In for a Ruble (26 page)

“You’ve read my file,” I said.

“I was actually more interested in the earlier part of the file—what happened before the Cheka.”

I didn’t answer. Alarm bells were ringing too loudly in my head. The early part of my file was totally bland and uninformative—Iakov had made sure of that. It was called a clean passport, my Gulag past had been expunged from the record. A former
zek
was a
zek
no more and could hold his head high without fear of shame or spurning or repulsion. Or that was the intention. But somehow Nosferatu had learned the truth. Now Batkin was making a similar implication. Or was I just paranoid?

“I’m not sure I follow,” I said as flatly as I could.

“Of course you do. My file reads the same, almost exactly the same, word for word.”

He took off his jacket and hung it carefully over the back of a chair. He undid a cufflink and rolled up the blue-gray sleeve. The arm was covered in tattoos in Cyrillic script.

“Vyatlag.”

He let that sleeve go and undid the other. More tattoos, different images and words.

“Gorlag. We were all in the same boat. Where were you, not that it makes any real difference?”

CHAPTER
26

I felt like I’d been punched—knocked flat. Gobsmacked, as the Brits say, a term that doesn’t translate, but somehow does. Batkin watched as I tried to clear my head. He’d thrown a calculated blow and hit—maybe harder than he knew. The surprise wasn’t his background, but the ease with which he admitted it. I don’t have the tattoos to record my time, but I could no more have owned up to Dalstroi and Vorkuta in the way he did than I could have put myself back into those state-sponsored hells-on-earth that formed my childhood.

“Surprised to meet a fellow traveler?” he said.

I nodded. The best I could do.

“There’s thousands of us. You know that.”

“But…”

“None of us talk about it? Of course. But what are we really afraid of? My Gulag upbringing is marked all over my body. No denying it. I don’t advertise it, but I don’t try to hide it either. You, on the other hand…”

I nodded again, as forcefully as I could. Probably looked feeble to him.

“None of us can move forward until we understand where we came from. When I read your file, I assumed you understood that. Your career here.”

The mention of my career here snapped me back to the present. He’d done a lot of research. He was using past and present to work me over. To what end?

He redid his cuffs. “You haven’t answered. Which camp?”

“Dalstroi … Then Vorkuta,” I said, defeated.

“Languages, that’s what Iakov saw?”

“That’s right.”

“He had an eye for talent. Mine’s organization. I organized the
zeks
at Gorlag, there were thousands more of us than the guards, who by that time were totally demoralized. We—the
zeks,
I mean—were about the only thing working in the Soviet economy. We deserved a little better than nothing. I made people think about their worth. We organized. We struck. We shut down the camp more than once. It wasn’t easy. Some died. They would have died anyway.” He shrugged. “But we got noticed. We got results.”

I was starting to think clearly enough to replace “we” with “I” in his recounting.

“So Iakov…”

“He found me, like he found you. He launched a successful career.” He lifted his jacket off the chair, put it on, sat down and shot a gold-linked cuff to underscore the point. He’d also finished bonding.

“Tell me about Irina. What did you want from her?”

I answered, it was the easiest thing to do. “My interest was her boyfriend’s uncle. If you want an apology, I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t sorry in the slightest, she could more than take care of herself, but it seemed the diplomatic thing to say, and I was looking to reestablish equilibrium in the conversation.

“I’m sure you said nothing untoward,” he said, also the diplomat. “Irina can be a difficult girl. She’s had a difficult childhood. Her father is a difficult man. She bore the brunt of that, while she was growing up. One reason she lives here now, with her mother and me.”

I didn’t point out she wasn’t exactly living with her mother and him, and I was having a difficult time with the repeated use of the word “difficult.” Too easy. It conveyed trouble without telling anything of its nature. Unsure of where to go next, I waited.

“I came here to ask for your help,” he said after a moment.

That couldn’t be good, but … maybe …

“Irina is up to something, involved in something, I don’t know which or what. It may involve this boy, again, I don’t know. Her mother is worried. So am I.”

Buy time. “Have you asked her—if anything is wrong, I mean?”

“Of course. Both her mother and I talked to her over the Christmas holiday, before she went to Moscow to see her father. She kept us at arm’s length. As you pointed out, she’s learned the art of prevarication. She may not be as good at it as she thinks—you’re right about that too—but she’s practicing.”

I almost said,
Every chance she gets and maybe for good reason.
Instead I waited some more.

He waited too.

Then he said, “I’m very fond of the girl. If I had a daughter, I’d like her to be … I’m more than fond of her mother. But what you say is true. She’s gone off the road somewhere, and we are both worried—her mother and I—that she could be going to a dangerous place. You know who her father is?”

I nodded. He sounded every inch the concerned parent, but the calculated assault of the last few minutes undermined that.

“You want me to find out what she’s involved in?”

“That’s right.”

Buy more time.

“Suppose I already have a client?”

“Does his interest conflict with mine—or hers?”

“It could.”

“You have obligations. On the day that your first client’s interests come into conflict with mine, I release you. Will that do?”

Ever the diplomat. Except that wasn’t where he came from. His tattoos said he was Gulag
urki
—the criminal class. He was also a Chekist. If—or when—his interests and Leitz’s, or anyone else’s, came into conflict, another solution would be found. But that would happen regardless of what I said. And, I was coming to realize, he was in a position to help me in a way perhaps no other person could.

“Let’s talk compensation,” I said.

“I am a wealthy man. I will pay what you require, within reason.”

“I don’t want money. I want information. Or, more accurately, unfettered access to information.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

I told him what I had in mind.

When I finished, he walked around the conference room looking at the view, looking back into the office, looking at me.

“I understand what Iakov saw,” he said. “That is a most finely tuned proposal. What, I must ask, makes you think I’m in a position to deliver—or that I won’t cross you?”

“You can deliver. I haven’t lived in Moscow for twenty years, but the way things work hasn’t changed that much. We’re both Chekists. We understand each other. I won’t give you reason to cross me. I know what will happen if I do. If you cross me, you can count on my tracking you down, carrying that Desert Eagle.”

He smiled broadly, for the first time since he arrived, and extended a hand.

“I believe you,” he said.

I took the hand. I didn’t believe him. Not about anything he said.

Beria appeared by the window, smiling.

CHAPTER
27

Victoria said, “You have no idea how difficult this is for me.”

Actually, I could make a pretty good guess, but I wasn’t about to say so. I leaned in and tried to look sympathetic.

“You’re a fraud. Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this. I can see it all over your face.” She shoved me away, but smiled as she did so.

We were on my couch, enjoying a predinner drink, red wine for her, vodka for me. I had a pork roast in the oven, coated with rosemary, sage, garlic, and olive oil. Victoria licked her lips as soon as she walked in the door, but the rest of her body language indicated she’d had a bad day.

The rest of mine hadn’t been overly productive either. After Batkin left, I’d replayed mentally the conversation with Andras’s mother. I couldn’t see anything that caused her panic or fear, both of which came out of nowhere. I went back over the Basilisk’s records, and they showed nothing more than a wealthy divorced woman teaching at a small Minnesota college, enjoying regular visits from her son and periodic vacations at health spas and ski resorts, one of which she’d just returned from. I worked the data on Andras and Irina without any more success. Despite what his mother said, Andras was still trying to reach his uncle. He’d called twice yesterday and once this morning without connecting. Walter Coryell gave every indication of having gone incommunicado. Irina, however, was still buying pizza at Crestview Pizza and soda at Mike’s Grocery. I called Gina and got her voicemail. She called back just after Victoria walked in.

“Sorry, Turbo! Back to back seminars. What’s up? Not Newburgh again, I hope.”

“Maybe worse, from your point of view. Crestview, Massachusetts—Hicksville to you. Probably a four-hour drive from New York. How soon can you get up there?”

“You paying? Tonight.”

“Tomorrow will be fine. Get the Valdez out of the lot. I’ll set it up.”

“This another hot-sheets joint?”

“Crestview Pizza and Mike’s Grocery, both on Main Street.”

“What about them?”

“They’re favorite spots of the kid you tracked in Newburgh, Andras Leitz. Also his girlfriend, a tall, blond Russian named Irina Lishina. Sorry I can’t be more specific on the description. Watch your step with her, she’s a tough customer.”

“Sure. What’s the deal?”

“Andras and the girl are students at a fancy private school in the next town, Gibbet. I think they’re up to something in Crestview. They hit that pizza joint several nights a week—when they should be studying or in bed. Pick them up there, follow them, let me know where they go.”

“Okay, but…”

“What?”

“Do I have to drive the Valdez? That car’s the most uncool thing on the road.”

“Ford—bedrock of the American economy.”

“You’re showing your age, Turbo. Google’s the bedrock of the American economy these days.”

“Try taking a date to a drive-in in a search engine.”

“Drive-in? Turbo, there hasn’t been a drive-in … You’re crazy.”

“Did I tell you I’m leaving you that car in my will?”

“Just my luck. A car I hate to drive and won’t be able to sell.”

I hung up.

“I’m glad to see you treat all your lady friends with the same gentle and affectionate touch,” Victoria said.

I fixed our drinks and asked Victoria about her day, and that’s when she said, “I wouldn’t ask if I had any choice, but I don’t. I need help.”

“
Socialist
help?”

“Don’t start.”

I couldn’t resist. “Assistance from a one-time foot soldier in the army of the Evil Empire?”

“I’m warning you, goddammit…”

“Or are you looking for some old-fashioned KGB tradecraft?”

“If you don’t … Shit. I knew this wouldn’t be easy. And before your ego inhales any more of its own manure, I only need
you
to get
him
to let me use the Basilisk.”

“Ahhh, the painful truth will out. Here I am, ready to rush to the aid of the beautiful damsel in distress, capitalist temptress though she may be, and I discover, in the nick of time, that I’m only being used, in typical vixen fashion, as a poor means to an ignoble end. I think I’ll go fall on my carving knife.”

“Did anyone ever tell you, without a doubt, you are the biggest pain in the ass ever to come out of Mother Russia?”

“It was a favorite theme of my ex-wife, although she was a lot more histrionic about it.”

“And how long did that marriage last?”

“Eight years, but it seemed longer.”

“An eternity to her, I’ll bet. Look, I’m prepared to pay. Sexual favors. Dinner at Trastevere. A case of that rotgut vodka you drink. Name your price.”

“Who says I can be bought?”

“You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you?”

“The thought crossed my mind, but I’m really just trying to find out what I’m signing on for.”

“You can be a real bastard.”

“Probably not your best sales pitch.”

I took her glass to the kitchen and refilled it along with my own. “We’ve got half an hour until the pork’s ready. Tell me your troubles.”

I think she started to call me another name, then thought better of it.

“It’s this case I came back for. Not mine—I didn’t start it—but I inherited it, and if it goes south, it’s on my watch.”

“It’s headed south?”

“Yes, dammit. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I thought we were headed for indictment. The reason I came back when I did.”

“
I
thought it was
me
.”

“Sorry. Don’t play games. I told you that.”

“You did,” I admitted. “What then?”

“DoJ’s like any other big organization. Nobody wants to give the boss bad news. So all the e-mails I got while I was away…”

“Overstated the case?”

“One way of putting it. Blew smoke up my skirt is another.”

“Sounds just like the Cheka.”

“Don’t start that. You can’t compare—”

“You just said, like any other big organization. What’s so different?”

“Never mind. You want to hear my story or not?”

“I’m all ears.”

She didn’t look like she believed me, but she said, “All right. We’ve been working with a handful of big city police departments—New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Atlanta. They have technology that allows them to monitor file-sharing sites on the Internet—in this case, child pornography. We got search warrants and taps on the guys swapping the porn so we could see who they were doing business with. That led us to a credit-card payment processing company. Same process we followed six or seven years ago, which led to the bust of a pretty big ring. But we didn’t have this kind of technology then, so this time, we’re swimming in a much bigger pond.”