“Proceed.”
“We sent one of the boys with Lyashko to Kiev. I wondered why he never returned.”
Pyotr leaned forward to get Vasily’s attention and stared at him. “Kiev is a dangerous city. He abandoned Lyashko and met a violent end. I did not want to upset you or anyone else.”
“Will Lyashko and Father Rogoza be coming for another visit soon?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I wondered if I might sit in on the meetings now that I know about their involvement.”
Pyotr smiled. “Yes, Vasily, I agree. You are next in line should anything happen to me. As for Lyashko and Rogoza holding the finances, that poses a future problem. For now, because of favors, and because of their positions, we are safe. But, as they say, tomorrow is another day.”
Pyotr looked at his watch. “And, since a shipment of supplies arrives before dawn, I should let you get a few hours’ sleep.”
As he escorted Vasily to the door, Pyotr placed his hand on Vasily’s shoulder. “I’m getting older, Vasily. Everything here is a test, and I think you and I have succeeded. As we discussed last time, I have even thrown off the evangelical yoke of religion.”
“I remember,” said Vasily. “You theorized evolution of thinking creatures who contemplate creators in their image is Earth’s safety fuse. Organized religion leads to untested certainty. If natural disaster fails, Earth uses religion, economics, and war to cleanse itself.”
Pyotr held both Vasily’s shoulders and stared at him. “I’ve always wanted a son, Vasily. In many ways, I feel you are my son.”
Vasily returned Pyotr’s stare, then said, “Good night,” and was gone.
In darkness, everything changed. The only light came from a small flicker of flame remaining on a fragment of log down low in the fireplace. “Good night,” Vasily had said. No father-son embrace, no shaking of hands, nothing except “Good night.”
Pyotr turned from the closed door, climbed the stairs to his sleeping loft, went to the window, opened it, and breathed in the cool night air. After several deep breaths, he whispered, “I always wanted a son. What purpose will I have served without a son?”
As he continued standing at the window, he looked up to the sky where stars flickered between the leaves of the tree canopy. Perhaps there were simply too many people in the world, the way there were too many stars, the people becoming commodities as the black hole of death waits in the wings to swallow up all matter, even stars.
Pyotr closed the window and went to bed.
With whom had he spoken at the window? No one but himself! And when he was gone, who would speak for him? Perhaps a child wandering the streets in need of a stronger soul would snatch his before it was sucked into the black hole. A child who would learn to avoid vultures like Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza—deputy chairman of the Synodal Department for Relations with Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies—or, even worse, Anatoly Lyashko—SBU head of the Main Directorate for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime.
Pyotr lay in bed for a long time before finally falling asleep. In the nightmare, his drunken father came to his small bed, turned him over, and Pyotr bit into the threadbare mattress, keeping himself silent and stupid, like his mother, who had already withstood her nightly violation. Later in the nightmare, Lyashko and Rogoza also made appearances, both waiting on the far side of the room, two depraved old men, one with a hand to his belt, the other lifting his cassock.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
When Nikolai Kozlov and his investigators left Mariya’s apartment, Janos Nagy walked out with them to see about the guard on the apartment building. Two uniformed militiamen sat in an unmarked turd-green Zhiguli close enough to the entrance to examine arrivals before they got to the locked vestibule door. After Kozlov instructed the militiamen, Janos reminded them to check everyone entering the apartment building, even those with keys. Obviously, from the look on Kozlov’s face, he did not appreciate Private Investigator Nagy’s making suggestions, but one of the uniformed militiamen knew Janos, and this helped ease the tension.
As Janos walked back to the entrance with Mariya’s key in hand, Kozlov called to him from the parking lot. “Janos!” Kozlov was on the other side of his car, his receding scalp like a blue lightbulb in the overhead parking lot light. “I know you will forward anything she adds to her story. You were once one of us and I expect full cooperation.”
“All the more reason for you to trust me, Nikolai. If you uncover anything, I will also appreciate the information.”
After Kozlov and his partner drove away, Janos told the uniformed militiamen he was going to order food for him and Mariya Nemeth. Both militiamen agreed an order from the local MacSmack Pizzeria sounded like an excellent idea for the long overnight watch.
On his way back to the apartment, Janos considered Nikolai Kozlov’s so-called investigation. Throughout the questioning, Kozlov had hinted kidnappings were often faked to put pressure on insurance investigators. Janos knew Mariya was not faking. He had been there earlier in the evening when she’d returned. He had felt the grip of her arms and the trembling of her body and the heat of her tears on his neck and, mostly, he had felt her reluctance to let go.
When the accusation of faking the kidnapping dissolved, Kozlov suggested the kidnappers might have been youthful pranksters. But Janos knew this was not true. Mariya had been a child of the street herself and would not have been frightened by a simple prank.
Mariya was still in the shower when Janos returned to the apartment. He shouted from the living room that he was back, and she answered, “Okay.”
Under the circumstances, it seemed foolish to ask about pizza ingredients, so he simply looked up the nearest MacSmack in the directory next to the phone and called in an order for two mushroom and ham pizzas, one for the militiamen and one for him and Mariya. After ordering the pizzas, he sat on the sofa and looked at his watch. It was 10:30 already. Two hours earlier he had waited while the militia was on its way and while Mariya was in the bathroom washing up. He knew she meant a douche because she had pointed to herself when she said it. At first he thought she’d been raped and there might be semen samples. But when he suggested a doctor, Mariya insisted she had not been raped.
Janos remembered the look on her face. She had stepped back from him, pointed to herself, and said, “Perhaps it is symbolic, but I need to wash.” The look on her face was that of an innocent child who was hurt but didn’t know why. It reminded him of an episode years earlier in western Ukraine when his sister Sonia had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her arm. The look on Sonia’s face as she pointed to her dangling arm in the moment before she began screaming was the same look Mariya had on her face.
The sound of the shower stopped, making the pipes in the apartment walls shutter. A minute later, Janos heard a hair dryer. When the pizzas arrived he went down to the vestibule, paid the delivery boy, and had one of the pizzas taken out to the militiamen on guard. After he returned to the apartment, Mariya spoke to him through the closed bathroom door.
“I smell food.”
“I ordered from MacSmack. Mushroom and ham.”
“There are plates and napkins in the cabinet next to the refrigerator. And, Janos?”
“Yes?”
“Please do not call me Mrs. Patolichev.”
He remembered Kozlov using Mariya’s married name even after she had corrected him.
The bathroom door opened, and Mariya came out wearing a long blue robe. Her damp hair curled at her neck. She wore no makeup, and her face was no longer red from the exertion of her ride home and from the embarrassment of having to explain what had happened.
Mariya folded her arms as if chilled and looked toward the apartment door as if someone had arrived. Janos knew what death was about, especially the effect of a recent death of a family member. He knew Viktor Patolichev was there in memory—a man hurrying in from the busy world, perhaps tossing a jacket onto the sofa, appearing for a split second the way dead p
eople always do until time dulls the image.
Mariya turned from the apartment door and looked to Janos. Her eyes were blue-green. In the lounge at Borispol, it had been too dark; and earlier this evening, he had found it difficult to look into her eyes while she told what the two men had done to her. When she sat with him on the sofa, a fresh after-shower scent came with her. When she smiled at him, he recalled what Svetlana Kovaleva had said. Yes, she did look like Kim Novak from Alfred Hitchcock films.
“Janos, I’ve been thinking about details, some things I might have overlooked … besides forgetting to give you my cell number when we met at the airport.”
Janos took his notebook from his pocket. “That was my fault. Tell me about tonight.”
“I’m no longer certain about their ages. I still think they were over eighteen. But there was something about their actions and what they said that made them childlike. At first I thought both men were insane, as I told the militia. But now I’m not sure.”
Janos wrote this down. “Anything else?”
“Something the young woman said gave me the impression there were two young women.” Mariya touched her finger to her lips. “Even though I heard only one, she referred to ‘them’ as if they were two couples.”
Janos unwrapped the pizza on the kitchen table while Mariya opened bottles of beer. They ate pizza and sipped beer until there was one slice of pizza left. They went through the ritual of offering the last piece to one another until Mariya laughed. She laughed with her hand to the open neck of her robe, a gesture, combined with her display of relief, which made Janos want to touch her. So he did. He reached out, touched her arm, and said, “What’s so funny?”
Mariya stopped laughing, shook her head. “I was thinking a short while ago I assumed life was over. And now I am eating MacSmack pizza.”
The shower and beer relaxed her some, but what relaxed her even more was Janos’ voice. He did not tell jokes. He spoke about himself, his Gypsy nickname—how he received it from a retired militia investigator named Lazlo Horvath, who now lived in Chicago in the US. Janos said Lazlo was like a father and they stayed in touch, speaking on the phone often. Janos said he and Lazlo sometimes spoke of the Gypsy dream of travel, yet in fact neither of them had traveled extensively. Janos spoke of a recent vacation to western Ukraine, told about giving a ride to a man who wore an American-style cowboy hat, a man who had gone back to visit the Chernobyl Zone where he’d been born before heading south to the Nikolaev shipyards. Mariya noticed a wistful look in Janos’ eyes as he spoke of Anatoly the Cossack.
They sat opposite one another on the sofa, both turned sideways so Janos faced her, his arm on the back of the sofa, his hand near her shoulder.
“I am boring the shit out of you,” said Janos. “The original object was to cheer you by telling humorous stories.”
“You don’t have to tell stories. It’s good simply having someone here who believes me.”
“Does it concern you if Kozlov does not believe you?”
“Yes. First I must deal with Viktor’s death and with so-called evidence he poured gasoline on himself. Now I must deal with this.”
“The men who took you in the van planned the kidnapping well. I feel guilty for having left you to follow the station wagon after our meeting at the airport.”
“It is my fault for going on a bicycle ride. I should have stayed here. Do you think these are the same ones who killed Viktor and your friend Aleksandr Shved?”
“Yes,” said Janos, standing up. “Perhaps not the same men.”
“But remember, Janos, there were also women. The one I heard spoke with authority.”
Janos smiled. “You are observant. While it is fresh, and since we are both more relaxed, we should go over what happened this afternoon and evening once more.”
As she told the story again, Mariya watched Janos’ reactions. When she told how the two men dragged her into the van, he stared at her. When she told about the removal of her shorts and the ankle straps they used, Janos blinked more than necessary. When she told about one man massaging her breasts while the other inserted fingers into her vagina, Janos looked away toward the window, where she could see his reflection against the dark of night.
In the robe, with her feet drawn up beneath her on the sofa, Mariya reminded Janos of a statue of the Madonna he had seen in church as a boy. The Madonna was surrounded by angelic children, and Janos recalled his boyhood fascination with one of the children. The child wore a robe and had blond hair. She looked up to the Madonna with eyes wide. Her hands were crossed demurely, one above the other. In the statue, whether on purpose or not, the sculptor had revealed the girl’s body in the folds of a robe draped smoothly and seductively. At least this is how it had seemed to an adolescent boy in church who’d often prayed he would find such a girl. He recalled telling Lazlo Horvath his first infatuation had been for a girl of stone. Instead of laughing as expected, Lazlo, then his mentor on the Kiev militia, had nodded knowingly.
When Mariya finished retelling the lurid details of the kidnap and assault, she folded her hands on her thighs exactly the way the angelic child at the Madonna’s feet had.
“You remind me of someone I knew when I was a boy.”
Mariya looked at him without answering.
“Never mind,” he said, trying to wipe the boyhood image from his mind. He was aware of having placed his hands on either side of his notebook as if in church holding a prayer book, as if he really was a boy again. He held the notebook up and studied it. “Do you feel able to answer more questions tonight, Mariya?”
“Yes.”
“Good. A few hours ago, you were kidnapped, your life threatened. You were told not to pursue an investigation, especially not with me. You were told your husband’s name and, consequently, your name would be disgraced. You say they mentioned Czech brothels and Moldavian traffickers and said to watch for traffyck. The first question is, why go on with this?”
“Can I put on my hooligan face?” she asked.
“Do whatever is necessary to answer the question.”
“I am tired of being controlled by men who are not fit to lick my feet! The one at my side said they were babes in the woods, but these were not babes. For once, my life was improving. No matter his past, I need to learn the reason for Viktor’s death! Can you think of a better reason to pursue his killers?”
“I cannot.” Janos again studied his notebook. “Therefore, tell me about Mariya Nemeth before she became Mariya Nemeth-Patolichev.”
She was born in Chernigov, raised an only child by her Hungarian mother after her Russian father disappeared. Her mother sent her to an all-girls’ Orthodox school in Uzhgorod. She ran away to Kiev with two other girls and took her mother’s maiden name. Eventually she got a job at a strip club and tried to save money to afford an apartment. But the pay for a stripper not willing to perform extra services was limited, and she ended up working in a massage parlor in Podil. While working at the massage parlor, she took classes at business school.
“This was my Bolshevik revolution,” said Mariya. “I took a job as a law office clerk, disposed of the skimpy wardrobe, and changed apartments.”
“So you were eighteen when you came to Kiev,” said Janos. “How old are you now?”
Mariya stared at him, her blue-green eyes innocent looking, so unlike a stripper’s or a massage parlor girl’s. She smiled and said, “forty-two.”
“You don’t look it. Now tell me about Viktor.”
Mariya met Viktor Patolichev when she was forty-one and he was thirty-nine. He had gotten into the adult video store business after limited success in a standard video store. Although Mariya told Janos what she knew about Viktor’s past during their initial meeting that morning at Borispol Airport, he asked her to go through it again. Viktor said he was the product of an unwanted pregnancy who spent time on the streets of Kharkiv, then ended up in an orphanage outside Kiev, somewhere to the north. After the orphanage, he supposedly lived in foster homes
, then moved to Kiev when he was in his twenties. He had various jobs, making friends and eventually getting into the adult video store business.
“Did he know his mother’s name?” asked Janos.
“No. He said he had no memory of his early childhood. He once joked that at birth he was abducted by aliens and dropped off at the Saint Francis Home for Boys a few years later.”
“You mentioned he was sometimes strangely religious. In what way?”
“Besides talking in his sleep about God’s retribution and some kind of fellowship, he sometimes had weeklong binges of daily church attendance.”
“As a result of his upbringing at the orphanage, or at foster homes?”
“He never spoke of the foster homes,” said Mariya. “The orphanage was run by an Orthodox order. When Viktor went on religious kicks, I sometimes attended church with him. He seemed mesmerized, sometimes to the point of mimicking facial expressions of the priest.”
“Did Viktor speak of the orphanage in detail?”
Mariya thought a moment. “Only to say it was strict and run by an order of brothers.”
“He never spoke of teenaged years with foster parents, or attending school?”
“He said he took a few courses at the university. Business and marketing.”
“You knew him over a year, and this is all you know about him?”
“He knew even less about me. It was our agreement. The past was the past.”
“What about Investigator Arkady Listov from Darnytsya? How did Viktor know him?”
“They were friends,” said Mariya. “You must have spoken with Arkady.”
“I did. Arkady said attacks on female clinics and the fire at the video store do not seem like things a religious organization would do. He suggested I look into cults and mentioned brainwashing techniques. You mentioned Viktor’s behavior at church services.”
“Are you suggesting Viktor was brainwashed enough to set himself on fire?”
As he stared at Mariya’s look of concern, Janos remembered the young man and woman in the station wagon. Smiling like religious fanatics, or cult members.
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