Dirty Fire (29 page)

It was less a plan than a prayer.

Mikhail pulled a mock-terrified face.

“And that does…
what
, my deluded little friend? Am I now to cringe in horror, to drop this”—he made a slight movement with his pistol, now aimed at the midpoint of the canvas—“and surrender to you?”

Mikhail smiled, and I saw his knees flex slightly as he settled into a shooter’s stance. “I think not.”

To the side, there was a sudden commotion and a woman screamed something in what might have been Russian. From the opposite side, in my peripheral vision I saw the bulky figure of the artist begin to move toward Mikhail: too slowly, too awkwardly to cover the distance in time.

The gunman seemed not to have heard or seen anything. His attention was elsewhere, as was that of his target.

Even at that distance, I could see his fingertip begin to flatten against the trigger, and involuntarily I tensed against the bullet’s impact.

• • •

Outside, Charlie Herndon listened to his joints pop as he squatted behind a thick bush. He cursed, softly but with a heartfelt intensity.

The thin foliage offered no protection as such; the Kevlar vest he had taken from his car’s trunk was designed for that. When the vests had been issued, the FBI quartermaster—a former Marine gunnery sergeant—had assured Herndon that it would stop a handgun bullet. “Or at least,” the quartermaster had said, straightfaced, “slow it down enough so it don’t go through and ruin the other side, too.”

Around him, the sights and sounds of a suburban night added a surreal touch to the situation. The vibratto nightsongs of a million crickets reverberated through the air. Herndon could see the flitting specks of nocturnal insects in their ceaseless orbits around the streetlamp a dozen yards away. Further down the street, only an upper window—probably a bedroom, the FBI agent guessed—glowed in an otherwise darkened house. Even here, despite what he suspected was underway inside the Travers residence, the appearance was one of domestic normalcy. The vehicles, parked in the circular drive in neat alignment with the curbing, only added to the air of genteel prosperity. Surely, it all seemed to insist, nothing untoward could happen here.

Herndon twisted his wrist, trying to read the luminous dial of his watch.

“It’s 10:38,” Chaz Trombetta said in a low voice. He had arrived minutes before, materializing from the shadows so quietly that he had momentarily startled the FBI man. In his hand was the heavy .45 Army Colt nobody could convince Chaz was antique.

Gil Cieloczki too knelt alongside, not knowing exactly why he had come, but unwilling to be left out of the endgame that appeared so close. All three men stared at the Travers mansion, each of them wondering what to do next.

It had been almost fifteen minutes since they had seen any movement against the backlighted curtains of the downstairs windows. The FBI dispatcher had patched Herndon’s cell phone through to the Hostage Rescue Team’s helicopter.

Even now, they were still at least five minutes away.

The HRT team leader confirmed what a dour Herndon had already guessed: even when they deployed, it would take at least another five minutes before they would all be in position to do anything useful. So Herndon, Gil and Trombetta had crept noiselessly over the manicured lawn and past carefully clipped ornamental shrubbery. The front door of the house was only a few yards away.

They said to stand by
, Herndon grumbled to himself with ill grace.
So I’m goddam standing by, and some mutt inside there is the one who’s really running the play.

The thought made him bristle anew. For the third time in as many minutes, he checked the action of his sidearm and waited.

Through the cellular phone he held shoulder to ear, he had listened to the terse, cryptic reports as other elements of the FBI mobilized. Herndon had briefed his SAC on the situation then asked for and received confirmation of his status as senior agent at the scene.

Soon there would be more than a dozen men, armed with automatic weapons and dressed in black jumpsuits, surrounding the house. They would await only the word to begin an assault. Presumably, Herndon would give that word—though at this moment he had not the slightest idea what course of action was possible, let alone advisable. And, he reminded himself, right now his strike force consisted of a possibly corrupt cop, a fireman—and one pissed-off Special Agent less than two years from retirement.

Still,
he mused, irritably,
it is good to be king.

From somewhere deep inside the house, he heard a noise. It sounded like a single note struck from a muffled bass drum.

“Gunshot!” Trombetta hissed near his ear.

“Oh, shit,” Herndon said, and ordered his stiffened knees to push him upright as he spoke into the phone. “Team Leader, this is Herndon. We have shots fired in the house. Repeat, there’s a shooter inside. We’re going in.” Without waiting for a response, he stuffed the cell phone deep in his side pocket.

He started forward. “Cieloczki, stay here. Trombetta, you’re watching my back,” he growled without turning his head. Chaz Trombetta, grateful but determined not to show it, just nodded grimly. He moved forward, a few steps behind the FBI man.

Gil Cieloczki watched them edge, quickly but cautiously, toward the door. He definitely did not want to follow them; there were any number of very good reasons to stay where he was.

Then the other two men were on the entryway. Gil watched Herndon rise and turn his back to the door. His leg swung forward, smashed back. The powerful mule kick shattered the doorjamb, and the two officers pushed past, guns drawn.

Gil waited another moment. Then, muttering something that might have been either a curse or a prayer, he rose from the lawn and followed.

• • •

“Let go, you insane cow!”
Mikhail shouted—for reasons he himself probably did not understand, in English.

It had all happened in an instant; the sound of his single shot still echoed from the concrete walls. Petra Natalia Valova had pushed hard past Tarinkoff and lurched forward, her hands outstretched. “
Nyet, piristán’!”
she screamed, just as the pistol fired.

And then she was flailing madly at her countryman, a wordless wail on her lips.

The woman fought like a wildcat, digging her fingernails into the wrist just above Mikhail’s gun hand and hanging on with both hands. She had slapped Mikhail’s pistol at the instant of its discharge, and then it was if the demons of hell had been loosed on him.

Mikhail could not have known if his shot had struck the painting—which was, to the Russian, merely old paint on older cloth. More urgently, he did not know if he had shot the lunatic who had stupidly hidden behind it. He did not know what the others in the room were doing, or were about to do.

All he did know was that he must remove this shrieking madwoman from his arm.

The two figures lurched across the concrete floor, crashing against one of the naked light bulbs that hung from the raftered ceiling. The light swung wildly, creating moving shadows that only added to the chaotic confusion of the meleé. Mikhail was the stronger, but Petrova’s strength was fueled by a raging desperation. She clung, limpet-like, to her adversary’s gun arm.

Mikhail thrashed sideways, the movement whipping the pistol barrel against Valova’s temple. The impact unlocked her grip slightly, enough for him to peel one of her hands from his wrist. He was not gentle; with an audible crack, one of the woman’s fingers broke under his grip. A sudden hard jerk freed the hand that held his gun.

And then I crashed heavily into the pair of grappling Russians, and the force of my impact sent the three of us scuttling across the concrete floor. As one, we careened off a wall and spun back into the middle of the room. I struggled to reach Mikhail’s gun hand as the Russian struck the screaming woman with a tight fist.

As Petra Valova was knocked free of the scrum, Mikhail twisted the pistol toward me.

But my hand chopped hard at his arm, striking the knot of muscle alongside his elbow. As the brachial nerve spasmed, Mikhail’s fingers opened and his gun fell away. He half turned to retrieve it, and I lunged onto his back. My weight dragged both of us to the floor, the Russian on the bottom facedown.

I moved up into the chokehold, elbows gripped in the opposing hands, clamping against the sides of Mikhail’s neck. In response, the Russian dropped his chin into his chest, using his jaw to partially block the pressure on his carotid arteries.

It was not enough. He bucked under me with the panic of a man feeling his consciousness begin to slip, and I knew that white-hot shooting stars were swimming madly on the fringes of his vision. He had only seconds before he would pass out.

I clung to his neck like a murderous monkey.

But with an urgent strength fueled by his own desperation, Mikhail pushed hard against the floor until his arms levered his torso upright. From close behind, I could feel his labored breathing rasp against my ear.

With a great effort, Mikhail smashed his head back into my face, hard—once, then again. The Russian’s head smashed solidly into my cheekbone, and the second blow took me alongside my jaw. The double impact sent twin thunderbolts of pain flashing across my vision. I felt the gunman slip from my grasp, and I tumbled bonelessly to the cool concrete. Above, the naked ceiling rafters spun sickeningly in and out of focus.

Mikhail came to his feet, gasping, looking right and left for his pistol.

During the few seconds it took for my vision to clear, as if from a distance, I heard the voice speak—a soft undertone, the words in an unaccented English.

“Is this what you need?”

When I could finally push my upper body from the floor, the gun was in Anatoli Tarinkoff’s hand—held loosely, but not inexpertly. As Mikhail held his own hand out for the weapon, I could see that he was breathing hard. But now it was not only from his exertion. His features were those of a man trying hard to ignore the alarm that his instincts were suddenly, urgently sounding.

The light glared from above and behind them, and the two figures were almost silhouettes against it. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought I could see the consulate official’s lips moving. Mikhail did not respond; he just stared at his countryman, standing as still as death.

Upstairs, there was the sudden crash of glass and splintering wood. Then the sound of rushing men, moving room to room and shouting in an unmistakable drill, filled the air. Mikhail’s head snapped in the direction of the stairwell door.

When he turned back, Tarinkoff’s grip on his gun was no longer casual.

“Anatoli.” It was Ron Santori’s voice, and it came from where the agent had flattened himself near the heavy packing crate. He slowly rose to his feet, and an unspoken communication seemed to pass between him and the art attaché.

“I am sorry, my friend,” I heard Tarinkoff say, with a philosophical shrug. “But we must salvage what we can. After all, I have diplomatic immunity.”

He turned toward Mikhail, a movement not unlike that of a serpent coiling.

“Sadly, you do not.”

And then Tarinkoff shot Mikhail once, in the forehead.

A mist of blood and pulverized bone jetted from the back of the Russian’s head, iridescent in the harsh backlighting. He stood motionless for a heartbeat, then collapsed into himself. The body that had been Mikhail twitched furiously for a moment, its heels bouncing on the concrete floor, and then was still.

The echo of the shot was still ringing in the room when Charlie Herndon kicked through the door. He was flanked by Chaz Trombetta, and both were training their weapons into the room. Behind them, I recognized Gil Cieloczki, his face tense with the moment.

Anatoli Tarinkoff raised both his arms high, the pistol dangling from one finger, hanging by its trigger guard. His face bore a casual welcoming smile that was inappropriate in the event.

“Please do not shoot,” he said amiably. “There is no further danger here.”

Nearby, Petra Valova half knelt before the paintings she had propped against the wall. She was staring at some indeterminate point in the distance, her eyes wild in a face battered bloody and her arms spread wide. One of her fingers dangled at an impossible angle, but she did not appear to notice her pain.

Instead, she looked like a mother desperately trying to shield her brood against a threat still unaddressed—one that only she could fully comprehend.

Then I heard a sound that must have been there all the time. It was a woman calling for help, loudly but not hysterically. Under that sound was another: that of a man groaning in pain through clenched teeth.

On the floor, Peter Comstock was being rocked side to side by Marita Travers. Her hands, still bound with the tape, were smeared with something dark. I could barely make out the pool of blood spreading on the floor beneath them.

With the instincts of a trained paramedic, Gil pushed past Chaz and Herndon and knelt beside the two civilians. He disentangled the woman’s arms and gently lowered the man to the concrete floor. An arc of black blood pulsed from a wound, rough-edged and large, in the man’s temple.

As Gil began to work, his face was grim.

“Get an ambulance here, quick,” Gil said, and Herndon spoke into his cellular phone in a voice low and urgent.

I sat on the floor, still half-dazed and unable to move forward. Now I knew, with a terrible certainty, where Mikhail’s final bullet had gone.

“So that’s what this whole thing was about?” Mel Bird asked, incredulous. “A damn publicity stunt?”

He sat in a wheelchair near the edge of Terry Posson’s hospital bed; his shoulder was encased in a fiberglass cast that elevated his arm to a right angle from his body. For herself, Terry had raised the bed to a half-propped position. She sat clear-eyed and upright, the thick hospital dressings looking like a lopsided gauze turban on her head. I stood with a shoulder against the wall, leaving Charlie Herndon to shift uncomfortably in the remaining chair, undersized for his bulk.

“In part,” I answered. “Or you could call it an attempt to resolve a fifty-year-old crime. Levinstein wanted to put the Russians in the spotlight with the whole world watching.”

“I still don’t get it,” Bird said. “Okay, these were valuable paintings. But you said the Russians stole what, thousands of paintings? Millions of ‘em?” He shook his head stubbornly. “They were sweating a little bad
press
, for God’s sake? Why so much trouble to get back
nine
of ‘em?”

“Money, pure and simple,” Herndon said. He fished in his side pocket and pulled out a page torn from a newspaper. As he passed it to Bird, I could read the headline:
RUSSIA TERMS NEW IMF LOAN ‘ESSENTIAL
’
; SAYS DELAY COULD IMPERIL ECONOMIC STABILITY.

“Basically, Levinstein’s plan was to focus world attention on all the artwork the Russians had looted after World War II—that is, art stolen by the Nazis from Holocaust victims,” Herndon said. “In ‘98, the Russians pledged to give it all back. But they kept finding reasons to drag their feet. This left Stan Levinstein seriously pissed. The Russians claimed they didn’t know what they had, or what paintings belonged to dead Jews? Okay, fine—he’d show the world the bastards weren’t even trying.

“Stanley got in touch with his Mafiya contacts, outlined what he was looking for: world-famous pieces known to have been stolen from Jews who went to the death camps, specified, by name and artist. Pieces the Russians had pledged to return. At first, it had to look like a straightforward snatch job, probably using some inside help. They round up the usual suspects, catch one of the people Levinstein used, sweat him big-time. Of course, the guy talks—gives them an American ‘art collector’ named Levinstein.”

“When they run Levinstein’s name through their computers, all kinds of alarm bells go off,” Herndon said. “Nine paintings—world-famous works that most people thought, or at least had been willing to believe, had been destroyed—are stolen
to order
. By a guy their files describe as a Jewish activist with an ax to grind and the know-how to grind it in a very creative, very public way. Imagine a press conference where Levinstein unveils all nine pieces and tells the world how he got them.”

In his voice was grudging admiration.

“Fast forward to last December,” Herndon said. “Just when they need another massive infusion of cash, the Russian government finds out what Levinstein had done. They were looking at a public relations disaster. So they tried to play it cagey.”

Bird scanned the clipping he still held and looked at Herndon. “No paintings, no loans? That was it?”

“More like ‘no credibility, no credit,’” Herndon replied. “That’s why they told Mikhail the paintings were expendable. Valuable as they were, they were nothing compared to the billions that were at stake. The last thing they could afford was to be caught in a lie—a big lie, on a subject that engendered strong emotions.”

“So Levinstein had the leverage he needed,” Terry said.

“Yeah, but Stanley had no desire to spend the next twenty years in federal prison for smuggling and art theft,” Herndon said. “So he contacted a man he knew as a public official and a neighbor: Talmadge Evans, who brought in Nederlander. Stanley thought he was protecting himself—after all, he never intended to keep the paintings. When he laid it all out for those two, he didn’t know he was giving them the chance of a lifetime.”

“And it came along right when they needed it,” I said. “Santori’s Operation Centurion was closing in on them. Suddenly they’re handed a multi-million-dollar retirement opportunity—one that, if they played it right, looked untraceable.”

“Until the Russians showed up, looking for the stuff,” Gil said. “Must have been a shock for Evans to get a call from the Russian Consulate, asking about the missing artwork.”

“Tarinkoff
called
the bastard?” Mel’s voice was frankly disbelieving. “How’d you get that?”

“Before we left the Travers place, the FBI found an excuse to confiscate Tarinkoff’s cellular phone,” I said. “Evans’s office number was in the speed-dial memory. It was listed under the name ‘R. Hood’—Tarinkoff’s idea of a joke, I guess. When we looked at the phone records, we found a half-dozen calls to Evans’s office since early March.”

“The slick bastard says he was inquiring about a ‘rumor’ of missing artwork,” Gil said. “A logical question from a cultural attaché, and it didn’t directly implicate him. But Tarinkoff sent a strong signal that he, on behalf of his government, was ready to make a deal for the artwork. Evans considered the opportunity too good to pass up. It meant there was suddenly an immediate market for the paintings—the payoff could come in days, weeks at the most, instead of having to wait years.”

“It was a smart play for Tarinkoff,” I said. “Why not work all the angles? They already had the local Mafiya hoods out looking.”

“As well as their psycho Mikhail,” Terry said. “They had a lot of people trying to get their paintings back.”

“Or to make sure they were destroyed,” Herndon nodded. “Valova came to the United States to keep Mikhail from doing exactly that. She was lucky; Levinstein died before Mikhail could make him talk. But the Russian kept looking. When the house burned down later the same day, Mikhail knew there had to be another person involved. So he started shadowing the investigation.”

“Mikhail followed me back from Stateville Penitentiary on at least one occasion,” I said, and shook my head ruefully. “I thought it was Santori’s people, maybe somebody Nederlander had sent.”

“Actually, destroying the paintings would have been the easiest solution, and maybe the smartest one,” Charlie Herndon said. “She took a big risk coming over here to try to recover the paintings and get them back to Russia.”

“She took a bigger risk at the Travers house,” Gil observed. “Going after a psychopath with a gun. Even if he was
her
psycho, more or less.”

“
She
took a risk?” Bird said sarcastically. He shot a thumb in my direction. “How about this idiot?” He turned to me. “Something give you the idea that painting was bulletproof?”

It was my turn to look abashed.

“I just took the chance,” I said. “Valova had worked herself into a frenzy. Maybe I got caught up in all the excitement, too. I would have looked pretty foolish if Ms. Valova hadn’t cracked.”

“Like a dead fool,” Posson said, “with pieces of a multi-million-dollar painting stuck all over his body.”

“I was lucky,” I admitted, “but there was a lot of luck in all this, good and bad. Nederlander panicked and pulled the plug on the whole insurance scam. That forced all the dirty cops in the ring to scurry around for new income sources. Plus it forced Nederlander—as well as Evans, as it turned out—to look for a big score to retire on.”

“Enter Levinstein,” Bird said, “and the rest is history.”

I grinned widely. “Or it will be. Len Washburn’s been laughing like a bastard all day. He’s promised his publisher a hell of a book out of this. Kellogg is filling him in on Sam Lichtman’s deathbed statement and providing documentation that backs it up. That should light a fire under Ron Santori’s career, when the book comes out.”

“Until then, Ronnie should be a happy man,” Herndon said. “He’s got a whole platoon of Justice Department lawyers busy. Evans is trying to make a deal; he’d like to avoid a potential death penalty. He’s offering to give up a whole raft of your aldermen, building inspectors, contractors—there’s even a mob tie-in he’s dangling in front of the legal boys. They’ll be writing up charges until next Christmas. And he’s got a ton of crooked cops to cook for dessert.”

“I hear the State Police is patrolling Lake Tower,” Mel Bird said.

Gil nodded. “Should be a lot of vacancies on the police force when you two get out. Including on the detective division.”

“What about Trombetta?” Bird asked me.

Herndon answered first. “He’s down as a confidential informant—that’s a step up the immunity ladder from just being a ‘cooperating witness,’” the FBI agent said gruffly. “I don’t know if he’ll save his shield. But I don’t think he’s going to jail, if that’s what you mean. Hell, if that bastard Tarinkoff gets a free ride, Trombetta probably deserves one too.”

“Story in the paper today said he was a hero,” Bird remarked sarcastically. “Tarinkoff, I mean. They said he grabbed the gun and saved Davey’s ass. But how come they didn’t have anything about gazillions’ worth of stolen paintings?”

“Because they didn’t know,” I said quietly.

“Decision from Washington,” Herndon said, and his voice was curiously flat. “They decided it would be inadvisable, particularly at a time when—and I quote—‘the Russian government is moving toward an equitable resolution of the trophy art issue.’ Translated, Washington and Moscow made a deal.”

“All that happened, they still don’t have to give it all back?” Bird was incredulous. “Or even admit they have it hidden away?”

Herndon shrugged, and I looked away.

“But the pieces Levinstein got out of Russia.” Terry paused and looked around the group. “What happens to those paintings now?”

All eyes turned to Herndon. The FBI art agent’s oversized shoulders rose in a shrug.

“That’s a damn fine question,” he said in his deep voice. “You see, there’s been a kind of…complication come up.”