by Chad Huskins
“Well, maybe you don’t have to fret anymore.”
“Why not?” she said, hopefully.
Mitchell paused, spoke to someone briefly on the other end, and told them thank you before he came back to Rideau. “Because there have been some, ah, interesting updates. A major fiasco right there in Chelyabinsk. It’s been happening all around you—the docks, Zakhar’s lodge, and now Tsarskiy Penthouses. Get this, it was a penthouse apartment building known to have mob ties. Virtually everyone on the staff were members of the Zverev family, with some rap sheets as long as my leg. Back in ’09 we had a few cases involving money laundering through Kliak Enterprises, the company that owns Tsarskiy Penthouses, but FSB never let us in close enough to examine the books.”
“Okay, what about it?”
Mitchell snorted. “It’s burning to the ground as we speak. The whole building, and so far everybody in it. No survivors, except some poor soul that crawled out missing his lower body, or something like that. He died before he got to the hospital.”
Rideau leaned against the lounge’s doorframe. Most of the lobby had emptied out, or else the people staying in from the storm had all gone to sleep on the couches and floor. “What’s going on tonight, Mitchell?”
“I don’t know, but we think it’s big. And listen to this: we got a lead on the local police chatter, and it’s all very preliminary, but it sounds like a cab driver is being interview right now by Chelyabinsk Police, and he says he dropped someone off at the penthouses almost an hour ago, a man the police say fits Yuri Shcherbakov’s description.”
“Shcherbakov?”
Mitchell said, “Now, we don’t know yet if he was in the building when it blew up, but Rideau…somebody’s taking out the garbage tonight.”
Rideau finally pushed away from the door, exiting the lounge. She walked across the hotel lobby, germinating on everything she had been told tonight. “Mitchell, I want you to talk to Yvone and Luc. Have them draw up a DCS report of everything you’ve chronicled tonight, then e-mail it to me. I’ll add what I know of the FSB’s non-comply system, and then I’ll forward the whole thing to both the Director and the Deputy Director. I want authorization to deploy more Interpol agents here to Chelyabinsk as soon as the storm clears. Tell Metveyev. I want him to be on the same flight. We’re going to put pressure on locals and FSB for search warrants to all known Zverev-related Mafia outlets in the city. We’re going public with non-comply, let the other international parties decide what they think about it. I want FSB and local police feeling the pressure to send in OMON units, to execute dynamic entry into those known Mafia outlets if necessary.” OMON was Russia’s version of SWAT. “We can take out the garbage, too.”
“You got it. But what’s the plan once they get there?”
“We’re going to drop some information to local and international media. We need everyone to know what’s happening before FSB covers it up again. Ruffa Docks, Ogorodnikov’s cabin in the woods, Tsarskiy Penthouses, the works. Whatever happened tonight may help us expose this thing. It could—” Rideau had been moving towards the front door, deciding it was time to leave. On the way out the rotating glass door, though, she spotted a man coming in. There was something familiar about his…
Rideau immediately looked away, and tried to keep a level head while speaking. “—uh, it could expedite the investigation, and force them to cooperate.”
“Make the best out of a bad situation, eh?”
“Yes.” The man walked straight by her. His eyes touched on her; chronicled her and disregarded her in the same instant. “Mitchell, I have to go.”
“All right. I should have that DCS ready in half an hour. I’ll e-mail it to you as soon as it’s done.”
“Yes, of course. Goodbye.” Rideau hung up. She stood now in the cold, and turned slowly to look at the rotating door behind her. Rideau saw the man in the heavy jacket walking straight across the lobby. She stepped back inside, followed him, and kept a distance of about thirty feet as he made his way to the elevators.
Rideau stepped to the elevators, as well. And, as she approached, she watched him dart his eyes all around. The man tapped a button for the elevator, but kept one side of his face to her the whole time. Because of this, Rideau couldn’t see if she had imagined the scar on the other side of his face. Rideau looked at her phone, pretended to send a text message, but surreptitiously took a picture of him. She waited for him to get on the elevator, and for the doors to shut, before she called her own elevator.
Her phone was special-issue from Interpol. It camewith biometric software, and could access certain facets of their ECHELON system, including fingerprint and facial-recognition archives. The screen was still showing a variety of possible IDs as she stepped onto the elevator, and hit the button for the fifth floor. Dozens of profile shots were considered, so Rideau finally just selected the one she was most suspicious of and had the computer run a check on all eighty possible faceprints. The result came back just before the elevator reached its destination:43 out of 80 nodal points, it read.
Not enough to be considered ironclad, but then she had only gotten a partial shot of the man’s face. He’d had stubble going on to a beard, but that shouldn’t have influenced the reckoning too much, since it was cheekbone height, nose width, and other such underlying structural factors that facial-recognition software took into consideration.
When the doors parted, Rideau stepped out slowly. She was in a long, narrow hallway, brilliantly lit, and with a cleaning cart sitting nearby unattended. She walked slowly by it, then looked at the room numbers. 504, 505, 506…
She came to a junction, looked left and right, but did not see her target. Rideau’s hand had gone to her coat pocket, to the Makarov that Dominika had granted her. She moved past 510, 511, 512, and 513. She turned down another hall, passing 522, 523, and 524. Still no sign of her target, nor anyone else for that matter. But it was him. I know it. Or did she? Forty-three nodal points out of eighty was not definite.
Rideau passed 529, then 530, then 531. At 532, she slowed. She stared the door marked 533. Dominika’s note had been clear on this. Unless I read her handwriting wrong? But Rideau didn’t think so.
She had run through so many scenarios in her mind over the last few hours, but now that it came to it, she was utterly frozen in indecision. She approached the door, raised her left hand to knock, but then her mind and body balked. Rideau thought about the gun in her hand. Then, she checked up and down the hall. Her target was nowhere to be seen.
All at once, the door swung open. Rideau gasped, and momentarily forgot about the gun in her hand as a pistol was leveled at her head.
“Don’t you move a muscle, little missy,” Spencer Pelletier said. It was him. She knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt now. The face was even paler than it appeared in other photos, and the scar and the scruff gave him a different and somewhat more deranged look, but it was him. “An’ don’t make a sound. Now, get on in here. C’mon. Move.”
“Please,” she said calmly. “I have a wife.”
Pelletier raised an eyebrow. “A lezzie, huh? That’s hot. Come on into my parlor. It’s the prettiest little parlor you ever did spy.”
19
He could tell right away that the woman regretted her decision. Any other plan of action would have been better than the one she took. Spencer imagined every fly in the history of the world probably felt the same way she did right now, and every spider walking its way slowly across its web to its dinner must feel precisely how he felt at that moment. He didn’t even know this fly, but one didn’t need to acquaint themselves with every enemy to savor the flavor of an endgame.
“Hand outta your pocket,” he told her. “Slowly.”
Spencer backed slowly into the room, and she followed. “Shut the door behind you.”
The woman did as she was told. “I’m not here for you,” she said, in an accent that Spencer guessed was French. She had the good sense to keep her hands raised without being told.
“I know. You were here for the other guy, the one who’s key this is.” He held up the keycard. “The Wolf? At least, that’s what he called himself when he was trying to kill me.”
The woman’s eyes sparked familiarity. “You know Shcherbakov?”
“Shcherbakov? That was his name? Huh.” It didn’t fit in Spencer’s opinion, but then names were meager things. They were important to others—useful in the spells he cast on others to get what he wanted—but to him they were flimsy and inefficient at describing the person.
“Was?” said the woman.
Spencer smiled. “Hope he wasn’t a friend o’ yers. He’s gone on to…well, ya know what, I’m not even sure what he’s gone on to.” He gesticulated with the gun. “Toss your phone onto the bed. Take off your coat. Slowly.” She did so. “Drop it on the chair there.” She folded it and sat it on the end of a wooden chair in front of a desk. “Now take of your clothes.”
“My…?”
He smiled. “Take—off—your—clothes. I won’t say it again. An’ do it slow as a striptease.”
The woman swallowed hard. “Y-you want me to…to strip?”
“I said like a striptease. That’s called a simile. However, if ya just wanna give me a little show, knock yourself out. I just need to see that you’re not packin’ anything.” The woman swallowed again, then, slowly, she started removing her garments. Spence took a few steps back, keeping his gun trained on her while he used one hand to part the curtains, and glanced outside. “No cops, huh?” He looked at her. Her top was off, but she still wore her bra, which held a pair of small, perky breasts. She pulled her pants down slowly, watching him as carefully as he was watching her. “Interpol?”
The woman said nothing.
“C’mon, I can just look in your wallet. Probably got ID in there, right?”
She finished removing her pants, and stood before him only in her underwear. She nodded, “Yes. I’m with Interpol. How did you know?”
“Elementary, my dear fuckin’ Watson. French accent. Interpol’s headquarters is in France, an’ I know I’m still a person of interest. I saw you recognize me when we crossed paths downstairs, but ya didn’t call the cops. That means you’re savvy, an’ ya know not to trust the locals.” He shrugged. “You also have the look. Some kinda investigator. The eyes bein’ windows to the soul, all that shit. But ya don’t have the confidence of a cop. When I saw you approachin’ through the peephole, I saw the trepidation written all over your face. Not normally your territory to arrest folks, huh?” He shrugged. “So, I figure you’re Interpol, or else a really, really bad informant or hitter for the vory.”
The woman sighed nervously. Her hands and legs were trembling. “Well,” she said. “There you have it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Th-there are people outside this building. Men staking out—”
“A lie. As sure as puddin’, sweetheart. You’re all alone here.”
“It’s not a l—”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” he said. “An’ right now you’re talkin’ to Bullshit McBullshitter, mayor of Bullshit City, in the heart of Bullshit Province, in the People’s Republic of Bullshit.” He glowered. “You’re name.”
The woman sighed a quivering sigh. “M-my name is—”
“Sit down, on the bed.”
She did so. “My name is Aurél—”
“Don’t move, sit still,” he said, stepping over to her coat to go through it. Spencer kept interrupting her because it was a tool of intimidation, one he’d employed many times over the years.
The woman licked her lips. “M-my name is Detective-Inspector Aurélie Rideau.”
“Detective-Inspector, huh?” He lifted her coat, jiggled it, found something heavy in one of the pockets. He rooted around, found a Makarov, a set of handcuffs, and a wallet full of money, credit cards and Interpol ID. The Makarov was useful—unbeknownst to Rideau, the gun in Spencer’s hand was completely empty. “Is Russia your major region of expertise?”
“One of them.”
“Oh yeah? What are your others?”
Rideau took another deep, quivering breath. “France, U.S., Britain, Spain—”
“You speak all the languages of those countries?”
She nodded. “I do.”
He laughed. “No shit? You’re an honest-to-god polyglot, huh?”
“I s-suppose I—”
“Me too, ya know. Least, I think I could be if I wanted. I learned to speak decent Russian pretty fast, an’ that shit’s supposed to be hard. Dr. McCulloch always said I was incredibly good at applyin’ myself at anything, especially if it directly benefits me. I’m very adaptable and goal-oriented, ya know?” he chuckled amiably. The woman remained silent, looking between the window and the door. Spencer looked at her. “But you already knew that. You’ve read my profile. You know who I am, what I’ve done. You know about my diagnosis.”
Rideau looked at him with something between fear and loathing. “Yes.”
He smirked. “Does it ever get weird?”
“What?”
“Meetin’ somebody you’ve been chasin’, someone that was just a face in a photo or on a computer screen until you got face-to-face with them.”
Rideau looked directly ahead now, staring at the wall. “Maybe. Sometimes.”
“Hm. I’ll bet it doesn’t happen much, does it? I mean, you’re with Interpol. You’re not really allowed to make arrests, just communicate between police departments around the world.” Spencer shrugged. “But this one was different. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did ya try to make an arrest? Why take the risk to get so close to someone as dangerous as me? That’s gotta go against all kinds o’ regulations and SOPs?” The woman remained silent. Spencer reached out to touch her shoulder. Rideau jerked, and shivered as though a cold chill had just gone up her spine. He ran his fingers through her blonde hair. “Answer the question.”
“I wasn’t after you—”
“Not initially, you weren’t. You were after your man Shcherbakov, but he didn’t show. Then you saw me.” He smiled. “I guess you’ve been kept up-to-the-minute on everything that’s gone on tonight. You knew that asshole wasn’t likely to show, that he got cooked inside Tsarskiy Penthouses. You were on your way out, but then you saw me. What was it that brought you here? Why wasn’t this place surrounded by undercovers, all of ’em waitin’ to storm this place the second Shcherbakov stepped into that lobby?” Rideau said nothing. He nodded. “It was personal, and the local cops, you know they’re as corrupt as some o’ those fuckers were back in Atlanta. Crooked as question marks, all of ’em. The vory are everywhere.”
Rideau said nothing.
Spencer looked her over, examining her perky breasts. Their perkiness could’ve been an illusion created by the black Victoria’s Secret bra she was wearing. The underwear was neither thong nor granny panties, just snug and form-fitting. Her skin was pale, but not so pale as his, and soft to the touch. The hair was blonde with even lighter, subtler highlights.
He lifted her cell phone off the bed and stepped away from her, and then took a seat in a chair across from her, grunting from the discomfort in shoulder. He started going through the cell phone. “Your wife,” he sighed. “Tell me about her.” She looked up at him sharply, defensively. That got a response, he thought. Predictable. “What’s her name?”
A moment of hesitation. “Gwendolyn.”
Spencer raised an eyebrow and nodded approvingly. “Gwendolyn. Pretty name. But names are flimsy things, an’ I don’t think they suit the person very often. You know what I think a better name is?” He held up her phone, and showed her the screen with the last received text messages. “Patricia.” Rideau’s eyes looked at him, smoldering. Names were flimsy things, true, and yet also powerful. “So,” he said smiling, “tell me about Patricia. That doesn’t sound French. What is she, like, American? British?” Rideau didn’t answer. “The more ya keep me talkin’, the greater chance ya have
to reason with me. Didn’t you ever take a hostage rescue course?”
Rideau looked at him. “Why do you want to know about my wife?”
Spencer smiled. “Good one. Answering a question with a question, get’s me talkin’. At least you’re not so addled now. I just wanna talk. No more stalling. Tell me.”
She sighed. “She’s tall—”
“How tall?”
“I don’t know exactly—”
“Taller than you?”
“Yes.”
Spencer nodded. “Go on.”
“She’s…brunette. Keeps her hair long.”
“She keep it long for her or for you?”
Rideau shrugged. “We both like it long.”
Spencer watched her for any deception. “Go on.”
“She has brown eyes, and light-brown skin. She was raised in America, but her father was a diplomat from Spain, and her mother was an interpreter at the United Nations building in New York.”
Spencer nodded, guessing the rest. “She was raised in one o’ those families that keep political ties. You two met on some investigation with ties in Spain?” Rideau nodded. “Was it love at first sight, or was their friction?”
“Why do you want to know th—”
“Just answer the question.”
The woman sighed heavily again, obviously trying to keep her cool. Her knee had started bouncing up and down, and her hand was still tapping her leg. “There was…friction.”
“Why? Because she was on opposite sides of the investigation?” Rideau nodded. “She was at odds with you, huh? You were there to investigate something, came up against a wall, and she was the translator for the side you were up again.” Another nod. Spencer smiled. “But then something happened. You offered up a piece of information, something them Spaniards wanted. You offered it freely an’ ya saw a glimmer of somethin’ in Patricia’s big brown eyes. It was trust. She liked that you were so open an’ honest.”
Rideau nodded. “Something like that.”