by Tom Clancy
The body-recovery team loaded the bags into their van for the drive to the morgue. The bags were not properly sealed because of the handcuffs, and they sat side by side on the floor of the van, perversely like the hands of lovers reaching out to each other in death … as they had in life? one of the detectives wondered aloud back in their car. His partner just growled at that one and continued his drive.
It was, agreeably, a slow day in the St. Petersburg morgue. The senior pathologist on duty, Dr. Aleksander Koniev, had been in his office reading a medical journal and well bored by the inactivity of the morning, when the call came in, a possible double homicide. Those were always interesting, and Koniev was a devotee of murder mysteries, most of them imported from Britain and America, which also made them a good way to polish up his language skills. He was waiting in the autopsy room when the bodies arrived, were transferred to gurneys at the loading ramp and rolled together into his room. It took a moment to see why the two gurneys were wheeled side by side.
“So,” the pathologist asked with a sardonic grin, “were they killed by the militia?”
“Not officially,” the senior detective replied, in the same emotional mode. He knew Koniev.
“Very well.” The physician switched on the tape recorder. “We have two male cadavers, still fully dressed. It is apparent that both have been immersed in water-where were they recovered?” he asked, looking up at the cops. They answered. “Immersed in fresh water in the Neva. On initial visual inspection, I would estimate three to four days’ immersion after death.” His gloved hands felt around one head, and the other. “Ah,” his voice said. “Both victims seem to have been shot. Both have what appear to be bullet holes in the center of the occipital region of both bodies. Initial impression is a small-caliber bullet hole in both victims. We’ll check that later. Yevgeniy,” he said, looking up again, this time at his own technician. “Remove the clothing and bag it for later inspection.”
“Yes, Comrade Doctor.” The technician put out his cigarette and came forward with cutting tools.
“Both shot?” the junior detective asked.
“In the same place in both heads,” Koniev confirmed. “Oh, they were handcuffed after death, strangely enough. No immediately visible bruising on either wrist. Why do it afterwards?” the pathologist wondered.
“Keeps the bodies together,” the senior detective thought aloud-but why might that be important? he wondered to himself. The killer or killers had an overly developed sense of neatness? But he’d been investigating homicides long enough to know that you couldn’t fully explain all the crimes you solved, much less the ones you’d newly encountered.
“Well, they were both fit,” Koniev said next, as his technician got the last of their clothes off. “Hmm, what’s that?” He walked over and saw a tattoo on the left biceps of the blond one, then turned to see-“They both have the same tattoo.”
The senior detective came over to see, first thinking that maybe his partner had been right and there was a sexual element to this case, but-
“Spetsnaz, the red star and thunderbolt, these two were in Afghanistan. Anatoliy, while the doctor conducts his examination, let’s go through their clothing.”
This they did, and in half an hour determined that both had been well dressed in fairly expensive clothing, but in both cases entirely devoid of identification of any kind. That was hardly unusual in a situation like this, but cops, like everyone else, prefer the easy to the hard. No wallet, no identity papers, not a banknote, key chain, or tie tack. Well, they could trace them through the labels on the clothes, and nobody had cut their fingertips off, and so they could also use fingerprints to identify them. Whoever had done the double murder had been clever enough to deny the police some knowledge, but not clever enough to deny them everything.
What did that mean? the senior detective wondered. The best way to prevent a murder investigation was to make the bodies disappear. Without a body there was no proof of death, and therefore, no murder investigation, just a missing person who could have run off with another woman or man, or just decided to go someplace to start life anew. And disposing of a body was not all that difficult, if you thought about it a little. Fortunately, most killings were, if not exactly impulse crimes, then something close to it, and most killers were fools who would later seal their own fates by talking too much.
But not this time. Had this been a sexual killing, he probably would have heard about it by now. Such crimes were virtually advertised by their perpetrators in some perverse desire to assure their own arrest and conviction, because no one who committed that kind of crime seemed able to keep his mouth shut about anything.
No, this double killing had every hallmark of professionalism. Both bodies killed in the same way, and only then handcuffed together … probably for better and/or lengthier concealment. No sign of a struggle on either body, and both were manifestly fit, trained, dangerous men. They’d been taken unawares, and that usually meant someone they both knew and trusted. Why criminals trusted anyone in their community was something neither detective quite understood. “Loyalty” was a word they could scarcely spell, much less a principle to which any of them adhered … and yet criminals gave strange lip-service to it.
As the detectives watched, the pathologist drew blood from both bodies for later toxicology tests. Perhaps both had been drugged as a precursor to the head shots, not likely, but possible, and something to be checked. Scrapings were taken from all twenty fingernails, and those, too, would probably be valueless. Finally, fingerprints were taken so that proper identification could be made. This would not be very fast. The central records bureau in Moscow was notoriously inefficient, and the detectives would beat their own local bushes in the hope of finding out who these two cadavers had once been.
“Yevgeniy, these are not men of whom I would have made enemies lightly.”
“I agree, Anatoliy,” the elder of the two said. “But someone either did not fear them at all … or feared them sufficiently to take very drastic action.” The truth of the matter was that both men were accustomed to solving easy murders where the killer confessed almost at once, or had committed his crime in front of numerous witnesses. This one would challenge their abilities, and they would report that to their lieutenant, in the hope of getting additional assets assigned to the case.
As they watched, photos were taken of the faces, but those faces were so distorted as to be virtually unrecognizable, and the photos would then be essentially useless for purposes of identification. But taking them prior to opening the skull was procedure, and Dr. Koniev did everything by the book. The detectives stepped outside to make a few phone calls and smoke in a place with a somewhat more palatable ambience. By the time they came back, both bullets were in plastic containers, and Koniev told them that the presumptive cause of both deaths was a single bullet in each brain, with powder tattooing evident on both scalps. They’d both been killed at short range, less than half a meter, the pathologist told them, with what appeared to be a standard, light 2.6-gram bullet fired from a 5.45-mm PSM police pistol. That might have generated a snort, since this was the standard-issue police side arm, but quite a few had found their way into the Russian underworld.
“The Americans call this a professional job,” Yevgeniy observed.
“Certainly it was accomplished with skill,” Anatoliy agreed. “And now, first …”
“First we find out who these unlucky bastards were. Then, who the hell were their enemies.”
The Chinese food in China wasn’t nearly as good as that to be found in LA, Nomuri thought. Probably the ingredients, was his immediate analysis. If the People’s Republic had a Food and Drug Administration, it had been left out of his premission briefing, and his first thought on entering this restaurant was that he didn’t want to check the kitchen out. Like most Beijing restaurants, this one was a small mom-and-pop operation operating out of the first floor of what was in essence a private home, and serving twenty people out of a standard Chinese
communist home kitchen, which must have involved considerable acrobatics. The table was circular, small, and eminently cheap, and the chair was uncomfortable, but for all that, the mere fact that such a place existed was testimony to fundamental changes in the political leadership of this country.
But the mission of the evening sat across from him. Lian Ming. She wore the standard off-blue boiler suit that was virtually the uniform of low-to mid-level bureaucrats in the various government ministries. Her hair was cut short, almost like a helmet. The fashion industry in this city must have been established by some racist son of a bitch who loathed the Chinese and tried his level best to make them as unattractive as he could. He’d yet to see a single local female citizen who dressed in a manner that anyone could call attractive-except, maybe, for some imports from Hong Kong. Uniformity was a problem with the Orient, the utter lack of variety, unless you counted the foreigners who were showing up in ever-increasing numbers, but they stuck out like roses in a junkyard, and that merely emphasized the plethora of junk. Back home, at USC, one could have-well, one could look at, the CIA officer corrected himself-any sort of female to be had on the planet. White, black, Jewish, gentile, yellow in various varieties, Latina, some real Africans, plenty of real Europeans-and there you had ample variety, too: the dark-haired, earthy Italians, the haughty French, the proper Brits, and the stiff Germans. Toss in some Canadians, and the Spanish (who went out of their way to be separated from the local Spanish speakers) and lots of ethnic Japanese (who were also separated from the local Japanese, though in this case at the will of the latter rather than the former), and you had a virtual deli of people. The only sameness there came from the Californian atmosphere, which commanded that every individual had to work hard to be presentable and attractive, for that was the One Great Commandment of life in California, home of Rollerblading and surfing, and the tight figures that went along with both pastimes.
Not here. Here everyone dressed the same, looked the same, talked the same, and largely acted the same way … … except this one. There was something else to be had here, Nomuri thought, and that’s why he’d asked her to dinner.
It was called seduction, which had been part of the spy’s playbook since time immemorial, though it would be a first for Nomuri. He hadn’t been quite celibate in Japan, where mores had changed in the past generation, allowing young men and young women to meet and … communicate on the most basic of levels-but there, in a savage, and for Chester Nomuri a rather cruel, irony, the more available Japanese girls had a yen for Americans. Some said it was because Americans had a reputation for being better equipped for lovemaking than the average Japanese male, a subject of much giggling for Japanese girls who have recently become sexually active. Part of it was also that American men were reputed to treat their women better than the Japanese variety, and since Japanese women were far more obsequious than their Western counterparts, it probably worked out as a good deal for both sides of the partnerships that developed. But Chet Nomuri was a spook covered as a Japanese salaryman, and had learned to fit in so well that the local women regarded him as just another Japanese male, and so his sex life had been hindered by his professional skills, which hardly seemed fair to the field officer, brought up, like so many American men, on the movies of 007 and his numerous conquests: Mr. Kiss-Kiss Bang-Bang, as he was known in the West Indies. Well, Nomuri hadn’t handled a pistol either, not since his time at The Farm-the CIA’s training school off Interstate 64 near Yorktown, Virginia-and hadn’t exactly broken any records there in the first place.
But this one had possibilities, the field officer thought, behind his normal, neutral expression, and there was nothing in the manual against getting laid on the job-what a crimp on Agency morale that would have been, he considered. Such stories of conquest were a frequent topic of conversation at the rare but real field-officer get-togethers that the Agency occasionally held, usually at The Farm, for the field spooks to compare notes on techniques-the after-hour beer sessions often drifted in this direction. For Chet Nomuri since getting to Beijing, his sex life had consisted of prowling Internet pornography sites. For one reason or another, the Asian culture made for an ample collection of such things, and while Nomuri wasn’t exactly proud of this addiction, his sexual drive needed some outlet.
With a little work, Ming might have been pretty, Nomuri thought. First of all she needed long hair. Then, perhaps, better frames on her eyeglasses. Those she wore had all the attraction of recycled barbed wire. Then some makeup. Exactly what sort Nomuri wasn’t sure-he was no expert on such things, but her skin had an ivory-like quality to it that a little chemical enhancement might turn into something attractive. But in this culture, except for people on the stage (whose makeup was about as subtle as a Las Vegas neon sign), makeup meant washing your face in the morning, if that. It was her eyes, he decided. They were lively and … cute. There was life in them, or behind them, however that worked. She might even have had a decent figure, but it was hard to tell in that clothing.
“So, the new computer system works well?” he asked, after the lingering sip of green tea.
“It is magical,” she replied, almost gushing. “The characters come out beautifully, and they print up perfectly on the laser printer, as though from a scribe.”
“What does your minister think?”
“Oh, he is very pleased. I work faster now, and he is very pleased by that!” she assured him.
“Pleased enough to place an order?” Nomuri asked, reverting back to his salaryman cover.
“This I must ask the chief of administration, but I think you will be satisfied by the response.”
That will make NEC happy, the CIA officer thought, again wondering briefly how much money he’d made for his cover firm. His boss in Tokyo would have gagged on his sake to know whom Nomuri really worked for, but the spook had won all of his promotions at NEC on merit, while moonlighting for his true country. It was a fortunate accident, Chet thought, that his real job and his cover one blended so seamlessly. That and the fact that he’d been raised in a very traditional home, speaking two native tongues … and more than that, the sense of on, the duty owed to his native land, far over and above that he pretended to owe to his parent culture. He’d probably gotten that from seeing his grandfather’s framed plaque, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge in the center on the blue velvet, surrounded by the ribbons and medallions that designated awards for bravery, the Bronze Star with combat “V,” the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation, and the campaign ribbons won as a grunt with the 442nd Regimental Combat team in Italy and Southern France. Fucked over by America, his grandfather had earned his citizenship rights in the ultimate and best possible way before returning home to the landscaping business that had educated his sons and grandsons, and taught one of them the duty he owed his country. And besides, this could be fun.
It was now, Nomuri thought, looking deeply into Ming’s dark eyes, wondering what the brain behind them was thinking. She had two cute dimples at the sides of her mouth, and, he thought, a very sweet smile on an otherwise unremarkable face.
“This is such a fascinating country,” he said. “By the way, your English is very good.” And good that it was. His Mandarin needed a lot of help, and one doesn’t seduce women with sign language.
A pleased smile. “Thank you. I do study very hard.”
“What books do you read?” he asked with an engaging smile of his own.
“Romances, Danielle Steel, Judith Krantz. America offers women so many more opportunities than what we are used to here.”
“America is an interesting country, but chaotic,” Nomuri told her. “At least in this society one can know his place.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “There is security in that, but sometimes too much. Even a caged bird wishes to spread its wings.”
“I will tell you one thing I find bad here.”
“What is that?” Ming asked, not offended, which, Nomuri thought, was very good indeed. Maybe he’d get a Steele novel an
d read up on what she liked.
“You should dress differently. Your clothing is not flattering. Women should dress more attractively. In Japan there is much variety in clothing, and you can dress Eastern or Western as the spirit moves you.”
She giggled. “I would settle for the underthings. They must feel so nice on the skin. That is not a very socialist thought,” she told him, setting down her cup. The waiter came over, and with Nomuri’s assent she ordered mao-tai, a fiery local liqueur. The waiter returned rapidly with two small porcelain cups and a flask, from which he poured daintily. The CIA officer nearly gasped with his first sip, and it went down hot, but it certainly warmed the stomach. Ming’s skin, he saw, flushed from it, and there came the fleeting impression that a gate had just been opened and passed … and that it probably led in the right direction.
“Not everything can be socialist,” Nomuri judged, with another tiny sip. “This restaurant is a private concern, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. And the food is better than what I cook. That is a skill I do not have.”
“Truly? Then perhaps you will allow me to cook for you sometime,” Chet suggested.
“Oh?”
“Certainly.” He smiled. “I can cook American style, and I am able to shop at a closed store to get the correct ingredients.” Not that the ingredients would be worth a damn, shipped in as they were, but a damned sight better than the garbage you got here in the public markets, and a steak dinner was probably something she’d never had. Could he justify getting CIA to put a few Kobe beef steaks on his expense account? Nomuri wondered. Probably. The bean-counters at Langley didn’t bother the field spooks all that much.