Smulski pondered for a moment. “Screw it. I’m going to be here until midnight as it is. I’m so pissed off at that girl, I don’t care if you are her ex. Go wake her up. Tell her she’s fired. Sheila, give the man Masha’s address.”
He spun on his heel and went back through the doorway. Sheila stared after him then shut her mouth and found a piece of scrap paper and a pencil. She scribbled the address and handed it to me.
“No way you’re her ex,” she said.
“How do you know?”
She snorted. “Masha’s never had a boyfriend. Lots of men ‘friends,’ sniffing around looking for a freebie, but no boyfriend.”
The address was about a quarter mile away on the far side of the little golf course that adjoined the park. Rather than retrieve my car, I hoofed it through the neighborhoods that ringed the park, and soon grew warm enough to break a sweat. I ended up at an older apartment complex with several buildings forming a square around a center common area with a little bit of grass and plantings and a pool. The apartments were staggered in a saw tooth pattern, three to a unit—at garden level, first and second floors—front doors all accessible to anyone coming in off the street. Masha’s unit was in a back corner building, right off a side street and probably furthest from the manager’s unit. Sounds of water splashing and children squealing came from the inner courtyard. I heard only two small voices and a woman’s voice. Most residents were at work.
I walked up to Masha’s door without seeing anyone and rapped on it hard with my knuckles. It popped open a half-inch, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. I froze and listened, but no sounds came from inside the apartment.
“Masha?” I called softly. “Anybody home?”
No one answered. I shouldered the door open gently and stepped inside a gloomy interior. Letting my eyes adjust, I found myself in a small foyer with a closet on my right and short hall to an open living room and kitchen. I rounded the wall that separated hall from kitchen and stopped dead in my tracks. On the far side of the living room, slumped in a straight-backed chair sat a naked figure. Tattered strips of clothing lay strewn everywhere. Even with the shades pulled the violence displayed shined in Technicolor. Blood streaked Masha’s chubby body, her head tipped forward so her chin was on her chest, and her wet, bedraggled hair dangled over her breasts. The blood had puddled on the carpet around the chair legs, the ferrous scent of it filling my nostrils. An even fouler smell mingled with the sickly sweetness of the blood, like charred meat.
Something else glistened at her feet. Her legs had been tied to the legs of the chair and her arms behind her back, but her feet disappeared into a large pan of water, maybe a roasting pan. A rope of some kind snaked from the pan across the floor behind her. I took a few hesitant steps toward her and realized that it was an electrical cord, now unplugged, but obviously used to send jolts of current through her body. Even though I hadn’t eaten, my stomach rebelled and heaved. Clamping my mouth shut, I choked back the bile that rose in my throat and looked away. In the kitchen, the metal door to the circuit breaker box hung open.
Like a witness to a train wreck, I couldn’t keep my eyes from returning to the horror confronting me, though I knew it would give me nightmares for weeks. Small cuts covered her body, not enough to cause major bleeding, just excruciating pain—the webbing between her fingers, the tender flesh under her arms and at the backs of her knees, breasts, the insides of her thighs… I knelt beside her and looked at her face. The gag stuffed in her mouth to stifle the screams was covered with blood, snot, and the tears that had streaked her cheeks with mascara.
As the shock faded, the same sorrow that had cored me like an apple after Cole died washed over me again. Whoever Masha had been, she hadn’t deserved to die like this. No one deserved to die like this.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
The distant sound of a siren pierced the small balloon my world had become, and the outside world came into focus again. It was time to go.
Chapter 21
July 27—Seattle
As I stood, the sadness drained away, replaced by rage. I moved quickly and quietly to the still open door, poked my head through to see if the coast was clear. I yanked my shirt out of my waistband, used a shirttail to cover the doorknob and pulled the door shut. I stepped off the small porch onto the sidewalk leading out to the street. Halfway there, I heard a man’s voice behind me yell, “Hey, you!” Pretending I didn’t hear, I kept moving, but as soon as I reached the street and rounded the end of the complex out of sight, I broke into a jog.
Weaving my way through the side streets back to my car, my mind ran there and back four or five times, taunting me each time, asking why I was such a slowpoke. On the other side of the park, back the way I’d come, it hit me—I had only one lead left. And it looked like someone had wanted information very badly from Masha. If whoever had killed her was after the same thing, I was a step behind. I changed direction and headed for the strip mall church Masha had visited.
Slowing as soon as I reached the parking lot out front, I caught my breath, wiped the sweat off my face and tucked my shirt in. The storefront church wasn’t air-conditioned, but it was cooler than the parking lot still baking under the late afternoon sun. Two columns of stackable chairs marched in neat rows across a yellowed linoleum floor up to a small lectern and a narrow table with two candles and a foot-high wooden cross on it. A door behind the lectern opened, and a man emerged dressed in a polo shirt and blue jeans. Blue eyes stood out in a friendly face under short, curly brown hair. Under six feet, his eyes widened as he took in my height.
“Can I help you?”
“You’re the priest here?”
A small smile crossed his lips. “Pastor.” As he approached his expression turned to concern. “Are you all right? Can I get you some water?”
I shook my head. “A girl named Masha came here yesterday afternoon.”
He nodded. “One of my parishioners. How did you know?”
“I followed her here.” I sank into the closest chair, knees trembling. “I’m sorry, pastor. I think I will have that water if it’s all right.”
“Of course.” He hurried into the back.
I looked around the makeshift church wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into. He returned with a bottle of water before any answers came to me.
“I’m Pavel,” he said with no trace of an accent. “Paul, if you’re more comfortable with that.”
“Russian?”
“My parents. They came over when I was so young that I’ve always thought of myself as American, not Russian.”
“Masha is dead,” I blurted. There was no easy way into this conversation.
Shock widened his eyes, but was quickly replaced by sadness. “How?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. You don’t seem all that surprised.”
He tipped his head to the side, perplexed.
“I followed Masha because I promised a dying man I would protect a young girl. I think Masha knows the girl’s mother, Anya.”
This time the surprise was so fleeting I almost missed it, and his jaw muscles tightened.
“Go on,” he said.
I told him everything. I’d never been particularly religious, but if I couldn’t trust a man of the cloth, who could I trust? He looked thoughtful when I finished and stared out the front window. Finally, he turned his gaze back to me and sighed.
“Masha and her friend Anya were in the life,” he said. “You know what this is? Men in Russia—unscrupulous men, criminals—”
“Mafia.”
“Yes, Russian mafia pluck these girls off the streets of small towns everywhere and offer them jobs in America. They feed off these girls’ dreams of a better life and their fantasies of America as the land of golden opportunity.”
He sat in a chair across the aisle from me and rested his elbows on his knees. “Reality is far different. The girls are essentially held prisoner here and forced to prostitute themselves to pay bac
k the cost of bringing them to the U.S. But it never ends. They must also pay ‘rent’ for the appalling hovels they’re forced to live in. And there’s the cut for the girls’ services, interest on the money they owe and so forth. It goes on and on.
“Most never find a way out of the life, and many die young from drugs or AIDS. A few lucky ones manage to escape or stay off drugs long enough to actually pay off what they owe. Anya’s one of the lucky ones. She found a man who loved her. To her surprise, she fell in love with him, too. He paid off what she owed, set her up in her own place, and continued to support her. And then she got pregnant and had a child. She went into hiding after that and kept a low profile so the mafia would never threaten her or her child. Her lover—your Mr. D’Amato, I suppose, since she never said—actually paid a monthly stipend to the mafia so they would think she was still working.”
“And Masha?”
“Never got out.”
“She had a job…”
“Oh, she started to clean up her life. Yes, she got a real job, started taking classes to get a GED. She wasn’t the prettiest girl, so she wasn’t in high demand anymore. But I’m sure she still owed them money. They always do.”
“So they made her service clients anyway,” I guessed.
He nodded. “How did she die?”
“Badly. No one should die like that.”
“You saw her?” He knew I had.
“You know I have to find Anya. I have to warn her. Masha was tortured. She may have told them where Anya lives.”
Pavel looked at his feet and shook his head. “Masha doesn’t—didn’t know. And before you ask, I don’t either.”
“Pastor—Pavel, you know better than I do what will happen here. They’ll find her and kill her, and the girl, too.”
He looked at me strangely. “How do I know you didn’t make all this up? Maybe you killed Masha. How do I know you weren’t sent to kill Anya and her daughter?”
“Oh, please. Me, a hit man for the Russian mob? Do I look like a killer?” As soon as I heard my own words, guilt smiled and waved, letting me know the lie might work with everyone else, but not me. I nearly squirmed under his stare. “Look, you’re just going to have to take me on faith. I made a promise—”
He held up his hand to stop me. “I can get a message to her, and let her know that you want to talk to her. That’s all I can do. I’m sorry, but that’s her choice.”
The determination on his face said I’d get nowhere with him by arguing. I rose wearily and dug in my pocket for yet another of Molly’s cards and wrote my name and number on it.
“The police might come asking questions,” I said.
“I’ll tell them what I told you,” Pavel said, his face turning to stone. “Masha turned tricks. They should look at her pimp first.”
The sun cast slanted shadows across the lot when I left. Like most summer days in this part of the world, as soon as the sun dived toward the horizon it dragged its cape of heat behind it to some other part of the world. Now drained of the adrenaline that had sustained me since finding Masha’s body, I felt doubly chilled. Realizing I hadn’t eaten all day, I walked across the parking lot to the strip of storefronts where Masha had intended to meet her friend. The mall offered Thai, Japanese and Mexican in addition. I couldn’t bring myself to go in the place where Masha had eaten. I chose Thai instead, but as soon as I stepped inside my stomach rebelled at the smell of food. I ran outside and dry-heaved in some bushes across the street until I puked up the memory of the bloody scene in the apartment, a thin stream of acidic bile.
I recovered my car and stopped at a coffee shop on the way home. The coffee I ordered didn’t do much to settle my stomach, but at least it washed down a dose of meds. And with only a few hours until I had to go to work, I thought the caffeine would help.
By the time I got back across the lake to my neighborhood it was around 8:00 p.m., which meant anyone parking on the street had already arrived back home, leaving precious few spots. I cruised slowly up the street in front of the house where Peter and Chance lived, and where I rented an in-law apartment below them. Scanning both sides of the street for a space, I swung my head back and forth. A black Mercedes on the opposite side made me do a double take. Marko sat behind the wheel, the surprise on his face matching my own. They were watching the house, which meant they were waiting for me.
I threw the Toyota into first gear, popped the clutch and stomped the accelerator.
Chapter 22
July 27—Bering Sea
The Chechen stole quietly down the passageway at what the Americans liked to call “oh-dark-thirty,” essentially the dead of night, when only a skeleton crew stayed awake to monitor the ship’s progress and vital signs. The fire near the engine room had served as a wake-up call to the entire ship that nothing could be taken for granted. Despite being surrounded by water, to a ship, fire was anathema. Though alert crewmen had doused it fairly quickly, containing the damage to nothing more than some blackened paint and a smoky smell that permeated that section of the ship, the alarm that had gone out had scrambled the rest of the crew and caused a fairly major disruption in routine, slowing the ship’s headway toward its destination.
Stopping at a door along the passage, he pulled a set of lock picks from a pocket and knelt in front of it on the cold steel deck. Within a minute or two, he felt the last tumbler click into place, opened the door and slipped inside. He barely had room to turn around in the small space. Limited to begin with, racks of electronics gear on all sides diminished the room’s size further. The deck plan labeled the room a “storage closet,” but only a very few knew the contents stored behind the label. The electronic systems in this room on this particular Udaloy I-class destroyer provided complete redundancy, from navigation to communication. Most ships in the fleet had gear only where it belonged. Due to budget constraints, none had a duplicate system buried deep within the ship where it’d be less susceptible to damage from incoming enemy fire.
Those he worked with on board had no idea of his knowledge and training in electronics. He took a slow look around the room, thinking of all the havoc he could cause from here. With a little time, he could change the ship’s heading with no outward sign on the instruments up on the bridge that anything was amiss. He could program the SA-N-9 Gauntlet missile firing system to relinquish control to his commands so he could turn radar onto different targets than those initially acquired. He could jam the ship’s communications systems. None of those strategies would help him accomplish his objectives.
Even now, setting a fire and what he was about to do now were only diversions, tactics to unnerve his enemy. But he’d been sent here to do more. He wanted to do more. He and his compatriots back home counted retribution a major part of the mission, revenge for all those the Russians had killed when they’d quashed Chechnya’s two attempts to assert its independence. And that fight was far from over. Many who shared his conviction had vowed to swarm around Russia like mosquitoes, an irritant, but potentially infecting the mother country with a disease so deadly she would relinquish her hold on the Chechen people. And what better time than now, when Russia was distracted with problems in the Ukraine.
He nearly spat in disgust. Why could the Kremlin not see it? Putin rattled Russian sabers along the Ukrainian border on the Crimean Peninsula because people there—ethnic Russians—wanted to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. Yet he rolled tanks and soldiers into Chechnya, torturing and killing thousands of Chechens—not Russians at all—because they wanted to run their country the way they saw fit, according to their beliefs, not those of Moscow.
He needed to cause maximum damage to the ship, this crown jewel in the Russian fleet, and take as many lives as possible to make the kind of statement that would make Moscow sit up and pay attention. He’d discarded his original plan, to construct a bomb and place it in or near munitions storage, as too high-risk. He had neither time nor materials to fashion a homemade explosive device. But he’d come up with another id
ea that seemed both feasible and, if successful, almost equally devastating. Soon...
He approached a bank of equipment and pulled a flexible keyboard from under his shirt and a USB cable from his belt loops and plugged in. Shipbuilders had scattered switches with knobs or levers, and painted appropriate colors, in strategic locations around the ship. He could override any or all of them here. With a few quick keystrokes he accomplished what he’d come to do, and within only a minute or so from entering he silently pulled the door closed behind him and hurried down the passageway back to his post.
As he entered sickbay, he pulled up short. Comprising several offices, exam rooms, two operating rooms, dental and ophthalmology departments, a pharmacy, sick wards, records storage, X-ray and berths for medical personnel, the suite was large but compact. Berths for both crew and the ill or injured were stacked like bunk beds, exam rooms and offices sized no larger than necessary, and medical personnel made to share offices as well as quarters. Only five sailors occupied berths in the wards. One had a case of food poisoning he’d gotten from eating spoiled food received in a package sent from home. Two had respiratory ailments likely caused by flu virus, and had been ordered to report to sickbay more to keep the virus from spreading than to treat the men. An emergency appendectomy had landed the fourth in post-op recovery. The last was in the isolation room with a mystery illness they hadn’t yet identified.
Soft snores emanated from the main ward. He frowned. Some other noise had made him pause. There it was again, the rustling of paper. Soundlessly, he moved down an inside passageway farther into the suite. Not the medical records room. The physicians’ office. He walked in as if he belonged—he did belong there—and stopped at the sight of Rostropovich rifling through a desk drawer.
“What are you doing?” he snapped.
Rostropovich looked up, startled. “I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d check on the isolation patient, but I can’t find his chart.”
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