The Disposable Man

Chapter 14

Willy, of course, didn't see a retreat as making any sense at all. “You gotta be shittin’ me,” he snarled back in the car. “We just clobbered ’em in there. Right now, they’re beating their brains out trying to keep alive. Jesus, if a bunch of dumb cops have ’em pegged, how far behind can the bad guys be?”

“What bad guys?” I asked, genuinely baffled that he’d left that conversation with anything that made sense. “Who do we choose from?”

He rubbed his forehead like a frustrated tutor. “Who cares? CIA, KGB, Russian Mafia-it doesn’t matter. Those two old fossils’re the lightning rod, and we just went from being part of the rod to being part of the lightning. The first shock was Boris. Whether Rarig iced him or not, his showing up was a sure sign to Rarig that his retirement days were over. Our hitting him tonight is the second shock. They have got to do something now. ’Cept if we cut ’em any slack, chances are they’ll get away with it. We need to watch ’em like hawks.”

“What’d you expect them to do?” Sammie asked.

“Move, for one thing. They’re sitting ducks here.”

“Hold it,” I said. “What about your theory five minutes ago? Where Antonov was out to blackmail Rarig for a quarter-century-old indiscretion?”

Willy waved that away like a fly. “Bullshit smoke screen. I wanted them to think I was an idiot-think local, act local. You know, get their guard down. If what I said really happened, all Rarig would have to do is play dumb and keep his mouth shut. We don’t have any proof. Why do you think they told us all that crap about Vienna if they didn’t think their past was about to eat ’em up? They’re sweatin’ something out, and Antonov was just the tip of it. Rarig may not have killed him, but I do think he dumped him to buy some time.”

He put the car into gear, swung it around, and drove out of the inn parking lot. “What we need to do is sit and wait-not keep flapping our gums.”

He drove the quarter mile to where the driveway met the road, pulled over and killed the engine. “Right?”

Sammie was sitting in the backseat. Her voice was carefully neutral in the dark night air. “It does look like they’re the only game we have.”

I looked straight ahead, across the deserted road at the black wall of trees opposite. I found myself slowly emerging from the emotional air pocket that had almost swallowed me. The situation hadn’t changed, but the company had. The two people we’d just left had learned to forecast the future using rumors, inference, and suspicion, while covering their own tracks sowing confusion and deceit. Theirs was a world of convenient realities, none necessarily based on the truth. Sammie and Willy, by contrast, inhabited a clear-sighted universe of cause and effect-they smelled a scent, and they followed it to the end.

Their simple lucidity was a welcome tonic.

“How’ve you two been working your surveillance so far?” I asked.

“Catch as catch can-no regular rotation,” Sammie answered. “When one of us can carve out a few hours unnoticed, we spell the other guy. I think the chief knows we’re up to something, by the way, but he’s choosing to ignore us, so we’ve got a fair amount of slack.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let me help. I have to keep checking in with the state police, but I can reach my answering machine through my cell phone and pretend I’m still at home. And sure as hell I have more free time than either of you. Who wants to pull first shift?”

“I will,” Willy said immediately. “Sammie was just on, and you’re in no shape to do anything. Go home, get some sleep. I’ll call you when I want out.”

He drove us to where Sammie had stashed her car and left us there.

Five minutes down the road, she asked, “Feeling better?”

I laughed and rubbed my eyes. “Who’d have thought Willy Kunkle could ever pull you out of the dumps?”

Sammie drove into the Meetinghouse Hill Cemetery, where Kunkle had picked me up, and killed the engine. “This okay?” she asked.

I’d been so lost in thought, I’d barely noticed we’d stopped. I looked up and glanced around. “Sure,” I said, but I didn’t get out of the car.

She didn’t press me, sitting quietly, waiting.

“Why do you think Antonov came to the inn?” I asked at last.

I saw her frown in the reflected moonlight. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it was like Willy said-he wanted to put the squeeze on Rarig.”

“All the way from Russia? Leaving behind the most lucrative black market in the world?”

“Then to kill him for some past grudge?”

“Okay. Why right now?”

Sammie remained silent.

“Try this on,” I said. “When J.P. and I first visited the inn, Rarig played the genial host. At one point, he pulled out a recent New York Times piece featuring the place. It was very flattering-a big spread-but he kept it in a drawer out of sight. In the entranceway there are plaques from one gourmet magazine or another and the usual promotional material, so why not a blurb from one of the biggest publications in the country?”

“It say anything incriminating?”

“I didn’t read it carefully, but I doubt it. He knew we were cops by then-local cops. Remember what Willy said? ‘Think local, act local.’ I think that’s key. The one thing about that article is that the photographer caught Rarig only once, in a mirror, looking like he couldn’t wait for them all to go away. You ever hear about the Windham Hill Inn before all this?”

“Sure-one of the fanciest around, along with the two in Newfane.”

“Ever seen a picture of Rarig?”

She hesitated before staring at me. “No. You saying Antonov saw the picture in Russia, and that’s why he came over?”

“The New York Times is known all over the world. Rarig’s not his real name, and I bet it wasn’t when he was operating overseas. After he pulled out of the business and came up here, as far as his old enemies are concerned, he fell off the end of the earth. And I’m not saying it was Antonov who saw the article. I think it was his boss.”

“Georgi Padzhev.”

“Right. I think Willy hit the nail on the head tonight without even realizing it. He thought Kidder and Rarig told us all about Vienna because it was on their minds. But they knew what they were doing-that’s why they were so chatty. They were seeing how we’d react. Why, I don’t know yet.”

“I also think Willy’s right about Rarig not killing Antonov but disposing of his body.”

“Why one and not the other?”

“To buy time. Maybe to slip back into the shadows. Here’s a guy who’s spent his whole life with assumed names, foreign languages, probably even disguises, for all I know. He finds a body from the old days on his lawn. If he calls the cops, the press’ll climb all over it, and we’ll be digging into his past. Out of the question. So he dumps it-he knows where and when to go-and he washes his hands of it. ’Course, as Willy pointed out, he goofed. But it was a good plan.”

“Just so he can go back to being an inn owner?” Sammie interrupted.

“People generally do things for a reason,” I explained. “Burn buildings for the insurance, rob banks for the money. If killing Antonov and leaving his body was a message to Rarig, then hiding that body deprives the sender of any feedback-it forces whoever killed Antonov to do something more-something Rarig is hoping he’ll see coming this time.”

“Except we did find the body,” Sammie pointed out.

“But nobody knows we linked it to Rarig, not officially.”

Sammie slumped her head forward and placed both her palms against her face. Her voice was muffled by her fingers. “So what, Joe? What’s it all mean?”

“What I think it means,” I said tentatively, “is that Antonov was sent out to serve one purpose and ended up serving another. Padzhev saw Rarig’s picture. Antonov flew over here to check him out. Somebody-maybe Snowden, maybe an old enemy of Rarig’s, maybe even an enemy of Padzhev’s-knocked him off and left his body as a calling card, which Rarig then tried to make disappear. Presumably, had he succeeded, Rarig was hoping things would end there-Padzhev might even think Antonov never got to Vermont. But the cat’s out of the bag, so now we’re all in for something more-what, I don’t know. And I’m not sure Rarig does, either.”

Sammie was staring out the window before her. “So, he actually doesn’t know who killed Antonov, even though he fingered Snowden?”

“I think that’s right.”

“But Rarig remains a lightning rod of some kind, like Willy said, and for some specific reason.”

“Right again.”

“And Kidder’s his inside contact.”

“That’s my bet.”

“But if Snowden didn’t kill Antonov, why did he try to kill you?”

I didn’t answer at first. So many pieces of this puzzle were interconnected, seemingly on a three-dimensional frame, that I was finding it impossible to nail any one of them in place. “Maybe he didn’t,” I admitted.

She stared at me, her mouth half-open. “Then who, Joe? And who, if not Snowden, is framing you now?”

“I don’t know, but I think it all hangs on Rarig.”

As confusing, taxing, and seemingly futile as the night had been, I found for the first time in days that I could sleep soundly. A catharsis had been achieved, like the bursting of a dam, and it had released the almost paralytic pressure I’d been storing up for days. There were no obvious immediate solutions, of course. But where I’d seen only blank canyon walls before, now I was focusing on finding a way out.

My only regret, which clung to me like a dull and chronic pain, was that I couldn’t share any of this with Gail.

Willy called the next morning. “Kidder flew the coop,” he said.

“Around eight.”

“Back to Langley?”

“I think so. I tailed her for a while, but I didn’t want to leave Rarig for too long.”

“He stay put?”

“So far. Sammie’s got him now. Something else, though-there’s been a killing up in Middlebury. Another Russian.”

I straightened, almost dropping the phone. “No shit.”

“Yeah, Just came over the wire. A drive-by. Guy was a prof at the college. Supposedly an old-time dissident immigrant, dating back to the sixties. Got whacked in front of something called the Geonomics Center, on campus.”

“No spook connections?”

“Not yet. No leads anywhere. Like I said, it’s brand new. I’ll dig into it, though, using the Boris case as camouflage. I got a friend in the department up there.”

A beep echoed in my ear, indicating another call coming in. I hung up on Willy and answered.

“It’s Sam,” said the voice at the other end, sounding tense. “I got a bit of a situation here.”

“What?”

There was a rustling sound, and another voice came on. “This is Rarig. We need to talk.”

All semblance of last night’s rambling host was gone. Rarig was clearly on edge. Something, I thought, was moving in the woods.

“I can’t be there for several hours.”

“You get here now.”

“It’ll mean missing my check-in at the barracks. They’ll issue a warrant for my arrest.”

“I can clear you of all that crap. I need you and your two friends, but it’s got to be immediately.”

“We going to Middlebury?”

It was a shot in the dark. I almost heard the thud as he fell.

“How the hell did you know that?”

“Who was the guy?”

“Nobody. They hit the wrong target. I need to save the real one. I can’t reach him by phone, and anyway, I think they found him by tapping my line.”

“Is that why they killed Antonov? To flush out the real quarry?”

“He read about Antonov in the papers. He got nervous and called me. Olivia came up to see what we could do. We thought we had a handle on it till this happened.” His voice suddenly broke. “You’re wasting time, Lieutenant. You coming or not?”

“Not yet, and you’re not moving without backup, so don’t bullshit me. What phone are you on right now?”

“Your partner’s portable. I dug her out of her hiding spot. I can tell you people don’t do this for a living.”

“Don’t be a smartass, John. You need us. Who’s the guy we’re supposed to be saving?”

“He’s a defector. The one I mentioned last night that Angleton locked up for two years ’cause he thought he was a plant.”

“Why not call in the cavalry?” I asked.

“It might be the cavalry that’s hunting him.” Rarig’s exasperation was as clear as his voice was becoming loud.

“You’re not going to give me your ‘Snowden’s-the-bad-guy’ spiel again, are you? I’m a little less gullible today.”

“God damn you, Gunther. I’m asking you to help me save a man’s life. That’s supposed to be what the police are for. I don’t know who’s trying to take him out, and I don’t know why, but I’ve got to do what I can. I’ll get you cleared of your legal problems-I’ve got the evidence you want-but I need you now.”

“Give the phone back to Sammie and walk out of earshot.”

I waited a few moments after Sam got back on. “He a safe distance away?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sorry for the screwup.”

“I don’t care about that. He’s right. Snooping on people isn’t our job. What do you think of all this?”

“That you leave the county? You’d be crazy. This creep’s been lying to us since we met him.”

“He sounds genuine now.”

“He looks genuine, but it could all be cock-and-bull, and you’d pay the price big time.”

“Willy called me about the shooting in Middlebury. That part’s legit. How did it come down at your end?”

“I saw him through the window on the phone ten minutes ago. He was pacing back and forth, waving his arm. Then, all of a sudden, he flies out of the house, makes a beeline for me like I was standing in the middle of a road, and demands to talk to you on my phone. He is seriously worked up.”

“This could be the break we’re looking for, Sam.”

I could almost feel her anxiety. “Jesus. It’s all so tied up in knots, who’s to tell? Willy says they use people like Kleenex. It’s a hell of a risk.”

“My other option looks like a dead certainty. Even if Richard gets me off, my career’s toast.”

She was utterly silent for a moment, before pointing out, “Rarig hasn’t said what he wants yet.”

“Put him back on, then.”

A few moments later, Rarig demanded, “Are you in or not?”

“What’s your plan?”

“My God. I hope to hell you’re not on your department’s SWAT team. All your hostages would die of old age.”

“Sam and I are both on the team, and we’re also alive to prove it. What’s your plan?”

“I don’t know yet,” he conceded. “I need to get up there, find him, and get him to safe ground.”

“You sure he’s still in Middlebury?”

“He should be. When we moved him there, he and I picked out a priest hole he could use in an emergency.”

“Is that where he called you from?”

“It doesn’t have a phone. It has a signaling device he’s supposed to trigger when he gets there, but he either didn’t use it or he never arrived. That’s why I want help.”

“All right,” I finally agreed. “I’ll come, but alone. I won’t jeopardize the other two.”

He barely hesitated. “Fine, just get here.”