The Disposable Man

Chapter 17

“Jesus Christ ,”Rarig shouted.

Willy sat back, smiling like an idiot. “Saw it in a movie once. Couldn’t resist it.”

“What’re you doing here?” I asked, already checking up and down the street.

“Don’t worry,” Willy said. “I’m not as dumb as you guys. Nobody knows I’m around.” He pulled a portable radio from his inner pocket and keyed the mike. “You there, Sam?”

“10-4” came the familiar voice.

“They’re baaaaack,” Willy announced, laughing at the end.

He replaced the radio. “Except her, of course.”

I pulled at my ear and sighed. “I should’ve expected this. You’ll probably get fired-you know that.”

Willy’s eyes grew wide. “Ooh, that’s a scary thought.”

“You selfish bastard,” I told him. “What about Sammie?”

He laughed again. “You know goddamn well she’s why we’re here. She thinks you set the friggin’ sun, which you probably will before we’re done. What’s the plan, anyway?”

“I take it you found us ’cause of the car.”

“Brilliant. Only took an hour or so. Small town. ’Course, there were two of us, and we knew to look around the college. I gotta say, though, for a guy with a price on his head, and the place crawling with law, you’re not too discreet.”

“How crawling is that, exactly?”

“The department here’s got about ten or so. We spotted maybe three or four state cops as well. If you figure they divided the town up between ’em all, not counting the ones at the crime scene and a few to man headquarters, you get six or seven cruisers rollin’ around. And I wouldn’t doubt they got more coming.”

“And you’re sure nobody saw you?”

“Yup.” He reached into his other pocket, pulled out a second radio, and dropped it on the front seat between us. “In case we get split up.”

I picked up the radio and examined it. It was labeled “NewBrook Fire Department.”

“What the hell?”

“I borrowed ’em,” Willy admitted. “On my way through Newfane. I know the combination to their firehouse. They only carry a couple of miles, but I figured we might need a private frequency to talk on. We checked ’em out as soon as we got here-called around, pretending we were up shit creek. Nobody heard us as far as we could tell. So-you even have a plan? You been here long enough.”

Rarig scowled at this rapid patter, but I was used to it. “As far as you’re concerned, the plan is to go back home. We’ve got one long shot to check out, and then we’ll probably be doing the same.”

“Great. I like long shots.”

I twisted around to face him fully. “Willy, I appreciate the gesture. I should’ve expected it. And if I really thought we had a chance of pulling this off, I’d even let you stick around. But things aren’t going too well. We were discovered by one of Middlebury’s finest and had to lock him up. You don’t want to be a part of this anymore, and I don’t want it on my conscience.”

Willy was laughing again. “No shit. That’s like kidnapping. And a cop, no less. Boy-you think you know a guy. No wonder you keep me around.”

Now even I was getting irritated. “Willy, for Christ’s sake. Fucking around is one thing-if you stick with us, you’ll be an accessory. That’s jail time.”

Not bothering to argue, he opened the back door and got out. “We figured you’d say that.” He pointed to the radio I was still holding in my hand. “You need any help, just turn it on. We’ll hear ya. If nothing else, make sure it gets back to NewBrook. Don’t want you busted for theft again. Bye.”

He waved at us both and walked quickly down the street.

After a long, stunned silence, Rarig said, “I don’t like that man.”

“Yeah-well, he’s an acquired taste. I wouldn’t be without him, obviously whether I like it or not.” I slipped Willy’s radio into my pocket, turned off. “So where’s the CFA?”

Rarig pursed his lips, and for a moment I thought the competitive edge between us was going to rear up into the open. The sudden appearance of two of my own troops, uncontrollable, unseen, and-to him-of unknown quality, obviously rubbed him wrong.

To head him off, I patted my pocket and said, “I’m not going to use it, whatever happens.”

That gave him an out. “You may want to eat those words.”

“Then so be it. I’m not going to turn my own professional suicide into mass murder.”

He contemplated that for a moment and then pointed down the street. “Straight ahead across the intersection. Take a right when you hit South Main.”

The CFA-Middlebury College’s Center for Fine Arts-is one of three large structures lining the east side of South Main, just before it turns into Route 30 and heads off into the countryside. As a result of their location, they stand against miles of rolling fields, a lush green golf course, and have a spectacular view of the Green Mountains-all of which contrast violently with the buildings’ bizarre architecture.

The southernmost two are athletic field houses, one looking like a soiled cluster of glued-together teepees, the other a Quonset hut with several Tootsie Rolls stuck to it. Both are connected by a tube-shaped umbilical cord.

Our destination was the newest of the three-as dissimilar from them as they are from each other, except in overall appeal. The Center for Fine Arts is a cob job of every building style known to Western civilization. In parts, its roof is flat, sloped, crenelated, and dormered, and apparently clad in everything from painted metal to slate. Similarly, its walls run from granite to brick to metal to peeling white clapboard, all butting together in cramped chaos. The front, with the most coherent appearance, is a shades-of-brown combination of frontier blockhouse, Norman castle, and federal office building, topped by a roof reminiscent of the sloped hull of the Confederate ironclad Merrimac, complete with gunports.

It is also cavernously huge, being built into the hillside, and at this time of year and day was largely dark and empty. When John Rarig and I stepped through one of the side entrances from the parking lot, I felt like a visitor who’d been shut in after closing time.

The art center’s interior is its soaring redemption. As jumbled as the outside, here the architectural crisscross between new and old, granite and wood, seems playful, airy, amusing, and self-confident. From the building’s middle space, an enormous stone wall thrusts up three floors to an elegant, fan-shaped wooden ceiling, lending to everything around it a paradoxical sense of lightness. Juxtaposed throughout this lofty, weighty, castle-like space are pits and balconies, masses of oddly placed and sized interior windows-some glassed in, some wide open-and an assortment of staircases, clinging to the walls as to a ship’s side.

At present, it was all mysteriously dark, quiet, and foreboding.

That impression grew as we ventured from empty, overarching vestibule to silent, dim hallway to totally dark performance hall. There were several of the latter, some large, others built for either practice or black-box theater, but none containing the man we were after.

At each stop, depending on the lighting and the layout, we either looked around or Rarig shouted Lew’s name into the void, identifying himself-only to hear his voice swallowed up by the gloom.

Finally, after an hour of this, frustrated by our lack of manpower and our ignorance of the floor plan, we were about to admit defeat. Rarig especially seemed to be running on ebbing resources. His mood, ever changing, had finally settled into a taciturn glumness, and mine was close behind. Failure here not only meant that Lew Corbin-Teich had spun away on his own, but it entailed my returning home empty handed, to a reception probably rivaling the surrender of a child killer.

It was therefore with some relief that we finally got an answer to Rarig’s last call.

We were standing in a doorway leading to the balcony section of what appeared to be-had there been any light-a very large stage area. Rarig’s voice had just disappeared as usual, without echo or response, when after a pause we clearly heard the name “John” float by as if carried on a breeze.

Instinctively, we both stepped inside, shutting the door behind us, plunging us into a blackness so deep, I couldn’t see my hands.

“Lew,” Rarig asked, “is that you?”

“Whom do you have with you?” was the answer, coming from somewhere high and against the wall to our backs. It was a light, delicate voice, heavily accented, with the careful phrasing of someone who’s learned the language too well.

“He’s a friend. He figured out you might be here. Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I am not sure for how much longer. No doubt they are doing as you are, searching me out.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Rarig explained, as if coaxing a child. “To get you someplace safe.”

“There may be no such place.”

Rarig lost his patience. “Well, it sure as hell isn’t here. Where are you, goddamn it?”

A soft chuckle. “That is John Rarig. Look to your left.”

We did as instructed and saw a tiny, bright red dot hovering in the darkness. Following it, our shoulders rubbing the wall for reference, we groped forward, found a narrow set of steps, and climbed to the door of a small sound and light control booth wedged up against the theater’s ceiling. The red light turned out to be from a pen-sized laser pointer, which our guide returned to his breast pocket as we joined him. A faint glow emanated from the equipment panel located at the base of a broad window overlooking a huge blank universe.

Lew Corbin-Teich was a soft outline of tousled hair and bushy beard, with an aquiline nose that came and went in the dim light as he turned his head. He greeted John Rarig with a bear hug and a kiss on each cheek, exchanging a few comments in Russian, which Rarig seemed to speak like a native.

Then Corbin-Teich turned to me and fumbled in the dark for my hand, which he shook energetically. “It is nice to meet you. I am Lewis Corbin-Teich.”

“My pleasure,” I said automatically. “Joe Gunther. Do you have any idea who’s after you?”

His shadow shook its head, his voice sounding bewildered. “No. I was walking with Andrei to the Geonomics Center, where he had a meeting. I was merely keeping him company. He has been in low spirits since the passing of his wife. I heard an automobile approaching from behind us. I turned my head to look. I was nervous because I thought I had seen a man watching my house the night before. I saw the barrel of a gun in one of the windows and instinctively I fell to the ground. Andrei never saw a thing, and I never extended a hand to warn him. I was utterly silent throughout the attack. Speechless. Andrei died as if all life suddenly was pulled from him and only his clothes remained. He fell in a heap and never moved.”

Corbin-Teich was weeping. Rarig placed one hand on his shoulder. “Lew, there was nothing you could do. He probably never felt a thing.”

“Tell me about the man you saw watching your house,” I asked.

Corbin-Teich’s voice was strained. “It may have been nothing. I have been on edge ever since the death of Sergei Antonov. I no longer know.”

I switched tacks. “Could your friend have been the target?”

“No, no. Andrei had no enemies. He was the gentlest of men.”

“I heard he was a defector, too.”

Corbin-Teich’s rejection was absolute. “Ah, such nonsense. He was a poet. He left decades ago as a matter of conscience. No one missed him. No one cared, just as no one will care that he was shot down in cold blood.”

Rarig administered more solace as I tried to keep Lew focused, although, truth be told, now that we’d found him, I had no idea what to do with him. Pure instinct was making me act like a cop.

“Did you get a look at the man who shot him?”

Corbin-Teich wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “I am sorry. Having all this return after so many years, it is a shock. I thought I had seen enough. I have become weak with old age. No, it is soft-that is what I have become. Forgive me. I understand what you are trying to do and I thank you. Yes-I did see the man, but I did not recognize him. His features were familiar. He was as they all were in the old days. But I did not know him personally.”

“Why didn’t you go to the other place?” Rarig asked.

“I tried. I ran after Andrei was shot, to the first phone I could find. I called you, and then I ran to go there. But I saw the automobile again, and I felt I could no longer stay in the open. I came here because I know it so well.”

He stopped suddenly and looked from one of us to the other. “How did you find me?”

“That was Joe’s doing.”

“Lucky guess,” I finished. “How long have you been here?”

“Hours. I have not paid attention.”

“Rarig, you have any ideas what to do now?”

There was a pause before he answered. “No. I thought we’d just get out of town and go from there. Maybe hole up someplace for a while.”

Great, I thought, but I didn’t have anything better. I did, however, have one more question to ask. “Mr. Corbin-Teich-”

“Please call me Lew. It is a wonderful custom. I like it very much.”

“Okay. You can call me Joe. I understand your friend had no enemies and you don’t think he was the target, so don’t misunderstand what I’m about to ask, but thinking back, do you remember the shooter ever taking aim at you, especially after he hit Andrei?”

There was a stunned silence. “You are thinking I was spared on purpose.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m thinking it’s possible.”

“To lure me out?” Rarig asked. “I’m in the phone book, for Christ’s sake.”

I shook my head in the darkness, reviewing the conversation I’d had with Sammie the night we’d all met with Olivia Kidder and Rarig at the inn. “Not you-somebody else.”

“It is possible,” Corbin-Teich admitted, his voice harder now, its inflection suddenly reminding me that this man had once been a protégé of Padzhev and a rising star within the KGB.

“The automobile,” he continued, “had no reason to speed by. There was no other traffic, no other people on the street that I could see, and it was an automatic weapon, yet all the bullets struck Andrei.”

“Who’re you thinking of?” Rarig asked me. “Padzhev? It still doesn’t fit.”

“No, not Padzhev. Someone else. Someone we haven’t thought of yet. Someone who would benefit from getting things all stirred up. Killing Antonov on your front lawn, tapping your phone line to find Lew, staking out his apartment and then knocking off his friend in a fake drive-by. It all feels like somebody’s trying to get something, or someone, to rise to the surface.”

“Snowden must be behind it,” Rarig said.

I shook my head. “If it’s Snowden, then who’s his target? Antonov’s already dead, you and Lew could’ve been knocked off anytime. There’s somebody missing in the equation.”

“It is Georgi,” Lew said softly.

“What is?” I pushed him.

“The target. It is Georgi Padzhev. Sergei Antonov would never do anything without Georgi’s blessing, so we can assume Sergei was in this country under Georgi’s orders.”

“Probably because they saw your picture in that article about the inn,” I added, excited that some of this might at last become untangled.

Rarig didn’t answer, but I saw him run his hand through his hair as if considering the idea.

“Would Georgi Padzhev be after you?” I asked Lew.

“Not to kill me. We are old men now. The KGB is gone. All that is history. Georgi might want to talk, to reminisce, as old men do. I might like that, too. It is what John and I did, after all, for hours and hours. This image you have of the KGB, much of it is propaganda. Georgi Padzhev is no monster. He was a chess player, like John here, like many others. The pieces were human beings, it is true, and many died but not as Hollywood would have it. We didn’t go around shooting people.”

I didn’t bother quibbling semantics. What did I really know, after all? “So Padzhev wants to reminisce. But he’s old, he’s now into the Mafia, and he has lots of enemies, which cuts down on his mobility. Antonov goes instead to check things out. But he’s known as Georgi’s henchman. Which means he’s followed to Rarig’s place, knocked off to lure out Padzhev, and Rarig’s line is tapped for insurance. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Yes. That is possible. Sergei was not a henchman, as you say. He and Georgi were like brothers.”

“So John told me,” I said. “But John hiding the body confused things enough that Padzhev held back, unsure what was happening. In the meantime, we circulated Antonov’s picture in the papers, which stimulated you to call John, which is how Padzhev’s enemies located you. It’s also why they probably framed me, to give themselves some breathing room. But they didn’t kill you. They still needed bait to get Padzhev into the open, to show him that whoever killed Antonov was still in Vermont. Knowing Padzhev, might that work?”

“I think so,” Rarig agreed. “Padzhev’s a ruthless, ambitious man. One of the things Olivia told me last night was that he’s fighting for his life right now, trying to hold off competitors. It’s purely theoretical, but if he let Antonov’s murder go unavenged, it could be used as a sign of weakness that would unite the opposition against him.”

“I would agree with that,” Corbin-Teich said. “The Georgi Padzhev I knew would never allow such a transgression. It was what made him so powerful in our organization.”

“And why he went to such lengths to snatch Yuri,” Rarig finished.

“So the people behind all this,” I concluded, “are Padzhev’s competitors from Russia, choosing the time and place for a showdown far from Padzhev’s home base.”

“It fits,” Rarig said, “except for Snowden. Where’s he belong?”

“You actually believe he killed Antonov?” I asked impatiently. “I thought that was just to get me all bent out of shape.”

Rarig remained stubborn. “Then who tried to have you knocked off in Washington?”

My head was already hurting, and the thought of this extra complication pushed me away from the entire subject. “I don’t give a damn anymore, at least not right now. Let’s just get out of Middlebury so we can figure out what to do next.”

“I would like that very much,” Corbin-Teich said with obvious relief.

I took his elbow and guided him gently toward the door we’d entered. “Lead the way, then. The car’s in the lower parking lot, away from the field houses.”

We began traveling the quiet, darkened corridors and staircases like trespassers, pausing furtively to look around, keeping our voices low and our footsteps silent. In the dim light, I cast a glance at Lew Corbin-Teich, studying what I could see under what turned out to be masses of snow-white hair. The plastic surgery had obviously been of high quality, although not knowing the “before,” I was hard pressed to judge the “after.” Nevertheless, there was a stillness to his features, an absence of mobility that suggested a mask. Watching it, I couldn’t help feeling his face embodied everything that had happened to me since discovering “Boris’s” body. Nothing had turned out as it had at first appeared, and none of the subsequent explanations had been any more real than Corbin-Teich’s remodeled appearance. Given what I’d been through these last few days, I couldn’t help wondering how he’d survived half a lifetime of it.

Our silent progress stood us in good stead. Just shy of the building’s entrance, we rounded a corner and saw two men in dark clothing loitering in the lobby, one of them with his eyes glued to the scenery beyond the plate-glass door.

We backtracked quickly but not before the other one saw us.

“Stop,” he shouted, as Corbin-Teich grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back along the wall. Rarig was ahead of us, heading for a door to the left. I was about to follow when Lew yanked on me again. “No, this is better.”

We slipped through a door on the right and vanished as into an absolute vacuum. From the comparative light of the hallway, we were now in total blackness.

Lew continued pulling at me, keeping me off balance. “This way. Follow me.”

I sensed from how his voice vanished into thin air that we were in a huge room, probably another of the theaters, but this realization was of no use whatsoever as I stumbled down a sloping aisle, sightless and clumsy until falling down outright, brought low by a cluster of metal chairs that had been left in our path.

Corbin-Teich fell with me in a tangle, smacking my hand against one of the chair backs and sending the gun I’d just unholstered skittering across the carpeting.

Simultaneously, the door we’d used flew open, outlining our pursuer in silhouette, a pistol in his hand. Without thought, I reached for the front of Lew’s jacket as he squirmed on top of me, yanked out the laser pointer he’d clipped there earlier, and pointed it at our pursuer. The tiny red dot stuck to his chest like an angry insect.

“Freeze,” I yelled, disentangling myself.

I saw the man’s head duck down to look at the red dot, misinterpreting it, I hoped, for an infrared gun sight.

“That’s right,” I said. “Face down on the floor.”

I saw him following my instructions as the door slowly swung to behind him. Before the light vanished, however, I was close enough for the laser alone to supply a poor substitute.

“Slide your gun over here.”

He did as he was told. I picked it up, pocketed the pointer, put my knee into the small of his back and his gun to the nape of his neck, and frisked him for more weapons. I retrieved a dagger from a sheath strapped to his lower calf. I then dragged him over to the edge of the aisle, placed his hands between the legs of one of the bolted-down row seats, and snapped my handcuffs around his wrists.

I returned the pointer to Lew and asked him to search for my own gun.

“Where’s your buddy?” I asked my captive, twisting one of his thumbs.

His voice was understandably tight. It, too, was heavily accented. “We help you.”

“Right.” I twisted a little harder, making him wince. “Answer the question.”

He tried to wriggle away. “No English good.”

“You Russian?”

“Yes, yes. Russian.”

Lew Corbin-Teich was back, crouching by my side, my gun in his hand.

“Ask him who he is,” I told him.

Corbin-Teich shot out a short, guttural question, which the other man answered with obvious relief.

“He says he works for Padzhev,” Corbin-Teich explained. “That they were sent here to protect me from Edvard Kyrov.”

“Who’s he?”

Corbin-Teich rapidly asked a couple more questions and then translated. “He says Kyrov is an old rival of Padzhev. That he is a very bad man-a longtime criminal, even back to the old days.”

The clear sound of a gunshot reverberated out in the hallway. I quickly moved to the door, opened it a crack, and squinted into the dim light. Rarig was standing over the body of the second man, having obviously doubled back from the door he’d used, to reemerge into the corridor behind his follower. It seemed clear he’d shot him in the back.

“Drag him in here,” I told him.

He grabbed the man’s feet and pulled him toward me. There was no blood on the carpeting.

After he’d passed by, I propped the door half-open so we could see what we were doing. “You just killed him, no questions asked?”

Rarig looked at me angrily. “I’m seventy-five years old, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to play around with some bastard like this. I just hit him in the back of the head. It was his gun that went off. Not mine.”

I checked the body and found a pulse, slow but steady. There was no saying how bad an injury he’d suffered, though. Reluctantly, I undid half of the first man’s handcuffs, and chained him to his buddy. “This one says they were sent by Padzhev to protect Lew-from someone named Edvard Kyrov. You ever hear of him?”

“Only by reputation. He’s a crook-a black marketeer.”

“He may be the one behind all this.”

There was a noise from outside. We both scurried to the crack in the door and looked out as a young man wearing a small backpack trudged by, earphones perched on his head.

“I don’t give a goddamn who anyone is right now, or says he is,” Rarig whispered. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

In the light from the corridor, I could see his forehead shining with sweat. His job was done, or almost, and he’d spared no one, deserving or not, in achieving it-from possibly killing the man behind us, to using me from the start. His blatant self-service finally burned through the desperation that had been driving me, leaving me clear-eyed, furious, and decided on my course.

“Fine,” I said, “but as soon as we get Lew to a safe place, I’m calling the cops. This thing is ending now. Is that clear?”

He nodded. “It’s all I wanted from the start.”

“You crap artist.” I held out my hand. “Give me your gun.”

His jaw tightened. “Not till we’re out of here.”

I exploded with rage. I took the dagger I still had in my hand and shoved its tip into Rarig’s nostril, making his head snap back until it smacked against the wall. His eyes popped open with fright.

“Look,” I said, my eyes five inches from his, “I’m sick of all this horseshit. Give me the fucking gun. Now.”

There was no doubt he could have just shot me at close range, but my obvious disregard for any such logic persuaded him to merely push the gun into my hand.

I removed the knife. “Thank you. Now collect your friend and let’s go.”

Feeling his nose gingerly, he nodded toward the two men on the floor behind us. “What about them? What if they do belong to Padzhev?”

“I don’t give a damn,” I told him. “I’ve played this game long enough, and not a single person involved in it has turned out to be what they said they were.” I walked over to Corbin-Teich. “Give me my gun.”

He complied without comment. I noticed then that the unconscious man’s arms were outstretched before him, his hands empty. My fury reignited, I swung back on Rarig, pushed him hard enough against the wall that the air flew out of his lungs, and went through his pockets as he doubled over in pain. I quickly found the Russian’s pistol and added it to my collection.

“You asshole,” I muttered to Rarig and spun him around to face the door, motioning to Corbin-Teich to join us.

“Simple plan,” I explained to them, speaking softly. “We move quickly out to the parking lot, get in the car-me driving-and we leave town the fastest way possible, Route 30 heading south. Understood?”

Nobody made a sound. I pushed them out ahead of me, and the three of us marched down the hallway, turned the corner, and entered the welcoming daylight of the building’s lobby. The sunshine, even fading as it was at the end of the day, made me feel for the first time that regardless of the consequences, I was regaining some measure of control. I knew it wouldn’t make any difference overall. Fred Coffin and the court were still waiting to give me the run of a lifetime, and I still had no contrary evidence to stop them, but my temporary elation made all that immaterial.