City of Exiles (9781101607596)

by Nevala-lee, Alec

  Ilya turned his head slightly. Osman, the tea boy from the adjoining spur, was a few years younger than he was, with an intelligent face flawed by a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth to his temple. When he grinned, the scar deepened into an extension of his smile. “Pleasure, mate.”

  “Good to meet you,” Ilya said quietly. “Did Grisha say why I wanted to talk?”

  “Sure he did.” Osman leaned forward, so that the top of his shaved head nearly rested on Ilya’s shoulder, and said in a low voice: “You want to hear the word on these killings, am I right?”

  Ilya nodded. “Grisha says that you’ve heard something about the murders.”

  “Just rumors, mostly. You can’t believe all you hear in a place like this. But people are talking, as they will.” He lowered his voice further. “Campbell’s demise set some tongues wagging. Plenty of Yardies here, you know—”

  “Yes, I know,” Ilya said. “So what are they saying about Campbell’s death?”

  “That it was the spies. Normally I’d call bullshit, because I don’t see why they’d want to take out a Yardie armorer, right? Later, though, when they got that one in Finsbury Park, I started to wonder. That wasn’t you, was it?”

  Ilya had to smile at this. “No. I didn’t kill them. But I believe it was the same man.”

  “That’s what I said. A stone assassin, which makes me suspect the stories are true. Whoever did this was a cold bastard. Trained, lethal, smart. Which doesn’t sound like spies to me. Sounds more like former military.”

  Considering this point, Ilya saw that there might be something to it. Military intelligence was a world apart from the civilian agencies, and it was better at working overseas. “Any talk about what the killer might do next?”

  “Plenty of talk, but nothing I’d credit,” Osman said. “But here’s what I figure. These military guys don’t do nothing without a good reason. The target will be someone who threatens them. If I were trying to figure what this lot was up to next, I’d keep my eye on whoever they hate most—”

  As he listened, Ilya was reminded of something that Wolfe had said. “Ever hear of the Dyatlov Pass?”

  “Never heard of it, mate, but I’ll keep my ears open.” Osman coughed. “Assuming, of course, that you can fix a few things for me as well. Maybe we can have a word about this soon—”

  “Of course,” Ilya said, knowing that his position, as a remand prisoner, gave him advantages that were not readily available to the general population. He glanced back up at the chaplain at the head of the room, who was winding down his sermon, and reflected on what he had heard so far. One point in particular stuck in his mind. The target, Osman had said, would be the man the security services hated most. Which made him think of Chigorin.

  Ilya looked around the chapel. Over the past few years, along with his study of scripture, he had read deeply in the history of the intelligence services, relying both on official accounts and on less traditional sources. With practice, he had become skilled at seeing traces of such activities where they had never been noticed before, and had absorbed the details of events that had previously gone unconnected. One was that of the Dyatlov Pass. But there were others.

  When the sermon was over, another hymn followed, during which prisoners could receive blessings at the altar. After the inmates were back in their seats, the chaplain concluded with the traditional benediction, his hand upraised: “The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you—”

  The service ended. As they filed out together, Osman gave a nod to Ilya, then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper: “One other thing. Watch your back, mate. A fellow like you needs to be careful.”

  “Thank you,” Ilya said, heading for the doors. “I’ll do my best to remember that.”

  They filed out for another body search, intended to uncover any contraband that had changed hands during the service, then trudged back to their cells. Osman wandered off in another direction, while Ilya and Grisha returned to their own spur. And Ilya was about to ask Grisha for his thoughts on the tea boy’s words when he was interrupted by a sudden commotion.

  He turned. Across the landing, on the other end of the spur, two prisoners had begun to fight. They were scrawny and black, with the thick dreadlocks of Yardies, and as each man flung shouts at the other, Ilya recognized the voices of two window warriors who spent each night yelling through the bars of their cells, trading incomprehensible insults for hours.

  As he watched, one of the men got the other in a headlock, the tendons standing out on his stringy arm. An alarm sounded from above as the guards and prisoners, including Grisha, began to surge toward the fun. Ilya took a step backward to avoid the stampede, his shoulders brushing the wall, and was warily eyeing the crowd when his attention was caught by something else.

  Looking up at the hexagonal bubble above the landing, Ilya saw that one of the men inside was watching him. It was the guard with glasses who, on his first day, had led him to his cell in the medical ward. And as he looked into the guard’s eyes, which were fixed on his, he knew at once what was happening.

  He turned in time to catch the man behind him by surprise. It was the one called Goat, whom Grisha had warned him about three days ago. For a second, the other inmate hesitated, the two of them facing each other in silence. Then he lunged forward with a snarl, the gleam of a razor visible in his hand.

  Without thinking, Ilya took a step back, just in time to avoid the worst of the forward slash. An instant later, he felt the cloth of his shirt part, then the skin. Hot blood began to stream down his chest, a shallow wound, but enough to turn the world red as Goat came in again.

  Ilya, his pulse blooming, sensed the attack as much as he saw it, and brought up his forearms to block the back slash. He felt a sting like a shaving nick as the razor cut open his right arm. With his left hand, he took hold of Goat’s wrist, the one with the razor, and managed to lock both hands around it as he threw the other man against the wall. Faintly, he heard shouts, although he wasn’t sure whether they were directed at him or at the fight across the landing.

  Goat’s head hit the wall with a thud, the razor falling from his grasp. As Ilya released him, the seconds seemed to tick by quite slowly. Seeing the razor at his feet, he picked it up, his fingers closing around its plastic handle.

  As soon as the razor was in his hand, time returned to its normal speed. Hearing the shouts and echoes on the landing, Ilya knew he had only a few seconds to get the answers he needed.

  He went over to Goat, who was on his back. Kneeling, Ilya took him by the hair, then slammed the other man’s head against the ground, hard enough to feel the floor vibrate. “Did Vasylenko send you?”

  Goat drew back his lips and tried to spit, although most of the saliva fell back on his own forehead. Ilya, feeling the seconds slip away, slashed him across the face, opening up his cheekbone. Rolling his eyes upward, Goat hissed out a few syllables: “It wasn’t Vasylenko—”

  Ilya leaned in, razor almost touching the white of the other man’s eye. Behind him, he heard footsteps. “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know his name,” Goat gasped. “I was paid for the job. They said they would help my family—”

  Ilya stared at him. He was about to ask another question when he felt himself seized from behind by several pairs of arms. A voice came hot in his ear: “Drop it, you fucking shite!”

  Feeling the arms around him tighten, Ilya complied. The razor fell from his hand. Before it had time to strike the floor, he felt himself lifted up bodily, his head pushed down, legs bent up and back. The world tilted sideways as he was hauled off by the guards, who shouted for the others to keep away.

  He was dragged into another room, a strip cell, that stood off the main landing. As he was held down, his face shoved toward the floor, he felt cool air touch his flesh as his shirt and jeans were cut off with sciss
ors. His chest and right forearm were sticky with blood.

  There was a click of steel as they put him in wrist locks, then bent his legs behind his back again. Ilya felt a leather belt encircle his waist, then more hands pry his limbs backward as his wrists and ankles were cuffed, leaving him unable to move. He flashed briefly on the binding of Isaac, but then even this pleasingly ironic image fell away as he was carried back outside.

  The lights on the ceiling bounced overhead as he was dragged down a second set of stairs, the guards puffing around him, and taken into a part of the block he had not seen before, a place smelling of sweat and human waste. With his face to the floor, he heard a door being unbolted and swung back, then allowed himself to be thrown into a final cell. It was the segregation ward.

  Ilya lay curled up on the floor, still trussed, the cell door sideways in his field of vision. In the hallway, a cluster of guards was outlined against the light. He heard their last words before the door closed: “Fucking animals—”

  The door swung shut, plunging the cell into darkness. He lay on the ground, his cheek pressed against the concrete, breathing the unspeakable smell. Blood was gathering on the floor beneath him, his body aching all over, and it only ached more badly as he began to laugh.

  39

  When Wolfe entered the segregation ward, she found that it was not quite the dungeon she had expected, but a plain tiled hallway with an institutional feel. The air smelled of bleach, as if someone had given the floor a hasty scrub before allowing her inside, but the faint stink of human dirt still remained.

  The guard on duty led her to a cell halfway down the hall, rolling an office chair with one broken caster. He parked the chair in front of the door, then opened the Judas hole so that she could talk to the man inside. After asking whether she needed anything, he left, locking the gate behind him.

  Wolfe sat down. In spite of the drugs she was taking, her neck and shoulder ached, and her arm was still in a sling. For now, though, she pushed her discomfort away and looked into the Judas hole. “Ilya?”

  There was no answer. From here, she was unable to make out the cell’s interior, but she sensed that Ilya was listening. She waited another moment, then said, “I’m trying to get you out of here. You did quite a number on the guy with the razor. But I hear he came after you first.”

  More silence. Wolfe glanced at the guard, who was out of earshot, then turned back to the cell. “I came to tell you a few things. We believe that we’re dealing with an intelligence plot to kill Victor Chigorin. We don’t have the full story yet, but it has something to do with a covert action called Operation Pepel, which took place in Turkey in the late fifties.”

  Wolfe waited for a response, which was not forthcoming. She had spent a long time debating how much information to share with Ilya, and despite his misgivings, Powell had signed off. The next part, however, was painful, and she had trouble keeping her voice level as she continued to speak:

  “We think that one of the officers at my agency was passing information to the Russians,” Wolfe said, the words still strange in her mouth. “He’s disappeared. Judging from travel records, it looks like he’s left the city, but then the trail goes cold. We’ve searched his files, and what we’ve found indicates that he was acting as an informant. But I still don’t know what to believe.”

  She paused, remembering what they had learned so far about Garber. Even now, a full day after the revelation, it was still hard to comprehend, and the agency was in a state of shock. Garber’s car was gone, and his credit card and identification documents had been used to buy a train ticket to Lausanne, although it seemed likely that he had disembarked at an earlier station.

  Along with a great deal of other incriminating material, a search of Garber’s computer had uncovered detailed information, its source unknown, about Chigorin’s itinerary. As a result, the agency had decided to embed an officer into the grandmaster’s entourage. Powell had volunteered to fly with them to Helsinki, and other measures were being put rapidly into place, but nothing could disguise the severity of the leak. Asthana, in particular, had taken it hard—

  A quiet voice broke into her thoughts. “Did you find out about the cow’s horn?”

  Wolfe, startled, looked through the opening in the door. Beyond it there was nothing but blackness, but as she regarded the hole more closely, she could see something moving in the dark. “I did. Do you want to talk about it?”

  There was no answer. She waited a beat before speaking again, although she had been preparing for this moment ever since their last meeting. “A shofar is the ritual horn used in the synagogue,” Wolfe began. “It can be made from the horn of a ram, or a sheep, or even a nonkosher animal. But never a cow.”

  A long pause. At first, Wolfe thought that Ilya had lapsed into silence, but before she could go on, he said, “Yes. Even here, you see, the rabbis are afraid of the ox’s face. But why?”

  “Because of the golden calf,” Wolfe said. “They were ashamed of it. Nothing that recalled a cow or calf was allowed into the temple.”

  After another pause, Ilya spoke softly. “Now, at last, you’re close to the heart of the matter. That ancient humiliation. Painful after so many centuries. Taken as proof that the Israelites were unworthy of God’s love. Yet the story itself is strange. Even in the original version, you can sense the author rushing past it. Something about it clearly terrified the rabbis. They erased every trace of it they could find. But what was it that made them afraid?”

  Wolfe did not reply at once. She knew the answer, or thought she did, but even now, it was not something she wanted to utter aloud. Only the hope of what else Ilya might say allowed her to continue.

  “The story doesn’t make sense,” Wolfe said at last. “The Israelites had just been delivered out of slavery. They had seen God himself at the Red Sea. Yet they gave up on him so easily, as if all those miracles weren’t enough.” She hesitated. “Unless, of course, they worshipped the golden calf, not in spite of what they had been shown, but because of it.”

  Even in the darkness beyond the door, she could tell that he was listening. “Go on.”

  Wolfe wanted to hurry past this part of the argument, but she forced herself to speak slowly. “So there’s a tradition that the heavenly chariot, the one Ezekiel saw, was present at the exodus from Egypt. It’s mentioned in a psalm, and it was associated with the exodus in the cycle of readings in the synagogue. Some commentators even say that God used the chariot and the four living creatures as a weapon against Pharaoh. Which makes me wonder—”

  She slowed, then halted. Even after straying so far from her own faith, she regarded what she was about to say as close to blasphemy. “Which makes me wonder if the golden calf, the one the Israelites worshipped, was the ox of the merkabah. Or that the rabbis were afraid that it was.”

  “A very interesting possibility,” Ilya said quietly. “And does this explain anything?”

  “Yes. It explains why the rabbis were so afraid of Ezekiel’s vision, and why it was retouched to remove the ox’s face and the calf’s foot. They didn’t want anyone to suspect that when the Israelites worshipped the calf, saying that it was the god who had delivered them from Egypt, they might have been close to the truth. That the calf was a reflection of something real.”

  Ilya was nothing but a voice in the dark. “And you know the point of this story?”

  Wolfe had expected the question. “I think it means that when God shows himself, we aren’t always ready. Our own eyes can mislead us. Even if he appeared like he did at the Red Sea, we wouldn’t understand it, unless we’d already found the answers on our own. That’s what a midrash is. An investigation he wants us to make first. Even if we hate him for abandoning us in the meantime.”

  In the brief silence that followed, Wolfe realized that she had been describing herself. If Ilya sensed this, however, he did not mention it. “Yes. For th
e unprepared, the revelation simply fades away. It doesn’t matter how powerful it is. The proof, we are told, is from the exodus from Egypt. Which is what happens when a vision, or lesson, is granted to those who aren’t yet ready to understand.”

  Wolfe sensed that she had passed a test. “And you’re saying that I’m still not ready?”

  “Few of us are. Ever since the golden calf, God has spoken in riddles. Or not at all. That’s why the rabbis look past the words of scripture. Not at the words themselves. We can’t trust our eyes or ears. It’s a mistake to wait for God to speak. He exiles us from his presence because his face might drive us mad. As it did with the rabbis in the orchard. Or those hikers in the snow—”

  Wolfe sat upright in her chair, which slid backward. “You mean the Dyatlov Pass?”

  Ilya fell silent again. Wolfe strained to see into the darkened rectangle, her mind racing. The only time she had mentioned the Dyatlov Pass to Ilya had been after his arrest. He had clearly recognized the reference, but instead of telling her what he knew, he had shared a different story. And as she thought now of the rabbis who had entered the orchard, she saw the connection at last. “Are you saying that the hikers saw something that drove them mad?”

  After another pause, his voice came again from the darkness, farther away now, as if he had retreated from the door. “I am not saying anything. Not yet. But I want you to tell me why you’ve taken such an interest in this.”

  Wolfe hesitated for a moment before responding. “They were Morley’s last words.”

  “I see,” Ilya said. “And what do you think the real mystery is, after the distracting elements have been stripped away?”

  Wolfe scrambled to catch up with this new line of questioning. “It isn’t as strange as it seems. I don’t know how much you know about the incident, but most of the hikers’ injuries could have been caused by a fall down the ravine. The woman’s missing tongue might have been degraded by the microbes in her own body. Their orange skin and gray hair may have been a misinterpretation of the mortician’s work, or a story passed along until it changed into something else—”