Last Snow

THIRTEEN

RHON FYODOVICH Kirilenko used one thin, reddened hand to shake out a cigarette and put it to his mouth. He slid open the slender box of wooden matches he always carried and lit the match. For an instant the sharp scent of sulfur sucked the oxygen out of his nostrils, causing a little gasp, an involuntary exhalation. Slowly and deliberately, as he did all things large and small, he put the flame to the tip of the cigarette, then took a deep pull on the harsh, black Turkish tobacco and held the smoke in his lungs until his mind ceased its hurrying. A hurrying mind was a disorganized mind, and a disorganized mind made mistakes. Ever since he had become a homicide detective in the FSB, that had been his philosophy; it was so simple, so succinct, so true that in his twenty-odd years running down murderers and serial rapists he’d never had cause to change it even one iota. This was precisely the sort of man Kirilenko was: practical, stolid—his few detractors accused him of being plodding, dull, even pedantic. On the other hand, his benefactors understood that this persona—bland and gray as the federal building in which they all toiled—was a carefully constructed facade. They saw him as being smart enough to follow orders to the letter, possessed of a quiet rectitude that ruffled no feathers and that allowed him to run his investigations as he saw fit. Everyone knew him as relentless; once he sank his teeth into an investigation he never let go until he’d reached a satisfactory conclusion, which meant a conviction of the perpetrator, or his death, whichever came first. That was about the only thing Kirilenko wasn’t fussy about. Incarceration or death, it was all the same to him because these death-wielding perps infuriated him. He looked on them as something other—other than human, less than human, a subspecies inferior even to animals.

Having gotten what he needed from it, Kirilenko blew out the Turkish smoke in a rush, then inhaled slowly and deeply. Behind him he could hear the small, familiar sounds of his men sifting through the charred remains of Karl Rochev’s dacha, but he paid them as much mind as he would the noises coming from the seats around him in a sports stadium, inconsequential until proven otherwise.

His attention was focused on the mattress his men had salvaged from the upper floor bedroom just before the staircase collapsed. It lay now among the trees, brushed by dead leaves and blades of un-mowed grass. On the bed was the twenty-two-year-old body of Ilenya Makova, Rochev’s current mistress or, he corrected himself, his late mistress. She was lying on the charred and smoldering mattress, a ragged hole opened up clear through her. On close inspection he could see that the wound had been inflicted by neither a bullet nor a knife. It looked malevolent, ugly, ancient, as if whatever had killed her had been used to rip her insides out. But whatever that weapon might be, it was nowhere to be found.

His gaze moved now to the digital photo on the screen of the cell phone in his hand. One of the men assigned to this detail by the FSB had had the presence of mind to snap a photo of the three people as they emerged from the front door before the fire started: Ilenya Makova’s killers. Sadly for him that man was Mondan Limonev, the one member of the division he worked out of who he despised more than any other. Worse still, he instilled both a sense of fear and distrust in Kirilenko. Limonev, a dead-eyed killer if Kirilenko ever saw one, was just the sort of animal Kirilenko had spent his entire adult life hunting down and bringing to justice. It offended him no end that this creature should be employed by the FSB. In his fantasies he’d discovered many novel ways to exterminate Limonev, none of which, sadly, he was at liberty to put into action.

The photo on Limonev’s cell was grainy, slightly blurred. Three figures. By narrowing his eyes slightly, he could recognize a male and two females. This, in itself, was a mystery. Why would Rochev hire three people to kill his mistress? Why would he want her dead in the first place? Kirilenko knew him as a serial fucker—he cheated on his wife with a roster of women as professional as they were beautiful. He’d never seen fit to kill one before so why start now? And, anyway, where was he? Disappeared from work, from his home, and not in a tryst at his own private love hotel.

But first things first. Back to the killers: Not only were there three of them, but it seemed that one was either an adolescent or a midget. Neither fit the usual profile of a professional hit man who, so far as Kirilenko’s extensive experience decreed, worked solo. But, actually, that meant little, since his experience also confirmed that professional hit men would use any tactic they could think of to throw him off the scent. As of this moment, none of them had succeeded; he’d run each of them into the ground. One of the reasons he always tracked down the perp, the murderer, strangler, shooter, knifer, was due to his orderly mind, which allowed him to know more about each situation than anyone around him. He absorbed a crime scene with all his five senses, then allowed his mind to look for patterns. A crime scene, steeped in death, in anger, violence, fear, even disinterest, was the very definition of chaos. Death disordered life. Many of the killers he was after were, in their way, as detached as he was. The difference was outrage. Murder outraged him, whether it be premeditated or accidental, professional or amateurish. To him, the taking of a life—any life—was unthinkable, a sin worthy of full retribution, lawful or otherwise. The taking of a life was a violation. It created a state of affairs unto itself, one that had nothing to do with society, that existed, throbbing painfully, outside the boundaries of civilization. Let the punishment fit the crime. Nevertheless, he lived with these acts of cruelty, with the most heinous of insults, as if they were lodgers who had overstayed their welcome in his mind and who would not now relinquish their place in his life for love or money.

He tried zooming in on the faces of the perps, but the man appeared to have his arm raised in front of his eyes, the woman was in the process of turning away, and the face of the adolescent or midget was lost behind the woman’s body. He was about to try zooming in on her face when he saw that she was gripping something in her hand: an arrow or a short spear, something with a wicked tip, meant to tear the insides out of its victim: the murder weapon. Now he moved up the image to the woman’s face. By zooming in, though not too much, he could discern her features. With a sickening lurch of his stomach he recognized Annika Dementieva.

“There is no trace of the marksman, the man in the woods who fired his weapon.”

The thin man with the saturnine face had emerged from the wreckage of the dacha to stand beside Kirilenko’s car. Kirilenko, becoming aware of his approach, had quite sensibly pocketed Limonev’s phone with its incriminating photo. He’d be damned if he’d share inside information with this man. As for Limonev, he had made a mental note to have the Ukrainians get him a replacement cell immediately.

“He wasn’t one of mine,” Kirilenko said, “so he must have been one of yours.”

“He wasn’t,” the man said. “Anyway, I wasn’t supplied with a marksman, you know that.”

“When it comes to you people,” Kirilenko said without rancor, “I know nothing.”

“Well, take my word for it.” The thin man glanced back over his shoulder. “Perhaps one of the SBU men, you know how undisciplined these Ukrainians are.”

Kirilenko regarded the man impassively through the smoke passing out of his half-open lips. “Do you judge Russians as harshly as you do the Ukrainians?”

“We have high regard for you,” the thin man said with some asperity. “I thought we’d made that perfectly clear.”

Kirilenko continued his study of the man. He had golden hair and the ruddy cheeks of an athlete. Unconsciously, Kirilenko rubbed the backs of his hands, reddened and stiff with a rheumy ache. “It wasn’t one of the Ukrainians,” he said. “They know not to make a move without checking with me first.”

“They despise you,” the thin man said.

“But they fear me more.”

“And whom do you fear, Kirilenko?”

Kirilenko took his time drawing on his cigarette, holding the smoke deep so his lungs could absorb the nicotine. Releasing the smoke, he said, just before he turned away, “Not you, American, if that’s what you think. Certainly not you.”

“MAGNUSSEN OR one of his people was at it a long time,” Jack said after some deliberation. “Rochev must have had something or known something Magnussen wanted very badly.”

“What did they do to him?” Alli said.

“It’s bad enough to give you nightmares.” Jack rose, and Annika was left to inspect the corpse on her own.

“The people who did this,” she said, “are professionals—experts, I must say, in torture and the application of pain.”

“Spoken like a professional yourself,” he said.

She looked up at him. “What an odd thing to say. Do you take me for a torturer?”

He deliberately ignored her comment. “Whoever they are, they must have a strong international connection to plan and execute a hit-and-run murder on Capri. It’s a small island with extremely limited vehicular traffic.”

Alli was staring out at the flat expanse of the water. “But Annika’s right. We’ve hit a dead end. There’s nothing left for us here and we have no way of finding out where Magnussen went.”

“Not necessarily.”

Jack led them back over the shallow crest and into the lowland of the cemetery. The afternoon was waning; the sun, exhausted from its misty journey, was sinking as if weighted down by the earth or by sorrow. The lengthening shadows seemed to thrust the headstones across the grass like accusing fingers.

“Alli, didn’t you say that Magnussen’s parents died on the same day?”

She nodded. “But in different places.”

Jack examined the headstones, one by one. Using his fingertips to trace the outlines of the chiseled letters allowed him to read what had been written more easily and quickly. “They died on August first, seventeen years ago. Magnussen’s father passed away here, on these grounds, but his mother died in Alushta.”

“Alushta is on the east coast of the Crimea,” Annika said. “It’s filled with expensive villas that overlook the Black Sea.”

“Bingo! That’s where Magnussen’s gone,” Jack said.

Annika frowned. “What? How could you possibly know that?”

“His mother was buried there.”

“I don’t see the connection.” Annika shook her head. “Maybe she was on vacation, maybe she was visiting friends.”

“In that event she would have been brought back here to be buried,” Jack said with such perfect logic that Annika was unable to contradict him.

“But a villa—”

Jack’s mind was working faster than the others could match or even imagine. “Look at this spread here. This family was wedded to money and prestige, they wouldn’t have remained here all year long. The summers are hot and unpleasant, aren’t they?”

Annika nodded, still dubious.

“Where would the Magnussens go in the summer? I’m willing to bet they own a villa in Alushta.”

“This is ridiculous, you’re not the Delphic oracle.”

“In a way he is,” Alli interjected. “Jack’s mind works differently than yours or mine, he can see things we can’t, make connections we can’t until much, much later.”

Annika stared at Alli as if she’d grown wings or had been struck by lightning. “Is this a vaudeville act between the two of you, or some idiotic sleight of hand trick?”

“Why would it be a trick?” Alli said so fiercely that Annika seemed stopped in her tracks.

“If you’ve got a better idea,” Jack said to Annika, “now would be the time to tell me.”

Annika looked away for a moment, her gaze roaming over the back of the manor house in the distance. “Seriously?” she said as she turned back to him. “You think Magnussen has gone to ground in Alushta?”

“SO WHO was he then,” the golden-haired American said, “the marksman who took a shot in the woods?”

He was not a tall man, nevertheless he was imposing, like all the American agents Kirilenko had met or had seen in surveillance photos. He was possessed of a confidence that bordered on arrogance. Kirilenko envied him or, at least, was jealous of his sense of entitlement. The world was his oyster, he moved about in it as he pleased, with an ease Kirilenko imagined only in his dreams. Kirilenko, the good silovik, who was tied to Russia as if by a chain-link leash. And he thought: I am faithful, like a dog, and the American is my master. He holds my fate in his hands—hands that do not ache in the cold, are not reddened and chapped, aged before their time. He has not seen what I’ve seen. And then with the briefest flash of contempt like heat lightning that comes and goes in one breath: What does he know of life, anyway? What can he know, he’s American.

Was it contempt Kirilenko felt for the golden-haired American or was it pity? His name was Martin, like the bird. Harry Martin. But what was his real name? Likely Kirilenko would never know.

“Harry Martin,” the American had introduced himself when they first met, “from Latrobe, Pennsylvania.” And when Kirilenko had looked at him blankly, he’d added, “You know, the home of Arnold Palmer, surely you’ve heard of the legendary golfer.”

Kirilenko just barely stopped himself from laughing in Harry Martin’s face. God in heaven! While Russians were struggling to survive, Americans were playing golf.

The two men sat side by side now in the backseat of Kirilenko’s car, drinking hot coffee from a thermos one of Kirilenko’s men had fetched.

“So who was he then?” Harry Martin repeated. “Any theories?”

They appeared to be two old friends chatting about something inconsequential, a sports match, perhaps, or the prospects of a favorite soccer team.

“I don’t deal in speculation, only facts,” Kirilenko said with a good deal less irritation than he felt. It wouldn’t do to rub the American the wrong way, he had too many powerful friends who, with one phone call, could seriously impact Kirilenko’s career, not to say his life. Just knowing this caused him a level of stress he found intolerable. Harry Martin was like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and it was driving him to distraction.

All at once he threw open the car door and stepped out into the waning day. The air smelled of smoke, charred fabric, and burnt plastic. While he was facing away from Martin he took out the cell phone and sent the photo of Annika Dementieva emerging from Rochev’s dacha to his assistant with specific instructions. A moment later Martin clambered out and without a glance at Kirilenko strode into the woods beyond what had once been the front porch of the house.

“All your men out of here?” he asked.

Kirilenko pocketed the phone as he followed the American into the woods. “The SBU also. It’s just us here now.”

“I need theories,” Martin said as they wound through the thick stand of hemlocks. He switched on the flashlight Kirilenko had given him. “I need something.”

Swallowing his emotions, Kirilenko said in his best fatalistic tone, “Someone has taken Karl Rochev, by force I would guess, judging by the corpse impaled to the mattress back there. It wasn’t us and I guarantee it wasn’t the SBU. Which means that there’s another faction in this mysterious, unnamed pursuit of yours.”

“Another faction.” Martin turned this phrase over as if it were alien to him or an idea to which he needed to adjust. He trained the flashlight’s beam on the forest floor as they picked their way across the soft earth. “Then we’ll have to find them, whoever they are. And we’ll have to eliminate them.”

Kirilenko made a noise deep in his throat. It was a kind of warning, as primitive as it was inarticulate, not that Harry Martin would notice, or even care. “And how do you propose we do that?”

Dying light, red and yellow, seeped through the evergreen boughs. Martin knelt, running his fingertips lightly over the nest of evergreen needles, pointing out to Kirilenko a muddle of fresh footprints, none of them made by the boots of his men. “A man, a woman—and these.” One set was significantly smaller than the other two. He stood. They were very close to the road. “We pick up the perpetrators’ trail and follow them back to the source.”

He seems so sure of himself, Kirilenko thought bitterly, even though he’s in a land foreign to him, among people who don’t even speak his language. Such an American trait.

They walked to the edge of the trees.

“This road goes in only two directions,” Kirilenko said. “Several miles away is a turning that takes you back to Kiev, otherwise it goes straight to the city of Brovary.”

“What’s there?” Martin asked.

Kirilenko shrugged. “It’s the shoe-making capital of Ukraine.”

“We split up. You go on to Brovary, see if you pick up their trail. I’ll take my man and two of yours and head back to Kiev and try to do the same. At least it’s a city I know.”

Kirilenko felt a wave of relief flood him. It was a minor miracle to have this gorilla off his back.

Martin nodded at the twilit road that unspooled before them, a tar-black ribbon, vanishing into the darkness of the evening. “Wherever Rochev is you can be sure of one thing: These three people will take us there.”