Irina saw him peeking, and dazzled the man with a brilliant smile of appreciation. Flummoxed, the driver looked away, put the car in gear, and eased back out into traffic.
Irina Sokolova had been born and raised in St. Petersburg, but even she wasn’t completely familiar with the suburban neighborhood the man took her to—quiet, ordinary, and anonymous. Neither of them spoke along the way. Fifteen minutes after she’d been picked up, the driver dropped her off in front of a small white house. With the natural grace and confidence that her looks had given her, she strode to the front door and knocked. A man she didn’t recognize opened the door a crack—and when he saw who it was, another crack—and looked her up and down, taking his time about the task. Behind her, she heard the car drive off.
Irina smiled. She was used to being examined; indeed, she enjoyed it. The man was conservatively dressed in a dark suit and tie. His shoulders were impossibly broad. She allowed herself to imagine some possibilities, then reminded herself that today was payday.
“I am here to see Sasha,” she said.
The man stood back and let her in, then closed and locked the door. Inside, the curtains and shades were all drawn, but the living room was well lighted.
Sasha emerged from the kitchen. Irina saw him, and felt herself tingle in anticipation of both the imminent sex and the money that would follow according to their agreement. Not necessarily in that order.
Sasha saw the look, interpreted it correctly—a six-year-old could have done as much—and smiled.
“Ah, Irina,” he said. “So nice to see you again. You have done well.” Then he turned to his colleague and said something in a language Irina didn’t recognize. The man nodded and left the room; then Sasha took Irina’s hand and led her into a bedroom, closing the door behind her as she passed through. He turned and smiled at her.
“Take off your dress and put it over there,” he said, pointing at a chair. “You won’t be needing that.”
“Won’t I?” she asked coquettishly. Her entire body was quivering now, enough that she could barely manipulate the zipper, but she complied, and turned to drape the dress carefully over the back of a nearby chair. She kicked off her shoes next and pushed them under the chair with her foot. Then she turned to a still fully-clothed Sasha and smiled.
“What about you?” she teased. “Aren’t you—”
She saw the gun. Then she heard the gun, but at that point, she was already on her way to the floor, the silenced bullet having traveled at supersonic speed across the three meters that separated her from her assailant.
Her eyes, blank and uncomprehending, met Sasha’s, whose returning gaze was expressionless, almost clinical, it seemed to her. She saw him move to stand over her, saw him lift the gun again and then lower it. Her vision faded to black and she was dead ten seconds later.
“Sasha” put the automatic back in his waistband. He had not required a second shot. There was remarkably little blood and debris as a result. Some, of course, but not much. The tiled floor would clean up easily, which pleased him. He had no wish to inconvenience the house’s owners any more than was absolutely necessary.
He gazed down at the dead girl. Having her strip and reveal her perfectly defined body was a nice touch, practically as well as aesthetically. It not only allowed him to keep her dress undamaged—he’d have a use for it later—but it also made it much easier for him to find the precise spot that would lead to the severing of her abdominal aorta. There would be shock, of course, but Irina would have felt relatively little pain. She had done her job well, he thought, and he felt he owed it to her to make her death as quick and painless as possible. He sighed. In a perfect world, he would have had sex with her first, but there simply wasn’t time. It was a great pity, but not an especially great loss.
After all, she was only a woman. They weren’t good for much.
He took the dress from the back of the chair and left the room. The man who opened the door for Irina earlier was there, as well as a dark-haired woman of Irina’s approximate size and shape, clad only in a red bra, panties, and white stiletto heels. “Sasha” tossed the dress to her. It proved (unsurprisingly) to be an almost perfect fit. Then the other man reached into a white plastic bag and handed her a blonde wig. She put it on and checked herself in the mirror. All three of them nodded their approval at the transformation. As they did, they heard a car pull up outside. The second man went to the window and moved the curtain an imperceptible millimeter in order to take a look. Satisfied, he let the shade drop, then turned and nodded once. Sasha nodded in return.
“Davai,” he said to the two of them. Without a reply, the man and the woman left through the front door, got into the Moskvich, and rode away. “Sasha” watched them leave. They made a striking couple, “Sasha” thought, and he knew that their coming and going would have been observed from behind more than one closed window blind up and down the street.
When they were gone, he waited five minutes before leaving by way of the back door. He locked it behind him and walked the two kilometers into town, where he casually dropped a brown paper bag containing the house keys and the gun—nothing about any of it could possibly be traced back to him—into the third trash can he passed. Then he boarded a crowded trolley car going in the opposite direction and once again, the Chameleon became nothing more than an anonymous face in the crowd.
Chapter Fifteen
“You did what?” I finally asked.
“I killed her,” Lori repeated. “It should have been I.”
My head reeled.
“What are you talking about? Why should—wait a minute, come over here and sit down before you fall down.” I eased her, unresisting, into a chair, then went over to the minibar, sloshed a measure of brandy into a glass and took it to her. I didn’t know whether it would really help. It worked all the time in books, I reasoned; there must be something to it.
“Drink this,” I told her.
She took the glass and lifted it to her mouth. Her hands shook uncontrollably and most of the brandy ended up on her clothes, but some of it went down. I took the empty glass and refilled it, and this time she did a little better. Then she put the glass down and looked up at me. Her eyes were wide enough that white showed all the way around the gray irises—or would have done if her eyes hadn’t been more red than white.
“You all right now?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Wait a second.” I went over to the door and slammed the deadbolt home. Then I turned on the radio—this time I recognized Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto—and kicked up the volume a few extra notches. The Cold War was over and we were all friends now, but this was still Russia and I was still paranoid enough to take at least rudimentary precautions. I sat down at the edge of the bed and looked at Lori.
“Now,” I said. “What in the hell is going on here?”
She took a deep breath. “Karin is dead because they thought she was I.”
“They? Who is ‘they’?”
“It is the word that first came to my mind. I do not know who killed Karin—who intended to kill me.”
“Why do you think ‘they’ thought it was you?”
“Because Karin and I changed rooms when we checked into the hotel.”
“Why change rooms?”
“Karin was abergläubisch…what is the English word—superstitious. Much more so than I. Her assigned room number was 418 and mine was 416. So we naturally changed rooms.”
“Naturally. Because 418 is such a well-known harbinger of…oh, wait a minute. Four plus one plus eight is thirteen. Is that it?”
Lori nodded.
I believed her. Sports people are a superstitious lot across the board: athletes, fans, officials…journalists, too. I was no different, except that my superstitions made perfect sense and were firmly based in logic. I wore a blue shirt every Friday, never wrote on the first page of a new steno pad, and always used two stir sticks when I bought coffee at a convenience store.
An
d just look at how lucky I was.
“So you changed rooms with Karin. But you didn’t let them know that at the front desk,” I said, “because when I talked with that cretin at reception earlier, he told me you were staying in 416. So far, so good. But what makes you think that whoever did this was after you? Why should anybody want to kill either of you? Why couldn’t it just have been some random maniac?”
Lori didn’t answer right away. She got out of the chair, walked unsteadily over to the black travel bag she’d brought in with her, unzipped it, and pulled out a thick white envelope, which she handed to me.
“This is why,” she said.
I took it. The envelope had been slit open across the top. I reached inside and pulled out a wrapped packet of fifty-dollar bills. U.S. currency, used. Since I didn’t know what else to do just then, I slid the wrapper down to one end and counted the bills, using the “banker’s flip” I’d learned from a Navy disbursing officer.
One hundred bills. Five thousand dollars.
Wonderful.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said. “Something felt wrong with the mattress. I could not ignore it, and when I looked underneath, it was there.”
“‘The Princess and the Pea’,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“Skip it. What time was this?”
“It was twenty-three hours.”
“What did you do then?”
“Karin I knew would be already asleep. I tried to go back to sleep myself, but of course I could not. At around six, I went to her room and found that the door was not closed completely. There was a terrible smell in the room. Then I—”
“Okay,” I cut in. “What did you do next?”
“I don’t remember,” she said, gesturing at the floor. “I think I must have gone a bit mad. The envelope with the money was on a chair near the door. I took it back to my room, put it in my bag, along with some clothes and my Reisepass—passport. Some other personal belongings. Then I left the hotel and wandered around the town.”
“What about the authorities? Why didn’t you call the police after you…found Karin? Did you at least go to your embassy?”
She looked down, then up. She shook her head.“I don’t know. I was not thinking clearly. I walked into a room and found my best friend butchered to death in her bed. I did not know what to do.”
“Why don’t you go to the police now?”
“I have done.”
“When they talked to me, the inspector mentioned that they were still looking for Karin—meaning you.”
“I returned later, then told them what I have just told you: that I lost my head and ran away. The inspector—a Captain Borzov, I think his name was—was most considerate.” Her nose wrinkled. “Except that he smokes too many cigarettes.”
“You got that right,” I muttered. I’d smelled it on her when she came in, but I didn’t make the connection, thinking that it was just some of my residue from earlier.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Did you go as Lori or Karin?”
“As Karin, of course.” She smiled wanly. “Lori is for the present no more. You are the only one who knows.”
“Was Borzov satisfied with what you told him?”
“I think so.”
I gestured at the envelope. “He didn’t ask you about the money?”
She shook her head and gave me a small kind of half-smile that I might just as easily have imagined.
“I did not tell him about the money…and I concealed it in a place where he was not likely to search.”
If she believed that, I thought, she didn’t know the Russian police very well. I looked at Lori and tried not to think about searching her in unlikely places. I almost succeeded.
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Because I told somebody else first. He told me not to inform the authorities about the money.”
Great. I had been hoping the plot would thicken soon. I was getting a headache.
“Somebody else told you? Who?”
“That is what I have come to tell you.”
“Someone from the embassy?”
“I cannot say. A friend. I can not be more…specific.”
“Wonderful. Why did you come to me? And what does your ‘friend’ think about that?”
She sniffed once, then stuck out her chin. “He agreed that you should know. I have come to you because I want to avenge Karin’s death. The police can do little; but you, a journalist—an American journalist—will be free to tell the world about what has happened and why. You can do much. And also, I trust you.”
“You don’t even know me,” I said.
“I know enough,” she said simply, giving me the little half-smile again. “I know I can trust you.”
This was all fishy as hell, but I didn’t argue. Instead, I shivered, and realized that I was standing there in front of her wearing nothing but a ratty pair of running shorts.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Hang on a second. Let me at least put on some clothes, and we’ll figure out your next move.”
She looked so forlorn that I found myself smiling at her in an attempt at reassurance. The wattage in her answering smile couldn’t have made a flashlight bulb flicker—but at least it was there. She brushed back a wayward strand of hair.
“Thank you, Paul,” she said.
I grinned.
“Don’t go away.”
I grabbed some khakis and a white polo shirt from the dresser and went into the bathroom, where the first thing I saw was my face in the mirror. It wasn’t a happy sight.
Had she really gone to the cops afterward? Must have done: she knew about Borzov and his cigarettes. But why not go to them immediately? If it was me, and I knew that I was the intended target, I’d want protection as quickly as I could get it, before the bad guys realized their mistake. She said she’d panicked and taken off without thinking. It was possible…but only just.
And who was this mystery man—if any—who had apparently told her to stash the money and tell no one? A lawyer? Someone from the German Embassy? Nothing made sense. It wasn’t like they could cover anything up at this point. Apply the smell test to this, I thought, and even Borzov would come across as a breath of fresh spring air by comparison.
I turned on the cold water full blast and stuck my head in the sink. It woke me up, but it made me neither wiser nor less skeptical. For that, I’d have to ask Fräulein Schachter a lot more questions.
I then dried my face and brushed my hair into a semblance of order. A lot more questions. Starting right now, lady. No time like the present.
Full of resolve, I strode out of the bathroom and found Lori sound asleep in the recliner, legs stretched out in front of her. Her jeans, I noticed, fit those legs very snugly indeed.
“Lori?” I went over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. No response. I shook her: gently, then a little less gently. “Lori!” Nothing.
“Well, shit,” I said.
After a moment’s thought, I bent and lifted her out of the chair as gently as I could and laid her down on the bed nearest the balcony. Then I drew the curtains, turned out the lights, and, thoroughly exhausted after what would have been a full day for anybody, flopped down onto the other bed.
When I woke up two hours later, Lori was in there with me, wide awake and as naked—presumably—as the day she was born.
Chapter Sixteen
Elsewhere
City Morgue
Petrograd District Office of Internal Affairs
20 Ul. Bolshaya Monetnaya, St. Petersburg, Russia
Over the course of his twenty-year career as a medical examiner, city coroner Boris Gulko had, almost by definition, seen it all when it came to death. And before that, five years in the KGB—“the good old days” was how he privately and derisively thought of that time not so very long ago—had added things to his education they didn’t cover in medical school.
But
this, he thought, gazing down at the naked body on the slab in front of him, this was…unusual.
In addition to the severed head, the medical examiner had counted thirteen (unlucky!) separate knife wounds on the woman’s body, and by his reckoning, at least eleven of them, given time, would have been fatal on their own. The man—it almost had to be a man, from the obvious brutality of the attack—hadn’t missed a single major artery or organ. Good luck, or good design? For all the apparent randomness of the attack, the coroner favored the latter. But at the crime scene, Gulko surmised that the strike that slashed her throat would have been the actual death blow: it only made sense for the assailant to thus silence his victim before getting on with his, um, handiwork.
Also, that wound had bled far more than the others. There hadn’t been enough blood left in her body to keep a cat alive, but in the case of the other wounds, they hadn’t so much bled as leaked. It was easy to make the distinction. The slashed throat and neck—the head had been severed above the line of that wound—would have killed the girl inside of a minute—the longest minute of her life.
Gulko was accustomed to the cold of the morgue—and more than accustomed to the sight of mutilated corpses—but still he shivered. The modus operandi brought to Gulko’s mind Jack the Ripper: a madman who knew what he was about when it came to anatomy. A madman who wished to send a message. A madman who was never even identified, let alone brought to book for his crimes.
The coroner stepped back from the body and beckoned to his two young assistants (for which read “incompetent oafs,” Gulko thought). Once the Germans had arrived and made positive identification of the victim, his interns would conduct the nuts and bolts of the autopsy under his direction. If they could manage to get through the process without losing the corpse, it would, he considered, be a great step forward in their careers. He went to the refrigerator at the far corner of the examining room and took out his supper: a large slice of raw cod and, somehow incongruously, a bottle of Coca-Cola. He carried his meal over to a table and sat down, but had only taken the first bite before one of his “children” called over her shoulder to him.
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