City of Exiles (9781101607596)

by Nevala-lee, Alec

  Karvonen turned slightly in his chair. The man, he saw, was young, beefy, and Russian, his arms protruding like sausages from the sleeves of his polo shirt, its collar turned up so it brushed his earlobes. A pair of sunglasses was perched on the bristling crown of his head. The girl, by contrast, was tiny, with too much makeup, but under the paint, she couldn’t have been more than twenty.

  For the next few minutes, Karvonen kept an eye on them. The argument, it soon became clear, was about money. The Russian, who had grown rapidly pink from the carafe of vodka on the table, grew more belligerent with every word, while the girl replied in a soft voice, taking occasional nervous sips from her glass. Karvonen, even with his good ears, could only make out bits and pieces, but at one point, at a lull in the music, he heard a single word: “Bliad—”

  The woman turned aside, her lips pressed together. For an instant, her eyes met Karvonen’s. Before he could look away, he saw her companion reach across the table and take her by the arm, pulling her halfway out of the chair. Her glass fell over, unnoticed, spilling its contents across the table.

  Hauling her to her feet, the man steered her toward the dance floor. As they went by, Karvonen saw that the man’s hand was clamped tightly on the girl’s arm, and that there were tears of pain in her eyes. For just a second, on the pale flesh of her forearm, he saw the marks of old bruises.

  Karvonen watched as they descended the steps to the dance floor. Then he finished his beer, rose slowly from his table, and followed them without haste, keeping a pace or two behind.

  On the main floor, he found himself caught up in a crush of bodies. The couple had halted just ahead of him, tears shining on the woman’s cheeks. Karvonen turned his head to one side but continued in their direction, as if being pushed that way by the momentum of the crowd. Still keeping his eyes averted, he passed within touching distance of the pair, barely seeming to brush the man as he went.

  A second later, the man crumpled to the floor, doubled up, clutching the crotch of his jeans in pain. The bottle of Armagnac, heavy as a bowling ball in its shopping bag, had hit him squarely in the testicles. The girl stared down at him, eyes wide, then turned to look at the man who had just passed.

  Karvonen moved on, the bag swinging slightly in his left hand. As he vanished into the crowd, he sensed the girl’s eyes on his back, but did not pause to turn around. And as he headed for the door of the nightclub, moving into the cool night beyond, he reflected that in most ways he was still the same man, after all.

  35

  When Ilya entered the interview room that evening, escorted by a guard, he noticed that Wolfe’s arm was in a sling. Wolfe was seated at the table in the center of the room, a paper shopping bag at her elbow. She was wearing a sweater with a neck that came nearly up to her chin, and her hair had been recently cut, so that parts of it stuck out from her head in untidy feathers.

  He remained in the doorway of the interview room, regarding her for a moment, then finally took a seat. At his side, the guard turned to Wolfe and asked, “Anything else I can do?”

  “No, thank you,” Wolfe said, keeping her eyes on Ilya. “I have everything I need.”

  The guard bobbed his head and left, closing the door behind him. Ilya watched him go, then turned to Wolfe. “I heard what happened.”

  “I guess the word has gotten around by now,” Wolfe said. “Apparently it was quite the sensation around here.”

  “Yes. But I was glad to hear that you were all right. I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  “Well, I promised to bring you these.” Wolfe opened the bag at her side, clumsy with her one good hand, and extracted a pair of books. She slid them across the table. “Here. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring more.”

  Ilya examined the two volumes. One was a hardbound collection of midrashim, the standard rabbinical commentaries on scripture, while the other was Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, both of which he had purchased the day before his arrest to replace the copies he had lost overseas. Flipping randomly through the first book, the one he had carried to the chess tournament, he said quietly, “Did you have the chance to read these?”

  “Not really,” Wolfe said. “I only picked them up from the evidence room today.”

  “You should at least read Scholem. Halperin and Wolfson are good as well, if you can only read English.” Ilya set the books back down. “Thank you. But why else did you come?”

  “I enjoyed our conversation from last time. I thought you might want to talk more about Ezekiel.”

  Ilya knew that she was really here for quite another reason, but he was prepared to indulge her, at least for now. “What about him?”

  “I’d like to talk about why his vision was so dangerous. That’s why you brought him up, isn’t it? You don’t think I’m ready to hear what you have to say. But I haven’t been burned alive yet—”

  Looking at the high collar of her sweater, which concealed the burns on the back of her neck, Ilya reflected that she was braver than he had originally believed. “How old are you?”

  “None of your business,” Wolfe said. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “A great deal. The rabbis tell us that a student shouldn’t study the merkabah, or the work of the chariot, until he’s at least forty years old. You don’t seem more than thirty. If that.”

  Wolfe smiled. “I’ll be thirty in January. And I know you aren’t forty either, at least if your passport can be believed.”

  Ilya granted the point. “Fair enough. So tell me why the passage was dangerous.”

  “Because it says things about God that we aren’t prepared to consider,” Wolfe said. “We’re comfortable with a certain idea of divinity, something abstract and unseen, but Ezekiel gives us a version of God who refuses to play by the rules. He sits on a throne, on a chariot drawn by four monstrous creatures, and appears with a human body, as if daring us to fall into heresy.”

  “But the body of God appears throughout scripture,” Ilya said. “God appears to Abraham, along with two angels, on the road to Sodom and Gomorrah. He closes the roof of Noah’s ark with his own hands. When Moses asks to see him, he shows Moses his back. Why aren’t these passages dangerous as well?”

  “I don’t know,” Wolfe said, with evident impatience. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you came for a conversation,” Ilya replied. “If you want to talk, you’ll give me your own interpretation.”

  Wolfe thought for a moment. “It’s fine if God appears to Moses. After enough time goes by, even the most outrageous stories become part of the tradition. But when you extend these visions into recent history, like Ezekiel did, they become dangerous again. He’s shoving God in our faces, showing us that his body is there in plain sight, and forcing us to deal with the implications.”

  “Yet the rabbis speak of God wearing the phylacteries,” Ilya said. “He drapes himself in a prayer shawl. They weren’t disturbed by the idea of his body. God made man in his own image, so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t take a man’s form. You’re close to understanding. But you keep missing the point—”

  “If I’m so close, then give me something to work with,” Wolfe said. “I brought you these books. You owe me that much.”

  “If you had read the books, you would know the answer.” Ilya showed her a page in the collection of midrashim. “Look at the song of the sea. The Israelites pass through the sea on the way from Egypt. Then they sing a song of praise on the shore. This is my God, and I will glorify him. It’s a vision that cannot be written down. A maidservant at the Red Sea, they say, saw something Ezekiel did not. The real question isn’t if God ever showed himself to us. It’s why he ceased to do so.”

  Wolfe studied the page, frowning. “Okay. So why did he stop showing himself?”

  “The answer is right here, in front of your face. But only i
f you’ve done your reading. Pretend this is a case you’re trying to solve. You have the testimony of a witness. In this case, a prophet. But there are aspects of his story that don’t make sense. What do you do first?”

  “I ask him to tell the story again,” Wolfe said. “I look for gaps, inconsistencies—”

  “And here your work has been done for you. Ezekiel opens with one account of his vision. Does he describe it again?”

  “Yes,” Wolfe said after a pause. “Later in the book, he sees the vision a second time.”

  “So you read more than ten pages. But is there any difference between the visions?”

  Wolfe thought for a moment. “When he first describes the creatures, he says that one of the four faces is that of an ox. In the second passage, it’s something else. A cherub, I think—”

  “Good. Even in Ezekiel itself, you see, the record is being redacted. But we can find traces of the retoucher’s hand. The vision is being edited to remove its more dangerous elements. If your first guess had been right, then the editors would have removed any reference to the body of God. But this isn’t what they changed. They erased the ox and nothing else. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Wolfe said irritably. “It didn’t strike me as especially important.”

  “You wouldn’t be so careless on a crime scene,” Ilya said. “Details are everything. Look at the feet of the creatures. Ezekiel says that they have the feet of a calf. But in the Septuagint translation, this detail is removed.”

  Wolfe seemed to understand. “So something about the ox makes the rabbis nervous. They’re retouching the passage, even in translation, because they’re afraid of something most readers would never see.”

  “But the changes reveal more than they intend,” Ilya said. “All retouchers are like this. You should know this by now.”

  Wolfe, to her credit, understood the allusion at once. “Like the intelligence services.”

  “Yes. Or your man Karvonen. The rabbis, at least, were respectful of the mystery. But the Chekists obliterated their enemies until nothing was left. Until they grew frightened of poets and painters. But it only made their fears more visible. They erased books, men, nations. Look at Poland and Hungary. Or others that were erased in secret. The traces are there, if you know where to find them—”

  As he spoke, Wolfe’s eyes lit up, although he wasn’t sure why. “How about Turkey?”

  Something in this question surprised him. For the first time, he sensed that she had access to information that he did not. He decided to push further. “Yes, perhaps Turkey. Why?”

  “Something I recently heard,” Wolfe said. “I’ll tell you if you tell me about the ox.”

  Ilya smiled at this. If he pressed further, he sensed he would learn more, but he also knew that it was important not to exhaust all his resources at one meeting. He signaled to the guard, then turned back to Wolfe. “This has been diverting. But I have nothing more to say.”

  “Just tell me one thing,” Wolfe said. “The secret services know how to erase their enemies at home, but overseas, it’s harder. It takes a specialist. Is this what Karvonen is doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Ilya replied. “But such a man would only be deployed against a target that could not be taken out in any other way.”

  Wolfe leaned across the table, her eyes fixed on his. “A target like Victor Chigorin?”

  Ilya did not respond, although, in his mind, this name set off its own chain of associations. As the guard unlocked the door of the interview room, Wolfe seemed about to protest, but in the end, she only fished a business card from her pocket. “Fine. But here’s my number. They let you make calls here, right?”

  He glanced at the card, memorizing the number with ease, and tucked it into one of his books. “Some of us are allowed to make calls. But don’t wait for me to contact you. I am not the man you need.”

  Ilya followed the guard to the door. On his way out, struck by a thought, he paused and looked back.

  “Another thing,” Ilya said. “A cow’s horn cannot be used as a shofar. If you want to talk again, tell me why.”

  With that, he gave her a smile so grave that it was almost a frown. Then he went back to be locked up in his cell.

  36

  Asthana was at her desk, taking notes on a stack of invoices, when a man’s voice came from over her shoulder. “Working late?”

  She jumped a little in her chair, startled, then saw that it was only Garber, who had crept up silently behind her. Turning around, she noticed for the first time that everyone else in the office had gone home. She smiled slightly at her own edginess, which she attributed to overwork, and removed her glasses. “Yes, for the third time this week. Devon is getting annoyed.”

  Garber sat down on the corner of her desk, which was the only surface that was not covered in papers. “What are you working on?”

  “Invoices, mostly.” Asthana began to straighten out the untidy heaps of folders. “I’m looking at the military collectibles dealer that sold guns to the armorer in Stoke Newington. Wolfe tracked them down online. They sold Campbell a deconverted Skorpion, remember?”

  “I remember,” Garber said, leafing through one of the files. “What about them?”

  “It occurred to me that they might have sold him components that were used to build whatever Karvonen took from the garage. It’s legal, up to a point, to trade in deactivated weaponry, even defused land mines or grenades.” Asthana handed him a catalog, printed on rough paper, that she had obtained by writing away to an address in Islington. “See? You can get just about anything, for a price.”

  Garber studied the catalog, which offered a range of deactivated military equipment, from old black powder muskets to empty canisters of nerve gas. “So you think that these items could be used to make a working weapon?”

  “It’s possible, if you’re good with your hands. Or if you arrange to get a weapon that was improperly deactivated. Someone like Aldane Campbell could have done a lot with this stuff.”

  He handed the catalog back to her. “I’m surprised that you’re the one working on this. Isn’t this more Wolfe’s area of expertise?”

  “Technically, yes.” Asthana switched off her computer. “But she’s busy tonight with her friend at Belmarsh—”

  “Of course. And Powell has signed off on it, too. Sometimes I wonder about the two of them. Don’t you?”

  “Not really,” Asthana said, although the possibility had, of course, crossed her mind. “Powell is married to his work, or at least to his idea of it. He just wants to turn Wolfe into a tiny version of himself. I thought she was too smart to fall for it, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Garber slid off the desk. “Listen, if you’re heading out, I can give you a lift home. I know you’ve been taking the train since your car blew up. What do you say?”

  Asthana hesitated. Strangely, her first impulse was to decline the offer, although she couldn’t see any real reason why she should. At last, she smiled. “That’s kind of you. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” Garber replied. She expected him to go back to his desk to retrieve his things, but instead, he lingered close by, almost hovering, as she packed up her papers for the night. As she picked up her purse and jacket, she noticed that she and Garber were the only ones left on the floor.

  They headed downstairs, passing the vacant front desk. Garber’s car was parked in the adjoining lot. As Asthana followed him to the shabby Renault, she watched him out of the corner of one eye. She thought that he had grown increasingly distant over the past few days, as if he had something else on his mind. Still, it had been an exhausting three weeks for everyone at the agency, so it wasn’t surprising that the strain was starting to show.

  When they arrived at the car, Garber unlocked the passenger door, then went around to t
he driver’s side as she got in. Sliding behind the wheel, he started the engine and backed out. As they headed for the front gate, he said, “Listen, do you mind if we make a slight detour? It’s a place I sometimes go to think. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you—”

  “Sounds serious,” Asthana said, keeping her tone light, although she was surprised by the proposal. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine. It’s just that we haven’t had a chance to talk in a while, and I want to get your thoughts on something.” Garber halted at the gate. “Look, it’s up to you. I can just take you home, if you like—”

  Asthana looked over at his face, which was in shadow. On most nights, after such a long day, she would have declined, but she sensed that there was more to the request than he was letting on. “I can’t stay out too late.”

  “I know,” Garber said, making a right onto the street. “This won’t take a minute.”

  After going another block, they turned onto the Albert Embankment, then continued to Nine Elms Lane. As they drove along the Thames, the lights of the city cold in the distance, Asthana began to feel vaguely uneasy. Instead of talking as freely as she usually did, she found herself staring out the window at the river, glancing occasionally at the man behind the wheel. Garber, for his part, drove in silence, speaking only once, to ask if she wanted the heat on.

  In the end, after five minutes or so, he turned onto a side street, where he maneuvered the car into a space under a shade tree and shut off the engine. “Here we are,” Garber said. “What do you think?”

  Asthana, seated in the darkness, looked out the windshield. Around them, unlit buildings stood shoulder to shoulder along the street. As far as she could tell, they were alone. Up ahead, however, against the lowering sky, she could see four white chimneys, rising into the air like the monumental legs of an upturned table. It was the Battersea Power Station.