The Fourth Courier

by Timothy Jay Smith

  The last Paris-bound passengers passed through the gate and the attendant locked the glass door. She yelped in alarm when she saw Jay’s bloody face. Mladic was the last to board a shuttle bus. Jay shook the door’s handle and shouted for her to open it. Mladic heard the commotion and looked back, recognizing Kurt. Their eyes locked.

  Kurt pulled a newspaper out of a trashcan and held it up for Dravko to see. He flicked his tongue, and pantomimed sending lewd kisses, while pointing to the paper. His message could not have been clearer: Kurt would out him. The general visibly paled as the bus pulled away.

  By that time, the security guards chased them down. They raised their arms to be led away.

  Shakily, Dravko mounted the steps to the airplane and stowed his suitcase in the overhead compartment. Did he require anything? the flight attendant asked. Would he like to remove his hat? A drink, perhaps champagne before takeoff? He waved her away and sagged into his seat.

  Wearied by his narrow escape, his eyes closed and his mind drifted. Again he saw Kurt’s last kiss—the flick of his pink tongue especially lewd in the circle of his black lips—and his pale palm pressed to the glass door as if ready to pull him off the bus. Dravko jerked awake. He was sweating. He asked for water. It refreshed him, and he sat back, closing his eyes again.

  The film in his mind began to play. From boyhood achievements to military adventures, his biography unfolded, the story of his inexorable rise. Dravko missed his airplane’s takeoff; he was so engrossed in a battlefield scene that he mistook the engines’ roar for army tanks. As surely as the plane’s lift, Dravko treaded an upward path, accumulating medals and honors, power, and faithful followers. He reached the point in his film where he stood on a platform surrounded by an honor guard and the crowds roared his name. At that point, he always rewound the film to hear the cheering again, but that time he let it run on, ready for the rest of his story. The camera panned the crowd. What was that? They were holding up newspapers! They weren’t cheering but jeering him with words taken from the headlines. The African’s headlines. Words of unworthiness. Scandalous words. Immoral. Too late, he tried to stop the film, to rewind it, but it jammed and burned from the center, shriveling away to reveal a final flick of the African’s tongue.

  Dravko cried out and bolted from his seat. Other passengers, curious, stared at him. They leered, it seemed to Dravko; they already knew his dirty secrets. So this is how it will be, he thought, the shame of revelation. His destiny derailed by the dark passions that had bidden him to sow his own ruinous seeds. An anguished noise rose from his throat as he pulled his suitcase out of the overhead bin. Vaguely he heard admonitions not to do that, please sit down, did he have a medical problem?

  He plunked the suitcase in the aisle, which brought a sudden hush.

  Someone cried out, “He has a bomb!”

  They knew his power then. They, too, shared his destiny, and before their anxious faces could turn to hatred, he released both latches.

  Lipstick tubes exploded into the aisle. They bounced off armrests, rolled under feet, scattered everywhere. A nervous laugh became infectious and spread through the cabin. He heard their mockery and collapsed on the suitcase, losing his cap to reveal his thinning hair. A flight attendant helped him up. He wept as she fastened his seatbelt.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  BASIA HAD TURNED ON ALL the lights to reveal her world, her end of the rainbow, her pot of gold: her corner apartment. For all her dreams, she had traveled no farther than that table, those chairs, her bed, and the knickknacks that made the place personal. All so pathetic, too, those knickknacks and make-do furnishings. How far she was from the glamorous beaches she had imagined. She tried to pinpoint when her life had become so shabby and couldn’t. It had crept up on her.

  Dreams forestalled.

  Dreams denied.

  Time up.

  Needle, spoon, lighter. She placed them on the table. She had escaped that world often, the needle her joy ride, and yet had failed to plan her final escape beyond trusting in Dravko’s protective shield. It had become so complicated, the tangled murders and double-crosses within double-crosses, that to sort through them took an effort greater than her weariness allowed. It was over.

  Spilling half of Billy’s powder into the spoon, she dissolved it with water, loaded a syringe, then repeated the process with what heroin remained, adding it to the same syringe. She put the lethal needle on the bedside table before dimming the lights and slipping a tape into a VCR player that projected a film on the wall of Dravko fucking her, both much younger and he in dress whites, on the loveseat at the former KGB lodge. She toasted their lovemaking with a bottle of scotch and swigged from it before turning her attention to the suitcase. A million dollars, was it possible? How ironic if true. How much it would have meant at one time. A million dollars, it was another life. It was everything, and anything, and more, and yet now it could buy her nothing that she needed. Her certain capture and imprisonment made it worthless. She had purchased her freedom at the cost of it.

  Basia undid the leather straps on the suitcase. She had a passing thought: what if she had confused suitcases with Dravko? This could be the bomb. Annihilation in a nanosecond had a certain appeal.

  She popped the latches and opened it.

  “Oh my God, Dravko, it is a million dollars,” she said aloud.

  He had stuffed the bag with lopsided stacks of dog-eared dollars. A couple tumbled to the floor. Basia pulled out more, slipping off their rubber bands. She whirled around, scattering the bills. She opened her coat—she was still naked except for the fur and heels in which she had fled the shack—and showered herself with money while twirling in a little girl’s fantasy of dancing on streets paved with gold.

  The blue flashing lights on police cars appeared at the end of the street.

  Basia stopped her dance.

  It was time.

  She scooped up a pile of money and flung it over her bed. She flung a second unceremonious armful, and a third. Her buzzer rang insistently. She fell into her bed of money and picked up the syringe. She heard the downstairs door break open, the pounding footsteps on the stairs and boots kicking her door. As the wood cracked, she found a vein and emptied the syringe.

  Before the angels fluttered beside her, she heard Dravko in the film cry out her name one last time.

  “Basia!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  JAY AWOKE THE NEXT DAY to discover it was already afternoon. He wondered why no one had called before he remembered he had unplugged the telephone, at what time he couldn’t say. He hadn’t managed to undress unless taking his shoes off counted.

  He called room service for coffee and took a shower. He scrubbed the dog bite on his wrist and tried to keep the bandage on his face dry. The slice was clean, he remembered the doctor saying. He had sutured it with butterfly bandages as carefully as if using a needle. “There won’t be a big scar,” he assured him. “No one will notice it.” Jay wondered how much might have been different in so many lives if Jacek’s scar had been as easily erased. Had his viciousness been driven by it, or was he such a swaggering sonofabitch that he would have ultimately ended up at the same dead-end? It didn’t really matter why. He’d ended up there.

  Jay tried reconstructing the prior night’s events. Kidnapped by Jacek and brought to the shack. Tied to a chair, his face cut, forced to watch a constantly repeating sexcapade. Tolek’s death. The chase to the airport, Dravko escaping in the bus, Kurt and himself helpless to stop him. Arrested themselves, but treated respectably after a telephone call to Detective Kulski, which ended with a police escort to a medical clinic to treat his wound. Somewhere in the night, he was returned to the hotel.

  He heard the porter’s knock at the door and answered. He carried a tray to a side table, poured the coffee, and laid back a napkin to reveal breakfast pastries.

  “Is your telephone not working?” the porter asked, handing him a stack of messages.

  “I unplugged it.” Jay s
igned the check and tipped him.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  When he left, Jay went through his messages.

  Kulski: Please come at your convenience.

  Ambassador Lerner: Expects you at his house at 16h.

  Kurt: Confirmed physicist had two suitcases.

  His father: Call your father.

  Lilka hadn’t called. What would she have said?

  He regretted abandoning her in such distress the night before. He was eager to know what happened after he left her at the shack with Detective Kulski. He had coffee while he dressed quickly and took the pastries to eat in a taxi. Speeding across the Poniatowski Bridge, he craned his neck to glimpse Tommy’s houseboat farther downriver.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  DETECTIVE KULSKI OFFERED HIM COFFEE from a thermos. “I thought you might need a cup of American coffee this morning,” he said before launching into the aftermath of his departure from the shack the night before. He sent officers to Basia’s flat, but they arrived too late. She had overdosed while sprawled on a bed of money with nothing but a fistful of greenbacks to cover her shame. “She stopped breathing before they reached the hospital. Also, we arrested Billy last night. We found many drugs at his bar. Of course, it will take more time to collect all the evidence.”

  “It’s all there,” Jay assured him.

  “We also have more evidence about Tommy’s murder,” Kulski said. “A gun was found in the river under the houseboat.”

  “Let me guess, it’s yours.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Director Husarska was setting you up. She probably took it the morning you were at rehab. She knew you’d be gone and you wouldn’t take your gun with you. I guess Tommy died in vain.”

  “If I had given him back his passport, he wouldn’t be dead.” Kulski shook his head regretfully. “It is also too bad that Pani Husarska is dead. I know she was not a good woman, but I think necessity made her that way. Or started her to be that way, and then it became a habit.”

  “You have a kind thought for everyone, don’t you, Detective? You should have been a priest.”

  “It was my mother’s wish.” He handed Jay what appeared to be a receipt. “This was found in her pocket.”

  “What is it?”

  “For cleaning her coat.”

  Jay smiled when he understood. “Of course, the fourth courier bled on her. They were embracing when she shot him. That’s why the fur went missing for a day.”

  “There were many clues, yes?” the detective asked. “After the facts are known, a lot more is obvious.” He sipped his coffee. “Also, I questioned Pani Rypinska.”

  “Lilka? How is she?”

  “I think you say, in a shocked state. She will come tomorrow to make a statement.”

  “Where is she?”

  “My wife took her to her sister’s last night.”

  “Your wife?”

  “I could think of no other way. I thought it better for her to go with a woman, and not a policewoman.”

  “And her son, Aleks?”

  “He ran off. Here is her sister’s number.” The detective handed it over. “She will need to stay there until my team finishes in her apartment. It might take another day.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I also have teams in Mladic’s hotel room and Pani Husarska’s apartment.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it covered.”

  “It’s a big case. You will also need to make an official statement.”

  “I’ll prepare something in advance and set up a time with Eva for tomorrow.”

  “Good.” Kulski poured off the remaining dribble of coffee between their cups. “Unfortunately that’s all there is.”

  “That’s fine. I have to go. I’ve been summoned to the ambassador’s.”

  “He must be pleased.”

  “Perhaps. Or we might get sent to the guillotine for the scene we created. Thanks for intervening with airport security. Otherwise, I would probably be in jail right now.”

  “It only required a telephone call.”

  “That you could make but I couldn’t. Also, I think your doctor did a good job on my face. He said the scar would be barely noticeable. I’m curious, why did you stop Kurt Crawford at the train station?”

  The detective reminded Jay that it had been his suggestion to canvass the station’s vendors, and he was glad that he’d made it because Kulski hit pay dirt. The night Ustinov was murdered, he purchased stamps at a magazine stand to send a letter to Russia. “Whatever he had to mail, it seemed important to him. He put extra stamps on it to make sure it arrived.”

  “He had some last words for somebody,” Jay said, “even if he didn’t know that they were his last words.”

  “I was talking to the vendor when I noticed Mr. Crawford come into the station,” Kulski continued.

  “Why? Because he’s black?”

  “Yes, it’s true. We see so few black people in our country.”

  “That’s what he tells me.”

  “He pretended to read the newspapers, but I sensed he was waiting for something to happen. As soon as he saw Pani Husarska, I knew he had waited for her. He followed her into the underground, and later when she was leaving the station, he was still following her. I thought she might be in danger.”

  “Did Kurt explain his business?”

  “Not at the station. Later, going to the shack, he told me enough to understand it is secret.”

  “What I said about the bomb is also confidential,” Jay said.

  “I understand. How long will you stay in Warsaw?”

  “Only two or three days. Long enough to make a statement and go over any last details and wrap things up. My older son has a Little League game at the end of next week and I want to go to it.”

  “Little League?”

  “Baseball for kids. His team is in the regional championships for middle schoolers.”

  The detective smiled. “So we are both proud fathers of sporty children.”

  “Yes we are, and I’m going home to tell mine. They’re both going through a hard time because of the divorce.”

  “It’s hard on kids.”

  “It wasn’t my choice. I’ll get the results of the DNA tests on those cigarette butts to you as soon as I have them. I’d bet a million dollars that they’re Director Husarska’s. If they are, they put her at the exact spot of the crime, and Tommy’s statement says he saw her toss at least one cigarette away.” Jay stuck out his hand. “Good work, Detective Kulski. Case closed. You broke up a drug ring and solved four murders.”

  “Only with your help.”

  “As I recall, I was the one who needed help.”

  “Did I tell you that I knew her brother-in-law?”

  “Tolek?”

  “We were in the same prison camp. He was humorous. People smiled when they saw him. His funeral will be Tuesday. It’s sad when a good man is killed unnecessarily. And just after he was granted a visa to go to America.”

  “If you hadn’t stopped Mladic, he would have kept trying until possibly millions of good people were killed.”

  Kulski said, “I don’t feel like a hero.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  THE MAID ANSWERED THE DOOR and escorted Jay into the ambassador’s library. Kurt was already there, browsing the books on a corner shelf. “How’s the FBI feeling today?” he asked.

  “Like roadkill resuscitated. What’s the ambassador thinking, do you have any idea?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “I just left Kulski,” Jay said. “He’s got his evidence guys going over Jacek’s apartment and Mladic’s room. Do you think Carl’s going to bust our balls?”

  “He should give us fucking crowns but I don’t know what he’s going to say. Langley’s ordered me home tonight. The director wants to know why a senior Yugoslavian official had to be removed in a straitjacket from an airplane in Paris blubbering my name.”

  “No shit. Mladic cracked up?”
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  They high-fived each other just as Ambassador Lerner entered. He scowled. “You gentlemen seem to be in a good mood for having had a very eventful night.”

  He opened a cabinet and lined up three glasses and poured heavy shots of scotch. “I just got off the telephone with the secretary of state. He wanted to be briefed on the situation. I told him what I knew, which is very little. Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” They drank.

  “I think my last words to you were ‘don’t break the law.’”

  Like scolded schoolboys, Jay and Kurt started to mutter apologies until Carl held up his hand. “Stop right there. Congratulations from the secretary of state. You’re responsible for Mladic’s arrest, and probably averting an eventual global catastrophe. Now tell me what happened.”

  For nearly an hour they wove a devious web of smugglers, cops, and politicians, and when they were through, all agreed they thought they knew most of the story. There were loose threads, to be sure: the identity of the couriers, their exact cargo, and the whereabouts of the uranium and detonator. Kurt reported Mladic’s indictment of Minister Brzeski’s involvement in the weapons smuggling racket, but with Basia dead, no one remained to corroborate it, and Carl hardly relished pursuing the matter given the circumstances by which Kurt had extorted the confession from the general.

  “Mladic was arrested when his plane landed in Paris, but the authorities aren’t certain what to charge him with,” the ambassador said. “No one has ever tried to bring down a plane with a suitcase full of lipstick tubes.”

  “Unfortunately there is a missing portable bomb,” Jay reminded them. “Dr. Ustinov defected with two matching suitcases, one presumably the bomb. Mladic and Jacek had matching suitcases, but it turns out neither was a bomb. So there must be a third matching suitcase somewhere.”

  “That’s not a very comforting thought,” the ambassador said. “Especially since portable means it could end up anywhere in the world.”