“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Strong-willed, thought Lazarev. Impressive.
“You have no idea why a young man from Sweden would have been asking about you? No idea at all?”
Pashie said nothing.
“I know about the exchange between the organization and the university. The Department of Economics and what you call Vektor.”
He waited for a reaction, but none came.
“Vektor consists of former members of the Swedish military and is carrying out covert intelligence activity. You may think you are working for some kind of research institution, but in fact you are working for the Swedish armed forces, and you have betrayed your homeland. And you know what we do with traitors.”
He squeezed the plastic tube with his strong hands.
“The Department of Economics at the University of Saint Petersburg no longer exists,” he continued. “It was blown up while you were sitting here in the dark. Everyone in the department died. Because you spit in my face instead of talking.”
Pashie closed her eyes. The tears came again.
“They died because of you.”
Her rib cage started to shake. Should he tear her clothes off? That usually got women to talk.
“How many more people have to die, Pashie?”
She shook her head. Her eyes were still closed.
“You know I am going to get the truth, sooner or later?”
Lazarev stood up. She looked up at him with pleading eyes.
“In a few days, I will receive a number of guests. I can’t have you stinking and howling here when they arrive. Do you understand that? Who is the young man?”
Her dark eyes stared at him, but she had once again become calm.
“He’s going to stop you,” she said.
Lazarev knelt in front of her. “Is he, now?”
He took hold of her hair and pulled it back, exposing her throat.
“Perhaps I should give you to my guests? I don’t think your young man will want you when the comrades from my organization have finished with you.”
Lazarev squeezed. The long fingers that had once promised an entirely different career wrapped themselves around her slender neck.
She began to suffocate.
No, not now.
He shook his head and managed to get up. Pashie was coughing on the floor in front of him.
It’s not time for you to die yet. I still need you. Until the young man is dead and everything is over.
44
The porter backed up a few steps when the jeep braked to a halt in front of the Grand Hotel Europe. Ilya leaned on the horn even though he could see that Max was already on his way out of the hotel. He opened the passenger door and grinned his wolf’s grin at Max.
“Do you know where we’re going, boss?” The vein under his eye was throbbing harder today.
Max fastened his seat belt and took out the fax Ilya had sent him on Sunday.
“Among the numbers you got out of Pashie’s phone was one associated with the address Ulitsa Zhukovskogo 41, apartment 104B, in Razliv.”
Ilya swung onto Nevsky Prospekt.
“What’s there?”
“I hope that’s where Margarita lives.”
Ilya drove north, out of the city. The jeep rolled over bumps and gaping holes in the asphalt, swung around trucks and trolley buses that were also negotiating Saint Petersburg’s worn streets.
They had to get to Margarita as fast as they could. Before the others, whoever they were, got there. But Ilya didn’t seem to realize they were in a hurry. When the traffic grew denser, he took a turn, and they ended up in what seemed like an endless labyrinth of narrow streets and winding canals.
Max clenched his teeth and held back a frustrated curse.
Finally they arrived in Razliv. The little town seemed to have been thrown together in a single day. A score of rectangles rose randomly from the earth. There were almost no streets or shops. Dense forest surrounded them. The apartment buildings looked as if they would be dissolved by rain or fall to the ground if a storm blew in. The facades were flaking like dry leather. Many windows gaped black and empty. Where apartments had burned, scorch marks streaked the plaster.
This place contrasted sharply with the architectural brilliance and rich variety of colors that characterized central Saint Petersburg. Max imagined Margarita taking her children to the preschool in the city, near her workplace, every weekday morning. Given what this place looked like, it was no doubt worth the effort. In Razliv there was no sign of the new money and burgeoning middle class everyone was talking about.
A black Mercedes was parked outside the front door of Margarita’s building.
“That’s the car that ran down Domashov, the journalist,” said Max.
“Good. We’ve got a chance to take them.”
Max shook his head. It was Margarita who was important now.
Outside the car stood two men in leather jackets. Max studied them from a distance. One of them looked like a Russian version of a Viking: tall, broad-shouldered, long black hair and thick beard. His partner, whose head was shaved smooth and whose face and hands were covered with tattoos, was smaller, wiry and agile.
They were hardly the employees of a telecom. The men bore the marks of the vory, the age-old guild of Russian thieves. They had presumably been hired to carry out a particular task. The question was which task.
“You see the basement window around the corner?” said Max. “If you go make a couple of new friends, I can get in there.”
Ilya grinned.
“With friends like you, I could use a couple of new ones. Give me a few minutes before you get started. If it doesn’t work, there’s a Makarov in the glove compartment.”
Ilya slammed the door to make sure the two vory heard him. He walked toward them without hesitation, his massive torso swelling. He was undeniably fearsome looking, even by the standards of Russian gangsters. Max hoped Ilya’s physical attributes and savvy would make it possible for him to resolve the situation without using the gun.
Max hesitated for a moment but then reached for the gun. Who knew what awaited him in the apartment?
Ilya had gotten a conversation with the two men started, and Max opened the door. With the pistol tucked into his waistband, he hurried over to the basement window. He bent down and stuck his left leg through the opening, twisted around, got his right leg in, and then slid down into the basement on his stomach.
He pulled out the Makarov. The feeling of holding a pistol in his hand was almost unpleasantly familiar even though it had been two years since he had last held a firearm.
When he emerged into the stairwell, he stopped and listened. He heard nothing above him. The directory in the building’s front hall indicated that apartment 104B was four floors up. He glanced at the elevator, but it was broken and the doors had been removed. The elevator shaft gaped behind x-ed boards. It was just as well; he preferred the freedom of the stairwell to the risk of becoming trapped in the elevator.
On the second floor, he was surprised by an odd bleating sound. A goat chained to the banister stared at him. Max shook his head in wonderment and continued upward.
On the fifth floor, he hurried to 104B. He held one ear to the door and listened, his left shoulder against the door, the Makarov in his right hand. There was complete silence. He pressed the doorbell button. Footsteps approached on the other side; then there was silence again.
There was no peephole, so Max assumed the person on the other side was standing as he was standing, listening through the door.
After a while the door was cautiously opened, and Max saw her face behind a security chain.
“You?” whispered Margarita.
“I regret what’s happened,” said Max when Margarita took a step backward. “You’re in great danger and can’t stay here. I’m sure you’ve seen the men waiting for you down there. If you don’t come with me, you’re going to be killed, like Marcel.”
&
nbsp; Margarita put a well-manicured hand to her mouth. The other held the security chain.
“Oh, God.”
“Margarita?”
She wiped her bloodshot eyes.
“They said he was drunk when he went to that damned place.”
“But you don’t believe them?”
“I know it isn’t true.”
“Did Marcel tell you where he was going?”
Margarita closed her eyes. Max laid his left hand on the hand resting on the chain.
“I have to get to my children,” she mumbled.
“Tell me what Marcel said to you before he disappeared. Then we’ll go straight to where they are and pick them up.”
“What about the men down there?”
“I know a different way out.”
Margarita shook her head, but then looked at him with determination.
“Marcel was worried about a meeting. And he told me whom he was going to meet.”
45
Margarita lay on the backseat of the jeep. Through the windshield, Max saw Ilya say something to the two vory and then point in the direction of the car.
No, don’t bring them over here, thought Max. Are you nuts?
One of the two men, the one with the tattoos, took out a cell phone. He spoke animatedly with someone for a few minutes and then put it away. He looked at the jeep and then at Ilya, who was approaching it.
Ilya knocked on the window on Max’s side. He rotated his index finger, and Max rolled down the window. Ilya reached toward the glove compartment, winking at Margarita. When he realized the glove compartment was empty, he looked at Max, who was holding the Makarov in his hand between the two front seats of the car. Ilya raised his eyebrows and took it from Max.
“Do you think you can drive this heap?”
Max nodded.
“Then I’ll see you back at the hotel.”
“But you can’t still be here when those two realize she’s gone.”
As usual, Ilya shrugged.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I have this.”
He waved goodbye with the Makarov in his hand, then turned around and started walking toward the vory.
Max wriggled over to the driver’s seat while he watched Ilya’s back recede. Would they ever see each other again? He pushed away such thoughts; he needed to show Ilya the trust he deserved. And get Margarita and her children to safety.
He started the engine and drove away without looking toward the men.
Margarita and Max didn’t talk during the drive into Saint Petersburg. The smell of Margarita’s perfume, a floral chemical scent, mixed with that of the jeep’s exhaust.
She was safe now, at least for the time being; she had been saved from the fate of her Swiss lover, Marcel Rousseau, the man who had played with fire. The feeling of having ensured her safety filled Max with satisfaction.
At least one thing had gone their way.
Pashie had told him that Russian women preferred plastic flowers to real ones. She said that if she were ever to start a new career, it would be selling plastic flowers. They were the perfect product for the new Russia. Russians loved flashiness and beauty but were notoriously bad at maintenance. Real flowers required love and care; plastic flowers lasted forever. They were cheap and elegant; they demanded nothing of you; they were simply perfect. In fact, Max had never heard anyone in Russia express much appreciation for naturalness. On the contrary. Naturalness was associated with poverty and backwardness.
Pashie knew how she would compensate for the plastic flowers’ lack of scent: by spraying them with an artificial violet perfume that would be sure to increase sales. Max imagined this would be like the scent wafting from the backseat.
Max poured coffee until Margarita held up her hand.
“Thanks. That’s enough.”
Max sat across from Margarita and her children. They were occupying four rattan chairs under a reproduction of an old Saint Petersburg streetlamp in one of the hotel’s restaurants.
Above them, light shone in through the domed roof.
“You’re safe here,” said Max. “For the time being.”
Without looking up, Margarita poured sugar into her coffee and stirred the steaming black liquid.
“What was it Marcel told you?”
Margarita looked up. For a moment she trembled, but she managed to pull herself together once again.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m looking for a friend. You know that.”
“I want to leave Saint Petersburg,” she said. “I want to never set foot here again.”
A waiter came by. Margarita ordered two banana milkshakes.
“Where would you go?”
“I have an uncle in Prague. I want to go there.”
“Okay,” said Max. “If you talk now, I’ll take care of it.”
She nodded.
“I know Marcel was employed by a large international company in the auditing sector in Switzerland,” said Max. “Why was he here in Saint Petersburg?”
“Marcel had certain weaknesses.”
“Don’t we all?”
Margarita took a sip of her coffee.
“He was still married,” she said. “Did you know that? He left a family behind in Switzerland.”
“What brought him here?”
“The Arbeiterjugend,” said Margarita, grimacing.
“In Switzerland?”
Margarita shook her head.
“East Germany. His real name was Günther Baumann, and he was born and raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt. He was an excellent swimmer and a participant in the Festival of Youth and Students.”
Which was to say he’d been involved in the work of the Komsomol, the communist youth organization. The latest festival had been held in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 1989. The next was to take place in Havana, Cuba, in a year. “For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace, and friendship.”
“So he defected to the West? And ended up in Switzerland?”
“Early in the summer of 1980.”
At that time there would only have been two possibilities. Either he had truly defected, which would have been difficult but had been managed by a small number of elite athletes, or he had been placed in the West by the organization that controlled all young lives and souls: Stasi, the super-effective East German intelligence service.
“And his wife?” asked Max.
“Swiss. All I know about her is that she demanded money. More money all the time.”
“And his company, Brice & Stadthaller? And St. Petersburg GSM?”
“I swore I would never tell anyone . . .” She pulled in her quivering lower lip, looked up at the ceiling far above them. Finally, she looked at Max.
She was no longer bound by her oath.
“He said they were old contacts. And they’d made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Exactly what that meant, I don’t know. But I’ve thought about it a lot.”
“What kind of contacts? Political contacts? Military?”
“I don’t know. Marcel was a secretive man in many ways.”
“And what was the offer?”
“He said we could live wherever we wanted, anywhere in the world.”
Margarita reached for a napkin lying next to one of the milkshakes that had arrived while she and Max had been talking. She wiped her cheek.
“He was going to leave her.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“They murdered him.”
Max leaned forward. “Who murdered him?”
“He told me he was going to meet him. I could tell he was nervous about this meeting.”
“Who is he?” asked Max.
“Marcel didn’t tell me his name. But he’s the leader, the boss.”
“Can you guess who he is?”
Margarita’s expression changed again. It was as though she disappeared for a moment. Then she shook herself.
“He is the devil. He’s an old, strange-looking man. A large body
and a small head. A ghost from our country’s darkest period.”
“Did Marcel call him anything? A nickname or a title?”
Margarita leaned forward. Her voice was only a whisper.
“Joseph Stalin’s most beloved son.”
46
Sarah walked down a long row of old boxes from the sugar company Sockerkompaniet that were lined up neatly on a shelf in the shop on Surbrunnsgatan. Comics, men’s magazines, sheets of stickers, and cloth badges mounted on cardboard. Behind the counter stood a man she assumed was Jocke. He looked up from what he was working on when Sarah glanced at him.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
He was dressed in black overalls and a red-plaid lumberjack shirt, wore his silver-gray hair in a ponytail.
“Jocke?” asked Sarah when she was standing in front of him. “My name is Sarah. Peter Tillberg at DN suggested I come and see you. I’m looking for information on events that took place in Stockholm in 1944.”
“What events would those be?”
“Things that stood out, sometime between the twentieth of February and the first of March.”
“Unfortunately, I have the newspapers in a warehouse; they take up too much space. I can’t go out there and look for a newspaper if you don’t know exactly what it is you want.”
Sarah nodded.
“But you can start with the posters,” said Jocke. He began moving deeper into the shop. “I have a few over here.”
He walked past a merchant’s chest with many small drawers. On the floor stood a number of crates containing posters in plastic covers.
“What dates did you say?”
“February twentieth to March first, 1944.”
Jocke pulled out a crate.
“You can start here,” he said.
Sarah looked at the first poster. “Berlin has surrendered. Goebbels has committed suicide.” The poster was from Svenska Dagbladet.
“Thanks,” she said.
She bent down and started flipping through the posters. There were quite a few interesting ones, but the dates didn’t fit. The posters didn’t seem to be in chronological order, which complicated her search.
She knelt; there was a bit of a draft along the floor, but she ignored it. She flipped through the posters faster and faster; she felt they were running out of time.
Ask No Mercy (Max Anger Book 1) Page 19