Rasputin's Shadow

50

I was running on empty.

This thing had us in its grip since we’d first stepped inside Sokolov’s apartment Monday morning, and here I was back at Federal Plaza, three days later, bright and early, having managed all of a blissful two hours of sleep and a decadent ten-minute shower. Which is something I wouldn’t normally complain about, but after the previous night’s shootout at the docks, the restaurant, and Prospect Park, my body was threatening an insurrection.

The good news was that Ae-Cha was going to be okay. The foot would take a while to heal; the PT would take far longer to get all those tendons and bones to move seamlessly and do what they were meant to do, but at least it was time she still had.

The bad news was everything else.

The flak was coming in from all corners: the governor’s office, the mayor’s office, the chief of police, all of it fog-horned to us through my own esteemed boss. We spent a good part of the morning in his office: Aparo, me, the ADIC himself obviously, Kanigher, a couple of NYPD liaisons, and a couple of Bureau lawyers. After the requisite dressing-down for the massive body count and the fact that Ivan was still on the loose, Gallo wanted a detailed run-through of everything that had happened since our last little sit-down-which was only yesterday morning, after the shoot-out at the motel the night before. Sitting there and watching my boss frown intensely and purse his lips ever-so-thoughtfully as he questioned and second-guessed every move we made was truly painful, especially given the state I was in, but I’d decided to get through it as passively as I could in order to move on and get back to trying to figure out what was going on.

Because the one question I kept coming back to was this: what the hell happened at the Russian restaurant in Brighton Beach?

That was something no one had really explained.

It was still too fresh, but questions were being asked, particularly by the news media, who were all over the story. We had nine dead there. More than forty in the hospital, several of them critical. Men, women, young, old. The press and our own people were describing the massive brawl as a freak incident. Most of those who’d taken part were Russian. Theories were bouncing around that it was a gang thing. But it didn’t make sense to me. I’d never heard of anything like it, not involving women, not unrelated to a heated sporting event like a boxing match or a political event like a protest march. There was no rhyme or reason for such a savage outburst. It just seemed insane.

The early information we had from the cops on the scene was that the victims themselves couldn’t really say what had happened. They didn’t know why they had done what they’d done, which was a useful defense, of course, though in this case, it felt like it was too widely consistent to be a cynical ploy from the guilty. A couple of them, however, had mentioned a rage, an aggression that had suddenly swelled up inside them, one they couldn’t explain. They said it was like they were in a trance, or drugged. And I couldn’t get that out of my mind.

The van had been there too, of course.

The van that Sokolov had hidden and lied about, the one Ivan had been so desperate to get his hands on.

By eleven, Aparo and I were back in his Charger, heading out to an industrial park near Webster Avenue in the Bronx. It was where the DMV records for Sokolov’s van had it registered. Maybe we’d know more when we got there.

“What is it with this van?” I asked as I stared at the picture of it that I was holding, a printout from the traffic cam. “What’s Sokolov got in it?”

“Maybe he’s like Goldfinger and it’s made of gold,” Aparo said as we sped up the FDR. “Or it’s loaded with drugs. Or maybe,” he added, all excited, his index finger up in the air to press his point, “maybe he’s come up with some radical new kind of engine that runs on a super-cheap alternative fuel and the Mystery Machine’s his secret prototype.” He paused, then, undeterred by my dismissive look, he continued. “Seriously. The guy’s a bit of a nutty professor, isn’t he? Maybe he’s cooked something like that up. The Russians want to keep it under wraps so they can safeguard their oil exports. We want it. Everyone’s after it.”

He looked at me again like maybe he actually had something there.

I wasn’t really listening to him anymore, as a weird and nutty idea of my own had just sprouted in my mind.

I hadn’t just been staring at a photo of the van. My attention had been drawn to the refrigeration unit on its roof.

It got me thinking about why the unit was there. What one used refrigeration for.

Meat. Ice cream.

Bacteria.

Viruses.

My mind went all kinds of places with it. And suddenly it didn’t seem as weird or as nutty anymore. And it started to explain a lot about what had been happening.

Aparo spotted it on my face. “You’ve got that look,” he told me.

I was too busy concentrating to retort.

“Come on, Sherlock,” he prodded. “For the cheap seats.”

“This thing,” I told him, still pensive, tapping my finger against the unit on the van. “What if it’s not for refrigeration? What if it’s the opposite?”

“A heater?”

“No. A diffuser. Something to blow air out rather than suck air in and cool it. And what if the air it was blowing out wasn’t just clean air. What if it had something else in it?”

Aparo wasn’t getting it, and his face clouded up. “Like…?”

“What if this is some kind of nerve agent?”

LARISA TCHOUMITCHEVA TOOK A deep breath and straightened her back, then stepped inside Oleg Vrabinek’s office and closed the door behind her.

“We need to talk,” she told him.

He motioned for her to sit. She took a seat facing him.

“I’m getting a lot of pressure from the FBI and the mayor’s office over everything that’s been going on since Yakovlev’s death,” she told him.

Vrabinek studied her in silence, but said nothing.

“What is going on, Oleg? You’ve kept me in the dark about this since Monday, but it’s getting way out of hand and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say anymore. All these shooting victims… What’s happening? Do we have him yet?”

Vrabinek’s face clouded, then after a moment, he said, “I think so.”

“You ‘think’ so? According to the FBI, we do as of around ten p.m. last night.”

He frowned, the worry creasing his forehead. “I think we do,” he said gruffly. “But I can’t say for sure for the simple reason that I haven’t heard from our man in over twenty-four hours.”

“How come?”

“He was supposed to let me know when he had Sokolov so that I could arrange their extraction.” Vrabinek was clearly unhappy about the implication that the agent hadn’t done so. “I don’t know where he is.” He thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Could the Americans be playing us? Do you think they have them?”

Larisa considered it briefly, then shook her head. “I can’t see why they would. What do they have to gain from it? Besides, I think Reilly was genuinely frustrated and angry about their failure so far.” She paused, then added, “Can’t you reach him?”

“I’ve tried. He’s not picking up.” Vrabinek pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the platter of bottles that sat on a low cabinet by the large window overlooking the consulate’s rear garden. “The thing about Koschey is, he’s his own boss. He does things his way and answers to no one but the general himself. I can’t order him to do anything.”

“So what do I do?”

He opened the small fridge that was built into the bar unit, took out an ice-cold bottle of vodka, and poured himself a tumbler. He knocked it back, then grimaced from the burning feeling it shot down his throat. “Keep doing what you’ve been doing,” he told her. “Mirminsky’s dead. If Koschey does have Sokolov, then I don’t think you’ll be having much more trouble with this. It’s over.”

Larisa nodded and walked out. And as she stepped into the hallway and headed back to her office, a worrying thought clawed at her gut.

Koschey’s reputation was that he was a loner who played by his own rules. Which meant that he might be making his own travel arrangements. If he did, she would have failed at her task.

With, as her handler had warned her, disastrous consequences.