Private Moscow

by James Patterson

  I grabbed a length of rusting iron rail that had a flat, razor-sharp end, and trudged through thick snow to get to the steel door. The yard was overlooked by a windowless warehouse and an apartment building that was undergoing refurbishment, and it couldn’t be seen from the Expressway overpass, so I had no eyes on me when I forced the jagged end of the makeshift crowbar into the gap between the doorplate and the frame. Even through my gloves, I could feel the freezing chill of the metal, but I ignored it and applied as much pressure as I could. The plate bent, the lock snapped and the door swung open.

  I stepped into a gloomy corridor that smelled of decay. An ancient toilet lay to my left and a space that might once have been an office opened up on my right. The walls were marred by damp and the floor tiles were rotten. I walked along the corridor, checking the place for tripwires and booby traps. Karl might have wanted me to find this place, but there was no guarantee it wasn’t hostile, so I moved with caution.

  The corridor took me to the main workshop, a thirty-by-fifty-feet space that would have suited a mechanic or body shop, but which was now empty. A steel balcony hung at the rear of the space and I climbed the rickety stairs that led up to it, but found nothing significant. Just a bare brick wall and a tiny, barred circular window that overlooked the yard. I peered down at the gloomy workshop space, wondering why Karl had brought me to a derelict, empty building. Then I noticed something on the floor below. I hurried down the steps and approached a dust-covered indentation in the concrete. I crouched and brushed away the dust to reveal a carved pair of naval aviator wings. I stood, puzzling over their significance, and as I moved around them, I felt the tone of my footsteps change. I looked down, scuffed my shoe through the thick dust and noticed a regular indentation. I bent down and traced the outline of a two-by-two-foot panel. I got my fingers beneath one of the edges and lifted the heavy square. Someone had covered a thick steel plate with concrete to conceal a manhole. A short, steep run of steps led to a basement. I pulled a flashlight from my jacket, switched it on and went down.

  The steps led to a small antechamber and there was another steel door, this one controlled by a numeric keypad. There was a note stuck to the wall beside the keypad. I shone the light on it and saw it read, “Happy Birthday.”

  I punched the month, day and year of my birth into the keypad and a green light flashed and the lock disengaged. I pulled the door open and pointed my flashlight into the room beyond. I was shocked by what I saw.

  Arranged on shelves around the room were surveillance cameras, directional microphones, location transmitters, audio and video bugs. A desk in the center of the room was covered with passports from different countries and beside them were stacks of foreign banknotes. Lying next to the passports and money was a large black diary. Lining the back wall was a gun rack that was covered by a steel mesh. The rack held assault rifles, grenades, pistols, knives and stacks of ammunition.

  I approached the desk and opened one of the passports. Looking every inch an authentic document issued by the French Republic, the photo that stared up at me was Karl Parker’s but the name beside the image was Claude Morel. I checked the other passports and found they all contained Karl’s photo and that each was issued in a different name. These weren’t the possessions of a successful CEO. This was the lair of a criminal, terrorist or spy. Who the hell was my friend?

  I opened the diary and leafed through the pages. They were all blank, not a single entry anywhere. What was it for?

  I pulled open the top drawer of the desk and found a laptop. There was a note stuck to the lid that read, “I did what I had to.” I recognized the writing from the UPS package. It was Karl’s.

  I was about to open the laptop when I heard footsteps in the workshop. I kicked myself for not closing the trap door behind me, but without brushing the dust over it, the outline would still have been visible anyway. I switched off my torch, hurried to the steel door and positioned myself behind it.

  I tensed as someone came down the stairs and crept toward the open doorway.

  “You’d better not be hiding behind that door, Jack Morgan,” Mo-bot said, and I stepped out, relieved to hear a friendly voice. “You could have given me a heart attack,” she added. “I told you I’d be here in five. Took me a little longer than I expected to pick the lock on the shutter.”

  She shone her torch around Karl Parker’s lair, and whistled loudly. “What the heck is this place?”

  CHAPTER 24

  “LUXURY COMMUNISM,” LEONID sneered as he and Dinara climbed the chipped concrete steps that wound up the dingy staircase. The place reeked of failure and as they headed up to the fourth floor they heard the sounds of a quarrel echo off the walls.

  “We don’t want to know about your money problems,” Leonid yelled up the stairs, and the argument stopped for a moment before resuming, except instead of fighting about their finances, the unseen couple were now rowing over who was to blame for starting disputes the neighbors could overhear.

  Leonid sighed. “You’re too young for communism, but I caught the end of it. Hard to believe there was a time”—he gestured at their surroundings—“when this was considered the height of luxury.”

  “My parents remember the Gorbachev years fondly,” Dinara replied.

  “Were they Party members?” Leonid asked as they reached the fourth-floor landing.

  Dinara nodded. “Loyal. They truly believed in equality.”

  “Equality?” Leonid scoffed. “I don’t remember Gorbachev or his cabal living somewhere like this.”

  The apartment building was one of many charmless, functional five-story blocks that had been thrown up around Moscow in the seventies and eighties. Poorly mixed concrete, terrible plumbing, shoddy electrics and a sense of neglect that was present from the day their doors opened. Buildings like these were some of the least desirable in the whole city, refuges for the poor, downtrodden and criminal. Dinara wondered why a Moesk customer-service agent would choose to live here.

  They entered the central corridor on the fourth floor. The place stank of rotten fruit and most of the lights were out, casting much of the corridor in shadow. They found apartment 418 and Dinara used lock-picking tools to gain entry.

  “I could have done it faster,” Leonid said when she pushed the door open.

  “Are you really that insecure?” Dinara replied as they crept inside.

  According to the property records, Yana Petrova lived alone, but official documents didn’t always tell the whole story, so Dinara and Leonid donned surgical masks and latex gloves and conducted a cautious sweep of the small two-bedroom apartment before relaxing their guard.

  The police hadn’t identified Yana Petrova as a victim of the Boston Seafood Grill blast, so Dinara and Leonid were a step ahead of the authorities and had free run of the place.

  “I’ll check the bedroom,” Leonid said.

  He walked down a short corridor that ran off from the living room. Taking care to leave no trace of her presence, Dinara searched the cupboards in the small kitchenette, looking for the slightest clue that might hint at why this seemingly unremarkable woman had been targeted for such an ostentatious execution. Dinara found nothing but evidence of a sad, solitary existence. There were meals for one in the fridge, and three sets of plates and cutlery. One set in the cupboard, one in the sink and the third drying on the draining board. A calendar of famous Moscow scenes listed only one appointment; the word “Mickey” was scrawled beneath yesterday and had been circled by two love hearts. Had Yana been at the Boston on a date?

  Dinara found tinned food and a half-empty vodka bottle in another cupboard. There was nothing on top or underneath the kitchen units, and, satisfied the tiny room had no secrets to reveal, Dinara moved into the living room. Leonid emerged from the bedroom corridor before she’d had a chance to get started.

  “I think someone has already been here,” he said. “Someone who can search without leaving a mark.”

  “Then how do you know?” Dinara asked.


  Leonid gestured at her to follow and they went along the corridor that fed into two small bedrooms and a tiny bathroom. He took her into the main bedroom, a simple space that overlooked the neighboring block. Leonid went to a chest of drawers that was covered by jewelry, makeup and skincare products.

  “She wasn’t house proud,” he said, signaling the thick dust. “Look at the marks.”

  Dinara saw clear circles in the dusty surface.

  “The dust build-up suggests she always put things back in the same place. Apart from today. These bottles have been placed wrong. And look at the jewelry tree,” Leonid said.

  Rings, necklaces, earrings and bracelets had been hung in tangled clumps. It was not the arrangement of a woman who wanted easy access to her jewelry.

  Dinara noticed a laundry basket at the end of the bed, and lifted the lid to sift through Yana’s dirty clothes.

  “You’re right,” she said. “These clothes have been sorted by type. Someone’s thrown in all the underwear and blouses first and put the trousers and socks on top.”

  Leonid looked puzzled.

  “When people get undressed, they put their clothes into the laundry, so you get outfit one, then the second layer is outfit two and so on. This bin has been emptied and refilled. The underwear went in first because there’s nowhere to hide anything. Then the T-shirts. Trousers and socks take longer to search, so they went in last.”

  Leonid nodded. “Whoever has been here would have fooled most cops. But I am not most cops.”

  “Will you ever stop boasting?”

  “How can a statement of fact be considered boasting?” Leonid asked.

  “The real question is what they were looking for,” Dinara said. “And whether they found it.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “KEEP LOOKING,” DINARA said.

  She left Leonid and returned to the living room. She checked the small two-seater couch that stood in front of the television, but found nothing. She searched the TV unit, but drew a blank. Her attention was caught by a flash of color across the room, and she saw a tank of tropical fish concealed behind a gilt tri-fold screen. Dinara went over to the aquarium and watched colors dart and dance through the water. Dinara felt sorry for the little creatures. With Yana gone, who knew when they would be fed again? She picked up a bottle of fish food and shook a little into the tank. The fish must have been hungry because they shimmered toward the tiny pellets and gobbled them up. The aquarium only added to Dinara’s sense of Yana as a solitary person. Dinara could picture the lonely woman talking to her fish as she fed them, and there was something tragic about the image. Dinara never wanted to end up like this.

  There was a small net next to the aquarium and as the light from the tank flickered with the movement of the darting fish, Dinara noticed a faint line on the net’s bamboo handle. The mark, possibly made by water, was about half an inch from the end of the cane. Dinara studied the fish tank more closely and saw something glinting among the tiny pebbles heaped on the bottom.

  She picked up the net and put it into the tank, handle first. She used the end of the bamboo to clear some of the pebbles and saw a brass button not much wider than the cane. She centered the handle over the button and pushed. The button depressed about half an inch, and the edge of the housing rubbed the cane where the faint mark was. Something clicked in the base of the tank, and a concealed compartment opened. Dinara pulled it wide.

  “I’ve found something,” she said, peering inside.

  Leonid hurried into the room as Dinara reached into the secret compartment that stretched the length and width of the tank. She pulled out a silver laptop and her mouth widened as she saw the sticker on the machine.

  “What is it?” Leonid asked.

  Dinara held the computer sideways so he could see the sticker. It said “Otkrov” and they both understood its significance immediately. It was short for otkroveniye, the Russian word for revelation. Otkrov was the pen name of Russia’s most notorious conspiracy blogger, a thorn in the Kremlin’s side and a source of alternative news and sensational stories for dissidents and malcontents all over the country. Such stickers were sold in vaping stores across Moscow and were popular with young rebels who wanted to stick it to the establishment, but there was something about the way this laptop had been hidden …

  “Don’t even think it,” Leonid said. “She can’t have been. Look around you. Otkrov’s stories don’t come from a place like this.”

  Dinara wasn’t so sure. “We should go. We need to find out what’s on this machine.”

  CHAPTER 26

  I WAS SITTING at the bar, drinking a highball. Mo-bot had gone to Private New York to make use of the tech systems that would help her open Karl’s computer. I knew she preferred to work without someone at her shoulder, so I’d returned to the Nomad, the hotel Jessie’s assistant had booked us into.

  A middle-aged couple at a nearby table were having a conversation in hushed but strained tones. The woman looked as though she might cry. At the other end of the long counter, a couple of guys sat side by side, drinking beer wordlessly as they watched an NBA game on an iPad. The Library at the Nomad wasn’t a sports bar, but the Knicks were playing the Wizards, and the New Yorkers were running away with the game, so the barman cut the pair some slack and let them watch with the volume down. There weren’t many customers to complain about them lowering the tone of the grand drinking hole. The tables on the gallery level that ringed the bar were all empty, and only a couple of the booths that nestled among the high bookcases were occupied. If the bar was anything to go by, the hotel was experiencing a post-Christmas lull, but the quiet suited me. Free from distraction, I was thinking about what we’d discovered in Karl Parker’s secret basement. What had my friend been doing?

  Karl had gone to great lengths to set up a trail designed specifically for me, which meant he didn’t want anyone else, not even Victoria, knowing his secret. I hoped my old friend hadn’t got caught up in anything illegal. I was already struggling with his loss and didn’t want to have to face anything that might tarnish my memories of him. I wanted to remember Karl as an honorable man who’d served his country with distinction, but the cache of false passports, weapons and money led me to suspect I was clinging to false hope.

  “I know that face,” Justine said, sliding onto the stool beside me. “Something bothering you?”

  She was a welcome sight. Truly the only person I wanted to be with at this moment.

  “We found weapons, fake passports and foreign currency that might have belonged to Karl Parker,” I replied. “Not the sort of stuff the average CEO has lying around.”

  Justine pursed her lips.

  “Can I get you anything?” the barman asked.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” she replied.

  “One highball,” the barman said, before stepping away to prepare her drink.

  “You think he might have been Agency?” Justine asked.

  I’d clutched at that hope too. The CIA recruited from the armed services, and had a track record of supporting businesses of strategic importance. Karl’s firm, Silverlink International, certainly fit that category.

  “Maybe,” I replied. “But he’s dead. Why go to all this trouble? If he was Agency, why not just leave a note?”

  “To protect a source or a mission maybe?” Justine suggested.

  I smiled. I knew she was trying to make me feel better by suggesting a scenario that didn’t involve my friend being a bad guy. She looked at me and the light caught her eyes, making them shine. I thought of the times we’d spent together and wanted to feel her in my arms.

  “I know that look,” she said, laughing and turning to the barman as he brought her drink. “Thanks.”

  “We weren’t so bad together, were we?” I asked as she took her first sip.

  “Not bad,” she replied. “Just complicated. Grief can do strange things, Jack. It makes you yearn for things that are gone.”

  She looked at me pointedly
, and I held her gaze. She was right. Death had a way of distorting emotions, but my feelings for Justine had nothing to do with Karl’s murder. I’d often thought about how good the two of us were together.

  “I don’t want to complicate what we have.” Justine reached out and put her hand on mine.

  Her touch was exactly what I needed. Reassuringly familiar and gentle.

  “Justine …” I began.

  “I don’t think we can afford the confusion, Jack,” she said, cutting me off. She looked as though she was about to say something else, but she never got the chance.

  “You would not believe the day I’ve had,” Sci said, appearing suddenly at our shoulders. “It’s brutal out there.”

  Justine withdrew her hand, and Sci shot me a questioning look.

  “You find anything?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing useful yet. Footage shows the shooter wore gloves throughout, and traffic cameras picked him up coming out of the Broad Street subway station. We tracked him back to Classon Avenue in Brooklyn, but after that the trail runs cold.”

  “Same with the chopper,” Justine said. “It crashed with three on board. It was chartered by a service company acting for Antares Futures and Investments, a corporation based in Belize. NYPD has asked for FBI support, and the Bureau is trying to find out who owns the Belize firm.”

  “So we’ve got nothing?” I asked.

  Justine glanced away, and I wondered whether she thought I was talking about the case, or our relationship. She’d been right. It had the potential to get complicated, and right now my mind wasn’t completely on the investigation.

  “Sorry, Jack,” Sci replied. “I’ll get back on it first thing.”

  “Thanks. I’m calling it a day,” I said, getting to my feet.