The Fifth Man

by James Lepore

  “You had a problem. You called him. He took care of it.”

  “That’s it?”

  “There was a dead body. You and a woman were on the scene.”

  “What dead body?” Tess asked. “What woman?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chris said, his eyes on Matt. “Tell me about her, the woman.”

  Matt did not answer. He looked at Tess for a long second or two and then back at Chris.

  “Go ahead,” said Chris.

  “Her name is Anna Cavanagh, born Anna Cervenka,” Matt said, and then stopped and looked at Chris. “Everything?” he said.

  Chris nodded.

  “Grandpa Joe left me two million dollars,” Matt said, looking at his sister now, whose eyes, Chris saw, narrowed in concentration around an otherwise fully composed face. ”I just found out about it. It’s in a self-storage place at the shore. Anna owns the storage place. Nico—you met him, Tess—asked me if I wanted to buy some diamonds; he said I’d make a huge profit. He somehow found out about the two million. He tried to steal it. Also to kidnap me, I think kidnap me, I’m not sure.”

  Matt stopped and turned to Chris. “This is the crazy part,” he said. “What happened, Dad?”

  Chris looked at his son and his daughter and then up at the top of the cliff, where three men with AK-47s stood at fifty-foot intervals in silhouette against the evening sky. Surely Matt and Tess had noticed them. Costa’s men, from the Café Eleni. He looked at his children again, one to the other. Who were they? What blood ran in their veins? No answers. Nevertheless, the time had come.

  “When you told me about Nico and the diamonds, I sent my friend Max French to keep an eye on you,” Chris said. “He intercepted your kidnappers and killed them. He figured Nico and his sister would try to steal the money again. He caught them and took them to Poland to interrogate them. They believed they were working for a Russian Mafia boss.”

  Chris stopped to look at Matt and Tess, who seemed to him to be in a state of suspended animation, between two worlds, much as he was on the day in 1977 when he was sixteen and his father told him he killed people for a living. He didn’t know then that it would come to this, but he should have. Inevitability, he thought, the last puzzle before death and God.

  “Who were the kidnappers?” Tess asked.

  “Probably friends of Nico’s from Little Odessa,” Chris replied. “Nico probably promised them part of the two million.”

  “I helped Max bury the bodies,” Matt said, addressing Tess, who remained focused and poised, like a queen, Chris thought, listening to the report of a battle.

  “Matt was supposed to go to Poland with Max,” Chris continued, “but Anna Cavanagh called and asked him for help. Her drunken husband was threatening her. That’s where Uncle Frank comes in. What happened, Matt?”

  “The husband was very drunk, or high on speed. Or both. He pulled a gun. I had no choice.”

  “Then what?”

  “I called Uncle Frank. An hour later, two guys in a pickup truck showed up,” Matt replied. “They looked like farmers. They took the body away, and all the guns and the husband’s truck.”

  “That’s it?” Chris asked.

  “They scrubbed the blood off the parking lot with some kind of solvent. I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “For what?”

  “Uncle Frank. You’re in his debt.”

  “That’s not a problem,” said Chris. “Trust me.”

  “Should I have called you?” Matt said.

  “You can always call Uncle Frank,” Chris replied. “He works for me.”

  Now both Massi siblings were silent.

  “So,” Tess said. “What’s going on? Who’s Max French? How come we never heard of him before?”

  Chris looked at his daughter before answering. Just like that, he thought. She’s in.

  “He used to be in the FBI,” Chris replied. “Now he works for himself, and for me.”

  “Poland?” Matt asked. “That’s where we do our renditions, isn’t it?”

  “We have friends there,” Chris replied.

  “Wait,” Tess said. “Are you talking about you personally or the United States government?”

  “Both,” said Chris. “And neither.”

  Chris was looking at Tess but out of the corner of his eye he saw a quick wry smile cross Matt’s face.

  “You said Nico thinks he was working for the Russian Mafia,” Tess said. “Who was he really working for?”

  “I don’t know,” Chris replied. “But I need to find out.”

  “Can we help?” Matt asked.

  “You’re in the thick of it, Matt,” Chris answered. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “Is it Marko Dravic?” Tess asked.

  “Who’s Marko Dravic?” said Matt.

  “Tess has a story of her own to tell,” Chris said. “I’m going up to shower. Tell him, Tess. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

  “You killed a guy?” Tess said when Chris was gone.

  “Yes. But don’t ask me about it.”

  “Okay, but what about Anna Cavanagh, born Anna Cervenka? Are you in love with her?”

  Matt did not reply. ‘Matt the Mute’ had been one of Tess’s nicknames for her brother when they were teenagers. When he wasn’t swaggering his idiotic Mafia-princeling swagger he was as silent as marble, and as dense, unable to formulate a coherent thought.

  “You have to be,” she said. “You killed her husband to protect her.”

  “Why the sarcasm?” Matt asked.

  “What sarcasm?”

  “Born Anna Cervenka.”

  He loves her, Tess thought; he hates her married name. And there’s something else I’m not getting. What? Does Matt have a secret?

  “He killed himself,” Matt said, without waiting for Tess to answer.

  “You mean by pulling a gun on you?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  All her life Tess had wondered what would become of Matt, the only grandson of a Mafia don on one side and a Mafia hit man on the other. Now he had killed someone. Made his bones as they used to say.

  “What’s she like, Anna Cervenka?” Tess said, shifting gears, hoping to get the thing out of her brother that she knew he was holding back. “Come on. I’m not teasing you. Are you in love with her?”

  “I just met her.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I don’t know, Tess. I am and I’m not.”

  “You had great sex.”

  Silence.

  “It’s a game changer, great sex.”

  Matt’s eyes darted at hers, but he remained silent.

  “Where is she now?” Tess asked.

  “She’s in New York. I gave her some money. I also got someone to watch her place.”

  “Is the money still there? The two million?”

  “No. I moved it.”

  “I don’t think Dad’s the head of the DiGiglio Mafia family,” Tess said. “I should say, I think he’s that and something else.”

  “Who’s Marko Dravic?” asked Matt.

  “Do you agree?” Tess asked.

  Matt did not reply. The siblings looked at each other, their beautiful, sensuous faces and lithe bodies like pre-Raphaelite figures bathed in the slanting rays of the late-day Aegean sun.

  “I agree,” he said at length.

  “He kidnapped me. Dravic.”

  “What? What happened?”

  “I was drugged.”

  “What?’

  “By great sex.”

  “What?”

  Tess told Matt the story of her brief affair with the handsome young man who called himself Patriki Karros, of her abduction in broad daylight. She left out the intimate details but did not gloss over the key point: she had been dr
ugged by great sex; she would have gone anywhere with Patriki.

  “Yes, Matt,” she said at the end. “Women like sex.”

  “I know they do.”

  “Your sister included.”

  “Tess…”

  “The thing is, Matt, I was a fool, and I can’t be from now on. And neither can you. Your friend Nico would have killed you for that money.”

  “And Marko Dravic, what did he want from Dad?”

  “I don’t know, Dad didn’t tell me.”

  “Is he connected to Nico and the diamonds?”

  “I think that’s what Dad’s trying to find out.”

  “Renditions, Tess? Warsaw? They waterboard in Warsaw. They do SERE.”

  “What’s SERE?”

  “Sensory overload. A form of torture.”

  “How do you know about this stuff?”

  “I’m doing my senior thesis on it, that is, I am if I ever get back to New York.”

  “On torture?”

  “No, on black ops.”

  “Christ…”

  “It’s what Dad does, Tess, face it.”

  24.

  Ephesus, August 29, 2012, 8:00 a.m.

  Though he knew the old man was a cold-blooded killer, some said a psychopath, Chris liked Viktor Marchenko almost instantly. Not because he was unpretentious or unassuming. The frayed white cotton shirt, the thick Turkish coffee—served in an old fashioned stove-top pot with a long wooden handle, by a middle-aged daughter who had lost whatever beauty she may have once had—were as likely an act, a presentation, as not. Nor was he gracious. He was a prickly old man, who it was obvious did not like to be bothered by extraneous details or to deal directly with anyone outside his inner circle. No, it was just that the white-haired don’s light brown eyes were as keenly intelligent as any he’d seen. Only his ex-father-in-law’s came close. They were dons of the old school, interested in the big picture and the future. How to fathom the one and arrive safely and intact in the other.

  “How shall I address you,” Marchenko said, “should I choose to?”

  “I would be honored if you would call me Chris, or Christopher.”

  “You have very good friends,” Marchenko said.

  “Thank you. They honor me.”

  “I have never met Don DiGiglio. It was a pleasure to speak to him. Will you be seeing him when you leave here?”

  “No.”

  “He says you are now the head of the family. We are equals, you and I, and thus I agreed to meet you.”

  Chris let this pass. They were sitting on heavy wooden chairs in a sunken garden on the old Russian’s estate in Ephesus, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Their feet nearly touched the pebbled scree that bordered a small pond, on the smooth dark surface of which water lilies silently floated, their white faces turned to the sun. They were surrounded by a crumbling stone wall overgrown with thorny shrubs and vines. Beyond the wall dense brush encircled the garden and beyond that thickly wooded hills rose on all sides. On one hilltop Chris could see what was left of more ancient stonework, a battlement or a rampart last used a thousand years ago. He could hear the sea, which he knew from the reconnaissance photos that Max had provided him was only a hundred yards or so away to the south. No one else was about, though Chris had no doubt that the armed men who had escorted him to the grotto were not far away, were watching them in fact. On a stone slab next to Marchenko was a thick-handled, blunt-headed hammer and a chisel with a large cap for striking. Next to them was an irregular-shaped shard of stone with the face and flowing hair of a young woman carved on it. The goddess of the grotto, Chris thought.

  “Do you like the coffee?” the don asked, unfazed by Chris’s silence. Seemingly unfazed.

  “It’s very good.”

  “You have two children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don DiGiglio’s grandchildren.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me why you are here.”

  “One of my ship’s captains,” Chris replied, his voice, and words, measured, “hired a young Ukrainian to make contact with my son. He was to offer him stolen diamonds for sale. The captain said that the offer was from you.”

  The old Russian nodded, his face unreadable, as still as the water in the middle of the pond.

  “If my son bought the diamonds,” Chris continued, “the money was meant to be traceable to him, and through him to me, to connect me and my family to something that was going to happen, a connection that would have made life very difficult for me, for my entire family.”

  “And your son’s name?”

  “Matthew.”

  Marchenko smiled; a thousand wrinkles briefly appeared on a face that a moment before had been as smooth as ice and almost as white. “The apostle John lived in Ephesus,” he said, the smile gone, his face alabaster again. “In 90 A.D. And Mary, she died here. Who is Matthew, in your family?”

  “No one,” Chris answered, understanding the question immediately. “We liked the name, my wife and I.”

  “Don DiGiglio’s daughter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your ex-wife.”

  “Yes.”

  “America.”

  “America,” Chris said, smiling very faintly, with his eyes only, thinking of his father, Joseph, who should have had the honor of being the namesake of Chris’s first son. No, Don Marchenko, America—the modern world—was not the reason for this slight, but perhaps you know that already.

  “Have you spoken to your captain?” the Russian asked.

  “He’s been killed.”

  “By whom?”

  “Whoever hired him to hire the Ukrainian.”

  “And this is where I come in.”

  “Yes.”

  “What exactly do you want from me?”

  “A man named Marko Dravic has approached me. A Russian businessman. He got my attention by briefly abducting my daughter. I need to know if he is the originator of the diamond ploy. Also, who he works for.”

  “Who he works for?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he want of you?”

  “He asked me to go to Prague, to help the Czechs stop a terrorist attack. He says the Russians won’t be trusted in Prague. He says he is just a businessman who has been asked by his government to approach me.”

  “What kind of attack?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “The Russians?”

  “GRU.”

  “Will you go?”

  “Yes.”

  The old man got up slowly, rising—unfolding it seemed to Chris—to his full height of no more than five and a half feet. He was rail thin. Taking a thick stick from the ground, he poked it into the pond and swirled it around, creating concentric ripples that went forth and faded as they reached the far bank. These small marching waves glistened as they caught the morning sun.

  “I love this place,” the don said, turning and facing Chris, holding the mud-coated stick out before him like a baton, lining it up with Chris’s face. “I will die here soon. But I have children and grandchildren, and men who have sworn their lives to me.”

  “I am asking a lot,” Chris said, “I realize that.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t me who hired the Ukrainian?” the don said. “That Dravic is not my man.”

  “You would not have put the grandchildren of Anthony DiGiglio in harm’s way.”

  Marchenko smiled his wrinkled smile again, then looked closely at Chris. “You know, Christoff,” he said, “the Turks used to fabricate terrorist attacks by the Greeks as a way of keeping their people stirred up and of course distracted. Now the Israelis are the devils. Sometimes the attacks are real, with evidence left pointing to Tel Aviv. It’s what governments do in this part of the world. But only governments retaliate against other governments.�
��

  Chris remained silent. He got the point. The price for Marchenko’s help would be very high.

  “Have you tried yourself?” the don asked.

  “Yes. But no luck. My people in Moscow have found nothing and time is running out.”

  “Where does he go?”

  “To his office, to church.”

  “He goes to mass on Sundays?”

  “No, he visits at random times.”

  “Which church?”

  “The Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.”

  “Does he go alone?”

  “We believe so.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “The attack is supposed to occur on September eleven.”

  “Thirteen days.”

  Chris nodded. “Thirteen days.”

  “Do you know of the Emperor Theodosius?” the don asked.

  “No,” Chris answered.

  “He built a stone wall around Constantinople, fifteen hundred years ago. Some of it now encloses us here.” Marchenko gazed at the parts of the wall around them that were not covered by vines, his light, intelligent eyes seeming to look into the past. “They are careless with their treasures, the Turks, now that they are an Islamist state. They disdain anything not Muslim.” The don, a wry smile on his face, threw the muddy stick into the pond, then strode to the stone slab. Swiftly and with surprising ease and grace, he lifted the hammer, placed the chisel vertically on the goddess’s face and cleaved her in half. “I will do as you ask. Take this,” he said, handing half of the shard to Chris, leaving the other half on the slab. “The person with the other half will tell you what I have been able to discover.”

  “Thank you for seeing me. And for your help,” Chris said, rising, “I am in your debt. When this is over, you may call on me at any time.”

  ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

  Chris was relieved to see Costa Vasiliou watching from the stern rail as the launch approached Eleftheria at anchor in Samos’s Karlovassi Harbor. He had entered Turkey illegally, and, though Chris had been received politely by Marchenko in his den, the Russian don was nevertheless a lion, old but far from toothless. Chris had not slept well on the overnight cruise from Skopelos, and now, gripping Costa’s large brown hand as he was helped aboard, he was tired.