Rasputin's Shadow (27 page)

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?”

L
ARISA
T
CHOUMITCHEVA 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.

A
ner
ve agent?” Aparo asked. “You serious?”

My thoughts were cartwheeling ahead with it. “Think about it. Sokolov, or whatever his real name is—he’s a scientist. A Russian scientist. We know he’s very bright. Maybe he came up with something that can turn people aggressive. Something airborne that can set off their most primal instincts. Something he didn’t want anyone to know about.”

“A gas that turns people aggressive?” Aparo repeated, looking distinctly unconvinced. “You have the gall to say that with a straight face after blowing off my theory about alternative fuel?”

“I don’t know if it’s a gas or a spray or what, but maybe it’s some kind of drug,” I countered. “One that can go airborne. Like inhaling secondhand smoke. The way pot has an effect on the brain. Maybe this is something like that. The opposite of Prozac. Instead of calming you down, it makes you real angry. Angry and paranoid. So you lash out at the merest provocation. Everything feels like a threat.”

I felt a rush of energy. The more I thought about it, the less outlandish it seemed. A nerve gas would go a long way to explaining why the crowd at Lolita went from party animals to bloodthirsty savages and back within a matter of minutes.

“We’ve got to run tox tests on the Lolita crowd,” I said.

Aparo turned serious. “Hang on a sec, that doesn’t stack up. What about the docks?”

“What about them?”

“Sokolov went out of his way to get the van and take it to the docks when he and Jonny went to get Daphne back,” Aparo said. “Why take the van all the way there but not hand it over in exchange for her? That had to be the deal, right?”

“Maybe that was the plan,” I agreed. “Maybe Ivan wanted the van all along, but maybe something went wrong and he got Sokolov instead.”

Something about that felt wrong, but I still thought the diffuser/nerve-agent idea merited a closer look.

“So how come Jonny and his buddy weren’t affected by it out at Lolita?” Aparo added. “Gas masks?”

“Maybe,” I said. I mulled it over some more, then asked, “What do you think?”

“Not to take anything away from my brilliant alternative-fuel theory—but, could be. And if that’s the case—shit, we’ve got to get it back.”

“We’ve got to get him back too. He designed it.”

Aparo nodded as he sped up. “Let’s see what we find at the garage.”

***

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER,
we turned into the rundown industrial park and pulled up by the small management office just inside its rusted gates. No one was there. We got back in the car and drove in until we found the unit that was the registered address for Sokolov’s van. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it wasn’t the small lock-up garage it turned out to be.

We had two padlocks to get past, and they proved tricky, but not insurmountable, with Aparo besting me by half a minute or so. We pushed up the roller door about an inch, and while Aparo held it open, I crouched down and had a look to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped. I didn’t really expect it to be, and I didn’t see anything suggesting it was.

We pulled it open.

The garage was empty. It was of a decent size, big enough to store the van, with about four feet to spare all around. I hit the lights. It was clean and tidy. No big oil stains on the concrete floor, no odds and ends left to rot there for years. There wasn’t much in it, aside from one shelf hanging at shoulder level all the way down the left-hand wall. It had a couple of cardboard boxes stored on it.

We took them down and opened them up.

They had all kinds of electronic parts in them. Wires, cables, switches, rolls of flat copper-colored metal in different gauges, small plastic boxes filled with miniature circuits and connectors, and a collection of square metal tubes of different lengths and widths—some hollow and some filled with what looked like conducting material. There was also what looked like an old pair of jeweler’s magnifying glasses.

They weren’t car parts, that much I knew. Beyond that, I had no idea what they were or what they could be used for, but I sure as hell wanted to find out. I took several photos of them with my phone and e-mailed them to our in-house computer analysis and response team. It wasn’t necessarily the specialty of the guys at CART, but I knew that their geekiness extended beyond digital data, and if they didn’t know what these things were, I was sure they knew who to ask.

I had a sinking feeling about what they would tell us.

I was e-mailing the last of them when I got a call from an unidentified number. I snatched my phone off the desk, knowing it had to be the pancake-loving hacker I had tasked with my private dirty deed.

“Gimme a sec,” I told Aparo as I stepped away to take the call.

“Konnichiwa,”
Kurt’s voice echoed. “You sitting down, boss? I have news.” He paused for effect, then proudly announced, “Target acquired.”

“I’m listening,” I said evenly, not wanting to encourage him too much.

He sounded excited. “So I got into the CCTV cam of the cash point, and I found our guy pulling out last week’s cash. Then he kind of glances around like he’s making sure no one’s watching before he walks off.”

“Maybe he’s just making sure no one’s waiting to mug him.”

“Maybe. But no. It gets better. I found a personal credit card of his with no paper trail. Statements and everything else only comes through to him by e-mail. And not his main Gmail account. I looked through the last three months’ worth of statements and you could say the card use doesn’t really fit that of a married guy with two kids. There are multiple charges to trivial-sounding businesses, but when you dig into who they are, they’re billing names for a lingerie shop called Sylene, a chocolate place called Cocova, and a flower shop called Gilding the Lily. They’re all down in the DC area. Plus he had a single charge of over three hundred dollars to something called L’Escapade. It’s an upmarket sex shop on U Street. Four and a half stars across the board.”

“So maybe he loves his wife. Maybe they’re meeting away from the house to share some private time. Or trying to spice things up with some role-playing.”

He snorted. “You talking from experience?”

I dropped my tone. “Careful, Kurt. Let’s remember the parameters of our relationship.”

He went silent, and I could sense all kinds of pressure valves popping inside his fragile physique.

“I’m kidding,” I told him. “Go on.”

“Well, he has another credit card, the one he shares with his wife. In the last month he’s charged all kinds of stuff on it. Car repairs, a plumbing contractor, his son’s braces, horse-riding lessons for his daughter. Personally I prefer my mount mammoth-shaped and a hundred percent digital. Less chance of real-world injury.”

“Focus, Kurt.”

“Yeah, sorry. My point is, he would have used that card if it was on the up and up. But he’s not. He’s using it cause it’s not with the wife. And here’s the good news. The card was used to guarantee a hotel booking for tonight.”

My skin bristled. “Cash point Thursday.”

“Exactly. And his disciplinary warnings were for arriving late to work on three Fridays in the last couple of months. You know anyone who arrives late at work so he can hang out longer with his wife?”

I wasn’t about to argue with someone whose deep insights into married life were gleaned while living with his mother. “So he books the hotel with the card, but pays the bill in cash.”

“And the authorization for the guarantee to hold the room is wiped clean. It never shows up on a statement. And you want the clincher?”

“Boggle me.”

“The hotel’s right next to the ATM he uses.”

Kurt had come through for me, massively—pun wholeheartedly intended.

I said, “He might be seeing her tonight.”

“I’ll bet he is. Remember, that’s when his wife has her weekly yoga class. Seven till nine. Meanwhile her husband’s putting a hundred dollars’ worth of edible lubricant to good use.” He chuckled. “And there I was, thinking field agents had all the fun.”

This sounded more than promising. “Okay. I need the hotel’s details and a photo of Kirby.”

“Done. And I’ll get into his alibi. Give you even more leverage.”

“Great.”

“He’s lucky he managed to snag a room tonight. The whole town’s booked solid.”

Which was curious. “Why?”

“The White House Correspondents Dinner. It’s tomorrow night. It’s like the Oscars these days. Huge.”

I wondered if it would make my getting a flight down there more difficult. “Okay. What time does he usually arrive?”

“I went through the hotel’s card issuing records. I found Kirby checking in last week and three weeks ago. Always between seven forty-five and eight.”

I glanced at my watch. It was almost noon. Tricky—but doable. Very doable.

I told Kurt, “Nice work, man. Seriously. You’d make a good cop.”

He chuckled. “With this body? I think not. Now, I’ve got a five-way Halo game starting in ten, so I’ll bid you sayonara.”

The line went dead, leaving me to wonder about how I was going to make it down to DC and back undetected given everything else that was going on, and questioning whether cheating on one’s wife would give me enough moral grounds for blackmail.

Then I remembered what they’d done to Alex, and any misgivings I was feeling were smothered into submission.

“Everything okay?” Aparo asked, giving me a curious look.

“Just peachy,” I told him.

I was going to need his help with this, but I wasn’t going to mention it just yet. Everything was moving so fast that my plans could change at any moment.

I just hoped they wouldn’t change enough that I wouldn’t be able to meet our wandering lothario in a few hours.