In for a Ruble

CHAPTER 24

Victoria declined my invitation to run with a sleepy, “Are you fucking crazy?”

I did five miles and returned at seven to find her still in bed.

“You’re going to have trouble transitioning back to working hours.”

“Lawyers start late.”

“As I remember, you used to go around the clock.”

“That was before my virtuous American work ethic was undermined by the socialist Evil Empire.”

We ate eggs and toast and coffee and she said she had to visit the office before going uptown and reclaiming her apartment from the dust covers, the first step toward reentering her normal life. I felt a tug at that. She felt it too, and squeezed my hand. “It’s only uptown, you dope. Closer to Trastevere.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

That put an end to the squeeze, and she went to get dressed.

Victoria went to her office and I went to mine. Foos was elsewhere, Pig Pen was absorbed in the morning rush hour, and I spent an hour sipping coffee while I thought about the Leitzes, my newfound liberty and good fortune, and why I didn’t feel better about the state of the world than I did. Victoria was back—and gave every indication of intending to stay. The winter of discontent hanging over the House of Turbo had morphed unannounced into spring. I was a million dollars ahead, and didn’t have to pay estimated income tax until April. One price of my adopted county. I owned a Repin self-portrait and could look forward to the unrestricted enjoyment of a painting most museums would kill for. How many people hit that kind of trifecta? I still had Beria to deal with, and no good idea of how, but he was just a ghost at this point, despite his periodic appearances, or so I tried to tell myself, a long-dead madman whose madness had died when he did, with no ability to inflict pain or suffering or death any longer—or so I tried to tell myself. I couldn’t quite get myself to believe it.

At the moment, however, present tugged harder than past. I was finished with the Leitzes, but I didn’t feel done. Too many open questions. What did Thomas Leitz have on his brother-in-law? Why did everyone in the family, except maybe Jenny, get nervous when Coryell’s name came up? How did he get tied up with Nosferatu and the BEC? Where was he spending his time, leaving no trail for the Basilisk? And where did seventeen-year-old Andras get $11 million—$22 million, if I added in Irina’s take?

If I pushed it, what was really roiling me was what Thomas Leitz said about sweeping things under the rug. The Leitz family made a lifetime habit of it, but didn’t I as well? My Gulag past. My fear over Beria. Things had happened to them—I had no idea what—that they didn’t want to confront. Was I any different? I’d been running from my upbringing all my life. Now I was running from my prospective parentage. Maybe the fires of Leitz burned a little too close to Turbo’s home. Leaving theirs untended left me only my own to contemplate.

Confusion, one step ahead of dejection, was overtaking satisfaction when the phone rang.

“This is Pauline Turner,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I’ve been away and just got your message.”

Half a beat before it clicked—Turner, Mrs. Leitz the first.

“Thank you for returning my call, but the matter I called about… It’s been taken care of.”

“Oh.” Pause. “Is everyone all right? Your message said Sebastian…”

“Everyone’s fine,” I said, although I wasn’t sure that was true. “It concerned your husband’s office, we figured out what the problem was.”

“Then Andras wasn’t involved?”

“No.” I wasn’t sure that was true either. “Why do you ask?”

Another pause. “Just making sure. Mother’s protective instinct, I suppose.”

That sounded good, but I didn’t believe it. I should have said good-bye and hung up.

“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Your son—what’s his relationship with his uncle Walter?”

A long silence. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and scared.

“Why did you ask that question?”

“There appears to be some tension between them. I was curious about the cause.”

“When… They’re not supposed… When did you see them together?”

She pressed the question like an accusation. I backed off and tried to reassure her.

“I haven’t. I haven’t met either one, to be honest. It’s more what others have told me.”

“Who told you? What did they say?”

She fired those questions like shots, the voice just above a whisper. The protective instinct was in high gear.

“Nothing specific. I’m sorry if I upset you.”

“Tell me! What does any of this have to do with Sebastian’s office?”

The whisper was almost a shout. I moved the conversation to neutral territory.

“Have you been visited or called by two people, man and a woman, claiming to be lawyers looking into Sebastian’s TV bid? Probably back in December, before Christmas?”

“No. I don’t think so. I would’ve remembered that. Lawyers, you say?”

“That’s what they claimed. They questioned your former in-laws. I was curious how far they went.”

“Please! What’s this all about?”

“Somebody bugged your ex-husband’s office. They had help from Walter Coryell.”

“What’s that have to do with Andras?”

Hang up!! A chorus screamed in my head. This is no longer your case and it can’t go anywhere good. Stubbornness paired with curiosity is a tough combo to shut down.

Beria materialized by the door. You’re still a Chekist. You always will be.

I ignored him.

“Andras was trying to reach his uncle over the weekend. I think he set up a meeting with him, but Coryell didn’t show. The two have no history of contact. That made me wonder.”

“Andras called Walter? That’s impossible.”

“Not according to phone records.”

“But… Andras would never… and Walter… he knows… Is Sebastian aware of this?” The panic was back in her voice.

“No. We didn’t discuss it.”

Another long pause.

“You said your business with Sebastian is finished?”

“That’s right.”

“Then, please, I need to ask a favor.”

I waited.

“It’s very important—for all of us. Please don’t ever tell anyone what you just told me. About Andras and Walter. All right?”

“Why not? What’s wrong?”

“You can’t possibly understand. No one can understand. Just promise me, you won’t ever breathe a word.”

“I’m not sure I can do that, Ms. Turner. I’ll need more specific—”

She hung up.

I was still holding the receiver in my hand, wondering what else was being swept—swept back?—under the rug, when the “arrrr-oooo-gahhhh” of our door horn sounded. Probably Foos—he likes to hit it on the way in. Pig Pen yelled out “Boss man!” After a minute, no one emerged from the server farm and the horn blew again. I put down the receiver and went out to the lobby. Three men in suits stood in the elevator vestibule. One suit was expensive and elegantly tailored. The other two were cheap and cut large to accommodate the guns carried under their owners’ arms. All three looked impatient.

The expensive suit was Taras Batkin, BEC partner and stepfather of Irina Lishina. Leitz and his extended clan weren’t letting go that easily. That didn’t surprise me nearly so much as the relief I felt at being back in the game.

I remembered what Aleksei said about Batkin and his title as I pushed the button that releases the electronic lock.

“Please come in, Mr. Ambassador. You can call me Turbo.”

CHAPTER 25

Pig Pen took one look at the queue that marched out of the servers and said, “May Day. Russky parade.”

I have no idea where he gets it, but he never misses.

“What the hell?” one of Batkin’s bodyguards said, hand under his jacket, turning toward his cage.

“Just a parrot, with a warped sense of humor,” I said.

The bodyguard walked toward Pig Pen’s office, hand in place. Pig Pen retreated to the back perch.

“Tell him to leave the parrot alone,” I said to Batkin. “He’s harmless.”

Batkin barked an order in Russian, and the bodyguard returned to the parade. Pig Pen stayed where he was.

Batkin was trimly built, about five seven. He wore a navy suit with an electric-blue windowpane check. His shirt was bluish-gray, with a white collar and French cuffs, blue and purple striped tie. His face was comprised of geometric forms—circular head, circular eyes, pyramid nose, square mouth. The eyes were the same color as his shirt. The black hair was applied with glue, unless I missed my guess, although the toupee was a good one. I wondered what he made of my shaved pate. He had a thick gold wedding band and, next door, a diamond encrusted pinkie ring. A short Russian crow, dressed like a peacock—with a hairpiece. He, no doubt, considered himself quite dashing. The Napoleonic complex was a foregone conclusion. I reminded myself not to judge the book before I’d read the first page.

“We can talk in here,” I said pointing to a glass-walled conference room.

The other bodyguard stepped toward me. “Arms up,” he said in Russian.

I shook my head.

“Up, asshole.”

I turned to Batkin. “You came to see me, unannounced. I presume you have business to discuss.”

Batkin said, “My men are protective. That should not surprise you.”

“I don’t appreciate being patted down in my own office. That shouldn’t surprise you.”

He looked me over calmly, deciding whether to concede a pawn this early. His concern was control, not safety. “You give me your word, you are not armed?”

“Wait here,” I said. Always good to establish ground rules with the Cheka.

I went to the kitchen, opened the old safe we keep there, and took out a .50AE Desert Eagle automatic with a six-inch barrel. It’s the size of a handheld bazooka with the firepower to match. I’d taken it away from its unhinged owner a year before and kept it around principally for intimidation purposes. I checked the empty chamber, left the clip in the safe and took the gun back to the open area. The second bodyguard was reaching under his arm when I tossed it to him.

While he fumbled, I said to Batkin, “When I am armed, this is what I carry. They use them for deer hunting here—and to stop the occasional pickup truck. Feel better now?”

He smiled and went into the conference room. I took the Desert Eagle from the bodyguard—he was looking it over with a professional’s interest, albeit a professional dimwit—put it on a side table, and followed.

“Let’s start over,” I said as I closed the door. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“You’ve been harassing my stepdaughter.”

So much for starting over.

“I talked to her yesterday on the phone. I asked her a question. I didn’t believe the answer and told her so. I’m more honest than she is. That’s the long and short of it.”

He nodded, as if that was the answer he expected. “This about the Leitz kid?”

He was up on her affairs, but it wasn’t my place to confirm them. “You can ask her that.”

“I can see why you annoyed her. Why didn’t you believe what she said?”

“She was lying. She’s good at it, I’m guessing she’s had plenty of experience, but she’s not as good as she thinks she is.”

He nodded again. “You were in the Cheka.” A statement, not a question.

“Twenty years. First Chief Directorate. But you know that. She knew it too. She’s not a fan of the organization.”

He nodded once more. “Iakov Barsukov’s protégé. Until you got cross-wired with Lachko. The details there are a little murky.”

“They don’t matter.” Except maybe to Lachko and me. Iakov didn’t care anymore, although he had, intensely, at the time.

“He was a good man, Iakov. A Chekist’s Chekist. The organization came first. He never let outside considerations get in the way. Lachko… Lachko is a different story. So’s his fucking brother.”

A bitter edge to his voice. He didn’t have much use for the Barsukov brothers. That was to his credit. Although he was wrong about Iakov—I’d found out the hard way and almost died in the process—at his hand. But that was the story I could never tell.

“You’ve read my file,” I said.

“I was actually more interested in the earlier part of the file—what happened before the Cheka.”

I didn’t answer. Alarm bells were ringing too loudly in my head. The early part of my file was totally bland and uninformative—Iakov had made sure of that. It was called a clean passport, my Gulag past had been expunged from the record. A former zek was a zek no more and could hold his head high without fear of shame or spurning or repulsion. Or that was the intention. But somehow Nosferatu had learned the truth. Now Batkin was making a similar implication. Or was I just paranoid?

“I’m not sure I follow,” I said as flatly as I could.

“Of course you do. My file reads the same, almost exactly the same, word for word.”

He took off his jacket and hung it carefully over the back of a chair. He undid a cufflink and rolled up the blue-gray sleeve. The arm was covered in tattoos in Cyrillic script.

“Vyatlag.”

He let that sleeve go and undid the other. More tattoos, different images and words.

“Gorlag. We were all in the same boat. Where were you, not that it makes any real difference?”

CHAPTER 26

I felt like I’d been punched—knocked flat. Gobsmacked, as the Brits say, a term that doesn’t translate, but somehow does. Batkin watched as I tried to clear my head. He’d thrown a calculated blow and hit—maybe harder than he knew. The surprise wasn’t his background, but the ease with which he admitted it. I don’t have the tattoos to record my time, but I could no more have owned up to Dalstroi and Vorkuta in the way he did than I could have put myself back into those state-sponsored hells-on-earth that formed my childhood.

“Surprised to meet a fellow traveler?” he said.

I nodded. The best I could do.

“There’s thousands of us. You know that.”

“But…”

“None of us talk about it? Of course. But what are we really afraid of? My Gulag upbringing is marked all over my body. No denying it. I don’t advertise it, but I don’t try to hide it either. You, on the other hand…”

I nodded again, as forcefully as I could. Probably looked feeble to him.

“None of us can move forward until we understand where we came from. When I read your file, I assumed you understood that. Your career here.”

The mention of my career here snapped me back to the present. He’d done a lot of research. He was using past and present to work me over. To what end?

He redid his cuffs. “You haven’t answered. Which camp?”

“Dalstroi… Then Vorkuta,” I said, defeated.

“Languages, that’s what Iakov saw?”

“That’s right.”

“He had an eye for talent. Mine’s organization. I organized the zeks at Gorlag, there were thousands more of us than the guards, who by that time were totally demoralized. We—the zeks, I mean—were about the only thing working in the Soviet economy. We deserved a little better than nothing. I made people think about their worth. We organized. We struck. We shut down the camp more than once. It wasn’t easy. Some died. They would have died anyway.” He shrugged. “But we got noticed. We got results.”

I was starting to think clearly enough to replace “we” with “I” in his recounting.

“So Iakov…”

“He found me, like he found you. He launched a successful career.” He lifted his jacket off the chair, put it on, sat down and shot a gold-linked cuff to underscore the point. He’d also finished bonding.

“Tell me about Irina. What did you want from her?”

I answered, it was the easiest thing to do. “My interest was her boyfriend’s uncle. If you want an apology, I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t sorry in the slightest, she could more than take care of herself, but it seemed the diplomatic thing to say, and I was looking to reestablish equilibrium in the conversation.

“I’m sure you said nothing untoward,” he said, also the diplomat. “Irina can be a difficult girl. She’s had a difficult childhood. Her father is a difficult man. She bore the brunt of that, while she was growing up. One reason she lives here now, with her mother and me.”

I didn’t point out she wasn’t exactly living with her mother and him, and I was having a difficult time with the repeated use of the word “difficult.” Too easy. It conveyed trouble without telling anything of its nature. Unsure of where to go next, I waited.

“I came here to ask for your help,” he said after a moment.

That couldn’t be good, but… maybe…

“Irina is up to something, involved in something, I don’t know which or what. It may involve this boy, again, I don’t know. Her mother is worried. So am I.”

Buy time. “Have you asked her—if anything is wrong, I mean?”

“Of course. Both her mother and I talked to her over the Christmas holiday, before she went to Moscow to see her father. She kept us at arm’s length. As you pointed out, she’s learned the art of prevarication. She may not be as good at it as she thinks—you’re right about that too—but she’s practicing.”

I almost said, Every chance she gets and maybe for good reason. Instead I waited some more.

He waited too.

Then he said, “I’m very fond of the girl. If I had a daughter, I’d like her to be… I’m more than fond of her mother. But what you say is true. She’s gone off the road somewhere, and we are both worried—her mother and I—that she could be going to a dangerous place. You know who her father is?”

I nodded. He sounded every inch the concerned parent, but the calculated assault of the last few minutes undermined that.

“You want me to find out what she’s involved in?”

“That’s right.”

Buy more time.

“Suppose I already have a client?”

“Does his interest conflict with mine—or hers?”

“It could.”

“You have obligations. On the day that your first client’s interests come into conflict with mine, I release you. Will that do?”

Ever the diplomat. Except that wasn’t where he came from. His tattoos said he was Gulag urki—the criminal class. He was also a Chekist. If—or when—his interests and Leitz’s, or anyone else’s, came into conflict, another solution would be found. But that would happen regardless of what I said. And, I was coming to realize, he was in a position to help me in a way perhaps no other person could.

“Let’s talk compensation,” I said.

“I am a wealthy man. I will pay what you require, within reason.”

“I don’t want money. I want information. Or, more accurately, unfettered access to information.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

I told him what I had in mind.

When I finished, he walked around the conference room looking at the view, looking back into the office, looking at me.

“I understand what Iakov saw,” he said. “That is a most finely tuned proposal. What, I must ask, makes you think I’m in a position to deliver—or that I won’t cross you?”

“You can deliver. I haven’t lived in Moscow for twenty years, but the way things work hasn’t changed that much. We’re both Chekists. We understand each other. I won’t give you reason to cross me. I know what will happen if I do. If you cross me, you can count on my tracking you down, carrying that Desert Eagle.”

He smiled broadly, for the first time since he arrived, and extended a hand.

“I believe you,” he said.

I took the hand. I didn’t believe him. Not about anything he said.

Beria appeared by the window, smiling.

CHAPTER 27

Victoria said, “You have no idea how difficult this is for me.”

Actually, I could make a pretty good guess, but I wasn’t about to say so. I leaned in and tried to look sympathetic.

“You’re a fraud. Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this. I can see it all over your face.” She shoved me away, but smiled as she did so.

We were on my couch, enjoying a predinner drink, red wine for her, vodka for me. I had a pork roast in the oven, coated with rosemary, sage, garlic, and olive oil. Victoria licked her lips as soon as she walked in the door, but the rest of her body language indicated she’d had a bad day.

The rest of mine hadn’t been overly productive either. After Batkin left, I’d replayed mentally the conversation with Andras’s mother. I couldn’t see anything that caused her panic or fear, both of which came out of nowhere. I went back over the Basilisk’s records, and they showed nothing more than a wealthy divorced woman teaching at a small Minnesota college, enjoying regular visits from her son and periodic vacations at health spas and ski resorts, one of which she’d just returned from. I worked the data on Andras and Irina without any more success. Despite what his mother said, Andras was still trying to reach his uncle. He’d called twice yesterday and once this morning without connecting. Walter Coryell gave every indication of having gone incommunicado. Irina, however, was still buying pizza at Crestview Pizza and soda at Mike’s Grocery. I called Gina and got her voicemail. She called back just after Victoria walked in.

“Sorry, Turbo! Back to back seminars. What’s up? Not Newburgh again, I hope.”

“Maybe worse, from your point of view. Crestview, Massachusetts—Hicksville to you. Probably a four-hour drive from New York. How soon can you get up there?”

“You paying? Tonight.”

“Tomorrow will be fine. Get the Valdez out of the lot. I’ll set it up.”

“This another hot-sheets joint?”

“Crestview Pizza and Mike’s Grocery, both on Main Street.”

“What about them?”

“They’re favorite spots of the kid you tracked in Newburgh, Andras Leitz. Also his girlfriend, a tall, blond Russian named Irina Lishina. Sorry I can’t be more specific on the description. Watch your step with her, she’s a tough customer.”

“Sure. What’s the deal?”

“Andras and the girl are students at a fancy private school in the next town, Gibbet. I think they’re up to something in Crestview. They hit that pizza joint several nights a week—when they should be studying or in bed. Pick them up there, follow them, let me know where they go.”

“Okay, but…”

“What?”

“Do I have to drive the Valdez? That car’s the most uncool thing on the road.”

“Ford—bedrock of the American economy.”

“You’re showing your age, Turbo. Google’s the bedrock of the American economy these days.”

“Try taking a date to a drive-in in a search engine.”

“Drive-in? Turbo, there hasn’t been a drive-in… You’re crazy.”

“Did I tell you I’m leaving you that car in my will?”

“Just my luck. A car I hate to drive and won’t be able to sell.”

I hung up.

“I’m glad to see you treat all your lady friends with the same gentle and affectionate touch,” Victoria said.

I fixed our drinks and asked Victoria about her day, and that’s when she said, “I wouldn’t ask if I had any choice, but I don’t. I need help.”

“Socialist help?”

“Don’t start.”

I couldn’t resist. “Assistance from a one-time foot soldier in the army of the Evil Empire?”

“I’m warning you, goddammit…”

“Or are you looking for some old-fashioned KGB tradecraft?”

“If you don’t… Shit. I knew this wouldn’t be easy. And before your ego inhales any more of its own manure, I only need you to get him to let me use the Basilisk.”

“Ahhh, the painful truth will out. Here I am, ready to rush to the aid of the beautiful damsel in distress, capitalist temptress though she may be, and I discover, in the nick of time, that I’m only being used, in typical vixen fashion, as a poor means to an ignoble end. I think I’ll go fall on my carving knife.”

“Did anyone ever tell you, without a doubt, you are the biggest pain in the ass ever to come out of Mother Russia?”

“It was a favorite theme of my ex-wife, although she was a lot more histrionic about it.”

“And how long did that marriage last?”

“Eight years, but it seemed longer.”

“An eternity to her, I’ll bet. Look, I’m prepared to pay. Sexual favors. Dinner at Trastevere. A case of that rotgut vodka you drink. Name your price.”

“Who says I can be bought?”

“You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you?”

“The thought crossed my mind, but I’m really just trying to find out what I’m signing on for.”

“You can be a real bastard.”

“Probably not your best sales pitch.”

I took her glass to the kitchen and refilled it along with my own. “We’ve got half an hour until the pork’s ready. Tell me your troubles.”

I think she started to call me another name, then thought better of it.

“It’s this case I came back for. Not mine—I didn’t start it—but I inherited it, and if it goes south, it’s on my watch.”

“It’s headed south?”

“Yes, dammit. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I thought we were headed for indictment. The reason I came back when I did.”

“I thought it was me.”

“Sorry. Don’t play games. I told you that.”

“You did,” I admitted. “What then?”

“DoJ’s like any other big organization. Nobody wants to give the boss bad news. So all the e-mails I got while I was away…”

“Overstated the case?”

“One way of putting it. Blew smoke up my skirt is another.”

“Sounds just like the Cheka.”

“Don’t start that. You can’t compare—”

“You just said, like any other big organization. What’s so different?”

“Never mind. You want to hear my story or not?”

“I’m all ears.”

She didn’t look like she believed me, but she said, “All right. We’ve been working with a handful of big city police departments—New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Atlanta. They have technology that allows them to monitor file-sharing sites on the Internet—in this case, child pornography. We got search warrants and taps on the guys swapping the porn so we could see who they were doing business with. That led us to a credit-card payment processing company. Same process we followed six or seven years ago, which led to the bust of a pretty big ring. But we didn’t have this kind of technology then, so this time, we’re swimming in a much bigger pond.”

“How many people we talking?”

“Not sure yet. Last time it was ninety thousand.”

“How much money?”

“Not sure about that either. Some of these guys spend ten, twelve thousand a year online—or more.”

“Ninety thousand at ten grand is pushing a billion.”

“Right and that billion, if that’s what it is, is disappearing—right here. The trick for these guys is getting the money out of the country and into their accounts overseas. In this case, Belarus, we think. It gets pretty murky over there.”

“Baltic Enterprise Commission?”

Green flash. “How do you know that?”

“BEC’s the market leader for that kind of service. I could’ve told you that two days ago, when I asked about the case.”

“I have institutional constraints, remember?”

“I remember. As someone on the outside looking in…”

“You are the biggest goddamned son of a bitch…”

“Just making a point—in the only son of a bitch fashion I know.”

“I never should have started.”

“I’m still listening.”

“You’re enjoying yourself way too much is what you’re doing.”

“I’m ready to help.”

She took a sip of wine. “I may have to switch to that kerosene you drink, just to get through this. So… we follow the money trails, and they all lead to a big payment processing firm here—in Queens—ConnectPay. We think it’s the one moving the money overseas. Firms like that, they operate under the radar. They can act like banks—take in money, move it around—but they’re not banks so they’re not subject to the same regulations, especially reporting regulations. This one only exists online. We go to the address in Queens—it’s not there. I mean, the building is, but not ConnectPay. We go looking for the guy who runs it—Franklin Druce is his name, with some partners who are partnerships owned by partnerships who take you on a tour of the entire Caribbean before they send you to Eastern Europe. The real bitch is, we can’t find a damned thing on this guy, Druce. Someone running a business like that, there should be something. Maybe not a criminal record, but an arrest record, some mention in the file, something. He’s not even in the goddamned phone book. That’s why I need the Basilisk.”

“The other day at the office, when I said Walter Coryell could have another identity, Mr. Hyde with plastic, you said, ‘We never thought of that.’ You were talking about Druce, right?”

“Right.”

“What’s the address in Queens?”

“Twenty-second street, number forty twenty-eight.”

“You’ve got a man watching the place.”

Another flash. “I give up. How…”

“I saw him. Last Friday night, right before I came home. The same night I saw Nosferatu there. It’s Walter Coryell’s address too, Leitz’s brother-in-law. We may be able to help each other out. But, since you said you’re willing to pay, there is a price.”

“Somehow I knew there would be. What price?”

“What do you know about Efim Konychev, like how come Homeland Security suddenly let him into the country?”

I could feel her tense up beside me. “Where do you get all these questions?”

“DoJ and State kept him out because he’s an organized crime figure. Homeland Security overruled. What happened?”

“How do you…?” One more flash of anger.

“Spies have lots of sources.”

“Don’t try to be funny. This is important. What source?”

“Very high placed…”

“If you…”

She was getting ready to belt me.

“Okay, okay. Russian blog. Ibansk.com.”

“Blog?!”

“That’s right. Written by a guy known as Ivanov. Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov. Everyman. He does have highly placed sources—the best in Russia. Ibansk means ‘Fucktown,’ by the way.”

“Nice.”

“Apt. So what happened, with Homeland Security?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I thought you were looking for help.”

“I am. I want to see this blog. I need to know what it says—exactly.”

“Sure. But it’s in Russian.”

“You can translate.”

“Maybe—if you ask with appropriate affection, deference and respect.”

“Okay. You’re right.” She took my hand. “You either translate this Ivanhoe…”

“Ivanov.”

“Or one of us is sleeping on the couch.”

After dinner, Victoria pronouncing the pork a success, I got the computer and logged on to Ibansk.com. Ivanov had a new posting on Konychev. I skimmed it quickly.

“Seems Konychev’s still in New York.”

“What?!”

I translated.

“He’s got style,” Victoria said.

“Zinoviev’s turning in his grave.”

“Who’s Zinoviev?”

“Russian novelist. Inventor of the original Ibansk.” I went back to reading.

“Christ! What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Victoria muttered at the sink.

“You talking to yourself?”

“Just wondering if all you Russians are ignorant peasants. Artichokes are an absolute Cabernet killer. They didn’t taste a drop of that wine, and it probably cost them most of that fifty-one hundred dollars.”

I had a feeling she was talking about more than the menu, but I said, “I’ll be sure to tell Konychev next time I see him. One more paragraph.”

“That’s the guy who beat you up, right?”

“Right.”

“Read me the earlier article, the one about Konychev and Homeland Security.”

I scrolled back and read it aloud.

Her only comment was, “Shit.”

“Need any more translation services?”

“Who is this guy, Ivanov? Where does he get his information?”

“Nobody knows—on either score.”

“How widely followed is he?”

“Very.”

“Damn it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just about everything. I really need the Basilisk now. How ’bout it?”

“I’ll try but whether he agrees is anybody’s guess.”

“What time can we start?”

“You go running with me at six, we can stop at the office on the way back.”

“I’m not that desperate. Let’s say breakfast at eight.”

CHAPTER 28

“Bayou Babe! Tiramisu?”

Pig Pen was on the case the moment we walked out of the server aisles.

“Get a wall clock, parrot,” Victoria said. “Nine thirty, breakfast, remember?”

I think he muttered, “Prospect Parkway—lane closed,” as he paced the floor of his office. He’d met his match in Victoria.

Foos came to his door to check the commotion. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“It appears that Leitz’s brother-in-law, Walter Coryell, may have a hidden identity, Franklin Druce. Victoria thinks Druce is behind a payment processor for kiddie porn sites. We want to check him out.”

“Which one’s asking?” Foos said with a grin, planning to enjoy the moment.

Victoria looked at me.

“We both are,” I said. “I still want to know what Nosferatu and the BEC have on Coryell. There’s also my new client, Taras Batkin, stepfather of Andras Leitz’s girlfriend, Irina.”

“You’re working for Batkin?!” Victoria cried. “You didn’t say anything about him.”

Foos’s grin broadened. Pig Pen climbed the mesh in his door, attracted by his nemesis’s distress.

“That a problem?” I asked.

“He’s… He’s… Shit. You know what he is. What the hell are you doing for Batkin?”

“That’s between us. But I might be persuaded to tell tales out of school if you do the same about Efim Konychev.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? Batkin can be very useful to me. He thinks his stepdaughter’s up to some kind of trouble and wants to know what. We made a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Like I said…”

Pig Pen picked the wrong moment to take another shot. “Bayou Babe…”

“Quiet, parrot!”

He shook his feathers and went back to his radio.

Foos said, “You think this trouble could involve the Leitz kid?”

“Their bank accounts say it does.”

“What bank accounts?” Victoria said.

“Remember I told you about the two kids with eleven mil each in the bank—back when we were sharing? What about Konychev?”

“Dammit, I…”

“And how is Coryell connected?” Foos asked.

“Andras and Irina were supposed to meet him at the Black Horse. He didn’t show. Andras has been trying to contact him ever since. The guy’s gone underground—maybe as Franklin Druce.”

Foos nodded. “Your lucky day, Bayou Babe. We’ll make an exception to the no-Fed rule, just for you. But…” He looked at me. “Stay on the reservation.”

Foos went back in his office. Victoria said, “What did I ever do to him?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Be glad he likes you.”

“He likes me?”

“He would have reset all the passwords if he didn’t. Come on—before he changes his mind.”

Pig Pen thought about trying again as we passed his cage, but when Victoria shot him a look, all he said was, “Route Three, fuel spill.”

It took less than ten minutes for the Basilisk to confirm Walter Coryell and Franklin Druce were indeed Jekyll and Hyde with plastic. In addition to the address, which Druce listed as both home and office, their driver’s license photos showed two poor images of the same ordinary-looking, brown-haired man. Druce was CEO of ConnectPay, and the company deposited forty-four grand a month into a checking account at B of A. He spent a big chunk of it online, mostly with ConnectPay, at a long list of what looked to be child porn sites. A consistent three to five K a month. Bricks-and-mortar charges were at gas stations and restaurants all over the Northeast—Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, New York, sometimes Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, or Delaware.

I told the Basilisk to line up the food and gas purchases. The beast whined and hissed—You already know the answer to that—but did as instructed.

“One-night stands from the looks of it. He buys gas and food in the same town. No hotel or motel charges, though. Must pay cash for those. Thinks he’s clever.”

I could almost hear the Basilisk snort with contempt.

“What do you mean?” Victoria said.

“Druce is a pedophile. He’s using the money he makes from ConnectPay to support his own habit. Every few months, when he gets bored just watching kids online, he sets off around the countryside to hook up with one. That explains the extra mileage on his car, remember?”

“Christ.”

“In fact, looks like he’s been on the prowl this week. Bought gas last Wednesday in Rockville, Connecticut. No meals though.”

I asked the computer for the phone number for Coryell’s garage. A Hispanic voice answered. “Sí. ¿Hola?”

I went with Spanish too. “Hola. This is José at Manhattan Volvo. We’re supposed to pick up Walter Coryell’s car Monday for service. Have it ready at eight, okay?”

“Wait a minute.”

I could hear him talking to someone else in Spanish in the background.

He said to me, “Sí, that’s okay, but it’s not here now. Hasn’t been since Wednesday.”

“Oh. Maybe there’s a mistake. I’ll check with the customer and call you back.”

“What was that all about?” Victoria asked.

“Coryell took his car out of the garage Wednesday and hasn’t come back. Julia told me Friday her husband was traveling on business. I wonder if maybe…”

I sent the beast back to its cave. It returned in an instant, blowing fire, triumphant.

“There’s your answer,” I said, pointing to the screen. “No one could find Coryell because he’s been cooling his heels, as Martin Druce, in the Tolland County slammer in Rockville. He was busted on Wednesday. Take a look.”

“Goddamn,” Victoria said. “That explains a lot.” She leaned in to read the screen. “Attempted rape, solicitation of a minor, indecent exposure, the list goes on and on. At least we got him.”

“Don’t count your Coryells too quickly.” I sent the Basilisk after his bank records. “I’d move fast if I were you. He wrote a check for five hundred thousand yesterday. Looks like he bailed himself out.”

“No!”

She pulled out her phone, found a number, and was soon giving orders to someone on the other end.

While she talked, I went back to Druce’s bank information. A handful of withdrawals, all cash, all five figures. The dates went back four years. A quick check confirmed they corresponded with Thomas Leitz paying off his shopaholic debts.

“GODDAMMMIT!” Victoria cried. “How the hell…? Never mind, I already know.… Get a man back on Fourteenth Street.… Yeah, I won’t hold my breath.”

She put the phone back in her bag. “Sometimes I think FBI stands for ‘Forever Behind It.’”

“Flew the coop?”

“Yesterday. Had a kid in his car when he got nabbed, but the kid got smart and ran. Cops found condoms, K-Y Jelly, all the usual paraphernalia. Only good thing is no one was hurt. Could be a tough case though, parents are already backing away—don’t want the attention and publicity.”

“He have any ID other than Franklin Druce?”

“Apparently not.”

“What’s your next move?”

“Hope he shows up back in Long Island City. I’m betting he’s halfway to Shanghai.” She banged her hand on the desk. “Dammit!”

“Don’t be too quick. He’s been doing this for a while. If he’s smart, and the record so far shows that he is, then he’s planned for this. He’s probably got another identity lined up, ready to go. He sheds Franklin Druce like an old snakeskin, reemerges as Walter Coryell, and goes back underground as John Q. Sleazeball. He’s out half a mil, and fingerprints are a problem, but no one has Coryell’s prints on file, and his won’t match Sleazeball’s in the event someone has them. He’s still at liberty.”

She looked at me with skepticism. “Why is it that you always know every scumbag’s next move?”

“Misspent youth, as we’ve discussed.”

“Don’t discount the rest of your life experience.”

“There is a risk Coryell/Druce takes on a new identity and disappears entirely, but somehow I doubt that. Too much money tied up in ConnectPay for one thing. And he’s got his partners to worry about. They don’t like surprises. That fact might give us some leverage.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. No us, though, shug. You stay away from Coryell. He’s Federal property now.”

“This is the gratitude I get?”

“So long as you’re working for Taras Batkin, it is.”

“Suppose what I’m doing for Batkin is purely personal?”

“Only thing personal about Batkin is the fact that I’m gonna nail his ass to the jailhouse wall.”

Something clicked. “You’re working with Aleksei again, aren’t you?”

“Don’t ask questions.”

“Konychev—he’s part of your case, right?”

“I said…”

“You’re having a hard time keeping Efim Ilyich on the leash, aren’t you? He’s not supposed to be going out to lunch at Maison sur Madison or anywhere else.”

“If you don’t… Oh, never mind. Dragons and treasures, that’s my new mantra when it comes to dealing with you.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“You have helped, and I’m grateful.” She gave me a squeeze and a kiss.

“Tell me this much—why all the secrecy surrounding Konychev?” I said.

“Who’s asking—you or your new client?”

“Point taken. I’ll do my own legwork.”

“You would anyway, no matter what I said.”

She did have me pegged.

“Make me one promise, though,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing for Batkin—it is personal, right?”

“Like I said, he’s worried about his stepdaughter. He thinks she’s up to something and wants to know what.” No need to remind her that whatever it was almost certainly involved the BEC. “And no money’s changing hands, if that makes a difference to you.”

She frowned. “No money? You are getting paid, right?”

I nodded. “Information. Or access to information. He’s the only guy I know who can provide it.”

Another frown. “What kind of information?”

“Family history. Gulag history. I’ll tell you all about it once I know what it is. Could amount to nothing.” Hope springs eternal.

She was looking me up and down, but the frown had turned into a smile. “This on the level—or you cooking up another one of your screwball Russian plots?”

“On the level.”

“Good. Remember, I don’t like surprises either. I gotta get to the office. Right after I thank that lion tamer you work with for the assist. And stay away from Coryell.”

I did as instructed, for the most part, because I figured the next surprise was right around the corner. I was right, and it was a doozy. But only the first in a hell of a string.

CHAPTER 29

Two days is a long time when nothing’s happening. I told myself to be patient—when I was in the Cheka, two days was nothing. I used to spend weeks, months, sometimes years, working an agent until he or she paid off. But I was playing a long game then—the Cold War stretched for decades. Victories were few, at least on our side, so the time they took faded once they were recorded. This was twenty-first-century America—waiting was for losers and wimps—you were expected to produce something every day.

Victoria was antsy too—and patience, as a song goes, was not a virtue she possessed.

“Goddamned judge. How long does it take to grant a search warrant?”

“We used to get ’em in hours. On the infrequent occasions when we needed one.”

“Don’t start.”

“Just pointing out the relative merits of different systems.”

“Horse-you-know-what. You’re just pulling my chain—and enjoying it.”

I was enjoying her company—and that contributed to my feeling frisky. She appeared to be enjoying mine as well—at least she was making no haste to return to her apartment uptown. We spent most of our time together talking about things other than the business at hand—everyday things like books and music and movies. The first phase of our romance had ended before we had that chance. Now, we found that, as with art, we had little in common on any of them. Her tastes ran to Hemingway, honky-tonk, and comedy. Mine took in hardboiled noir, bop, and the filmed version of hardboiled noir. The disparities led to spirited arguments that inevitably (and happily) led to equally spirited reconciliation.

Her presence was keeping Beria at bay—as if she locked some door, and he could no longer get in, or maybe she just filled all the available emotional space with love and good cheer (interspersed with the occasional threat), and there was no room for his malevolence. It had been days since his specter last appeared. I made the assumption that this bode well for the future, in all kinds of ways.

Occasionally, we circled in on the subject at hand or one of its multiple manifestations—Batkin, Konychev, the BEC, Coryell/Druce—and if we reached a point of contention, we circled out again. We felt tension and not, we both understood the situation. Get used to it, I told myself more than once, this could be what it would be like going forward. I remembered the feeling I’d had with my ex-wife—I couldn’t talk about my work with her—and I knew where that led. This was different—and better.

While Victoria was at the office, I worked the Basilisk. Thursday, it produced a few tidbits. Coryell/Druce had returned two calls Tuesday when he got back to town. One to Andras. One to the nameless cell phone I’d matched with Nosferatu. Nothing after that. And nothing from Gina. I started to call her more than once but no news meant nothing to report. She’d get in touch when she was ready.

Disobeying orders temporarily, I made a surreptitious trip to Long Island City for a look-see. Victoria’s FBI man was watching the building. Other than that, not much going on.

Batkin called Thursday late to keep the pressure on. He wanted a progress report, he said. I had none. He wasn’t pleased.

“I can close the archive doors as easily I opened them.”

“I can walk away from a teenaged girl and her overbearing stepfather too. Neither of us benefits either way.”

We were both bluffing.

Friday morning, I realized I’d made a mistake. Ibansk.com was the catalyst, with the news that the BEC had dropped offline. Ivanov was uncharacteristically brief. He’d been taken by surprise too.

It occurred to me that I’d been looking at everything from the wrong perspective—just like I’d told Leitz. I’d borrowed his point of view, understandable in the circumstances, he was the one who’d hired me, but a mistake nonetheless. Konychev—or whoever was behind the bugging of Leitz’s computers, and my money was still on Konychev—didn’t give a damn about TV networks. He was looking for something else.

I scrolled back through Ibansk.com, noting the dates of Ivanov’s posts that mentioned trouble in the BEC. One in August, two in September, two more each in October and November, three in December, including the news of the Tverskaya attack, and two in January. The most recent, before today, was last week, the day after I’d been beaten up by Nosferatu.

Next to that list, I put down the sequence of events involving Leitz as I knew them. The computer activity Foos had spotted in the Leitz system had occurred in August, the same time when the BEC’s troubles began and the first three million showed up in accounts belonging to Andras and Irina. The brute force attack on Leitz Ahead came shortly after. Alyona Lishina approached Leitz in October. More Leitz computer activity around Thanksgiving. Another transfer of funds to the kids’ accounts. The fake lawyers followed, dispatched to question the Leitz family. They pretended to ask about Leitz to support the background-check story, but they were more interested in everyone else. Every Leitz sibling—Marianna, Thomas, and Julia—told me as much. They’d all been asked about the other members of the family, not just Big Brother Sebastian. Konychev was attacked in December, around the time Nosferatu and Coryell placed the bug. Konychev and Nosferatu and the BEC had Coryell in their pocket. They were in business together. Konychev and Nosferatu weren’t looking for information on Leitz’s firm or TV deal. They were looking for the guy who was interfering with the BEC’s network.

Andras Leitz, computer whiz.

That’s where his budding fortune came from—or at least part of it. He and Irina were ripping off the family business, her family business. The timing fit. So did the bank, in a circumstantial way. The million-dollar transfers came in August and December, from a bank in Estonia. More than probable the BEC would do business in Tallinn.

I called Victoria.

“Search warrant come through yet?”

“Don’t get me started. I’m ready to start taking scalps around here as it is.”

“When it does, check the bank records.”

“Turbo, America won the Cold War, remember?”

“We can argue history later. I’m betting you’re going to find four transfers out of ConnectPay’s account at B of A, two each of one-point-five million in August and two each of two-point-five mil in November. If you can follow them, I bet they lead to accounts owned by Andras Leitz and Irina Lishina. Might be tough, though. I think the money gets washed and dried on the way. It ends up in Estonia before coming back here.”

“What have you been up to now?”

“Just thinking.” I told her about my misassumptions.

“Huh,” she said. “That actually makes sense. I’ll look into it and let you know. If—I ever get my goddamned search warrant.”

She hung up. I went to Foos’s office.

“What are the chances Andras Leitz could get inside the BEC network?”

He thought for a moment. “Without knowing any particulars, I’d say not good. They’re well protected, better than most. Andras is smart, but…”

“Someone’s been causing the BEC technical problems for months. According to Ivanov, they’ve knocked it offline altogether.”

“No shit? Give me a minute.”

I went back to my office and fed Andras’s name into the Basilisk. He was on the move again. Wednesday noontime, he flew to LaGuardia on AmEx. Late Wednesday afternoon, he withdrew $2,900 from a half-dozen ATMs—all in Queens. When I mapped them, they formed a parade down Queens Boulevard. Then the trail stopped. Not a single electronic transaction since. He’d stocked up on cash and gone underground. Why? I had the feeling the answer had to do with Walter Coryell.

Foos appeared at my door.

“You’re right. I tried several known BEC IP addresses. They’re all nonresponsive. But I still don’t think Andras…”

“Suppose he got inside some U.S. servers connected to the BEC, like his uncle Walter’s. Could he access the network, make mischief?”

“That’s possible. But…”

“Why?”

“Yeah, why do it?”

“If I’m right, he ripped off eight mil for openers.”

“This can’t be about the money.”

“True. I don’t have a good answer for why. But he was in Queens Wednesday. Withdrew three grand then dropped offline.”

“Huh. You gonna tell Leitz?”

“My client’s Taras Batkin now—and his stepdaughter is right in the middle of this.”

“So?”

“So I’m going to think about it.”

I didn’t get a chance to think long. Gina called a few minutes later.

“Those kids are up to something, but I can’t tell what. It’s a nighttime operation, though. Last two nights, I didn’t get to bed until after three. I figured you didn’t want to hear from me then.”

“You figured right. What’s up?”

“I found the kids’ place. And they’re definitely doing something strange. It’s on the second floor and they got all the windows covered over, like they don’t want anyone to see in.”

“Where?”

“Crestview Main Street. There’s a liquor store across from the pizza joint, in the next block. This place is over that. Looks like they got the whole floor. Two-story building, one entrance and a fire escape.”

“How’d you find it?”

“Two kids showed up for pizza Wednesday night. Ten to ten. Not the Leitz kid and the girl, but two others. They looked like Gibbet School kids, I know a couple at NYU who went to that place, and they’re a type, you know? I took a drive by when I got up here. That campus has more money than most country clubs. Looks like everybody should be wearing blue blazers or white dresses and be waited on by—”

“I get the point.”

“Anyway, these kids were driving a BMW, New York plates, BDK one-three-five-eight. They bought a pie to go and went across the street. The entrance is around back. I circled the whole building. Every window’s covered, no lights anywhere, except one over the door outside. All you can see inside is stairs going up into the dark. They stayed until after two. I didn’t call you yesterday because I didn’t know who they were. Last night the Russian chick shows up. I’m pretty sure it’s her—tall, blond, real looker. She hits the pizza joint and goes in the same entrance as the others. I thought about going up the fire escape, but you told me to lay back, so I did.”

The BMW was Irina’s car. The ghostly image of Nosferatu, all six-feet-seven inches of him, fingernails as long as knives, materialized in my imagination. He could make me come to miss Beria.

“You did right. How late did she stay?”

“Two thirty-eight. I tailed her back toward the school, but she turned off on a side road just short of campus. Martin Lane. No way I could follow without getting spotted. What kind of high school lets kids go and come at all hours?”

“The kind that believes their students don’t use the same toilets as the rest of us. You didn’t see the Leitz kid?”

“Nope. But he could be inside the place above the liquor store, for all I know.”

“You’ve done your job. Pack up and head for Logan. I’ll catch a late afternoon shuttle. Meet me at the gate with the car keys.”

I called Victoria, and told her she was her own for at least one night. She asked where I was going, in a tone that indicated she didn’t expect an answer.

“Batkin business,” I said, which was true.

“Shit.”

That she didn’t precede “shit” with “bull” said she believed me, and she wasn’t happy about it.

“I’m running down the connection between the Leitz kid, the Lishina girl, and Coryell/Druce. Could be fruitful for you too.”

“There’s laws about what kind of evidence we can use, you know.”

“How’s that search warrant coming?”

Silence.

I started to say good-bye, but she’d already hung up.

CHAPTER 30

Gibbet, Massachusetts, settled in 1635 according to the marker announcing the town line, still had all the signs of a prosperous New England colonial township. Why they named it after the gallowslike structure from which convicted corpses were hung as deterrents to those who might follow their misguided path was a question, but four centuries ago someone apparently thought it was good idea. Town founder was a hangman, perhaps. In the intervening years, the Gibbet folk had built lots of white and gray wood-sided houses with green and black shutters. A brick town hall, stone library, and Doric-columned historical society lined Main Street, interspersed with Federal, Greek Revival, and Georgian homes. The supermarket, gas station, and convenience store all looked out of place. The police station, fire station, and post office had been moved to the edge of town, their former Main Street facilities now occupied by an Italian restaurant, health food store and Pilates center. Gibbet had made a seamless transition from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century.

Hayfields Drive ran south out of town, a big leafy road, or would be come spring, with a wide double yellow stripe. The houses here were bigger and whiter and grayer. The owners weren’t mowing their own lawns. A tall wrought-iron fence demarcated the border of the school’s property and paralleled Hayfields Drive for the better part of a mile until I came to the entrance. No sign, but two square stone columns supporting iron gates with medieval coats of arms left little doubt this was an institution that took its importance seriously.

The Duke of Wellington supposedly said the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Gibbet School had taken the Duke at his word and was doing everything it could to apply the principle in the land that won a revolution against his countrymen. Gibbet’s playing fields stretched in all directions—soccer, football, baseball, track and field—snow-covered now, but ready as soon as spring arrived to prepare this generation of aristocratic kids for the next nineteenth-century war. Scattered among the fields were copies of eighteenth-century Georgian buildings and a late Gothic chapel. The Valdez was decidedly out of place.

I parked the car and strolled the plowed pathways through the fields and buildings. No one else was out, which meant no one questioned my presence, but there was no one for me to question either. Sunday night, the buildings were all locked, dorm and nondorm alike. The chapel, administration building, gym and performing arts center were dark. Lights in the dorms, built to look like houses, as well as in the Russell Wilcox Stu-Fac Center, which all required an electronic pass to get into. The place exuded as much welcome as the Gulag camps I grew up in.

I found Martin Lane, the side road Gina had described, a quarter-mile cul-de-sac with three houses and a barn. Parked in the driveways were a Ford Explorer, a Saab, two Subarus and a Dodge Ram pickup. No BMW, but it could have been in the barn.

Four and a half miles away, Main Street, Crestview, was a study in contrasts. A hardscrabble, working-class town, whose best days were a century behind it. The houses were side-by-sides and double-deckers, many with peeling paint. At 8:30 P.M., the sidewalks were all but rolled up. Downtown was next to a rail yard and handsome enough in a way that evoked its blue-collar roots. The business district stretched four blocks. About a quarter of the store fronts were empty. The pizza place anchored one corner. The grocery was two doors down. Both looked exactly like they should. A half-dozen chrome-legged tables and fake leather chairs filled the former, racks of the supposed staples of modern life—chips, soda, cereal, toilet paper, and laundry soap—the latter.

I pulled into a parking spot across the street from the liquor store at the other end of the block. The lights were still on there as they were at the pizza place and the grocery. The rest of the street was dark. Enough parked cars to give me cover. It had been snowing heavily when I left LaGuardia, but the storm hadn’t moved this far north yet, a good thing for me. A chilly, dark night, cloud covered sky, no moon. Also all to the good for my purposes. The snow was coming, though. I could feel it.

I sat in the dark for fifteen minutes. Two cars and a police cruiser passed. None paid me any attention. No pedestrians. I could see the guy behind the counter in the liquor store reading the paper, marking time until closing. No light or sign of life from the second floor. At 8:55, he stood and folded the paper. A few minutes later the lights went off. A minute after that, he came out, and turned to lock the door behind him. He walked down the block until he came to a Honda showing more than a few years of age, unlocked the door, climbed in and drove away. The grocery store closed a few minutes later. The pizza joint was the only life left, maybe still hoping to sell a pie or two to the kids from Gibbet School. Or it didn’t know it was done for the night but was holding true to its hours.

Gina said Irina came last night at 9:50, the others around the same time the night before. After dinner, after study hall, after they were supposed to be tucked in for the night. No way of telling whether anyone would show up tonight, but if they did, I doubted they’d come any earlier. I made sure the dome light was off, checked the rearview mirror, and pushed open the door. A gust of damp wind cut through my flannel pants. I locked the door quickly in case the guy in the pizza joint—or anyone else—was paying attention, trotted across the street, and took shelter in the shadows. I walked down the block, sticking close to the dark building, all but invisible, I figured, turned the corner and went around back. A parking lot of mostly broken pavement. A couple of Dumpsters backed up on train tracks that hadn’t been used in years. Like Gina said, a single bulb shone over a doorway at one end of the building. An iron fire escape dropped from the second floor at the other. The windows were all dark. A rat scrambled across the lot, coming straight at me, until it veered off and found protection under one of the Dumpsters. Supper time.

I returned to the Valdez and its heater, mildly regretting not buying a pint of vodka before the liquor store closed. Never a good idea to drink on duty, but who knew how long I had to wait. The Boston public radio station played a recording of Shostakovich’s preludes and fugues. I knew the record—the pianist, Tatiana Nikolayeva, supposedly had inspired the pieces. You don’t hear it often. I sat in the dark, marveling at Shostakovich’s ability to write a series of works in which not one, but two, beautiful songs played off each other, point and counterpoint, with absolute harmonic perfection in every note. Bach had done it three hundred years earlier, of course, but for my money, Shostakovich had raised the bar. Bach would argue that Shostakovich cheated—he employed dissonance.

Shostakovich had morphed to Mozart just after 10:00 when a pair of headlights turned into Main Street from the direction I faced. I slid down behind the wheel as a dark colored 3 Series BMW came straight toward me until it swung off into the parking lot behind the liquor store. I waited until the lights were out of sight and ran to the alley at the other end of the building, not worrying this time about who might see me. I reached the back in time to see a young woman, tall and blond, unlock the door below the lightbulb and go inside.

I walked back to the train tracks, looking up, waiting for a light to go on.

Nothing.

No light on the Main Street side either. I returned to the parking lot. Still dark. As Gina said, they had the windows blacked out.

I was heading back to move the Valdez when more headlights swung into the lot. They belonged to a black Cadillac Escalade, which looked a lot like the black Cadillac Escalade I’d last seen in Long Island City. I followed the rat to the Dumpsters, ducking behind before the SUV’s lights swept across. Then they were gone. I peeked out to see the taillights turn left onto Main Street. I stayed where I was.

Two minutes… Three… Four…

Fifteen before the headlights announced the Escalade’s return. I didn’t move.

This time, the driver did one revolution of the parking lot, pulled up next to a rundown concrete structure that had once been part of the rail yard and maybe still was. The same spot I’d been thinking to park the Valdez. I couldn’t see the driver but any doubt was erased by the New York plates.

I waited a cold half hour, checking my watch while I shivered, to see if Nosferatu would get out of the car. Three brief flashes of light from the cab indicated he hadn’t kicked his smoking habit. When I was convinced that he was waiting, as I was, I crossed the tracks, bent low until I was shielded by buildings on the other side. I took a circuitous route back to the Valdez. Gambling, I moved it, lights off, to the rail yard behind the parking lot, next to a building where it was all but hidden but still had a distant view of the Escalade and the lighted door beyond.

That’s where I spent the night.

CHAPTER 31

Dawn would’ve just been lighting the sky, had there been any sky to light, when they came out. Snow had fallen hard all night, starting about the time I moved the car. Six inches or more now on the ground. I’d been dozing on and off, but you learn to keep one eye half awake. Foos had called a little after 2:00 A.M.

“Weird shit. BEC’s back online.”

“You sure?”

“I’m calling at two a.m.”

“What’s going on?”

“Could be anything. Technical difficulties. Somebody—maybe Andras, like you suggest—screwing around inside, but they fixed the problem.”

“Could Andras do this?”

“Technically feasible. There’s still the question of why.”

“I’ll tell you this. I’m sitting outside some kind of crash pad he’s got in the next town to his school. I’m pretty sure he’s inside. I know the Russian girl is. Guess who else is watching the place?”

“He suck blood?”

“Not mine, I hope.”

“You got a plan?”

“Not beyond figuring out what’s going on. And keeping Nosferatu away from the kids, if I have to.”

“I’ll hang here. Let me know if you need anything.”

When the door opened, Irina and Andras stopped under the naked bulb just long enough for me to get a look, before they hustled through the snow to her car. Neither looked around nor looked worried. Neither appeared sleepy either. Irina took the driver’s seat, and the BMW backed out and pulled away. I waited for the Escalade to follow, but it didn’t. The BMW pulled into Main Street and disappeared. I couldn’t follow. I couldn’t move without being spotted.

Wait… and wait some more. Five minutes before the Escalade’s doors opened, and the tall man’s head rose above the car. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and the same overcoat I remembered from Second Avenue. He removed something from the back of the SUV and walked toward the building. A short man got out of the passenger side and followed. He wore an overcoat, no hat, and had a large messenger bag strung over his shoulder. With a quick glance around, Nosferatu used a crowbar to pull down the fire escape ladder. He and Shorty climbed to the second floor, and Nosferatu spent a quick minute fiddling at the window. Then he pushed it up, and they climbed inside.

I flipped another mental coin. On the assumption Nosferatu’s attention was now focused inside the building, I put the Valdez in gear and drove as fast as I dared toward Gibbet. The road was a mess. The plows hadn’t reached it yet, and the Valdez made its own free-form progress. No other cars, the only reason I didn’t hit any, but we came close to the ditch three times. When not pumping the breaks and spinning the wheel, I told myself Andras and Irina couldn’t be going much faster, but they had a big head start. The single set of tire tracks ahead of me made generally straight progress, an indication they were taking it easy or the Bimmer had all-wheel drive. The tire tracks turned into Martin Lane. They stopped at the door of the barn.

I left the Valdez by the main road and followed footprints. At the back of the barn, I was just able to reach the sill of a high window. I pulled myself up. The glass was dirty, the interior dark, but parked inside was a 3 Series BMW.

I dropped to the ground and ran along a well-traveled path through earlier snows across the corner of a field toward the woods. The footing got more treacherous in the trees but I kept up a good pace until I emerged, a quarter mile later, at one end of a Gibbet School soccer field. The footprints led around the goal toward the school’s buildings. A hundred yards in the distance, through the screen of falling snow, I could make out Andras and Irina walking quickly, heads down. Just a couple of prep school kids returning to campus at the crack of dawn.

I retreated to the woods and ran for the Valdez.

The Escalade was still in the parking lot. I parked in the same spot and slid down in the seat.

I’d been gone a half hour and sat another forty-seven minutes before Nosferatu and the short man came out the front door. They walked straight to the SUV without looking around. Nosferatu carried a backpack by one strap. Shorty still had his messenger bag. They climbed in and drove off. When he got to Main Street, Nosferatu turned right, away from the road to Gibbet, but that didn’t mean anything.

Daylight was still trying to gain traction, the snow fell thickly. A good time not to be seen. I got a screwdriver, flashlight, and crowbar from the trunk—the same tools Nosferatu had used. I hooked the fire escape ladder with the crowbar, as he had done. The ungreased iron creaked, but the snow muffled the noise. I didn’t wait or look around but climbed the rungs to the platform and took the stairs above two at a time. An old-fashioned wood-framed, double-hung window with a half-moon lock and plenty of give. I slipped the screwdriver through the crease and pushed the lock around. The lower window opened easily. A blanket inside hung from ceiling to floor. I stepped in, closed the window, and listened.

Silence. I waited a minute to be sure. The place felt empty. I pulled the hanging blanket aside.

Pitch black. My flashlight fought darkness down a long hall that ran the length of the building. Eight or ten doors on either side. I stayed where I was for another minute before I tried the door on my left. It opened with the squeak of old hinges. A small, empty room. Cobwebs and dust illuminated by the flashlight beam. Another blanket hung from the ceiling against the far wall, a window behind it. I closed the door and tried the next one. Empty room, the same size, blanket over the window. Same story in the two rooms across and the two on each side after that. Sixteen rooms in all. Two bathrooms faced each other mid-hall. One had two grimy toilets, two dirty sinks and a shower that hadn’t been used in years. The fixtures in the other were new and relatively clean.

The place had been a flophouse, cheap rooms for rent by the night, week, or month. At some point, business had dried up or the town fathers decided this wasn’t the kind of operation they wanted on Main Street. Probably vacant for years before the kids took it over.

The room near the new bathroom had been converted into an outsized closet. A half-dozen hanging racks on wheels, holding vintage costumes for men and women with an emphasis on undergarments and nightclothes. Across the hall was a dressing room. Three tables with mirrors, two full-length mirrors on the wall, lots of makeup and wigs. The drawers of two bureaus held a selection of sex toys as well as handcuffs, riding crops, chains, boots, chaps, ropes, masks, and nylons. The room next to that was furnished to look like a bedroom, but it was more a bedroom set, with a video camera on a tripod in the corner. The Sheetrock walls were scratched and marked, roughly used. A double bed against one wall, unmade. A beat up wing chair against another. A desk in front of the third, next to a blanketed window. Laptop on the desk, cable running to the camera in the corner. The camera was positioned to take in both the chair and the bed.

Three more rooms were set up in similar fashion—bed, chair, desk, computer, camera. Two of the beds were four-posters. A studio for multiple productions, all going on at the same time. At the end of the hall was an open area with a counter and three doors. One door was closet-size. A hanging blanket covered the second with stairs behind, descending to the outside. A rack of hooks by the third, labeled 1 to 16, confirmed this was indeed an old flophouse. Inside, an office with a desk, sofa, table and chairs, a computer on the desk next to a rack of servers. One more blanket over the window. I pulled it back to check the parking lot. Empty except for falling snow.

The table was littered with a pizza box, beer and soda cans, and a full ashtray. Stale smoke hung in the air. I pushed the butts around with the tip of my screwdriver. Tobacco and marijuana.

The computer was asleep. I hit a key and it came to life. A Web browser contained the home page of WildeTimePlayers.com. Oscar Wilde himself stared out from the screen with long hair and Victorian frock coat, his arms outstretched, holding a collage of photographs showing bodies, no faces, in various stages of undress. None were outright naked, none were overtly pornographic. None looked to be over eighteen either.

A menu bar gave me multiple options—SIGN IN, REGISTER, PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE, MEET THE PLAYERS, PAST PRODUCTIONS, MY ACCOUNT. Just like Amazon or Netflix. I clicked on MEET THE PLAYERS and a dialogue window popped up—PLEASE SIGN IN. I clicked on SIGN IN and was asked for a user name and password. I clicked on REGISTER and was asked to designate a user name and password and pay a fee of five hundred dollars. To do that I had to establish an account at ConnectPay.

I tried the HISTORY bar. Someone had been working the pages. The clock in the corner said 8:06 A.M. I called the office on my cell phone, hoping Foos was true to his word. Six rings before he answered. His voice was grumpy.

“This better be good.”

“It’s not. Bad, getting worse. I need a keyboarding bug—pronto. I’m sending you an e-mail.”

“That it?”

“We need to check out a Web site. We’re going to want zombies and a straw man.”

“That bad?”

“Worse, like I say.”

“Give me a minute to hook up a zombie. I’ll send the e-mail back through that.”

I opened the e-mail program and sent a blank message to pigpensboss@pigpensplace.com. A minute later, I got a reply. I clicked on the attachment, which launched itself, installed itself and disappeared. A second later my e-mail and the reply self-evaporated as well.

“Done,” I said. “Straw man?”

“How much we need?”

“Five hundred to open. Don’t know after that. Figure a couple grand.”

“Hold on. I’m sending you a parallel screen app. Click on the attachment and you’ll see what I’m doing.”

“Great. Get rid of it when we’re finished.”

“Why is it you constantly assume you’re dealing with Homer Simpson?”

I ignored the rebuff—not undeserved—and clicked on his e-mail.

The financial history of one Malcolm Carver appeared on the screen. He had checking and savings accounts at Citibank with balances of $2,315 and $3,356, respectively. He also had a Citi Visa debit card and an American Express gold card. His address was in Bethpage, New York.

“He’ll do,” I said.

“I’ve got zombies lined up in Hungary, Italy, and Indonesia. That enough?”

“Should be sufficient. Address is WildeTimePlayers.com. Wilde with an ‘e’, as in Oscar.”

The zombies were an extra precaution. I doubted the Crestview cops had the technology to monitor online activity, but Victoria and the FBI could be monitoring ConnectPay. I don’t know much about the laws governing child pornography, but I assumed we were about to break a few.

Foos typed in the address. The home page of WildeTimePlayers appeared on the parallel screen I was watching.

“I see,” he said.

“It’ll get worse. Malcolm has to register. That triggers the five bills.”

He did as instructed, creating a username, MalMalware@yahoo.com, and opening an account for Malcolm Carver at ConnectPay tied to his Citi debit card. By this afternoon, his account would be five hundred dollars lighter.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Try MEET THE PLAYERS.”

A new screen appeared with photos of Andras Leitz, Irina Lishina, and three others, dressed—or more accurately, mostly undressed—in the vintage costumes I’d seen down the hall. There was no attempt to hide the essentials here. Andras wore pantaloons dropped around his knees and a codpiece pulled up to his stomach, exposing his genitals. His penis was partly erect. Irina’s breasts showed clearly through a sheer camisole, the hem well above her shaved crotch. The other kids were similarly exposed. Below each was a name—Salomé, Dorian, Algernon, Basil, and Sybil.

I could almost see Foos shaking his gray-black mane. “Shit, that’s Andras.”

“Afraid so.”

“You know the others?”

“The girl in the see-through is the Russian. I’m guessing the others are kids at Gibbet School.”

He grunted. “The names are all Oscar Wilde characters, right? Not that it matters.”

“They’re not Dostoevsky.”

“You want to see more?”

“No. But we need to know how bad this is.”

“We do?”

“I do. Sorry you’re along for the ride.”

He grunted again.

“Click on one of the other kids. Keep it as anonymous as possible.”

“Oh, that makes it much better.”

Fifteen minutes later we had a complete picture of the Web site and the WildeTimePlayers’ operation—or as complete as we wanted to get. The Players offered an à la carte menu of content, charging different rates for photos, videos, and “private auditions.” The photos and videos, which set Malcolm Carver back another three hundred dollars for a quick and perfunctory survey, came in solo, duo—boy-girl, boy-boy, girl-girl—and three-way packages. Not much, as in nothing, was left to the imagination. No private auditions available at the moment—they were strictly live and priced accordingly.

Foos said, “I need coffee. Back in a few.”

I got up from the computer and checked the window. Still snowing, no action in the parking lot. Growing up in the Gulag, I saw more than my share of depravity. Starvation. Murder. Exploitation. Rape. The worst was babies turning on their mothers, pounding their chest with fists too tiny to hurt, because the mothers were too emaciated to feed them. Forty years later, they still haunt the occasional nightmare. As a spy, I was taught to prey on human weakness—psychological, emotional, sexual, professional, financial. I don’t harbor many illusions, the world is an ugly place, and I can’t say I felt any particular shock or outrage at what we’d seen. But in a place I didn’t want to be, couldn’t wait to get out of, in the middle of a northeast blizzard, I tried to fight off a profound depression. It wasn’t just the sleaze. Porn by definition involves exploitation. These kids, who had everything, were exploiting themselves, or each other, or both. They wrapped their brand with an ersatz Victorian theatrical veneer and convinced themselves that somehow this made it all okay—a good or productive or funny way to spend their time. For what? The money? That explanation still didn’t work, and I couldn’t see one that did. I’d dealt with lots of twisted people with fucked-up motives, but it was beyond my ability to imagine where and how these kids had gone so far off the rails. I don’t know how much depravity Foos encountered as a California-raised child genius, but he’s one levelheaded dude, as they say these days. Even across the ether, I could feel the Web site sucking his energy.

I returned to the computer.

“You back?”

“Yeah.”

He said, “You think Leitz has any idea?”

“Nope.”

“You gonna tell him?”

“That’s one of many questions I can’t deal with right now. I gotta get out of here.”

“I’ll clean up the electronic trail.”

“Check something first—recent activity on these servers, between seven and eight this morning.”

“Hang on.”

The screen in front of me filled with lines of computer code, which scrolled, flashed, disappeared, flashed and scrolled again.

Foos said, “Somebody spent the better part of an hour looking for outgoing activity. They found it and copied it.”

“Can you tell what it is?”

“It’ll take a while.”

“Do it. I’ll call once I get out of here.”

“On it.”

I put the computer to sleep, wiped off any surfaces I’d touched, pulled the hanging blanket in the reception area aside, took a final look around and started down the stairs.

If I’d come in the front door, I would have missed it. A strand of monofilament stretched across the stairwell, third step from the bottom, ankle level. It shone with the dancing dust against the light outside the door. Coming in the other way, no light behind…

My flashlight beam tracked the strand through a staple in the wall back up the stairs.

Scanning each step, I reclimbed the stairs. Another strand of monofilament across the second from the top, in case whoever came in missed the first one. I’d chanced to step over it on the way down. I stepped over it again back to the lobby and followed both strands to the closet. They ran under the door. I reached for the knob and stopped.

Options. I was looking at an obvious booby-trap, Nosferatu the trapper. He could have rigged the closet door as well. But he expected whoever came up the stairs to trip the string. Still…

I took out my phone and called Foos.

“Update. Activate the zombies and download everything you can from the WildeTime servers.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, but Nosferatu’s wired this place to blow. I’m now a one-man bomb squad, so if I don’t call back…”

“Pig Pen will mourn.”

“He’s in my will. How long you need for the downloading?”

“Wait a minute.”

“Waiting may not be a good idea here.”

“Right. Lots of data. Terabytes. Few hours minimum.”

“I’ll buy you as much time as possible.”

“Keep me posted.”

“If I can.”

I went back through the space, carefully this time, opening every door, looking in every corner. Every hair on my back stood straight up—all telling me to get out while I could. I tried not to listen.

I found four wastebaskets in four bedroom closets, all filled with gasoline. The fifth closet held the kind of five-gallon can you get at any gas station. It was half full.

Nosferatu had improvised. He’d set the trap to kill the next person who entered, presumably one of the kids, then burn the place to the ground. Why? Time enough to worry about that later—or so I hoped.

I moved the five-gallon can to the working bathroom. I filled it from one of the trash cans and carried it out to the Valdez, careful to avoid both tripwires, and poured the contents into the tank. A messy operation, environmentally incorrect, but nobody would die. Two more can-fulls, two more trips to the car. One more survey of the space. No more improvised Molotov cocktails. Still the closet door to deal with.

I called Foos.

“How much more time you need?”

“Lotta dense shit. Three hours, maybe four.”

“I’ve got one more thing to do here. Might be the last thing. If you don’t hear from me there’s a reason.”

“Pig Pen…”

“I know…”

I went back to the closet door, the tripwires running underneath. Inside, almost certainly, was another container of gas connected to some kid of trigger. Question was, had Nosferatu triggered the door as well. I put the odds at eighty–twenty against. One in five. Not as good as Russian roulette, one in six. On the plus side, there was no reason for it. On the down side, he’d gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that he set off an inferno.

Foos needed three hours plus. If I called the cops, he wouldn’t get them. If I opened the door, and bet wrong, he wouldn’t get them either.

I grabbed the knob and pulled.

Nothing.

I leaned against the jam and exhaled.

Inside was another wastebasket. Next to it a mousetrap, the monofilament tied to the spring. Tin foil wrapping both ends and a cable running to a plug in the wall. Someone coming in trips the wire on the stairs, flips the trap, closes the circuit and…

Boom.

Nice guy, Nosferatu.

I pulled the plug. Breathing normally for the first time in an hour, I carried the last can of gas to the Valdez and dumped it in.

I called Foos again.

“I still need time,” he said.

“Take it. I’ve cleaned out the bombs. I’m going to get the kids. Call Leitz. Tell him I want Andras in the headmaster’s office—now. I need his okay to take him with me. If he argues, tell him I don’t want his blood on my hands.”

“Should I tell him about Crestview?”

“Only if you have to. This is life and death for his kid—thanks to his kid—and his best chance for life is with me.”

“Lucky you.”

“Remember who got me into this?”

CHAPTER 32

It was still snowing as I drove back to Gibbet School, but the road had been plowed and sanded. I stopped in the driveway outside the administration building and called Batkin.

“I was wondering when I would hear from you,” he said.

“You’re not going to be happy that you did. I have no time to explain what’s going on, but none of it’s good for your stepdaughter. That’s her fault, I’m afraid. Seems she’s been pursuing the Internet’s oldest profession.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“She and some friends have been running an online pornography ring—with themselves as producers, directors and, I’m afraid, stars.”

I waited for the intake of breath, and I got it.

“Are you certain Irina’s involved?”

“Let’s just say I’ve seen a lot more of her than I was looking for.”

A pause while he processed what I said. I was pretty sure where he’d go, and I was right.

“Do you know…? Who’s responsible? Who got her into this?”

“Don’t know if anyone did. I think she and some pals were doing this on their own.”

“Is the Leitz kid involved?”

“I’m not saying who was involved. She’s got worse problems. I just left their production studio. It’s in the town next to Gibbet. It was booby-trapped to blow sky high. Irina could easily have been the one to set off the explosion.”

“What the hell? Who…?”

“How about a tall, ugly man, Belarusian, six-seven, pockmarked face, buckteeth, superhuman strength?”

Another intake of breath.

“Karp is here?”

“If that’s his name, yes.”

“I may have underestimated my old friend Efim Ilyich. You’ve met Karp, I take it?”

“Once.”

“I’m impressed. Not many survive the experience.”

“It was touch and go. He have a full name?”

“Karp is the only one I know. Konychev’s muscle. A man without a heart.”

“I can attest to that.”

“What did he want with you?”

“Tell me to mind my own business.”

“Were you interfering in his?”

“Not intentionally.”

“That wouldn’t make any difference to Karp. He was a zek who became a guard who became the right hand of the camp commander. Gorlag, after my time. They say he likes young boys and blood, not necessarily in that order. He has quite a track record on both counts. You should watch your step.”

I didn’t point out the irony of his advice. “I intend to. I need to get your stepdaughter out of town. When he finds out his trap didn’t blow, I don’t know his next move.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Help with the school. I need them to release the girl to me.”

“I understand. Where are you?’

“On the campus.”

“I’ll call the headmaster. You’ll bring Irina home?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“As soon as you can.”

I presented myself to the headmaster’s secretary—a sharp-faced woman of a certain age and dress, who looked me all over and didn’t hide the distaste at what she saw. Not entirely her fault—a night in the car and a morning spent transferring petroleum products out of a flop house porn den didn’t leave me presenting my best.

“I’m afraid Dr. Paine is extremely busy, booked all day. Perhaps tomorrow…”

“Tell Dr. Paine to squeeze me in. He has my name from two of your parents, Sebastian Leitz and Taras Batkin.”

She frowned at the tone and the name-dropping. No way, in her universe, I should know such people.

“As I said…”

“Tell him I’m waiting. Now, please.” I put my best Cheka authority, meant to convey inevitability, into my voice. “If you don’t, I will.”

She managed to get up and go into the office behind without spitting.

She came back a half minute later.

“Dr. Paine will—”

A man with shoe-polish brown hair that looked dyed, four to five inches shorter than my six feet, bustled out the door right behind her.

“Mr. Vlost, Philip Paine, pleased to meet you. My apologies if you’ve been delayed. This is all… very irregular. Please, come in.”

He extended a hand and gave me a limp handshake. He wore round tortoiseshell glasses, a Harris Tweed jacket, striped tie, gray flannel trousers, and penny loafers—with pennies. I followed him into his office. The dragon secretary retreated to her perch, still looking for a spittoon.

Paine circled his outsize mahogany desk and pointed me to a seat across.

“How can I help?”

I stayed standing.

“I’m here for Andras Leitz and Irina Lishina.”

“Yes. Dr. Leitz and Ambassador Batkin called. But, as I’m sure you can appreciate, we have rules, procedures, responsibilities. Not to mention classes to teach. I can’t just release… I need to know…”

“What do you need to know?”

“I need… Why do Andras and Irina have to leave school? Clearly there’s some sort of issue. Dr. Leitz and Ambassador Batkin were vague as to its nature. There may be other students involved. There may be issues that affect the school. We need to make sure… Perhaps you could…”

Philip Paine gave every indication of being an insecure man, hiding behind the stature he presumed his office held. A midlevel private school apparatchik who had somehow risen to Politburo power and understood he’d climbed above his station. He was past uncomfortable, not yet panicked, but headed that way. On a better day, I might have worked him with more subtlety.

Today I said, “The issue is this: I’m here to pick up Andras and Irina. They’re in danger. Their parents have told you to expect me. What are we waiting for?”

Paine wrung his hands and tried once more. “I’m sorry. But here at Gibbet, we don’t just release our students into the care of people… when we don’t know.… We have responsibilities. In loco parentis…”

No matter what the system, there’s always some bureaucrat trying to protect his turf. The Communist Party member responsible for overseeing his part of a five-year plan somewhere in the Urals. Philip Paine at Gibbet School. The motivations were the same. Behind them was fear of making a mistake and the loss of position and the privileges that could follow. Paine was frozen in inaction.

I took out my phone and hit redial. Batkin answered on the first ring.

“Turbo. I’m encountering resistance.”

“What kind of resistance?”

“Headmaster.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Paine looked pained. The dragon put her head through the door. She wanted to breathe fire, but none would come.

“Ambassador Batkin on line one.”

Paine gulped and picked up the phone. While they talked, I dialed Leitz.

“Foos called,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

“No time for that. I’m at Gibbet. Nosferatu’s here. I’m trying to get Andras out of town. I’m getting a hard time from the headmaster.”

“His name says everything you need to know about him. I’ll call right now.”

“He’s waiting to hear from you.”

I pocketed the phone and took the offered seat.

Paine hung up from Batkin, looking like the apparatchik who’s just been told he’s won a one-way trip to the Gulag.

Dragon-lady opened the door. “Dr. Leitz on line two.”

I crossed my legs and nodded at Paine.

“Looks like I’m holding two kings. You?”

It took eight hours to get back to New York. Snow fell for most of the trip. Cars spun out left and right. I kept a steady pace around thirty and tried to maintain as much distance as I could from other vehicles.

The kids were quiet in the backseat. They’d come to Paine’s office, when finally summoned, sullen and nervous. At least Andras was. Irina was impossible to read. Andras wore a sweater over corduroys, like his father. Irina had a turtleneck under her ski jacket and dark jeans. The presence I’d noted in our phone conversation was evident in person. Some Russian women have it, even at a young age, as if she had the world exactly where she wanted it, in the palm of her hand—current circumstances not withstanding. Neither kid’s demeanor improved when informed they were riding back to New York with me.

I introduced myself without explanation and let them stew across Massachusetts until we got on I-84 into Connecticut.

“I’ve been in the playhouse,” I said.

That got no response. I watched through the rearview mirror, and I think they glanced at each other, but they said nothing.

“I’m not going to ask what you thought you were doing, but I am curious about one thing. When you left this morning, a tall man, ugly SOB, spent an hour in there. He’d been watching the place all night. He left behind enough gasoline to blow your little studio to Timbuktu, and he rigged it so the next visitor—maybe one of you—would set it off. Boom, good-bye. How come?”

That got their attention. Andras went wide-eyed and looked at Irina, who slid down in her seat and tried to disappear—not so much from me, I thought, but from him.

“You said—”

She cut him off. “Shut up. Not now.”

“Karp,” I said. “That’s the tall man’s name, I’m told. You know him, Irina?”

Her eyes shot fire into the rearview mirror.

“Who’s Karp?” Andras asked.

“SHUT UP!” Irina shouted.

Andras turned away, chastened.

The dynamics of their relationship became clearer. More Cheka training—when an opening presents itself, drive a wedge through it.

“Karp’s a professional assassin, Andras. A man who enjoys hurting people. I know that from personal experience. He works for Irina’s uncle.”

Burn one bridge to build another. Irina had the same look my ex-wife used to get before she flew into a rage in the last days of our disintegrating marriage. Andras’s eyes got wider.

“Assassin?!”

“Shut up!”

“What’d you guys do to piss Karp off?” I said.

“We didn’t do…” Andras whispered.

“Andras, if you say one more fucking word, I’ll never speak to you again.”

He looked away.

“Karp’s still after both of you,” I said. “Think about that. We have a long drive home.”

I took another shot on the stretch between Hartford and Waterbury. I’d stopped at an exit that featured an array of fast-food options, chose Burger King for no reason other than it was open and empty, waited for the kids to use the bathrooms, passed up the opportunity to do so myself, for fear I’d be solo when I came out, and asked if they wanted anything to eat. They bought Whoppers and fries and Cokes. I passed on that opportunity too. Fast food is one American invention that holds little appeal, and hunger is one more thing Russians learn to deal with from an early age, especially in the Gulag. Standing behind them at the counter, in the bright fluorescent light, I noticed a rough, red, scar peeking out the top of Irina’s turtleneck, marring the otherwise fine skin. I hadn’t seen that before, I was pretty sure, and I’d seen a lot of Irina last night.

“So, who’d you guys clip for that eight mil?” I asked as we pulled back on the highway and they unwrapped their meals.

“We have nothing to say, Chekist Pig,” Irina responded before biting into her Whopper. Andras looked at her, clearly uncomfortable, then caught my eye in the rearview mirror. He held his burger in his lap and said nothing.

“The way I figure it,” I went on, as if discussing a movie or last night’s ball game, “the seven mil each of you guys has—all those transfers from State Street—are your WildeTime profits. Nice work if you want to do it. But the three mil in November and five in December, that puzzled me—for a while. You might have gotten away with it if you’d only hit them once. But the second time—Thanksgiving vacation, right?—you got their attention. Karp put a tap on your old man’s system, Andras. They had a good look around. You didn’t cover your tracks quite well enough and now you’ve got Karp on your tail. He got Uncle Walter to help, by the way, with your father’s computers. Which reminds me, did you see him on Wednesday?”

His eyes grew wider than ever. “I didn’t…,” he started to whisper.

“ANDRAS! Remember what we promised.”

He gulped, took a bite of his burger, and studied his knees.

“You didn’t what? See him?”

He kept his face down. Irina watched him and watched me. She was on high alert.

“I think you saw him. He tell you he was in jail? Child rape, Andras. Your uncle has a serious problem. But maybe you already knew that.”

He started to shake, head still down. Irina put a hand on his shoulder while she kept her eyes on me in the mirror.

“Haven’t you said enough, Cheka Pig?”

I ignored her. “That why you wanted to disappear so bad, Andras. You hit half the ATMs in Queens after you left your uncle.”

He was still shaking. Irina had acquired a more thoughtful look, and it occurred to me I’d just told her more than I should have. It was also clear I wasn’t going to break her hold without a sharper weapon, and probably not so long as she was present to protect her interests. With nothing better to do for another three hours, I kept at it anyway.

“You know who you’ve gone up against, don’t you, Andras? I’m sure Irina’s told you all about them. They run in her family. All the way through it. Baltic Enterprise Commission—same outfit that probably hosted your WildeTime Web site. Same people that have Uncle Walter by the you-know-whats. They own him and they own ConnectPay. You do know that, right?”

“Shut up, Pig!”

“Maybe Irina was a little short on the details. I can understand that. Her uncle started the BEC. Her father’s a partner. Her stepfather’s another. Maybe she has her hand in the honey pot too. How ’bout it, Irina?”

“Fuck you.”

“Thing is, Andras, you screw around with people like that, they don’t care who you are, who you know, who you’re sleeping with. You rip them off, they want restitution—and blood. Not necessarily in that order. They need blood to tell the next guy not to try. That’s why Karp is here. That’s why he’s after you. Both of you. You put up a good act, Irina, but he’ll break your neck as easily as he breaks your boyfriend’s.”

It could have been my imagination, but Irina chewed more thoughtfully. Maybe I’d really penetrated her tough-girl Russian veneer this time. Andras wasn’t chewing at all. He just stared straight ahead, out the windshield, alone in his thoughts. I had the idea that, as troubling as those were, they were probably safer than anywhere else he could be.

Around Danbury, it stopped snowing. The kids slept, Andras leaning against the door, Irina’s head on his shoulder. Foos called to announce he’d finished the transfer.

“Worse than we thought,” he said. “Kid’s in this deep.”

“How deep?”

“Wrong people catch him, they’ll bury him alive.”

I kept one eye on the rearview mirror. No movement. “You mean the same people as this morning?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They know what you know?”

“Yep. Where are you?”

“Danbury. Slow going.”

“I’ll be here.”

I pushed up the speed to forty-five and called Victoria.

“You okay?” she asked.

“That’s a relative question, but yes, I’m alive and functioning.”

“Don’t be cute. Where are you?”

“I-Eighty-four, an hour from New York on a good day, probably two tonight.”

“I-Eighty-four? What the hell are you doing on the road?”

“Snow’s stopped.”

“You know what I mean. Pull off, find a motel.”

A car ahead of me went into a skid. The phone fell to my lap as I braked gently and moved lanes. The sliding vehicle swiped the snow covered guardrail as I passed.

“Turbo?! You there?!” Victoria called.

“Sorry. Car ahead just spun out.”

“Can you hear yourself talking? You’re no good to anyone dead, least of all me.”

“The sweetness of your sentiment is all I need to bear me back to town.”

“Christ! You are the most stubborn—”

“National trait. Only foreign invaders are defeated by snow. Have I told you how snow and Russian stubbornness turned the tide of the Great Patriotic War?”

“Save the propaganda and focus on the road. What happened in Crestview? Foos said you’d encountered difficulties, but everything’s okay now.”

“Foos exaggerated—about okay. I’ve got the Leitz kid and the Russian girl in the backseat. We’ve got Nosferatu on our tail, maybe. They’ve got him on their tail, certainly. Neither of them will tell me what’s going on, I was up all night last night, and this is a long trip. So I’m in a bad mood. But I’ll be back in your arms in a few hours.”

“There’s something you need to know.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m breaking rules telling you.”

“I understand.”

“Alexander Lishin.”

Uh-oh. “The backseat, remember.”

“That’s why you need to know. He’s dead.”

I checked the mirror. All still.

“Where? When?”

“He was found in the Moscova River fifty miles outside Moscow. Apparently there was a thaw and he bubbled up through some thin ice. The CPS got there first. They’ve got a tight lid on. He’s been dead several weeks.”

I looked in the mirror again. Irina hadn’t moved, still sleeping soundly or giving a good performance of same. Did she know?

“Cause?”

“Run through with a fireplace poker and the body dumped. The poker broke through the ice. He’d been tortured about eight different ways before he hit the water.”

“Thanks. I understand everything you mean. We’ll talk about it when I get there.”

“You coming home?”

“I’ve got to drop off the kids. Then a stop to make. Then probably the office.”

“A stop? What kind of stop?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“How’d I know that’s what you were going to say? I’ll be waiting.”

I spent the last ninety minutes of the drive thinking about Victoria’s news and whether Irina had any idea and what it meant. I came up empty on all fronts. I would’ve given a bottle of vodka for a laptop and the ability to read what Ivanov had to say. Victoria said the CPS put a lid on. I was willing to bet the Valdez—and the Potemkin—that Ivanov had the story.

The kids came to life as we crossed the Willis Avenue Bridge into Manhattan. The streets were quiet and empty. We got to Irina’s house first, which would give me a few minutes with Andras. She anticipated that and whispered something about “remembering our promise” before she kissed him on the cheek and got out of the car. Her stepfather opened the door when I rang. He tried to greet her, but she brushed past without a word. He looked at me, the blue-gray eyes cold but sad.

“Would you like to come in? Drink? You’ve had a long drive.”

I could see he had a hundred questions. What parent wouldn’t? I wanted out of there before he started asking.

“No, thanks. I’ve got another delivery to make.”

He hesitated, ever so slightly. He wasn’t used to being turned down, but he sensed it was better not to push. “We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll call in the morning.”

No question about it being first thing. That would be enough time for me.

Andras avoided mirror eye contact as I drove slowly down Park Avenue. We had the street to ourselves, a good thing since it was slushy and slippery.

“So what’s the deal between you two,” I asked in my best friendly, conversational tone. “She your girlfriend? You going out?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even look up. I wanted to tell him that I knew girls like her, that I’d married one of them and been where this led, and he didn’t want any part of it. He wasn’t going to listen.

“What I said back there on the highway, about the Baltic Enterprise Commission? That’s all true. If you’ve ripped them off, they will not rest until they catch you. I’ve seen Karp—the tall man, the assassin—at your father’s office, at your uncle Walter’s building, and at your place in Crestview. He knows who you are, Andras. He knows who she is too. Her stepfather may be able to pull some strings on her behalf, but I very much doubt he’ll pull any for you. And that doesn’t mean they still won’t use her—hurt her—to get to you. Seventeen’s pretty young to start living underground. If you tell me what’s going on, maybe I can help figure a way out. That’s what I’m going to tell your dad, but I’m making you the offer first. I don’t want anything in return, but you do have to tell me the truth.”

He didn’t respond, he just looked around the car, as if examining for the first time where he’d spent the last eight hours. I caught his eye in the mirror and held it. He leaned forward, and I slowed to a crawl, ready to stop altogether. There was a moment when I thought he might open up, but it passed. He fell back in the seat and buried his head in his hands.

He was honoring his promise to Irina. It occurred to me that he just might be more scared of her than Karp.

Leitz himself came to the door, like Batkin. The greeting here was warmer. He hugged his son, and Andras hugged back—with what appeared to be obvious affection. Maybe he was just glad to be rid of me. The kid went inside and Leitz shook my hand.

“It seems I am continually in your debt.”

“You might not think so when you hear the whole story.”

“How bad is it?”

“I don’t know it all yet, but I’m not exaggerating when I say life and death. I think he’s used his computer skills to rip off the people who bugged your network—the Baltic Enterprise Commission. That’s why they did it, by the way, they were after him, they were never interested in your TV deal. The fake lawyers interviewing your brother and sisters, maybe even Alyona’s involvement—they were all part of the effort to find out who was stealing from them.”

“Andras? Stealing? Baltic Enterprise Commission? He’s a boy, a school kid!”

“I don’t know how to tell you this. He’s a school kid with eleven million dollars in a dozen different bank accounts. He and Irina and a couple of others are running their own criminal enterprise. A pornography operation—in which they produce, direct, and star. This isn’t conjecture. I’ve seen the whole thing. I can document the bank transfers.”

Leitz shook his head back and forth, eyes wide, mouth suspended in a circle. I’d hit him hard, perhaps harder than I should have, but I was feeling the impact of the last twenty-four hours. He tried a couple of times to collect his wits and speak but the wits weren’t cooperating.

“There’s more,” I said. I told him about Nosferatu and the explosives. “Talk to your son. Maybe he’ll open up to you. I tried a few times. No luck. Something has a strong hold on the boy. Probably Irina, but it could be something else.”

“All right. But…”

“He isn’t safe here. You can hire security, but I wouldn’t give most rent-a-cops much chance against these guys. If I were you, I’d get him into hiding—a hotel somewhere busy where no one will notice or care about one more person. Take away his cell phone. Don’t tell anyone where he is. Especially not Irina. I’ve got a couple of leads to follow, but if he decides to talk about what he’s been doing, maybe we can figure a way out of this. That’s his best chance.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“He won’t have to worry about college admissions.”

CHAPTER 33

Twenty-second Street in Queens was dead quiet at 8:00 P.M. and filled with snow. The plows had made one pass, but that had been hours earlier. I parked the Valdez against a snowbank, partly blocking the street, but there was just enough room for a car to pass, if any came by, which seemed unlikely. I walked the block, looking for signs of life and finding none, including no sign of the FBI. They probably figured nobody would be out. Or maybe they took snow days. I’d have to ask Victoria.

I stopped by a van with AAA-ACE-ACME LOCKSMITHS on the side, parked across the street, engine running, and knocked twice on the window. A small, wiry man got out.

I’d made one more call from the road, while the kids were sleeping. Fyodor, proprietor of AAA-ACE-ACME, whom I pay well for the occasional B&E job, told me I was out of my fucking mind. I told him I’d add two bills to his normal fee. He agreed to meet me in Long Island City.

In four minutes, we were through the front door and on the elevator. Fyodor wrinkled his nose when we got off on the third floor. The stench was intense in the closed hallway. It got stronger near the door to YouGoHere.com. Fyodor knelt at the lock and did his work quickly, taking seven, maybe eight minutes. When the last click clicked, he pushed the door open and doubled over, retching. I gagged when the wave of stench hit me. I pulled Fyodor up by his shirt and yanked him back toward the elevator.

“You were never here.”

“I never wanted to be.”

I gave him seven hundred dollars, and he left without a word. I stopped in the hall, letting the stink dissipate, not wanting to go in, knowing I had no choice.

I didn’t have anything to cover my face. I took the deepest breath I could, and moved fast through the door, pulling it closed behind me. The room was dark, I tripped over something immovable, cried out and lost the air in my lungs. I inhaled, stifled the urge to vomit, and kept going, feeling for the window. I found a metal blind and glass and a crank and cranked it. I yanked up the blind and put my head through the opening, sucking cold air, trying not to throw up.

When my insides settled down, I dropped the blind, leaving the window open. I flicked a light switch by the door.

They say flies find a body within hours of death. They’d found Walter Coryell—the source of the smell had to be Walter Coryell—and invited all their friends over for a feast. I’d set several clouds abuzz. A prehistoric mass of maggots seethed around the ears, nose, and eyes. The body slumped over the desk that had tripped me, bloated with bacteria, head at an impossible angle, the no-longer-recognizable remains of eyes in rotting sockets turned to the ceiling. The fresh air diluted the stink, but not enough.

The headquarters of YouGoHere.com was a one-room office. Three file cabinets, drawers closed. Same with the desk. The room itself was plain as plain could be. Desk, chair, two other chairs on the other side. All cheap metal and plastic construction. No signs of search or violence other than the body with the broken neck. I went back to the fresh air of the window while I looked around again.

Something was wrong, aside from the body. A printer and a copy machine against one wall. A cheap table against another. No computer. No servers, a staple for any Internet firm, but also no desktop machine, no laptop, no nothing. YouGoHere might be a rundown sham of a business, but even a sham needs the basics, if only to put up a credible front.

Holding my breath, I made a quick circumnavigation. Next to the copier, against the wall across from the window, I found a patch of floor, two feet by four, where the color was darker than the surrounding linoleum. The size of two server racks placed side by side. They would have shielded the floor from the sun. I eased the copier away from the wall. A half-dozen cable connectors stuck out of a plastic plate in the Sheetrock. The servers had been here.

Coryell’s corpse wore a white shirt and khaki pants, both stretched tight by bloated skin. Running shoes on the feet. A navy blue ski jacket hung on the back of the chair. A bulge in his rear pocket. I reached for it. I don’t know why it felt creepy—there was nothing he could do now, except stink and breed more flies—but it did. I worked the wallet out and went back to the window.

Eight twenties in the billfold, a New York driver’s license, two credit cards, Visa and American Express, and a B of A bank card, all in the name of Franklin Druce. I found an identical wallet in the desk drawer with a license and bank and credit cards issued to Walter Coryell.

The other drawers yielded nothing. Neither did the file cabinets. I replaced the wallet, eased the copier back against the wall, took off my jacket, and wiped everything I’d touched. Holding my breath again, I put down the blinds and shut the window. The stench closed around me in an instant. I let myself out and took the stairs two at a time down to the street. The cold, wet air outside was about the sweetest smell ever.

CHAPTER 34

“Russky!” Pig Pen called when I emerged from the server farm. “Tiramisu! No gigolo.”

He was grinning, if parrots can grin, custard hanging from his beak.

Victoria and Foos sat opposite each other over a chessboard on the coffee table. She jumped up and ran to me. She was wearing jeans that had been sewn on, boots, and a black T-shirt advertising Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in Nashville. Tootsie had made it to fit her. We hugged tight, and some of the misery of the last thirty-six hours fell away, until she pushed me back.

“Phew! You stink, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

I didn’t mind. I’m sure she was right.

“Bayou Babe. Tiramisu! Russky gigolo,” Pig Pen said.

“Pig Pen and I are bonding,” Victoria said.

“I’m not so sure I’m going to like this.”

“You jealous?”

“Now that you’ve demonstrated yourself to be a soft touch, he’s not going to let go easily.”

“Bayou Babe,” Pig Pen said.

She turned to face him. “Quiet, parrot, or you’ll be eating rice pudding before you know it.” To me, she said, “You smell like death, not warmed over.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

It wasn’t what I said but how I said it—more hard-edged than I intended.

“Uh-oh. This that stop you mentioned?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Careful, Turbo, she’s a much better chess player than you are,” Foos said, coming in our direction.

“I never claimed to be any good at chess.”

“Neither does she.”

“Hey! All I said was…”

“That you were only a beginner?”

“Did you beat him?” I asked. If she had, she was seriously good. Foos wasn’t grand master material, he didn’t have the discipline, but he wasn’t too many levels below.

“We drew twice,” Victoria said. “We were just starting the rubber match.”

“Go back and finish. I’ve still got stuff to do.”

“Uh-uh. I want to hear what you’ve been up to—and how many laws you broke.”

“To be continued,” Foos said. “I got all that material you asked for, Turbo. How’s Andras?”

“Okay, physically. In a shitload of trouble otherwise.”

“Maybe more than he’s aware,” he said. “Let me know when you want to take a look at those servers.”

“First things first. Drink.”

“What servers? And what about a shower?” Victoria said.

“Has to wait, I’m afraid.”

“Always thinking of yourself,” she muttered.

Foos grinned and headed for his office. I went to the kitchen and poured a large glass. Victoria raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

“Food next,” I said as I went rummaging through the mostly empty fridge.

“Want to talk about it?” she said.

I was leaning over the vegetable drawer. I stopped. Being asked to talk about it was new to me. I’ve lived a lonely life in those terms. No parents, and as a kid, my friends were usually looking for a way to climb up my back, as I was theirs. I could talk to Iakov, until I found out I couldn’t, but his sons were worse than the kids in the Gulag. When I was married to Polina, I didn’t discuss my work. The Cheka demanded secrecy and loyalty. Foos and I discuss work-related matters but he’s not long on discussion generally and about as sympathetic as a cinder block.

On the other hand, as soon as I started talking, I’d be headed down a street with no way out at the other end. Too many crimes had been committed—not just by me—for her to ignore. The kids were in it up to their necks, and she’d rightly demand they go to the cops. I’d already sent one into hiding, and the other’s stepfather—my client—was unlikely to look kindly on a request to serve her up to the law. I could tell her what happened, but I was in no position to do what she’d want done—although I doubted she’d see it that way. I told myself to stop rationalizing and play the hand. I closed the drawer and unbent myself.

“Coryell’s dead. That’s the smell. Just spent enough time with the corpse to confirm he’s your man Druce.”

She didn’t blink or act surprised. “Where?”

“His office. No sign of FBI outside.”

“We pulled him. You had to go there tonight?”

I nodded. “Those kids are in life and death danger, and he’s the link—or was. I didn’t know he was dead. Correction—I expected he could be but wasn’t sure. His neck’s broken. Several days ago, judging from the stink and the flies.”

“I already know the answer to this, but I’ll ask anyway—you call the police?”

“Believe it or not, I did. From a pay phone.”

“You leave a name?”

My turn to raise an eyebrow.

“Never mind. Take what you can get. Hang on.”

She took a cell phone from her pocket and gave someone a short list of orders about the NYPD, Coryell, and his office.

“Want to hear about the computers?” I said when she finished.

“What computers?”

“ConnectPay’s. The ones that probably have every transaction the company ever made recorded on their hard drives. Not to mention customer files, money flow, BEC data…”

She’d been pacing the kitchen while she made her call. She stopped and faced me. “What about them?”

“They’re missing. Not in Coryell’s office. They used to be, I saw where they were. Somebody took them. Maybe the same somebody who killed him.”

“Goddammit. You got any good news?” She paced some more.

“I’m alive. And you know a lot more than you did two days ago.”

That stopped her again. She came back toward me.

“How the hell did I get myself shacked up with a serial felon?”

“Felonious sex appeal?”

“Don’t start with the humor—and don’t give yourself airs, especially not tonight. How’d you get into Coryell’s office?”

“You don’t really expect me to answer that.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t. You touch anything, take anything?”

“No one will find fingerprints.”

“I’m sure that’s true. Answer the question.”

“I opened the window. I moved the photocopier away from the wall and put it back. I checked Coryell’s wallet. It’s in his hip pocket, where I found it. I interrupted several hundred musca meals.”

That got me a look.

“Flies—there’s lots of them.”

“Ugh.” She resumed her pacing. “You know, shug, aside from your own criminal intent, which I’m trying hard to overlook, all this information you serve up, I don’t know if we can even use it. We’ve got laws, conventions, rules of evidence.”

“You’re a prosecutor. I’m an ex-spy. If what Foos just said about your chess acumen is true, I’m guessing you’ll find a way.”

“You’re an ex-spy bullshit artist.”

She put out her arms. I stepped into her embrace.

“No! My mistake. I think that smell’s growing. You need a bath, maybe disinfectant. If that doesn’t work, one of us is definitely sleeping on the couch.”

I shook my head. “I’ve got one more job to do. It’s why I came back here. It’s ugly and unpleasant and probably involves your man Konychev. I’m also going to need your help with something.”

“Do I anticipate more laws being broken?”

“Can’t say no. But law or no law, there’s no good way out of this particular swamp.”

“Remember I grew up in a swamp.”

“Doesn’t mean you want to return.”

She put a hand on each cheek and planted her lips on mine—briefly.

“You’re not the only who can take a selective approach to truth telling. Let’s go—that is, if he’ll let a Fed sit in.”

“If you really drew him in chess twice, he’s too devastated to say no.”

I grabbed the bottle and two glasses in addition to my own, and we went to Foos’s office.

“Showtime,” I said.

“I was afraid of that,” he said.

He moved his desk chair aside to make room for the two I brought around. He made no comment on Victoria’s presence. Pig Pen wasn’t the only one she’d been bonding with.

I put the glasses and the bottle on the desk. Foos poured a drink. Victoria shook her head, no.

“First stop, see if WildeTime.com is still online.”

“No need. Whole BEC network is down.”

“Again? That’s not good for the kids.”

“The kids—or kid—are the ones who took it down. That’s what I meant when I called.”

“Andras really took down the BEC?”

“Uh-huh. He’s been toying with ConnectPay for months, starting last summer. He spent weeks looking around, figuring out what’s what. He tried a few minor data-corruption programs, nothing too serious, more experiments than anything else. Then he found his way through the BEC firewall. A few more data-corruption forays, reconnaissance missions, enough to cause some glitches. Then he clipped them for that three mil in August and the five at Thanksgiving. Like he was ramping up. A couple weeks ago, he planted a real worm, nest of worms actually. Data corruption big time—designed to make a total mash of everything. The first time it twists a few files—as a warning. That was the little hiccup a few days ago. The second, if it isn’t disabled, the worms bore their way through everything, eat it all from the inside out, leaving a long trail of cyber-shit in its wake.”

“Let me guess. The second launch was today.”

“Correctomundo,” Foos said. “They may have backup systems unconnected with their main servers, but if not, the BEC is well and truly cooked. And even if they do, they’ve got a big job getting back in business. Could take weeks, probably months.”

“That’s a lot of income.”

“Billions.”

“Did he cover his tracks?”

“He did inside the ConnectPay servers, but all the activity is clear as day on his own system. Didn’t reckon anyone would be looking at it, I guess.”

“Naïve.”

“He’s a kid, a smart kid, but a kid.”

“And the guy this morning could see it?”

“If he’s remotely competent, he saw everything I did.”

“You’re right about buried alive. If they don’t dismember him first.”

Victoria was watching silently, a mix of surprise and thoughtfulness on her face. I reached for the phone and called Leitz.

“You get your son somewhere safe, like we discussed?”

“Working on it right now.”

“Don’t delay. It’s worse than I thought. And don’t tell anybody—not your wife, your family, anybody where he is. Anybody who knows is in the same kind of danger.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“I’ll explain when I see you.”

Victoria said, “That kid’s a suspect. You’re aiding and abetting.”

“That kid’s dead—as soon as they finish torturing him—the moment anyone in the BEC knows where to find him.”

“You can’t keep him in hiding forever.”

“I know.” Problem was, that’s exactly how long Karp and Konychev—Batkin too?—were going to keep looking. She was giving me her best prosecutorial glare.

“Suppose I need to talk to him?”

“We can discuss that.”

“Uh-uh. You get no special dispensation from me. Not when it comes to doing my job.”

“I understand. I’m not expecting any. But there may be other answers.” I did my best to sound confident. I could see she didn’t believe me any more than I believed myself. I turned to Foos.

“If the ConnectPay servers were disconnected before the data destruction program launched itself, there’s a chance they weren’t infected, right?”

“If they were offline, and Andras didn’t trash them too, they’re probably okay.”

“Looks like you still have your case, if we can find those servers,” I said to Victoria. “Although we may need them to bargain for the kid.”

“Hold on, shug. You can’t…”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said quickly. “We have to find them first. And if Nosferatu killed Coryell, it’s a moot point—he’s already got them.”

“You still can’t…”

Time to change the subject, even if it was only a temporary reprieve. I said, “Let’s take a look at the WildeTime data. Start with e-mail. Search on Newburgh.”

I could feel Victoria’s glare as I watched the computer. Foos was cool as a cucumber—once again declining to take sides, at least overtly. It took a minute to find an exchange between someone named frankyfun and Salomé—a half-dozen messages arranging a five-thousand-dollar private “in-person audition” at the Black Horse Motel for the night of January 15.

“Who’s that?” Victoria asked.

“Frankyfun is Walter Coryell.”

“You sure?”

“Dead certain, actually.”

“Doesn’t your sense of humor ever take a night off?”

“Carpe diem.”

“Carpe my ass. Who’s Salomé?”

I resisted the temptation to carpe the obvious comeback. “Salomé is Andras’s girlfriend, Irina. What else is there on franky?”

Foos worked the keys. Franky was a regular. He’d paid for “private auditions,” mostly with Salomé, about once a week for the last six months. All recorded.

One of the worst things about this kind of investigation, it makes you question your own motives. Are they based on prurience? How much do I need to see? We all have tendencies, I’m told, but most of us keep them buried. For those who don’t, and have the funds, here was a menu, just like a diner. Cute underaged Russian blowjobs in column A. Sweet-faced American boy pulling his pud in column B. For kiddie doggy, choose column C. Got a thing for teenaged lesbians…

Victoria muttered, “Jesus, I can’t believe this. You weren’t kidding about the swamp. I’ll take that drink now.”

She reached for the bottle.

“Pick one at random,” I said to Foos.

Foos pointed and clicked. We got Irina/Salomé doing a solo masturbation act, at the direction of frankyfun, who’d paid $699 for the privilege. It took a short minute to figure out how it worked. Irina was on the bed in one of the rooms I’d seen that morning. She stared out at the camera, clothed in a vintage velvet dress with lace collar, made up to look like an even younger girl, pigtails and all. She shed velvet to reveal underwear that was decidedly twenty-first century, then she removed that piece by piece and went into her self-pleasuring act. She received direction from franky via e-mail, which someone was reading at the computer on the desk and relaying to her. One of her fellow players, no doubt. Andras? Boyfriend as virtual pimp? That was more depressing than I wanted to contemplate.

“I’ve had enough,” Foos said.

“So have I,” Victoria echoed.

“One more thing,” I said. “What’s the date on the scene we just watched?”

“Last May,” Foos said.

“See any sign of a scar on Irina’s neck?”

“Nope.”

“Neither do I. Pick a more current one.”

He found another private audition, ordered up by frankyfun just two weeks ago. She used a lot of pancake, but the rough skin was difficult to hide. The scar was there.

“Enough,” I said.

“What’s that about?” Victoria asked.

“I don’t know. Noticed it on the drive from Gibbet. I’m going to check it out.”

“How’re you going to do that?”

“Spy sources.”

That got me a look, but she didn’t press it. “How many clients you think these kids have?” she asked.

A quick survey indicated almost three hundred, with an average monthly tab of two grand.

“They’ve been pulling down north of seven mil a year, minus ConnectPay’s cut.”

“This can’t be about money,” Victoria said. “These are rich kids, right? They have money. They have futures.”

“Another question we still don’t have an answer for. Go back to that frankyfun e-mail,” I said to Foos.

He scrolled through the full exchange—four messages, franky arranging a tryst with Salomé at the Black Horse.

“I’m betting that’s not Salomé. It’s Andras using her account.”

“Can’t check that, if he logged on with her user name.”

“No need to. Only way it fits. The junkies said he was shouting, ‘Where is he?’ and she said, ‘This was your plan.’”

“Junkies?” Victoria asked.

“Witnesses,” I said. “They weren’t stoned. I caught them just before their morning fix.”

“Great!”

“The guy in the playhouse this morning? He try to hide his tracks?”

“Uh-uh,” Foos said.

“He knew Nosferatu was going to blow the joint.”

“What?!” Victoria shouted.

I told her about the playhouse and the explosives.

“Jesus Christ! You’re a one-man wrecking crew. You didn’t call the… Shit, never mind, why am I asking?”

“I removed the gas. Put it in my car. Nobody got hurt.”

“Oh great. You could have been… What makes you think…?”

“Once a Fed…,” Foos said. I guess he couldn’t resist.

Victoria got ready to belt him. He grinned. They hadn’t bonded as much as I thought.

“Do either of you realize how many laws… Of course you do. And you’re happy about it.”

She stood, knocking her chair over backward.

“Nobody’s any worse off than they were before,” I said. “We haven’t changed the dynamics here one bit. The kids were in danger, they’re still in danger—all of their own making. Coryell’s dead. He was already dead—also his fault. You know more than you did four nights ago, when you were ready to trade anything for help. I’m out a night’s sleep, but I picked up some free gas in the deal. And—even though we can’t take credit for it—it appears one of the truly nasty players on the Internet has been knocked offline. This is where I need your help.”

“That’s not the point, and you know it.” She stomped her feet and walked around the office. Foos watched, stifling a chuckle. She stopped in front of me. “What help?”

“I need the FBI or somebody trustworthy—not the local cops—to go to Crestview tonight and retrieve the WildeTime servers, before Konychev or Batkin or someone else gets them. Even though those kids are already all over the Internet, let’s not make it worse by having all that content fall into the wrong hands. They may be useful to you too.”

She took another walk around the office and came back and looked me straight in the eyes. Annoyance, concern, fear, and love were duking it out in hers.

“This is what it’s going to be like, isn’t it?”

“Welcome to the inside.”

“I should’ve stayed in Marathon—maybe even that reform school. I’ll make the call. Then let’s go home.”

Foos winked.

CHAPTER 35

“That kid has to be a suspect in his uncle’s murder.”

“I don’t think he did it.”

“What you think isn’t relevant. What you know—about him, about the uncle—that’s material.”

“It’s all there for the cops to find, if they look.”

“That’s not the point either. And one thing isn’t there, and that’s the kid, thanks to you.”

“He won’t do you any good dead.”

We sat across from each other at my kitchen counter, eating a late meal of bread and cheese and vodka and wine. I’d washed off most of Coryell’s corpse’s stench, to her approval, but I was resisting her admonishments to tell my tale to the police, which had her increasingly pissed off.

We’d checked Ibansk.com before leaving the office. As expected, Ivanov was already on the Lishin story.

I provided a rough translation.

“I take it back. He’s worse than you are,” Victoria said.

“I’ve got the same question, shug. Why’d he do it? Andras.”

“The girl put him up to it.”

“Typical. Blame the woman. Why?”

“Don’t know. But after eight hours with them, I can tell you she’s running the show.”

“Merle Haggard said the same thing about Bonnie and Clyde. History’s on your side for once. What’s her motivation?”

“That I don’t know. I wonder whether it has to do with the death of her father, but the timing doesn’t line up. She and Andras started in on the BEC back last year—months before Lishin got run through.”

“I need my people to talk to her.”

“I’ll ask Batkin, but I won’t cross him.”

“You cannot hide behind your client.”

“I’m not hiding. Nosferatu doesn’t care about laws or rules of evidence, neither do his bosses. You heard Foos—the guy I saw this morning spent enough time on the WildeTime servers to finger Andras for the BEC worm. Maybe Irina too. That’s why Nosferatu wired that place to blow, taking everyone inside with it—including, as it turns out, me. He’ll know by now he failed—and he’ll be looking for the kids. He won’t be reading them their Miranda rights.”

“That’s not the goddamned point. It’s the cops’ job—my job—now. Can’t you get that through your hairless head?”

The green eyes were afire. For my part, exhaustion and vodka were overcoming good sense.

“I’m beat. Let’s go to bed. Nothing’s going to change in the next few hours. We can pick up the argument in the morning.”

The fire ebbed. “Good idea. Tomorrow is another day.”

“It certainly is.”

It certainly was.

Starting first thing in the morning when, while we were warming up the argument over breakfast, someone tried to assassinate Taras Batkin.

CHAPTER 36

They didn’t get him. And in the confusion, Irina did a runner.

Batkin had his own armored Mercedes. This was New York, not Moscow, but Ibansk knows no formal borders, as Ivanov often points out. Despite the snow that had buried the city, Batkin and Irina emerged early Friday morning. He told me later they were going to church, St. Nicholas, the Russian Orthodox cathedral on East Ninety-seventh Street. That sounded an unlikely destination for either of them, but I didn’t argue the point.

At 7:30, two bodyguards checked the street. It had been plowed twice in the last thirty-six hours, but the asphalt was still covered with a layer of slush and ice, on top of which was two inches of snow. That didn’t stop the guards from calling the driver to bring the car. Usually, the parking space in front of the house was kept clear by the city, and one of the guards would hold the door while two more escorted Batkin from the house across twelve feet of sidewalk into the rolling fortress.

This morning, four feet of packed snow occupied the limousine’s parking spot, deposited there by the Department of Sanitation’s snow plow garbage trucks. Batkin’s bodyguards had hacked a narrow, slush-filled channel from sidewalk to street, not unlike the Gulag laborers who dug Stalin’s canals in the 1930s with exactly the same tools. When the guards checked the street, all they saw were neighbors shoveling the sidewalk. The armored limo pulled up at the end of the snowbank canal. One guard opened the door. Two others brought Batkin and the girl out. As they picked their way toward the car, one “neighbor” to the east and another across the street opened up with mini–Uzi machine pistols hidden beneath their overcoats. The guns fire nine-hundred-fifty rounds a minute, although each magazine holds only thirty-two. It looked like the shooters got off a couple of clips each when I surveyed the damage a few hours later. Two bodyguards died in an instant. Batkin was lucky. He pushed Irina to the ground and his leather-soled Italian loafers slipped on the ice. He ended up on top of her in the slush, bullets pummeling the packed snow all around. One more bodyguard was wounded, and another hit the eastern “neighbor” square in the chest with four nine-millimeter slugs. The other shooter ran for it, the Mercedes in hot pursuit, but the car was as useless as the Potemkin on the slippery pavement. The driver lost control and piled into a row of parked vehicles, totaling two Range Rovers. The man disappeared down Madison Avenue. When Batkin pulled Irina up, she bolted in the other direction. He tried to chase her, but she was hightailing it down Fifth before he got halfway to the corner.

I know how it happened from the news reports—four TV crews, with helicopters, were on the scene in minutes—and from Batkin himself. Once he’d recovered, he called me.

I wasn’t aware of any of this until Foos phoned at 8:50 and said in his usual succinct style, “Better turn on your TV.”

Victoria was explaining the finer points of obstructing justice. To be fair, her concern for me and the law she was sworn to uphold was equally genuine. That didn’t stop it from grating. I hadn’t had near enough sleep to make up for the night spent watching the playhouse, the events of the day and last night’s vodka, which left a dull thudding at the back of my head. I’d hoped the combination of exercise and cold air would clear it away, but the downtown streets were too slippery to run without risking broken bones. I’d settled for a chilly walk around southern Manhattan that cleared nothing. I was in no mood to argue my case over breakfast—aware I didn’t have much of a case to argue. I tried to hide behind the position that I couldn’t do much of anything until I knew more about what was going on, even though I didn’t have any immediate idea how I was going to find that out.

Victoria wasn’t buying any of it, which had her on the subject of obstruction when Foos called.

“Somebody took a shot at your ambassador buddy.”

“He’s not a buddy. You mean shot, like murder shot?”

“I mean a hundred of them. He’s lucky to be alive.”

I turned on the TV and was treated to an aerial view of East Ninety-second Street. Both ends of the block were jammed with police cars. I could see what looked like a limo piled into parked cars on one side. A breathless voice-over announcer recounted sketchy details of the assassination attempt.

“He wants you up there, ASAP,” Foos said.

“Who?”

“The ambassador. Who else?”

“He called?”

“Couple minutes ago. Said your cell phone’s off and to get you a message to meet him at his house as soon as possible.”

“How’d he sound?”

“How do you think? Somebody just tried to kill him. Bad way to start the day.”

Victoria had gone to the bedroom when the phone rang and reappeared wearing one of my black turtlenecks, the core of my winter wardrobe. It was almost big enough to fall off.

“You need some color in your closet. Everything you own is black, gray, or beige.”

“I think you made that point once before.”

“Didn’t take. Like everything else I say. Something besides turtlenecks and T-shirts would be nice too.”

“Cuts down on decisions. Think of all the time I save.”

“So you can get into more trouble. What’s going on?” She pointed at the TV.

“Somebody tried to assassinate Taras Batkin.”

“Jesus! Here?”

“Uh-huh. That’s East Ninety-second Street.”

She approached the TV and stood fixated as the announcer repeated the few facts they had. I poured some coffee and gave her a cup. She barely noticed it was in her hand. When the newscast cut to a commercial, she shook her head and said, “That’s impossible. This is New York.”

“Happens in Moscow all the time.”

“That’s different. That’s… We have rule of law here, goddammit.”

She was angry. This was an attack on her country, and on her, as well as Batkin.

Having no answer, I shook my head. “He wants me to come up there.”

“Who?”

“Batkin.”

“What?! He wants to see you?”

“Foos says he called a few minutes ago.”

“You can’t go up there.”

“Why not?”

“After everything we talked about? He’s a criminal! He’s…”

“That doesn’t mean I am.”

“Don’t you understand anything? After yesterday? And last night? You just keep… I can’t deal with this. I gotta get going. I’ve gotta get out of here.”

She started for the bedroom, stumbled and fell against the couch. I was there in an instant, helping her up, making sure she wasn’t hurt. I tried to hold her but her fists pummeled my chest.

“Vika! Stop! I’m just going to talk to the man.”

“I want that girl in my office before noon!”

She pulled away from my embrace and holding up the turtleneck all but ran to the bedroom, the door slamming behind her.

I stood in the middle of the floor, arms suspended in the air, the TV news announcer prattling away behind me. I had no idea what he was saying. I was still there when she reemerged, fully dressed, and walked out the door without saying good-bye.

This time, I did follow, as far as the elevator.

“Vika, I’ll do what I can about Irina. But tell me what’s wrong.”

She shook her head.

“Is that no? Why not?”

She looked up, eyes full of tears. “If you think about it just a little, you’ll figure it out. Just bring the girl. I have to go.”

The elevator arrived with a chime, and she got on, keeping her back to me. She didn’t start to turn around until the door was closing and the cab dropped from sight.

CHAPTER 37

Controlled bedlam at Madison and East Ninety-second. The cops had the block sealed. News crews, reporters, and onlookers jostled for position. A major catastrophe and everyone wanted a piece of the action. The police were edgy, as was the crowd, even though at 10:40 A.M., three hours after the attack, there wasn’t much left to see. The bodies and the limo had been removed. All that remained was a snow-covered street filled with cops and emergency workers milling around.

The snow slowed everything. I’d walked from the Ninety-sixth Street subway station, thinking about Victoria and Batkin, Irina and Andras and Leitz, trying to put the pieces together. I had assumed Victoria’s case was against Konychev, hence her unwillingness to talk about him. Now, it appeared it could be Batkin—or both of them. Konychev had to be Suspect Number One for this morning’s attack. One or the other or both would be going after Coryell’s missing computers. But if Nosferatu had killed Coryell, presumably he had them. Konychev was after Andras and Irina. Batkin appeared unaware of his stepdaughter’s involvement in the destruction of his business. Alexander Lishin had been murdered, presumably by one partner or the other. The disintegration of the BEC ownership structure, as well as the business itself, had to be total. One thing was clear—Irina stood at the center of it all. Maybe that’s what Victoria meant when she said I’d figure it out. That seemed too easy, but it was certainly why she told me to bring her in. Still, I felt like I needed a scorecard.

In New York, everyone is responsible for clearing the front of his or her own building, which means the city’s sidewalks get shoveled in patchwork fashion. Park Avenue is lined with big apartment buildings, and they have staff, and the staff have shovels, snowblowers, and salt. The side streets, lined with town houses, were uneven going—clear in front of several houses, then a foot of snow for half a block. The temperature had risen overnight then dropped back into the low twenties at daybreak, adding a crust of ice—and another layer of shoveling difficulty. One blessing was lack of wind. The late morning was clear and dry—the exact antithesis of the way I felt. My brain resembled the sidewalk—a slushy, opaque, half-frozen patchwork of a few clear facts and a lot of buried connections waiting to be shoveled out. Beria joined me briefly as I walked, the first time I’d seen him in days.

Don’t forget about me. I’m still part of this.

I told him to beat it.

The police wouldn’t let me into Batkin’s block until I phoned, and he sent one of his remaining battalion of bodyguards to fetch me. A chorus of “Hey! Who’s he?!” rose from behind as the police moved the barrier to let me through. A broad-backed man, whose forebearers probably shepherded my fellow zeks to work in the forests of the Kolyma camps, led me silently down the icy block. I noted the crumpled sides of the parked cars and the bloodstained snow bank riddled with bullet holes. I had the memory of another ice- and snow-crusted time and place—a prison camp covered in the blood of its unfortunate inhabitants. I was one of them, I’d been lucky enough to escape, and now I was walking back in under my own power, drawn by a fellow sufferer whose motive matched the bloody snow in its opacity. Beria watched from Batkin’s door, grin in place. Victoria’s admonition to figure it out knocked hard at my brain.

The transition from crime-scene street to Batkin’s neoclassical living room jarred. He sat in a maroon velvet armchair, surrounded by royal greens and golds and reds. The room was smaller than Leitz’s, but the high ceiling gave it grandeur, as did the paint, wallpaper, and fabrics, none of which came from Home Depot. He was wearing a dark purple silk robe, ankle-length, with what was almost certainly a mink collar. Russian funeral suit in a czar’s palace. His hairpiece was in place. Had it remained intact during the shooting? A half-full brandy snifter sat by his chair. He looked up as I entered, gray-blue eyes difficult to read—sad, certainly, but still hard.

“Thank you for coming on short notice. Drink?”

“I’ll join you.” If that collar was mink, the brandy was probably good. No point in not being sociable, and it might help melt the ice upstairs—or so I told myself. He pushed his robed body to its feet and went to a large, heavy sideboard holding decanters and glasses. He was moving all right, but perhaps not with the full confidence of purpose he’d had Wednesday at my office. Dark blood clotted on the half-moon forehead and plump left cheek. The side of the pyramid nose was scratched as well. Minor injuries, under the circumstances. He brought me a snifter and indicated I should sit.

“Irina’s gone,” he said.

I stifled a curse. If anyone acted foolishly, I half expected it to be Leitz, not an experienced hood like Batkin.

“What happened?”

He told me about the attack.

“Did you argue?”

He shook his head. “We probably would have, but I couldn’t get her to talk. Her mother’s away—in Moscow—and Irina went to her room as soon as she got here. Refused to come out. I tried to talk to her through the door, but…”

He sipped his brandy while I considered the irony of a Chekist unable to interrogate his own family.

“And this morning?”

“We were going to church. I thought maybe it would help her…”

He trailed off as if unsure what kind of help was being sought.

“What can you tell me about this… this group she was involved with?”

I noted his use of past tense and thought to correct him. He mistook my hesitation.

“Remember my tattoos. I doubt you can shock me.”

Having no idea what was going on, or whose side anyone was on, or even what sides were available to join, half of me decided this was an instance where evasion, rather than honesty, was the best policy. The other half, thinking about Victoria, said the best way out of this mess was to put my cards on the table, as I knew them to be, and look for an opportunity to walk away. As that half climbed to 60 percent, I told him about the Players, minus names and addresses. I also omitted, for the moment, the Walter Coryell–ConnectPay connection and Andras Leitz.

As I moved deeper into the story, Batkin stood and walked around the room, glass in hand. I couldn’t see what he was thinking, he kept his back to me for the most part. I could only imagine the impact, even on a Gulag- and Cheka-hardened psyche. I’d warned Leitz about how the last case had ended badly for everyone involved. This one was going places I could never have contemplated.

When I finished, Batkin shook his head, his back to me still, and said, “She’s always been a troubled child. I blame her father.”

He would. “Why do you say that?” I asked, mainly to keep the conversation moving.

“Alexander Petrovich was the antithesis of a family man. He never should have married. He treated Alyona like a doormat, running around on her with a new woman every week. He didn’t care if she found out, he didn’t give a damn how much he hurt her. It was even worse for Irina. He ignored her, as if she was someone else’s child. When she tried to get his attention, he threatened Alyona, screaming at her to get the girl away from him before he beat her.”

Again, he was using the past tense. He could have been referring to the marriage. He could have been talking about the late Alexander Lishin. He could have played a role in his death. He could have read Ibansk, as I had last night. I kept silent.

He took a swallow of brandy. I sipped while I waited. Wherever it was from—Cognac, Armagnac, somewhere else—it was a far cry from Marianna’s Presidente. He swallowed some more and put the glass on the mantel.

“Who has the group’s computers?”

Time to evade, if not outright lie. “I assume they’re still in the building in Crestview.”

“Address.”

A command, not a question. I shrugged, only a little uncomfortable at pointing out the viral nature of the Internet to a man who’d built a business based on it.

“Any number of clients have downloaded any number of pictures and videos. I haven’t searched the Web, but…”

His hand cut me off, the voice testy. “Yes, I know all that. I want the address.”

“Main Street, above the liquor store. Fire escape is the best way in,” I added helpfully.

“Who else was involved in these… Players?”

I shook my head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You asked me to find out what she was up to. That was the deal. No reason to drag anyone else into it.”

“They’re already in.”

“They’re kids. Fucked-up kids, but kids. They have parents and stepparents too.”

He nodded slowly. He didn’t like my answer but he wasn’t going to budge me off it.

“Who was behind the attack this morning?” I asked, only partially to change the subject.

Batkin watched me carefully. The eyes were still clear—they showed no fear, nor effects of the brandy.

“The obvious candidate is Konychev. But as much as I hate him, I have a hard time believing he would be that stupid. Even if he had been successful… he knows the price as well as I do.”

“Revenge for Tverskaya?”

“I had nothing to do with that!” He spoke too quickly and realized it. “It’s also not his style.”

“If you say so.”

“How much do you know about my esteemed friend, Efim Ilyich?” Batkin asked.

“What I read on Ibansk.com. You and he don’t get along.”

“Don’t put too much faith in that son of a Cossack whore. Ivanov makes up half of what he writes. One day he’ll pay for the lies he tells.”

Usual Cheka knee-jerk response. He managed to get deep under the organization’s skin. One reason I did have faith in Ibansk.

“So you and Konychev are actually pals?” I said, perhaps more provocatively than I meant.

“I loathe the stinking pedik. But we made a deal. Neither of us wanted to make it—we both would have preferred to finish the other off. However, we had… encouragement. The kind only a complete fool would disregard. I’ve upheld my end. But now… Enough of that. Find Irina.”

I had to find her anyway, but I wanted out from under any obligation, if only to straighten things out with Victoria. Besides, I’d done what he asked.

I said, “That’s not part of our deal. I’ve done what we agreed on.”

He picked up his glass and returned to his chair. He sipped slowly, looked at me for what must have been two or three minutes before he said, “I have the information you want.”

I sat back, stunned by the claim, but also by how he, or anyone, could have discovered anything this fast. I’d heard nothing from Sasha.

“How?”

“Your man was slow. He was also… diverted. While he was down a blind alley, I had my own people searching. Some things aren’t that hard to locate if you know where to look.”

“And?”

“Find Irina.”

“We had an agreement.”

“I’m making a new deal.”

I shook my head. “Why should I go along with that?”

“Because you will recognize that you have no choice.”

What I recognized was the nasty feeling I get when I’ve stayed in a card game too long, miscalculating my opponent’s hand, and was about to pay for my mistake. I took a sip of brandy and played for time.

“I don’t follow,” I said.

“I think you do. Find Irina, and I give you the results of my search. Walk away and I give them to your son. I’m sure he will be most interested to learn of his ancestry.”

How the hell did he know my every fear and insecurity? Beria appeared by the fireplace, fingering the king of spades, his message all too clear.

Never underestimate the Cheka.

Perhaps I had been living away from home too long. Batkin was watching me across the top of his glass, enjoying himself in some perverse way, if that was possible on such a morning.

“Only Irina?” I said.

“I don’t need help with Konychev, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“What about Karp?”

“If I were in your shoes, I’d kill him before he killed me.”

CHAPTER 38

I stepped into the street, not sure what to think. The refection of sun on still-clean snow blinded. In Moscow, a layer of black soot would already be settling. The snow here would get dirty soon enough, but for now it was bright white everywhere.

I walked east toward the subway, squinting. I’d spent another half hour probing Batkin about the BEC and the extent of his knowledge about its demise. No question he was one tough SOB—as well as an unreliable witness and an accomplished liar. He was a Chekist after all. On balance, however, I was inclined to believe him. At least until I checked out his account.

He confirmed the essential facts about the Baltic Enterprise Commission and the split between its leaders. Konychev, the media mogul, and Lishin, the technology expert, had built the business. Web hosting for spammers to start, in the Internet’s early days. They’d been successful—so successful they attracted the Kremlin’s attention. An enterprise with mastery of this mysterious new medium—ultra-mysterious to the dinosaurs who rarely ventured outside the fortress walls—was frightening. They injected Batkin into the partnership, ordered him to get his arms around the BEC and its activities and report back. He did that. He also recognized that Konychev and Lishin had only begun to tap their creation’s potential. For three men, each of whom wanted the other two dead, they made a toxic and formidable team. The business grew and expanded and spun Internet gold. Batkin kept his Kremlin bosses far enough at bay that the partners were allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

The trouble started over the summer. Long-simmering animosities bubbled to the surface, and disagreements over business issues turned up the heat. Then the technical problems hit. Annoyances at first, just as Foos had described. Minor hackings, data corruption, cyber-vandalism. Things like that had happened once or twice before, not often, but they had a big Internet footprint, they would be a target for any fool who wanted to boast about hacking the BEC. The partners were concerned, but not overly so—until three mil vanished in August. That got their attention. Their technical people worked the data. Karp flew to New York.

Karp reported some progress. He’d identified the source of the theft attack. Konychev boasted they’d have the culprit soon. Batkin and Lishin were losing patience, fast.

Another five million went out the cyber-door in November. Karp leaned on Coryell. Elizabeth Rogers started making the rounds. The BEC leadership was apoplectic. It wasn’t just the money. They weren’t used to this kind of treatment—and the inability to do a damned thing about it. Lishin told Batkin it had to be an inside job—their defenses were too strong to be so easily breached. Lishin ordered Konychev whacked. Batkin didn’t put it that way, but we were Chekists, we understood each other. The killers missed, Konychev went into hiding.

Batkin didn’t say anything about the most recent cyber-attack that felled the BEC or about Lishin’s death. I didn’t ask. I wouldn’t have believed him on either of those questions. It was possible that he had been playing me for a sucker since that first visit to my office. I could have delivered Irina into the hands of her jailer, maybe executioner, last night, which was why she ran the first chance she got. Even money, though, that neither Konychev nor Lishin had confided in him. No reason for them to have done so.

As I picked my way through the snow-packed sidewalks, I tried to handicap whether his concern for Irina was based on her safety or a desire to reunite her with her dead father or some idea that she, or Andras, could lead him to the missing ConnectPay servers, now more valuable than ever. Perhaps even the foundation the BEC needed to rebuild. A man like him would already be thinking about that.

First things first. I called Victoria. She was in a meeting. I left a message that Irina had taken off. I didn’t say anything about Batkin. I’d call again as soon as I had more information. Then I found a payphone and dialed Moscow—Aleksei’s apartment.

“Coffee?” I said.

“When?”

“Sooner the better.”

“Do you know what time it is? Never mind. Ten minutes.”

I walked a few more blocks, until I found another pay phone and dialed Aleksei’s disposable.

“You hear about Taras Batkin?” he asked.

“Just left him.”

“What?!” Then, “Why am I surprised?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“How do you know what I think?”

A fair question.

“I can tell you all about it—it’s his stepdaughter. She’s playing some dangerous games, and she’s run away. You know the BEC’s offline?”

“Old news.”

“How about the late, unlamented Alexander Lishin?”

“Ivanov broke that story.”

I listened for anger or frustration but didn’t hear any.

“Here’s something else, the real reason I called. I’m assuming you’ll be able to pinpoint the date of Lishin’s demise. Check whether his daughter, Irina, was treated around that time for a wound to the neck, right side, just below the ear. A cut, maybe a burn, bad enough to leave an ugly scar.”

“That’s not going to be easy.”

“I’m assuming you have hospital contacts. You can do it quietly. It might be the bulldozer you need to push the roadblocks aside—if you want to. You have a suspect yet?”

“Don’t ask. What’s your interest in the girl?”

I started to give the same reply—Don’t ask—until I heard Beria chuckling. I spotted him across Lexington Avenue, shaking his head with a smile.

You don’t get it, he mouthed. You never will.

“I think she’s the one who took down the BEC,” I said to Aleksei.

Sharp intake of breath. “How…?”

“She had help. Her boyfriend’s a computer geek. His uncle was a key cog in the empire.”

“Was?”

“He checked out last week.”

“Connection?”

“Maybe. Probably. Not sure. Konychev’s enforcer is after the kids. Name’s Karp by the way. You can pass that on if you like. I need to keep the girl’s role under wraps.”

“You trusted me. I can return the favor. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

I hung up. Maybe that was the start of something. I looked around for Beria. He was gone. I continued down Lexington and stopped at the window of a coffee shop. Cheka and BEC troubles were sidelined by the immediate prospect of a club sandwich and fries—not my usual lunch diet, but comforting in the prospect that they might soak up the brandy. My hand was on the door when my cell phone buzzed.

Thomas Leitz’s voice was high, shrill and hysterical.

“YOU HAVE TO HELP ME! YOU HAVE TO!”

CHAPTER 39

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“EVERYTHING! IT’S YOUR FAULT! He’s out there. I can’t move. I can’t do anything!”

“Who, Thomas? Who’s out there?”

“The tall man. HE’S STALKING ME!”

I dropped my hand from the coffee shop door. The fear coming through the phone was real. People brushed past, bumping me from either side on the snow-narrowed sidewalk. I pushed on down the block until I found a doorway providing shelter from the pedestrian traffic.

“Okay, calm down. Tell me what’s going on.”

“He’s out there. HE’S WATCHING ME!”

“Describe him.”

“The man you told me about. You told him where to find me, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?”

“Cool down. I didn’t tell anybody anything.”

“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU. HE’S OUT THERE!”

“Thomas! Stop! You called me. I want to help. You have to tell me calmly and specifically what you are seeing. Understand? Where are you?”

“He’s out there.”

The hysteria receded, a little, the borderline panic remained.

“Where are you?” I repeated.

“My apartment.”

“Okay. What’s going on? What do you see?”

“He’s across the street. He’s watching me!”

“How long has he been there?”

“I don’t know. I was going out. To… He came towards me. STRAIGHT AT ME! I ran back inside. I’ve been watching. He hasn’t moved. He’s waiting for me!”

“How long ago? How long ago were you going out?”

“I don’t know. Ten minutes.”

“Okay. Good. What does he look like?”

“The man you told me about. Tall. Ugly. Bad hair, bad teeth.”

“You have a doorman?”

“Yes… Part-time.”

“There now?”

“Until four.”

I looked at my watch—2:30 P.M. The doorman would be no match for Nosferatu, but the fact that he was still across the street said he didn’t want the complication of getting past someone. Question was, what did he want?

“How many entrances to your building?”

“How should I know? I…”

“Thomas! I’m trying to help. Answer my questions. This is important. How many entrances?”

“The front door?”

“Good. Fire escape?”

“From the rear window. Down to a well in the back.”

“Then what?”

“Back out to the street.”

“Next to the front door?”

“Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“I think so.”

No way for Nosferatu to get in without the doorman seeing him. Or so I hoped.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I’m going to hang up for a minute. I’ll call you right back. I want you to watch the tall man. Tell me what he does. Okay?”

“I need help!”

Cheka training, any training, if it’s done right, is hard to shake. I had Thomas Leitz in the palm of my hand. I could help him, I could also get something in the process. The process wouldn’t be pretty.

“You shouldn’t have blackmailed Coryell all these years,” I said, making my voice hard, almost cruel. “That’s what this is about. The tall man knows what I know. You want my help, there’s a price.”

“WHAT?! What are you saying? I didn’t…”

He was crying. I ignored that and pushed. “You did. You hit him up. You used him every time you needed money. Now the tall man wants to know what you had on Walter. So do I. That’s where we are today. You can deal with him or you can deal with me.”

“That’s not fair. You’re a bastard. I didn’t.”

“Him or me, Thomas. I’m hanging up. I can call back or not. Tell me which way you want this to go.”

Tears, choking, sniveling. Maybe I should have felt sorry, but Thomas Leitz was a user whose string of using had run out. No remorse on my part.

“Good-bye, Thomas.”

“WAIT!”

“Wait for what?”

“I’ll do what you say.”

“What I say is this: When I call you back, you are going to tell me what you had on Walter Coryell. That’s the deal.”

“But…”

“No but.”

A long wait. Longer than it should have been. Thomas Leitz was terrified, but not terrified enough.

I broke the connection and started to count. I got to seven when the phone buzzed in my hand.

“Next time I turn it off,” I said.

“You’re a bastard.”

“Tell it to the tall man. If he lets you. He likes breaking necks. He’ll break yours in a second.”

I cut the connection again. This time I got to four.

“OKAY! Whatever you say.”

“What did you have on Walter?”

“Make him go away first.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll make him come back. And I’ll be right behind in case he fucks up.”

“Make him go away. PLEASE!”

“Watch your window.”

I walked down the block until I found a pay phone. I punched in the number the Basilisk had identified calling Coryell’s office last week.

A Belarusian voice said, “What?”

“You and I have a lot to discuss, Karp.” I spoke Belarusian.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Someone who knows who you are. Someone who knows where you are. Someone who has what you want.”

I could almost hear him spit in the snow.

“Fucking zek. I know you, asshole.”

“Fuck your mother. You want to do business or trade insults?”

“I don’t trade with zeks.”

“Kiss the computers good-bye then. I’ve got other buyers.”

I hung up and started counting again. When I reached twenty-five, I called Thomas on my cell phone.

“What’s he doing?”

“Throwing a total hissy fit. He just punched the wall, I think.”

“Good. I’ll call you back.”

“Wait…”

I called Nosferatu on the pay phone.

“Reconsider?”

“You’re a dead man.”

“We all are. Are we dealing before we die?”

“What do you want?”

“Leave the fairy alone. He has nothing you need. Get out of his neighborhood and we’ll talk. That’s the deal for now.”

I felt mildly guilty about the “fairy” part. But us tough guys have to bond like everyone else.

“Maybe I’ll just kill him now.”

“Then you won’t hear from me again. And I’ll let your boss know how you fucked up.”

I hung up before he could respond.

Thomas Leitz said, “He’s leaving! He’s walking down the block and… he’s gone! How…?”

“I called in some debts. Your turn now. What about Coryell?”

“It’s not… I didn’t…”

“If I don’t make a call, he’s back in five minutes.”

Another long wait. It was taking time for Thomas Leitz to realize his luck had run out.

“Good-bye, Thomas. What time does the doorman get off?”

“WAIT! Okay. Go to the school, my locker. I’ll give you the combination. You’ll find what you want taped under the top shelf. No fucking good to me anymore.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, although I knew the answer.

“You haven’t heard, smart guy? Walter’s dead. They found his body yesterday. You and Sebastian and Julia can all have a great time remembering what a wonderful human being that shit was. You can read the note at his funeral. I won’t be there.”