In for a Ruble (11 page)

“Your mother?”

“Bad subject.”

The Cheka stomped in, wearing high leather boots with steep heels, Lavrenty Pavlovich at the head of the column.

“Maybe I should call another day.”

“You’re on the phone now. You wouldn’t have called unless you wanted something.”

Ouch. And true. “Aleksei, I…”

“Don’t. I’m sorry. That wasn’t called for. It’s been a bad few days, as I said.”

“You’re right, though. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m just not used to…”

“I understand. It’s your kopek.”

“All right. Efim Konychev.”

Pause. “What about him?” His tone had been sour. Now it was sour and on guard.

“I might be bumping up against him.”

“Be careful.”

“I figured that out. Ivanov says he’s been in hiding since the Tverskaya attack.”

“I guess so.”

Sour, on guard, and evasive.

“Any idea why he’s showing himself now, or why the Feds here are letting him into the country, or why he’d want to be let in?”

A pause before he said, “I can’t talk about that.”

So the CPS was involved. “He causing your string of bad days?”

“You’re not listening to me.” Annoyance in his voice now.

Change the subject. “You ever run across a very tall Belarusian, maybe six seven, bald, pockmarked face, bad teeth, exceptional strength?”

There was a longer pause this time. “Why?”

“He laid a pretty good thumping on your old man a few nights ago. More than that, he seemed to know all about me, which suggests certain connections.”

“That’s your department.”

I let that go.

His voice softened. “Okay, few nights ago? Where?”

“Here. Second Avenue. He had four guys with him, but they could’ve been rent-a-thugs.”

The voice changed. “What are you working on?”

“Something I can’t talk about.”

Another pause. “I’ve heard about a man like that. Knack of appearing out of nowhere. Superhuman strength. Don’t know his name, no one does. Lots of stories, though. He likes to tie people up conscious and slit their wrists so they feel themselves die. If he has time. Otherwise, he just breaks their necks—with his hands.”

I was starting to look lucky.

“He’s supposed to be the chief enforcer of the Baltic Enterprise Commission.”

The connection I was looking for. I paused before I played my next card. I told myself I hadn’t been sure I wanted to when I placed the call, but that was rationalization.

“That photo of Konychev yesterday on Ibansk—it was taken outside an office building here in New York. One of the tenants is a big-time Wall Street investor, Sebastian Leitz.”

I was listening for curiosity, but he kept his voice flat, intentionally or not. “So?”

“Leitz is bidding on two TV networks here. Sixty-five billion dollars. His computers were bugged eight weeks ago. Right after I discovered that, I got a visit from the bucktoothed Belarusian. I call him Nosferatu, by the way.”

“More coincidences than you can tolerate?”

“One way to sum it up.”

“And what do you want from me?”

“Information. Background. I’m trying to put pieces together, figure out what’s going on.”

“You working for—what’s-his-name?—Leitz?”

“Can’t say.”

A long pause this time. “You think we’ll ever trust each other. I mean, really trust?
Both
of us?”

I started to answer—
I hope so
—but he was asking a two-sided question. His lack of trust was given and warranted. We both understood that. He was also asking if I could overcome a lifetime of cynical calculation and trust anyone—him—based on things as ethereal as blood and love.

Beria put in an appearance behind the public phone, wearing his Cheka uniform, pince-nez balanced on his ski-jump nose. Eyes dark and humorless, but not without curiosity.

Not so simple, is it?
he said.

Go away,
I said.

That’s not so simple, either. I’m here. I’ve always been here. I’ve always been part of it. I’ve always been part of you.

“Hang on,” I said to Aleksei. I let the receiver dangle and walked around the phone stand. The vision vanished. I came back and put the receiver to my ear.

“Sorry, bag lady listening in. I can only say, I’m willing to work on it. I can’t think of much that’s more important.”

“I can tell you’re trying. I hear it now. Keep at it. That’s all I can say. It’s going to take a while.”

“I understand that.” I looked around. Beria was nowhere to be seen.

He said, “I’m still trying to work some things out. You and the Cheka. You and Polina. I can’t say how long it will take. Or make any promises.”

Aleksei used our given names, as he’d done since we’d become reacquainted. I was his father, she’d been his mother, but neither of us had been there much in those roles. I had the unrealistic goal of someday being called
Nana
—Dad—but I doubted it would ever happen. A price of fate, and my own decisions, which I also understood all too well. I caught another glimpse of Lavrenty Pavlovich, on a park bench, shaking his head. I shook mine. Beria grinned before he evaporated into the cold morning sun.

“I just want to stay in the game. I won’t try to tell you how to play your cards,” I said.

“You told me that once before, remember? Don’t fold, make the other guy go out first.”

“I remember. I didn’t know who I was talking to at the time.”

“Chekists aren’t usually so slow on the uptake. Sorry—I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“No offense taken.”

A long pause. “Tell me this, if you can: This man Leitz, he seeing a woman named Alyona Lishina?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Around. You know who she is?”

“Konychev’s sister, ex-wife of Alexander Lishin. Current wife of Taras Batkin. Also the mother of a girl Leitz’s son spends a lot of time with. Why?”

“You’re well informed. We’re interested. But every time we start to ask we run into roadblocks.”

“Cheka roadblocks?”

“What do you think?”

No response to that.

“This your case?”

“Uh-huh.” Another long pause. “We’ve been building a case against the BEC for years, under the Kremlin radar. The problem, as you can appreciate, is that it’s a totally online business. Everything is done in the ether—or what they call the cloud these days. You’re a phisher and you need a base for your phishing expeditions. You have some contacts in the biz, or you visit a few online sites frequented by like-minded crooks. You get checked out, if you pass muster, you get access to a passworded site that’s essentially a shopping mall. Everything you need—applications, storage, memory, processing, protection—all available for sale or rent. You put together your package and use a version of PayPal to pay. You’ve never met anyone, no one’s met you. After a few months, the Web site’s taken down and another set up somewhere else. You get access if you’re still a customer in good standing. Simple, really, and totally anonymous.”

“How did you get on to them?”

“Usual way—get a tip, get lucky, bust a warehouse full of servers. Follow the data, apply pressure, work it up the line. BEC is big enough to require organization, so there is a chain of command, and we followed that. We also tracked the money, which is harder to hide, as you know. It was an international effort, us, the Germans, French, Brits, U.S. DoJ. We followed a half-dozen trails. One of the most productive was a child porn operation over there, busted five or six years ago. That led to the company processing the payments, that led to a couple of European banks, that led to shell companies here.”

“And you think the BEC’s behind them?”

“You asked about Konychev. He runs the BEC, with two partners—Lishin and Batkin. He’s one of yours.”

I ignored the barb. “I read that on Ibansk. Ivanov got his facts right?”

“Yes. Not Konychev’s choice, even if he is his brother-in-law.”

“Ivanov says the partnership was Kremlin enforced.”

“Cheka wanted one of its own on the inside. Surprised?”

Ivanov confirmed. Putin himself reportedly boasted, not long after becoming president, that thousands of Cheka operatives had been dispatched to take control of every government, business and, no doubt, criminal institution. Except …

“Batkin’s based here now.”

“I know.
Ambassador
Batkin. Russian-American Trade Council. I’m told he sets great store by his title. We’re not allowed to go anywhere near RATC, as I call it. I assume it’s a front for Chekists making their second career in organized crime.” Definitely a bitter edge to his voice now.

“He one of your targets, along with Konychev?”

“Don’t ask. Not that it matters. Lid’s been slammed on. Right at the time when the BEC leadership’s in disarray.”

He made no attempt to hide the frustration.

“Who’s being protected?”

“Everyone and anyone, as usual. Watch your step. The tall guy who beat you up, he probably still works for Konychev.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

“I hope you do.… I mean that.”

“I mean it too.”

CHAPTER
10

I walked home, Beria by my side.

He doesn’t trust you.

What do you know?

I’m the Cheka. I know everything.

I let him keep me company. It was his ground we were covering. Nobody stopped to ask,
Who’s he? Why are you talking to him?
Nobody paid us any mind.

This morning’s conversation with Aleksei had been the longest since dinner in Moscow when he’d walked out. We’d met twice while I was there. I’d gone looking for, if not reconciliation, at least a start down that road. I was prepared to tell him the truth about my past—the Gulag, the Great Disintegration of my marriage to his mother—and was terrified of his reaction. I hoped he wouldn’t hold it
all
against me. I was most worried about the shame of the Gulag and how badly Polina had poisoned the well. I found I had bigger problems. I should have seen them coming—he’d been more than clear last summer—but one of the hardest prisons to break out of is your own point of view.

The first meeting took place two nights after I arrived, at a restaurant the hotel concierge recommended. I wouldn’t be seeking his advice again. A dark, close cave, carved out of the basement of an old building near the Kremlin walls, with atmosphere to match. The raucous laughter from an American tour group bounced around the subterranean room, growing in volume as the waiter brought more vodka. The food was a jumble of Russian standards and what’s called “continental”—a menu of generic dishes that could have been concocted anywhere. Aleksei was in a bad mood, for reasons he wouldn’t specify. I suggested we move venues, but he waved with indifference and said this place was fine. I could barely hear, he didn’t have much to say, and I failed to find a path to get a conversation moving.

Outside, afterward, in the cold winter air, he apologized. “My fault. Nothing to do with you. It’s … Just a bad few days. How about we try again Thursday? I’ll choose a place.”

I walked back to the Metropole, hopefulness over the next meeting tempered by the sense that one opportunity had been wasted and I wouldn’t get too many more. I also wondered how often the “bad few days” came around.

The second meeting started well enough. His choice was a small neighborhood café, above ground and airy, even in the winter dark, with a limited, but appetizing menu and good draft beer. His mood seemed better, if still distant. That was to be expected, I supposed. I had suggested meeting at his apartment—I was curious to see where, and how, he lived—but he quickly parried that. I wondered if we were in his neighborhood. In New York, the Basilisk could have told me in an instant. As Foos is fond of pointing out to anyone who’ll listen, Europeans—including Russians—are more protective of their data.

Aleksei was at a table by the window when I arrived. He wore a dark jacket over a navy turtleneck and wool trousers. Two inches taller and thirty pounds lighter than I am, his thick black curly hair was close to needing a trim, but still kempt. He’d been described as resembling a young Mark Twain, and it fit. The black eye patch was in place—the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone gunned down Andrei Kozlov, first deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank, in 2006. The someone, of course, was widely presumed to be working for the Cheka.

We’d given the waitress our orders—meat for him, fish for me—when he said, “Okay, tell the story.”

I was taken aback by the abruptness of the request—or command, hard to tell which.

“What story do you want to hear?”

“You and Polina. You and Iakov. You and the Cheka. Where you came from. Why you left. Why you live in New York. You decide. It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

I listened for emotion—anger, bitterness, resentment, curiosity—but heard none. His voice was flat, almost professional in tone. He was a cop—to the extent he wanted to conduct an interrogation, he’d have a plan for how to go about it.

I didn’t have a plan. I’d thought about it, tried to develop one—before I left New York, on the plane, over the last few days. I still didn’t know where to start.

“What did your mother tell you?”

I assumed, perhaps unfairly, that Polina had imparted the worst. Maybe worse than that, although she wouldn’t necessarily have seen a need to exaggerate.

He shook his head. I thought at first he was refusing to answer. “She didn’t tell me much of anything. I asked, of course. All she said was, we were a family of the damned—doubly damned, was the way she put it.”

“She didn’t say why?”

He shook his head. “She believed it though.”

She would have, no doubt about that. “So you really don’t know anything about me?”

“Only what I learned in New York.”

I was looking at a mostly clean slate—with all the temptations such a vessel presents. I told myself to stick to the facts.

“Let’s start with the Cheka,” I said. “That’ll take us to matters closer to home.”

“It’s your story.”

The voice was still flat. I told the tale of my career, from the Foreign Language Institute through the Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence) to the First Chief Directorate, whose attention in my time was focused almost entirely on the Main Adversary—the United States—and my five assignments abroad.