“And a witness statement in which all the decorations fit,” said Mishin. “That’s as good as a photograph.”
“Lazarev,” said Max. “The Goose. Stalin’s most beloved son.”
“Stalin’s most beloved son?” asked Mishin.
Max told him what Marcel Rousseau had called his boss. Mishin furrowed his brow.
“What do you think that means?” asked Max.
“What it means?” interrupted Ilya. “It’s nonsense, of course.”
Mishin sighed heavily. “It could be nonsense, but it could also be true.”
“Joseph Stalin had an illegitimate son, a son by his first wife, and a son by his second wife as well as an adopted son,” said Max. “Both of his legitimate sons died young. Stalin was even worse as a father than as a tyrant.”
“Indeed. One of his legitimate sons apparently either purposely ran into an electric fence or was shot by guards or both—the evidence isn’t conclusive—in a German prison camp after Stalin refused to trade a captured German officer for him. The other, a fighter pilot during the war, drank himself to death. Stalin evidently despised his sons, but it’s also known that there were young men he loved, men who became like sons to him. Sons he chose.”
Chosen sons? Max thought. That might not be unreasonable to a dictator. What was it his own father had been in the habit of saying? God gave you your relatives. Thank God for being able to choose your friends.
“Do you believe that?” asked Max. “That he was that close to Stalin?”
“Hard to say. Over the years, many hard-line communists and military hawks have claimed a blood relationship or some other kind of special relationship to Stalin. Maybe it’s just a legend he’s created about himself. But it certainly lets us see the rest of what I’ve found in a new light.”
Mishin laid his briefcase on his lap.
“What did you learn from that article?” he asked. “Is there anything that sticks out?”
“That he’s a cold-blooded mass murderer,” said Ilya.
“I learned a nickname and got a description of his appearance,” Max said.
Mishin drummed on the briefcase while Max considered what he had read on the screen. The eyewitness testimony from the woman who had survived and fled when her town had been destroyed. The contradictory man.
“Piano Concerto number 23,” he said.
Mishin nodded.
“Mozart. Quite unusual for a colonel general in the GRU, I should think. If he’s as old as we think he is, then he grew up when the privilege of learning to play Mozart was granted to very few children. My guess is that he was once a musical wunderkind.”
“Perhaps known as the Goose even when he was a child?” said Max.
“That was my thinking exactly,” said Mishin. “I found this.”
Mishin opened his briefcase and took out a letter-size sheet of paper. It was a copy of a page from an old issue of the magazine Vosmoy.
“The young man who just took a picture of me”—Mishin pointed at the librarian—“helped me with this last night.”
Vosmoy meant “eighth.” The text was difficult to read, but it was soon clear to Max that everything was about music. In the middle of the page was a small, grainy photograph. It showed a piano behind which a young boy sat. Behind the boy stood a strict-looking elderly man, perhaps his father or grandfather, wearing a stern expression. The caption read “The young Goose plays ‘Flight of the Bumblebee.’”
“What year was this published?” asked Max.
Mishin unfolded a handwritten note that had accompanied the photocopy.
“The issue is from 1930.”
Max continued reading the text of the article. “The twelve-year-old phenomenon Viktor Gusin—the Goose, as he is known to his friends and admirers—masterfully interpreted Rimsky-Korsakov’s fast-paced interlude, to the acclaim of his audience. Among those present was the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Vyacheslav Molotov.”
“Is that our man?” asked Ilya.
Max nodded.
“Yes, that’s the Goose. As a young, gifted boy.”
Molotov, the famous Soviet foreign minister. Had Molotov discovered the Goose and brought him into Stalin’s innermost circle?
When Max had read about events in Stockholm during the forties, he had run across a quote from Molotov. In a statement, he had said that Soviet bombers had not dropped bombs on Finland; they had dropped food for the starving Finnish population. After his statement, the Finns began calling Russian bombs Molotov breadbaskets. By way of retribution, they had thrown bottles full of burning gasoline at the Russians and called them Molotov cocktails—a little something with which to wash down the bread.
Molotov had stubbornly rejected de-Stalinization. He had been openly critical of Khrushchev and a committed Stalinist until his death in 1986.
Max shifted in his chair and looked at Mishin. Thanks to him, they had accumulated a number of clues. The real name of St. Petersburg GSM’s chairman, Lazarev, was Viktor Gusin; he had an infamous nickname and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of human beings. He was connected to the inner circle around Stalin. His most beloved son.
Did the rest of the Ivanovich Foundation consist of similar men? Max felt himself shaking as he considered this possibility. It was as though all the cruelest ages of world history had suddenly come to life again.
By pursuing the connection between St. Petersburg GSM and these old men—Stalin’s own men—Pashie had walked straight into an inferno. Had she done so with her eyes open, or had she been surprised? If she sensed that events taking place now were connected to men such as Stalin and Molotov, she would never let it go, no matter what warnings she might receive from Domashov and others. No matter what Max or Sarah said.
That must have been why she hadn’t been in touch for a few days—because she had been close to exposing a sensational secret: that one of the city’s most celebrated new companies had its roots among some of the worst criminals ever to live.
Suddenly the evidence appeared compelling. And there was a strong motive for her abduction.
But what had led her there? Max felt sure he hadn’t done so himself.
He thought of the quote. The one put up on the wall of her office at the university. “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” And he thought of what she’d written in the book: “Nature has committed certain errors we Bolsheviks must correct.”
Max thought of a third Stalin quote, the one that was perhaps best known: “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.”
“Mishin,” he said. “We know who and why. Now we have to find out where. Where can this monster be holding her prisoner?”
“My guess is at the Colony Field,” said Mishin. “And I think I know where it is.”
53
The steel caps under the soles of his shoes clicked against the hard white tile floor as Nestor Lazarev walked through the kitchen. Once this had been a lively place, in sharp contrast to its current state. The great kitchen had produced breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three hundred people every day. People had worked properly then; they hadn’t complained about their wages or gone on about wanting free weekends to spend in the countryside. They had been proud to serve their country. A five-minute break on an aluminum bench was enough to give people their energy back when they were working for the right reason.
He longed for the day when this place would once again be full of life.
At the far end of the kitchen were two stainless-steel doors. He opened one, stuck his hand in, and switched on the light. There was a panel above the switch, and when he turned on the power a humming came from the refrigeration unit. He stood in the middle of the freezer room and took a deep breath. The air was remarkably fresh in here. At twenty degrees below zero, animal proteins didn’t stink. He switched on the thermostat and went back into the kitchen.
The ovens behind Lazarev were so big that you could roast wild pigs and lambs
whole in them. In front of him were two gas stoves, each with six burners. One of the burners was larger than the others, large enough for what he intended. On the gas stoves stood two heavy cast-iron pots, one meter in diameter. The gas burners had been developed for Soviet industrial purposes but had been installed in this kitchen at his request. They brought the water in the big iron pots to a boil very quickly.
He reached for the hose hanging from the ceiling by a hook and began filling the pots with water.
When he had filled them both, he opened a drawer under the big workbench and looked at his souvenirs from the towns around Kandahar. They shone in the light of the fluorescent tubes, perfect, razor sharp.
Muslim custom required the blades to be free of even a single nick; if they weren’t, they were considered spoiled and couldn’t be used. A single stroke with a long blade was meant to sever the main artery and the cervical vertebrae.
He had been struck by the dignity of the ritual and the beauty of the death that followed.
A single stroke.
Lazarev studied the grooves and drainage channel on the workbench. He placed one pot on the floor beneath the end of the benchtop and one in the adjoining sink. From another drawer he took a box made of precious wood. In it lay eight glass cups. He removed one of the cups and heated it quickly.
The heat would create a vacuum in the cup that would lift the skin and draw out the blood.
I will cleanse you of the poison that resides in your bodies.
He heard her sobbing and howling out in the corridor.
Cry while you can, he thought. You have no idea how much pain you’re going to feel.
He had seen to it that Margarita Yushkova’s bags and clothes were searched after she and her children had been arrested at the airport. Lazarev had confiscated her cell phone and a card on which the name Max had been handwritten in Cyrillic letters, along with a Russian cell phone number.
This card was the only item among Margarita’s possessions that had interested Lazarev.
Who is Max?
He had stuck the card and cell phone in the pocket of his suit jacket. Then he had let the vory interrogate her and observed the process on the screen in his office.
They were doing a good job, though he couldn’t trust them fully.
It had been the young blood, the mayor’s right-hand man, who had advised Lazarev against using his own men in the city. He was smart and was certainly right in this regard. It was only a question of time before the mayor’s man in Saint Petersburg came to power in Moscow, regardless of who won the farce of a presidential election.
Outside Russia things were different. Lazarev could pick up the telephone and get things done by men who had been properly trained, who knew how the world worked and could take orders.
Men like the soldier in Stockholm.
When Lazarev was able to work with such men in Saint Petersburg as well, then things would really start to happen.
While the vory’s interrogation methods had been amateurish, there was no reason to interrogate Margarita Yushkova further. She had tried to give them nonsense, tried to play dumb, but in the end they had gotten everything out of her. Now Lazarev knew where Paul Olsen was. Or Max, as Margarita called him.
The Grand Hotel Europe? That’s where you’re hiding?
Fortunately for Lazarev, Margarita had even known—and told the vory—what suite Max was staying in, as she and the children had accompanied him there when he’d dropped off his jacket before taking them to a restaurant in the hotel.
The anniversary would arrive soon. He couldn’t let himself be distracted. They couldn’t be allowed to suspect that there was anything he didn’t have under control. The Swede would have to be eliminated.
He looked around the kitchen one last time. Everything was ready. The vory could proceed with their tasks.
“Come in,” he called.
The man with the tattooed weasel face looked for affirmation when he entered the kitchen.
You should be happy you’re getting to enjoy a very temporary taste of freedom before I lock you up in Kresty Prison for another fifteen years, thought Lazarev. If you hadn’t corrected your own mistake and brought them here from the airport, they would have left Russia forever. And you would have been found on some park bench in the city with your graffiti-covered head on your lap.
The employees of St. Petersburg GSM were unaware that Lazarev had provided the passport-control personnel at Pulkovo Airport with their names and passport numbers. Given that he had to work with idiots like these vory, he was glad some of the old structures were still functioning. He’d send the passport officers something special for their next party.
The tattooed vor’s partner, the big treelike man with the long hair and beard, was somewhat better. He was supposed to be from the endless Siberian forests. A big, shy man who had happened to kill a woman he’d raped in a forest.
He’d tied up Margarita’s two children with a rope. Were they two boys or a boy and a girl? The way people dressed their children these days, it was hard to say. New York Rangers? An American ice hockey team. To think things had gotten to this point.
Now the big man came in with Margarita Yushkova’s arm in a firm grip. They stopped some distance from Lazarev.
Lazarev looked at her.
“You spoke with the enemy,” he said. “With this Max from Sweden. That was the thanks I got for giving you a job with a higher salary than anyone else in your decaying suburb was earning. Did you think he was some kind of hero?”
Margarita whimpered when she heard Lazarev’s low voice.
“There is no Swedish hero. Soon Sweden will have been turned into an oblast under the control of the Kremlin.”
The vory had been given clear instructions. They knew exactly what they were to do, how they were to prepare for the great gathering that was now so near at hand.
Margarita Yushkova never took her eyes off Lazarev. His appearance had paralyzed her, as if she had seen a ghost. The man for whom her lover had worked, the man he’d feared. The man many of her colleagues at St. Petersburg GSM hadn’t believed existed.
“They are your children,” said Lazarev, sticking a finger into the water in the pot. “This is their death sentence.”
The water was lukewarm but quickly getting hotter. He smiled at Margarita.
“Do you know what happens to a human being’s cells, inner organs, and muscle mass at the boiling point?”
It made no difference whether a child was a boy or a girl as long as the age was right. They looked excellently suited to his purpose. They were completely silent, didn’t look up at their mother but simply stared straight ahead. The survival instinct.
Lazarev walked over to the tall man. The bear from Siberia.
“Let this be the last thing she sees in her life. When you’re finished, she’s your reward.”
The man began breathing irregularly and blinked several times. He looked over at his tattooed friend. A smile spread across his face.
“When you’re finished with her, just tie her to one of the heat pipes in the tunnels under the hangar. The rats will finish her off.”
The screams of a woman who feared for her offspring had a special quality. Lazarev had heard it many times before, and it had never ceased to fascinate him. The sound was the same regardless of whether you were in eastern or western Russia, in Afghanistan, or in Sweden.
It was with that animal scream ringing in his ears that Lazarev left the kitchen and the vory began carrying out his orders.
54
The tube was gone, but it wasn’t over yet. The hangover from the vodka he had forced into her was growing more intense, and every move made her queasy. The last thing she wanted to do was throw up again. The barbs in the tube had torn her palate open, and the acid made the wounds sting.
She didn’t know what building she was in. What was the old man doing in here? Why did he talk about Vektor as if it were a Swedish version of the CIA? Pashie knew both Max and Sa
rah were connected to the Swedish armed forces, but surely her employer wasn’t a cover for an intelligence organization? And why would a newly founded cellular telephony company like St. Petersburg GSM end up in conflict with such an organization?
Did that have something to do with the tip? The one she’d received from the man in Switzerland?
It was as though something had been revealed to her, something she hadn’t realized until now. If she hadn’t listened to the message on her answering machine, she wouldn’t be here. Who was he, the man who’d called her from a hotel in Davos and who hadn’t been reachable when Pashie had tried to call him back?
What other consequences had her hunt for the truth about St. Petersburg GSM had? Her captor had said that the department had been blown up. And that everyone had died.
Because of her.
That couldn’t be true.
Tears ran down her cheeks again. Who was everyone?
Mishin, who had been her mentor since she’d first come to the city as a young, lonely, and lost student?
Paul Olsen?
When the monster had said that name, a storm of emotions had raged within her. Paul Olsen was a secret between her and Max. When she’d heard the name, she’d been filled with a hope that had made her strong again. That had probably not been the monster’s intention.
And because the monster had asked about Paul, Max couldn’t have been in the department when the bomb had gone off; he wasn’t one of those who died. There was still hope that they would be reunited. If she could just manage to survive.
Suddenly she heard a woman’s terrible scream. It came through the walls and the floor. It seemed it would never end.
Then the loud, muffled voices of men; they sounded like angry wolves.
What was going on up there? Was the screaming woman going to take Pashie’s place?
Or am I going to take hers?
55
How had this wealth been accumulated in such a short time? Another example of Yeltsin’s deplorable waste.
Lazarev had come in through the Grand Hotel Europe’s lobby with his back bent and the weight of his long torso resting on the cane in his right hand. Once again, the certificate documenting a heart operation in London had given him free passage through the metal detector.
Ask No Mercy (Max Anger Book 1) Page 23