Private Moscow

by James Patterson

  I looked at Dinara, who turned away.

  “No matter,” Leonid said. “Vodka will fix you.”

  “Medical attention,” Feo explained mischievously.

  There were shouts of approval as I took a seat at the table almost directly opposite Dinara.

  Someone passed me a shot glass, and my neighbor, a bald man with rough stubble, filled it. I necked the shot and immediately felt its warmth spread throughout my body. The glass was refilled to murmurs of approval, and I knocked back a second shot.

  My glass was refilled a third time, and I realized this process would continue as long as I kept drinking, so I left the glass alone and the bottle moved on.

  “I owe you my thanks,” I said to Leonid.

  “Of course,” he replied loudly. “And to Lera and Kiril.” He gestured at a man and woman to his left, and I recognized them as the middle-aged couple from the bridge. “They did the real work.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  My neighbors turned to the people on the other side of them, and I was left alone. Dinara threw a couple of furtive glances in my direction, but otherwise I sat surrounded by chatter I couldn’t understand. The alcohol eased its way into my system, and the tension I’d felt all night melted away. As I replayed events in my head, I found myself struggling to hold on to a memory long enough to blame myself for what had happened. Everything was foggy and distant and I glanced down at my shot glass and wondered just how strong the vodka was. Realizing I’d had enough, I got to my feet.

  “Goodnight,” I said.

  Everyone jeered.

  “Never leave a full glass on the table,” Leonid yelled above the noise, and his words triggered fresh derision.

  I raised the brimming shot glass and downed it in a single gulp. The jeers turned to cheers and I left the room to the sound of their drunken approval.

  I walked through the building to the quiet residential wings and found my way to my room. I’d just stepped inside when there was a knock on my door.

  I opened it and found Dinara outside. She looked up at me and hesitated.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, and if she’d had anywhere near as much vodka as me, I could understand why.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “I should have seen it was a trap,” she replied. “I should have …”

  I thought she was going to break down, so I held her by the shoulders.

  “I shouldn’t have let us get in that situation,” I said. “It’s on me.”

  We stood staring at each other, both blaming ourselves for what had happened. I could feel the warmth of her body beneath my fingertips.

  “Make up your minds,” Leonid slurred as he staggered into the corridor. “Your room or hers.”

  I took my hands away, and Dinara backed up.

  “I’m going to ignore that because we owe you our lives,” she said.

  “Too right,” he replied, passing between us.

  “Shouldn’t you be on a stakeout?” I asked.

  “I have my underlings watching Utkin,” he replied. “A chief doesn’t work the night shift. Goodnight to you both,” he said.

  He stepped inside his room and shut his door, and Dinara and I stood there eying each other for a moment. I realized I was caught up in the emotions of what had happened and my professional judgment was in danger of being swept away on a tide of vodka.

  “I’d better …” I said, taking a step back.

  “Me too,” Dinara agreed.

  She crossed the corridor.

  “Goodnight,” she said, and she went into her room and quickly shut the door.

  I did likewise, and collapsed on my bed, laces tied, clothes on. Within moments, I was deep asleep.

  CHAPTER 60

  MY PHONE WOKE me from a dreamless sleep at 9:15 the next morning. My eyes were raw and my head pounded. My arms ached from having been suspended in a stress position, and I winced as I answered the call.

  “Jack?” Justine said.

  “Yeah,” I croaked. “What time is it there?”

  “Quarter past two in the morning. We’re working round the clock,” she replied.

  I rubbed my face and sat up.

  “What’s been happening over there?” Justine asked. “I couldn’t get hold of anyone.”

  I should have told her about my abduction by Veles, but I didn’t want her to worry.

  “We’re following up some leads,” I replied blandly. “We caught a name: Veles. Probably Spetsnaz or Russian intelligence. Can you ask Mo to run an alias search? See what it flags up.”

  “Will do,” she said. “I’ve sent Dinara everything we could get on Ernie Fisher, Robert Carlyle, Karl Parker and Elizabeth Connor. Personnel records, school transcripts, service histories.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you with her?” Justine asked.

  It was a loaded question, and after the events of the previous night, I just couldn’t face it head on.

  “Not right now, no,” I replied. “Anything else?”

  There was a pause.

  “No,” she replied at last.

  “Stay in touch,” I said, before hanging up.

  Twenty minutes later, I’d showered and got dressed, and, feeling a little more human, left my room and knocked on Dinara’s door. There was no answer, so I tried Leonid’s, but his room was also silent.

  I went into the main building and found a few late risers finishing breakfast in the dining hall. I recognized some of them from the previous night’s vodka session, and when they waved at me, I nodded in reply.

  I finally found Dinara in the library, where she was working alone, hunched over her computer. She looked fresh, free of any sign of her abduction and traumatic ordeal.

  “Morning,” I said.

  She looked up and shifted awkwardly. “Good morning,” she replied. “Justine has sent us some information on Ernest Fisher and Robert Carlyle. I’ve been pulling out the highlights.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  She shook her head, and I grabbed a chair. The library was one of the few rooms that didn’t look as though it had undergone any refurbishment since the place had been converted from a school. Books were arranged on low, child-friendly shelves, and classroom tables had been pushed together in clusters of four to create reading areas.

  Dinara was at the cluster nearest the windows, overlooking football goals and a playing field that was buried beneath snow. She had a series of applications open on her laptop, but she was currently working on a simple document that listed key moments in Ernie Fisher’s life, from his birth in Featherville, a tiny settlement in Idaho, to his appointment as the US ambassador’s chief of staff.

  “That’s interesting,” I remarked. “He and Karl Parker were both born and raised in small Midwest towns.”

  “And both enlisted in the Marine Corps within two years of each other,” Dinara observed.

  “Fisher was a couple of years older than Karl,” I said. “Similar academic profiles too. Solid but nothing flashy. Certainly nothing to indicate their later achievements.”

  “What about Robert Carlyle?” I asked.

  Dinara opened a similar document and showed me the Washington financier’s potted history. “Born in Arminto, Wyoming, enlisted in the Marines aged eighteen,” she said.

  “There’s a pattern,” I remarked.

  I thought about the key I’d found in Ernie Fisher’s apartment.

  “What if their similarities aren’t just in the past?” I asked. “What if the key is for a safe in a warehouse like the one Karl Parker had? Someplace secret. Completely off the books.”

  “He was planning to leave,” Dinara remarked.

  “So his next stop was going to be to collect his passport and whatever else he needed,” I surmised. “It will be somewhere close by. Like Karl’s, it will be in the city, someplace Fisher could get to quickly.

  “Any idea how we find it?”

  �
��Old-fashioned detective work,” I replied. “We canvass. It’s time-consuming, but I don’t see any other way. We start at the epicenter, Fisher’s home, and work our way out.”

  CHAPTER 61

  LEONID REGRETTED EVERY sip of vodka he’d had the previous night. His tongue felt like an old babushka’s pumice stone and his head was as tender as a steak put through a mangle. But he’d needed to blow away the residue of his brush with death. An inch or two above his protective vest and his drinking buddies would have been toasting his memory.

  He’d blustered his way through the experience and brushed off Dinara’s concerns for his wellbeing, but deep down he’d been shaken. Why was he in this job? He could easily have got a quiet desk job as head of security for a big firm, but instead had chosen to put himself back on the front line without any real support.

  Who wants to live forever? a small voice inside him asked.

  Was that it? Did he have a death wish?

  Leonid shook the thought from his mind, and focused on Erik Utkin’s apartment building. The Black Hundreds’ recruiter lived in Meshchansky District, on Shchepkina Street, in a traditional villa that had been split into large apartments. It was a lovely home in a great neighborhood, one that was beyond the reach of most Muscovites.

  Leonid had relieved Larin, one of the ex-cops who lived at the Residence, and who’d staked out Utkin’s place overnight. Leonid had been parked fifty meters along the street from the yellow-fronted building for an hour when Erik Utkin finally emerged and climbed into a black BMW 6 Series.

  Leonid followed Utkin across Moscow to Kapotnya, a neighborhood almost twenty kilometers from the city center. Kapotnya was one Moscow’s most crime-ridden, poverty-stricken areas, and even in the arctic conditions, there was clear evidence of drug use on the streets. Leonid drove by a group of scrawny men gathered around an oil-barrel fire, sharing a crack pipe. Soon afterwards he passed a couple of skeletal men shooting up in a bus shelter.

  Erik Utkin finally stopped on the corner of Kapotninskiy Passage and Kapotnya Block, and Leonid pulled over a short distance behind him. Filthy tower blocks rose either side of the street, and the bare branches of the trees that lined the road looked like jagged scars against the ugly buildings. Utkin kept his engine running, but Leonid cut his to avoid the vapor of exhaust fumes attracting unnecessary attention.

  Leonid could see the Black Hundreds’ recruiter through the BMW’s rear window. He had his head turned toward a gray high-rise apartment building to their right.

  Soon, three men came out. Two of them wore hooded tops beneath heavy coats, but Leonid recognized them as fighters from Grom Boxing. They were scowling as they were accosted by the third man, who was gaunt and covered in sores. He didn’t have a coat and shivered as he capered around the two boxers. His face was grubby and pinched and his hollow eyes spoke of years of drug addiction. He chattered away, oblivious to the boxers’ rising anger, and even at a distance Leonid could sense the desperation of an addict.

  Finally, one of the boxers ferreted in his coat pocket and produced a small plastic bag, which he handed to the gaunt man in exchange for crumpled notes. These two boxers were dealing drugs, and unless Leonid was very much mistaken, they were doing it with Erik Utkin’s approval. Sitting in his BMW, the man had watched the trade without emotion.

  The addict ran off, and the two boxers approached Utkin, who opened his window. Clouds of vapor escaped their mouths as they exchanged greetings in the cold, and after a minute or so of chatter, Utkin popped his trunk. One of the fighters went to the rear of the BMW and removed a plastic bag from the car, while the other man handed Utkin an envelope.

  Erik Utkin was giving these men more than his approval; he was supplying them with product.

  Leonid pulled his phone from his pocket and made a call.

  “Dinara,” he said when she answered. “I think I’ve found Erik Utkin’s secret. It looks like he and his men are dealing drugs.”

  “But the Black Hundreds would crucify him if they found out,” Dinara replied. “They kill dealers.”

  “I know. He’s gambling his life,” Leonid agreed. “Which is why he didn’t want us digging around. You want me to stay on him?”

  “Can you arrange for someone else to pick up his tail?”

  “Of course,” Leonid replied. “Why?”

  “We could use your expertise,” Dinara said. “Meet us at Ernest Fisher’s apartment as soon as possible.”

  “OK,” Leonid said, hanging up.

  Sava Efimov was due to relieve him at 3 p.m., and almost certainly wouldn’t appreciate being summoned early.

  “Da,” Sava grunted as he answered the call. He’d been one of the previous night’s biggest drinkers.

  “I need you to take over early,” Leonid said. “Duty calls.”

  Sava groaned. “I should never have agreed to help. This is why I left the force.”

  “You left the force because someone shot you in the gut and you got pensioned off,” Leonid corrected the man. “You love this and you miss it.”

  “You’re a jerk, Leonid Boykov.”

  “I’m also right,” Leonid replied. “Hurry up and get dressed. Head for Kapotnya. I’ll call you with the final location when you’re nearby.”

  “OK,” Sava said, and Leonid hung up.

  Up ahead, Erik Utkin bid the two fighters farewell and drove away. Leonid followed. He’d stay on the man’s tail until Sava arrived.

  Maybe that’s why you do this, he told himself. Same as Sava, you love it and you’ll miss it when it’s finally gone.

  CHAPTER 62

  DINARA AND JACK waited in Feo’s UAZ Pickup. The larger-than-life former cop had insisted they take his truck, and Jack had agreed but only on condition Private paid a fair hire charge for it. They were parked behind Ernie Fisher’s building, waiting for Leonid to arrive, and they’d exhausted all their small talk. Neither of them had addressed what had happened the previous night, and Dinara wished she could take it all back. The rush of emotions she’d experienced after escaping from Veles, combined with the vodka, had impaired her judgment, and Jack Morgan—handsome, strong, successful Jack Morgan—had seemed irresistible. But he was her boss, and they had a job to do.

  “How do we handle billing this?” Dinara asked, trying to re-establish their professional relationship. “This truck, the surveillance team, any other costs we incur. Maxim Yenen has terminated our contract.”

  “I’m going to cover everything personally from here on,” Jack replied. He turned up the heating, which was preventing the windshield from misting over. “Maxim Yenen hired you to investigate a woman whose blog was just used by the people who killed Ernie Fisher to try to discredit Private’s investigation into the deaths of Karl Parker and Elizabeth Connor. I don’t know whether that was opportunism, or if the two investigations are connected. Until we have answers, we’re keeping both cases live.”

  Dinara nodded. She didn’t dare ask what would happen after these cases. Partly because she didn’t want to add to Jack’s concerns, partly because she was afraid of the inevitable answer. Without clients, Private Moscow couldn’t stay in business. Dinara didn’t want to think about how she’d deal with what would be a serious personal and professional failure. Jobs like this were hard to come by, particularly for people who ran their last business into the ground.

  “There he is,” Jack said, indicating Leonid’s old Niva, which was turning onto Rochdelskaya Street.

  Leonid parked a few cars away, hurried over and climbed in the back. “Feo loaned you his truck?” he asked in Russian.

  “For a price,” Dinara replied in English.

  “Apologies,” Leonid said immediately. “I forgot you don’t speak Russian, Mr. Morgan.”

  “My problem, not yours,” Jack responded. “So you caught Erik Utkin dealing drugs?”

  Leonid nodded. “It seems so. I couldn’t see what was in the bag, but a couple of his fighters were definitely selling narcotics of some kind.”

&n
bsp; “The Black Hundreds would punish him severely,” Dinara observed.

  “Unless they’ve branched into new ways of making money,” Jack said.

  Dinara shook her head. “Not these people. For them patriotism is bound up in the preconception of a wholesome life. God, country, family. Drugs would attack the very core of what they stand for.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time the actions of an organization like this don’t match its words,” Jack replied. “But let’s assume you’re right for now, unless we find anything to suggest otherwise.”

  “What about Fisher?” Leonid asked.

  “We think he had a safe somewhere in the city, possibly a warehouse similar to Karl Parker’s,” Jack replied. “We’re going to canvass his neighbors and nearby businesses to see if anyone remembers him. Find out if he’s got a place people saw him using. We’ll start here and spread out. Put his photo in front of enough people and someone will recognize him.”

  “What’s our search radius?” Leonid asked.

  “We start here and keep going until we find something,” Jack replied.

  “The whole city?” Leonid remarked in disbelief.

  “I don’t think it will come to that,” Jack said flatly. “But we keep going until Justine and the team in New York come up with a better angle.”

  “What’s the matter?” Dinara goaded Leonid. “You’re not afraid of a little hard work, are you?”

  He replied in Russian.

  “What did he say?” Jack asked.

  “Something about how cold it is,” Dinara replied, frowning at the old cop. “The rest of his words I won’t translate, because they belong in the gutter.”

  Jack laughed. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 63

  I FELT JUST shy of useless. A detective who couldn’t speak the language wasn’t much good at canvassing, and I found myself standing idle as Dinara spoke to storekeepers on Year 1905 Street.