Chapter 28
They were sitting in the glassed-in section of the restaurant, overlooking the green expanse of the Tiergarten, when Sophie’s cellphone rang.
“Sophie Durant,” she said, snatching it up from the table. Charlie looked on to see if it might be the anticipated call from Gunther and was surprised when she passed him the phone. “It’s for you.”
“Uh, hello?” he said, wondering who would be calling him via Sophie. His stomach sank as he heard the voice of Bob Rouleau, the head of security at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow.
“Charlie, where the hell are you? We’ve been trying to reach you all last night and this morning. Do you still have your BlackBerry?”
“I forgot I’d turned it off last night,” he lied. “What’s up?” He preferred not to mention his whereabouts for the time being.
“The Moscow police want to question you in connection with a murder that happened Thursday night — a man named Sergei Yermolov. They say they got a tip that you were at the crime scene.” Charlie waited for more detail before saying anything.
“You need to come in right away so we can talk about this. We’ll need to consult with Justice and arrange an interview with the police as soon as possible. When can you be at the embassy?”
“Uh, I’m not actually in Moscow,” Charlie said, wondering how much he should be saying on a cellphone. Then again, the Russians, and Rouleau for that matter, had only to check his passport data or the GPS in Sophie’s phone to find out where he was. “I’m in Berlin.”
“Berlin? What are you doing there?” Rouleau said, and although his question followed a brief pause, he didn’t sound surprised by the news, which made Charlie think he had checked his passport activity first.
“I just came for the weekend.”
“With the Durant woman?” The tone said everything.
“I’ll be back tomorrow evening. Can it wait until then?”
“No, it can’t, and if we don’t deal with this today, you’ll be detained when you fly into Domodedovo tomorrow.” Charlie waited while there was a rustling at the other end, then Rouleau’s voice returned. “I’m going to give you the number for my counterpart in Berlin. I want you to call him as soon as you hang up and arrange to meet at the mission there this afternoon. We’ll set up a secure conference call and deal with this.”
“Okay.” Charlie was nodding and apparently looking as worried as he felt, if Sophie’s expression across the table was any indication. He took out a pen and scribbled the number on a napkin.
“Call him right away, Charlie. Understood?”
“Yeah, sure,” Charlie said, wondering what Rouleau was thinking, or what he had been told by the Moscow police. Was it possible that he thought Charlie might actually have murdered someone? “Listen, Bob, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I didn’t say you did, but we need to straighten this thing out as soon as we can. The sooner you get in touch with the security head there, the better.”
“You’re making me nervous, Bob.”
“That’s not my intent, but you have to realize this is a serious matter. And we have to follow standard procedure.”
“Of course. I’ll call right away.”
“And, Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Make you sure you turn your BlackBerry on.”
He hung up the phone and handed it back to Sophie.
“Who was that?”
“The head of security for the embassy in Moscow. He doesn’t sound too happy with me. He wants me to go to the embassy here and basically turn myself in. I think I might be … fucked.”
“You did nothing wrong, other than try to help —” She was interrupted by the ring of her phone.
“That’s probably him again.”
“Sophie Durant. Yes … Gunther? Thanks for calling me back. I’m Steve Liepa’s sister.”
Charlie watched her as she answered the next question awkwardly. “He’s … well, I’m afraid he died last week, in Moscow.” There was a pause as Gunther apparently digested this information. “I’m in Berlin and I wonder whether you could spare me a few minutes….” Another pause. Then, “I’m in the Tiergarten right now. The … yes, well, I can find it. Prenzlauer Berg … yes.” She was scribbling furiously as she nodded. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She disconnected and waved at the server. “He says it’s about half an hour by S-Bahn. Did you want to call your embassy contact?” She held out the phone.
Charlie stared at it for a second before answering. What difference did it make if he turned himself in now or later this afternoon? “I think I’ll come along for the ride, if that’s all right with you.”
Sophie and Charlie walked into the crowded restaurant and made their way to the bar. It was only mid-afternoon, but the clientele was mostly students, and the preferred order mostly beer, so it seemed like the sort of place that could really get hopping early on a Saturday and go long into the night. Sophie was looking toward the rear corner of the room when a tall, dark-haired man in his thirties approached her from the other end of the bar.
“Ms. Durant?”
“Yes?”
“Gunther Volkmann. I have a table for us in the corner.”
“Charlie.” Charlie extended his hand and the German shook it, then led them to a booth at the far end of the bar.
“I am very sorry to hear about Steven,” Volkmann began, as they sat. “He was a good friend and will be missed.”
“Thank you,” Sophie said, slipping off her coat. Charlie did the same. The crush of young bodies filling the place made the air seem close and stuffy. “We appreciate your meeting with us like this.”
Volkmann nodded. “Have you come from Moscow?”
“Yes. I’m on my way back to Canada, and Charlie …” She paused uncertainly.
“I’m with the Canadian Embassy in Moscow,” Charlie supplied. “I’m assisting Sophie.”
She brought Volkmann up to speed on the official version of her brother’s death, at the end of which she said, “I gather you believe he was a drug trafficker as much as I do, but the Russian authorities are sticking to their official version.”
“This, at least, is not surprising,” Volkmann said as the server delivered their drinks.
“You’ve worked in Moscow?” she asked.
Volkmann shook his head. “Not personally, but I know several colleagues who have spent time there over the years — you hear things.” He paused and then raised his glass. Sophie and Charlie took their cue and did the same.
“To Steven,” Volkmann said, and his solemn toast was followed by an awkward silence. Charlie decided to break it first.
“We’re trying to find out as much as we can about Steve’s activities in the past few months, and we’ve noticed he spent a lot of time in Berlin.”
“We were hoping,” Sophie interjected, “that you might be able to tell us more about what he was doing.”
Volkmann set his beer down and met her gaze. “I will tell you everything I know, of course, but I fear you will be disappointed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think … I know Steven was working on something very important to him. I knew him for some time and yet I never knew that side of him. He seemed almost obsessed with whatever he was doing. But he never told me what it was.”
“Was he writing a book?”
“He was writing something.” Volkmann nodded. “He spent every moment with his laptop. Did he tell you he was writing a book?”
“No, but you’re not the first person to mention the laptop,” she said, looking at Charlie.
Volkmann followed her gaze and frowned. “What is it?”
“It’s just that the laptop wasn’t at his apartment or office,” Sophie said.
“He preferred to le
ave it at my place, rather than bring it to Moscow,” Gunther said, reaching under the table and bringing out a small duffel bag. “He said he didn’t trust the locks on his apartment door in Moscow. He left some personal things, too. I brought them for you.”
“You have his laptop?” Sophie said, with something close to disbelief. She hesitated before taking the bag.
“It’s mostly clothes,” Volkmann continued. “But he had a rucksack that he always carried his computer in.”
Sophie opened the bag and looked inside, pulling out the little canvas bag with the laptop inside. Aside from it, the duffel contained mostly clothes — a sweatshirt, a couple of T-shirts, and a pair of jeans. There were a half-dozen books and some toiletries. She plucked a balled-up T-shirt from the bag and unfolded it, staring at the logo of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“I bought him this,” she said with a grim smile. “The last time he was in Toronto. It was around his birthday and I got us a pair of Leafs tickets at centre ice. We went out to dinner, took in the game, and I bought him this while he was lined up to get us a couple of beers. We had such a good time.” She hesitated, the T-shirt held tightly in her hands as she stared at the crest, then rolled it up and put it back in the bag.
“I’m very sorry,” Volkmann said. “I wish I knew more about what he was working on.”
“Me, too,” Sophie said, unzipping the canvas bag and retrieving the silver laptop from a padded case. She opened it and turned it on as Volkmann and Charlie looked on.
“Shit, it’s password protected,” she said with a sigh, flipping the laptop around so they could see.
Volkmann pointed to the screen. “I can get through that — if you want me to, that is.”
“It’s that easy?” Charlie looked at Volkmann, who smiled.
“If your job is computer security, then yes,” he replied, and when Sophie nodded, he turned the laptop toward himself and started tapping keys. A few clicks later, he was on Steve’s desktop, the background a photo of a sunset over water. He turned the screen to Sophie.
“I have that picture somewhere,” she said. “Steve took it himself.” She stared at the screen for a moment before turning it so all three of them could see. “Let’s see what he had on here.” She launched the explorer function and brought up the documents stored on the hard drive. She flipped through a series of folders, some of which contained what looked like technical manuals, others miscellaneous correspondence and emails. She paused as the cursor hovered over a folder entitled MC.
“Does that mean something to you?” Charlie asked.
She shook her head as she clicked it open. “No, but it’s empty, anyway.” She frowned and went back to the desktop and, after clicking around for a few more minutes, she gave up.
“Well, that’s not much help,” she said.
Volkmann looked at his watch. “I should really be going. If there’s anything I can do, or if I find anything else of Steve’s at my place, I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you, Gunther,” she said. “I really appreciate this.” She looked at the bag as Volkmann stood to go.
“And I’m very sorry for your loss,” he added as he turned to leave.
Sophie and Charlie sat at the table in silence for a while after Volkmann had gone, then Sophie reached into the bag and pulled out the handful of paperbacks and spread them on the table. The first two were mysteries, but the rest were non-fiction — true crime and books about the drug trade, biker gangs, and the like. Charlie picked up one entitled Global Mafia.
“It looks like Steve had an interest in investigative journalism,” he said, flipping through the book.
“I guess so,” Sophie said, picking up another on the drug trade. “Interesting that none of these were in his Moscow apartment, don’t you think?”
Charlie tried to recall what type of books they had found in Liepa’s bachelor pad — mostly novels, apart from the technical manuals he was translating. “You think that’s because he didn’t want to give anyone in Moscow any clues as to what he was working on?”
“That’s apparently why he left his laptop here in Berlin,” she said, pointing to the computer. “Though there doesn’t seem to be much on it.”
Charlie frowned, then pulled the laptop closer. “Do you mind?”
“Be my guest.”
Charlie scanned the desktop, located the icon for the word-processing program, and clicked on it. Sophie looked on as they waited for the program to open. Once a blank document appeared on the page, Charlie clicked around under the file button until a drop-down list appeared.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the list of recent documents — the ones Steve would have opened lately,” he said, scanning the list of about ten names, most of which were files Sophie had already looked up on her search of the computer’s file directories. The titles were everything from groceries to itinerary. He clicked on the link to the document entitled itinerary, but it came up blank. As did a document entitled simply MC.
“The same name as the empty folder on the hard drive,” Sophie said, looking over his shoulder with interest.
“Except this is a reference to an actual file. The path is to the E: directory — must have been a USB. I’m curious about this itinerary. Look at the date.”
“It’s just before Steve went to Paris.”
Charlie nodded, then right-clicked on the second path, which brought up the properties of the document entitled MC. He leaned closer to the screen.
“What is it?”
“Look at the size of this thing,” he said, pointing to the line that showed the document was almost five hundred kilobytes. The shopping list, by comparison, was under ten. He clicked back into the main directory and pulled up a translation of almost thirty pages and checked its size — it was less than two hundred kilobytes.
“Whatever it was, it was fifty or sixty pages long.”
“MC — it’s got to be someone’s initials, but whose?” Sophie reached for the canvas bag and searched inside. “I don’t suppose we’d be lucky enough to find the USB stick in here.”
“What about the duffel?” Charlie asked when her search turned up only a few pens, a pack of gum, and some Post-it Notes. She searched all the pockets and turned up nothing of interest, other than a four-inch, soft rubber bear with “Berlin” stamped across the belly. Charlie had seen them in the airport gift shop — the city’s mascot.
“It’s not in here,” she said with a sigh, tossing the bear back into the bag. She was staring at the Maples Leafs shirt still on the table in front of her when Charlie put his hand on her arm.
“We’ll find it, don’t worry. And we’ll get to the bottom of this, one way or the other, I promise.”
She looked at him and gave a feeble smile before balling up the T-shirt and putting it and the rest of all that remained of her brother back into the bag.
Chapter 29
Charlie sat in the fourth-floor conference room, waiting for the return of the security officer. He glanced at the digital thermostat and was surprised to see that it was a couple of degrees below normal room temperature. He felt warm all over.
“Sorry about that, but I was waiting to print this off.” Tom Edwards was younger than Charlie by at least a decade, and his loose-fitting fleece vest did nothing to conceal his athletic build. Charlie wasn’t sure if Edwards was with Defence or RCMP, but he had no problem imagining him with an assault rifle or Mountie-issue Beretta in hand.
“This is the latest from Moscow,” Edwards said, taking a seat opposite Charlie and pointing at the sheet of paper. “It seems the local police want to have a talk with you, and they’re being pretty insistent. I understand you’ve talked to Moscow this morning, so you know what this is about?”
Charlie gave a nod.
“Before we go any further, you should know that if you were involved in the death of a local
on Russian soil, the consequences —”
“I wasn’t involved in anything. I just happened to show up at his place when he —”
Edwards put up a hand. “We’ll get to that. I just want to make sure you understand the situation, that’s all. You may want to consider hiring a lawyer.”
“I appreciate the warning, but I’m a lawyer myself. I know my rights.” There was an awkward pause, and Charlie knew he had sounded far too defensive. There was also the fact that what he knew about criminal law in Canada could fit on half a cocktail napkin and was out of date by about fifteen years. As for Russia …
“You’re a lawyer?”
Charlie felt the colour rising to his cheeks, as Edwards continued.
“I haven’t seen your file, so I didn’t know. Anyway, you obviously understand why we have to be careful.”
“I do, so what’s the plan for my return to Moscow?”
“We’ll get to that. Can I ask you why you left?”
“I’m allowed to do what I want on my free time,” Charlie said, feigning indignation and trying to stay away from the subject of his capture and interrogation the day before. “Last time I checked, it was a free country — Canada, I mean.”
Edwards nodded. “It’s just that, given your alleged attendance at a murder scene on Thursday night, it might look a bit suspicious … to the Russians. Why didn’t you mention any of this to the Moscow mission?”
“What am I supposed to say? I went to see Yermolov to ask him some questions about a consular case I’m working on and found him dead.” Charlie sighed. “To be honest, I was a bit shaken up. I would have mentioned it to the mission in due course, but I thought a little break might be —”
Charlie was glad for the interruption of Edwards’s BlackBerry, realizing how implausible his version of events sounded. Edwards answered the call and glanced at Charlie as he spoke, then read off the number for the speakerphone sitting on the table in front of them before hanging up.
“That was the head of mission in Moscow. She wants to talk to you … to us.”
The Moscow Code Page 18