calls to Iakov. She’d gone straight to the source with her blackmail threat. The one man who had everything to lose from exposure. That’s why she’d been so scared. Lachko she could handle. Iakov—she knew better.

He said, “She had the file. Kosokov had hidden the CDs in Eva’s stuff. She demanded a hundred million! Polina was never shy.”

“So the six hundred million you told me she stole, that was another lie.”

“Polina could never get enough. She was the most venal—”

“I’ve heard that speech, Iakov. I was married to her for eight years, remember?”

“If you know so much, why are you asking?”

“Keep talking.”

“Rislyakov set up the payment system. He was supposed to find out who and where she was.”

“Wait a minute. How’d you know about Rislyakov? I thought you and Lachko weren’t talking.”

“As I asked the other day, what kind of jackass do you take me for?”

Of course. He had his own man—or men—inside Lachko’s organization.

“You’re right about Rislyakov’s parents. I didn’t check that, until later, after he disappeared. He was another one—he thought he could outwit the Cheka. Sooner or later, they all learn—you take on the Cheka, you take on the whole organization. Something you might want to bear in mind.”

“Keep going.”

“He was clever. Took a couple of months to catch up. We pegged him in Moscow last month, right before he came back here. I took the next flight and went to the place on Greene Street. That’s where you came in.”

I checked my vest and came out of the pipe. “You shot him, didn’t you?” I said as I came close. “He was going to put the bite on you. You didn’t follow him. He invited you. You gambled that the file was on his computer, or if it wasn’t, no one would find it with him dead. So you killed him as soon as he opened the door.”

“If I did, where was the gun? And who shot me?”

“Polina’s husband’s driver. He arrived at just the wrong time. You’d pulled Ratko into the back hall. Left the door open. He came in after, saw the blood, just like I did. He surprised you, you shot at him, missed, he shot you. He was taking your gun when Eva fired through the door and hit him. They exchanged blind fire, and he left while he still could. You passed out until, as you say, I came in.”

“That’s a fanciful story.”

I was a few feet away. He looked old. He looked tired. The blue eyes still burned defiant.

“You shot Ratko, yes or no?”

“If it makes you happy, yes. Cheka honor was at stake. The only person who will truly miss him is Lachko. That should make you happy.”

Lachko and Eva. “Move to last night.”

“What about it?”

“The scene at the fallout shelter—why? You tortured her, you destroyed her life, then you set it up for her daughter to finish her off—and burn to death herself, too. You hated her, I understand that. She crossed the Cheka, I understand that, too. But why go to all that trouble?”

“I believe this interrogation is over. I have nothing more to say, and I do have a plane to catch. I’ll take the records now. How did you find them, by the way?”

“Not quite yet.” I took the SIG Pro from my vest pocket. “Raise your hands.”

He laughed. “Turbo, such melodrama. You’ve been in this decadent country too long. You think you’re Clint Eastwood.”

“No drama, Iakov. Hands up.”

He raised them slowly, still smiling. I ran my free hand over his suit. A Beretta in the waistband, which I tossed aside. The cell phone was in his breast pocket.

“Hands down now,” I said as I dialed the office. Foos answered right away. “This the phone that called Eva last night?”

“Give me thirty seconds.” He came back on in twenty-five. “That’s it.”

“From Front and Dover?” I said, eyes on Iakov. The smile narrowed.

“That’s right,” Foos said.

“Can you testify to that, under oath?”

“If that’s what you need, sure. He used a carrier that’s easy to track.”

“That’s exactly what I need.”

I pocketed the phone. “There’ll never be a trial in Moscow, that’s true—but there will be one here, maybe two. One for the murder of Ratko Risly. You’ve confessed to that. And one for the murder of Polina.”

The grin was back. “You left out Eva.”

“Eva didn’t die. I was with her. I opened the door and triggered the booby trap. I tried to save Polina, but she was already too far gone.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Turbo. You were in Brighton Beach.”

“That was a good trick you pulled, with Mulholland. But I got back early, and I had help. Eva would have opened that door. Someone stopped her.”

“Help? Who?”

Iakov didn’t know about Petrovin. That was good for Petrovin. “A friend, a Russian friend. He’s close to Ivanov.”

The smile disappeared.

“That piece today…”

“I can play tricks, too.”

“This is pointless, Turbo. Like a Politburo debate. We all knew the outcome before we started. A phone call is nothing. Give me those records. I want to catch my plane.”

“You shouldn’t have come here, Iakov. You should have stayed at home, where you’re untouchable—but there was too much at stake, wasn’t there?”

“I told you, Cheka honor.”

“No. That’s not it. Never was. This is about the Cheka, but it’s more about you. The apartment bombings were never Patrushev’s operation—they were yours. Gorbenko didn’t report to him, he reported to you. You didn’t have Putin’s okay—you were too wily to ask for it, he was too cautious to give it. All went well until Gorbenko realized he was on a one-way trip to his grave. Somebody must’ve made a mistake. Could even have been you. Doesn’t matter now. It all began to come apart with Ryazan. You had to fix it—to save your own skin. You went back to cover your tracks. You got most of them—Kosokov, the bank, Gorbenko, you probably doctored the files to make Patrushev appear responsible—but you missed two. Kosokov copied the records. And Eva. She was in the barn. She saw you. She watched you set the fire that killed Kosokov and almost killed her. That night at Greene Street was the first time she’d seen you since she was nine years old. No wonder she was terrified. Even doped up silly, she knew you’d come back for her.

“You can’t prove—”

“It’s the reason you worked over Polina the way you did. You needed the girl. You needed Polina to make that call. From what I could see, she held out as long as she could—longer. Whatever else you say about her, she loved Eva.”

“You still can’t prove anything.”

“You forget. I have Kosokov’s records. The one unmolested set. The ones he hid, you couldn’t find, and Polina took with her. The ones that made her go to you in December when she needed money. She saw what I saw. Kosokov covered his ass. He made sure every transaction was client-approved. The client doing the approving is you, Iakov. ChK22—that’s your Cheka designation. She knew enough to recognize it. So did I.”

He took a step back. It might have been the darkness, or my imagination, but the blue eyes turned color, closer to Lachko’s gray. “What do you want? Money? Position? Rehabilitation?”

I shook my head. “I’m not a Chekist anymore, Iakov. I’m just an old zek trying to make my way. I was reminded recently about the light of day. I want this whole affair to be seen in the light of day. That’s why there’s going to be a trial. Here. A jury may well decide there’s not enough evidence to convict, but the world—including Russia—will get to see what happened, in 1999, in those apartment buildings, at Rosnobank, in that barn, at Greene Street, last night under the Brooklyn Bridge. Russians will gain a little better idea who runs their country and how they came to be there. I’m not naive, I don’t expect much to change—but we’ve spent too long hiding under a cloak of secrecy and deceit. Tsarist cloak, Bolshevik, Stalinist, Chekist, doesn’t matter. They’re all the same. I’m pulling this one off so everyone can see. That’s what I want.”

“SERGEI!”

“I’m right here,” a new voice said from behind. “Drop the gun, shit-for-brains. Only thing pulled gonna be this trigger.”

Sergei stepped out of the same pipe section I’d been standing in a few minutes before, his big frame just visible against the wall of darkness behind. He held a silenced machine pistol at his hip, like the ones in the car. I let the SIG fall from my hand.

“Move away from him,” Sergei said. “Over there.”

“No.”

“Turbo, don’t be stupid,” Iakov said. “There’s no point now. You played out your hand. You lost. Game over.”

He ran his hands over me and pulled out the hard drive, the recording device in my vest, the detonator, and his cell phone and mine. He picked up my gun and moved away.

“Clint Eastwood,” he said. “Nobility is a fool’s pursuit. If you’re lucky, you end up a dead hero. Usually you just end up dead. Especially when you’re stubborn.

“Just so we’re clear, not that it will matter. Lachko knows nothing of this. Sergei has worked for me for years. Long before Lachko. I recruited him into the Cheka, like you. I flattered you at the hospital, when I said you were the best. Loyalty’s the ultimate test, Turbo. I thought you’d learned that back in 1988.”

I wasn’t ready to fold. Not yet. “I’m not stupid, Iakov. You trained me, remember. I copied that hard drive. It’s in a safe place. Anything happens…”

“You’re bluffing. I don’t blame you, it’s all you have left. Even if you’re not, I’ll take that chance. I’ll be back in Moscow. Sergei will be in Brighton Beach. The girl… things happen, as we know. But no one will be able to put together the story you have, however fanciful. A nick to the Cheka’s pride, perhaps. We’ve endured worse.”

He was right, of course. There would never be a trial in Moscow. Mulholland might try to protect Eva, but he didn’t begin to understand what he was up against. Polina was right to be paranoid. I, on the other hand, had been stupid and, worse than that, arrogant, thinking I could do this myself.

“I’m sorry it worked out like this, Turbo. You always had this streak, you know, I saw it way back when you started with the Cheka. I thought you were smart, you’d learn how the world works, you’d adapt. After all, you’d survived all those years in the camps—you must have learned something. I was wrong. You didn’t learn. You had a chance in ’88. You made the right decision then. It was difficult, I know, but you overcame your misguided instincts and did what was best for yourself, your friends, the organization. I see now that was an aberration. You did what you did for whatever reason, but you hadn’t changed at all.”

There it was. For me anyway, the final Russian irony. Absolution on my execution ground—from my executioner. I’d die, if not happy, without sin.

“I have to get my plane,” he said. “Good-bye, Turbo. I wish it had been different, I mean that.”

He started for the hole in the fence.

“Not yet,” a new voice said.

“WATCH OUT—IN THE PIPES!” I dove at Iakov. Sergei’s machine pistol flashed, and the fire was returned from in front. No noise, just deadly muzzle flame. Iakov sidestepped my lunge and turned toward the intruder, bringing up my SIG. Sergei’s muzzle fire arced upward and disappeared. Iakov was lining up a shot in the dark.

“NO!” I dove again, from my knees, knowing I was too late.

More fire. The force of the slugs threw him back into me. I caught the body and we fell backward into the mud. He was dead before we got there.

I sat in the muck holding his corpse. I felt motion to my right and heard running feet. A minute or two passed before Petrovin walked out of the darkness, dressed in black, head to toe. He held up his own machine gun. “Would have intervened sooner, but it took a while to find the clips for this thing. Next time leave them in one place. Dead?” he said.

“You hit him square.”

“Big guy, too.”

My head was spinning. “How’d you find me?”

“Victoria—and your friend with the hair. She got him to trace your cell phone. He pegged the call you made to Iakov. I convinced them to let me handle it, but I suspect the police aren’t far behind. Victoria—well, you know how patient she is. I heard that speech, by the way, the one about the trial and the cloak, while I was looking for the clip. You’d better watch that idealistic streak. Might cause you to fold prematurely.”

He was smiling. I couldn’t respond. My mind was still on the dead man in my lap. All the emotions fought with each other—sorrow, anger, resentment, doubt—mostly aimed at myself.

“He was going to kill you,” Petrovin said.

“I know. I could have stopped—”

“No. You did what you had to. And you didn’t change a thing. Not as far as he’s concerned.”

“I don’t follow.”

“If I hadn’t killed him tonight, I would have sometime soon, back in Moscow.”

A bell rang in my head. It pointed to something I should see but couldn’t quite make out.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” I said. “Why?”

“You don’t know? Polina was my mother.”

CHAPTER 47

Too much to process, and no time.

One imperative—get Petrovin on a plane. If the Cheka got wind of his presence on this killing ground, he’d be a dead man the moment he set foot on a Moscow street, maybe sooner. No one could know he’d been here—ever.

I pulled Iakov’s airline ticket from his pocket—miraculously, it hadn’t been shredded. He was still traveling as Andropov. He had a passport in the same name. I held both out to Petrovin. “Exchange the ticket, take a ride home on the Cheka. Dump the passport in Paris. I’ll take care of things here.”

He looked skeptical. “How are you going to do that?”

“I’ll think of something. If you don’t go now, you won’t anytime soon. We both know what that means. Leave the machine gun. Dump this cell phone, too—with the passport. It doesn’t mean anything now. There’s a Beretta over there. Iakov’s.”

He found the pistol while I laid Iakov on the ground. We moved outside the fence.

I tossed the detonator and pistol in the backseat of the Lincoln. “There are two of Lachko’s men and a bomb in the trunk.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“But not smart. Thanks for saving my skin.”

“The first ex-Chekist should live long enough to learn what it feels like.”

I gave him the hard drive. “Take this. Kosokov’s bank records—but you know as well as I do, the Cheka will never allow a trial, not a real one.”

He nodded. “They squelched the official investigation back then.”

“Your friend Ivanov won’t feel so constrained.”

He smiled. “I can almost guarantee that.”

I got some rags out of the back of the Valdez. “You’d better move. I’ve got some rearranging to do, before the police arrive.”

“Do you… do you ever visit Moscow?”

“Had a trip planned a couple weeks ago, before events intervened.” That seemed like a different era.

“Look me up next time. You’ll find me—”

“I know,” I said. “I know everything I need to. Get going. I hear sirens, and I’ve got work to do before they get here.”

That was a lie, but certainly a short-lived one. He had to realize the truth, too—neither of us wanted to broach the subject. There’d be time enough later—if he got on the plane and I stayed out of jail.

He held out his hand, and I took it. I wanted more than anything to pull him to me, but I gave him a firm grip, avoiding his eye, looking past his shoulder to the main road.

“Go.”

He went. I watched him trot out to the service road and disappear into darkness. I ran back with the rags to wipe down the machine gun he’d used, work Iakov’s prints over it, and help the lifeless hands fire a quick burst into the mud. I laid the body down again. The sirens came into range shortly after.