City of Exiles (9781101607596)

by Nevala-lee, Alec

  Watching them go, Ilya heard Grisha’s voice. “Not one for making friends, are we?”

  Instead of replying, Ilya turned back to the exercise yard, where the prisoners were being called in one block at a time. “Tell me something. Has there been talk of the killing of James Morley?”

  “Of course,” Grisha said. “Lot of rumors going around. And some of us find you interesting, too. We think you know more than we’ve read in the papers. You’re a bit of a celebrity here.”

  Ilya studied the other prisoners, who were slowly making their way back to the gate. “Is there someone I can ask about this?”

  “A fellow with his ear to the ground, you mean?” Grisha nodded. “Yeah, I know just the guy. A tea boy, a listener, you know. Not much he doesn’t hear, I imagine. Want me to arrange it?”

  “Yes, if you can,” Ilya said. “I’d be interested in hearing what he has to say.”

  As he spoke, he saw another familiar face. It was the inmate he had noticed on the prison bus, the one pretending to sleep. He was standing at the edge of the crowd, looking at the two of them intently. Ilya eyed him back. Grisha, noticing this mutual inspection, lowered his voice. “I’d watch out for that one, if I were you. Double murder. Nothing to lose at this point—”

  Ilya continued to regard the other man. “So why would he care about me?”

  “Not saying he would,” Grisha replied. “But I’d watch your back when you’re near him. And your front as well.”

  Ilya watched as the prisoner finally turned aside, joining the queue of other inmates. When he drew near the others, they cleared a space for him, as if sensing an unpleasant smell. “What’s his name?”

  Grisha screwed up his face to remember. “Francis,” he said at last. “But everyone calls him Goat.”

  When their block was called, they filed inside, where they merged into a line of other prisoners. Ilya submitted to a second search, then headed for his spur. Before he could go up the steps, however, he heard someone call his name. Turning, he saw a guard beckoning him closer. “Yes?”

  The guard jerked his head to the left. “Visitors’ area. Someone to see you. A lady.”

  31

  Wolfe entered the visitors’ room, finding herself in a grimy space the size of a small gymnasium. Looking up at the balcony, she saw guards peering down through binoculars, their black ties and white shirts reminding her oddly of missionaries. Five rows of chairs and tables were bolted to the floor. Visitors sat on the right, prisoners on the left, marked off by yellow sashes on their shoulders.

  As she walked over to the numbered chair she had been instructed to take, she felt the room’s eyes on her face and body. She had driven out alone, in Asthana’s car, leaving her warrant card behind. This meeting was off the record. If there was, in fact, a leak at the agency, it seemed wise to keep this visit to herself.

  After a body search by a female guard and an examination by a sniffer dog, she had entered the secure waiting area, where she had remained for forty minutes until her number was called. Without her phone or any reading material, she had been given plenty of time to ask herself why she was here. Even now, she didn’t really have an answer, only a hunch, or the rumor of one.

  All the same, when she saw a guard escort Ilya into the room, even that whisper of a hunch began to fade, and for one cowardly moment, she found herself wishing that she hadn’t come.

  When Ilya saw her, his eyes narrowed incrementally. There was a second when he appeared to pause, falling a step behind the guard, and she feared that he was simply going to walk away. Instead, he went up to the table and sat down silently, his blank gaze meeting hers, leaving her to wonder what had prompted him to come this far. Curiosity, perhaps.

  Wolfe slid a can of soda across the table, feeling that the gesture was faintly ridiculous. Earlier, after locking up her valuables, she had exchanged her remaining cash for a few plastic tokens that could be used in the vending machines. “Hope you don’t mind Fanta.”

  Ilya set the can aside without looking at it. After holding her eyes for another second, he turned away, his voice flat but not impolite. “I don’t see why you’re here. I have nothing further to say.”

  “I know,” Wolfe said. “I’m not here to discuss the case. I wanted to talk about something else. About the story of four men in the orchard.”

  Wolfe thought she saw a flicker of interest in his expression, although this might have been wishful thinking. “What about it?”

  “It’s a story from the Talmud,” Wolfe said. “Four rabbis entered an orchard, or a garden, where they had a mystical vision. One died from the shock. Another became a heretic. A third went mad. Only one, Rabbi Akiba, departed safely. I’m wondering why you told us that story.”

  Looking into his face, Wolfe felt as if she were back in Sunday school. As a Mormon, her education had been steeped in the story of Israel, the only history that the church regarded as meaningful, apart from its own. After a pause, Ilya said, “Do you know what they saw?”

  “Nobody does,” Wolfe said. “Whatever it was, it was secret. Something impossible to describe. And dangerous, at least for anyone who wasn’t ready for it. Was that what you were trying to tell us?”

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Ilya said. “What did the four men see?”

  In his tone, Wolfe heard the door she had opened begin to close. “I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t think so. The story tells us that a revelation is meaningless if the listener is unprepared. What is truth to one man is heresy for another. I see no point in talking to those who will not understand. Or who give no indication that they will hear what I am saying.” Ilya glanced away. Then, after another pause, he said, “You know the work of the chariot?”

  Something in his words sent a shiver down her spine. “It’s a passage in the book of Ezekiel,” Wolfe said. “It’s also called the merkabah. I’m afraid I don’t know much about it—”

  “Ezekiel is among the exiles in Babylon,” Ilya said sharply. “A whirlwind comes out of the north, the heavens open, and he has a vision of God. He sees four winged beasts, each with the face of a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle. Then he sees a chariot with four wheels within wheels. Above the chariot is a shape like a man on a throne, made of fire from the waist down. Do you know that much?”

  Wolfe bristled at his air of condescension. “Yes. I also know that students who studied the passage without preparation were burned alive by fire from heaven. Or so the stories say.”

  “Good,” Ilya said. “It was believed that discussing the vision would cause God himself to appear. Fire would come from the sky. So the rabbis tried to prevent the passage from being read aloud in the synagogue. Ezekiel himself received a warning. And I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth—”

  The image of a woman with a missing tongue passed briefly through her mind. “And this was what they saw in the orchard?”

  “Possibly,” Ilya said. “But no one knows. That’s the point of the story. There are secrets for which the mind is not prepared. It can be dangerous to seek knowledge before you are ready. Otherwise it can destroy you. Or drive you mad. You would do well to remember this.”

  Wolfe saw that this was the conclusion to which they had been headed all along. “Is that why you won’t cooperate?”

  Ilya glanced aside. A few seats away, a couple was kissing. “Tell me why you came.”

  “Because I wanted to talk to you without the police,” Wolfe said. “I know you don’t trust them. They haven’t treated you with respect. But I thought you could be persuaded to help me find Karvonen.”

  “Why?” Ilya asked. “If you’re trying to say that you’re different from the Chekists, I see no difference at all.”

  “Then you’re not looking hard enough. Or you’re refusing to make the distinction. If you lump me in wit
h the secret police, you trivialize their crimes. I’m trying to save lives, not support an oppressive regime.”

  “Let me ask you a question. If Lermontov had been arrested, would he have gone to jail?”

  “Yes, probably,” Wolfe said, even though she already sensed the trap. “Although—”

  Ilya broke in. “No. He would have been sent back home. A prisoner exchange, most likely. Nothing can be allowed to upset relations with Russia. Everything works to maintain the system.”

  Wolfe saw an opening and pounced on it. “But we’re trying to take down Karvonen. He’s part of the system too, isn’t he?”

  “Karvonen is the system,” Ilya said. “He may look like a man. But he’s really the expression of an idea.”

  “Is that how you found him?” Looking into his dark eyes, Wolfe saw she had guessed right. “It was something in the crimes themselves, wasn’t it? Something that told you he was working for the intelligence services—”

  “As I said to your friend, all the signs were there,” Ilya said. “Look at the fires. Why use potassium permanganate?”

  “I don’t know,” Wolfe said honestly. “I thought it might have been one of the chemicals he used in his work. He was a photographer. A retoucher. But there isn’t any photographic application that I can find.”

  “Close, but wrong. Potassium permanganate reacts with glycerin. But it also creates an explosive reaction with cellulose nitrate. Cellulose nitrate is what the secret services use to print code pads. So they can be easily destroyed. Karvonen just turned it to other uses.”

  Wolfe was struck by how simple this seemed. “And that was what caught your eye?”

  “That and other things,” Ilya said. “An artist is revealed by the materials he uses. The history of intelligence is a series of layers. One written above another, like a sacred text. Karvonen follows patterns that have existed since before he was born. And like all killers, he has his own compulsions.”

  Wolfe was about to ask what he meant, then found that she knew the answer. “Fire.”

  “That’s one example. If you want to keep a secret, you don’t set it on fire. Fire destroys, but it also draws attention. Like the work of the chariot. The fact that some students are burned alive only attracts others. In this case, Karvonen needs to be invisible, but he also wants to be noticed. He wants his work to be appreciated. Which can be dangerous for a true artist—”

  Even as he spoke, a garbled announcement came over the intercom, indicating that visiting hours had ended. Wolfe glanced over at the noise, then turned back to Ilya. “Can I talk to you again?”

  Ilya did not answer at once. At last, he said, “If you like. Perhaps next time you could tell me why Ezekiel’s vision was so dangerous. Or, at the very least, you could bring me some books.”

  Wolfe wanted to say more, but found herself being steered politely away by one of the guards. As she headed for the door, she glanced back at Ilya, who was still seated, as instructed, with the rest of the prisoners. His eyes remained on hers until she had left the room.

  She passed quickly through the reception area. The encounter had exhausted her, but she was also thrilled that she had found a way in. Ilya had revealed more than she had expected, and she sensed that he was willing to go further. The important thing, she told herself, was to be ready. Ilya had posed a question. And he would only continue to talk if she could venture an answer.

  Wolfe thought back to what he had said about Karvonen. An artist was revealed by the tools he used, as much as by his choice of subject. This was all the more true of Karvonen, since he had selected his victims according to the requirements of a larger plan, not his personal inclinations. But his methods were his own. And if she wanted to learn more about a man like this, she had to consider how he had lived and worked, down to the books on his shelves.

  In the parking lot, Wolfe got into the car. For a moment, she sat where she was, trying to decide where to begin. Fragments of Ezekiel’s vision mingled with images from the Dyatlov Pass, which she reminded herself to discuss with Powell. At last, starting the engine, she headed for the street, and was going over a bump only slightly too fast when the bomb under her car exploded.

  32

  On the fourteenth floor of the Savoy Hotel, Powell emerged from the elevator and headed for the suite at the end of the hall. Outside, two young bodyguards in good suits were lounging against the wall to either side of the door, chatting about football in Russian. At his approach, they straightened up, and the nearest guard motioned for him to stop. “Must search first.”

  Powell displayed his warrant card. “My name is Alan Powell. I was invited.”

  “Sorry,” the bodyguard said, in what seemed like a tone of genuine apology. “Must search first.”

  Returning the card to his inside pocket, Powell raised his arms and allowed himself to be frisked, which the bodyguard did with admirable efficiency and quickness. Then the second guard knocked on the door to the suite, which was promptly unlocked and opened from the inside.

  The guards smiled at him as Powell went into the room, where a third bodyguard was standing. It was an opulent space, furnished in a tasteful mingling of Edwardian and Art Deco. The floor beneath his feet was paved in marble, with a chandelier of Murano glass hanging from the ceiling.

  On a plush mahogany sofa at the center of the room, Victor Chigorin was seated in his shirtsleeves, looking at something on a tablet computer while breakfasting on yogurt and fruit. At the writing desk by the window, which disclosed a view of the Thames, a shapely female assistant was talking on the phone. Next to her, in a wing chair across from the sofa, sat a man in his thirties with a sharp chin and strikingly bright green eyes. Powell recognized him at once.

  Chigorin popped an orange slice into his mouth, then set the computer aside. “Please, sit down,” the grandmaster said, gesturing toward an empty chair. “Can we get you anything?”

  “I’m fine,” Powell said, taking a seat. “Don’t let me interrupt your breakfast.”

  “Thank you. I apologize for eating while we talk, but I’m rarely up before ten.” Chigorin indicated the man in the wing chair. “I don’t know if you’ve met Joseph Stavisky, my friend and occasional colleague—”

  Powell shook hands with Stavisky. “No, but I know you who you are. I’ve often been to your website.”

  Stavisky only bowed his head. He was a lawyer and blogger based in Moscow, the founder of a site devoted to exposing corruption in Russian corporations and government contracts. Powell was surprised to see him here. Two men of such ambition, he knew, would not fit easily within the same four walls.

  Chigorin took up a spoonful of yogurt. “We have been speaking about the search for Karvonen. It appears that a dead end has been reached. Stavisky, while I eat, tell him about our interest in this case.”

  “Of course,” Stavisky said, speaking in rapid, nearly unaccented English. “I assume you know something of my background. As an investor, I had shares in Gaztek, Transneft, all these companies, and wondered where the money was going. Millions of dollars lost every year. So I looked at documents, wrote emails, called for investigations. Before long, people started to listen.”

  “So it seems,” Powell said, although he knew that the site’s rapid rise wasn’t quite as accidental as Stavisky made it sound. “I hear you’ve started looking into public contracts as well.”

  “It was a natural next step. The information was all there, ready to be unearthed, but no one had ever done it before. We found corruption in ministries, regional governments, public works. All I did was put as many eyes on it as possible. Safer, obviously, than doing it on one’s own—”

  “Those who work alone tend to be murdered, or to simply disappear,” Chigorin said with a glance at Powell. “Your friends at the Cheshire Group learned this the hard way, I imagine.”

  “Which is why I
have no fear for myself,” Stavisky added. “Nothing would be accomplished by killing me. But this is not the case for certain exceptional men. Someone like Victor, for instance, cannot be replaced. And I have recently come into possession of information that implies he may be in danger.”

  Powell looked over at Chigorin, who had listened without changing expression. “And you believe this, too?”

  After a pause, Chigorin said, “I am not entirely convinced. There have been rumors of plots against my life before. But in the course of looking into this allegation, Stavisky has uncovered material that may be pertinent to your case. Which is why I advised him to contact you.”

  “This is the situation,” Stavisky said. “Last week, I met with a source who claimed to have knowledge of an intelligence plot aimed against Victor Chigorin. He offered no details, either because he did not know them or was unwilling to share them at once. When I pressed for more evidence, he gave me a number of files, saying he believed they were relevant. When I examined the documents, however, they turned out to be nonsense. Or so I thought at the time.”

  Chigorin picked up his tablet computer. Turning it on, he opened a file, then handed it to Powell. “You’re the first person outside this room to see any of this. We can’t give you a copy, but you can read it here.”

  Powell studied the file, which turned out to be a smudgy photocopy in Russian. He translated the title at the top. “Operation Pepel?”

  “Ashes,” Stavisky said. “We’ve found references to it in other intelligence sources as well. Apparently it was a special operation of a political nature in Turkey. Originally, it was thought to have taken place in the sixties, but based on this document, the date needs to be pushed back at least to the late fifties. And it says that an agent named Yuri Litvinov was involved.”

  Powell, scanning the page, recognized the name. “The current director of the FSB.”