Blood and Rubles

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “You,” said Hamilton. He wondered where Karpo had gotten his evidently accurate information.

  “The woman who died in the cross fire between the two gangs was a particular friend of Inspector Karpo’s,” Hamilton said.

  Kuzen looked up at the blank white face. The men standing before him looked like chess pieces—one black, one white, avenging knights who might strike at odd angles.

  “Inspector Karpo has already visited with a member of the gang we are discussing with you,” said Hamilton. “He has visited a prisoner named Voshenko. Do you know Voshenko?”

  “Voshenko? Voshenko,” Kuzen said, finding it impossible to control the trembling in his voice. “The name is—”

  “Very big man,” said Hamilton. “Bigger than the man downstairs whose knee I accidentally dislocated.”

  “Big man. Voshenko. Yes. Maybe,” said Kuzen.

  “Inspector Karpo broke both of his thumbs,” said Hamilton. “It was an accident too. Accidents can happen to anyone. For example, I could walk in the other room, find myself a cup, and pour myself coffee. I might hear the crash of breaking glass, and when I returned to this room, I might find the window broken and you missing. Do you have a family, Igor Kuzen?” asked Hamilton.

  “Wife, two daughters,” he said, his voice breaking. “They … we live in a dacha outside of town.”

  “Business success forces you to live in this apartment most of the time?” said Hamilton.

  “Yes,” said Kuzen. “Listen, please, I know nothing of this gang business, or killings, or any theft of nuclear materials. I’ve done a few things that may not be strictly legal. Who really knows what is legal and what is not anymore? But killings, nuclear weapons. Nyet.”

  “I need a cup of coffee,” Hamilton said.

  Kuzen looked at the FBI agent in panic and reached for his sleeve. “No, please.”

  “I’m just going to get a cup of coffee,” said Hamilton calmly, a smile on his face.

  “They have no warheads, no weapons, yet,” said Kuzen.

  “Nuclear material?” asked Hamilton.

  Kuzen shrugged.

  “We have carefully examined your background, Kuzen,” Hamilton said. “It is our conclusion that you do not have the requisite skills to assemble a functional nuclear weapon. How long will it be before the Beasts discover this?”

  “You don’t understand,” said Kuzen. “They already know. I am only a decoy. I know enough to talk the language of nuclear weaponry with people sent by the North Koreans or the Iranians.”

  “So the Beasts have no plans to deliver real weapons?” asked Hamilton.

  “Not yet,” said Kuzen. “The German they killed in the café, Kirst. He figured out I was a fraud. He was going to tell the buyer and …” He shrugged.

  “Why are you confessing so readily?” asked Hamilton.

  “Because,” said Kuzen, “if you leave without taking me with you, they will come and question me. I am not a man of great courage. They will assume that I have talked or might soon talk.”

  “We will have the names of all members of the mafia for whom you are working,” said Karpo.

  Kuzen laughed nervously.

  “And,” added Hamilton, “we will have your testimony and all information you possess about illegal activity.”

  Kuzen stopped laughing, tried to catch his breath, and said, “I will be a dead man. There is no place you could put me that would be safe. They would get to me in any prison.”

  “What about the United States?” asked Hamilton.

  “I don’t know,” said Kuzen. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you will testify against this mafia and I will arrange for you to have immediate political asylum in the United States. I can also arrange for you to find employment in our nuclear-disposal efforts.”

  “America?” Kuzen said. “My wife? Daughters? If they stay …”

  “Your wife and daughters too,” said Hamilton.

  “This is all so fast,” said Kuzen. “I need time to … You just walk into my home …” He pointed around the room at his possessions. “You take everything away.”

  “There will come a time,” said Hamilton, “when your mafia will find your information too old and limited. Then they will buy themselves another expert and eliminate you. How can someone as intelligent as you are be so stupid as to not see this?”

  “I …” Kuzen began, but he never finished.

  The front door burst open. The bald man from the lobby came limping in with a gun in his right hand. Karpo and Hamilton drew their weapons as the limping man, his teeth clenched in either pain or a grin, began firing.

  The bullet from Hamilton’s weapon crumpled the man forward on his knees as the shot from Karpo’s gun hit the man in the forehead, jerking his head back.

  “Are you hit?” asked Hamilton, moving cautiously toward the fallen killer without looking back at Karpo.

  “No,” said Karpo.

  “How could he miss?” said Hamilton, kicking the weapon away from the dead man.

  “He didn’t,” Karpo answered, looking down at Kuzen, whose beautiful silk robe and pajamas were drenched with blood. “He came to kill him first.”

  Hamilton looked at Kuzen’s body and the delicate coffee cup and saucer, which were untouched. Then he felt himself beginning to tremble. He fought against it. He had never shot anyone before, had never had reason even to draw his weapon, and now he had almost been killed. If the dead man on the floor had chosen to, he could have killed Hamilton or Karpo or both of them.

  Hamilton had assumed the dead man had been there to protect Kuzen. It was clear now that the dead man had been there to be sure that Kuzen did not talk to the police.

  “There’s a phone in the corner, near the window,” said Hamilton. “Our assassin may have called for backup, or the doorman may be doing that right now. I suggest we do the same.”

  The FBI man was sure that he was not trembling. He was also still clutching his weapon in both hands, keeping his eyes toward the front of the apartment through which the killer had come. Karpo placed his weapon back in the holster under his jacket. He ignored Hamilton’s suggestion.

  “I suggest you call the police number,” said Karpo. “They will attempt to tell you what district we are in. Armed officers will begin showing up within ten minutes of your call. Someone at the district will, by that time, have also placed a call to a member of the mafia responsible for this, if the doorman has not already done so. I am the ranking Russian officer on the scene. I suggest we search the apartment while we wait for help. When help arrives, evidence may disappear.”

  “You are a cynical bastard,” said Hamilton admiringly.

  “The recognition of reality in a world of political chaos is not cynicism but reason,” said Karpo.

  “Do you always quote Lenin?” asked Hamilton, putting his weapon away but keeping his jacket unbuttoned.

  “Do you always recognize when someone is quoting Lenin?” asked Karpo, moving toward a room that looked like an office. The door was open and a computer sat on the desk in the room.

  “Not always,” said Hamilton. “But it’s impressive when I do, isn’t it?”

  He paused at Kuzen’s body, touched the man’s neck for a pulse. He didn’t find one, but he hadn’t expected to. He moved to the telephone and made the call to the police for immediate backup, using Colonel Snitkonoy’s name.

  “Ten-minute search,” said Hamilton, going to the front door and pushing it closed. The lock was now broken, but the door stayed closed.

  “Ten minutes will be adequate,” said Karpo, who was now out of Hamilton’s sight.

  Even though the man on the floor had a bullet hole in his forehead directly above his left eye, Hamilton knelt again to be sure he was dead. When he entered the office, Karpo was going through papers stashed in neat wooden cubbyholes on the table next to the desk. The walls of the room were filled with books. A stack of manila folders lay neatly on one side of the computer. On the other side
were boxes of floppy disks.

  “My computer skills are adequate, but not sophisticated,” Karpo said, turning on the computer. “I assume you are well trained.”

  Hamilton moved behind the desk and examined the names of the files on the screen. Karpo continued a search of the contents of the envelopes and the cubbyholes.

  “I doubt if he’d leave anything incriminating sitting on top of his desk,” said Hamilton.

  From where he sat, he could see both of the bodies in the next room. That was the way he liked it.

  Karpo examined the cubbyholes. Each was marked by a small white tab in black ink. There seemed to be no order to the slots, not alphabetical, not by subject. There were fifteen slots with labels such as RELATIVES, MARKETS, CARTOONS,CATS, CLOTHING, PENSION.

  “Orderly man,” Hamilton said. “Files in order, indexed by subject, title, entry dates.”

  Hamilton opened a file at random and shook his head. “No wasted words, our Kuzen. Efficient.”

  In front of Karpo stood the less-than-orderly cubbyholes. He stared at them while the FBI agent hurried through the hard-disk files.

  “Plenty of data here,” said Hamilton. “Take hours to go through it. Everything looks like it’s backed up and indexed on floppy. I’ll double-check. Then I suggest we look at the backups when we have more time. We’re down to seven minutes.”

  “I’ll continue to look,” said Karpo, going through a stack of letters and notes from the cubbyhole marked TAXES.

  “It’s your country,” said Hamilton, racing through computer files.

  “It was,” said Karpo.

  “We’re not going to get this done in time,” said Hamilton, lining up the backup disks and looking around the room.

  “He wouldn’t leave anything lying around,” said Karpo.

  “Then what are we looking for?” asked Hamilton as he switched off the computer. “There could be something on the hard disk or one of the floppies that can be opened with a code. The man was a scientist. An anal-retentive one. Look at this place. It looks as if a team of maids left five minutes ago. Except …”

  They both looked at the mess of cubbyholes.

  “A concession,” said Hamilton.

  Karpo shook his head no.

  “Then what?” asked Hamilton. He stood up and felt more comfortable because he could get his gun out quickly.

  “What if the disorder of these papers and the randomness of these slots is neither disorderly nor random?” said Karpo.

  “Meaning?”

  “If someone touched a shelf or looked at its contents when Kuzen wasn’t here, he would come back and know it.”

  “Why would he care if … ?” Hamilton began, and then stopped.

  “Something is hidden,” said Karpo.

  He ran his fingers delicately along the wooden slats between the compartments. His touch was light, his eyes unblinking. Suddenly he stopped.

  A piece of paper, the tiny corner of a newspaper or page of a book, fluttered to the table.

  “Which one?” asked Hamilton.

  “This,” said Karpo, pointing to the cubbyhole marked BILLS.

  If someone disturbed the papers even slightly, the seemingly random bit of paper would flutter to the table. The person who had disturbed the papers could ignore it, throw it away, pocket it, or try to return it to the sheaf of papers. But return it where, between which two sheets?

  “A very cautious man,” said Hamilton.

  “His caution failed to save his life,” said Karpo, pulling out the stack of bills and handing half of them to the FBI agent.

  Two minutes later they had examined the small pile.

  “We can take them and check them,” Hamilton said, adding the bills to the pile of floppy disks.

  Karpo removed the sliding bottom of the now-empty cubbyhole. The bottom was a narrow slat of wood that fit into a slot, just like the rest of the open-faced shelves. There was nothing taped to the slat of wood, nothing taped to the back of the shelf.

  “Two more minutes,” Hamilton said, checking his watch.

  Karpo ran his fingers around the edge of the slat of wood. When he was gently brushing one side of the slat, he stopped and examined it.

  “How thin can a disk be?” he asked.

  Hamilton shrugged. “Paper-thin. Why?”

  “Our time is up,” Karpo said, starting to slide the slat back into the wooden cabinet. “I’ll call again. You can check the other rooms.”

  “Right,” said Hamilton, moving toward the living room.

  With one hand Karpo picked up the phone and dialed Petrovka. With the other he removed the slat again, found the spot he was seeking, and dug his thumbnail into the nearly paper-thin, one-inch-long slit of clay that had been painted the same color as the thin wood. He asked again for immediate support and hung up, listening for Hamilton’s footsteps in the other room. Karpo quickly removed the clay and turned the slat of wood onto one side. A round, bright circle of metal fell into his palm. He pocketed the metal, slid the slat back in its slot, and returned the bills to the cubbyhole. He carefully gathered the bits of clay in his fingers and deposited them in another pocket.

  Fifteen minutes later a quartet of police, in full uniform, weapons at the ready, were standing in the room over the bodies of the two dead men while a very black man in a very good suit and a tall, gaunt figure they recognized as Karpo the Vampire answered questions put to them by their officer, a young captain who was already losing hair and gaining weight. The young captain looked tired. The sight of the bodies barely drew his attention.

  “Mafia,” he said with a resigned sigh.

  “Yes,” said Hamilton, explaining who had killed whom less than half an hour earlier.

  Kuzen’s dead eyes were open. Karpo looked down at them. The dead man had lost his life and his secret.

  TWELVE

  Lies

  ARKADY ZELACH HAD A HEADACHE. He wasn’t sure whether it was from his old injury, the fact that he had now gone a full twenty-four hours without sleep, or the presence of the screeching woman on whose shoulder a baby slept.

  Colonel Snitkonoy himself had called to congratulate him on saving the life of Sasha Tkach and apprehending all three of the killer children. Porfiry Petrovich had done the same and told him to wrap up the paperwork and get home for some well-deserved sleep.

  Zelach had already called his mother for the third time. He had called her the night before to say that he would be home slightly after midnight. Then he had called her to say that Sasha Tkach had been injured and that he would have to work at least a few more hours. After that Zelach went to the hospital to be sure Sasha was all right and then back to the district station where the three boys were being held. Their mother was waiting for him along with a skinny man with curly black hair and the face of a night animal with long teeth. The man’s name, he was told, was Lermonov. Lermonov was a lawyer, a new and rising breed who knew there was no longer a viable written criminal justice code. Lermonov and others like him jumped in where the Parliament feared to walk. The new lawyers quoted precedent, old laws, new laws, invented laws. Each and every one of the hundreds of mafias had its own lawyer or two or three. Lermonov was sure he was on the way up, that some well-connected businessman or high-ranking mafia member would recognize his ability and move him into a position of power. Meanwhile he made the best of things, representing whoever called on his services, which he hawked with business cards inserted into the mail slots along the streets of the vast neighborhood in which the Chazovs and others who might get into trouble with the police lived. The five hundred cards had cost him nothing. They were the price of representing a printer named Kholkov, who had set up business in a Gorky Street basement with no permit from the police or the local mafia. Lermonov had simply made one small bribe to a police sergeant on Kholkov’s behalf as well as the promise of an immediate substantial percentage of Kholkov’s business for the mafia, which in turn promised to give Kholkov customers.

  It was because of one of
his cards that Elvira Chazova had called on him in his tiny apartment-office. He had taken on her cause immediately. He took on all causes immediately as long as there was a payment up front. Elvira, child in her arms, belly full, had pleaded with him to take on the legal protection of her children in the name of mercy and decency. Elvira was a fraud. Lermonov saw through her and demanded cash or goods. Elvira had given cash, and now Lermonov and his client sat across from Zelach in the large, echoing room. Zelach’s head ached. He needed help. Paperwork and screaming mothers and insistent lawyers were beyond him. He sat quite still, back straight, and said little.

  “The boys you are holding are completely innocent,” Lermonov said. “In fact, they are heroes. Just before you came rushing out to attack them, Mrs. Chazova’s boys had beaten off two older boys, who were attacking the policeman. The Chazovas drove them away and were tending to the policeman when you came out and started to beat and handcuff them.”

  “No,” said Zelach, determined to show no signs of wavering, which he accomplished by conjuring up the image of Tkach on the sidewalk and one of the boys about to strike him with a brick. “It was they.”

  Elvira Chazova wailed. The wail echoed off the walls of the interrogation room, which were badly in need of paint. The wail woke the baby in her arms, who began to cry.

  Zelach fought the urge to cradle his head in his hands. His eyes met those of the lawyer.

  “How can you be sure?” said the lawyer.

  “I saw them standing over him. There were no others on the street. Sash … the fallen officer told me it was they who attacked him.”

  Lermonov sighed patiently and spoke over the crying and wailing.

  “He was struck down from behind. He saw a trio of small boys armed with sticks and stones, small boys who had driven off his attackers. Heroes. They should get medals.”

  “They did it,” Zelach repeated. “And they have done it before.”

  “The court will not agree,” said Lermonov, rising. “I demand that you release the children into the custody of their mother. They are her sole support.”

  “No,” Zelach repeated.