The Moscow Code

by Nick Wilkshire

  “Why didn’t you call me after they let you go, instead of running to my hotel?” she asked.

  Charlie sighed as he remembered the lost BlackBerry. “They must have taken it, unless it fell out when they grabbed me. Either way, I’ll have to get a replacement on Monday. Assuming I’m back at the office on Monday.”

  “What are you going to do? You can’t stay in Berlin in­­definitely.”

  Charlie was wondering the same thing. He was due at the office on Monday morning, but for all he knew the cops might already be looking for him. Why hadn’t he called the police when he left Yermolov’s apartment? Or after he had been snatched off the street, instead of rabbiting to Berlin? How was it that he always found himself alone?

  You can’t run forever.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he said after a long silence. “All I wanted was to escape to a nice, quiet career in the Foreign Service. See a bit of the world, do some good and put in my time for the pension. I don’t know how everything got so fucked up.” He was feeling the effects of the scotch as he finished his second glass. “I’m sorry.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “What about the Canadian Embassy in Berlin? Surely you can talk to someone there.”

  He nodded, feeling suddenly exhausted. “That’s what I’ll do,” he said with little conviction as he tried to imagine a plausible explanation for his actions.

  “We’ve got another couple of hours,” Sophie said, putting her seat back. “I might try and get some shut-eye.”

  “Sweet dreams,” he said, closing his eyes and trying not to think about his status as a fugitive, imagining instead that he and Sophie were on a vacation together. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the feeling of dread as he looked over his shoulder again and scanned the cabin behind him. Sophie had pulled the thin, blue blanket over her shoulders, and he envied her as she dozed peacefully.

  Chapter 27

  Charlie skewered the last of a syrup-covered sausage and popped it into his mouth before setting the fork down and pushing the plate away. He had made a pig of himself at the buffet, but he didn’t care. The flight had been ahead of schedule, and with the time change, they had made it to the hotel before 1:00 a.m. He’d been able to book a room for himself.

  Despite the nap on the plane, Charlie had slept for a good seven hours before showering and heading downstairs for breakfast. But if he was hoping a good sleep would change his outlook, he was wrong. In the light of day, his situation seemed even worse. So much so that he had briefly considered checking out and getting on the next flight back to Moscow. He sipped the strong coffee and looked out the window at all the Mercedes, BMWs, and Porsches sliding by on Ebertstrasse, the morning sun glinting off their high-gloss metal skins. He noticed the thin layer of white on the ground from an overnight snowfall as he glanced across the street toward Leipziger Platz and the Canadian flag flapping from the top of one of the newer buildings. There was no avoiding the chat he was going to have to have with the embassy’s security officer.

  “Deep in thought?”

  He looked up to see Sophie standing over him, her auburn hair tied back in a tight ponytail. She had traded in her jeans and sweater for form-fitting athletic wear that made her even more attractive, if that was possible. He tossed his napkin over the remnants of his fatty breakfast and waved to the chair opposite him.

  “Morning.”

  “Sleep well?” she asked, taking a seat as a server appeared with a fresh carafe of coffee.

  He waited until their cups were filled, then replied, “Yes. You?”

  “Like a baby.” She looked out the window to where Charlie had been staring and spotted the flag. “Is that the Canadian Embassy?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you going to go talk to someone there?”

  “Maybe later,” he said, sipping his coffee.

  “I don’t want you to get into any trouble, Charlie.”

  “I’ll be fine. Any word from Steve’s girlfriend here?”

  “She wants to meet at noon. She lives near Friedrichstrasse station, if you know where that is.”

  “Not sure, but I think it’s pretty central. We can get the S-Bahn over there.” He motioned across the street to the Metro station. “It’s probably only a couple of stops.”

  “What is it?” he asked, sensing her sudden preoccupation.

  “Did Steve mention her to you at all?”

  “The German girlfriend?” Charlie asked, sipping his coffee. “No, why?”

  “I was just wondering. It feels kind of awkward given we just talked to another girlfriend in Moscow. I can’t say I’m surprised. I just hope he wasn’t misleading anyone.”

  “Maybe they weren’t exclusive,” Charlie said, trying to sound knowledgeable about current dating practices.

  “I guess dating isn’t what it used to be.”

  Charlie laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “You make it sound like you’re eighty or something.”

  “I guess it could be worse,” she said with a grin. Charlie said nothing as he finished his coffee, thinking the statement sounded ridiculous coming from her — young, beautiful, and a successful surgeon to boot.

  “What are you smirking about now?” Sophie asked.

  “What?” Charlie set his cup down, wondering if his expression had somehow betrayed what he was thinking.

  “You have this … look.” Something about the way she was staring at him made him laugh again. Her severe expression broke into her own smirk, followed by a full-blown smile that lit her face. “You’re pretty chipper for a guy who’s off the reservation,” she added.

  “I’m just a guy enjoying a weekend in Berlin,” he said, maintaining his smile. “Until Monday, that is — then I’m officially AWOL.”

  She nodded. “You’re right. All we have to do is figure this all out over the weekend and we’re golden.” She raised her glass of orange juice in a salute before taking a sip.

  They took the S-Bahn from Potsdamer Platz and got off at Friedrichstrasse. Walking down from the upper platform into the central part of the station, they were overwhelmed by the smell of coffee and pastries. Outside, the sun was shining on a beautiful fall day as they made their way east over the river Spree and toward the address. They found it in a side street a few blocks past the river — a four-storey building connected on either side to buildings whose facades were much better maintained. The rack by the front door, overflowing with bicycles of every description, gave the impression of a student dorm, but Charlie remembered that lots of people rode bikes in Berlin, not just students. They scanned the directory outside the front door, and Sophie pressed the button next to “Donner, H.”

  They waited for a response, but when it came, it wasn’t from the little microphone, but from somewhere over their heads. They stepped back and looked up to see a woman’s dark hair waving in the wind as she leaned over a little balcony on the fourth floor.

  “Hello?”

  “Heidi?” Sophie looked up. “I’m Sophie Durant, and this is my friend Charlie,” she said as he gave the young woman his most reassuring smile. “Can we come up?”

  Heidi disappeared above the rail and a few seconds later, the entrance door began to buzz. The four flights of stairs took them a couple of minutes, during which time Charlie tried to focus on his breathing and avoid staring at Sophie’s Lycra-clad backside as she gracefully took each step with ease. As they reached the fourth-floor landing, a door opened and a young woman in her late twenties appeared in jeans and a hoodie, her wavy black hair tied back in a hurried ponytail.

  “Come in.”

  “Thanks for meeting us on a Saturday,” Sophie said as she and Charlie made their way inside.

  “It’s no problem,” Heidi said, her English enveloped in the singsong edge of her native German. “Come,
let’s sit down.” She led the way past the cluttered entrance into a small living area that brought to mind an IKEA display after an especially hectic Saturday. Sophie and Charlie sat on a couch as Heidi took the chair opposite, curling her legs up under her. “I’m so sorry to hear about Steven.”

  “Thank you,” Sophie said. “Did you know him well?”

  Charlie sensed the unspoken communication between the two women as Heidi hesitated. “We were friends,” she eventually said. “At one time, we were more than that, but when Steven decided to move to Moscow, we … well, you know how it is.”

  Sophie gave a sad smile, and Charlie wondered if it was because her brother had never told her about Heidi. It seemed to Charlie that there was a lot the brother and sister didn’t know about each other.

  “He never told you about us,” Heidi continued. “But he talked about you often. He was very proud of you.”

  Sohie’s words seemed to catch in her throat as she spoke. “How did you … hear about Steve’s death?”

  “One of his former colleagues here in Berlin is a mutual friend. He was in touch with the Moscow office where Steven worked. He thought I should know.” She changed position on the couch. “I knew you were a surgeon in Toronto, so I found your contact information online so I could offer my — how do you say? — condolences. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not,” Sophie said. “It was very kind of you.”

  “I have a younger brother myself and …”

  A silence descended over the room for a few seconds before Heidi sprang to her feet. “I made coffee. Would you like some?”

  They accepted, and she returned a few minutes later with a tray laden with an assortment of brightly patterned enamel mugs, a French press full of rich-smelling coffee, and a little plate of biscuits.

  “Do you know what happened to him?” Heidi asked as she pushed the coffee plunger down slowly.

  “Just that he died in police custody. He had been picked up at a party on some trumped-up drug charge.”

  Heidi snorted in disgust as she poured the coffee into the mugs and passed them over. “That’s ridiculous. Steven was no drug dealer, and he would have known better than to get involved with them in Moscow, of all places.”

  Sophie nodded. “How did your friend say he died?”

  “He didn’t, really.” Heidi sipped her coffee and looked at them both before continuing. “The Moscow office said his death was under investigation, but that it seemed like an accident.”

  “The official line is suicide.” Sophie drank from her coffee. “Which is total bullshit.”

  Heidi nodded. “I think we both know Steven would never do that. He was so full of life.” She reached for a tissue and blew her nose.

  “When was the last time you saw Steve?” Charlie asked after giving Heidi a moment.

  “About three months ago,” she said, nodding again as she recalled the time frame. “I saw him in a coffee shop around the corner. He was sitting there, in the corner, working on his laptop. I almost didn’t want to interrupt, he looked so … intent, and we hadn’t seen each other since we split up. But he saw me and gave me that big smile of his.” She seemed absorbed by the scene as Sophie and Charlie looked on in silence. “I should have known he would be as kind as he always was. I really loved him, do you know?”

  Charlie noticed that Sophie seemed to be struggling to maintain her own composure, so he decided to pitch in again.

  “Did he say what he was doing in Berlin?”

  “He said he was working on something, but he didn’t really say what. I got the impression it was outside of his regular work in Moscow, though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t think he enjoyed his work very much. He always said technical writing and translation was boring.”

  “It’s the last thing I would ever have thought he’d be doing,” Sophie said with a smile.

  Heidi smiled back. “Exactly. Steven was much more of a free spirit, and it showed. But he seemed very passionate about whatever he was working on that day. We were together for months and I don’t ever remember him working on the weekend or bringing work to a coffee shop. He used to make fun of people who did that.”

  “That’s Steve,” Sophie said, then her smile faded. “You said he had a laptop?”

  “Yes.” Heidi paused, as they both looked on in anticipation. “What is it?”

  “It’s just that there was no laptop among his things, either at his apartment or office,” Charlie said. “It’s possible he sold it or it broke, I suppose.”

  “I don’t think he would have sold it,” Heidi said. “He loved it. He stored all his music and work on it.”

  “He didn’t say if he was writing anything, did he?” Sophie asked. “He was always going on about wanting to write a novel.”

  “He told me the same thing, and I wondered if that was what he was working on, but he really didn’t say. We chatted for a while, laughed, and then I left him there, after we promised to stay in touch. Now I’ll never see him again.” Her eyes glistened with tears. The three of them drank their coffee and talked for another fifteen minutes or so, Charlie and Sophie asking questions and not learning much of particular interest.

  “Thank you for meeting us on such short notice,” Sophie said at last, rising to her feet. “We really appreciate it.”

  “Of course. If there’s anything I can do … well, you know how to reach me.”

  At the door, Sophie asked, “When you saw Steve in the coffee shop that day, he didn’t say where he was staying, did he?”

  “In Berlin? No, but you might want to check with Gunther.”

  “Gunther?”

  “He and Steven used to work together, before your brother went to Moscow. They were good friends, and I’m sure if Steven was in town, he would probably have stayed there.”

  “I don’t suppose you have his contact information?”

  “Just a minute,” Heidi said, disappearing back into the kitchen and returning after a few seconds of rustling noises. “Here’s his card. His mobile is on the back.” A frown creased her brow. “I probably should have called him. I don’t know if he knows that Steven …” She trailed off.

  “Don’t worry,” Sophie said. “I’ll tell him. It was really nice to meet you, Heidi. I can see why Steve liked you.”

  The two women shared a brief hug at the door, and Charlie waited until they were back outside before looking at Sophie.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded. “I just need some air. Let’s walk down to the river.”

  They walked in silence back toward Friedrichstrasse, then down along by the water. The bright sunlight was enough to take the edge off the cold, and the walking path was full of strollers.

  “You sure you’re all right?” Charlie asked when Sophie came to a stop and leaned up against the rail. A tour boat glided by, a smattering of tourists snapping pictures from the top deck.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” she said, fixing him with those green eyes. “We’re quite a pair. Me trying to find out what those bastards did to Steve, you trying to figure out whether you can go back to Moscow without being arrested.” She gave a grim laugh and looked back out over the water.

  “You’re thinking about the laptop?”

  “I’m thinking how little I knew about my kid brother. I wasn’t a very good sister.”

  “Don’t do that to yourself. You had separate lives. Steve was the one who chose to roam around Eastern Europe. You can hardly blame yourself if you didn’t know every detail about his life.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “I was the one who stayed close to home. I did all the family dinners, attended all the functions, pretended to be happily married — but in the end it didn’t matter, and why should it have? Everyone loved Steve.”

  “He loved you,
too, Sophie. Didn’t you hear what Heidi said? What they all say.”

  They stood in silence for a while, leaning on the rail.

  “Well, there was clearly something on that laptop that Steve, or someone else, didn’t want anyone to see,” she said.

  “Maybe it was stolen, taken by some unscrupulous cop or prison official who was only interested in pawning the laptop itself.” He stopped when he noticed her expression. “All right. Suppose there was something on it?”

  “I’ve got to find out what he was working on.” She looked out at the river. “I agree with Heidi — it seems odd for him to be working on a weekend. Plus, he would have been in town for a few days. I would have thought he’d spend some time in his favourite beer hall.”

  Charlie nodded. “So let’s talk to this Gunther guy.”

  “Maybe he knows something we don’t,” Sophie said, fishing out her cellphone and punching in the number on the back of the card. Charlie could tell from her expression that she had gotten his voice mail. After she had left a message with her number, she put the phone away and slipped on her sunglasses.

  “Come on, let’s keep walking,” she said, turning away from the rail. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with the exercise.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said, thinking that he was the one who needed exercise. He had been breathless by the time she had floated effortlessly up Heidi’s stairs. “The Tiergarten’s this way. You game?”

  “Why not?”

  As they set off again, Charlie couldn’t help a smile. He might be personally adrift, his career on the line and pos­sibly wanted by the Moscow police for murder, but there still seemed no place he would rather be at that very moment.