“Here endeth the lesson,” he said.
Smiling once again, he reached for his cell phone and made a short call. With that done, he took the SIM card and flushed it down the toilet. His work in St. Petersburg was complete.
Lopez locked up and walked out into the late evening sunlight. He looked up, grimacing.
“God, how I hate the White Nights,” he said.
The house keys went into a nearby storm drain; the cell phone Lopez lay on a railroad track as he knelt to retie a shoelace. He stood nearby and watched as the train roared past only three minutes later, at 22:12.
At 23:12, Lopez was on board a train bound for Helsinki. His seatmate, a comely fifty-year-old widow, thought him one of the nicest men she had ever met.
9 Karenina Square, flat D
Illyurin, Russia
When Larisa Annikova’s telephone chirped at her and kept chirping, she looked up from her forensic medicine textbook in annoyance. She had programmed the answering machine to pick up on the second ring, but—she looked over at the bedside table—now the red light was off. Probably the damned cat had jumped on the machine and deactivated it. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
The phone continued to ring. Larisa didn’t have caller ID, and she didn’t know of any reason for anyone to be calling her this late at night. A wrong number, perhaps: she knew from experience that her own number was only one digit removed from that of a nearby pizza place. Whoever it was would surely give up soon.
But they didn’t, and there was always the chance that the call might be important. The young medical student tossed aside her book and, with a sigh, reached for the receiver.
“Slushayu.” (“I’m listening.”)
“Larisa Nikolaevna?” A man’s voice—unfamiliar, out of breath, frantic. Whoever he was had pronounced her name and patronymic correctly, but she didn’t think he was a native Russian speaker. Some of his obvious anxiety transferred itself to her. She felt goose bumps on her arms and she shivered inside her nightgown.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“I am a friend of Tolya’s. Come quickly to his flat. There has been an accident.”
She sat up, startled. “What kind of accident? Who are you? Hello! Hello!”
But the line was dead.
She flung herself out of bed and quickly threw on jeans, shirt—actually a blue Moscow Dynamo hockey jersey with a white 19 on the back—and shoes. She grabbed her keys from the kitchen table and ran down the stairs to her car. The old Lada sputtered once, twice; then the engine caught and roared to life.
Two seconds later, Larisa Annikova’s car exploded in a huge orange fireball that essentially vaporized her and blew out an entire wall of her apartment complex.
One hundred meters away at the end of the street, a man stood smoking a cigarette. He cringed reflexively when he saw and heard the explosion, even though he was stationed there for the express purpose of watching for precisely such an event. He tossed his cigarette away and punched a number into his cell phone—the same phone he had used to call the girl just a few moments ago.
“7448.”
“3724.”
“Well?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
The Chameleon put his cell phone away and shrugged. Almost certainly, there had been no need to kill the woman; but neither would it hurt anything—and what was another dead woman, more or less? It would give the police something else to deal with, and create that much more confusion, which could only be to his benefit.
It had been a satisfactory enterprise thus far. Most of what he had set out to accomplish he had accomplished; the rest, with ordinary luck, would be taken care of within the next twenty-four hours.
At which point he could prepare to tell the world. The time for anonymity was drawing to a close. It would feel good to rest at last; to share his exploits with what he felt sure would be an adoring public. Soon, he thought.
His phone chirped at him—a reminder that for now, however, he still had work to do.
“8914.”
38 Ulitsa Mussorgskaya
St. Petersburg, Russia
Chief Inspector Dmitri Borzov lit his fourth cigarette of the day at ten minutes past one o’clock in the morning and stared down at the beautiful dead woman on the floor. She wore nothing but a black bra, black thong panties, and a small reddish-black hole almost exactly in between. Her eyes were open wide, staring at nothing, and her mouth was slightly ajar. That her face seemed to register surprise meant nothing—it was merely a random arrangement of her features. A housefly buzzed intermittently around the entry wound.
Apart from the uniformed officer near the door, who scarcely counted, he, the coroner, and the corpse had the place to themselves. The photographer had finished his work a few minutes ago—only because he finally ran out of film, Borzov suspected. (But, to be fair, he could scarcely blame the man: dead or alive, this girl was well worth looking at.)
“Well?” he growled at the coroner, who was kneeling over the body. “What have you learned?”
Boris Gulko looked up, his eyes bloodshot, his face haggard. He hadn’t been to bed yet—or rather, he had, but hadn’t been asleep five minutes before the telephone shrilled its summons at him. He was eleven months from retirement.
“It is too early to be certain, Inspector,” he said, “but as a starting point, I am working on the provisional theory that the dead woman was shot in the abdomen.”
“Remarkable,” said Borzov. “You are clearly a master of your craft. Would you care to elaborate?”
“Elaborate on what? You have seen as many dead bodies as I. This one has been dead perhaps six to eight hours.”
“Which does little to tell me who she is.”
The policeman at the door spoke up.
“I know who she is,” he said.
Borzov glared at him, and the man braced to attention, swallowing nervously.
“Then why the devil haven’t you spoken before now? Who is she, you fool? And how do you come to know her?”
“Her name is Irina Sokolova. She works—used to work—as a maid at the Three Crowns Hotel. I—er—went out with her once, but she was too expensive for me.”
“Too expensive for a policeman? You astonish me. Are you certain of your identification?”
“I am certain, Chief Inspector.” The cop gestured. “No other woman in St. Petersburg looks like this one.”
Borzov couldn’t argue with that.
“What else do you know about her?”
“Nothing, Chief Inspector.”
“I hope she was worth it,” he snapped, but his mind was already racing ahead. The Three Crowns was where they had found the decapitated body of Karin Fessler, earlier that day. The two murders could not possibly be unrelated, which made Sokolova either an accomplice or a witness—though not a useful one, not now. He would have to pay another visit to the hotel, that much was clear.
And also, he thought, pay another visit on the American journalist, Mallory.
Borzov lit another Marlboro, then checked his watch. Zero one forty-five, and there was nothing more for him to do here.
Mallory first, he decided. No time like the present, and nothing like a late-night/early-morning interrogation to catch a subject unawares. Hadn’t Comrade Stalin proved as much? He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, something chirruped at him from somewhere inside his trousers. Borzov was so tired, he didn’t bother to swear before reaching for the phone.
“What is it?” A pause, then, “Oh. I see. That is good news,” he said, heavy on the irony. “Where?” A few seconds later, he rang off and replaced the phone. When he looked up, he caught the coroner staring at him, and wondered for a moment what his face must look like to the older man. He took the cigarette from between his teeth.
“Trouble always comes in threes, Boris,” he said quietly. “Your young intern, the female, Larisa Annikova?”
Gulko looked up at him in surprise—and some al
arm. First names and soft voices weren’t Borzov’s style. One bushy white eyebrow rose in interrogation.
“Yes?”
“She was blown up in her car fifteen minutes ago.”
Pulkovo-2 International Airport
St. Petersburg, Russia
The chartered Gulfstream-5 carrying Maria Rakosi reached the gate at twenty-four minutes past midnight. Cramer had paved the way for her. By half past the hour, she had cleared Customs and picked up her rental; by one o’clock, she had picked up the package that was waiting for her at the American consulate; and at exactly twenty minutes past, she was shown to her room at the four-star Peterhof Hotel on Nevsky Prospekt, three blocks down from the Europa.
Alone in the spacious double room, she undressed, changing into shorts and a loose-fitting black tank top before opening the package from the consulate. It contained something that looked like a tablet computer but wasn’t exactly, and something that looked like a Walther PPK and indisputably was. She turned on the first and loaded the second; then, satisfied with what she saw, turned out the lights, lay down in the bed nearest the door, and set the alarm on her wrist watch for six a.m. The flight had been an exhausting one, and her shower, just this once, could wait until morning.
Being right-handed, she turned onto her left side, making sure the Walther was in easy reach, and arranged the pillows underneath her head.
Maria Rakosi was asleep in less than thirty seconds.
Chapter Nineteen
Karin felt her scalp gingerly. I could see a fair bit of her brown hair sticking to the underside of the wig. She’d meant for it to stay there a while. She looked at me and frowned.
“I fully intended to tell you who I was, Paul. There was no need for you to tear my hair out.”
I shrugged. “It was a small price to pay. What’s with the story?”
“The story, as you call it, is true. I only changed the names.”
“To protect the innocent?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. Why the disguise?”
“I told you. I was the one whom they were trying to kill.”
“And you just happened to have a blonde Lori Schachter wig with you?”
“Yes. I bought it at home before coming here. I knew the sort of people she was associating with, and I thought it might be necessary to at some point myself disguise—disguise myself.”
That was such an incredible line of reasoning that it might even be credible. I didn’t push her on it.
“You said ‘they’ again, Karin. Who are ‘they’?”
“Gamblers, Paul. Russian gamblers. They were paying your precious Lorelei to influence the outcome of the matches.”
“She’s not my precious Lorelei,” I said—too quickly. “How do you know?”
Karin leaned forward, hands clasped between her legs, in an attempt to impress me with either her earnestness or her cleavage. Or both. I let her try.
“I have for some time been suspicious. There have been many questionable decisions in the last several matches we have officiated together. She has been spending more money of late. And once last month, in Dortmund, I saw her take an envelope from a man in a restaurant.” Karin pointed at the money on the dresser. “An envelope almost exactly like that one.”
“Did you talk with her about it? You guys were friends, partners. Besides, if she was on the take, wouldn’t that reflect on you as well?”
She nodded. “I was frightened of confronting her directly. I did some research on my own, and learned that the people she was associating with were very bad.”
“What about your Federation? Couldn’t you go to them with what you had? I’m new to handball, but surely whatever Lori was doing must have been obvious to you.”
She shook her head.
“It was very subtle. I only became suspicious because the two of us have worked so closely together for so long. It would take only two or three decisions during a match to affect the outcome.”
“What about the man with the envelope in Dortmund?”
“They would not act on my unsupported word. The Federation officials,” she said, charging the last word with enough venom to kill a rhinoceros, “are nothing but a gang of lecherous old fools. They would not—what is the phrase—rock the boat.”
“What about the police, then?”
“It is the same answer. The German police would require more evidence. The Russian police would be either complicit or afraid.” Karin seemed to have a wide-ranging and deep-rooted lack of respect for authority. In theory, I could see her point of view.
“But why come to me?”
“I told you why. So that you can bring the story to light. As an American journalist, you are an objective observer. They would have to address the matter if you were to give it wide publicity.”
I took a sip of Coke and debated with myself whether I should get a cigar going. This was starting to sound as if it might take a while.
“I’d like to help you, Karin, but I’ve got the same problem as the lecherous old fools. Unless you give me something concrete to go on, then I can’t rock the boat either.”
“You do not believe me?”
“I might believe you—but that’s not enough.”
She pursed her lips and seemed to think for a moment.
“What if I could give you something, how did you say, concrete?”
“What have you got in mind?”
“I have a friend,” she said, “here in St. Petersburg. All of the matches have been on television. He has recorded them, and he can show you the inconsistencies I told you about, as well as how they affected the outcomes. I can take you to him now.”
“This is the guy you told me about earlier?”
“Yes.”
I thought about it—or rather, pretended to.
“It has to be somewhere public,” I said. “You can stay in the car, if you’re worried about being spotted.”
She gave me her trademark expression again.
“With you, I am not afraid. May I call him and make the arrangements?”
“Now? At one in the morning? What’s public at one o’clock in the morning?”
Karin seemed surprised at the question.
“During the White Nights?” she said. “Everywhere is public.”
That much was true. Unless you count passing out from sheer exhaustion, I hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep since arriving in Russia. Every time I went out onto my balcony to count sheep, I’d seen people down in the street, walking about as if it were the middle of the day—which to all intents and purposes, it might as well have been.
“Okay,” I said. “Call him. Mussorgsky Square. Can he be there in fifteen minutes?”
“Yes.”
“How will I recognize him?”
“I was intending to describe you to him. He will make the approach.”
I shook my head. “No dice. I don’t like being sneaked up on. We do this my way, or we call the cops right now.”
Karin actually pouted. Cute, but annoying given the circumstances.
“Very well,” she said.
“Do it, before I change my mind.”
I put on socks and shoes and collected wallet, cell phone, and passport while Karin made the call. She spoke in German but, along with most of the swear words, I knew the numbers from one to ten. I heard her start her end of the conversation with “vier vier fünf sieben”—“4457.” I heard “Mussorgsky” once and “ja” three or four times with a “nein” mixed in. No “Auf Wiedersehen” or whatever it is Germans say when they’re done on the telephone, and she didn’t swear once. Most informative.
“Are we all set, then?” I asked when she put her phone away.
She nodded. “He will be wearing a red shirt, in the same style as yours, and a large pair of Sonnenbrille—how to say, sunglasses. He will have also a brown suitcase at his feet.”
“I wear my Sonnenbrille at night,” I sang softly. It actually almost worked in German; but it
was a stupid song in any language.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
“One moment.” Karin slipped into her shoes, then got up and walked over to her bag. She placed it at the edge of the bed we’d just finished almost using, dropped the Lori wig inside, and came out with a black one. When she put it on, I saw that this one featured straight, shoulder-length hair, parted in the middle, with bangs across her forehead. It made her look exactly like Grace Slick, the lead singer for Jefferson Airplane back in the mid-sixties. Which wasn’t a bad thing at all. Sexy, sexier, sexiest. Amazing, what a simple change in hairstyle and color could do for a woman. My poker face must have slipped, because Karin smiled at me and struck a pose. Along with her actress training, there was clearly some modeling experience in her past.
“What do you think?”
I kept what I thought to myself, and pointed at her bag of tricks. Felix the Cat had nothing on Karin Fessler.
“It’s different. What else do you have in there?”
“Only this.” She dipped into the bag and when her hand came out this time, it was holding a black semiautomatic pistol, complete with silencer. So much for Felix the Cat. It looked like a Glock—for all the good that knowledge would do me—and Karin looked like she knew how to handle the thing. From where I was standing, I couldn’t tell whether the safety was on.
“I do not wish to hurt you, Paul,” she said. “In fact, you will not be harmed at all—unless you leave me no choice.”
For the last few minutes, I had almost been expecting this, or something like it. Five feet separated us. I’d have to take at least one step before I could reach her. Even so, I liked my chances of doing it, maybe as often as two times out of three. But I didn’t have the luxury of an extended set of trials. Besides, I was curious, and being dead seemed like a drastic way of scratching that particular itch.
“So what now, Karin?”
“We proceed as planned,” she said, “but not to Mussorgsky Square. I will direct you. Please do not attempt anything heroic.”
Heroic, she says. Obviously she didn’t know me very well.
We left my room, went down the elevator, through the front door, and out to my car, my hot little shadow right behind me all the way. Presumably she had to stash the weapon somewhere as we crossed the lobby—a window of opportunity, but I couldn’t take the chance of getting any innocent bystanders hurt or killed. Very decent of me. Outside, the evening was muggy to the point of being oppressive and, combined with the way I was already sweating, served to plaster my shirt to my skin. A few dark clouds off to the west suggested a chance of rain later on. I hoped I’d have a chance to see it.
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