Authors: Greg Dinallo
“Get to the point, will you?”
“You’re an accomplice to murder, Katkov.”
“What?! I was the fucking target, for Chrissakes!”
“You?”
“Uh-huh. The guy followed me around all day. Rafik saved my ass. No thanks to you.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“The medal dealers. You heard that guy threaten me. They thought I set them up.”
“That’s what happens when you stir up trouble for a living. You’re an action junkie, Katkov. You crave it. All you media people do. You get high on it, and then you crash.” He pauses and looks to his clipboard. “What’s this Rafik got to do with it?”
“He was my connection.” It dawns on me the shooter wasn’t following me to make me squirm, but because the medal dealers wanted to take out both of us. “Rafik was there that morning. They must’ve blamed him too.”
Shevchenko nods thoughtfully, then studies me.
I’ve a feeling he’s knows more than he’s telling and is deciding what to do about it. “Come on, don’t hold out on me. We still have a deal, if this is what I think it is.”
“It probably isn’t,” he says unconvincingly. “Regardless, we’re still working on it.” His eyes dart to his watch. “Sorry. I’m in the middle of something.” He signs off on the report, and leaves with a spring in his step, setting the double doors swinging on their hinges.
I wait while the clerk completes his work, then hurry outside, anxious to get the smell of formaldehyde out of my nostrils. The temperature has dropped below zero and the sky is gray with the promise of snow. I walk past the line of cars parked along the wall and out the gate, deciding to treat myself to a cab.
Ten minutes later, I’m still waiting for one when headlights illuminate the courtyard, and a car emerges. Shevchenko’s car. It comes in my direction on the other side of Petrovka and stops at the employees’ entrance. A woman steps from the shadows in the recessed doorway. Her walk is familiar. Unfortunately, so is her face. Too preoccupied to notice me in the darkness, Vera crosses to the car and gets in next to Shevchenko.
I feel as if I’ve been punched in the gut. He said he was in the middle of something! This sure as hell explains it, along with Vera’s endless supply of coffee. I’m seized by an impulse to get roaring drunk and confront them. But it’s a short Metro ride to the community center, and if there was ever a time for a session at Moscow Beginners, it’s now.
“Nikolai K.!” the heavyset fellow with the wintry eyes enthuses, clapping me on the back as I enter the meeting room. “How’ve you been doing?”
“Lousy. I’m in a rotten mood. Frankly, I’d rather be getting drunk.”
“So would I,” Ludmilla T. says with mischievous eyes that make brief contact with mine.
“So would we all,” the old fellow in the skullcap chimes in. “Want to talk about it, Nikolai?”
“Nothing to talk about. Even if there was, ten years of talk wouldn’t change a thing.”
“How do you know?”
“Yes, why not give it a try?”
“You don’t have to be afraid with us.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Of course you are,” the old fellow says gently. “The way to overcome fear is to meet it head-on.”
“Maybe he’s not ready,” Ludmilla says vulnerably.
“Are
you?
” one of the younger men challenges.
“No,” she whispers. “I may never be.”
“I can relate to that,” an older woman says. “I hate confrontations. Especially with myself.”
“It’s like picking at a wound,” another observes. “It never heals.”
I couldn’t agree more. It was a mistake to come here tonight. I’ve too many wounds, too much pain. I’m drifting off, trying to tune them out, when an uneasy feeling comes over me, a
feeling I’m being watched. I look up to find stern, hypnotic eyes staring at me from a poster. Beneath the life-size image of an ascetic-looking man, identified as “The Founder,” is flame-scorched typography that proclaims:
DIANETICS
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY
MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY WINTER SESSION REGISTER FOR CLASSES NOW
It’s a depressing sight. No sooner do we topple the statues of Lenin, then we rush to replace them. Rafik was right. Little has changed. We’re still eager to be wooed by charismatic men who claim they have all the answers. Oh, we applaud democracy, but it’s religion—an infallible hierarchy to tell us what to do—that we crave. I’ve no doubt this guy, Hubbard, and others like him, will have a field day with the current craze for self-improvement.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” I say, having decided that maybe Alexa and Vera can’t accept me warts-and-all, but I can. I know who I am, I know it’s futile to fight my nature, to be someone I’m not.
“No pain, no gain, Nikolai,” the old man warns.
“As my ex-wife would say, ‘That’s why God made anesthesia.’” I head for the door, turning a deaf ear to the group’s exhortations to remain.
Heavy snow is falling as I leave the community center. I’ve gone about a block when I hear the crunch of footsteps behind me. A figure bundled in greatcoat, fur hat, and boots moves into view as I turn the corner. The snow obscures my view, but it looks like a woman, a tired woman, paying me no mind. Is her blank gaze the result of an exhausting day’s work? Or of professional schooling intended to conceal she’s tailing me? I’m tempted to duck into an alley until she passes, but I’m sick and tired of jumping at every shadow and sound. It’s a few blocks to State Liquor Store No. 12. If she’s there when I come out—if she
is
surveilling me—I just might confront one of my fears and offer to share my bottle of painkiller with her.
14
I
’m running down a long, narrow alley. It’s dark and still except for the glint of steel and threatening movements of the person stalking me. I keep running, deeper and deeper into pitch blackness. The towering walls suddenly converge. There’s no way out. I’m trapped, backed into a corner. The assailant charges, shoves a pistol against my chest, and pulls the trigger with a vengeful sneer. A deafening explosion! Blinding blue-orange flashes! Glimpses of a face! A peaked cap set at a jaunty angle.
“Bastard!” Rafik shouts. “Fucking bastard! You promised you wouldn’t let me die!”
Searing pain tears through my body. I stumble in the darkness. A door! There’s a door! My fists pound on it frantically. No one responds. I’m on the verge of passing out. My arms drop from exhaustion but the pounding continues.
Another gunshot!
The pounding intensifies!
I scream and sit bolt upright, drenched in sweat. My tongue feels like it’s made of wool. My head like it’s being crushed in a slowly tightening vise. My eyes, wide with terror, are staring at the door to my apartment. Someone’s knocking on it. I crawl out of bed, stubbing my toe on an empty vodka bottle that goes
spinning across the floor. I’m halfway there when I hear a key in the lock.
It’s Vera. She recoils at the sight of me. Then her eyes react to something and flare with anger. “Who the hell is that?!” she demands, slamming the door closed after her.
“Who’s who?” I wonder meekly, head throbbing.
“That!” She stabs a finger at the sleeping alcove.
I squint at the bed, trying to resolve the blurred image. Christ! There’s a woman tangled in the sheets! A naked woman! Legs drunkenly askew, a breast exposed, one arm hanging over the side of the bed, the other bent at an angle over her face.
“I don’t know,” I rasp, shuddering at the sight of hastily removed clothing and yet another empty bottle as it starts coming back. “Last night . . . yes, yes, there was this woman . . . she, she was following me. I thought she was, anyway. But she wasn’t. She—”
“You picked up a woman on the street?!”
“Yes. Wait. No. I’m not sure,” I stammer, leaning into the alcove for a closer look. There’s something familiar about her. As a matter of fact she looks a hell of a lot like what’s-her-name. God, it is what’s-her-name.
Ludmilla T. stirs, pushes up onto an elbow in a lemon-vodka haze, then collapses with a groan.
“No, she’s not from the street, Vera,” I say, foolishly expecting to mollify her. “She’s from Moscow Beginners. Yes, that’s where she’s from.”
“You go there to get rid of a vice, Nikolai!” Vera screeches, yanking the curtain to close off the alcove. “Not to pick one up!”
“Hey, people who live in glass
dachas . .
.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Come on, Vera. I saw you! He finally make chief? That it?”
“Chief? You can’t mean Shevchenko?!” Vera’s about to launch a fusillade of indignant denials when someone knocks on the door. Several sharp, authoritative raps.
Vera opens it brusquely, revealing a tall, good-looking woman in a down-filled overcoat, standing in the corridor. Vera’s eyes narrow and burn with anger—"
Another
woman?!” written all over them. “It’s over, Nikolai! I mean over!” She takes a folded newspaper from under her arm and throws it at me. It whizzes past my head and hits the wall above the
dresser. Vera turns on a heel and blows out of the apartment. “Take a number, honey,” she says to the woman standing in the doorway.
“Vera?! Vera, wait!” I’m stumbling down the corridor after her when it suddenly strikes me that I’m stark naked. I put on the brakes and slink back to my apartment, palms cupped over my shortcomings.
The woman greets me with an amused smile. She is tall and zaftig, as my father used to say, with large features that seem familiar. “Nikolai?” she echoes with uncertainty, flinching as the door in the foyer slams, rattling the glass. “Nikolai Katkov?”
I nod numbly, trying to place her, and slip into the apartment in search of my pants.
She gives me a moment to find them, then follows. “Gabriella Scotto, Special Agent, United States Treasury Department,” she announces in heavily accented Russian, displaying her identification.
“We got rid of the KGB. Now we have Americans with badges knocking on our doors.”
“I don’t believe
they
knocked.”
“They didn’t ask permission to come in, either.”
“Could we talk for a few minutes?”
“If you insist,” I reply in English. “But I’d rather we massacre your language than mine.”
“Fair enough,” she replies, sounding a lot like a tourist I met from a place called Queens. “My agency is interested in a story you wrote. They think it might tie in with something they’re working on.”
“Really?” I wonder, unable to imagine what the U.S. Treasury and black-market medals dealers could possibly have in common. “You came all the way from Washington to talk to me?”
“Of course not. Please don’t feel flattered. I happened to be here giving a seminar, and my people asked me to—”
“Militia Headquarters,” I interrupt, finally placing her. “The data-sharing expert.”
“That’s me.”
“I knew you looked familiar. You’re wasting your time, by the way. The only thing a Russian cop values more than his gun in his fiefdom. Sharing just isn’t part of his vocabulary.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she says, breaking into a confused smile. “I’m sorry, have we met before?”
“Collided.”
Her brow furrows as she tries to remember.
“Debunking the Power of the Press . . . ?”
“And Other Myths,” she adds with a scowl. “The journalist with the eating disorder.”
“Hunger for truth.”
“Sorry. Didn’t recognize you without your bib.”
“You’re welcome to borrow it.”
“Oh?”
“I have a feeling you’re about to eat your words.”
“Look, Mr. Katkov, I dragged my butt all the way out here, and—”
“I’ve seen better, Agent Scotto. Believe me.”
“Okay. Okay,” she says, exasperated. “We can spend the next hour insulting each other, or we can spend it doing business. What do you say?”
A loud moan comes from the sleeping alcove before I can reply.
Agent Scotto’s eyes widen with concern and sweep to the curtain. “Who’s that?”
I shrug sheepishly. “I’m afraid we just met.”
“I think I’m starting to understand. That was your girlfriend before?”
“Was,”
I reply glumly.
“I’ve been there,” she confides with a hint of empathy. “Played both parts. More than once.”
I’m thinking Special Agent Scotto has a healthy lustiness that makes it easy for me to believe her when Ludmilla T. moans again.
“We better insult each other someplace else,” Scotto suggests. “Trouble is, where? This berg makes my old neighborhood look like a country estate.”
“Where did you grow up? In Queens?”
“Bensonhurst. That’s in Brooklyn. You sound like you grew up in London.”
“Well, frankly I’ve never been out of Russia. Not every Englishman who lives here is a spy, you know. My parents hired a tutor when I was a child. He was from Dover, as I recall. You like country estates?”
“Not particularly.”
“You’ll fancy this one. Give me a few minutes.”
I slip behind the curtain. Ludmilla hasn’t moved. I pull the covers over her, then quickly freshen up and dress. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on my boots when she stirs.
“Hi,” she whispers, sleepy-eyed.
“Hi. You okay?”
She smiles weakly and nods.
“I’ll be out for a while. Place is yours. There’s some coffee in the cupboard.”
“Coffee?” she mouths, brightening.
“Make enough for two.” I blow her a kiss and return to the parlor in search of my parka. Agent Scotto locates it on the floor behind an armchair and tosses it to me. “You don’t work on a word processor?” she wonders as we leave the apartment.
“I wish. Every time I save enough money, I run out of coffee and cigarettes.”
“Among other things,” Scotto sneers, noticing the vodka bottles on the way out.
The air is unusually clear, thanks to a wind shift that took the smog south along with the snow. It left a crystalline patina in its wake, giving Lyublino an uncharacteristic sparkle.
“So, Agent Scotto,” I begin as we walk north on Kurskaya. “What does Moscow’s black market in medals have to do with your Treasury Department?”
“Medals?” she wonders with a puzzled frown. “What’re you talking about?”
“My article.
Independent Gazette
published a story I wrote on black-market medal dealers.”
“Never seen it. The one they faxed me from D.C. is about a guy named Vorontsov. He was murdered to stop him from blowing the whistle on a privatization scandal.”
My jaw drops. That’s the last thing I expected. “How’d your people acquire it?”
“Picked it off your wire service.”
“ITAR?”
“We call it RITA.”
Either way, it’s an acronym for the Russian Information Telegraph Agency, formerly TASS. “That’s rather puzzling. The story never ran. It was spiked. . . .” The pieces suddenly fall into place. “Sergei.”
“Who’s he?”
“The editor who spiked it. I wanted the story back. He claimed he’d misplaced it. I had a feeling he was up to something. Now I know what.”
“He sent it to the wire service? Why? Why wouldn’t he run the story himself?”
“Because the militia blew it out of the water.”
“And he never told you he sent it to RITA?”
“Not surprising. He’s a rather cautious, secretive fellow. Out of necessity, mind you. We all were. I guess, like most of us, Sergei still hasn’t completely shaken the old ways of doing business. He’s also a friend. Maybe he didn’t want to get my hopes up in case it didn’t fly.”
“It just might. We knew it’d been spiked, but we weren’t sure why. So we weren’t sure who to trust. That’s why we came to you first.”
“Quite smart.”
“I get paid to be smart. Those documents you mentioned in the story, you still have access to them?”
“No, but not for lack of trying.”
“Well maybe I can—”
“You had your chance. You blew it.”
“Pardon me?”
“You recall that day at Militia Headquarters?”
“Oh, no,” she groans, as it dawns on her.
“Oh, yes. They were the bone of contention.”
“Guess I owe you one. This Investigator . . .”
“Shevchenko.”
“He still has them?”
“I doubt it. He said he was returning them to the Interior Ministry.”
“Shit.” Her brow knits with confusion. “I thought he worked for the Interior Ministry.”
“He does, but he’s at thirty-eight Petrovka, not Ministry Headquarters on Markskaya. That’s where the Oversight Committee’s located. The documents belong to them, and I imagine that’s where Shevchenko sent them. Keep in mind, the Interior Ministry’s a massive bureaucracy. It’s got more subdirectorates, departments, and administrative sectors than you can count. The joke used to be that half of Moscow has to work at the IM to keep an eye on the other half.”
A knowing smile cracks Agent Scotto’s face as we turn the corner and come upon the Durasov Estate. Built on a wooded lakefront by a family of aristocrats, the eighteenth-century mansion now houses the Oceanographic Institute. Its spired, snow-dusted dome caps two intersecting wings that form a Greek cross, giving it churchlike scale and presence. “Wow,” Scotto exclaims as we walk down the drive lined with towering poplars. “Now, that’s what I call a weekend retreat.”
“That’s precisely what it was a couple of hundred years ago.”
She stops walking and catches my eye. “You’d have to launder a hell of a lot of money to build it today.”
I nod thoughtfully, reading between the lines. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Money laundering.”
“Interdicting it. That’s FinCEN’s specialty.”
“Who?”
“FinCEN—Financial Crimes Enforcement Network—it’s a federal task force that gathers financial intelligence. We have personnel from Customs, IRS, Secret Service, Postal Inspection, FBI, BATF—”
“I’m afraid you left out KGB,” I say, facetiously.
“We’re working on it. Right now we can access American commercial, financial, and law enforcement data banks; but we’re going global.”
“Information-sharing expertise.”
“And analysis. I’m Deputy Director.”
“A bureaucrat. Russians abhor bureaucrats.”
“So do I. I’m a cop by trade, Katkov, an eighteen-eleven—licensed to carry a weapon.”
“Rhymes with double-o-seven.”
“We had it first,” she says with a sassy smile. “Twenty years in the field. Border patrol. Undercover drug enforcement. I was running a network of informants when they put this operation together and bumped me upstairs.”
“Sounds like you rather miss getting your hands dirty.”
“Any agent pushing a desk who says otherwise is full of it.” She stops walking and sits on a bench overlooking the frozen lake, then emits a reflective sigh. “Trouble is it gets on more than your hands. Anyway, the case I was telling you about: Some funds FinCEN’s been tracking surfaced in a deal to build a pipeline from Siberia to Western Europe. The broker on the Russian side was a V. I. Vorontsov.”
“That makes sense. He was an accomplished trade representative. This country is drowning in red ink. I venture to say hard dollars for oil is one of the keys to recovery.”
“Yeah, but the pipeline deal’s being put together with dirty money. If Vorontsov was responsible for oversight and brokering it at the same time, we have a classic case of the fox in the hen house.”
“Maybe. Then again, perhaps he was working both sides of the street.”
“You mean undercover?”
“Precisely. Can you think of a better way of conducting oversight than being at the table when the deal is going down?”
“Several. You have any proof he was murdered to stop him from blowing the whistle?”
“No. But I’m pretty damn sure he was.”
“Why, because it’ll sell more newspapers?”
“No, dammit. Because somebody tried to kill me yesterday.”
That stops Scotto cold. She’s all ears now.