Private Moscow

Chapter 64

The oppressive darkness of a January night set in during our journey across the city.

“What’s your name?” I asked the mutterer, who drove with two fingers on the wheel.

“Ghani,” he replied, glancing back at Dinara and me. “From Afghanistan. You know it?”

I knew it all too well. The memory of my last day on the battlefield was still seared in my mind. I’d lost so many friends, and our driver might have sympathized with the people who’d killed them. Heck, he might have been one of them.

“No,” I replied. It was simpler to lie. “I’ve never been.”

“I have,” Dinara replied, surprising me. “A long time ago. In Kabul.”

The driver nodded, and I got the sense he knew better than to pry. Had she been there with the FSB? As a Russian operative? Or simply as a traveler? It was a part of the world that was so damaged a simple conversation risked opening a sectarian can of worms.

“When did you last see the man in the photograph?” I asked.

Ghani sucked on his cigarette. He’d taken off his hat and rubbed a hand through his thick salt and pepper hair. He exhaled a cloud of smoke, which I tried my best to ignore in the confined, warm cabin of his rattling Skoda.

“The day after yesterday,” he said.

“The day before yesterday?” Dinara qualified.

Ghani nodded. “Yes, yes.”

I glanced at Dinara and saw that she was also alive with the thrill of a lead.

“What time?” I asked.

“Morning,” he replied. “Maybe ten o’clock.”

That was roughly an hour before Ernie Fisher was murdered.

“He ask me to take him to Lefortovo. To a fun house. He tell me wait then we go to airport,” Ghani said. “But we never go airport. When he come out of fun house, he angry. Mad. Tell me take him home. He forget something.”

“The key?” Dinara guessed.

Ghani looked at her blankly.

“Fun house?” I asked.

“You know,” Ghani replied. He arched his eyebrows, sucked on his cigarette and glanced at Dinara. “For girls.”

“He means a brothel,” Dinara clarified.

“Fun house,” Ghani repeated. “Is where I take you.”

He drew in another lungful of smoke and exhaled slowly, filling the velour-covered cabin with a thick cloud.

“You married?” he asked us.

“No,” Dinara replied. “We work together.”

“Why no?” Ghani asked. “You very beautiful,” he told Dinara. “And he got the eyes of a mountain man.”

“Is that good?” I asked.

“Yes. Is very good,” Ghani replied. “You keep woman safe. You dangerous.”