by David Duffy
“You might not look like you do this afternoon,” he said with a smile.
“I look like hell, true, but I haven’t folded yet.”
“You’re making me rethink my lifelong Chekist stereotype. Do you have family?”
I thought again for a while before I said, “No. Not anymore.”
“I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t step over a line. I couldn’t help thinking you’d make a good father.”
“That’s quite a compliment, especially for a would-be ex-Chekist.”
He nodded and went silent again. He was trying to make up his mind about something, and it wasn’t easy for him. Best thing I could do was stay out of the way. I poured a little more vodka and sipped slowly.
“Suppose I dealt your life-hand a wild card, the kind that could change everything you believe, every assumption you’ve made?”
“That would be some card. Guess I’d have to see it.”
“It will also make you immediately and desirably expendable, in the eyes of your former colleagues.”
“At least one of them already feels that way. Will I have to fold my hand?”
“Based on what you’ve told me, I don’t think so. Although it could well cause you to play differently from here on.”
“All right, I’m game. But tell me something first. How did you lose your eye?”
“You remember Andrei Kozlov?”
“Of the Central Bank?”
“That’s right. I was with him when he was assassinated in 2006. I was collateral damage—or maybe they just missed, in my case. We were working together at the time.”
“And you believe the Cheka was responsible?”
“Who else?”
“The jury said it was the former chairman of VIP Bank, if I remember correctly. Kozlov had suspended his license.”
His voice took on a hard edge, bordering on bitter. “We both know two things. There is no rule of law in Russia, and nothing has happened since the fall of the Yeltsin government that wasn’t cleared in Lubyanka.”
“I haven’t signed on to that platform yet, and I didn’t mean to start an argument. I was asking… You take a lot of chances. You’ve already paid a big price. What are you in this for? Love, honor, duty, revenge, money—what?”
He picked up his glass, saw it was empty, looked at the bottle, and put the glass back on the counter. “Not money. This suit is the most expensive thing I own. The rest—maybe some of all of the above. If we both live long enough to get to know each other better, I’ll tell you the story. That might explain things. I’d like to hear yours, too. That could explain more.”
The bitterness was gone and the relaxed grin back.
“Play the card,” I said, “if you’re still game.”
He paused, considering one more time, but not for long. “What I’m about to tell you only four people know. Used to be a few more, but the Cheka has been chipping away at our ranks, two so far this year. You’ll be on the list.”
“You’re repeating yourself. Tell the story.”
CHAPTER 33
“Fact number one—there was another corpse in the Valdai shelter with Anatoly Kosokov. Boris Gorbenko, an FSB colonel who was the point man on the 1999 apartment bombings. Fact number two—the bombings were an FSB operation from start to finish. Fact number three—Kosokov and Rosnobank financed them.”
Petrovin paused to pour some more vodka while I processed what he was telling me. Kosokov’s bank was a Cheka financing vehicle. The Cheka staged multiple bombings that killed three hundred people and pinned them on Chechen terrorists. There had been allegations at the time, but there almost always were, and I hadn’t paid them much attention. Now Petrovin was telling me the allegations were true. Kosokov financed the operation, and the Cheka started the second Chechen war. It should’ve sounded fantastic. Except it didn’t.
“You say these are facts. You have proof?” I said.
“We have Gorbenko—on videotape and a signed affidavit. You’d call it a confession. He was a weak man. We’d had our eye on him—he was one of the Cheka’s go-betweens with the Chechens. We wondered which side of the street he was playing. After the Moscow bombings we brought him in and sweated him, told him we’d let both the Cheka and the Chechens know he’d sold the other out. He turned, laid out everything, how he’d arranged for Gochiyaev to rent the storage spaces in the buildings, acquired the RDX explosive from Perm, how he directed Kosokov where and when to move money. He knew every supplier, every warehouse.”
“He could’ve told you what he thought you wanted to hear.”
Petrovin shook his head. “Remember the bomb that didn’t go off, in Ryazan? Putin was busy praising everyone involved for their vigilance, then two FSB agents were arrested for setting the explosives, and Patrushev tried to make that ridiculous claim about a training exercise?”
I nodded. Not the Cheka’s finest moment.
“Gorbenko tipped us to Ryazan, and we called the local police. He not only knew the location of the explosives and the time of detonation, he knew the names of the FSB operatives. We held those back. The local cops nailed them on their own, and they were exactly who Gorbenko said they’d be.”
“Why didn’t this come out at the time?”
“You know part of the answer. The Cheka slammed the lid on. Every attempt at the truth was corrupted. They wanted their war with Chechnya, they got it. They wanted Putin to replace Yeltsin. They got that, too.” His voice grew bitter again.
“And the other part?”
“We overreached. We believed Gorbenko, but we also knew he’d say anything to save his sorry skin, as you just observed. The Cheka was moving fast. If we were going to take them down, we needed everything ironclad. We sent Gorbenko to bring in Kosokov and the Rosnobank records.”
“Hold on a minute. This was 1999. If you don’t mind my saying so, you must have been a teenager.”
“True. I joined the CPS in 2004. Worked closely with a man named Chmil. He ran Gorbenko. He was murdered last year. Gunned down in his car at a stoplight. That’s why I said what I said earlier.”
“And Chmil told you all this, about Gorbenko?”
“He was still trying to build a case. I helped. And I’ve read the file. It’s closely guarded, even within CPS.”
I believed him. I also had the feeling their security wasn’t as good as they needed it to be, and Petrovin knew it, too. He wasn’t just playing with dynamite. He was tiptoeing through the entire Russian nuclear arsenal. His story was a conspiracy theorist’s dream come true. It went all the way to the top of the Kremlin. The apartment bombings and the second Chechen war put Putin in power. But if that was the case…
“Why hasn’t Ivanov run with it?”
“Patience. You’ll see.”
“All right. Go on.”
“Gorbenko arranged a meeting with Kosokov at his dacha in the Valdai Hills. This was about two weeks after Ryazan, October sixth, rumors were flying all over. Also turned out to be the day that Rosnobank burned. Chmil figured Kosokov wouldn’t show, but he did. Gorbenko was wearing a wire, connected to a recording chip taped to his back. We didn’t want to risk any of our people in the neighborhood. Gorbenko was supposed to convince Kosokov to cooperate with us, or at least get him to own up that he’d been the Cheka’s banker for years and specifically for this operation. We promised what we could—money, a new identity in a new country. Chmil didn’t believe it would be enough. He was right. Would you like to hear what happened?”
“You have the recording?”
“We got lucky. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.”
Petrovin retrieved a laptop from his bag. He clicked some keys. Faint voices emerged from the little speakers, talking in Russian.
“That’s Gorbenko, speaking first,” he said.
“You’ll never make it, you know. They’ll have men at every border crossing.”
“Let me worry about making it. If the Cheka’s as smart as everyone says it is, we’d all still be wo
rking for the Party.”
“Don’t be a fool, Anatoly Andreivich. Look what they did to your bank. They’re shutting everything down, erasing all the tracks, eliminating all the links. You’re a very big link. You and I, we’re the only two who could expose everything.”
“I’m counting on that fact to keep me alive. You made your deal, Boris. You’re on your own with it. I’ll take my chances by myself.”
“You’re crazy! The CPS can provide protection. We can bring the Cheka down. Yeltsin will have no choice but to purge the entire organization when people see what they’ve done. It’s their one big weakness. No one will have difficulty believing they murdered innocent Russians to pursue their own ends. Especially once you and I lay out the evidence. Like the Katyn massacre. There’ll be national outrage.”
“National outrage? Russia today? Hah! Don’t make me laugh. Neither of us will live to see it, in any event. Like I said, you made your deal. Good luck to you. I’m taking my evidence with me. My life insurance policy.”
The crash of a door. A new, female voice. “Tolik, I came as soon as I could. What the hell is going on? What are you doing here? Oh… Who the hell are you?”
Gorbenko said, “No names. Better that way. Call me Leo. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
I recognized her voice, but I still asked, “Who’s that?”
He stopped the recording. “Kosokov’s mistress. Your friend Barsukov’s wife, Polina Barsukova. There’s more. Remember, Gorbenko—Leo—is in the kitchen now. We think some time has passed. But here she comes.” He tapped a key.
Polina’s voice again. “Leo?”
“What the…”
“Move, out the door.”
“Kosokov, what the fuck is this? I have no time for…”
The shotgun roared.
Polina spoke again. “One barrel left. Move!”
A couple of minutes of indistinguishable sounds.
Petrovin stopped the tape. “We’re pretty sure Kosokov and Polina are taking Gorbenko from the house to the barn.”
“Over there,” Polina said when he started it again.
“What do you want?” Gorbenko said.
“We’ll get to that. Open that trapdoor.”
Silence, punctuated by a couple of grunts before Gorbenko spoke again.
“Look, Kosokov, I can…”
The blast from the shotgun cut him off. The sound of a bang, a thump, and another. Then silence. The speakers died. Petrovin looked at me with a grim expression. “She shot him in the chest. The thumps are the body falling down the stairs. Bomb shelter underneath the barn. Concrete construction, stocked with all the staples—food, water, even vodka. Must’ve dated from Soviet times.”
I’d been luckier than I realized a few hours earlier. “The recording survived all these years?”
“Amazingly, yes. The chip wasn’t damaged by the blast, and no one searched the body. Gorbenko was supposed to call that night—one way or the other. When Chmil didn’t hear from him, he went to the dacha the next morning. Nothing there, except the ransacked house, some blood, and the burned-down barn. We didn’t know about the shelter, of course. It had snowed all night. No way to tell who or what had come or gone. He made a decision to leave everything as it was. Remember, no one knew we’d turned Gorbenko. Maybe he was right, I don’t know. The investigation died, with the Cheka’s help.
“Then two weeks ago, some kids discover a trapdoor in the foundation of the barn. Under the trapdoor they find the shelter, and in the shelter, what’s left of two ten-year-old corpses, one shot, one burned at the stake. The amazing thing is, the local police notified us—not the Cheka. We were able to secure the site.”
“And make sure Ivanov announced the news to the world.”
He grinned sheepishly. “As I said before…”
I wasn’t listening. “When did you say the kids found the bodies?”
“Mid-May.”
That couldn’t be it. Ratko had phished Mulholland months earlier. “If Polina shot Gorbenko, then who killed Kosokov?”
“We still don’t know.”
“And that’s one reason Ivanov hasn’t run with the rest of the story.”
He nodded.
“The fact that Polina’s alive makes her a leading suspect, doesn’t it?”
He was lifting his glass, but he stopped midair and returned it to the counter. “You know she’s alive?”
I grinned, partly to cover my carelessness. I’d assumed he knew about Polina. All the wits Sergei had knocked out hadn’t returned to the roost. No harm done, that I could see, but I told myself to watch my step.
“You’re late to the party. Yes, she’s living here. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”
He looked down at his glass. Perhaps I’d nicked his pride. “Where is she?”
“Could be I’m holding the bargaining chip now. Tell me about Rad Rislyakov.”
He shook his head.
“You know he’s dead? You can’t say anything that’ll hurt him now.”
He nodded.
“You were right the other day, your guesswork about Greene Street. I’d gone there looking for Ratko. I found the body. Iakov was there, too. He’d been shot, he said by the same guy who shot Ratko. I think the killer works for Polina’s current husband. I think she had him kill Ratko.”
I might have slapped him. He drew back, jumped up, froze for a moment, then walked around the room. When he came back, he said, “Why’d she do that?”
“Multiple reasons. Rislyakov was blackmailing her. He knew who she was, who she’d become. He horned in on a scheme she was running and was taking fifty percent not to tell Lachko. Then he got greedy and wanted a hundred thousand dollars, cash. I delivered the money to his people, and they led me to him. She had her husband’s driver follow me. I led him to Greene Street.”
He sat down again and rubbed his face. “What kind of scheme?”
“I don’t know, but I’m betting it’s connected to your two corpses. Rislyakov hacked his way into her computer several months ago. He removed a big file, without her knowing. He also learned enough to get close to her daughter—another way to keep tabs on Polina.”
“The auburn-haired girl?”
“That’s right. Her name’s Eva.”
That brought his head around, a funny look in his eye. “But you don’t know what he stole?”
“No. Only that she panicked when she found out.”
“How do you come to have all this information, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I had twenty-four hours with Rislyakov’s laptop, remember?”
“The one you gave Barsukov?”
“Yes. After I copied its hard drive and made a few programming modifications. Rislyakov put a keyboarding bug on Polina’s computer. I put one on his.”
He grinned. “You can see everything he does.”
“Cheka habits die hard.”
I poured a little more vodka and offered him the bottle. He shook his head. “Listen to this again,” he said. He pushed some keys on his computer, and the tape started.
Kosokov’s voice. “National outrage? Russia today? Hah! Don’t make me laugh. Neither of us will live to see it, in any event. Like I said, you made your deal. Good luck to you. I’m taking my evidence with me. My life insurance policy.”
The door crashing open. Polina saying, “Tolik, I came as soon as I could. What the hell is going on? What are you doing here?”
Petrovin stopped the computer. “Kosokov says he’s taking his evidence with him—his life insurance policy. Suppose that’s the records of his bank, all the Cheka’s transactions.”
“Okay, I’ll suppose. But he’s dead.”
“She’s not. Suppose that’s what she had on her computer. Suppose that’s what Rislyakov stole.”
“Dammit!” It made perfect sense. I did my own revolution of the living room. Polina was scared about Mulholland’s bank crashing. She was looking at being cut adrift again—bringing back every fear she ever ha
d since she was a kid. She’d be terrified, desperate, just like that day at Kosokov’s dacha. She needed money. She used Kosokov’s file to put the bite on Lachko. He still had Cheka connections. They moved the payoff money through Ratko’s laundry—and Lachko assigned Ratko to figure out who was hitting on him. Ratko did just that and… No, he didn’t. He didn’t report back. Lachko was ignorant of Polina the day he hauled me out to Brighton Beach. Ratko had kept his discovery to himself and gone underground. Less than perfect sense. I returned to the kitchen.
“If you’re right, and that’s what Rislyakov stole, why didn’t he turn it over to his masters?”
Petrovin held out his glass. “Rislyakov was working for us. He was our man inside the Badger organization.”
I laughed. “I may be an ex-Chekist, Alexander Petrovich, but that doesn’t make me newly gullible.”
He shook his head. “Blood’s thicker than money, even in Russia.”
“Meaning?”
“Rislyakov had a conflicted relationship with his parents. They were dissidents during the Soviet years. His father spent time in the Gulag. Ratko competed with politics for his mother’s attention. He went through a rebellious phase, fell in with a bad crowd, but a couple of teachers recognized his technical brilliance and helped him get back on a straight path. He reconciled with his folks in the midnineties. He was living with them, while he was going to university, in an apartment on Guryanova Street.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Right. They were all supposed to go to their dacha that night, but he had an exam coming up and decided to study late at school. They stayed home—and perished in the bombing.”
“He blamed himself, of course.”
“Of course. He started hanging out with his old friends and caught the attention of Barsukov. Chmil was a friend of his mother. He spent years trying to convince Ratko that the bombings that killed his parents were a Cheka operation. Three months ago, something happened, and Rislyakov told him he believed him—and he wanted to get even. He offered to open up the Badger empire. Chmil was murdered before he could do anything about it.”