by Trevor Scott
Peering through the opening was a set of wide blue eyes against a pale face. Long straight hair swept down as far as Jake could see. She was staring at Jake, uncertain what to think of him. She held her violin bow in her right hand like a sword.
“What can I do for you?” she asked in Ukrainian. Her voice seemed to resonate and flow much like her violin.
“I’m Jake Adams, and this is Quinn Armstrong,” Jake said in Ukrainian. “We’d like to speak with Petra.”
She started to close the door.
“Wait,” Quinn jumped in. “Tell her Quinn is here. We are friends.”
She looked at Quinn now, as if she recognized the name finally. Her eyes switched back and forth nervously. “She is not well,” she said in English.
“Please,” Quinn pleaded. “It’s urgent that we talk with her.”
She muttered something and closed and locked the door.
“What the hell was that?” Jake asked. He wasn’t fluent in Ukrainian, but he usually understood more than he could speak.
Quinn smiled. “She told us to go fuck ourselves.”
“Really? And she looked so sweet and innocent.”
“Musicians can be brutal. She’ll be back.”
He was right. A minute later the door opened again. This time all the way. The blonde stood back and motioned with a nod of her head to enter.
Inside was totally different from the entryway. The walls were freshly painted ivory white. There were plants everywhere soaking up the sun streaming through tall windows. There wasn’t much furniture. A small sofa. A chair with a stand and music in front of it. Her violin lay in its open case, cradled in soft red velvet. The lack of clutter made the room look much larger than it was.
There was a small kitchenette off the living room, and a little wooden table with two chairs. Jake and Quinn stood in the middle of the room, as Helena closed the door.
She was wearing a sweater that extended just over her buttocks. Her legs were covered in black tights with stirrups over tiny feet in pink stockings. Jake realized that she was a very small woman, perhaps five feet two, yet she stood tall as if she were much larger. Overall, she was an extremely attractive woman.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked in her version of English, moving into the kitchen area.
“No, thank you,” Quinn said. “I need to speak with Petra.”
Her eyes shifted toward a closed door. “She’ll be out in a minute.”
Jake moved over and looked at her violin. “Your music was beautiful.”
She came closer, as if defending her violin like a mother would her child. “It’s all I have. I would die without it.” She stroked the velvet near the violin’s neck.
“Passion is something lacking in this world,” Jake said, gazing into her eyes. “We need more people who love what they do, instead of those who simply do what is expected of them.”
She thought for a moment. “You do understand. That’s a rare quality.”
“For an American?”
“For anyone,” she corrected, smiling through teeth that could have used braces. It was her only imperfection.
Finally, the door opened and Petra Kovarik came out. Her hair was dark and wet and had just been combed. But her face was blotched with red. She had been crying. She wore tight clothes displaying a perfect body. Jake understood Quinn’s attraction, if his hunch was correct. And the way Quinn was looking at her, Jake was probably right. Officer had fallen for agent.
Quinn met her in the center of the room and they kissed on both cheeks, then quickly on the lips. He whispered into her ear. She took a seat at the kitchen table and Quinn took the other. Jake moved closer to listen, and Helena sat on the sofa and crossed her legs.
“Have you heard about Yuri Tvchenko?” Quinn asked.
She nodded her head, but kept her eyes in a constant stare at the table. It was as if she were peering down through the floor, through the ground, and on to hell. She was scared.
“Who would want Tvchenko dead?” Jake asked.
She looked up at this man she had never met. “Who is he?” she asked Quinn.
“I’m sorry. This is Jake Adams. He’s a friend of mine who knew Yuri. They had worked together a few years back. He was with Yuri when he died. He’s trying to help me find his killer.”
She seemed to relax with that last revelation.
Quinn started again. “What was Yuri working on? You must have been part of that.”
She hunched her shoulders. “We were working on new pesticides,” she said. Her English wasn’t perfect. It flowed with a childlike quality. “It was for agriculture. You spray the fields with this strain and you wipe out the entire bug population. And the larvae and eggs are also affected. They become sterile.”
That was the story Jake had already heard, but there had to be more to it. “Who was he dealing with? Who wanted to buy the strain?” Jake asked.
“I was never involved with that,” she said, looking not at Jake but Quinn. “Yuri was a very secretive man. He trusted no one. We worked together. That is all.”
“You weren’t lovers?” Jake asked.
She laughed.
Quinn gave Jake a quick glare, as if he had just asked a nun how many men she had screwed.
“What’s so funny?” Jake asked.
She tried to hold back her laughter. “Yuri would rather fuck his test tubes. He had no time for women. Besides, he liked men. Young men.”
Quinn looked somewhat surprised. “You never told me that before.”
“You never asked.”
Jake turned and smiled at Helena, who looked bored on the sofa. He swung back to Petra. “What are you hiding for?”
Anger swept across Petra’s face. “I don’t trust the men.” After she said it, she covered her eyes with her hands.
“What men?” Quinn asked.
She started sobbing. “The men who started showing up at the lab,” she forced out.
“Here in Odessa?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“It started a few months back,” she muttered. “One man. Then two came a few weeks later. They were not like those who had come in Kiev all the time. These were different.”
“How?”
“They were more desperate looking. They were Arabs I think. From the Middle East, anyway.”
“So you were still working for Tvchenko?” Jake asked, already knowing the answer.
She nodded. “At his apartment.”
“What about at the private institute?” Quinn asked. He looked more concerned now.
“The original strain was worked there. But he was moving in other directions, and he wanted that closer to him. Where he had all the control. He came to Kiev and got me just over a month ago.”
Jake thought for a moment. “But you said the men started coming a few months back.”
She shifted her eyes up at Jake. “That’s what Yuri told me.”
“What did they say when they came?”
“I don’t know. They talked in the other room. I stayed in the lab.”
Quinn was sitting back now, as if he were looking at an unfaithful wife.
“You’re a bio-chemist and you have no idea what in the hell Tvchenko was up to?” Jake yelled. “I find that pretty hard to believe.”
She threw him an indignant glance. “It’s true.”
“What about chemicals,” Jake said. “Was he working on any new chemical agents?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Jake knew she was lying. Tvchenko’s apartment was full of chemicals. He may have been working on biological strains at the private institute, but unofficially he was working on chemical agents. Jake thought for a moment. Tully O’Neill had had Tvchenko’s place wired. Why hadn’t he mentioned there was a woman there? That other meetings had taken place in the apartment? If she did know what he was up to, then she was one hell of a liar. Regardless, she had a good reason to be scared. Whoever killed Tvchenko, mus
t have seen Petra at the apartment. They would have to assume she knew what Tvchenko knew. She was in danger.
Jake pulled Quinn aside, explaining how he thought Petra was in danger.
“But she doesn’t know anything,” Quinn pleaded.
“It doesn’t matter. They don’t know that. Whoever they are just wants to plug holes.” Things were becoming clearer now for Jake.
Quinn looked at Petra, who was slouched back in her chair brushing her fingers through her wet hair.
“How can we protect her?” Quinn finally asked.
He wasn’t thinking straight, Jake could tell. His eyes flicked back and forth from Petra to Helena and then off to nowhere.
“We’ll have to get her out of here,” Jake said. “What about the consulate?”
Quinn swished his head quickly. “I can’t hide a Ukrainian citizen in our consulate.”
“What about a safe house? You still have to have a few of those hanging around. If not, set one up.”
It was the only way.
“You’ll have to bring Helena with you,” Jake continued. “If we found her, so will they. Better yet, I’ll come up with a place for them.”
It wouldn’t be easy to sell that to Petra, and Jake knew it. But until they had all the answers, there was no other way. Besides, Petra knew more than she was saying. Once they had her on neutral ground, she might open up.
18
BERLIN, GERMANY
It was noon and the sun was trying desperately to poke through the heavy clouds.
Sitting at an outdoor table at a restaurant on the edge of Alexander Platz, Gerhard Kreuzberg took a long chug on his liter of bock beer. He gazed around the square at the sharp-edged buildings that were supposed to be the highlight of socialism, but thought only about how ugly the place was. It was no wonder communism had failed. It was far too gloomy. Only the flowers that separated the walkways were appealing to him. Primrose stretched along one strip like a sea of red. Grape Hyacinth across another side in a dazzling purple. Then tulips and daffodils in every color lined the edges. Bees and hornets buzzed around from flower to flower in a choreographed dance. Kreuzberg took in a deep breath and could distinguish a blend of the flowers, but not any particular individual flower. He had always liked gardens.
Kreuzberg had been the foreign relations minister under Helmut Kohl for over six years before retiring from public service when Germany’s new president took over. He had served the public ever since graduating from Berlin University in the late fifties. He had been most fortunate to live in the Western corridor when the Russians, Americans, British and French divided his great city. And now he had returned to his native home, to a city that was still not whole and equal. That’s why he came to Alexander Platz to eat lunch once a week since moving back to Berlin. He needed to see what had been so bad, what he had fought so hard against.
●
Two men sat at a corner table sipping coffee and keeping an eye on the man sitting alone. One man was young, his eyes passionately intense. The older man, in his early thirties going on fifty, leaned back and sipped his coffee. He knew for sure his target from the photograph was the man drinking the beer and eating by himself. Their contact had been right. He ate here every Wednesday after his driver had dropped him off and drove the silver Mercedes away.
If everything else went as planned, the man would eat his meal and walk toward the Weltzeituhr, check his watch against that large international clock, and then continue on toward the television tower, where he would gaze up at it in amazement. His driver would pick him up at exactly one thirty off of Unter den Linden. He was like clockwork.
The older man tried to ignore him, but it was too difficult. He was too excited. He had worked for years in Germany, trying to bring their cause to the world stage through peaceful protest, and then not so peaceful bombing of travel agencies and airline offices. Now, to be called on for this.... The older man smiled and took a sip of coffee.
●
Kreuzberg ate a simple meal of curry wurst and French fries soaked with mustard. He loved the smell of curry even more than the taste. His old colleagues in Bonn had always wondered how he could eat that way, but he had been doing it since his youth. Wealth and esteem had not changed him so much that he could not enjoy plain food. He remembered where he came from. His father had been a simple shop owner, and had worked hard to send his only son through gymnasium and on to the university.
When he was done eating, he paid for his meal and started walking across the wide square. There weren’t as many people out and about as normal, but still the area was crowded. When he reached the Weltzeituhr, he flipped his pocket watch from a vest pocket and gazed down at it for a moment. His father had given him the watch. It was not an expensive one, but it was the only thing he had to remember his father by. He was nearly a half hour earlier than normal. He had eaten his meal quicker today. It was difficult to sit at a table alone. The time simply stood still.
Continuing on, Kreuzberg wandered closer to the needle-like television tower, Fernsehturm. It was the tallest structure in a city where every building, except those few that had been reconstructed from rubble, was no older than fifty years.
●
The two men kept their distance. When the German stopped, they stopped, pretending to talk about something important. In a moment they would be joined by the third man circling out and approaching from the other side. It was a flawless plan. They could not fail.
●
When Kreuzberg paused to gaze up at the tower, he noticed the two men again. He recognized them from the restaurant, where they seemed to look at him with almost a sexual intent. Maybe not sexual, but surely passionate. Kreuzberg was dressed rather well in an expensive three piece suit. A British cut that he had had made in London on his last visit just a month ago. They were probably thieves. They were dressed in dark wool pants, black and brown shirts. All cheap and off the rack. They were Turks, he thought, looking to steal his wallet. He had dealt with thugs before. And now the city was full of them. The worst were the Russian Mafia and the Chechen thieves. They would slice the suit open to get the wallet instead of simply asking for it.
He turned and walked toward a more crowded area, where he would meet his driver. They would never try anything in front of all these people.
In a moment, he reached Unter den Linden. He checked his watch again. He had fifteen minutes and only three blocks to walk before he reached his meeting place. Now he wished he had asked his driver to eat with him today. He was a big man, and his mere physical presence would keep most thieves away.
The sidewalks were teeming with people walking off their lunches. Occasionally, a bicycle would ring its bell, warning a walker of its approach from the rear. Kreuzberg had nearly been run over a dozen times, so the bell always made him cringe.
He was a block from his meeting place now. There was a large hedge to his right that skirted the sidewalk for an entire block. Birds chirped and fluttered within the thick bushes. One flew out quickly and nearly hit his head. He jumped back swiftly.
The flowers were gone. There was only a small strip of grass along the sidewalk, where dogs had urinated and defecated and the nasty odor rose up to tinge at Kreuzberg’s sensitive olfactory nerves.
Just fifty meters now and ten minutes for his driver to show up. His driver was always on time or early. He expected nothing less of his people.
He had kept an eye out for the two men following him, but they had disappeared. Perhaps he had been too concerned. He relaxed a little.
When he was almost to his meeting place, he noticed a man approaching straight away. He had seemingly appeared from nowhere. He wasn’t dressed as shabbily as the other two men, but he was dark like them.
Kreuzberg slowed his pace.
The man continued toward him, not even looking at him.
Kreuzberg tensed up again as the man was nearly upon him. But he was looking behind Kreuzberg.
A bell rang from behind, and Kreuzberg
jumped to the side, turning quickly as the bicycle nearly hit him.
He didn’t feel a thing when the man reached out to help him from getting hit by the bike. The man simply smiled, turned, and continued on down the sidewalk.
Kreuzberg felt silly. He brushed his suit and straightened it out over his hips. He even laughed slightly out loud. Why did they allow those bicycles on the sidewalks anyway?
In a moment he reached the spot where he would wait the last few minutes for his driver. But something was wrong. He felt a piercing pain under his left arm. Was it his heart? Had the man and the bicycle scared him that much?
The pain spread out and seemed to be invading his entire body. Now he started sweating. His breathing became labored. He was barely able to catch his breath. People walked by him, staring. He started to loosen his tie. His neck felt hot, like it would blow up.
He couldn’t breathe. He grasped his neck with both hands, as if he were being strangled by invisible hands and he was struggling to remove the ghost’s strong fingers.
Then his knees buckled. He hit the pavement with a thud. Now a young couple stopped and seemed to be saying something to him. He peered up at them with teary eyes, as if begging for help.
He twitched uncontrollably on the ground. But by now he could no longer feel anything. It was as if the world were spinning around at a hundred times its normal rotation, and he was at the center rising up a torrid, swirling tornado.
In a moment he lay still.
A silver Mercedes pulled up to the curb and the driver rushed quickly through the crowd. He peered down at his boss lying on the cold, hard cement, his eyes glazed over in horrid hope, looking up to the cloudy sky to God.
19
STATE OF CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO
Baskale had driven all night through some of the most treacherous terrain in northern Mexico, on dirt roads that never should have been built and were rarely maintained. The last fifteen miles had been without a road. The Chevy Suburban had held up well with its wide desert tires, laboring only occasionally when the sand became deeper and looser. Despite his best efforts, Baskale knew he was over an hour late. He had stayed too long at the drug dealer’s house. He had driven with great determination, but he didn’t want to crack even one bomblet open. One tiny fissure, one brief whiff, and they would all die. His mission was far too important to die that way, in some snake-infested desert.