Rasputin's Shadow (10 page)

T
he con
cierge came striding out of the elevator toward Sokolov, moving purposefully, a walkie-talkie in his left arm, his right arm extended, his index finger jabbing aggressively at the Russian.

Sokolov faltered back, panicking.

“Sir?” the man bellowed.

The woman. The damn woman in the elevator. She must have called downstairs and ratted me out
.

He swung a glance down the corridor behind him, but there was no movement coming from the far apartment.

“Sir!” the concierge called out as he came right up to him.

Sokolov pulled out his gun and waved it wildly at the concierge, cupping its grip in both hands.

“Stop right there. Don’t come any closer. I’ll shoot.”

The concierge stopped in his tracks and held up both his hands in front of him, open-palmed and defensive.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it easy, all right? Take it easy.”

Sokolov took another step back, up against the wall, his eyes jumpy as they scoured the corridor in both directions. “Dmitry Rogozin, from the Russian consulate. What apartment is he in? I know he’s on this floor.”

“Sir, calm down—”

“Which one?” Sokolov yelled as he stabbed the air with the handgun.

“Sir, you should know I’ve already called the police.” He held up his radio. “This thing’s live. They can hear everything we’re saying and they’ll be here any minute now. So maybe you should think of getting the hell out of here before it’s too late.”

“Shut up and tell me where he is,” Sokolov barked as he reeled under what the concierge had just told him. Was his radio really live? Would he have called the police already?

He stormed right up to the man, waving the gun excitedly just inches from his face. “Tell me where he is!”

“Sir, you’d better get out of here,” the concierge insisted, his tone steady, his gaze leaping from the gun to Sokolov’s eyes and back.

Sokolov was finding it harder to breathe. What good would it do anyway? Through the turmoil in his mind, he managed to see that even if he knew what apartment Rogozin was in, the Russian would never open his door. Sokolov would have to shoot his way in, and then what? The police would probably be there before he could force him out and he’d end up with a pointless, zero-sum hostage situation, with Daphne still held captive and him ending up in custody or dead.

He took one last look down the corridor, then blew past the concierge and rushed to the elevators. He found one of them there, its door blocked open. He didn’t really understand why that was, but when he got in, he saw a set of keys in the control panel and realized the concierge had locked them open while he investigated what the stranger was doing there.

Sokolov turned the key, pulled it out, and hit the lobby button.

Less than twenty seconds later, he was scurrying up Thirty-sixth Street, his hands in his pockets, his hat pulled right down over his face, hugging the buildings and hoping no one was coming after him.

***

K
OSCHEY DIDN’T HESITATE, DIDN’T FLINCH.

Four pulls of the trigger, in quick succession. Four head shots, one after the other. The whole thing was over in less than four seconds.

He didn’t even bother to stop and check the bodies. There was no need. He knew the damage his bullets would have made, given where he’d placed them. He’d done it many times before, and his aim had never let him down.

He didn’t stop there.

He strode up to the receptionist’s desk, stuck the gun right in the terrified man’s face, its suppressor barrel pressed against his forehead. Koschey brought his other hand up to his mouth simultaneously, his extended index finger positioned in front of his pursed lips.

“Shhhh,” he told the receptionist. Then he moved the finger away from his own face for a more severe “Be careful” gesture.

The man responded with some rapid-fire nodding.

“Room number?” he asked.

The man’s eyes widened, like he wasn’t sure.

“Room number?” Koschey repeated.

“Nine.”

Koschey rewarded him with a third eye.

Then he looked around, made sure the small lobby didn’t have any security cameras—he didn’t expect any in a dive like that—and walked out.

He hadn’t anticipated running into any law-enforcement officers there. That had surprised him. Up until then, it had all gone flawlessly.

The Virgin Atlantic flight from Heathrow.

Breezing through immigration at JFK on the fake Croatian passport.

The Chevy Yukon SUV that had been left for him in the blue garage at Terminal 4—not a rental, nothing that could flag up the fake ID he’d used to come into the country, not in this day and age when you were fingerprinted and photographed at immigration.

The gear that had been placed for him in its trunk.

The address he’d inputted into his Nexus phone.

All flawless.

Then he’d spotted the two operatives and decided they would need to be eliminated. Then the two cops and the two detectives had arrived, further complicating matters. Fortunately, the cops had been dismissed, or he would have had to deal with them, too.

Unforeseen complications—nuisances, really. He knew that killing them would raise the stakes and make things harder for him. American law enforcement officers didn’t hold back when they lost one of their own. Four would make them go ballistic. Koschey knew that.

It didn’t bother him.

Besides, he was pretty sure that before he was done, there’d be other reasons for them to go even more ballistic.

And that didn’t bother him either.

But that would come later.

Right then, he had more work to do.

***

D
APHNE
S
OKOLOV WAS HUDDLED
in a corner of the small bathroom, shivering.

Her day had turned into a personal hell before it had even begun. She couldn’t understand why this was happening to her. She’d worked through the night at Mount Sinai. It had been a decent shift, with all the patients under her care doing well. Then she’d signed out and left the hospital, anticipating a hot cup of tea and some thyme honey on toast with Leo before he set off to work. Then the insanity had plowed into her life.

The stranger—Russian, she knew—who had intercepted her as she walked to the bus stop, told her he had a gun in his pocket, told her to stay quiet and do as he said if she wanted to see Leo alive again, and forced her into the car that had been trailing just behind them.

The nylon handcuffs with which they’d tied her hands.

The big Band-Aids that locked her eyelids shut.

The sunglasses—they had to be, that’s what they felt like—that they then slipped over them.

The drive, to a destination she couldn’t see.

And, finally, being dumped here, in this grimy, windowless bathroom, of some hotel, she assumed from the look of the place, her eyelids mercifully liberated, her mouth incarcerated in their place, the Band-Aids swapped for a strip of duct tape.

She’d been in there all day, a day that had grown more terrifying by the minute, especially after one of her captors had returned from somewhere where things had gone badly wrong.

He’d come back all shaken and frantic, rambling breathlessly as he tried to tell his partner what had happened.

She’d understood a lot of it. Living with Leo for so long, she’d picked up more than a few words. And what she’d understood had terrified and confused her even more.

The Russian had, it seemed, taken someone he considered his superior to their place. To meet Leo. That, already, stunned her.
What did this have to do with Leo?
They were supposed to bring Leo back, then the Russian’s superior, whom he referred to as Yakovlev, had crashed out of a window—
their window
—and fallen to his death. Pushed out by Leo, the Russian believed.
Pushed out? By my Leo?
The Russian had described Yakovlev’s corpse in grim detail to his compatriot, and although the sight had spooked him, what terrified him even more, it seemed, was how their boss would react to this news.

Their boss, whom they referred to only as
kuvalda
—the Sledgehammer.

The Russian had finally calmed down and mustered up the courage to call his boss and inform him about what had happened. He’d been given a severe dressing-down—the Russian had recounted it to his partner, word for word. They were told to wait there for further instructions.

That had been hours ago. They hadn’t spoken much since—at least, not in a loud enough voice for Daphne to overhear what was being said, especially not with the TV on. But one thing was clear. They were both clearly terrified of what that failure would mean for them.

Then came the knock at the door.

Daphne froze—as did the two men. She could feel it, even with the door between her and them. She heard a few whispers. They hadn’t been expecting anyone.

She felt a surge of hope. Had the police found her? Was she about to be rescued?

She struggled against her bonds, desperate to at least be able to rip the tape off her mouth, to be able to scream out that she was in there, held prisoner by these two thugs. But it was no use. Her hands were tied firmly behind her back, the clasp hooked into a water pipe that ran along the bottom of the wall.

She calmed down and listened again.

She heard movement in the room. One of the Russians—the one who’d been with Yakovlev—must have gone up to the door of the room. She heard him ask, “Who is it?”

Then came a flurry of chaotic, frenzied sounds.

First, a sharp crack, like something had just punched through the door.

Then a thud, big and dull, something falling to the floor.

A loud crash immediately followed it—a destructive crash, like a door being bashed off its hinges.

Then a brief yell, a metallic snap, another thud.

Then silence.

Daphne’s pulse soared. She was being rescued, she was sure of it. It was the police, or the FBI—had to be. They’d stormed in and incapacitated her kidnappers. Leo must have told them what had happened, and they’d tracked the men down. She was going to be all right. She was going to be reunited with Leo, and everything would be back to normal again.

She kept her eyes trained on the door, her mouth straining against the duct tape, her heart racing in anticipation, waiting for a hero cop to swing it open and untie her and take her out of that horrible prison.

The door did swing open. Only it wasn’t a cop.

It wasn’t anyone she knew. Just a tall, slim man with a bushy goatee and glasses.

And from the look on his face, she knew he was no hero.

S
even bodies.

We had seven bodies and no witnesses and nothing but a lot of blood and a whole lot of questions.

Me, I just had one question.

What the hell were the detectives doing here?

It was around eight o’clock, and Aparo and I had driven over the second I’d received the call informing me about the shootings and telling me the two detectives we’d met the day before were dead. The scene outside the motel was lit up like a carnival, with cruisers and unmarkeds crowding the small building haphazardly like they’d been drawn in by a giant magnet. A string of media vans formed an outer perimeter, their satellite dishes deployed like a miniature SETI listening farm. The place was crawling with cops, techs, and reporters, as well as a small army of gawkers who’d come out of the woodwork for a closer look.

I got directed to the chief of detectives of the 114th, a tall African American man called Byrne. He looked understandably grim, and angry. After the quickest of intros and dispensing with first names, I asked, “What the hell happened here?”

“I don’t know, but . . . it’s brutal,” he said. “I’ve been on the job for twenty-seven years. Bronx, Crown Heights. I’ve seen my share.” He paused, and his expression turned bewildered. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“See for yourself.”

He led us through the maze of cops and into the small, low-ceilinged lobby of the motel. Four bodies were strewn there, on the tiled floor, so close together that the pools of their blood had blended into one another. Crime-scene technicians were all over them. I recognized Adams and Giordano, but not the other two. And I saw what Byrne meant. Each one of them had a single-entry wound to the head. A couple of foreheads, one eye, and one upper cheek.

Four bullets. Four kills.

Which was stunning, for the simple reason that they couldn’t have been fixed targets. Two of them were cops. Trained law-enforcement officers. With the requisite training and reflexes. They would have made a move. And yet there they were, their guns still holstered, lying there like fallen targets in a shooting gallery.

Which got me wondering about the other two.

“What do we know about the other two?” I asked him.

“Not much. Civilians, as far as we can tell. But they were packing.”

I looked again. They had shoulder holsters and automatics poking out from under their suit jackets. Handguns that also hadn’t come out when needed. But the suits, the concealed hardware, the fact that they were in there having some kind of meeting with the detectives—these guys had government agency or private contractor scrawled all over them.

“What brought them out there?” I asked.

“They got a call about the maroon Ford Escape.”

My gut did a backflip. “What, the one from our APB?”

Byrne nodded. “A squad car spotted it parked outside. The officers called it in.”

“And they called them instead of us.”

He gave me a knowing look. “Keeping it blue. You know how it goes.”

I did. And I could just see Adams electing not to call and let us in on it, deciding it could lead to some kudos for him and Giordano. Instead, it got them killed.

Stupid, I thought. Stupid and petty. But it happened. More than you’d think.

Still, it didn’t tell us what these other guys were doing there. And given how these contractors tended to work, no one was about to just waltz in and fill us in.

I considered the crime scene again. There was a fifth victim, signposted by a big splatter of blood on the wall directly behind the reception counter. I took a look behind it and saw the body. Again, one slug, dead center of his forehead.

Another execution.

I cast my gaze around the lobby. I didn’t see any bullet holes in the walls. It looked like no other shots had been fired apart from the ones that had ended these five lives. I tried to picture what had gone down here. Even with the element of surprise, even if it had been a sniper taking them out without them even seeing him, the other men would have reacted after the first bullet struck. No way they wouldn’t. I mean, there were four of them, all armed. And this was no sniper. There was no angle, no broken glass. No, as I was sure ballistics would bear out, whoever shot them had to have walked in and just shot the four of them. In the face.

Which meant it had to be more than one shooter. Two, at least. At best. If they were both great shots and had the element of surprise. They pull out their guns simultaneously and take the first two out, adjust their aim, fire again. Four men down.

Maybe.

“We’re looking at two shooters,” I said.

“Got to be,” Aparo said. “Maybe more.”

This was going to get messy. I got a sense that a lot of suited people would be coming into my life very soon. Suited, attitude-laden, and not particularly pleasant to work with.

I asked Byrne, “We were told seven dead. Where are the other two bodies?”

“This way.”

He led us back out and down the side of the motel to Room 9. Its door had been kicked in, but not before someone had fired a shot through its peephole. The lucky receiver of that slug was sprawled out right behind the door. It had gone straight through his right eye. Even with the damage of the entry wound, I recognized him from the YouTube footage as our unknown observer from outside the Sokolovs’ apartment.

There was another dead man inside the room, by the bed. Looked like one solitary round, again, though this one was through the heart. Otherwise, the room looked undisturbed.

“Any IDs on them?”

“No,” Byrne said. “But we’ll have names and jackets soon enough. They’re covered in ink.”

I leaned in for a closer look. The guy with the missing eye had tattoos on his fingers and hand, and I could see the edge of one on the base of his neck. The guy by the bed was the same. And from the designs and the Cyrillic letters, it was obvious we were dealing with Russian gangsters. The tats would tell us a lot, and fast. Russian criminals used tattoos to tell their life stories. We’d know where they’d been incarcerated, what gang they were in, what rank they had. A delightful and charming tradition, and a boon to law-enforcement agencies.

I glanced around the room and wondered if this was a place they often used to lie low. A chat with the manager was on the agenda.

I still didn’t get what had happened here. Some shooters had showed up and gunned down the detectives and the other two outside, as well as these two. Why? To shut them up? What did they know that the shooters didn’t want the detectives to find out? One of them was outside the Sokolovs’ place. Was he there with Yakovlev, or was he just keeping tabs on him or on Sokolov?

Too many questions. Too many unknowns.

I walked into the bathroom to have a look. It was pretty basic. Sink, mirror, toilet, bathtub with a fixed showerhead. Old-style column radiator, small window mounted high, white floor tiles. Reasonably clean. The bath’s shower curtain was dry, its soap bar unopened, its large towels unused. The Russians clearly hadn’t been there for too long, which wasn’t surprising. I didn’t think they were staying there.

“No luggage, right?” I asked.

“Nope.”

I was getting impatient with myself. We were playing catch-up while the bodies were piling up. I unconsciously stopped in front of the mirror and stared at myself for a moment, willing myself to figure this out before more bodies dropped, then as I turned away, something snagged my attention. A small glint, coming from behind the radiator.

I crossed over to it and bent down for a closer look. There was definitely something there, small and silver. It had been jammed in from the side. I took out my pen and nudged it around until it broke loose and fell to the floor.

I picked it up. It was a watch. But not a normal watch with a wristband. This was a fob watch, hanging from a short, two-inch chain.

A nurse’s fob watch.

“Check this out,” I called out to Aparo.

He stepped in. I held it up to him.

“Daphne Sokolov?” he asked.

“Got to be. She was here.” The watch jump-started my mind, which had started screening various possible scenarios.

“So that’s what the shooters were doing,” Aparo said. “They came for her.”

“Or for them,” I wondered aloud. “Maybe she and Sokolov were both being held here.”

“Or maybe she was being held here and Sokolov came for her,” Aparo offered.

“Our meek science teacher turning into the Terminator? I’m not sure I buy that.”

Aparo pursed his lips in agreement. “Maybe he recruited some muscle to break her out.”

“Maybe.” I frowned, frustrated by what I felt we were getting sucked into. “Here’s our problem. We don’t know anything about this Sokolov, and I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere until we do.”

I tried to take a step back and process what we knew and what we were seeing.

The one-eyed bandit is outside Sokolov’s place while, up in the apartment, there’s a scuffle that ends with a Russian diplomat going through a window and falling to his death. Were they there together—in which case, why was our dearly departed diplomat openly cavorting with a tattooed Russian gangster?—or was the heavy watching the diplomat? Then we have Sokolov’s wife going missing that same morning. Cyclops ends up here, with another Russian wiseguy, and they’ve got at least Daphne Sokolov locked up in the bathroom. Maybe Sokolov, too. The detectives and two men in black show up here, and end up leaking all over the lobby. Then the killers take out our Russian heavies and leave with Daphne, and maybe her husband, too.

Too many maybes.

I bent down to look at the base of the radiator, wondering if she’d been held there, if she’d been cuffed to it and if anyone else had too. It was definitely the best option. The towel rail wouldn’t handle anything with more muscle than a two-year-old. Same for the shower rail. And the base of the toilet, well, that would’ve been just nasty. And cumbersome.

Then I saw something else. On the base of the wall, above the row of tiles that skirted it. Something had been scratched into the paint.

I leaned in for a closer look.

They were letters. Cyrillic letters.

I looked at the watch again. It had a safety-pin fastener, like on a brooch. Which could easily have been used to carve the letters.

“There’s something here,” I told Aparo. “In Russian.”

Aparo got down on his haunches for a closer look. “What does it say?”

“Hang on.” I pulled out my smart phone, launched the Google Search app, and went to Google Translate. I selected Russian to English, brought up the Cyrillic keypad, and typed in the word:
. It came back with what it sounded like,
kuvalda
, and what it meant in English.

I told Aparo.

He gave me an impressed nod. I nodded back. We both knew what this meant. Daphne Sokolov had definitely been held here. And to find out why, we now knew who to talk to. A Russian mobster who’d been on the Bureau’s radar for years. A smug slimeball by the name of Yuri Mirminsky, nicknamed
kuvalda
.

The Sledgehammer.