CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Arkhangelskoye Military Convalescent Home, USSR, October 9, 1961
“Spasibo za to [Thank you for coming], Artur Vsevolodovich,” responded Antoine in the same language, gesturing a welcome to the formidable man.
“You have to be at the place by seven in the morning when they have the change of shifts. I will be parked at the loading dock of the Arkady at O six hundred. The traffic will get too heavy after that,” Artur said without taking a moment for greetings or a chat.
“Do you have weapons for us?”
“They will be in the car tomorrow. Too dangerous to have such things in your possession these days if you don’t have to. The ments [cops] and the KGB goons are always on the lookout.”
Antoine nodded his understanding. Michaele brought a small tray holding three medium glass tumblers half-filled with vodka. The three took their glasses and chorused the traditional salute.
“Bóo-deem zda-ró-vye, [To our health]!”
The following morning, Antoine and Michaele took no chances. They stood shivering in the autumn cold and darkness at five-thirty, making sure they were as obscure as possible by standing in the shadows of a stack of packing boxes.
“There’s Artur Vsevolodovich,” said Michaele as a shiny new ZIL- 135LM slowly pulled alongside the dock.
He and Antoine slipped quietly into the backseat, and the Mafioso sped out into the growing traffic. They slowed down after going a short distance on the MKAD [Moscow Automobile Ring Road], while Artur squinted to find the road he wanted. He turned off twelve miles west of the militsya MYC in Tverskoy District, central Moscow, and into the Zrkhangelskoye Estate. The architectural center of the Arkhangelskoye Estate was the Yusupov Palace, a beautiful edifice on a sunny day. But today they were unable even to see its outlines due to fog and drizzeling rain.
“Here’s your guns. Keep them out of sight,” Artur said, and the two newcomers quickly slid the weapons under their trench coats.
They were dressed in hospital groundsmen uniforms supplied by the vory v zakone [thieves-in-law] Solntsevskaya Bratva [brothers or brotherhood]. Artur parked off the gravel parking area beneath a copse of white birch trees to wait for them.
His parting warning was, “Don’t be long. Once the body is discovered, the ments will be here in a matter of minutes.”
Antoine and Michaele walked into the entryway to the long façade of the Stalin-era Military Convalescent Home which was built in the 1940s for the Red Army elite and was closed to visitors. Its terraces overlooking the river were accessible, and its staircases were the best way to reach the riverbank, a sodden mass at the moment; but the two men navigated the terrace to the main patient area unnoticed as a fortunate result of the limited visibility. They stepped into the Palladian-style building, and Michaele found a sofa in an out-of-the-way corner and settled into it, fingering his gun. His job was to protect Antoine’s back this time. His turn would come.
Antoine made sure there was a minimum of people in the hallway where the thieves-in-law had told him he would be able to locate his quarry. He encountered a young woman dressed in the uniform of a senior nursing officer.
“Are you Sister Maria Nikolayovna Ilyushkin?” he asked using the name Pakhan Breslava had given him.
“Do you work here … outside?” she responded brusquely.
“Never mind that. Answer my question.”
The man had the air of a military officer despite his humble uniform. Maybe he was KGB.
“I am Sister Maria, the head nurse. What do you want?”
“The Pakhan sent me.”
Maria blanched. Her sister had borrowed money from the russkaya mafiya during a time of desperation and had never been able to pay off the exhorbitant interest let alone the principal of the debt. The choice she faced was prostitution or involve the entire family in a lifetime of favors for the criminal syndicate. There was no escaping, and this was hardly the first favor required of her to protect her sister.
“I will help anyway I can,” she said with dread in her voice.
“Where is General Lagounov? Be quick about it.”
“It is against the rules. I am not supposed to divulge where our important veterans live, sir, please.”
Acting on a hunch about the man, she asked in German, “Sind sie Deutsch, mein Herr. Warum Sie die Allgemeine möchten, bitte? [Are you German, sir? Why do you want the general, please?]”
Antoine let his stress and anger at the nurse’s obstructionism get the better of him.
He snarled, “Gott verdammt, wo is er?”
This was worse than she had imagined. It was bad enough for a friend of the russkaya mafiya who was owed a favor to be challenging her, but this was a German. This meant that the favor must be evil indeed. She had lived in Stalingrad during the war—during the siege—and she was well aware that Germans were the spawn of the devil. She felt faint.
Antoine calmed down, seeing that his bullying was counterproductive. It had been a terrible mistake to have seemed to be a German to the woman and to have responded when she spoke the language of the Fatherland. He tried another tack to soften his presence and to get her to cooperate without calling more attention to him.
He spoke quietly in his native language, “Je suis désolé de vous avoir inquiété, Sœur. Je suis un grand admirateur du général et souhaite qu’à lui présenter mes hommages. Aidez-moi, se il vous plait. [I am sorry to have worried you, Sister. I am a great admirer of the general and wish only to pay him my respects. Please help me.]”
Sister Maria decided he must be one of those poor souls who was interned by the Germans and had lost his gentlemanly skills. Gen. Lagounov must have liberated him. It was a fiction she needed.
She called to the nurse-apprentice who was standing nearby and listening too intently, “Ludmila Mikhailovna! Take this man to General Lagounov at once!”
The timid country girl sprang to an upright posture and strode quickly up to the man and Sister Maria.
“Yes, Sister. Follow me, please,” she asked.
The general’s hospital room was fifty yards down the long hall. The door was open, and the general was sitting slouched on his easy chair listening to the music of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake—his favorite—on his vintage gramophone. Antoine stayed behind the young nurse to obsure his presence until the last possible moment.
“What do you want now, you witch?” the old man demanded imperiously, his usual demeanor.
He looked at Antoine without recognition at first, then something from somewhere deep inside him seemed to jell.
Antoine smiled grimly. The pleasure of the moment was almost too much to contain. He turned to the rather homely young nurse.
“Get out,” he said, “now!” in a voice that came from inside a crypt.
Ludmila Mikhailovna turned quickly and walked towards the door, shivering.
She heard the unpleasant man say, “Kind of surprised to see me, no, General?” as she walked out the door.
Antoine took his time. The first thing he did was to close the door to the old man’s room. Then he picked up the general’s prize cavalry saber and admired it, stroking it lovingly.