A Wild Justice

by Craig Thomas

  The flat behind Vorontsyev’s. The explosive had been hidden in the TV set and radio-detonated. Vorontsyev had delayed on the landing outside his door, talking to a neighbour. The — terrorists had claimed they were gas fitters. Perhaps they’d got the timing wrong, or been hurried into the detonation. Whatever, they were ten seconds too early — though not for the young woman, who had been sitting at a table on the other side of the wall between her flat and Vorontsyev’s television. She and the baby had been killed instantly.

  ‘Terrible business — ‘ Trechikov began, shuffling his feet afresh as the echo of Bakunin’s hard, demanding tones returned to him. ‘I-‘ He faltered once more.

  Vorontsyev’s unplastered hand moved on the bedclothes.

  ‘I know it upsets you. Chief. She wasn’t important.’

  The tone was sympathetic, the intent icy. Dmitri Gorov appeared embarrassed, while the young detective and the woman wandered away from the bed to the other end of the spacious private room. At least he had been able to insist on that quality of treatment for his chief of detectives when neither rank nor money could demand it.

  Trechikov nodded Gorov away from the bed and sat on the chair Goludin had vacated. Dmitri, after studying Vorontsyev for a moment, nodded the other two outside and closed the door behind them. Trechikov relaxed until his gaze returned to the pitiless stare with which Vorontsyev regarded him. The room was too warm for Trechikov in his fur boots and greatcoat, but he felt that to shed the coat would be to divest himself of some last lingering authority. Vorontsyev continued to look at him as if he were a beggar who smelt of vodka and dirt.

  ‘By next week they’ll have you as good as new — ‘ he began, but Vorontsyev interrupted him, the free hand gripping Trechikov’s wrist.

  ‘Listen, Igor VassiFyevich,’ he hissed, painfully hoisting himself higher against the pillows. ‘Listen to me. I can smell their scent on you like your wife would smell another woman’s perfume!

  I know you’ve come to tell me to lay off — suspend me?’ He studied Trechikov’s face, the glare in his eyes a source of heat that drove the man back. ‘Right. That’s the crux of it. Someone’s given you your orders.’

  ‘No, Alexei — I T came to see how you were, it’s my first free hour since the … Look, you’ll have to take some leave, the investigations are in the hands of the GRU — 1 just want to make sure you get well/ Stay well, stay alive, the panic in the voice announced unambiguously. Vorontsyev retained his fierce grip.

  ‘Vera Silkova’s dead, Igor. Don’t you understand? They almost killed Marfa up on that rig, now they’ve managed it in the case of an innocent bystander.’ He was whispering, yet Trechikov was held as by some ancient mariner. ‘They don’t care. There were people in the other flats when they tried to blow me to smithereens. They killed Vera Silkova and her baby just to get at me, to make sure of me!’ He swallowed. The bruised lips were opening and closing like the pastiche of a healthy mouth. ‘I don’t care about Rawls, about the Iranian, anyone else who died because of them. But don’t tell me it’s all right, Igor, don’t tell me that!’

  He released Trechikov’s wrist. The older man rubbed it immediately, as if it had been burned. Vorohtsyev lay back once more, seeming to subside into the pillows.

  ‘I — all right, Alexei, all “right … I won’t say thai, not in the way you meant. I tried to keep you away from it, Alexei. You should have listened to me — obeyed my order.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Vorontsyev admitted grudgingly after a silence.

  ‘What do you know, Igor?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Trechikov at once protested. It was true — thank God, it was true.

  ‘Who called you, who told you to come?’

  Trechikov shook his head vehemently.

  ‘I’m here to place you on leave, Major,’ he said, fumbling for formality as for a defensive weapon.

  Vorontsyev’s lips grinned. The eyes remained hard as flint.

  Trechikov had never suspected this stubbornness before.

  ‘Bakunin?’ Trechikov was astounded, so that his expression confessed even as he attempted to control it. ‘I thought so. It had to be him. And who is he answerable to?’

  ‘How the hell would I know that?’ Trechikov burst out.

  ‘You might have a guess.’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Calm down, Igor — careful of your angina.’

  ‘I do have angina—’ Trechikov protested at the mockery.

  ‘And a pension and a dacha and a greedy wife, Igor. I know.’

  ‘It’s easy for you, Alexei’

  ‘Yours is the easy way, Igor,’ Vorontsyev sighed, his eyes filled with pain. He seemed wearied by the argument, or by whatever process of reason had preceded his observations. Trechikov felt nettled at being upbraided, but no sense of superior authority seemed to hand. ‘I tried it. I know.’

  ‘Look, Alexei, just keep your head down, man!’ Trechikov protested.

  ‘I might have done — beforeV Vorontsyev snapped. ‘I’d have got tired, we’d have got nowhere, everything would have settled down. But they couldn’t wait, could they, Igor? They couldn’t wait for that to happen! Doesn’t it irk you — just a little — that they don’t give a fuck for any normal kind of behaviour? They don’t even behave like your average crook! Their first response is explosives.’

  ‘Look, Alexei, I understand your outrage, I really do. But it will only get you ‘

  ‘- killed? I know that, too.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘I don’t have any choice. Not now. I’ve found things out.’

  Trechikov flinched away, as if Vorontsyev had announced he had a communicable disease. He was, Trechikov admitted to himself, afraid. Alexei even knew that he wouldn’t report this conversation; knew his weaknesses, his self-pity, his fear, and the shreds of decent normality he attempted to keep wrapped about him in the coldest wind.

  ‘I — there’s nothing …?’ Vorontsyev shook his head. Trechikov leaned forward/his forehead damp. ‘You’re on leave. Read that as suspension. Your team will be reassigned.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At once. For their safety, Alexei. Think of them, won’t you — whatever you decide.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Be careful — very careful, Alexei.’

  ‘Yes,’ Vorontsyev replied tiredly. There was a tinge of regret in his voice, as if he felt himself coerced on his intended path.

  Trechikov was very afraid. In a few moments, he might be able to consider Vorontsyev pig-headed, criminally stupid. But not quite at that moment. He stood up, nodded brusquely, and walked to the door. When he looked back, Vorontsyev had deliberately shut his eyes. Trechikov left, and felt himself walking through a small cloud of censure from Vorontsyev’s team, who had now been joined by another detective he recognized as Lubin. They parted for him, but he sensed their hostility, as if he had entered a puritanical courtroom, his criminality already plain in his demeanour. They were fools, blindly stupid, all of them.

  Vorontsyev opened his eyes as he heard the door open. Dmitri, Marfa, Goludin and Lubin crowded into the room, half-afraid of their visit yet deeply curious. Dmitri perched himself on the chair vacated by Trechikov and Marfa sat on the other side of the bed. The two young men remained near the door, as if guarding it against violent intruders. In a sense, that was exactly what they intended.

  ‘What did the old man want — another warning-off?’

  ‘Just that, Dmitri. He meant for my good. Like he means to reassign all of you for your own good.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Maybe it’s best, Dmitri — no, listen to me. The old man’s terrified. Bakunin’s been at him. And there has to be someone else behind Bakunin. Drugs, nuclear physicists, technicians — it’s too clever by half for that ape Bakunin. Do you understand me?

  All of you?’ He stared at each of them. One by one, they nodded like sullen children. ‘OK. I want you to realise how dangerous it is. There is no safety net, none at all. We’
ve been abandoned — that was the message and it wasn’t in code. / am on my own.

  Is that clear?’

  He looked at each of them carefully … Goludin seemed doubtful, anxious; Marfa had a clarity of enthusiasm that might be innocence or trust; Lubin attempted to appear grave.

  Dmitri — was Dmitri; there was nothing else to do but go on with it. He had no right to take anyone except Dmitri with him.

  ‘Look,’ he said tiredly, ‘I’m putting a sticking plaster on a cancer — that’s all I can do. It won’t count for anything, it won’t really help. I’ve been put in this position. My head’s above the parapet — yours aren’t.’ Dmitri’s look excepted him. He rubbed his loose jowl and the stubble of his beard rasped in the quiet of the room. ‘I’m trying to give someone who’s dying pink medicine that will do them no good at all. I refuse to let you become as futile. You understand — really understand?’

  He realised pain and pleading had both appeared in his expression. He was asking them for their help, even their protection; behaving like a demagogue, filling their heads with an ideology that was alien to them.

  ‘Don’t answer — just go,’ he said.

  Marfa burst out: ‘Whatever you say about sticking plasters sir— we know more than that!’ She glowered at the two younger men as if dragooning them into her cause. ‘That heroin — the boxes it came in, they had Grainger Foundation, Phoenix, Arizona stamped on them. The hospital’s involved, of course — but we can all guess who must be behind it…’ Her confidence faded. Perhaps it was anxiety that quietened her and made her next words uncertain. ‘Can’t we?’

  Goludin seemed on the point of panic, but Lubin smiled gravely at him, then he appeared to draw calm from their numbers.

  ‘Can we?’ Vorontsyev asked with forced lightness.

  Turgenev,’ Dmitri offered after a hot silence. ‘It has to be him. GraingerTurgenev is the ideal conduit, we’ve known that since Schneider and Rawls came into the picture. Flights in and out all the time, money no object, power to ‘

  ‘Control Bakunin and the chief,’ Vorontsyev finished. ‘I should have left it on Bakunin’s doorstep, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘As you said, he doesn’t have the brains. Or the power, really.

  Only Turgenev has that.’

  ‘Now you see why I asked you to leave — all of you?’ He looked at Dmitri, who shook his head in a minimal gesture.

  Then Dmitri said:

  ‘Here’s the rundown. I have a score to settle and, anyway, we’re friends. Lubin and Goludin think they’re on an awfully big adventure, the sort that makes cop movies — the idiots — and Maria would follow you, like a dog, wherever you went.’ The woman blushed furiously, her eyes hot, and filled with admission.

  ‘OK? Anyone been misrepresented? No? Good. The next question is — what do we do now?’

  ‘It isn’t that easy,’ Vorontsyev protested.

  ‘It is, if you’ll just keep quiet, Alexei.’

  Vorontsyev was embarrassed at their gauche, crystal enthusiasm, their blindness to reality. And relieved and grateful not to be alone. He said quietly:

  ‘You want to do this?’ In turn, after looking almost furtively at each other, they each nodded. ‘Very well,’ he sighed. ‘And thanks.’

  Then their enthusiasm burst out in a cacophony of suggestions.

  ‘We know there are a couple of scientists around ‘

  ‘Check the use of his private jet —’

  ‘Pull Schneider in, he must know who’s’

  ‘Panshin’s another key to it’

  Vorontsyev held up his hand and they eventually fell silent.

  ‘This town is Turgenev’s web. Step on it anywhere, and he’ll know about it. //he’s behind it …”

  There was no doubt. Not any longer. No one else possessed the immunity from ordinary existence that would allow them to have the chief of detectives blown up in his own home and be entirely careless of any response. He had masked the suspicion from himself during the days he had lain in that bed, terrified, only gradually certain of his own survival.

  There was so much money to be made, there was influence to be gained in the Middle East and the Moslem Triangle. Above all, there was great cunning and intelligence on display, and enormous power. Only Turgenev had power enough to control the police, Bakunin and the GRU, the American hospital, and executives of GraingerTurgenev. Only Turgenev could have had him ordered to death with such impunity …

  … the thought that had brought him sweating awake during the long last few nights. The gradual colouring of a silhouette, the growing accuracy of a photofit. Eventually, he had seen Turgenev’s features clearly. He had been in no doubt for twenty four hours now. All roads led to the hunting lodge on the tundra.

  ‘All right,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘let’s get to work. Get some more chairs, coffee and food. Just remember — ‘ He looked at his plastered arm and strapped ribs as he had done so frequently and impotently. ‘- one mistake is one too many. Just one.’

  John Lock sat in the Kim first class lounge at Toronto International, waiting for his flight to Amsterdam. He had bought the ticket with the credit card showing the last of his identities.

  With the last of his strength, too, it now seemed. His nerves were itchily weary, easily alarmed; his hand, picking up the bourbon, shook each time he stretched it towards the low table.

  He had little sense of whether it was night or day outside the windowless lounge, no sense whatsoever of his waiting fellow passengers; of the girl who served the drinks. He remained stale and unwashed and exhausted within the aftershave and the smooth cheeks and the new shirt and jacket. The denims had cleaned up sufficiently. The new sports bag at his feet was all but empty. Two paperbacks, another shirt, some underwear all bought at Toronto International.

  He looked at his watch once more, blinking the dial into focus.

  Another hour before his flight.

  He’d found the airstrip — yesterday, today? — almost four miles from the arroyo. The single-engined Cessna he had seen landing was used for crop-spraying, mail deliveries, grocery flights, the occasional passenger. For the right steep price, the pilot had flown him to Reno, Nevada. He had intended to find another plane to take him south, anonymously, to Mexico. And had known at once they would anticipate his choice. Yankees on the run always fled to Mexico, as if it was the only border they had ever heard of.

  So, he had headed north. First from Reno to Sacramento in a twelve-seater jet, then from Sacramento to Vancouver, and finally Vancouver to Toronto on Air Canada. No big airports, no security checks until he reached Canada. He’d slept overnight in an airport hotel in Vancouver, then flown to Toronto … so it was yesterday or the day before that he’d killed Tran, he realised with a jolt. The realisation was no more than a muffled, distant explosion.

  It was unreal now. As was the girl’s dead body in his apartment.

  Only the beginning of it — Beth — and the end he envisaged

  — Turgenev — were real to him. Beth and Turgenev. What Turgenev had begun, he would end.

  There was nothing else he could possibly do, even imagine.

  Nothing whatsoever.

  ELEVEN

  Incidence of Arson

  John Lock stood in the fur-lined boots he had purchased at

  Moscow’s Cheremetievo airport, hunched in his new overcoat against the evening wind and blowing snow, and stared at the ruin of the house. The traffic of Novyy Urengoy passed behind him, hissing and grinding through gritted slush, headlights flaring, brakelights eager. His cheeks were numb with the icy cold.

  His whole head ached with it, despite the fur hat he wore.

  It had taken him almost two days from Toronto to reach this place, and someone had blown it away. Curtains flapped like soaked rags at glassless windows, there was charred paintwork and stucco, a ha If-col lapsed roof, no lights. The janitor of a newish block of flats along the street had told him that terrorists had tried to kill a cop. He knew the only
cop who lived in the Tsarist, ramshackle house; Vorontsyev, the honest cop he had told Beth about, the evening before she was murdered. He could remember the interior of the house, the rooms of Vorontsyev’s apartment on the first floor. He’d accepted the Russian’s invitation to dinner, then to listen to jazz records in his apartment. Had warmed to the man almost at once, after the incident in the hotel bar had been cleared up. Now, he simply stared at the blind empty windowframes like open mouths, lightless like all the other windows. The place had been taped off by the police, but he had already seen dim figures, shabby as rats, moving amid the rubble. One of them had carried off a scorched-looking microwave cooker, two others had loaded a damaged washing machine onto a wheelbarrow and disappeared into Ehe sleet.

  Turgenev … Lock shivered. His whole being was cold. Turgenev could strike at Vorontsyev without a qualm or hesitation.

  Even the janitor somehow hadn’t believed the terrorist story, shrugging morosely and cynically after its relation. And a young woman and a baby had died, and another woman had been injured by falling masonry. Lock shook his head. He knew the town well enough to know there were no terrorists … only gangsters, the biznizmen; the Russian mafia. And he knew that Vorontsyev had been concerned about heroin — he had said as much, that evening he had invited him back to the prim, airless, lonely apartment. Heroin angered him; there was something about it killing his fnspector’s daughter, wasn’t there? However hopeless, even ludicrous it seemed, he wanted to enlist Vorontsyev’s help. He had to have the policeman’s aid. He was the only man in Novyy Urengoy he could trust.

  To get Turgenev — to have the remotest chance of killing him — required help. The help of a man he hardly knew.

  Ridiculous.

  But no other way lay open to him. No other way at all.

  Drugs, Vorontsyev, an attempted murder … Turgenev. He sensed himself forestalled, anticipated — though he knew it was all but impossible. Turgenev might already know he was in Novyy Urengoy, but it must be coincidental that Vorontsyev had become a target. Nevertheless, he shivered once more; he was not the other player in a chess game, he was a mere piece on the board.