Liars & Thieves

CHAPTER TWELVE

They were in their apartment in Moscow when they came to arrest him. They came in the middle of the night, as they always did. They smashed at the door with a sledgehammer. The furious pounding woke him, the sound of wood splintering, someone somewhere screaming. Bronislava was beside him, startled awake.

He could see everything in the small apartment in the light from the street that came through the window, see the door panel bulging and splintering under each impact, hear the grunting of the man swinging the hammer. And there was no other way out. No exit. They were trapped! When they found his notes he and Bronislava would be taken to the Lubyanka, thrown into the cells, and interrogated and tortured until they told everything or died. He had seen them there so many times, people praying to die… and now it was his turn. The hammering… they were almost through the door…

He awoke in a lather, fighting the blanket that was over him. He sat up, stared at his surroundings.

Oh, God, where was he? Nothing looked familiar… nothing. Only the dream had been real, the same dream that had tortured him for twenty years…

There was a woman sitting on the cabin steps — a young woman, perhaps thirty years of age, with medium-length dark hair, wearing a blouse, slacks, and a sweater. She spoke to him in a language he didn’t understand. He shook his head slowly, completely lost, confused.

He urgently needed to go to the bathroom. He stood, folded the blanket that had covered him, and, with it draped over one arm, stepped behind some bushes and relieved himself. He zipped up his pants and stood looking around.

The woman found him there. She had a cup of something hot. He accepted it gratefully, sipped, then she took his arm and led him back to the steps of the cabin. By gestures she motioned him to sit beside her on the top step. He did so, sipped at the drink, glanced around at everything, trying to remember.

She spoke again. He understood not a word. While she was talking a man joined them on the porch. He was slim, apparently in his mid-thirties, with a lean, tan face and short hair. He spoke to Goncharov also, and to the woman, back and forth. Mikhail Goncharov had no idea what they were discussing.

After a while she led him inside. He looked around again. Everything was strange. He sank into the nearest seat, scanned the entire room, then arranged the blanket over his legs. He was chilly.

The woman made him a sandwich. He ate it slowly, savoring every bite. She gave him more of the hot liquid to drink.

When he finished the food, the man brought a notebook and a ballpoint pen. He handed them to Goncharov, pointed to Goncharov’s chest, then widened his hands before him in the universal gesture of a question.

A name, Goncharov thought. He wants my name.

But what is it?

Startled, his eyes widened as he realized he didn’t even know who he was.

He picked up the pen, made the point go in and out, examined the white paper, but for the life of him he could think of nothing to write.

“He doesn’t know his own name,” Linda Fiocchi said heavily.

“Apparently not,” Basil Jarrett agreed.

“So what should we do?”

“Damn, woman, I don’t know.” Jarrett went to the woodstove and opened it. He wadded up a sheet of newspaper from a nearby pile, added kindling, and struck a match. When the paper caught, he closed the door and adjusted the draft.

What should we do with a man who is obviously suffering from some kind of severe mental confusion? Not that Linda or I know a solitary thing about mental illness. Boy, you come to the cabin for a quiet, restful weekend, some fishing, reading, wine, and lovemaking… and you’ve got a mental patient on your hands.

When Jarrett turned around, Linda was sitting beside the older man holding his hand. The man seemed to be paying no attention. He stared fixedly at something far, far away.

Civilization had reached Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, I decided as I cruised slowly through, checking out the scene. The Wal-Mart was huge, spanking new, and had a couple of acres of parking lot. Inside would be 9 mm and .38 Special ammo, not to mention underwear and jeans, socks and shirts. All the necessities for classy, with-it guys like me.

The house I was looking for was about a mile south of downtown on the beach side of the highway, on a dead-end street. It looked about as I remembered it, a medium-sized two-story bungalow with a large screened-in porch and a crushed-seashell parking area big enough for four cars. I wheeled in, killed the engine, sat looking it over. Only two of the other bungalows on this street that dead-ended at the dune had cars parked beside them.

“Whose house is this?” Dorsey O’Shea asked from the back seat.

“Guy I know.”

“One of your friends you are about to curse with your presence. Do you have permission to stay here?”

“Uh, he won’t mind.”

“So the answer is no.” She harrumped. “I thought not.”

I turned in my seat to face her. “I’ve had about enough of your lip. I’m sorry you had to shoot that bastard this morning, but I’m not real damn sorry. He came to kill all three of us. It was him or us. He was a rotten cop and he fell in with rotten people.”

“You knew him?”

“I know his name, yes.”

“Jesus, Tommy, I don’t want to have to kill people, for any reason at all. Ever again.” Her voice had a hard, brittle edge to it. “Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“What kind of man are you, anyway? You kill a man at my house, watch another die before your eyes, and you drive all afternoon with your arm out the window and the radio playing, like you don’t give a good goddamn.” The pitch and volume of her voice were rising. “What kind of animal are you, anyway?”

“I can answer that,” Kelly Erlanger said calmly. “Yesterday morning Tommy Carmellini ran into a burning building and dragged me out, saving my life. Men like the ones this morning went through that building shooting everyone they could find, then set the place on fire to burn the bodies. Last night he went to my house and got me out of it just before more men arrived to kill me.”

She turned in her seat so that she, too, could see Dorsey. She held up a handful of paper. “These are copies the KGB archivist made of the files in his custody. He spent twenty years copying these files and smuggled them out of Russia after he retired. Never in my life have I read such a chronicle of evil. Tommy Carmellini? He’s one of the good guys.”

She got out of the car and closed the door behind her, leaving me alone with Dorsey.

Dorsey wouldn’t look at me. After a bit she said, “I know there is evil in the world, but I don’t want to live with it. I don’t want to fight it. I don’t want it bleeding to death in my foyer. What’s so wrong with that? Do you understand?”

“I think so,” I told her. “But you’d better keep that pistol handy. You may need it again if you want to keep breathing.”

It only took me a couple of minutes to pick the lock on the front door of the bungalow. I opened the door, went through turning on lights, then went back to the car to carry in the weapons and baggage. The women came inside. After they used the facilities, they walked through the house examining everything.

“You really do know the owners?” Dorsey asked sharply.

“Yes.”

“They won’t mind you using this place?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why don’t you call them and ask? There’s the phone.”

“I would rather not. The fewer people who know we’re here the better. If there’s a problem, I’ll make it right with the owners later on.”

Kelly took a deep breath and announced, “I’ll take the bedroom on the left, upstairs. I saw a swimsuit up there that looks like it might fit me. Dorsey, would you like to go for a walk on the beach?”

Dorsey’s shoulders sagged. “Yes,” she said. “I guess I would.”

While they were changing clothes I rooted through the kitchen drawers until I found a spare house key. I gave it to Kelly as they trooped past on their way out, with borrowed towels over their shoulders.

I stood beside the car watching them walk down the street. After they disappeared across the dune, I got in the car and headed for Wal-Mart, which even had groceries.

That Kelly… she had her share of guts. I liked that.

The sheriff was a man in his fifties, balding, with a modest pot gut and a quiet voice. He stood in front of the cabin listening to Basil Jarrett explain about the man they had found when they arrived midday, the man who had spent most of the afternoon asleep near the woodpile.

When he had told him everything he could think of, Jarrett led the sheriff inside. He sat down beside Mikhail Goncharov, asked him his name, where he was from, all the usual questions. For his troubles he received a blank stare.

The sheriff took the pad, wrote his name upon it, and held it up so the man could see the similarity between the name on the pad and the sheriff’s name tag above his left pocket, just below his badge. Then he offered the man the pad and pen.

Goncharov took them, examined the pen, stared at the white paper, and finally laid them in his lap. The sheriff rescued the pad and pen and wrote out two questions. What is your name? Where do you live? Goncharov didn’t appear to even read them when they were held in front of him.

The sheriff sat for a bit more, chatting with Goncharov and receiving no response, then finally arose from his chair and motioned to Jarrett and Fiocchi to follow. Standing in front of his cruiser, he said, “He’s not from around here. Never saw him before.”

“Do you want to take him with you?”

“Well, about all I could do would be take him to the county lockup for transport to the regional jail. We could get some prints, send them to the FBI, see if they can figure out who he is. Gonna take a while, I suspect.”

“You’d leave him in jail while the bureaucrats are piddling along?”

The sheriff settled his hat onto his head and looked searchingly at each of their faces. “Seeing as how he’s apparently incompetent, the mental health commissioner will have him examined by a psychologist or psychiatrist, hold a hearing. If the commissioner finds he’s incompetent, regardless of who he is, he’ll send him to the state mental institution for treatment.”

“I see,” Basil Jarrett said, glancing at Fiocchi. “So you’re saying he’ll probably wind up in the nut house?”

“I sorta suspect so,” the sheriff admitted. “This fella doesn’t have a wallet or money on him — you told me that. It’s been my experience that there are very few people without some kind of identification on their person unless they are running from something.” He shrugged, then continued, “He doesn’t appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He won’t talk to me in any language, won’t write down his name or tell us where he lives — he seems unresponsive. Abnormally so.”

The sheriff got out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, taking his time. When he had it going he said, “He appears to me to be unable to take care of himself. I call that incompetent. What do you think?”

While the sheriff smoked, Jarrett and Fiocchi walked out of earshot and talked the situation over. In a moment they came back. “Is there any way you could fingerprint him and send the prints to the FBI? And leave him here until you hear something?”

“You don’t know who this man is,” the sheriff pointed out. “He could be a fugitive, a killer, or an escapee from a prison or asylum. He could be bedbug crazy. He could be any damn body. Do you really want the responsibility of caring for this man for a while? Might be as long as a week?”

They went away and discussed it animatedly. Finally they returned. “Yes,” Jarrett said. “He’s sick, having severe nightmares, and we think he has amnesia. We don’t think jail is the place for him. I have to go to work on Monday, but Linda could stay here with him if necessary.”

“I’ve got some office supplies in the trunk,” the sheriff said. “Seem to remember an ink pad in that bag.” He made no move to open the trunk but stood smoking. When he finished the weed, he dropped it and ground it out beneath his shoe. “This guy seems pretty harmless. Let’s hope he is.”

When I got back from Wal-Mart that afternoon, I did some sit-ups and push-ups to get the kinks out, then went for a run. I stood on the dune looking until I saw the women — they seemed deep in conversation — then I ran the other way along the beach.

That night I fixed steaks and potatoes for dinner on the charcoal grill that sat beside the house in the small yard. While the food was cooking I made a salad. I had even remembered to buy a six-pack on my shopping expedition, so we washed our meal down with beer.

The women didn’t have much to say that night. Kelly dove back into the Goncharov treasure and Dorsey selected a book from the shelves. She read on it a while, then put it back on the shelf and went upstairs. I heard the shower running, then nothing. I figured she went to bed.

I sat on the screened-in porch and thought about the last two days. Bullets, blood, fire, murder… it was like we were in the middle of a war.

Me, I was just a thief who liked breaking into places I wasn’t supposed to be. The agency kept me busy cracking safes, planting bugs, photographing documents in private offices, and the like. All in all, it wasn’t a bad job — I got paid adequately and regularly, although I wasn’t getting rich, and presumably someday I would retire on a comfortable pension if someone didn’t shoot me or I didn’t open a booby-trapped filing cabinet. Or a rope didn’t break while I climbed the side of a building. Or I didn’t get thrown into some third-world dungeon to rot. Or I didn’t pick up a fatal intestinal parasite somewhere or other. Or these hired killers who were chasing me and Kelly — and now Dorsey — didn’t catch me.

What was there to worry about?

Truth be told, I thought about quitting the government off and on for years. Tell the CIA to shove it and go out on my own, burglary for fun and profit. Then I would think about guys I had known, guys like Sal Pulzelli, who didn’t live to retire, and I would think, what the heck, I’ll hang in there. Keep on keeping on. So I’d been hanging in, keeping on. Now Sal was dead and Willie carved up and…

I knew exactly how Dorsey felt.

Why me?

There were some blankets neatly folded on a chair in the living room, so I carried them out to the covered porch and bedded down on a couch. Kelly was still curled up reading.

It must have been about midnight when I awoke to find a woman crawling under the blankets with me. At first I thought it was Dorsey, but it wasn’t. It was Kelly. She was wearing cotton pajamas and she wasn’t interested in anything but sleeping. She snuggled up against me and promptly dropped off.

I wrapped an arm around her and went back to sleep myself.