by Gary Haynes
Looking around him, it was clear to Kazapov that another incident of Nazi panic had occurred in the bunker. The SS had attempted to destroy the passageways, hoping that the worst of sights would remain hidden. Fires had been started nearby. But in their haste, they too had only succeeded partially. He was sure of it now.
As Pavel’s torch continued to do its work, Kazapov was rendered speechless. Each item seemed more grotesque than the last. Rosaries hung from hooks on the walls, with human teeth for beads. There were cups crafted from craniums and thigh bones carved in the form of trumpets, with mouthpieces and bells. Elaborately engraved bowls, fashioned from human skulls and containing large stones, lay in a triangular pile on the floor. Kazapov blinked erratically as the light continued to illuminate all manner of other similar horrors.
‘Are they relics?’ Pavel said. ‘Like the bones and hair of the Christian saints. Are they real?’
Kazapov took out a slim torch of his own, guessing the sergeant just wanted to make sense of it all in his mind. But he knew what the musical instruments and receptacles carved from bone were. He knew too that they were real. He knew where they’d come from.
Now he focused, wondering briefly if the shadows cast by the torch beams were playing tricks. But it was not so. There, on a wooden shelf about three feet above the rubble-free floor, was a mummified woman sat upright, encased in a dome-shaped wicker basket. A small woman. From the east.
‘Bring some NVKD men. Collect it all. Be careful. Don’t spoil anything,’ he said to Pavel.
‘Yes, comrade lieutenant.’
‘Wrap these items in blankets before you do. Put them in crates,’ he said, nodding towards the macabre. ‘Be sure the Poles don’t see this.’
‘Yes, comrade.’
‘Treat it all with respect.’
‘Yes, comrade,’ Pavel said.
‘And don’t mention this to anyone else.’
‘The fascists must have hated so much it drove them insane, comrade lieutenant. In Stalingrad, I saw cannibalism. Our men held prisoner in the kessel went mad with the cold and starvation. They ate the warm livers and kidneys of the dead. But I haven’t seen anything to compare with this, lieutenant. Not even the dismembered in that room down there can compare,’ Pavel said, referring to the severed corpses in room with the cauldron of incense. ‘Nothing like this violation of the dead.’
But Kazapov had seen and heard of worse things during his time with the ChGK. He didn’t say anything, though. What was the point?
‘Shut up now and go,’ he said.
When Pavel moved off, Kazapov thought the man might be expecting a rebuke, so he called out to him and he turned around obediently. Kazapov shone his own torch onto the wall next to the sergeant.
‘Don’t speak of such things.’
‘Comrade?’ Pavel said.
‘Cannibalism. It’s not what people want to hear. Do you understand me, sergeant?’
In the faint light, Kazapov saw a concerned frown pass over the NCO’s face.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll not repeat it. But if you speak of Stalingrad, you will say it was a glorious victory. Nothing less than that,’ he said, keeping up the pretence of being a loyal Stalinist.
‘Yes, comrade. Thank you, comrade,’ Pavel said. ‘At Stalingrad, the card-carrying communists led all of the assaults and all-out charges. The commissars brought us chocolate and mandarins, a kind word for us beleaguered soldiers in a trench for a month at a time. The temperature was below minus thirty degrees, comrade. We beat the army that had defeated the Poles and French within weeks. We beat them at Stalingrad. We beat them at Kursk.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Kazapov said. ‘Go on now.’
Kazapov thought there was element of pretence about the sergeant, at least as far as his servility was concerned. He looked as hard and lethal as the bayonet that hung on his belt. He knew the NCO’s manner had been born of self-preservation. Regular Red Army soldiers both mistrusted and hated the NKVD, and who could blame them? But it didn’t bother him. This hidden room, this chamber, was unexpected.
Pavel Romasko left
And what was on that film I saw him looking at? The film, Kazapov thought. He’d forgotten about it. How could he have?
He let the sergeant slip from his thoughts.
He stepped now over a cranium filled with smooth stones, the narrow torch beam trained on the wicker basket, the mummified woman within. He reached out with his free hand and touched the plaited willow.
He knew that he would never understand the mind of a Kalmyk.
27
FBI HQ, 2015, the next day.
Sitting at her ash-grey desk, Carla used a mouse to navigate Yale University’s website, still convinced that Gabriel Hall’s relationship with Johnny Hockey was motivated by something beyond publicity hunting. It intrigued rather than disturbed her, but she was determined to discover the source of that motivation. She was fastidious by nature. She’d spent four months tracing a suspect whom she’d eventually identified thanks to a diamond-shaped mole under his left armpit. She’d tracked down a kidnap victim after a year by sifting through over 10,000 paper documents that were unsuitable for scanning into a computer search programme.
Now, she read with little interest the couple of paragraphs about Gabriel on the university’s site and, after reverting to the Google search page, noticed that his name came up on thirty or so other sites. The majority were reports of white-collar criminal cases he’d been defending, and not one revealed his presence on a social or professional media site, which hardened her view that he wasn’t representing Hockey to secure the publicity it was generating.
Refusing to wane, she checked the FBI records via SENTINEL, the software case management system that digitalized investigation workflows.
Her search ended when she read of a suspected case of kidnapping, which had been passed to the NYPD due to lack of evidence. She bit her bottom lip, nodding. Gabriel Hall’s niece had gone missing in Central Park eighteen months ago.
She decided to read the NYPD ongoing case notes in detail, knowing it was now one of thousands of missing persons’ files.
But first, she rang Section Chief Hester. He was still in the building, even though it was almost 21.00 hours, and she said she needed to see him urgently.
*
Reclining at his desk in a black, high-backed chair, Hester twiddled a pencil above his substantial paunch. He wore cufflinks studded with rubies and behind his head was a framed photo of Georgetown University’s waterfront on the Potomac River. Standing, Carla noticed the chocolate bar wrappers in his mesh wastepaper basket beneath the closed Venetian blinds and had to stop herself from lecturing him on the dangers of type 2 diabetes. Evidently, his weight issue was self-inflicted rather than inherited.
‘Take a seat,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
Carla sat down in front of his beech wood desk on the chair that she supposed he’d placed there purposely for her.
‘Let’s have it, agent.’
‘A defence attorney called Gabriel Hall is acting pro bono on the Hockey case.’
‘I know that. Half of New York knows that. Is there a problem?’ Hester said, as if he’d be flabbergasted if there were.
‘I’m not sure, sir.’
Hester placed the pencil down on his desk, arched both his fingers and his eyebrows. ‘Is that it? I was about to go home to my long-suffering wife. She says she sees her pedicurist more often than me.’
She forced a closed-mouth smile. ‘Hall’s teenage niece went missing in Central Park eighteen months ago, sir. I suspect the NYPD have drawn a blank.’
‘So, Gabriel Hall’s niece went missing,’ he said.
His voice was lethargic, and he looked as if he was about to yawn. Carla couldn’t make out if he was overly tired or if he was mocking her. She decided reluctantly that it was a bit of both.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And what’s your point?’ Hester said.
‘I attended Ho
ckey’s preliminary hearing. Hall and the public defender were present. I saw Hall go into a bar in Queens straight afterward. It’s a hangout for bikers and the Nazi Lowriders. Hall said something to a guy there and just walked off. I think he’s running errands for Hockey, and Hall’s no errand boy. Something’s not right.’
He frowned. ‘Now, tell me why you followed a New York defence attorney.’
Carla leaned forward, rubbed her forehead and said, ‘He’s bending over backward for this guy.’
‘But that’s his vocation,’ Hester replied.
She sighed. Hester was clearly frustrated and so was she.
‘He acts for people in Watson’s social class, not pond life like Hockey. But, Hall has a motive to hate people like Watson and getting close to Hockey is — ’
Cutting her off in mid-flow, Hester said, ‘How do you know a sex criminal was responsible for his niece going missing?’
Carla nodded. ‘The initial investigation was inconclusive, sure. But it cites abduction as a possibility.’
Hester pursed his lips. ‘I think Hall is representing Hockey because he believes Hockey killed a man that liked to watch a young woman being murdered, as you say. But if he believes his niece was abducted by a sex criminal, that’s just added motivation. That’s it. You know your role here, and it has nothing to do with Gabriel Hall. You’ll find another lead. Now, I want to go home and eat something with my wife, if that’s alright with you, agent?’
She rubbed her thigh, as if straightening out a crease in her trousers. She didn’t get up, as she knew she was expected to.
‘I’d like to follow Hall, just for a couple of days,’ she said.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘I think — ’
He hushed her with a motion of his fleshy hand. ‘No. I’m not interested. Focus. Find out who the girl was. Find an existing pattern or an emerging one. Find something that’ll stop it, but do it without a federal judge lecturing us for harassing an attorney.’
She stood up. ‘Yes, sir.’
As she left the office, she decided that she wouldn’t follow Gabriel Hall. Hester, the hard-ass, was right. But she’d purposely left out one crucial detail concerning Hall’s niece. She wanted to talk to Hall first, to clarify matters before reporting back to the section chief. Hester hadn’t said she couldn’t ask the lawyer to lunch.
28
Yale, the next day.
It was mid-morning and Gabriel poured himself a cup of coffee in a staffroom opposite the Sterling Law Building, the neo-Gothic design of which was based on the English Inns of Court. He sat on an armchair with fading green fabric and glanced at the only other person in the room. The frail male professor, with milky white irises and a forehead as lined as a limpet shell, had the intellect to serve on the Supreme Court, and would have done so, Gabriel knew, if he hadn’t been so dismissive of politicians.
The professor was hunched over a table made of fine maple wood, surrounded by piles of papers. His obvious immersion in the minutiae of his work led Gabriel to think that even the fire alarm wouldn’t disturb him. But out of respect, he took his smartphone from the pocket of his jeans, put it on vibrate mode and placed it on the arm of the chair.
He saw what he took for dog or cat hairs on the old man’s dark-blue blazer, and squinted. He’d been allergic to animal hair, as well as certain foods, since childhood. He thought now about opening one of the windows, but decided he couldn’t risk a gust of air spoiling the old man’s work.
Gabriel spent half an hour reading a law journal before the mobile started to purr, moving from side to side like a kid’s toy running out of battery life. He snatched it up, noting that it wasn’t a number on his list of contacts.
He stood up and walked to the narrow, red-brick corridor outside and leaned up against it, in between the two oil portraits of alumni that hung there.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Gabriel Hall?’
‘Yes. Who’s this?’
‘My name is Special Agent Carla Romero. We spoke at the federal prison. I was there to see Jonathan Hockey.’
He clasped the back of his head, feeling a little off guard. ‘You were at the courthouse, too.’
‘Could we meet?’
He thought that might be reckless, but his curiosity kicked in. ‘OK.’
‘You know Little Italy?’
‘I do,’ he said, nodding to a colleague, a visiting researcher with blonde hair cut boyishly, as she walked by.
‘There’s a little bistro on Mulberry Street called Frank’s Place,’ she said. ‘Midday tomorrow suit?’
‘What’s this about?’
‘See you tomorrow,’ Carla said.
‘Wait,’ Gabriel said. ‘How did you get my number?’
‘Your PA.’
‘My PA wouldn’t give out my number to just anyone,’ he said, frowning.
‘She didn’t. But I asked her to call me back at the FBI building, so she knew I wasn’t a nut job.’
She disconnected, and he arched his back against the wall, images forming involuntarily in his mind, images that he was powerless to reject.
*
A day after Hockey’s arrest, Gabriel’s smartphone had rung.
The ringtone was the theme tune from a well-known action-adventure movie. Roxana had put it on as a practical joke, hoping, he’d guessed, that it would embarrass him in some rarefied meeting at Yale. But he’d kept it on as a payback. It had infuriated her every time someone had rung him. Now, he just couldn’t quite bring himself to change it.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Gabriel, it’s Abe.’
Abe Murray was an NYPD detective sergeant, and had what Gabriel knew to be an uncommon investigative mind. He was dogged and kind, too. He’d been involved in the investigation into the disappearance of Gabriel’s niece after the FBI had passed the file onto the police. The man had worked fifteen-hour days on the case and had reported to Gabriel regularly. Sometimes, he just called to see how Gabriel was, which Gabriel guessed was the case today.
‘Abe. It’s good to hear from you. How are you?’
‘I feel like shit most mornings.’
Gabriel smiled to himself. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘It’s, well, hell Gabriel, I’m sorry to bring this up, but I thought you should know.’
‘Know what, Abe?’ Gabriel said, confused by the comment.
‘The Watson case, you heard of it?’
Gabriel raised his eyebrows, finding the question a little peculiar. ‘I’m not Amish, Abe.’
‘No, you’re not.’
He heard Abe sigh, wondered why the cop was hesitating.
‘The douchebag they arrested had a DVD at his place. I’m told it shows a violent murder.’
‘I’m listening,’ Gabriel said, his gut tightening.
‘An expert in such things informed me the victim had the facial features of a Kalmyk girl.’
Gabriel felt bilious and swallowed hard. ‘Have you seen it?’
‘No, Gabriel.’
‘Can you get me a copy?’ he said.
‘The FBI have jurisdiction.’
‘How come?’
‘Mrs Watson was a Jew. The suspect is a neo-Nazi type. The victims were both tight with the mayor. You know how it is.’
‘Can you get me a damn copy or not?’
Gabriel steadied himself. He sat down at the farmhouse table, putting his free hand to his forehead. He knew what he’d just asked of Abe was impossible. He blamed everyone involved for not finding his niece — because he still blamed himself for letting her out of his sight in Central Park. It haunted him.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.’
‘As far as I’m concerned, you got every right to.’
‘Thanks, Abe. Thanks for calling.’
‘No problem, Gabriel. Give my regards to Roxanna.’
‘She left.’
‘I’m sorry, Gabriel. Real sorry. If it’s any consolation, it often happens
after something like this.’
No, it’s no consolation, Gabriel thought.
Once the IVF treatment had failed, he knew his sister had tried to adopt in the US for some time. It hadn’t happened. She’d said she’d read about adopting foreign orphans on the Internet. The most readily available were girls, from infants to six years of age. She’d heard about Americans going to the Republic of Kalmykia, a federal subject of the Russian Federation, to adopt Kalmyk babies and children.
Kalmykia was in the Caucasus, his sister had said, between the Black and Caspian seas to the west and east, and the Don River to the north and the Caucasus Mountains to the south. The nearest known Russian city was Volgograd, formerly named Stalingrad. Kalmykia was once part of the Great Silk Way, she’d said. She’d smiled, then. He’d disapproved of the way she seemed to wallow in the far-flung nature of the place.
His sister and her husband had gone to the capital, Elista, with 20,000 US dollars and had returned with his niece. Her name was Sangmu, a Tibetan name, which meant the kind-hearted one. Gabriel had been angered by that, and entirely sceptical of his sister’s motives. But that had changed. For thirteen years, the orphan from Kalmykia, somewhere Gabriel had never heard of before, a child with learning difficulties, had become a focus, and she’d responded to it, becoming noticeably more confident and exceeding expectations. He’d grown to love her in a way that had made him realize how selfish his former life had been.
Sangmu’s disability was characterized by impaired intellectual and social functioning, although she had no obvious physical signs. It manifested itself in a weak memory and a lack of social inhibitions. The easily preventable cause, Gabriel had learned, was severe iodine deficiency. His sister had established close links with the American Association on Intellectual and Development Disability, after the diagnosis of her daughter’s condition. The child psychologists hadn’t been able to decide if the trauma of Sangmu’s previous personal circumstances had been exacerbated or lessened by her neurodevelopment disorder. But they’d advised that she should never leave home alone.