City of Ice (16 page)

“The Russian freighter is the key,” Sandra said. She
held the phone now against her shoulder, awaiting his response.

“All right. I’ll get it.”

He accepted the receiver from her and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Who are you?” Sandra went back to her labors.

“The Russian freighter is the key.”

“Yeah, I got that message. Now who are you? I’m tired of this.”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Give me a code name, then. At least that. I need to refer to you in some way. When you leave messages I need to confirm who’s calling.”

His source chuckled lightly on the other end. “You’re looking for a clue. You’re hoping I’ll give something away. All right. I’ll go along with that. Give me a second. Okay, let’s name this operation Steeplechase. You can call me Arch. Any messages left from Steeplechase Arch refer both to me and to this operation.”

“What operation?”

“Don’t patronize me, Cinq-Mars.”

The detective squeezed the phone in his hand, as if information might squirt free. “Tell me about the freighter then.”

“I already have. The Russian freighter is the key. Take it from there. Good luck, Cinq-Mars.”

Steeplechase Arch hung up.

Cinq-Mars mulled over the message, then crossed to where his wife was sweeping dust and asked without a word of preamble if she had ever fired a rifle.

“Émile, what’s going on?” She leaned on her broom and explored the intensity in his eyes.

“East of Aldgate,” he murmured, looking away.

“Excuse me? Émile? What does that mean?”

“Sandra, you were raised on a farm. You must’ve fired a weapon.”

“Rifles, sure. Shotguns in duck season. I’m American. Don’t we all blast away at each other? It’s our constitutional right.”

“I’m going into the village. I’ll buy a shotgun. I want you to keep it with you whenever I’m gone. Especially out here. When you ride the trails, take along the cell phone. From now on when you’re in the house, I want you to keep the doors locked. I don’t mean to scare you, but this might be a good time to be prudent.”

“Émile?” She searched his eyes but found no solace there, no humor, no retraction. She turned her head away. Cinq-Mars moved to enclose her within his embrace, but she twisted out of his grasp and returned to the horses.

“Sandra,” he said, coming up behind her.

She faced him again. “Émile, what next?” When he could not answer she shook her head. “Go,” she said. “Get the gun. Don’t worry about me. I can shoot straight.”

“It’s probably nothing,” he said.

“It probably
isn’t
nothing,” she corrected him. “But how am I supposed to know when you won’t talk to me? Out of the blue you ask me to arm myself. Will you ever tell me what’s going on, Émile? Ever?”

How could he convey his gut suspicions when they made no sense?

“This isn’t about cops and robbers, is it?”

Cinq-Mars nodded. “People don’t realize it yet, but there’s a war on. No one knows I’m involved, but when they do…” He let his voice trail off.

The couple stood silently next to each other, and Sandra at last consented to his embrace. In the cool damp of the barn, they kissed. Breaking it off, she bent to resume her labors, sweeping, tirelessly sweeping, and Cinq-Mars turned and through the small side door walked out into the brilliant sunlight of that fine winter morning.

With Detective Bill Mathers in tow, Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars traveled to the city docks before noon and drove down to the commercial gate, expecting his badge to ease entry onto the property. Instead, a security guard, looking down upon him, recited a litany of procedures. Mathers got out of the car and went around to the cubicle. With his face to the frosty glass, he demanded to know what the old fart had against cops. Cop and sentry had a few bad moments. Finally, the guard made a phone call, authorization was granted, and Mathers signed the visitors’ book. At that point Cinq-Mars heaved himself out of the car, barged into the guard’s hut, and demanded to see the book.

“I’m not authorized to show you that,” said the man, a wizened churl with a gripe against the living who did his best to make the world conform to his rules.

“I don’t have the authorization to arrest you for impeding an investigation, but I could be induced,” Cinq-Mars warned him. He was hoping the man would laugh, but instead he put a hand on his holster, straightened his back, and looked grim. “Hey. I’m kidding.”

“I don’t have authorization.”

He was finding the guard’s bullying meekness mildly endearing. “Go ahead. Request authorization. I’m happy to wait.” He tapped him on the shoulder as if they were old comrades-in-arms and stepped outside. The moment the guard concluded his call Cinq-Mars barged back inside while Mathers stepped up to the glass, and together they examined the book with the window of the cubicle between them. “There!” he announced. The mother lode.

“Lordy be. How about that?” Mathers whistled.

“Day before Christmas, were you on duty?” Cinq-Mars asked the guard.

“I got seniority. Took five days off around Christmas. Two before, two after.”

“You’ll have to make another inquiry. I want you to request authorization for me to confiscate this book as evidence.”

The guard looked from one man to the other to determine if he was pulling his leg before consenting. “Somebody better send me a replacement book.” He’d decided the two detectives appreciated the value of procedure. Minutes later the officers departed with the book sitting on the backseat of their squad car, following the guard’s meticulous directions along the docks to the Russian freighter.

Dilapidated grain elevators stood alongside the freighters belligerent against the wharves. The Port of Montreal wasn’t busy in winter, although icebreakers kept the river open to the sea. The scarcity of ships and the quiet made the docks an eerie place.

Clambering out of the car, the detectives stared up at the rusty black behemoth that was the Russian freighter. Shared knowledge passed between them. This was no three-bedroom apartment. What could be concealed within that frame was beyond their ability to discover. Snow and ice hung from the upper decks. Spring lines binding the ship to the wharf were rimmed with icicles that glittered in the morning sun. The ramp leading to the main deck looked flimsy. Wind had blown snow across the ship’s name.

“Kind of makes a needle in a haystack look like a snap,” mused Mathers.

“At least in that situation you know you’re looking for a needle.”

“I could ask what we’re doing here,” the junior partner hedged.

“You could, but you don’t want to waste our time.”

They proceeded to the base of the ramp, and Cinq-Mars made room for the more agile man to go first.
They ascended, their gloved hands clamped to the frozen rail, resisting the urge to glance down. Halfway up, Mathers stalled, his breath puffs of steam. “Are you sure we can’t leave this to the Mounties?”

He had such a baby face, Cinq-Mars noticed. With that mug he was a choirboy for life. “They’ve been here. Didn’t find a thing. Mush, Bill. Don’t leave me out here to freeze.”

They were ignored on deck. Political change in Moscow had not altered the disposition of these sailors, a sullen, uncommunicative, accusatory lot. The detectives climbed an exterior companionway to the high wheelhouse, where a hostile officer informed them that the captain would be summoned. He made them wait, nattering in Russian, before he put the call through.

Activity on the decks was lethargic, and the noise of the ship reverberated through the steel hull, the low murmured burr of the ship’s systems interspersed by a rhythmic clanging. The wheelhouse was dreary. Despite a continuous blast of warm air, the steel walls caused the men to feel damp and chilled. They waited in the company of wary junior officers who were inspired to stare, and by the time the ship’s captain arrived both policemen believed that they were the ones under official scrutiny.

Captain Vaclev Yakushev was no more than five feet, six inches, a hundred and twenty pounds. Heavily accented, his first words showed a rudimentary command of English, and he promptly dismissed the three crewmen present.

“You are not the police here before.”

“Probably you were speaking with members of the RCMP,” Bill Mathers told him. “We’re MUCPD—Montreal Urban Community.”

“What business you have here? City Montreal Police—what I have do with you?”

“What’s your name again, sir?” Cinq-Mars shot out in a hard voice. He would not be reduced by this man. He was anxious to intercept any drift the conversation might take toward challenging his right to be there.

“Captain Vaclev Yakushev. This I told to you. Who are you?”

“Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars. My partner, Detective Bill Mathers. How long have you been in port, sir?”

He screwed up his face to indicate that the question was difficult. “Little while.”

“Be more specific, sir. Check your log if necessary.”

“We come here, it was eleven October.”

“You’ve stayed awhile.”

“That’s what I told to you.” He shifted his shoulders around to put his rising impatience on display.

“What has kept you in port so long?”

“This is known. We have difficulties.”

“Excuse me?”

The man expressed his irritation. “This is known.”

“Not to me.”

The captain heavily sighed. “Ownership is problem. Until ownership of vessel is resolve, we cannot sail.”

“Why do you continue to load and unload?”

“We have no hurry. Sometimes we are told to us hold shipment. After that we are told to us unload. Once we are told load what we are told unload three days before. Of course, all is nonsense. What can we do? We load, we unload. We are here stuck.”

“On the twenty-fourth of December, the day before Christmas, what were you doing?”

“I do not know what I do on that day.”

“Check your log, please, sir.”

The man hadn’t shaven in a few days and his beard was gray with black bristles mixed in. His gray hair was cut short. He wore a blue sweater with an elbow in need of darning and flipped through the pages of
the ship’s log with evident disdain for the process. “A day the same as every day,” he concluded.

“Was it? On that day a man by the name of Mr. Walter Kaplonski visited your ship. Do you recall the visit, Captain?”

“Mr. Kaplonski, yes. I have done business with this man. As I said, it was a day like every day.”

“Was he accompanied?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Did he come alone or was he with someone?” Cinq-Mars gazed out across the broad decks of the freighter as though he was taking only a token interest in his questions now.

“This I don’t remember. I would say that he come alone here.”

Cinq-Mars turned. “That’s odd, because on the day in question Mr. Walter Kaplonski signed in at the gate in the company of Mr. Hagop Artinian. Did you meet Mr. Artinian, Captain?”

The captain gestured with his hands to indicate that he was at a loss. “I do not know this name.”

“You don’t.”

“I do not.”

“He was not aboard your ship?”

“I would say no.”

Cinq-Mars found the man’s impenetrable mien suspicious in itself.

“The record at the gate says that Mr. Artinian and Mr. Kaplonski were on the docks for about five hours before they passed back through the gate.”

“Maybe this other man he was waiting on dock. Maybe he did not come aboard my ship.”

“Thirty below zero that day. He would have frozen to death.”

“Perhaps he waited another place. On ship. On dock. I have no memory that name. I have no recollection Mr. Kaplonski arriving himself with another man.”

“Your English is improving, Captain. Your accent is losing its hold.” The captain stared back at him. “I have your permission to speak with your crew?”

“No, not. My crew has duties. I have spoken to police one time before. You have no place here.”

“We understand that you are loading stolen cars for shipment to the Soviet Union,” Cinq-Mars told him. Here was a man not unfamiliar with interrogation, he believed, and he wanted to keep him guessing.

The man smiled thinly. “You make errors. Three. One error is, no cars aboard my ship. Other police check for that. This is false accusation. Another mistake, this ship does not return my country. We sail from here go Boston, New York. I understand this, but must wait for to resolve ownership. After, I am told, we go San Francisco through Panama Canal, or we go Buenos Aires. To be decided. We take no cars back my country. One more error you make say is Soviet Union. Perhaps you do not know this but Soviet Union is no more existing.”

Émile Cinq-Mars walked slowly across the steel floor. Bits of black rubber mat clung to the surface, although most had worn away. He came up very close to the steely-eyed captain of the Russian freighter, and the smaller man held his ground. “How long do you intend to remain in port, Captain?” he asked him quietly.

“This is not known.”

“Approximately.”

“Many weeks.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Sufficient time for us to conduct our investigation.”

“Then everyone is pleased. I hope you to find your cars, Detective.” He craned his neck to look back at Cinq-Mars, to meet his challenge. Clearly he was not about to be intimidated by mere height. He had stood up to large men before.

“Mr. Hagop Artinian, the young man who was on
your ship, the man you have no recollection of seeing, was murdered that very day. The time of death puts him aboard your ship, Captain.”

“This is not possible—”

“No? A question’s just been answered for me. Now I know why he was dressed as Santa Claus. You could not risk having the security guard check the car trunk, which they routinely do, and yet you had to get Mr. Artinian out of here and you had to have him check himself out at the gate. So you dressed him and Kaplonski as Santas, as if they were off to do some good, and you drove them out, the living beside the dead. Now all I have to do is figure out what interest it is that you and your people have with me, to go to the trouble of placing a sign around his neck with my name on it. That is the next mystery, Captain. Like the last, it shall be revealed. Good day, sir.”