Last to Fold

CHAPTER 36

I woke feeling born again, just like they sing about in those gospel songs, although my particular form of rebirth probably wasn’t what they had in mind. A little after six o’clock, and I lay there watching her chest rise and fall under the sheet.

I don’t know whether it was the nickname or what I said about heartbreak, but I’d led her to bed without resistance. It was far from my best night, which she more than made up for with her own intensity and tenderness, a combination that took us places where I could leave the pain of my injuries far behind. She’d undressed herself, then me, then used her breasts, eyes, thighs, lips, hands, and teeth to work both of us into a white-hot heat, on the edge of ecstasy, before we wrapped ourselves together and plunged. Sometime later, we broke the surface of reality, panting and sweating, partly sated, knowing there was more to come. We lay quietly, her head on my chest, holding each other close, saying nothing. I dozed until I felt her restless hands start to work, and I responded with mine, and without a word we carried each other a second time to the door of oblivion. I slept through the night, visiting no netherworlds for the first time since Saturday.

“Okay, give.” She was looking at me from her pillow, smiling.

“What?”

“How’d you get the funny name?”

I laughed. “That’s why I finally got you into bed.”

“You think it’s your shaved head and hairy chest? I’ve been wondering about this ever since I read your immigration file.”

“Talk about privacy.”

“Don’t change the subject.” She doubled the pillow under her head and waited. Her big eyes were green pools I wanted to jump into.

I caressed her cheek. She knocked my hand away. “Get on with it.”

“My grandfather, Turba Petrovich, he’s the culprit. One of the original Chekists. Ardent Bolshevik. Knew Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin, the whole gang. He worked with Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka.”

“But that means he helped create the Gulag!”

“Yes. Grandpa Turba was one of the officers who oversaw the construction of the camps—and became an early victim of his creation. He was caught in one of Stalin’s purges, when Comrade Yezhov took over the NKVD from Comrade Yagoda in 1937. Grandpa was taken away on Christmas night, although it was no longer called that, and sent to Norilsk, where he died four years later. But what goes around comes around, as you Americans are fond of pointing out. Yezhov was arrested in 1938 and shot in 1940, after Lavrenty Beria took over the Cheka. I hope my grandfather at least knew he outlived the man who caused his downfall.”

She was looking at me, dark eyes wide with interest. I reached for her cheek again, but she pushed my hand away. “None of that. Keep going.”

“While he was still on the rise, Grandpa Turba and Grandma Svetlana gave birth to their only son. Nineteen twenty-six; revolutionary fervor was morphing into Stalinist zeal. Turba believed Stalin was a great man doing great things for his country, including pulling it into the modern age. Industrialization was the big thing—railroads, factories, dams, electricity—Stalin was building the new Russia. A lot of people were caught up in the excitement, and they demonstrated their enthusiasm with names for their children. Some kids got lucky—Len, for Lenin, is a perfectly serviceable name. Or Ninel, Lenin spelled backward, for a girl. Even Engelina or Melor, shorthand for Marx, Engels, Lenin, and October Revolution.

“Grandpa had different ideas. Remember, we like wordplay. The family name was Vlost, as you know, which dates from the thirteenth century and is a variation of Vlast, which can be traced to the twelfth. Means ‘power.’ Seemed perfectly reasonable to him—highly desirable, in fact—to call his firstborn Electrifikady. Full name Electrifikady Turbanevich Vlost. Means Electrifikady, son of Turba, and electric turbine power. Apparently Grandpa was quite a card.”

“You know, every story you tell gets more absurd.”

“All true. I swear on the graves of Marx, Lenin, and Ronald Reagan.”

“But you never knew him, right, the guy with the power name?”

“Right. I think my mother feared they would never be together again and giving me his name was a way to make sure we were part of something that had a history, that had lasted. Technically, I should have been called Electrifikady Electrifikadyvich—Electrifikady, son of Electrifikady. We don’t do ‘junior.’ But she gave me exactly the same name he had. I shortened it all to Turbo as soon as I was old enough to know how.”

“I like Electrifikady. Can I call you that?”

“Not if you want to continue whatever it is we’ve started.”

“Don’t be so defensive. It’s cute.”

“So’s Vicky.”

That brought out the pout. She sat up and the sheet fell away. I reached for her, but she pushed me back.

“I’ve gotta get to the office.”

“I usually run in the mornings. Want to go with me?”

“In this heat? Are you crazy? Never mind, I know the answer to that. What illegal activities do you have planned for today?”

“Going looking for Rislyakov’s database.”

“What if you find it?”

“Probably go out to Brighton Beach, see Lachko, try to make a deal.”

That got a worried frown. “I won’t ask if that’s wise. We both know the answer. Am I going to approve of this deal?”

“I hope so. You could be the primary beneficiary.”

“You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

“At dinner. If we’re still talking.”

“I’m beginning to have some sympathy for your ex-wife. Since you’re such a good cook, you can make me breakfast before you go running or whatever. I like it when a man does that. I prefer my eggs scrambled, with a little Tabasco.”

The bare behind sashayed to the bathroom. I waited a few minutes before I got up to follow her instructions, enjoying a long-gone feeling. I hadn’t really expected to encounter it again.

Victoria left for the office, declaring my eggs delicious, my health still doubtful, and my plan for the day borderline crazy. This time, she was three for three. I logged in to the Basilisk and retrieved the information it had generated on Ratko and his alter ego, Alexander Goncharov. I found the charge three weeks earlier on a Rislyakov Visa for $862 from a Moscow undertaker. I reached for the phone.

In a ten-minute conversation with a helpful mortician’s assistant, during which I posed as the late Rad Rislyakov, I learned that he had arranged for the disinterment of his parents on his last trip to Moscow and the shipment of the cremated remains to New York. That made my first stop of the day Chelsea.

I logged on to Ibansk.com. Petrovin was still feeding Ivanov.

My cell phone buzzed. Gina said, “She’s on the move. Quite a looker.”

“So was Pandora, I’m told. Anyone else following?”

Pause. “Can’t tell yet.”

“You see anyone else, you think you see anyone else, break it off and get out of there. Okay?”

“Okay. She just came out. I’m watching. We’re headed for Madison. I’ll call back.”

Had Polina been reading Ibansk.com this morning? Had Petrovin counted on that?

Eva could have gone anywhere, but I bet on her clinging to Ratko’s orbit. She’d fallen hard. It would take time to shake him, especially since his end was so abrupt. I took a cab to Sixth and Twenty-first, which was showing more activity than my previous visit, though the heat on the sidewalk was no less punishing.

The lobby was cool and empty, other than the doorman behind his sleek blond desk. I was marginally worried about Lachko’s thugs, but he has always lacked imagination—or he was counting on me to do his dirty work. No Russian beef in sight.

The doorman looked up helpfully before he recognized me and frowned. I put the photo of Eva on the counter.

“She’s upstairs, isn’t she? Rislyakov’s place.”

He stammered for a moment, then looked away.

“How much she give you?”

“What?”

“How much she give you not to say she’s here?”

“Nothing! She didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me. You’re in enough trouble already.”

“Trouble?”

“Patriot Act, remember? Give me the key.”

He looked around again. No help appeared. “She’s not there. I mean… she was, but she left.”

“When?”

“This morning. Couple hours ago.”

Maybe Eva followed Ibansk, too. “Coming back?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Anyone else asking for her?”

He looked around once more. “Those guys that were here before. They came yesterday.”

“You get rid of them?”

“Yeah. They didn’t press it.”

“You tell her about them?”

If there had been a hole under his countertop, he would have gladly dropped in. “This morning.”

“She say anything?”

“Uh-uh. Went back upstairs for a few minutes, came back down and left.”

“She won’t be back.”

“How do you know that?”

“My job. Key.”

“Yes, sir.”

I took the elevator to seven, inserted the key, rang the bell, waited, rang again, waited, turned the knob, and shoved the door open.

Everything was as it had been. A few articles of women’s clothing dropped on the furniture. Ratko wouldn’t have approved. It took a short twenty minutes to make sure there was nothing to find, except for the heavily taped box on the kitchen counter with the return address of the Moscow undertaker in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Violating the dead is a difficult thing to do, but neither Ratko nor his parents were going to haunt me. Still, it took a few minutes to cut open the box and a few more to fish through the two containers of coarse, hard ashes inside. Cremains, they’re called in the trade. I stuck my arm into Mom until I felt something solid. I did the same with Dad. Buried in each box was a portable hard drive, smaller than a paperback book, tightly wrapped in plastic. I undid one—five hundred gigabytes, more than enough to hold the database and the key to Ratko’s laundry. The other, Kosokov’s bank records?

I found some tape and resealed the box. Maybe Eva wouldn’t notice—if she did come back. No one else would care. I stopped long enough to say a silent prayer for the dead. They wouldn’t hear it. They’d never know how they’d been used either. On the way out, I grabbed Ratko’s copy of Travels with My Aunt. A long time since I read it, and he didn’t need it anymore.

CHAPTER 37

“Jackpot!” Foos said.

“Whattaya got?”

“Ratko’s database. Forty-two million potential bank accounts—along with the code for the laundry. We could go into business tomorrow.”

“Victoria wouldn’t like that. Neither would Lachko. How much money are they moving? Can you tell?”

“More than fifty mil a month, but they’re still ramping up, adding accounts, increasing the flow. May was twenty-two percent higher than April, which was up twenty-one percent over March. Classic early growth curve. Sky’s the limit, with that many names to work with.”

“Let’s see.”

He spun the computer screen around. The columns were all the same as the ones that had given me a headache last Thursday. Now they showed bank names and branch locations, account names and numbers and dollar amounts moving in and out. Overseas deposits and withdrawals were shown in local currencies. The sheer volume of transactions made it complicated, but the underlying program was decidedly simple.

“Gotta hand it to him. Helluva operation,” Foos said.

“No wonder Lachko wants it back so bad.”

“You already gave him half of it. You gonna give him the other?”

“I’m thinking to sell it. About time the Barsukovs started to spread the wealth.”

Foos raised a bushy eyebrow. “What’s Victoria going to say about that?”

“She’s not my minder.”

“That’s not what you said yesterday. And the lipstick on your neck suggests different.”

I put a finger to my skin, where she’d snuggled when we’d said good-bye. It came away purplish red. “I’m doing this partly for her. Can you bug the database the way you did Ratko’s computer?”

“I’ll attribute the stupidity of that question to your impaired mental condition.”

“Okay. What about the other hard drive?”

“That one’s your department.”

“Why?”

“It’s in Russian.”

My ribs had started to ache, but I did my best to ignore them as I took a cab to Second and Eighth. The street was much as I’d found it before. All kinds of people going about their lives. I stopped at a bank to buy a roll of nickels before watching Slav House from the opposite sidewalk for about ten minutes. Nobody came or went. That was good for my purposes. The mattress salesman emerged from his store, smoked a cigarette, and went back inside without noticing me.

I crossed the street and pulled open the metal door. The same big guard sat on a stool in front of the turnstile.

“Yeah?” he said.

I put my hands in my pockets and moved toward him.

“You’ve been in a fight,” he said, rising off his stool. “Looking for another?”

I hit him across the face with my right hand wrapped around the nickels. He fell over the stool with a crash. He pulled himself halfway up, and I hit him again. This time he stayed down.

I stood back against the wall under the one-way window until the steel door opened and a hand holding a gun poked out. Colt .45. I hit the door with my shoulder, which made everything hurt, but not as much as the other guy’s wrist. Bones cracked as he shrieked in pain. The gun clattered to the floor. I kicked it away and pulled open the door. The short, greasy-haired guy Gina had described held his damaged wrist, the hand hanging as if no longer connected, his face twisted in agony. I grabbed his shirt and yanked him into two hard jabs with the nickels. Teeth dropped to the floor. I let go of the shirt and the rest of him fell on top. He didn’t move.

Ten minutes later, I blinked as I stepped into the sunlight, holding Eva by the hand. Slav House consisted of a large meeting room, three smaller classrooms, and a couple of conference rooms and some offices. I found her in one of the latter, asleep on a cot. There were three large safes against the wall, all locked, presumably where they kept the cash. I gave the place a quick once-over before waking her, but it yielded nothing. She didn’t seem surprised or resist when I asked her to come with me. She wasn’t stoned, as far as I could tell, just exhausted.

“Please,” she said, “not h… h… home.”

“My office.”

“Okay.”

The cab was crossing Delancey Street when the cell phone buzzed.

Lachko said, “You have a fucking death wish, shit-sucker. You’d be a dead man, if you were a man at all. As it is, you’ll be a dead nonevent no one will remember. By midnight.”

“I have the database. I have the code.”

A long silence. I pictured him in his all-white office, struggling to bring his temper under control. “Bring them to me. You and your faggot-fucking son can live.”

“We’re both going to live, Lachko—on my terms. That’s where we start the negotiation. I can see how this works now. You moved fifty-two million in May. Not bad. June’s on track for over sixty. You going to throw all that away?”

Another silence. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I’ll call when I’m ready to talk.”

I closed the phone before he could respond. I expected him to call back, if only to throw more insults, but the phone stayed strangely silent. Eva was looking at me, blue eyes wide.

“Your father can be a very angry man,” I said.

She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, shaking her head. The eyes opened again, just as wide. “He’s n… n… not my f… father,” she whispered.

I tried to get Eva to explain that confession, but she didn’t speak another word for the rest of the cab ride, despite my questions and coaxing. She stared straight ahead, as if she’d retreated into her own world where no one could follow. She kept the same stare as I paid the driver and led her through the lobby, into the elevator, and through the server farm. It took Pig Pen to break the spell.

“Hello, Russky. Hello, cutie. Hot number!”

Eva’s head spun. “Wh… wha…”

“Eva, meet Pig Pen. Pig Pen, this is Eva. Be polite.”

“Cutie. Hot number!”

Eva looked at Pig Pen, back at me, then back at the parrot. “He t… talks?”

“A lot more than he should.” Foos taught him the “Cutie, hot number” routine to impress his dates, which, to my surprise, it never fails to do.

Eva approached the door of his office-cage. “Hello, P… P… Pig P… Pen.”

“Hello, cutie. Pizza?”

She looked back at me, unsure.

“Don’t pay attention to his pizza pleas. He hits on everyone.”

“I’ll get you pizza,” she said.

“Hot number! Hot number!”

Foos was banging on his keyboard. “Who’s that?”

“The Mulholland girl.”

He hauled his bulk to the door. Eva was still outside Pig Pen’s cage. The parrot was hanging on the mesh, talking up close and personal.

“Looks like he’s got a new friend,” he said. “She staying?”

“Not sure. She’s used up Ratko’s hideaways and doesn’t want to go home.”

The phone rang, and Foos answered. He listened a minute and held the receiver out to me, mouthpiece covered. “Victoria. Not a happy camper.”

“Y’all told me your business with Mulholland has nothing to do with my case.”

“That’s true.”

“Then what the hell is he doing in Brighton Beach?”

“Are you sure?”

“He got out of a car at Barsukov’s place a few minutes ago.”

“What kind of car? His or Barsukov’s?”

“Hold on.”

A click on the line, silence, then another click.

“Lincoln Town Car. Mulholland and two other guys, probably Barsukov’s.”

“I’ll call you back.”

“Call me back? Call me back when, dammit?”

“When I get to Brighton Beach.”

I phoned Gina while piloting the Potemkin out Ocean Avenue. I didn’t want to take it—Lachko might try to add it to his collection—but the Valdez was still uptown at its observation post.

“We’re doing another bank tour,” Gina said.

“ATMs?”

“Real branches. She’s going in and talking to tellers.”

“Keep a record. Branches and times.”

“Turbo, what do you pay me for?”

“You see anyone else watching you—or her?”

“No, and I’ve been looking, but…”

“But what?”

“I’ve got a sense I’m not the only one on this tour.”

“How many banks have you hit?”

“Four.”

“Get lost. I mean now, right now. E-mail me the bank information.”

“Okay, but—”

“NOW!”

“Hey, you’re scared.”

“Down to my shoes. You saw what I look like. Beat it.”

CHAPTER 38

I pulled up at the pink palace at three ten. A guard pointed a shotgun through the iron bars as I got out of the car.

“Tell Lachko Turbo’s here,” I said in Russian.

The guard called to someone else while he kept the barrel pointed squarely at my midsection. After a few minutes, the someone yelled back and the gate swung open. The guard didn’t move. Two others came out, checked inside and under the Potemkin, then signaled me into the courtyard. I parked next to the ZiL limo. Auto détente. I was searched and escorted along a different set of hallways to an open courtyard in the center of the complex. At one end was a chapel in the Greek Revival style. Lachko wasn’t remotely religious, probably keeping the bases covered. A large swimming pool took up most of the middle, lounge chairs spaced evenly around. A bar with a fake thatched roof faced the chapel across the pool. Waikiki meets Delphi. Lachko was in his wheelchair on the far side in the shade, oxygen tubes in the nose, papirosa in hand. Another muscled thug, could have been Sergei’s brother, stood beside him.

First things first, my first thing being self-preservation. “Lachko, let’s you and I be clear from the outset,” I called across the pool. “That guy or anyone else lays a hand on me, your laundry is out of business.”

“You’re in no position to dictate anything, Turbo.”

“In that case, I drove out here for nothing.”

I turned back toward the house.

“Wait. You’re not going anywhere.”

“That’s exactly my point, Lachko. I come and go as I please, unmolested. Your word on that, for what it’s worth. Otherwise, we won’t even get started.”

“Fucking zek.” He spat on the tile.

“You can drop the zek bullshit, too. I’m tired of it.”

He let the cigarette fall to the ground. “That’s what you are, Turbo.”

“I’m here to make a deal. We can talk about that or we can wallow in old insults that don’t mean anything anymore.”

“So you have come to think. I’m not sure everyone would agree.”

“I’ll take that chance. Where’s Mulholland?”

He ground the cigarette under his foot and lighted another. I could smell the cardboard forty feet away. “I have no idea.”

“Come on, Lachko. You brought him out here. Why?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You know full well.”

“I know you’re a useless—”

“Where is he now?”

“How should I know?”

My phone buzzed. Victoria said, “Mulholland left that cotton-candy cabin fifteen minutes ago.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Look like?”

“Normal or like me?”

“Appeared to be unharmed. Does that go for you as well?”

“So far. But I just got here.”

“Turbo! Get out of there.”

“I’ll call when I do.”

She started to say something, but I cut her off. Lachko was watching from across the pool. None of this made sense. Some kind of game—he’d used Mulholland as a lure—but games were never his style. When he wanted something, he sent muscle, as he’d done before.

“I did drive out here for nothing,” I said as I pocketed the phone. “See you.”

“What’s your rush? Company not to your liking?”

“Too much of a good thing.”

I started for the house. I hadn’t taken half a dozen steps before I felt a hand on my shoulder, spinning me around.

“Handle with care. Boss doesn’t have what he wants yet.”

The big man took a step toward me but veered away and went inside.

“Come over here, Turbo. I’m tired of yelling,” Lachko said.

It might have been the bright sun, or the disease, but up close Lachko looked like he’d aged ten years in the last few days. I didn’t feel sorry.

“Tell me about Eva,” I said.

“Why should I tell you one fucking thing about anything?”

“It’s part of the deal we’re going to make—for the code and the database.”

“What deal?”

“We’ll get to that. Eva. She’s not your daughter, is she?”

He threw the smoking cigarette in the pool. “She’s Kosokov’s.”

That admission must have hurt. I still didn’t feel sorry.

“I fell hard for Polina, that’s true,” he said, lighting another. “She was screwing him, but I thought I could pull her away. She told me they were never serious, but that was before I learned she lies as easily as I smoke Belomorkanals. She married me, but I think she was still trying to get even with you. Or she was trading one protector for another—or keeping two on the leash. Kosokov was so fucking venal, he didn’t give a damn. The man was a whore.”

He was angry. Maybe I could provoke him. “That’s why you killed him?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

He threw his cigarette into the water, next to the other one, and held up two tobacco-stained fingers, a half inch apart. “You are this close to choking on that butt underwater.” He wheeled his chair a few feet, following the shade. “You’ve always considered me slow-witted, and perhaps in this instance I was. It took me too long to discover she’ll eat your balls for breakfast and throw them back up to make room for lunch.”

“She said the same about you.”

“I can imagine the lies she told. I didn’t kill Kosokov. I would have, gladly, but fate didn’t put that in my path.”

I kept at it. “He lost your fortune—one of them—or did he just steal it?”

He laughed out loud, long and hard, until he started to hack. He bent over double, body shaking so hard I thought he’d fall out of his chair. I was about to go in search of help when he gave a final, choke-filled cough, spat a cupful of yellow-brown bile on the bluestone, and pulled himself upright.

“Turbo, you are without a doubt the dumbest fucking Russian in all of Russian history. You swallowed Polina’s lies so deep, the hook buried itself in your bowels. I ask myself, whenever I’m unfortunate enough to think of you, how the fuck did you ever make it into the Cheka? I told you before—Kosokov was a fool, a big-mouthed moron. He was the tool of our mutual friend, Polya. She suckered me, I admit, but not so much I didn’t make sure every kopek of my profit left his fucking bank the moment it was booked. Kosokov made some bad bets at the end, or so I’m told, but he made them with his money—and Polina’s—or the bank’s, not mine.”

That sounded like the Lachko I knew—but it wasn’t Polina’s hook buried in my bowels. “So who killed him?”

“Who the fuck cares? If I wasted any time thinking about it, I’d assume she did.”

“Why was Ratko operating behind your back?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You hadn’t seen him in months. You had your men out looking for some sign of him. You had no idea about the Greene Street loft. He took everything necessary to run the laundry and went underground. He was shutting you out.”

“Turbo, you and I have coexisted on the same planet for the last twenty years only because our paths did not cross. Now they have, and it remains to be seen whether we will continue to coexist at all. If we do not, you can be assured your soul will be resting back in the zek-filled sewer it crawled out of in 1953. I practically raised Ratko from the time he was a teenager. When I find out who killed him, I’ll make sure he pays. It could well have been you, in which case I’ll be doubly happy to even the score. Rurik is watching from the window. He was a guard in the Gulag. He hates zeks almost more than I do.”

He grunted and moved his chair again. Didn’t appear to take a lot of effort. I wondered how sick he really was. Ivanov wasn’t infallible.

“Still no answer.”

“You despise me, Turbo. I despise you. Part history, part jealousy, part fate. You’re still healthy. I sit here in a wheelchair with fucking tubes up my nose.”

He sucked the papirosa down to the nub. The late-afternoon sun burned as hot as noon.

“You destroyed my career. For what? Score points with my father? Claw your way over my back? You always hated me because I was born with the Cheka in my blood and you were just a shitty zek.”

He spat so hard the bile landed in the pool with a dull plop. While he fished for another smoke, I walked around the water. The sun bounced off the palace roof, rays splintering off the tiles, solar blades baked in reflected heat. I could see Rurik through the glare, behind a picture window, watching my every step. I stopped in front of the chapel doors. Prayer wasn’t going to help. I continued my circumnavigation of the Barsukov world I’d left—been thrown out of—long ago and been sucked back into. The old world had been twisted but something I could comprehend. I understood how it worked. This one, I wasn’t sure I could wrap my head around. Bigger question was, why did I want to?

I arrived back at the wheelchair. Lachko was staring at the pool in a haze of cardboard smoke.

“You still haven’t answered the question. Ratko was running out on you. Why?”

He bent forward in the wheelchair, hands at his sides, cigarette hanging just above the ground. “I don’t know.”

I almost believed him, but it could’ve all been an act. He could lie as easily as Polina—or the Politburo bosses he used to work for.

“What the fuck do you want, Turbo?”

“What was that ruse with Mulholland all about?”

Lachko looked up, eyes as empty as a beggar’s soup bowl. “I told you before, I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

In a strange way, I sensed he was telling the truth.

“Why’d you bring him out here?”

He shrugged and turned the wheelchair away. I’d learned as much—or as little—as I was going to. I said, “Okay, let’s talk business. Twenty percent.”

He spun back. “What the fuck?”

“You heard me. The database and the code. They’re yours for twenty percent of the profits.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind.”

“Business, Lachko. And maybe a little bit of payback. I’ve got it, you need it. That’s the deal.”

“Have you forgotten Friday night?”

“Do I look like I have? I’ve put all the necessary protections in place. Anything happens to me, Aleksei, Victoria, anyone, you’re shut down.”

“Ten.”

“Fifteen.”

“Fucking zek.”

“You’ll be a richer Chekist. I’ll be a rich zek. We’ll still hate each other.”

I dropped the portable hard drive in his lap.

He spat once more into the pool. “Don’t come back.”

The Potemkin was where I’d left it. The cell phone buzzed again as I crossed the courtyard.

Foos said, “She’s gone.”

“What happened?”

“Don’t know. We went to Lombardi’s with Pig Pen, came back, she said she was tired, wanted a nap, and stretched out on the couch. I thought I heard a cell phone ring a little later, and when I came out to check, she was gone.”

“Dammit.”

“She’s a sweet kid, but a real head case. Ratko screwed her over pretty good. Probably best for her he croaked. He would’ve broken her heart otherwise. It’s pretty damned fragile as it is. She’s still too hung up on him to see what was happening.”

“Sounds like she told you a fair amount.”

“I just bought the pizza and listened. Been a long time since anyone took an interest in what she thinks.”

“She say anything about her mother?”

“Uh-uh. Only that she and Ratko talked about family a lot. His parents were dead. He was always asking about hers.”

No surprise there.

“Can you tell who called her?”

“On it right now.”

The Potemkin’s tires squealed as I accelerated through Lachko’s gate. I knew why I’d been tricked into visiting Brighton Beach. The trickster wanted Eva. I didn’t know why, but I had a good idea who. The list of potential tricksters was growing short.

CHAPTER 39

“Disposable cell phone,” Foos said. “The one that called her.”

“Fuck your mother.”

He ignored me. He’d heard it before. “Call came in a few blocks from here. Dover Street.”

My head whipped around. I yelped as my neck sent a shot of pain down my right side.

“You okay?” Foos said.

“Yeah. Where on Dover?”

“Dover and Front. Right under the bridge.”

The pain vanished as I ran for the door.

Spies are a paranoid bunch. For good reason. There usually is someone out to get us. That doesn’t mean we lack humor.

One of the trickiest challenges I faced in a foreign city was finding secure venues to meet agents. America’s most crowded metropolis, New York, offers wonderful anonymity. Everyone consciously ignores everyone else around them. But it’s still difficult to find places where one is truly alone—and out of the reach of prying eyes, ears, cameras, microphones, and binoculars, should there be any interested, which, of course, we constantly assume there are.

I found a few good venues in my time—the bar at the Village Vanguard, any number of undervisited rooms at the Metropolitan Museum (ditto for the Cloisters), the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (less crowded than its Bronx brethren), windswept piers on either river, especially in winter, and, one of the very best, a well-traveled, thoroughly anonymous gay men’s pickup spot in the parking lot of a Queens park. I appreciated the irony of that one more than my agents. By far my favorite was the old Civil Defense shelter in one of the stone piers supporting the Brooklyn Bridge. I happened on it completely by accident, in the mid-1980s. The lock had rusted to the point of breaking, or maybe someone had broken in and run away, leaving the iron door banging in the wind on a sleeting winter night, the noise echoing around the chamber of the bridge’s understructure. I was walking to the subway after meeting an agent on one of the East River piers. There was nobody on the street, so in I went.

I found a forgotten Cold War fallout shelter. Big, damp, dirty room, stocked to the ceiling with cases of high-protein crackers (date-stamped 1962), drums of water, crates of medicines, and boxes of blankets. There were some wooden chairs and tables, two dozen folding canvas cots, some kerosene lanterns and multiple cans of fuel. Iron rungs climbed to a second exit in the bridge ramp. Whether the stone of the superstructure was enough to protect the inhabitants from the feared nuclear winter was anybody’s guess, but the early 1960s—the months of the Cuban Missile Crisis (we knew it as the Caribbean Crisis)—were hardly a rational time in America. Everyone was scared, for good reason.

I wedged the door shut that night and returned the next day with a heavy-duty combination lock. I spent a good hour kicking it around the street to make it look old. I checked the place periodically over the next three months. So far as I could tell, no one ever got near it. I used the shelter more than a dozen times over the next two years. I never saw evidence that anyone else even knew of its existence. My agents were evenly divided. Half found it fascinating. The rest disdained the dirt and damp. I took pleasure in the irony every time I visited.

Another summer thunderstorm tonight. I ran through seven blocks of rain to Dover Street, clothes glued to my body when I got there. Early evening, sunset still hours away, but it might as well have been midnight. No lights from the buildings. No one on the street. Dim pools of reflection on the asphalt from a few streetlights. The hulk of the bridge weighed heavy above. An urban no-man’s-land, bereft of life, except for the rumble of traffic on the ramp.

Lightning flashed off the door to the old shelter. No way to tell if anyone had been there since my last visit in 1988. I took refuge in the entrance of an unlit building and waited. No motion, no people, nothing. The rain slackened some but still fell hard. I didn’t have a good idea—I didn’t have any idea except to hope the lock was still my own and take my chances. The exertion of running made everything ache. I hadn’t brought a gun. A good hand to fold.

I waited another few minutes on the grounds that summer storms pass. The rain kept falling.

Muttering under my breath, I started across the street at a trot. I could see the old iron door more clearly as I got closer, the pockmarks of rust and age brightening in the lightning flashes. I could almost see there was no padlock on the latch when a strong arm grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around. My feet gave way on the asphalt, slick with rain, and my butt hit the pavement, setting off a chain of pain through every bruised muscle I had.

Damned fool! Of course he’d have someone watching.

I looked up, expecting to see the bullet that would split my skull, thinking about Victoria and Aleksei and Eva and my own stupidity.

An eye patch. Then a hand grabbed mine. “This way. Move!”

Petrovin pulled me to my feet and shoved me to the refuge of another pier. Eva Mulholland was huddled in the shadows, hair matted around her head, soaked shirt clinging to her frame.

Petrovin had traded his white suit for black jeans and a black T-shirt. He hadn’t lost any of his presence.

“I was following Polina,” he said. “I think you had someone on her, too.”

I nodded.

“She brought me here and went inside. That was four o’clock. Eva came at five. I waylaid her.”

I looked at Eva. “Why’d you leave the office?”

“She c… called.” Her voice was between a squeak and a whisper.

“And?”

“She n… needed m… m… me. Said I had to c… come. Then…”

“Then what?” Pretrovin said, with a gentleness I doubt I could’ve managed.

Tears welled. “She screamed. It w… w… was aw… aw… awful.”

“I know this place,” I said to Petrovin. “I’ll go.”

“You armed?”

“No. Are you?”

He shook his head. “Are you sure you’re in shape…”

“I’ll be fine. It’s an old fallout shelter, one big room. If I’m not back out in two minutes, get her out of here and find a cop.”

Nobody came or went while we talked. The rain picked up a little, then slowed. It was falling harder again when I took a breath and started for the rusted door a second time.

The padlock lay on the pavement, cut open, off to the side. Same one I’d bought two decades before, looked like.

I put my back to the wall beside the door, reached around, pushed it open a few inches. If anyone made any noise, it was drowned by the traffic rumble above. I peered into the dark. Couldn’t see a thing. There was a light switch to the right of the door. I’d been amazed years ago when it worked. Who was paying the bill? Where was the bill sent? I was just as amazed now.

I flicked the switch and gave the door a hard shove. It struck something. Glass broke. A trail of fire skittered across the floor around a stack of water drums—a whoosh and a flash and flames and shadows danced on all four walls. I could feel the heat and smell the oil.

Behind the drums a circle of fire raged, fed by kerosene-soaked blankets, flames leaping six to eight feet. In the center I could just make out Polina, tied to a chair, head falling forward. A funeral pyre of blankets burned under the chair.

No time. She’d be dead in a minute and the whole place an inferno a minute after that. Holding a dry blanket in front of me—an ineffective shield if there ever was one—I made my way around the fire circle to the back. No room between the fire and the wall. The designer of this execution chamber had done his work well. The heat scorched everything. The fire burned all around—no spaces, no breaks. My clothes would be alight in a second.

I held the blanket out in front and jumped through the fire. I screamed as the flames seared my skin, the smell of burning flesh mixing with kerosene. I wrapped the blanket around Polina, lifted the burning chair off the pyre, and ran through the other side, giving her a final shove as I fell to the floor and rolled, trying to extinguish burning linen and skin.

“STAY STILL!” Petrovin barked. I stopped, and he covered me with blankets. The burning eased. The smell remained. He took more blankets to Polina and covered her. As I sat up, I saw Eva by the door, her whole body shaking. She let out a wail—the sound of a lifetime of fear, pain, and sorrow reverberating around the stone walls before she collapsed to the floor.

“Get the fire out,” Petrovin yelled.

“Water drums,” I said. “Soak the blankets.”

He went to work on one of the metal cans. It took forever—probably just a few seconds—to get one open. We suffocated the kerosene-soaked blankets. The space filled with black smoke. The stench of fuel, wool, and flesh made me gag.

Polina’s clothes were badly charred, her skin black and red. The burns could be the least of her problems. She’d been worked over with a blade—disfigurement by a thousand cuts. The wounds puffed and oozed. I put my nose next to one; it reeked of kerosene. I fought the urge to throw up.

Her hands were bound to the back of the chair, and her feet to the legs, with duct tape wrapped thick. Tape covered her mouth. I looked for something to cut her free. A box cutter lay in a corner, blood on the blade. The torture weapon. I slashed the tape on her arms and legs and the chair fell away. I pulled the piece off her face as gently as I could. She was unconscious and barely breathing. I pulled out my cell phone. No way not to get my hands dirty this time.

Victoria got on the phone immediately. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” I lied. “Ambulance. ASAP. Front and Dover. In the bridge support. Felix Mulholland. Severe burns and lacerations. Loss of blood. Blood poisoning. She doesn’t have long. Cops, too. I’ll wait.”

She hesitated half a second, a hundred questions running through her mind. She didn’t ask one. “I’ll call back.”

Mulholland next. “Your wife’s badly hurt.” I repeated the essentials. “Ambulance on the way. New York Hospital?”

“Yes. I’ll meet her there. Tell me—”

“Time for that later.”

He understood urgency, too. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

Petrovin sat on the floor, Polina’s head in his lap. He stroked her hair. I thought I saw tears in his good eye, but that could have been the smoke. When he saw me looking, he put his finger to her neck.

“Pulse very faint,” he said.

“Odds aren’t good. Bastard worked her over with that box cutter and put kerosene in her wounds.”

“Jesus! What kind of…”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. His shoulders started shaking, and a new look came over his face, one of barely controlled fury. He was close to explosion. Time to get him and Eva out of here.

“Take the girl and go somewhere safe, before the entire New York City police establishment arrives. She’s the target now. That fire was set; the door was booby-trapped. She was supposed to set it off—burn her mother to death before her eyes, herself, too, maybe. I’ll deal with the cops.”

He kept his eye on me as he stood, cool returning. “I don’t disagree with your assessment, but why are you doing this?”

“Why are you?”

Hard to make out in the dim light, but I think he smiled. “Perhaps we’re on the same side after all.”

“You’re the only one who ever doubted that. Does anyone know where you’re staying, anyone at all?”

He hesitated.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Don’t go back there. Someone knew about Chmil, remember?”

I dialed the office. Foos was still there. “Emergency. I need hotels with vacancies, fast.”

“Give me five.”

“Call this number.” I gave him Petrovin’s cell phone.

Eva didn’t want to leave. She started screaming and dove at her mother. I put myself between them. Polina’s back was to her—Eva couldn’t see the extent of her wounds. Petrovin talked quietly in her ear from behind. I couldn’t hear what he said, but his calming influence took hold.

“Polina’ll be at New York Hospital,” I said. “Don’t answer your phone after my friend calls back. If I want to talk, I’ll call twice. I’ll hang up after the third ring the first time. Answer the second call on the second ring. You’d better move.”

Petrovin nodded and took Eva’s hand. He pulled her to the door. He turned back when he got there, looking at Polina on the ground.

“You know as well as I do there’s only one—”

“I know,” I said.

CHAPTER 40

The police got there first, the ambulance second.

I called Bernie as soon as Petrovin left. “I need a lawyer. Someone who can keep me out of jail.” I told him where I was.

“I heard about that place, back at Langley. We never touched it, waiting for someone to return. How bad is it?”

So much for my irony. “Bad.” I gave him the details. “I’ve called Mulholland. Ambulance and cops are on the way. But your former partner’s going to have my ass.”

“Word is, she already has.”

“I’ve got newfound respect for the CIA. I still need help.”

“I’ll send Franklin to hold the fort while I arrange more heavyweight assistance.”

Victoria called just before the police arrived. “I’ve done what you asked. I’ve got a ton of questions, but I’m gonna let Coyle ask them on my behalf, at least to start. Remember what we talked about this morning—be straight with him. He’s gonna repeat everything you say word for word.”

The cops moved me outside, searched me, and asked a lot of questions of their own, which I refused to answer.

The paramedics wasted no time in taking Polina away.

“New York Hospital,” I said. “Her husband’s—”

“We know.”

An SUV carrying Coyle and Sawicki and the taxi with young Malcolm Franklin raced each other down the block and skidded to the curb in unison. Coyle headed straight for me. Sawicki tried to cut off Franklin, but he ducked under his arm and sprinted in my direction.

Coyle walked on by and went inside. Franklin slid to a stop by my side. “Don’t admit anything. I’ll do the talking.”

“Good advice,” I said.

Sawicki caught up and pushed himself in our faces. “I own your ass tonight.”

I did my best to smile. Franklin did his to look stern. We stood there until Coyle came back out.

“How much did you touch?”

“Don’t answer that,” Franklin said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Pretty much everything. The door was rigged to knock over a kerosene lantern, which ignited a fire, which was going to burn the woman—Felix Mulholland—at the stake. She’d already been cut up bad. I got her out of the fire. I put out the fire. I called for help. Beyond that, talk to my lawyer.” I looked at Franklin, who didn’t look happy.

“What were you doing here to begin with?” Coyle asked.

I looked at Franklin.

“My client will answer all questions in due course.”

“Your client’s full of shit.”

“C’mon, Coyle, look at me. I’m cooked better than a backyard steak. I told you what I found and what I did about it.”

“I’m still asking what you were doing here to begin with. Taking a walk in the rain under the Brooklyn Bridge?”

I thought about trying to bluff. I might pull it off. I thought about my conversation that morning with Victoria and her admonition about playing it straight. I thought about the fact that I’d likely need her help—and Coyle’s—before this was finished. I weighed all that against the fact that this was Cheka business, family business—none of hers, none of his. I decided to tell the truth. Up to a point.

“Eva Mulholland—the daughter—got a call from her mother, telling her to come here. I followed her.”

“So you must have seen the guy who set the fire.”

“Uh-uh. I was late. I was in Brighton Beach—you can confirm that—and I had to trace the call through her cell phone. By the time I got here…”

“Where’s the girl?”

“You know the Russian working with Victoria? Eye patch, curly hair. Calls himself Petrovin, at least to me?”

Coyle nodded.

“He was following Felix Mulholland. She led him here. He didn’t like the setup, waylaid the girl.”

“Bull. He would’ve seen the guy come out.”

“There’s another exit, ladder to the bridge ramp.”

“So where are they?”

“The girl was in shock. He took her to get help.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“Think about it, Coyle. Guy brings Felix Mulholland here. Works her over. Makes her call her daughter. Daughter doesn’t show. He sets the trap and splits. I trigger it.”

“Okay, so who’s the guy? What’s he want with the Mulholland babe or her daughter? And how’d he know about this place?”

I’d gone as far as I was prepared to. I looked at Franklin. “Your move.”

He stepped forward. “My client will answer no further questions.”

He was trying to sound important, but he came across as silly. Not his fault—he was being trained to argue the finer points of securities regulation with the SEC. Coyle got that, too, and did his best not to laugh.

“All right, counselor. You and your client can accompany me and my partner back to the office. We’ll continue our conversation there.”

We continued until sometime after 2:00 A.M. Franklin was spelled at eleven by a criminal lawyer named Lieb who wasn’t any more effective in cutting off the questions, but when he said I wouldn’t answer, he sounded like he meant it. Coyle made me call Petrovin a couple of times, but he didn’t answer, as agreed. Sawicki wanted to lock me up overnight, but Coyle let me go—after I promised not to leave town and to produce Petrovin and Eva the next day, and Lieb promised that my promise was one they could bank on.

We rode a slow elevator to the street and walked out into the hot, damp night. Lieb flagged a lonely cab and offered me a lift. I said I’d walk. I wanted time to think.

The streets were empty. I should have gone home—I was tired and aching and scorched. I was also too keyed up for sleep and keenly aware that a clock hanging over the head of Eva Mulholland—maybe others, too—was close to running out. I thought about calling Victoria, but she was probably debriefing Coyle. The office was quiet, but I woke up Pig Pen when I turned on the lights.

“Russky. Burned crust.”

“Not crust, Pig Pen, me. Burned Russky.” I reeked of smoke and kerosene. He gave me the same stare I get from his owner when I utter a logical improbability and closed his eyes. His mention of crust reminded me I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I found some bread, cheese, and vodka in the kitchen. I was chewing and sipping when the phone rang.

“Coyle says your story’s too fucked up not to be on the level. He also says you know damned well who set that fire and why it was set there.”

I was right about the debriefing. “And?”

“Between you and him, shug, I’m going with him.”

“Thank you for your support.”

“Seriously, are you all right? Coyle said you looked pretty messed up.”

“Your concern is touching. His, too. I’m self-medicating.”

“Uh-oh. Remember what happened last time you went on the vodka cure.”

She had a point. “I will. Where are you?”

“Office—but I can be at your place in ten minutes if you want to hold hands and tell me what’s going on.”

“That’s all I have to look forward to?”

“You’re a suspect, shug, and I’m beat. You gotta be, too. It’s 3:00 A.M.”

She was right—and I should have stayed where I was and started working through the Russian file on Ratko’s hard drive, my purpose in coming here in the first place.

“I’ll wait for you at the front door.”