by Chris Culver
“I’ll kill you, fucker,” said Frank. “I’ll fucking gut you.”
One of the nurses injected something into Frank’s IV line. Almost instantly, his face and voice slackened, and he stopped fighting. His eyes stayed open, though.
“I hope that was non-narcotic,” said Ash.
The nurse with the syringe nodded. “It’s just a mild sedative. He’ll be fine.”
For a mild sedative, it worked remarkably well.
“He’s in some pretty intense pain,” said Ash. “Is there anything you can give him?”
“We tried giving him a time-release pain capsule, but he chewed it to get high.”
Ash normally felt sympathy for drug addicts. They made mistakes, but he knew how powerless addiction could make someone feel. He had a hard time feeling anything at all for a man who admitted trafficking in young girls and accepting one as chattel for a job, though. The world would be a better place without him. If the girl he took—Maya he called her—died, maybe the court system would make that happen. On his way out of the room, Ash made a short prayer that it wouldn’t come to that.
24
Kiev, Ukraine, 1971. It looked like a party or family reunion. Well-dressed men and women congregated around tables on a concrete slab beside a quartet of apartment buildings. Most of the women wore simple, long dresses and scarves over their heads to keep their hair from becoming disarrayed in the wind, while the men wore long-sleeved wool shirts and black or brown slacks. Almost all of them looked at each other fondly and laughed at each other’s jokes and remarks.
The image stood in stark contrast to the propaganda Kostya had seen on television. The west proclaimed the Soviet Union a dystopian wasteland where lines to buy bread or other basic necessities stretched for blocks, where men and women dressed in dull uniformity, where secret police officers trolled the streets, looking for dissidents. Soviet propaganda, on the other hand, depicted the empire as a utopia where people had ample leisure time, children could play, and everyone had enough to eat. The reality lay somewhere in between, as it oftentimes does.
Kostya hadn’t been to the Ukraine since being shipped to a gulag and later joining the Red Army. His military service hadn’t been by choice, but it had worked out for him. His superiors recognized his abilities, allowing him to become a junior officer. When he left the army a year ago, he left as a captain, a very high rank for someone not formally a member of the Communist Party. He had a wife, a young family. He could have lived out the rest of his life in relative ease. He had little interest in being another cog in the center of a giant bureaucracy, though, and he had even less interest in joining the Party and hoping for something greater. He had promises to keep.
“Are you ready?” asked Kostya, glancing to his left. At nineteen years old, the man beside him, his new brother-in-law, still had several years of military service left. He may not become an officer, but he’d do well for himself and his much older wife, Kostya’s sister. He had the temperament of a soldier. Even though Kostya had only known him for two years, he trusted him, something he couldn’t say about many people.
“He deserves to be in prison,” said Lev.
“He will be,” said Kostya. “At least for a few days.”
Kostya walked forward. The apartment buildings around them, like the streets and sidewalks, had been constructed of dull, reinforced concrete, causing the otherwise bright day to feel almost gloomy. Children laughed and played somewhere distant, and he could hear the clattering of an old car engine on the street. Kostya straightened the lapels of his suit. He doubted Vladimir would recognize his face, but he’d know what the suit signified. Very few men other than Party leaders could afford a suit like that. Kostya refused to join the Party, but he had found ways to earn a comfortable living despite that. Lev’s simple, olive-green uniform would complete the image.
The family gathered around the table stopped speaking as they approached. Kostya looked over his shoulder and found his brother-in-law staring at Vladimir, unblinking. Had those eyes been directed at him, Kostya would have been driven into silence, too.
“I’m truly sorry to interrupt what appears to be a happy family,” said Kostya, smiling. Several of the family members closest to him relaxed. Kostya looked at Vladimir. His shoulders no longer had the square, muscular shape Kostya remembered, nor did his eyes hold the same strength. Vladimir looked away, like an animal wishing to avoid a confrontation. “My friend and I would like to briefly abscond Vladimir. He’s an old friend.”
“How do you know my husband?”
The woman who spoke had broad shoulders and a flat face. She could have lost thirty pounds and still been slightly overweight. Kostya smiled but felt uneasy around her. Growing up on a collectivized farm that sent most of its production hundreds of miles away to Moscow, he had waited in line for hours to buy potatoes, and hours more in a separate line for bread or milk. It was a part of life. Few average Soviet citizens had the chance to become overweight because few had the time to wait in that many lines. He doubted Vladimir’s wife had to wait in too many lines. Despite his transgressions and changes in the government, her husband was still an important man. Kostya counted on that.
“Your husband was one of the MGB officers who most influenced my own career choices,” said Kostya, reaching into his pocket for an ID card that identified him as a former army captain. He held it up and smiled. “I’ve told so many stories about Vladimir that my brother-in-law demanded I introduce him.”
Vladimir’s wife looked at Kostya’s ID before sitting straighter and putting her hand on Vladimir’s shoulder, urging him to stand. Kostya wondered if she knew about her husband’s activities while he had worked for the MGB. Probably not.
“I’m sure my husband will be most pleased to meet your brother-in-law, Comrade Captain.”
Vladimir slowly stood up and looked at his wife. “We’ll be back. Stay here.”
Kostya held out his arm, gesturing for Vladimir to precede him from the courtyard. The day felt warmer and brighter out of the shade cast by the buildings. Trees along the streets swayed in the breeze, but Kostya paid them little mind, instead focusing on the man in front of him, the man who had assaulted his aunt and allowed others to do the same to his sister. For many years he had plotted to shoot him in the back when no one could see, but he realized now that wouldn’t do. Eight years in the GRU, the main intelligence directorate of the general staff, had taught him the virtue of patience when punishing others.
“I remember you,” said Vladimir. “You’re Myra’s nephew.”
“I’m glad to have made an impression,” said Kostya, looking around. Residents of the nearby apartments had planted flowers in wooden boxes hung on balconies and windows, granting a bit of bright color to an otherwise dull building.
“How is your aunt Myra?”
“Dead,” said Kostya. “Breast cancer.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” said Kostya. “You used her like she was a toilet and then discarded her when you were done.”
“I did no such thing. Our relationship was complicated. You were a boy. You didn’t understand.”
“I wasn’t as young as you think.”
“Perhaps not,” said Vladimir, staring straight ahead. “I presume you came to my home for a reason.”
“This isn’t your home. This is your sister’s apartment. It’s her birthday. You have a much larger apartment several miles away.”
Vladimir stopped walking and looked at Kostya and then Lev as if for the first time.
“What do you two want?”
“An apology.”
Vladimir squared his shoulders to Kostya and straightened. “I’m not a man to trifle with, boy.”
“Neither am I,” said Kostya. “You sent me to the same gulag you sent my uncle Piotr. That was a mistake.”
“I did my job. That’s all.”
“You worked for a tyrant and had my uncle executed so you could fuck my aunt without wo
rry.”
Vladimir turned and headed back toward his sister’s apartment.
“Never come back here again,” he said. “I still have some sway with my former colleagues. They will arrest you.”
“If you do, you’ll find that your former colleagues don’t have the power they once did. My colleagues, on the other hand, are at your house right now.”
Vladimir stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not. Go home and find out on your own.”
He looked at Kostya from his feet to his forehead.
“Are you trying to scare me? It’s not working. Let the past stay in the past and leave me be.”
Kostya shook his head. “You could order me around when I was a child, but not anymore. Right now, you have KGB officers in your house, men I know. They will find stolen letters to Party leaders, diplomatic cables, maps showing troop deployments, documents discussing troop levels, tactics, and morale. They’ll even find an English-language typewriter. I used every favor I accrued in my years of service to acquire them.”
“You’ll have to do better than make up stories to intimidate me. Leave.”
Vladimir turned toward the apartment again and started walking. Kostya grabbed his arm by his shirtsleeve and pulled hard. Vladimir cocked his arm back to hit him, but Lev caught the old man’s arm and pinned it behind his back before he could.
“You will go to prison for this,” Vladimir snarled at them. “Army careers or not. I’m a member of the Party. You can’t touch me.”
Kostya shook his head. “As soon as you go home, you’ll be arrested. After that, you will be taken to Lubyanka Square in Moscow where you will be questioned and tortured. When you pass out from the pain, they will inject you with adrenaline so they can start over again. That’s all that will happen.”
Vladimir squirmed in Lev’s grip and sneered. “If you’re confident of these things, why tell me?”
“Because I can. When they strip you naked and tear out your fingernails, know that I ordered the evidence against you to be placed in your apartment. When they burn you with cigarettes, know that I’m watching. And when they force your face into a pile of your own filth at the end of your miserable life, know that it will be my sister’s husband who pulls the trigger. You did this to yourself, and you made me who I am, Comrade Orlesky. I will never forgive you for that.”
* * *
Chicago felt ten degrees cooler than Indianapolis, but that didn’t make it comfortable. The wind whipped through the row houses and buildings around him, carrying the scent of cinnamon and clove from a nearby bakery. When Kostya first came to the United States, the Ukrainian Village had been a neighborhood for Eastern Europeans wanting to maintain a common identity and culture, but as time progressed, many of those immigrants assimilated into the greater American culture and left the area. Now the neighborhood had more yuppies in restored Victorian row houses than Ukrainians and more sushi restaurants than Orthodox churches. Some people called that progress; Kostya had his doubts.
“Vitali still lives here?” asked Lev, looking toward the window in front of a Southwestern restaurant. Kostya and Lev had parked on the street in the center of a dense commercial district. Unlike the Loop or other major business centers in the city, few of the buildings in the Ukrainian Village reached over four stories. Kostya looked around him. From his vantage point, he could see Vitali’s bakery, several restaurants, and an art gallery on street level. Cars jammed the roads and pedestrians crowded the sidewalk. The noon sun stood high overhead. Lunch break.
“I haven’t talked to him in several years, but hopefully.”
“I hope he’s as smart as you remember.”
“Me too.”
Kostya had met Vitali Kozlov almost forty years ago in Tel Aviv, Israel. They had both been young men then, both eager and hungry to put their mark on the world outside Soviet borders. In Vitali’s case, his sojourn abroad hadn’t been entirely by choice. He grew up in a Soviet orphanage and was sent to a gulag for hooliganism at eighteen. At twenty, his Soviet jailers, in a cost-saving measure, handed him a passport that labeled him Jewish and sent him to Israel. Eventually, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. When Vitali became an information broker, Kostya didn’t know or care as long as he could use him.
Kostya walked to Vitali’s bakery and pulled open a heavy glass door. The scent of cinnamon became stronger, as did smells of yeast and sourdough. Baked sweet goods filled display windows and racks behind the counter displayed loaves of bread. Several people waited in line for service, but Kostya ignored them and flagged down a young female cashier with dyed blond hair and brown roots, drawing annoyed glances from some of the other patrons.
“I’m looking for Vitali Kozlov. Is he in?”
The cashier looked at Kostya for a moment, but then quickly looked away. “Let me get my manager.”
The cashier wiped her hands on her apron and then left the register, drawing still more annoyed glances. Kostya took a breath and leaned against the counter, ignoring those around him. When the cashier came back, a man who could have been her older brother stood beside her. He had brown hair with just a hint of red, a pinched face, and a few freckles on his cheeks. The cashier went back to ringing up customers, but the manager leaned forward and lowered his voice.
“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Kozlov?”
Kostya shook his head. “He’s an old friend,” he said, turning to Lev. The big man produced a bottle from behind his back and handed it to Kostya. “Tell him I’ve brought his favorite scotch.”
Kostya handed the bottle to the manager and eyed him as he walked off.
“That’s an odd way to treat your friends,” said Lev. “You might as well have pissed in a bottle.”
The flicker of a smile sprang to Kostya’s lips, but it disappeared before anyone but Lev could see it.
“Vitali will know what it means.”
“I hope so.”
They waited for about five minutes before the manager returned. Behind him stood a man with thin lips, glasses, and shoulders stooped with age. He smiled broadly when he saw Kostya and held up the bottle.
“The last time I drank this, I was sitting in a bar in Brighton Beach and my girlfriend had just left me for a football player.”
“You met your wife that night.”
“I did,” he said, chuckling and looking at the label. “She bought me a drink and warned me that not even homeless people would drink this excrement. Where’d you find it?”
“I had to call around.”
“Come back to my office,” said Vitali, gesturing for Lev and Kostya to step behind the counter. The customers remaining in the shop parted for them as they walked past the display counters and to the rear of the bakery. Flour dusted the countertops and floor, while loaves of bread and sweets cooled on racks beneath an exhaust fan. Men and women in white smocks and hairnets hustled from one counter to the other, carrying racks of unbaked bread, sacks of flower, or containers of yeast.
“Aside from hand mixers, we try not to use much machinery anymore,” said Vitali as they passed two men kneading bread. “Our customers like to know that our goods are handmade. We charge more for them that way. You should tell Michael out front to give you some poppy seed rolls on your way out. We made them special this morning for a wedding reception, but nobody picked them up.”
“We will,” said Kostya, watching the men and women around him work. Vitali had a thriving business, and no one stood idle. Kostya wondered if the men and women who worked there knew their boss’s primary profession. “Can we talk in private?”
“Of course,” said Vitali, gesturing toward a white door with a brass OFFICE sign screwed into the wood. Vitali opened the door with a key and stepped in first, gesturing for the two men to follow. The interior felt cramped, but cozy. It had room for a desk, two chairs, and a bookshelf containing cookbooks in various languages. Vitali sat first and put the bottle of scotch on the des
k. “It’s been a long time, Kostya. I didn’t know that I’d see you again.”
“It’s been too long,” said Kostya. “Unfortunately, I have little time to reminisce. I’m here because I need help, and you are the only person I know who can give it. A man murdered my daughter and her husband.”
Vitali blinked and leaned back.
“In Chicago?”
“In Indianapolis,” said Kostya. “I have reason to believe the man who ordered her murder lives here.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. Do you have a name?”
“Just a first name. Lukas. He traffics young women.”
Vitali ran a hand across his chin and sighed audibly. “And how did your daughter know him?”
“Does it matter?” asked Kostya, raising his eyebrows.
“To me it does,” said Vitali. “If you said your daughter was missing, I’d help you without question. I haven’t seen you for fifteen years, though, and suddenly you drop into my office looking for a very dangerous man. I want to know how you became involved with him. I don’t work with those who peddle the lives of others.”
“He murdered my daughter and her husband because my son-in-law took a girl from him in order to send her home. My family has nothing to do with his business besides having a desire to dismantle it.”
Vitali nodded, his eyes absent. “You’re sure the name was Lukas?”
“Positive.”
Vitali’s Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed, considering the request. “He calls himself the Butcher and thinks he’s more important than he is. He pays off the right people, though, so he’s allowed to operate with little interference from law enforcement or others.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
Vitali shook his head. “No, but I might be able to find out.”
“Please do. Cost is no concern,” said Kostya. “And please be discreet. I want him alive and well so I can greet him properly.”
25
Ash left the hospital and immediately drove to the police department. If Frank had delivered girls to the farm near Louisville yesterday, they needed to find them fast before Lukas’s men moved them again. Before he could do that, though, he needed to nail down the farm’s location. He commandeered an empty desk in the homicide squad and pushed aside a pair of empty diet soda cans before opening a Web browser on the computer and navigating to Google Maps.