City of Exiles (9781101607596)

by Nevala-lee, Alec

  He saw that the black smoke was gathering again. Now it looked like it was entering the hood itself, a living thing, its tendrils drawn into his lungs with each pull of respiration. He could feel it on his face. “Not real,” Powell managed to whisper. “None of this is real—”

  Powell broke off. A shadow had fallen across the floor. He did not want to look up, did not want to face this final outrage, but finally, as if compelled by a force outside himself, he slowly raised his eyes.

  A monstrous figure stood before him, the height of a tall man, so that it had to stoop to fit itself inside the confines of the jet. The first thing Powell noticed was that it had the wings of an eagle, its feathers filthy, spreading from one side of the cabin to another. He saw that its nails were long and yellow. Then, raising his eyes, he saw its face at last, and felt his sanity depart.

  It was a cherub, the living creature of the merkabah, and it was real. It had four faces, arranged like the conjoined heads of cephalopagus twins. One was a man’s face, twisted and contorted beyond recognition. Another was that of an eagle; the third, an ox. But worst of all, facing him, in place of the lion that Ezekiel had seen, was the leonine face of his father. His father was grinning.

  Powell collapsed. Inside the hood, he could feel his hair standing on end; then he heard a faint musical tone sounding from nearby. With the last shred of his old self, he realized that it was his phone. But then even this knowledge fell away, and as he looked up at the creature that loomed above him, feathers stinking and falling from its wings, he saw the eagle’s beak drop open, showing its black tongue, and the sound of the phone was lost in its sudden scream.

  With all his remaining strength, Powell tried to crawl forward. Even as he did, the moment he had been expecting finally came, and as the world tilted sideways, he began to laugh. It was too late. The plane was going down.

  45

  Earlier that morning, a man named Ivan Suvorov had crept quietly downstairs, trying not to wake his wife. He was dressed warmly, in long johns, a denim shirt, a fleece coat, and a green knit hat, while his feet were encased in the thick felt boots, or valenki, that were traditional footwear in this part of the world. Because it promised to be a wet day, he paused at the door to put on his galoshes.

  Outside, it was bitterly cold, but the old pensioner felt quite cheerful as he trudged to the pickup truck parked in front of the house. He slung his pack and folding chair into the rear bed, then opened the passenger’s door so that his dog, an aging husky, could hop into the front seat. Closing the door, he went around to the driver’s side and slid heavily behind the wheel. Then he started the truck and headed for the road, driving toward the river Volkhov, near the city of Veliky Novgorod.

  A few hours later, he was seated in a folding chair on the surface of the frozen river, warming his hands in his oilskin muff. Looking out at the forest that ran along the river’s margin, its rows of pine and alder trees crusted with snow, he exhaled deeply, the breath rising from his nostrils in two tidy streams of vapor. The dog was curled up at his side, its nose thrust into its tail for warmth.

  The old man coughed, feeling the cold spread through the convolutions of his lungs. It had been a quiet morning. So far he had caught nothing but smelt, none of them more than a few inches long, and a couple of perch, which he had stuffed, still twitching, into the canvas sack by his chair.

  Ivan was beginning to think about lunch, which would consist of a generous slice of salami and a swig of vodka, when he heard a low drone from overhead. He looked up just in time to see a plane heading his way, a sleek white private jet with wing tips slanted upward into pointed winglets, so that from this angle, it looked something like a fish itself.

  His first thought was that the plane was heading for the air force base, which was ten kilometers away. He had barely enough time to notice that it was coming in far too low and fast when it passed directly overhead, so close that he could see the individual rivets on its underside, as well as its stowed landing gear. For a second, he was in its shadow. Then it dove past, barely clearing the trees on the other side of the river, and crashed into the woods.

  Feeling the ground shake from the impact, Ivan leapt to his feet, his chair toppling backward. The dog, startled, jumped up as well. Ivan stared in disbelief as the plane slid onward, suddenly clumsy, not slowing as it plowed into the treetops. Branches exploded like gunshots. The plane seemed to skate briefly across the surface of the forest, with two almost symmetrical clouds of dust billowing to either side, then fell abruptly out of sight. At once, a cloud of inky black smoke, shot through with fire, mushroomed up from the woods.

  Ivan gaped at the crash, his aged heart thumping, knowing at once that this was the greatest and most terrible sight that he would ever see. Then, leaving his gear behind, he began to run across the icy expanse of the river, his galoshes kicking up clods of slush. As his dog ran beside him, yelping and howling with excitement, Ivan made straight for the pillar of smoke pouring up from the trees. Even from here, he could feel the heat on his face.

  III

  “I take it, Watson, that you have no longer a shadow of a doubt as to how these tragedies were produced?”

  “None whatever.”

  “But the cause remains as obscure as before.”

  —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”

  War had now been declared in Heaven . . . The Devil was Nabu, pictured as a winged Goat of Midsummer; so that the answer to Donne’s poetic question about the Devil’s foot is: “The prophet Ezekiel.”

  —Robert Graves, The White Goddess

  46

  Here, then, was another cell, in a part of the prison that Ilya had not seen before. His new room had two doors, an outer one of solid iron with an observation slit, and an inner door with a grid of steel mesh. Three of the four walls were made of reinforced concrete. The fourth consisted of a sheet of bulletproof glass, through which one or more guards currently watched him at all times.

  At the rear of the cell stood a toilet and shower, allowing him to wash up without rejoining the general population. He was in the shower now, a trickle of warm water coming down over his head. The flow was activated by a metal button in the wall, which released about ten seconds of water each time it was pressed. It wasn’t much, but he was grateful for the chance to wash the dried blood from his body. In the end, the guards had not beaten him too badly.

  At last, reasonably refreshed, Ilya emerged from the shower and toweled himself off, keeping his back to the guard who, he knew without turning, was watching him through the glass. His clothes, the same he had been wearing for the past two days, had been folded and draped across the back of his chair. He pulled on his shirt and jeans, remaining barefoot. For some reason, they had taken away his shoes, which had been set outside the cell door.

  He had just finished dressing when he heard steps approaching from the end of the corridor. A second later, the cell’s outer bolt was withdrawn with a grating rasp, and the door swung open to reveal a guard carrying a folding chair. “Visitor,” the guard said without looking at Ilya, who was watching from inside the cell, his hair wet. “Just be a moment, then.”

  The guard set down the chair and left, keeping the outer door open. Ilya took a step closer to the mesh, glad that Wolfe had returned. After their last conversation, which had been abruptly cut short, he had grown increasingly concerned that he had failed to give her enough information. He had shared his suspicions about the plane crash that had nearly killed Menderes, an incident he had pondered more than once while exploring the history of the security services, but as bright as she was, he wasn’t sure whether she had made the final connection.

  It was only then, as he waited for Wolfe to appear, that he noticed that the guards were no longer watching through the glass. And as he turned back to the door of his cell, suddenly suspicious that this visit was not what he had
expected, he found himself face-to-face with Vasylenko.

  He took a step back. As Vasylenko came up to the mesh and lowered himself into the chair, Ilya saw that the old man’s hands were empty, but he was still inclined to keep his distance. The door’s metal gridwork was too fine to admit a knife, but it would not stop a gun.

  Vasylenko, evidently noting his concern, spoke quietly in Russian. “You disappoint me, Ilyushka. If I wanted to hurt you, there would be easier ways than coming here myself. Although I doubt that anyone would protest much, since you’ve hardly endeared yourself to the guards.”

  Ilya saw his point, but he still kept well away from the mesh. “What do you want?”

  The old man gave a slight shrug. “It’s association time. We’re allowed to visit old friends. I thought I would pay you a call.” Vasylenko indicated the chair inside the cell. “Sit down. It’s been too long since we truly spoke.”

  Without lowering his eyes, Ilya took a seat, the cardboard chair creaking beneath his weight. For Vasylenko to come here would have required a substantial bribe, but he still didn’t know the reason. “If you want to see me, here I am. Now tell me why you’re really here.”

  “I wanted to find out what became of you. For such a righteous man, you have the reputation of one whose thoughts turn naturally to violence. You insist on making things so hard for yourself. And all for nothing.” A gleam appeared in the old man’s eyes. “You haven’t heard?”

  Seated in his cage, far from the rest of the world, Ilya had a foreboding of what was to come. “Tell me.”

  “Chigorin’s plane went down two hours ago.” The vor’s voice was regretful, though a hint of amusement remained in his eyes. “It crashed in the woods near Veliky Novgorod. No word so far on survivors. It was a noble effort, Ilyushka, but in the end, you were just a few hours too late.”

  Ilya remained silent. He felt no horror at the news, just a sickening inevitability, as if he had known all along that this was where the story would end. At last, he looked at the old man, who was watching greedily for his reaction. “I would have done nothing differently. If you think otherwise, you don’t know me at all.”

  Vasylenko smiled sourly. “I expected no less. But there are things that even you fail to understand. Your life is joined with mine. If I deprived you of certain things along the way, it was only what was necessary for you to become what you were destined to be. You should be thanking me for this.”

  As he listened, Ilya found himself remembering the house of his youth, now a tomb, the man and woman inside fallen into a dreamless sleep. “I never wanted to become anything. A man should only seek to be a man.”

  “But you wanted to be something extraordinary,” Vasylenko said. “There’s no point in denying it. You saw yourself as the last of the righteous. A tzaddik. I didn’t put the idea in your head; I only had to use it. It made you more dangerous than a man to whom cruelty is second nature. Cruelty was something apart from you, so you embraced it as a test. Am I wrong?”

  “No,” Ilya said, thinking of the faces that still haunted him. “All I can do now is correct the balance.”

  Vasylenko shook his head. “It’s too late. No matter what Wolfe might have told you, you can’t bring back the dead, no matter how long you spend in the valley of dry bones. I know you better than you imagine. You’re drawn to her, see something in her that you’ve lost in yourself. But she is as powerless as you are.” He paused. “What has she told you about Chigorin?”

  His tone remained offhand, but something in his words made Ilya look at him more closely. Through the mesh, which cast a grid of shadows on Vasylenko’s face, the old man’s expression had not changed, but a note of hunger had entered his voice. Ilya wondered what this meant, the most recent question still hanging in the air, and then, suddenly, he understood.

  The Chekists, he saw, were as confused about the situation as anyone else. Chigorin’s plane had crashed, yes, but the forces at work were so obscure, and the secret services so impenetrable, that even Vasylenko’s contacts weren’t entirely sure why. To respond, they needed more information. And if they were truly looking for answers, they might be willing to offer him something in exchange.

  All these thoughts flashed through his mind in a fraction of a second. Vasylenko was still waiting for his response. Ilya took another moment, then said carefully, “She told me that Chigorin was about to receive a trove of classified files. That the Chekists were anxious that none of these documents see the light of day. But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

  Vasylenko leaned back, the grid of shadows falling away from his face. “I don’t know what you mean, Ilyushka.”

  “Someone came after me in Spain. I know now that it wasn’t you. But I also gave the gangs there no reason to want me dead. Unless my presence threatened their plans in other ways.”

  “It’s possible,” Vasylenko said, with apparent carelessness, though Ilya knew that the old man’s mind was working intently. “I no longer have any interest in Spain. A new breed has taken over. Anyone willing to make deals with the beasts in Transnistria is not likely to respect the thieves’ code. In any case, they have pledged their allegiance to another faction.”

  Ilya sensed his meaning. “Military intelligence. Not your friends, but their rivals—”

  “I did not say that,” Vasylenko replied sharply. “I am only reminding you that the world is changing. The thieves are no longer what they once were. I should know. I was there at the beginning. Now we’re nearing the end. And as much as you hate us, I know that you will bear no love toward our successors.”

  As Vasylenko spoke, he shifted in his chair, bringing his face into a shaft of light. Looking at him now, Ilya saw nothing more than a man in his seventies, aging, endangered, and weary. “So why was I targeted in Spain?”

  “An old dispensation is giving way to the new. The gangs, I imagine, are cleaning house. If they had found you at another time, they might have left you alone, but perhaps they thought it safest to remove you from the picture. After all, you have a reputation as a dangerous man.”

  Trying to see beyond the vor’s words, Ilya caught a glimpse of some dark machine, a process, begun long ago, that was only now reaching its culmination. “What are they planning?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Vasylenko drew back again, retreating from the light, so that he was nothing but a voice in the shadows. “By now, there is no point in looking further. All you’ve done has been in vain. And there is nothing that anyone can do to prevent what is happening already.”

  47

  On the third floor of the airport office tower at Helsinki, an incident command center had been hastily assembled. As Wolfe entered the room, the officer who had escorted her from the gate pointed to a tall man in the corner, who was talking rapidly into a telephone. “That’s him.”

  “Thanks,” Wolfe said, weaving through the crowded conference space. Although she had been in Helsinki for less than a quarter of an hour, it already reminded her, oddly, of Salt Lake City. There was a sort of Swissness to both cities, orderly and humorless, and the only real difference, as far as she could tell, was that everyone here was drinking coffee.

  As she approached the man in the corner, he slammed the phone down. Eero Harju, she recalled, was a lead investigator for the Accident Investigation Board, the division of the Ministry of Justice tasked with looking into all aviation, rail, and maritime accidents. Working her way up to him, she held up her badge. “Hi, there,” Wolfe said. “We spoke on the phone. I’m—”

  Before she could continue, Harju spoke over her head, asking something in Finnish of an investigator at the other end of the table, who was on the phone as well. Covering the mouthpiece with his hand, the second investigator shook his head. Harju turned to Wolfe. “Stonewalling on the Russian side,” he explained in English. “They aren’t telling us anything.”

&
nbsp; Wolfe followed Harju as he went over to a laptop. “So there’s no word on survivors?”

  “We’re waiting on the Ministry of Emergency Situations,” Harju said, bending down to his computer screen. “They’re playing it close to the vest. I wish to Christ the plane had gone down here—”

  It was a strange sentiment, but Wolfe knew what he meant. Since she had last checked, two separate investigative commissions had already been announced in Russia, and while they had pledged their full cooperation to foreign agencies, their actions told a different story. “What about the site?”

  “Sealed off. They aren’t letting anyone in or out. The rumor is that they’re afraid of contamination.” He glanced up from the laptop, looking at her closely for the first time. “Hold on. You’re the one who said there might have been poison on the plane. What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing conclusive,” Wolfe said, trying to keep the discussion moving. “Do we at least have images of the crash?”

  “No footage yet. I’m told they’ve recovered the flight data and cockpit voice boxes. Troops from the military base nearby have been called in. There’s already concern that they’ll seize confidential opposition documents.” Harju shook his head. “No oversight at all. It’s a real mess.”

  As she listened, Wolfe could only share his frustration. She wished, not for the first time, that she had been allowed to fly to Russia. In the tense early minutes after the crash, with her fear for Powell’s safety channeled into anger and impatience, she had pushed hard to go to the accident site. An investigative team had been assembled to advise on the response, including a pathologist from the Royal Air Force, and Wolfe had felt that her place was with them.

  In the end, however, Asthana, who spoke better Russian, had been sent instead, and Wolfe had been ordered to Helsinki. She had hustled to catch a charter flight from Heathrow, and had made good time, spending just over two hours in the air. All the while, as she scrambled to keep up with events on the ground, Asthana’s final words, just before their departure, had echoed in her mind: “Don’t trust anyone. Remember what happened with Garber—”