Her small smooth face was surrounded by fine white hair. Her age was hard to tell. Her English was exquisite. On her office desk was an iPod with small speakers. From it came the Beatles. “Norwegian Wood” was on, turned very low.
“A present from Valentina,” she said. “She knew when I was a girl, long ago, the Beatles meant everything to me and they were banned for so long. I’m sorry, I was thinking about her. I like to think about her. The news was so devastating it was hard to believe, but I was not surprised.”
Orphanage Number Six, as it had been in Soviet times, was a free-standing building with a ramshackle playground next to it. The concrete walls outside were stained with water. It still served children, Elisabetta told me, but some rooms had been converted to house older girls who needed shelter. In them, she showed me the desks, a pair of beds with blue spreads, posters of pop stars.
The building had been scrubbed endlessly, there were colorful pictures on the walls done by the kids, but there was a dank sour smell was there, as if it literally came out of the walls.
In Elisabetta’s office was a framed photograph of a little girl. It was Luda, the child Val had tried once to adopt.
Elisabetta offered coffee again and I refused, and sat down opposite her at her pine desk. She put a pack of Russian cigarettes on the desk followed by a small box of chocolates.
“Please,” she said.
“Not surprised, you said?”
“When I heard, I thought to myself, he did this to her. They did this.”
“Who?”
“One moment,” said Elisabetta. She closed the door and lowered her voice. “I know what happened,” she said. “I know. I said to her, my darling girl, please be careful, please go slowly. But Valentina was an innocent, you see. She didn’t understand about greed. Or money. She simply didn’t get it,” Elisabetta added. “We had begun taking in girls of ten, eleven, twelve, who were working in the train stations as prostitutes, there is a lot of money in Moscow now, and while the girls used to go to Western Europe and America, there is more money here. It had become big business and there are big, how would you say it? Big players. In business. In the government. I said to her, Valentina, you must not talk about certain people. But she didn’t hear me. She was, after all, an American girl. Is somebody there?” she called out, and half rose from her seat. Nobody answered.
“Who were you expecting?”
She turned up the volume. “Eleanor Rigby” played.
“I don’t know,” Elisabetta said. “Since Valentina’s death, there have been people dropping by for no reason in particular, you see. She took everyone on. She criticized everyone and everything she didn’t like, she picked up the phone and called government officials. Worst, she spoke to journalists. This can get you killed. She made friends with a woman who wrote about the abuse of children and girls, and the money and the connections with the government. Let me show you some of the girls, her girls,” said Elisabetta, taking a binder and opening it, turning the pages, showing me the pictures.
I stopped her. From my pocket, I took the picture of Masha Panchuk.
“Yes,” said Elisabetta, “she was one of ours. Her name was Maria. She was a Ukrainian girl who ran away from home and was found by her uncle who put her to work. Valentina got her out of the country and to London. I don’t think she was sixteen years old.” Turning pages in the binder, Elisabetta found the girl’s picture, a sad beautiful girl, photographed by Val.
“What did they call Maria?”
“We called her Masha.”
It had started here. In this shelter, on a crummy backstreet in Moscow.
“Masha’s last name, it was Panchuk?”
“Not then. Only after she married a fellow named Zim Panchuk. You knew her?”
I told Elisabetta about Masha’s death.
“My God,” she said.
“I think she was killed in Val’s place, she had a purse Val had given her with her name in it, and when they realized it was the wrong girl, they went after Valentina.”
Elisabetta put her small chin on one hand and smoked with the other.
“Who did it?”
“You knew her father?”
“Of course. Anatoly Anatolyevich, he gave us money. He came here a few times, he was so jolly with the little children, and he sang for them, and brought them presents, usually food so exotic they had never seen it. They thought he was Father Christmas,” she said. “He did whatever Valentina asked. In the last few months, I believe, she spent most of her time working on our behalf. I felt she had become obsessed.”
“You said she made friends with a journalist?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Please, tell me.”
“It’s dangerous,” she said. “They kill journalists.”
“They killed Valentina,” I said. “I need help.”
“I’ll see,” she said. “But now there are babies who need feeding. I must go.”
“I’m a policeman. In the United States. Valentina’s father is my best friend, she was my friend.” I leaned over the desk.
From a drawer, Elisabetta took a photograph and sat gazing at it. “She was such a special girl,” she said. “She was pure.”
“Valentina?”
“Yes, her soul was pure,” she said, and handed it to me. In the picture were Val and Grisha, his arm around her.
“You knew him?”
She nodded.
“What did you think?”
“I met him quite a while ago, not long after Val started helping us. She wanted everybody to love him, the way it always is when you first fall in love. Recently she had stopped talking about him. I didn’t pry. Once, she said just that he didn’t believe in the things she believed in anymore.”
“I see,” I said. I had heard it before. Valentina had fallen hard for Grisha at first. Later, she backed away, then broke it off. For this, I thought, most of all for this, he killed her.
Elisabetta got up to leave.
“Have you seen him?” I said.
She turned from the door.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“He came in a few days ago,” said Elisabetta. “He asked about Mr Sverdloff. My assistant talked to him, he wanted Valentina’s files, she said there were none, that she had taken them to America with her.”
“How was he?”
“Angry,” she said.
“Enough to kill?”
“My assistant was frightened, it’s all I know.”
Elisabetta went to the back of the building where I could hear the babble of babies, and returned with a short fat woman. “This is Marina,” she said, introducing the woman. “She is a journalist, but she helps us here at the shelter. I have to go.”
“Marina Fetushova,” said the woman, and lit up a stinky Russian cigarette.
I introduced myself to Fetushova. She didn’t move, just kept smoking.
“You help out here?” I said in Russian.
“None of your business.”
“I need information.”
“We can’t talk here,” she said, and without another word, she walked through the front door, blowing smoke into the open air. I followed her.
We were at the edge of a playground where a gang of eight-year-olds were climbing a jungle gym and skipping rope. Fetushova watched them.
Head set between beefy shoulders, she wore a sloppy green sweater and a gray skirt. In spite of the booming voice, and the fact that she swore like crazy, she had a cultivated accent.
“You’re a cop?” she said.
“Yes. From New York.”
“What is it you need?”
Her tone was brusque, almost hostile.
“I want to find somebody.”
“Who’s that?”
“Grigory Curtis.”
Fetushova swore, calling Curtis a prick and much worse, and then turned away.
I grabbed her arm.
“Don’t do that,” she said, shaking loose. “
Don’t fucking touch me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t talk to you here,” she said.
“What’s wrong with here?”
“Don’t be an ass.”
The sun beat down on the playground. The kids kept playing.
“So somebody knew about Val’s involvement here?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
“People watch this place?”
“My God, you’re naive. What do you think?”
Leaning forward, as close to her as I could without her slugging me, I said, without thinking about it, “I’m desperate.”
Her expression changed slightly, a mixture of sarcasm and sympathy.
“You don’t sound like a fucking pig cop,” she said.
“I’m a friend.”
“You’re from where?”
“Here.”
“Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“You’re interested?”
“I’m only talking to you while I finish my smoke,” she said.
“Give me one.”
She offered me the pack, and her lighter. I told her the street where I grew up, the street where we moved after my father lost his job, the school I went to.
“Yeah, me too, same time,” she said.
There was a flash of recognition. Now she understood, it seemed to say, she knew all about me. But I looked at her and saw an old Russian woman, not somebody my age. Maybe that was what her work had done to her.
“You remember the music teacher?” I said. “At our school?”
“Okay, forget the fucking small talk,” said Fetushova, drawing back, throwing her cigarette on the sidewalk, crushing it with her foot, walking closer to the playground.
“What happened here?”
“Fuck you,” she said. “I don’t talk about it,” she added, but she didn’t leave, just stood and watched as women came and went, bringing packages to the shelter. The kids played. The older girls watched them. In this shabby district, everybody was poor, shabbily dressed. But you could hear the traffic, the rumble, the scream of it.
In the middle of town, you saw a Moscow afloat on Russia’s supplies of oil and natural gas, heard the world bellowing for fuel, prices skyrocketing. In the center of the city, you could feel it, as if the resources, oil and gas, aluminum, nickel, diamonds, gold, and the revenues poured down a chute into the city from the Far East and the former republics. Money, money, money.
It was the biggest city in Europe now, ten, twelve, sixteen million, depending if you counted the floating immigrant population and dozens of billionaires. I could feel it flexing its muscles, bragging rights claimed like a prizefighter who had taken the title. But at the shelter, there were only the kids and the stained building and old women in headscarves who looked like Russian women had looked for centuries. They brought home-made dumplings, and black bread, whatever they could afford for the children.
The little girls in tiny blue shorts and striped t-shirts ran around, laughing. They clambered up the jungle gym. I thought of the children in the green square in London, hanging upside down. An older girl sat on one of the swings, swinging higher and higher. I watched her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
I saw it all over again. I saw the girl in the Brooklyn playground, I saw Masha Panchuk. Fetushova had picked up her bag, lit up another smoke, was getting ready to go.
“Was somebody hurt here?” I said. “In this playground?”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
I told her about Masha Panchuk, the way she died, I told her all the details.
She dropped her cigarette, hand trembling.
“My God,” she said.
“What?”
“Wait.” She hurried into the shelter where I tried to follow. “I said wait.”
“About a year ago, Valentina took this picture,” said Fetushova, returning with a print in a plastic sleeve.
Stomach turning, I looked at the picture. A girl on a bench, the jungle gym visible behind her.
“Here?”
“Yes,” Fetushova said.
The girl was wrapped like a mummy in duct tape. A doll was on her lap.
“Jesus Christ.”
“This playground,” she said. “The girl was thirteen. She belonged to a bastard very high up, close to the Kremlin.”
“Belonged?”
“He owned her. You can as good as buy these girls,” said Fetushova. “Somehow she got away. Somebody found her on the street and got her here. The son of a bitch thought the girl might talk. He hired a thug to do this. Shut her up. Tape her up. She was found like this.”
“Dead?”
“Of course.”
“They murdered the kid?”
“Yes.”
“Why all the duct tape?”
“It’s an old gangster punishment. You make it look like the old mob, the officials can deny it. They distance themselves. The fuckers look clean as a whistle, they give the shelter money, they go on TV, official TV, we only have official TV now, of course, and say how dreadful this is.”
“Valentina?”
“She had started working with us when it happened. We asked her to take pictures. The girl in Brooklyn, she looked like this one, the duct tape?”
“Yes. I think they were after Valentina and got the wrong girl.”
“Fuck,” said Fetushova. “Somebody hired a creep who knew about this?”
“I think it was Grigory Curtis.”
“Piece of shit, piece of mother-fucking donkey turd,” she said. “You know him?”
“I want him,” I said. “He’s here. Elisabetta told me he had been here to the shelter.”
“He wouldn’t have the stomach to do this kind of job, if it was him, he hired somebody who fucked it up, right?”
“Yes.”
“And when it came to Val, all he could manage was a pillow over her face. Fucking bastard. I have to go.” She looked around.
A couple of guys lounged at the edge of the playground. They looked like low-level hoods, or street creeps from the FSB.
“Who are they?”
“Garbage men,” she said, laughing. “We call them garbage men, I just don’t know what kind of garbage.”
“Where can we talk?”
“I can’t talk.”
“I’ll be at your office. I’ll wait for you,” I said.
“Just don’t get me killed,” said Fetushova.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I left the shelter. I had already checked every place that was mentioned in Grisha Curtis’ files; in the stuff I had stolen from the office on Moscow Road. I had checked, quietly as I could: an apartment where he’d lived; a bank he had worked at; a gym where he did weights.
I couldn’t exactly call up the FSB and ask for his contact. I couldn’t say, who ran him, if somebody did. Maybe a real spy would know how.
So I worked the obvious places. Nothing. He wasn’t good at keeping secret files, but he was good at hiding.
I felt him on my back all the time. At every corner, I looked over my shoulder, and put my hand on the little gun in my pocket.
Paranoia took over in Moscow. I walked as fast as I could, heading for the subway, always feeling somebody behind me, turning sharply, thinking I’d see Curtis, when there was nobody at all.
I stopped near an old Moscow housing project, twelve tall buildings, most in an even worse state than when I’d been here in the 1990s. I put my head into the hallway of one of the buildings; it stank of piss, like it always had, the elevator was still broken.
A few elderly women sat on rickety chairs on a patch of grass outside, and I scanned the faces, thinking I might recognize somebody, but they stared back, blank, and went on fanning themselves against the heat with newspapers. Living on meager pensions, they seemed completely unconnected with the new Moscow.
I asked the oldest of the women if she had known Birdie Golden. My mother’s best friend who
had taught me English lived and died in the building with the broken elevator.
“Yes,” she said in Russian. “You are?”
I told her who I was. She beckoned me to lean down so she could kiss my cheek.
“Birdie loved you very much,” she said. “She talked about you all the time, you were like her own son,” said the woman, who invited me to take an empty chair and offered me a bottle of water from her bag.
I wanted to stay. I wanted to sit in the sun like the old women and talk. I realized Olga Dimitriovna had reminded me of Birdie a little.
“There is a man looking in this direction,” said Birdie’s friend, and I glanced over my shoulder and saw one of the garbage men from the playground.
“I should go,” I said.
“Please come back,” said the woman, and I said I’d try, even while sweat was running down my back and my hands were cold. I had to get Marina Fetushova to tell me what she knew. Whatever it took. Now, I thought.
I found her at the radio station where she worked.
“Fetushova, Marina,” she said, sticking out a hand as if she had never met me before, and I saw this was for show, for the other people at the small radio station where I found her.
The radio station was in a couple of rooms in a concrete building near the Arbat, a dingy place with stale air thick with the rank smell of old cigarettes, no air conditioning.
Fetushova half pushed me out of the room where four people pored over scripts and fiddled with equipment. From another room, door shut, came the sound of American Blues. Buddy Guy, Mick Jagger covering a raucous Muddy Waters number about champagne and reefers.
A guy stood on the landing, leaning against the wall. Security for Fetushova and the others, I guessed. I started for the office.
“Not in there. I don’t like to compromise anyone else,” she said, pushing me back out into the hallway.
“Let’s go outside,” I said. “A cafe.”
“I told you what I know. You’re a cop, you’re Sverdloff’s friend, you were Valentina’s friend. She mentioned you to me once,” she said, and sat on the bottom stair, elbows on knees.
“What did she say?”
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