24
MURAT REACHED UNDER the driver’s seat and came up with a bottle of vodka, steering the wheel momentarily with his knees. They drove slowly, quietly, with the lights off, along the far side of the road rather than in the middle. “I hope you don’t embarrass yourself,” Katya said to Murat reproachfully, with a look of disgust.
“With this?” He laughed. He unscrewed the top and poured the contents over the policeman’s injured hand. The cop grimaced, inhaling loudly through clenched teeth. “To keep out infection. You see,” he said, smacking the cop in the back of the head, “we treat defeated enemies well.”
To Jim and Katya in the rearview he said, “This is not vodka. Not even samogon.” He waved the bottle behind him, under Jim’s nose; it triggered an instant memory of late afternoons cleaning the kitchen after all the customers had gone home. He shut his eyes for a moment and saw his father at the counter, working a rag, while he scrubbed the day’s grease from the grill. It wasn’t soap, and it wasn’t detergent; he couldn’t quite place the smell. “For cleaning glass. This is only for selling, not for drinking.”
“You give people Windex to drink?” Jim asked. “Doesn’t that kill them?”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Katya said. “You throw up first.”
“Yes. Also, you can get used to it. Some uncultured people sell methylated spirits, and these, no question, will kill you.”
“And they sell it only to kiosks for drunks, you know, who probably drink worse every day.”
“Actually, we did one time sell to Stockmann’s.” Murat had a warm, predatory glow at the memory. “Only one time. The second time, we tried again, and they said they would kill us if we returned. You wouldn’t expect that from a Swede; Swedes are supposed to be very peaceful. But they had a better krysha than us, so we could never try again. But yes: this kind of ethanol is also good for healing and cleaning.”
As they rounded a bend a brick wall fronting the street began. It stood about fifteen feet high and a good half mile long, and was topped every twenty feet with carved concrete spheres atop spikes. Murat cut the engine, and they coasted to a stop just before an imposing wrought-iron gate set into the wall, with a camera and a buzzer on the right side. “You have been here before?” he asked the cop, who still gripped his hand.
The cop nodded.
“How many times? Don’t think, just tell. One? Five? Every weekend?”
“Every night I work at Kalifornya. After it closes, Mr. Vorov likes us to bring him the night’s money in cash, in a box, so he has it counted by breakfast.”
“So you’ve been in the house.”
“Yes. Well, no. A private guard drives up to the gate, here, and takes it from me. Only very senior people are allowed into the house. I hear it is a palace, modeled on Alexander Palace. They say you can have anything . . .”
“Yes, yes, yes. Your face is known but not well known; that is all I wanted to know. Go, make them open the door.”
Fear and confusion contorted the cop’s mashed-potato face: fear not at what Vorov or Murat might do to him but the sort of indolent, hatred-based fear that comes when a person without imagination breaks his routine. His life was watching Kalifornya’s door, taking and giving bribes when appropriate, drinking with his colleagues, complaining about his wife, putting the occasional shovel in the ground. He could not fit this action into his hierarchy of actions; he was baffled. Only when Murat stepped out of the car, trailing his knife against the side of the cop’s face, did he spring back to life.
“Do you think a man such as Anatoly Vorov will just open the door for anybody? What: I will press the button, and like an elevator it springs open.”
Murat nodded slowly, as though considering the point. He scratched his head with the tip of his knife, then he sheathed it. “You’re right,” he told the cop, who nodded gravely, the corners of his mouth turned down in pompous self-satisfaction. He was about to break into a smile when Murat punched him hard, twice, once in the corner of the mouth, splitting his lip, and once in the eye, knocking it shut. Before he could completely collapse Murat caught him by the collar, pulled him upright, and slapped him back to attention.
“The Kalifornya is being robbed. You escaped out the back. Eight armed men. Rostov accents. Go: tell him now.” Murat pushed him toward the bell, moving quickly, before his terror-induced obedience faded. He joined Jim, Fadlan, and Katya, who stood flush against the brick wall, directly to the right of the camera, and therefore out of its range.
When he pressed the button, a red activity light and a harsh white activating light switched on, and the camera came to life, bathing the policeman in the sole cone of light visible anywhere. From behind its Plexiglas covering, the camera took in the policeman’s battered face, his gashed hand, his disheveled appearance, and his lack of a weapon. “Yes,” a voice barked through the intercom.
“It’s Volodya. The Kalifornya is being robbed. I snuck out the back to let you know.”
“You told them who they were robbing?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Eight. I saw eight.”
“Locals?”
“The ones who spoke had Rostov accents.”
“Are they still there?”
“I don’t know.”
The box clicked off but the light remained on, as if considering. Finally the box squawked back to life. “Stay there. Remain in front of the camera. We’re coming.”
Murat tapped Jim in the chest: his motions had become coiled, purposeful. “You have your gun?” he whispered.
Jim tapped his jacket pocket: he could not believe it, but he was, in fact, carrying a gun. Somewhere in the distance, two engines started.
“The trucks will not stop,” Murat said. “They will not stop for our friend the policeman.” The cop glared at him, insulted. “He is their doorman; to stop a robbery they will send the real fighters, which is good for us. You will take him and the woman up the path to the front door. Remain visible. Walk in front of the camera. We will duck under in front of you and go around back.”
“Why?” Jim felt at a distinct operational disadvantage without Murat and Fadlan. It wasn’t just that they were two more people, or even that they were two more armed people. It was more that, unlike Jim and Katya, they appeared to have some idea of what they were doing. The engines grew louder, and the cop tried to smooth out his uniform and stand straighter: they were close.
“Because he will not just shoot an American and a woman. But he will shoot two Tatars as soon as he would look at them.”
“And after that?”
“After that it will be in God’s hands. Death meets you where he wishes; you cannot hide here, or travel there.”
“Then why not walk up to the front with us?”
“Please.” Murat chuckled. “Just because Death meets you at his convenience does not mean you must invite Him.”
“You already invited Him,” the cop hissed. “You were dead as soon as I rang that bell.”
With an initial clank and a smooth, mechanized hum, the gates swung open. True to Murat’s prediction, the two black Hummers, both with tinted windows, did not stop, and if they gave any indication that they saw in their rearview mirrors four people standing against the wall in the dark, they didn’t show it. They roared toward the Kalifornya in a chaos of revving engines and dust.
As the gates started to swing shut, the cop began walking forward; as soon as he was out of the camera’s view, Murat brought the butt end of his gun down hard on the back of his head. He fell as though his spine were pulled out.
“Dead?” Katya asked, peering fearfully at what she thought was a corpse.
Murat shook his head. “Resting. For a long time.” Jim and Katya walked in front of the camera, staring into its eye with their hands visible. Beneath them, crouching, scampered Murat and Fadlan. Once all five were inside, Murat and Fadlan melted into the woods lining the drive, while Jim and Katya walked up its center.
The birch-lined drive followed a gentle westward curve, which, even if it had been light, would have obscured the house at the top. Knee-high garden lamps lined the path; Jim was careful to stay in their pools. Assuming he was being watched, the last thing he wanted to do was give them any reason to chase after him in the dark.
“Jim,” Katya whispered, squeezing his free hand.
“Yes?”
“I always knew we would make it here. I always knew we would get in. What I don’t know is how we’ll leave. Why would he ever let us go?” Jim swallowed hard. He had thought the same thing, but hearing it out loud made his fears that much more real.
“He’s a businessman,” Jim said, pretending a confidence he did not feel. “All we want is your grandfather, right? No crusades, nothing else? We promise our silence in exchange for him.”
Katya started to speak, but just then they rounded the bend, and the house came into view a few hundred feet up the path.
Jim had been expecting something grand, palatial, Russian: like the cop said, it was modeled on Alexander Palace, where Nicholas II had lived. The cop appeared to have received some bad information, for they did not stand in front of a palace, nor of a new Russian dacha in the fashionable Scandinavian blond-wood-and-diagonal-window style, nor even of a Soviet-style monolith. Instead they stared at an enormous, symmetrical, prefabricated Colonial-style house that would not have looked out of place in a wealthy American suburb. It was a McMansion. Grander than most, sure, with a six-car garage rather than a three, and Jim figured it had some add-ons, especially in the area of security, that its American counterparts lacked, but fundamentally it looked like home, right down to the blue-painted shutters and the carved stone path: no less incongruous than if a Russian turned a corner in Rockville and came upon a replica of St. Basil’s Cathedral wedged into a suburban street. It was so strange that Jim laughed and shook his head, while Katya looked on with disgust.
As they continued toward the house, the front door—a thick, sturdy-looking wood model with a black handle and knocker, a peephole, and, lit up next to it with the faint orange glow of home, a doorbell—swung open. Jim held his hands out from his body, palms forward: not raised in surrender, but clearly showing he was no threat. He pushed Katya behind him. He figured it was better to be prepared if Murat’s assumption was wrong, and Vorov had no problem eliminating problems, whatever their gender or nationality.
Emerging from the doorway was a chubby, impish, balding little man smiling blandly and peering around with an expression of bemused, benevolent interest. It was difficult to tell whether his suit fit poorly or whether his dumpling-shaped body, high forehead surrounded by tight black curls, and tiny little kumquat-fingered hands would have made any piece of clothing look ridiculous. He could be my uncle, Jim thought: he had Sam’s small stature and delicate features, but he appeared more used to smiling, more open, than Jim’s father.
“Welcome, welcome. Mr. Vilatzer, is it? Ms. Lisitsova? I am Anatoly Vorov,” the little man said in fluent English that sounded like it was caught in a mid-Atlantic eddy. It had the bite of a Russian accent and the rounded vowels of a longtime English speaker. He looked from person to person with a touch of clinical pride to see what effect his name had on them. “I assume that you have come to see me.” He shrugged pleasantly, diffidently, then let his arms go slack at his sides. He looked like an orthodontist, or an ineffectual bachelor relative who makes his living fiddling with numbers. “Here I am. Please, come in, come in. What would you like to talk about?”
“We’d like to see Rodion Lisitsov,” Jim said in Russian.
Vorov turned his gaze toward Jim, sharpening it and letting some of the benevolence burn off. “You speak Russian with both an American and a slight Belarusian accent, if I’m not mistaken. Did your parents come from Minsk?”
“My grandparents, actually. Impressive.”
Again, the self-effacing shrug and the mild smile. “In my business, it helps to know as much as you can about someone before you have to open your mouth. You learn from small clues and from cultivating your ear. That’s all. A useful skill. A learned skill. Little more than a parlor trick, really. I could easily teach you, if we had the time. You also are a Jew.”
“Less impressive, that one. Russians seem to have a unique ability to sniff out a Jew at fifty paces. Well honed over the centuries, I guess.”
Vorov looked down at the ground and smiled ruefully, embarrassed at having expended his capital on such an obvious guess. “Yes, yes. It really isn’t that difficult once you know what you’re looking for. And I hope I cause you no offense if I say the obvious: it’s the complexion, dark, plus the prominent nose, and the shape of your ears. Our Komsomol leader in university used to say that a Jew’s ears stick out from his head so that when anybody in his city complains about scarcity, the Jew can hear, and rush in to sell. He said this, of course, as an insult, but I have spent my career trying to cultivate such ears. I have always wanted a pair of sharp Jew ears.”
Jim felt his ears go red. Vorov noticed, and smiled: advantage him. The nose Jim was used to—he’d heard the slurs before, especially in his mother’s old Hamden stomping grounds—but the ear comment was new.
“I won’t insist on practicing my English any further tonight, though I am a bit rusty. Do you have a gun, Mr. Vilatzer? I am afraid that too much time spent living in Nancy Pelosi’s district seems to have wiped away my military training and given me rather a horror of guns. I must insist that if you are to be my guest you leave your weapon outside. You may leave it here”—he gestured to a small alcove beneath a row of windows, adjacent to the doorway. “I promise nobody will take it. You may reclaim it when you leave. Are we expecting anyone else this evening?”
“No. We came alone.”
“Did you? I am amazed you could find my house. Then again, you certainly have shown yourself to be resourceful. Perhaps I should not underestimate you anymore. Come in, please.”
He stood aside, and Jim and Katya found themselves in a two-story entry foyer with a hanging chandelier, hardwood floors, and stairs with a runner carpet and a wooden banister winding their way up. A distant rumbling shook the chandelier, which sent out a pleasant tinkling, and was silent again.
Jim shook his head at how familiar it seemed: the place looked like something a successful athlete would buy—prefabricated in construction and taste. Vorov read his reaction well. “It must seem a bit like home to you.”
“Not exactly,” Jim said. “Our house is much smaller.”
Vorov chuckled politely, his face alive with interest and sympathy. “Is it? You should have seen the hovel where I began. I made this all on my own. A bootstrapper, I suppose. Not unlike you, Seamus. Or your parents.” His smile remained fixed, glittering; his eyes stayed on Jim like a snake’s.
“What do you know about my parents?”
“Nothing, nothing at all. I’ve never even been to Rockville, and on those occasions when I do find myself in Washington, I eat downtown, where my business is. I couldn’t say I know them at all.” He glanced over at Jim to see how accurately the arrow struck. From somewhere in the house came the low clatter of forks against plates, glasses against the table, but no conversation. “I know the type, though, Seamus”—he paused for effect—“or Jim, as you seem to prefer, that was my point: so many of my countrymen see how I live and think where has his taste gone? Why doesn’t he live like Berezovsky or Abramovich or Gusinsky? The truth is I keep a Russian home in Pacific Heights and an American one here. When I’m abroad I like to remind myself of my native land, and when I’m here I like to pay tribute to the country that has taught me so much. I’m sure at least you understand, even if your lovely companion looks less convinced.” Katya stood against the front door with her arms crossed. She looked not disagreeable or disapproving, but anxious, straining, like she was listening for her grandfather’s voice, breathing, presence.
Just then a swinging door at the back of the foyer opened, and a tall, blond man in a suit strode confidently through, his ID flipped open before him and an oily, disarming grin tacked to the bottom of his face.
“That’s him,” Katya hissed in Jim’s ear. “The wolf man.”
“I am Nikolai Skrupshin, deputy junior minister of the Interior. Your papers, please. And your mobile telephones.”
When neither of them moved he broadened the smile. “Please, for matters of security you are required to hand over your mobile telephones. If you wish to check, you will see that you cannot make or receive calls here, so they are quite useless, and any objection would be simple vanity. I assure you I will return them to you myself, personally, after our business is concluded.”
Jim reached into his pocket, flipping the phone shut as he handed it to Skrupshin along with his passport. “Vilatzer, See-ya-moos. No patronymic. No father, perhaps? A bastard?” He held his hand out to Katya without looking up. “Ah. You, I remember. Lisitsova, Katerina Georgovna. And your phones I shall keep here.” He dropped them clattering to the ground and stomped them into smithereens. “I promised you could have them back. I made no guarantees as to their condition.” The joke pleased him enough to raise a laugh and a nasty curl of his lip. He bowed, first to Vorov and then to Jim and Katya, and retreated back through the swinging door.
“I’m afraid Nikolai does like his theatricality.” Vorov sighed. “I’m sorry about that. Please, if you would, let’s come out of the hallway.”
He led them down a narrow hallway off the right of the foyer, into a small, comfortable room furnished with a long wooden desk, a leather couch, two plush upholstered chairs, and cabinets of books along the walls. He ushered them into the chairs and took his place across from them behind his desk. “Please, sit down. Can I get you anything to drink? Water? Wine? Brandy? Don’t tell me you’ve started drinking vodka, Jim.” Vorov laughed and shook his head, kindly crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“Nothing, thank you,” Katya said icily, her hands balled into fists in her lap. “Where did you take my grandfather? When can I see him?”
“Take?” He looked hurt at the implication. “I did not take him anywhere. I am not in the business of taking people, ever. I promise you, any guests I am currently entertaining have all come completely voluntarily.”
“So you admit he’s here.”
“I do.”
“Is he here alone? Are there others with him?” Katya asked. Jim put a hand out to forestall that line of questioning: he thought they had agreed to take Lisitsov and go. Unless the cavalry showed up—and without his phone, at this late hour—that seemed unlikely, Jim wanted to keep things as simple as possible. Vorov, however, caught his gesture and noted it with a narrowing of his eyes, a filing-away expression.
“There are, certainly there are,” Vorov said. “Again, I don’t see why my houseguests are any of your concern.”
“I want to see him,” Katya said, her voice rising with fury.
“He’s sleeping, I’m afraid. He is the oldest of my guests, and, as you well know, he likes his nights to end early. But, I’ll tell you what: come this way. I’ll introduce you to some of his friends.”
He led them back down the hallway, and then through a kitchen, where six men—expressionless, dead-eyed, thick-necked, leather-jacketed: guards, obviously—sat playing durak at a round table. In one corner was a stove, recently used and strewn with pots. Carrot, celery, and onion detritus littered the counter, and a bottle of red wine stood open by the pot. Just behind the table were two sliding glass doors: the same kind that opened, in fact, from the tiny kitchen onto the postage-stamp yard at Jim’s parents’ house. The men nodded solemnly to Vorov as he passed, but their eyes followed Jim and Katya.
Through another swinging door they entered a long, low dining room, where three people—a man and two women—sat finishing a meal at a table far too long for them. They sat together in a far corner, as though huddling for warmth. When Vorov came in with his broad host’s smile, they seemed to retreat slightly into their chairs, hooding their smiles and sharpening their eyes in fear.
“You see?” he said. “They’re finishing their dinner; they are about to retire for an after-dinner drink, perhaps a bit of music. There are no guards here. There is no compulsion here. Just three friends enjoying my hospitality. Isn’t that right? Svetlana? Matvei? Isn’t that true?”
The three nodded in unison as though controlled by strings. Jim read fear and truculence, but Vorov was a far more skilled reader of people than he was, and, still smiling, he snapped his fingers and beckoned them back into the kitchen.
“I enjoy the company of intelligent, serious people,” he said over his shoulder, as he gestured for them to sit down at a round wooden table in the corner of the room set with a bottle of Saint-Estèphe and a platter of smoked fish, black bread, and pickles. “I have a university post in California, you see, but here in Ukraine I prefer to cultivate a more informal salon. They are my guests for the week.”
“And after this week they return home?” Jim asked.
Vorov just smiled and ambled over to the table with three wine-glasses. “Why don’t you open the bottle, Mr. Vilatzer.” He handed Jim a corkscrew. “And please: help yourselves if you’re hungry. Nikolai,” he called out. “Nikolai, would you come down here, please. Esteemed Lisitsov’s granddaughter wishes to see him.”
They entered the kitchen from one end as Skrupshin came in from the other. They hovered by the door, while Skrupshin stood by the table. The guards all had their eyes on Vorov. “Nikolai, could you: as we discussed earlier?”
“Of course.”
From behind the house Jim heard two quick pops, followed by a burst of machine-gun fire. “What was that?” he asked.
Vorov, still serene, said, “I think your friends might have just met mine. I enjoy entertaining, Mr. Vilatzer, as you can see, but I prefer my guests invited.”
“I don’t . . .” Jim stammered. “What are you talking about?” Katya reached for his hand, and he squeezed back.
“Earlier, at the door I asked you if you were alone. You said you were. I believe you were not. Tell me, please: were you alone? Does anyone know you are here?”
“We came alone,” Jim said. He tried to speak evenly, but he could hear and feel the terrified tremolo in his voice. “We came because we know you are a businessman, and we thought . . .”
Another bang, this one impossibly loud, made Jim jump and Katya scream. Skrupshin held a Makarov in front of him. It was still smoking. The card game was short a player: the guard closest to Skrupshin was slumped over the table, a sticky, baseball-sized maroon-and-gray concavity in the back of his head.
“That is what we do, Mr. Vilatzer, to spies. His cousin, Nikolai just discovered, is FSB. Who knows how much they know.” Vorov’s affability had gone, and in its place was a horrible, hard, acquisitive emptiness, a blankness without a bottom. “I saw two shadows duck into the forest when you entered. I will ask you one last time: who else knows you’re here?”
“Okay,” Jim pleaded. “Okay, okay.” Skrupshin advanced toward him with the gun. “Before I came . . .”
Jim’s answer was cut off by a loud crash and a riot of shouting as a horde of soldiers in balaclavas, blue uniforms, and OMON badges, their weapons raised, kicked in the back doors. As Skrupshin turned toward the door, the lead soldier—an enormous mountain of a man whose blond beard protruded, hedgehoglike, from beneath his mask—aimed a chunky plastic black-and-yellow gun at Skrupshin. When he pulled the trigger, instead of a bang there was a whistling, whiplike sound as a wire shot from the gun into Skrupshin. He fell over twitching as a wet spot spread across the front of his trousers.
Katya screamed, released Jim’s hand, and disappeared through the dining room door. The three living guards dropped their cards and put their hands on their heads, but a group of soldiers started beating them with their gun butts until they collapsed to the floor, their hands still around their heads as the soldiers began kicking them where they writhed.
An immense soldier, with a beard that protruded past the bottom of his ski mask, caught Vorov in the gut with a knee, grabbing him as he fell. He had just turned his attention to Jim when a shrill “Don’t move!” in English and in a woman’s voice, stopped the room cold.
Mina stood in the doorway in Kevlar and a raised ski mask. She aimed a Glock toward Jim and the soldier. “This is a Russian operation!” the soldier shouted. “You have no jurisdiction.”
Jim heard the gunshot, but only for the briefest moment. The bullet caught him in his forehead, just above the eye, and sent him reeling. A warm, wet, red cloud veiled his vision, and then nothing, nothing at all.