by David Duffy
If Bill Gates had a dollar for every line of Excel spreadsheet employed by Ratko Risly, he’d have many more millions than he already does. The computer contained workbook after workbook, each titled with a number and all following the same format—a group of three columns on the left, five on the right, but the right columns contained many, many more entries. The first column in each group appeared to be a date. The earliest started six months ago. The most recent were the ones the computer added by itself this morning. The other columns contained what could be account numbers and dollar amounts, but that was pure guesswork on my part. On the other hand, why keep such elaborate records for anything other than financial transactions? Ratko’s outgoing mail contained messages similar in content—five columns of numbers—but the messages, which numbered dozens per day, went to an array of addresses. Zombies, Foos said. Sleeping computers, left online, hijacked by cyber-pirates for a host of nefarious purposes, usually to send spam blasts or to corral into botnets, but also to cover tracks. Ratko’s BlackBerry received confirming copies of the e-mails issued by Ratko’s computer.
My stomach was rumbling, but I kept at it. Another forty minutes and I’d found the contents of several of Marko’s e-mails logged into various workbooks. Sure enough, on the five-column side, every entry had a match a day or two later. The three-column entries were singles. I was pretty sure I was looking at the inner workings of the money laundry Ivanov said Ratko was building for Barsukov, but it beat the hell out of me how it worked.
My eyes, head, and stomach were all angry. I checked my e-mail before heading out in search of sustenance and almost cried aloud when I saw Sasha’s name in my in-box with the subject “Vacation.” That was code—he wasn’t writing under any duress. The message read “Weather lousy here. Thinking of a trip. Always wanted to visit Istanbul. Can you recommend hotels?” More code—something had happened (he couldn’t know I knew what), and he was going incommunicado for a while. I tapped out, “Try the Four Seasons, in an old prison, you’ll like it,” to tell him I understood.
Food forgotten for the moment, I placed another call to Brighton Beach. “Tell Lachko I’m going to visit Iakov. I’ll leave the computer with him.”
CHAPTER 18
Iakov had a Central Park view he couldn’t use from the top floor of the Guggenheim Pavilion at Mount Sinai. The place felt more like hotel than hospital—carpeted hallways, fancy wallpaper, mahogany doors, private rooms, and, no doubt, room service. No private insurer was footing this tab. Still, all the ersatz luxury couldn’t quite excise the commingled smells of illness and death.
Two of Lachko’s thugs stood guard. One blocked the door while the other put his pockmarked face a few inches from mine. Tobacco and vodka on his breath. “Lachko said one visit and don’t come back, don’t call, they don’t want to know you exist. I’ll take the laptop.”
“Iakov asked first.” I pushed past them into the room.
Iakov was sleeping, his head lolled over, the back of his bed propped up in a sitting position. His shoulder was wrapped in white gauze under the hospital gown. His color looked good, or as good as a pale-faced Russian’s can, and his breathing was slow and even. He had an IV in the back of one hand. A machine beeped electronic indications of life. He hadn’t changed much in the twenty-plus years since our last meeting. Permanently thin as well as tall, he’d always looked old for his age, and the years were finally catching up. His bones made their own mountain range beneath the hospital sheet. The face wasn’t wrinkled, but it had deep creases I didn’t remember from the eyes to the flare of the upturned nose, then down to the corners of his mouth. The white hair flopped over his forehead. It was thinning, patches of scalp beneath. I sat beside the bed and took his hand.
There was a time when I would have walked the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway barefoot if he’d told me to—no questions asked. Even today, I probably wouldn’t dismiss the request out of hand. Iakov was at once savior, mentor, guiding light, and surrogate father. Each of us is responsible for our own destiny, but he was the reason I had any destiny at all. I’ve often wondered whether his father knew mine—they would have been young officers in the Cheka’s early days. I’ve asked the question but never received a satisfactory answer. Nor has he been forthcoming about how he found me among the hundreds of thousands still in the Gulag in the early 1970s. I’ve never felt in a position to press either point. Find me he did, though, and one day when I was seventeen, a weak, hungry, tired, calloused kid, clad in rags, I was brought to the office of the commandant of the Vorkuta camps and interviewed by a man in a captain’s uniform, first in Russian, then in Ukrainian, then Hungarian and Polish, and finally in broken English. His skills were passable. Mine were better. Two days later, still digesting my first real meal in years, I was on a train to Moscow.
I was installed in a small apartment with seven other students at the Foreign Language Institute, where I studied English and French. I didn’t know it, but this was a training ground for the Cheka. In time, I was taught the basics of intelligence—building agent networks, surveillance, agent communication, etc. Seems funny looking back, but this would comprise most of my formal training. The rest I had to learn on my own—overseen, sometimes firsthand, others from a distance, but consistently, by Iakov.
The eyelashes flickered once or twice before opening to reveal piercing sky blue. Where Lachko and his brother got their hostile gray, I’ll never know.
“Turbo!”
“Hello, Iakov. How do you feel?”
He waited a minute, taking stock. “Pretty fit, for a seventy-four-year-old Russian with bronchitis and a bullet wound.”
“You look good.”
“They tell me I can probably leave tomorrow. That would never happen in Moscow.”
“You wouldn’t get this room in Moscow, either. Well, maybe you would.”
“Don’t start. Capitalism has its faults, too.”
“I didn’t come here to argue. I just wanted to see that you’re okay.”
“Thanks, if I remember, to you.”
“Fate was kind, for once.”
He smiled.
“What happened in that loft, Iakov?”
“The American police want to know the same thing. They were here this morning.”
“They don’t know about me, do they?”
“Turbo, what kind of jackass do you take me for, after all these years?” His eyes sparkled, showing the rebuke was half in jest.
“I’ve never doubted you. But what were you doing there?”
“I told you—Cheka business.”
“Am I permitted to ask what kind?”
He smiled up at me, but he didn’t answer.
“I’m guessing it involves this computer you want so badly.” I held out the laptop.
He took the machine. “Rislyakov was working on something for me.”
“Did that something involve Eva?”
“No!” He spoke too fast. His voice softened again. “I didn’t know she was there. How is she?”
“Alive. Near overdose of a bad drug—Rohypnol. Not sure whether she took it or Ratko gave it to her.”
“Ratko wouldn’t…” He stopped. “I shouldn’t say. I don’t know. Where is she?”
Something told me to be careful. “A friend took her to a hospital. Your Cheka business, does it involve Polina?”
“Polina?” He nearly spat out the name. “I never … Why these questions?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”
“This is none of your affair. At least, I don’t see how it could be. But perhaps you should tell me what you were doing there last night.”
“I wanted to talk to Rislyakov.”
“Why? What’s he have to do with you?”
I’d thought about this on the way uptown. How much was I willing to give? I decided to stick with the truth—or the truth as I knew it before Foos erased the inner workings of Ratko’s computer.
“Rislyakov, and maybe Eva, hatched
a stupid fake kidnap scheme. They were hitting on Eva’s father, her adoptive father. He hired me to take care of the kidnappers.”
“Kidnapping? What the devil for?”
“Not clear. How well did you know Rislyakov?”
“Not well. He was Lachko’s protégé.”
“You aware he had a gambling problem?”
That came as a clear surprise. “No.”
“Was Lachko?”
“I don’t believe so. I don’t know. Lachko and I … We don’t talk much anymore. He doesn’t confide in me, hasn’t since … you know.”
“You still blame me for that?”
“At my age, I don’t blame anyone, except life and fate.”
“Lachko does.”
“You ruined his career.”
“He hasn’t done badly.”
“You know what I mean. He was going to run the Cheka.”
“Maybe he should’ve thought about that before he started stealing.”
“Everybody stole, Turbo. You know that, too.”
“Not true. You know that.”
“All right, you didn’t. You still could’ve looked the other way.”
“Like everyone else.”
“We’ve been over this ground before. Is there a reason you’re taking us on another tour?”
Good question. No good answer, except that old wounds, when they’re deep enough, don’t heal.
“What happened last night? Who shot you?”
He shook his head. “Rislyakov and I were talking. Someone buzzed from outside, and he asked me to wait in the back. I heard him yell, and the shot. I wasn’t armed—I stayed where I was. I didn’t hear anything else, so I thought whoever it was had left. He was just outside that door to the kitchen, waiting. He shot me as soon as I opened it. I must have passed out. The next thing I remember is you.”
The blue eyes were thoughtful. I thought about the questions he wasn’t asking, like Why was Eva in that loft? Is Polina living here? He could already know the answers. Or he could be biding his time. Or some other reason altogether. Iakov taught me to play chess when I was a student at the Foreign Language Institute. I was never much good at it. He always beat me.
He gave up a pawn. “So Polina’s remarried?”
“That’s right.”
“She’s still married to Lachko.”
“Apparently that hasn’t stopped her.”
“Who’s the new father Eva has?”
Another caution signal. “Does it matter?”
“Turbo!” The voice was sharp. “Remember where your loyalties lie. Lachko will want to see her. He has a right.”
“The loyalty question got put through the grinder back then, Iakov.”
“Your memory is self-serving, as so many are. You started the grinder.”
I stood and went to the wall of the small room.
“Tell me about this kidnapping,” Iakov said.
“Not much to tell. Just Ratko—or Ratko and Eva—trying to score a quick hundred grand. I assume he had an impatient casino creditor. Unfortunately for him, he had some associates who were neither bright nor brave, which is how I got to Greene Street. Did he and Lachko have some kind of rift, do you know?”
“Why do you ask that?” The sharpness was back.
“The name on the buzzer was Goncharov. Lachko didn’t know that.”
“You’ll have to talk to Lachko. Rislyakov was only doing a job for me.”
He was lying. I could feel it. He’d been tiptoeing around the truth as carefully as I had.
I pointed to the computer on his lap. “Lachko wants that, too.”
“You told him you had it?”
“Only way to find out what hospital you were in.”
He smiled. “You explore its contents?”
“Of course.”
“Of course. Anything interesting?”
“Spreadsheets. I assume they’re what Lachko wants.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“Truth?”
I tried to read what was behind the blue eyes. He was watching me watching him. I gave him the same face I use when I’m holding a full house, although I felt like I had anything but.
“Truth.”
He opened the laptop and turned it on, balancing it on his legs and working the keyboard with his one good hand. After a few minutes, he said, “How thoroughly did you check this?”
“Thoroughly.”
“Data recovery?”
“Two large files copied and removed—permanently—some time ago.”
He nodded, as if that were the answer he expected. “You tell Lachko that?”
“He didn’t ask.”
He nodded and continued to work the keyboard.
“What happened between Lachko and Polina?” I asked.
“Why do you care?”
“Curiosity.”
“She was never loyal to him, just like she was disloyal to you. She was screwing a man called Kosokov the whole time they were married.”
“The banker?”
“That’s right. Everyone thought she ran away with him.”
“You didn’t believe it?”
“It was always too cut-and-dried for me. Life isn’t that neat.”
“You always said there are a million shades of gray, and my job was to get within a hundred of the right one.”
He smiled. “You have no idea how much good it does an old man to see you again.”
“I feel the same. I’ve always regretted everything that happened.”
“We can’t fight fate.”
“You didn’t answer my question—about Polina and Cheka business.”
“What are you looking for, Turbo?”
“Just trying to solve a riddle for a client,” I lied. “What are you looking for?”
“Trying to lay a few old ghosts to rest.”
He was lying, too.
The door opened, and the pockmarked thug came in. He nodded at Iakov and whispered in my ear. “Fuck off. Lachko’s downstairs.”
I looked down at Iakov. “Will you be in Brighton Beach?”
“I don’t know.”
I picked up his hand again and squeezed it. He smiled up at me.
“You know, of all the men I brought into the Cheka, you were the best.”
I smiled back. Just like old times. Only thing missing was warmth.
* * *
There was a shaded bench across Fifth Avenue, but I walked a few blocks up to the Conservatory Garden in case Lachko should decide to look out his father’s window. All manner of flowers in bloom, including a few purple tulips hanging on to their last petals—color so deep they were almost black. I wondered if they were Russian. I sat in the thick shade of the canopied crabapples and almost felt comfortable. My psyche felt anything but.
I was trying to process too much at once—emotions, reactions, suspicions, doubts. Seeing Iakov for the first time in twenty years, and seeing him in that condition, rattled the door to the soul. Polina resurrected her own grave full of memories. Lachko, too. They all brought back the heartache of the Disintegration. I thought I’d succeeded in locking away those feelings, but Lachko knew how to reach in and squeeze, and his father and Polya, without even trying, amplified the pain.
Then there was Iakov, not telling the truth—for the first time I could remember. He’d betrayed me two decades ago, but that had been aboveboard. Put between a rock and a hard place, he’d chosen Lachko, his own flesh and blood. I understood that. The ramifications were going to be dire for one of us, and family won out. The irony was, Iakov couldn’t avoid the chasm that would be ripped open whatever he chose to do. He was too close to see that. I was, too, at the time. This afternoon, he had no need to lie that I could fathom. Yet he had.
Motion beside me. I turned fast, ready to face one of Lachko’s goons. The man looking down was the same one I’d seen in Victoria’s reception area, in his white linen suit and eye patch. He bowed formally from the waist and
extended a hand. “My apologies if I startled you,” he said in Russian. “Petrovin. Alexander Petrovich Petrovin.”
“Call me Turbo,” I replied in English, taking the offered hand. His greeting was old-school Russian. Mine was anything but. Nobody’s called me the mouthful my mother saddled me with since the orphanage, except Lachko when he wants to piss me off. “I saw you earlier today, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That is correct. I apologize again for intruding. I’m told we have a mutual acquaintance in Rad Rislyakov. I was wondering if you’ve seen him recently.”
“Never met him, I’m afraid.” Technically true.
He looked me over, taking his time. He was a handsome man in his midtwenties, maybe an inch taller than I am but a good thirty pounds lighter. The linen suit was well tailored and hung stylishly from his slender frame. With the eye patch and full head of black curly hair, it gave him a certain flair. His one brown eye took me in with intelligence, and his easy smile indicated he meant no offense with his examination.
No reason not to be polite. “Please. Have a seat. Are you working with Victoria?”
“We’re collaborating, yes.”
“You’re in law enforcement?”
“In a manner of speaking. I will apologize in advance and tell you that I am necessarily sparing with the facts of my professional pursuits. Even my real name, well … Life is extremely inexpensive in Russia these days, as I’m sure you are aware, especially for people in my line of work. I came from Moscow to see Victoria—and Rislyakov. He was supposed to meet me earlier today, but he didn’t show up. That’s one reason I asked if you’ve seen him.”
The formality of his tone and language seemed out of place for a man of his age in this day and time. He carried it off without affectation.
“I understand,” I said, “but I like to know who—and what—I’m dealing with. Your reticence could make it difficult to find a basis for discussion. You with the FSB?”
“Certainly not!” His tone indicated I’d succeeded in insulting him.