by Glenn Meade
As they moved deeper into the building, more light began to filter from shattered windows and shell holes in the roof. Kelly and his men turned off their flashlights.
Carla saw a thick layer of dust cover the ground, some of the walls caked with graffiti. “Murderers go to Hell!” “Walk with the devil, die with the devil!”
They passed rooms with rusted metal beds, no doubt where the guards raped women. On some of the walls crude sexual symbols were drawn.
They came to a crossroads of corridors.
Two led left, and two right.
Kelly shone his flashlight. Mounds of bomb wreckage choked one corridor on each side, blocking them with fallen masonry and rubble. Bombs had shattered the ceilings, and electrical cables hung down like thin black snakes.
These two corridors looked impossible to penetrate.
Shafts of light filled the other two corridors, some of the doors along the passageways missing or smashed off their hinges.
Carla felt her breathing quicken, her pulse drumming in her ears.
Kelly gestured with the flashlight. “Do you remember which one?”
“I . . . I think it’s this way.”
She picked her way down the left corridor, Kelly and the others following.
Where a door was closed, Carla opened it, the hinges creaking.
In several rooms were rusting steel filing cabinets and shattered furniture. Behind one door was an electrical switch room, the wires a mess, hanging like spaghetti.
But no janitor’s closet.
“I was wrong. This isn’t the one. I has to be the next corridor—the one that’s blocked.”
Kelly shouted to his colleagues. “Go get the JCB digger, boys! Knock down the front doors if you have to, but get that bloody thing in here, pronto.”
• • •
Carla moved back to the mouth of the next corridor. It was blocked by a huge mound of wreckage.
She felt certain this was the one that led to the closet.
She began to lift pieces of debris from the mound. A shower of ceiling plaster and dust fell from above.
Kelly said, “Steady on, girl. I don’t like the look of that ceiling. It could cave in. Wait until the digger arrives.”
But she was barely listening. She grasped a shattered plank of wood and cast it aside.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
Ignoring Kelly, she moved a slab of ceiling plaster next. She worked furiously, in a kind of fearful desperation.
Kelly tried to stop her but she pushed him aside forcefully. Outside, they heard the JCB start up, and then came a crashing sound, as if the men had rammed the digger through the entrance doors.
Carla kept working, frantically. She coughed and sputtered.
The plaster dust was like a film of talcum powder, and it covered bumps of debris on the floor. Her right foot hit something hard, shaking off some of the dust—a soldier’s old boot.
Then she stepped on something soft.
She nudged it with the tip of her shoe, and saw a flash of blue and red. A shiver ripped through her heart.
She dropped to her knees, brushed the dust off the object.
She recognized the Thomas the Train motif, the little blue engine with huge eyes and a smile.
“What’s wrong?” Kelly asked.
“My—my brother’s backpack . . .” Her breath came in gasps as she examined it.
The zipper was open. Fear pounding her chest, she turned the rucksack upside down. The contents tumbled out.
A rusted tin of sardines. A shabby pair of boy’s underwear and undershirt.
A shiny stone, a piece of string. The kind of things infinitely important to a small boy.
A 1986 silver dollar coin in a plastic case.
The last thing to tumble out was a piece of a blue material.
Luka’s comforter.
His blankie . . .
She squeezed the piece of cotton, began to tremble, a cry building inside her, and her eyes felt wet.
She scrabbled again at the debris, grasping huge chunks of masonry. A noise roared in her ears as the men arrived with the JCB.
Kelly grabbed ahold of her shoulders. “Please, move back. We’ll have it cleared in no time.”
The machine’s claw plowed into the mound. In no more than two minutes it cleared a path through the rubble, leaving only a cloud of choking dust.
They seemed the longest two minutes in Carla’s life.
She was trembling so much she could hardly breathe, from the dust, from dread, and she had to hold her sides.
Once the digger broke through, the driver backed it up, leaving a gap wide enough to step through.
Kelly turned on his flashlight. A corridor lay beyond.
Doors either side. Some ripped off their hinges, others intact.
“Stop! Stop the bloody machine . . . !” Kelly made a cutting gesture to his neck.
The driver killed the noisy engine.
Silence engulfed them.
Kelly, his face covered in dust, his arm over his mouth and nose, looked back at Carla.
Her eyes were wide, afraid.
Without a word, she grabbed the flashlight from Kelly and stumbled through the gap.
• • •
The flashlight sliced through the dusty air like a silver blade.
She saw that the debris had been right up against a door.
She shone the light on its grimy engraved sign: DOMAR.
She remembered the word.
Janitor.
She gripped the handle, twisted.
The closet door wouldn’t budge. Debris was scattered at the bottom of the door and she kicked it away.
She jerked the handle again. It still didn’t move.
Kelly was behind her now. “Here, let me try . . .”
He turned the handle, yanked hard, and Carla heard a splintering crack. The wood appeared to be jammed or swollen in its frame.
Kelly yanked again. The door creaked open an inch or two, then stuck.
Before Kelly could yank it again, Carla slid the fingers of both her hands into the gap of the door frame and pulled with all her strength.
The door groaned and cracked open.
A moldy odor hit them. Carla couldn’t speak. She felt bile rise in her throat and clasped a hand to her mouth to muffle a gasp.
“Step back, Carla. Do as I say, please,” Kelly urged, and tried to pull her away, but she fought him off desperately.
Inside the storeroom she saw the mummified remains of several children.
Some were curled up on the floor; some were standing. Their empty eye sockets were huge gaping holes, and their features were beyond recognition.
The bodies still had hair and clothes, but the garments were shriveled up, a mottled brown color. One of the bodies was of a little girl, her long hair plaited down to her waist.
Another was a little boy with dark locks. Carla felt a strange fluttering in her chest, as if her heart was about to stop.
She gave a cry that sounded like a strangled moan.
Then she sank on her knees to the floor and screamed.
For her mother, for her father, for Luka.
A terrible scream that seemed to echo throughout the building, like a cry from all the souls of all the dead who had ever perished there.
PART FIVE
44
* * *
NEW JERSEY
The man who called himself Billy Davix admired the pole dancer’s legs as she swung them around the steel bar, her blond hair flailing the air.
Music blared, a Rolling Stones number.
A waitress came over and placed a vodka-and-tonic on Billy’s table. All the women working in the bar were terrific lookers, even in the low lighting of the private club.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?”
Billy peeled some bills from his wallet and nodded to the pole dancer. “Yeah, how about the new girl?”
“You’ve got expensive tastes.”
“You’re right there, baby. Do me a favor and tell the man upstairs that Billy is here to see him.”
“Sure.”
Billy watched the woman’s retreating figure beneath her tight skirt. The private club did pretty good business. Only Wednesday evening, but buzzing.
Some of the women at the bar looked like the hookers they were; too much lipstick and makeup and cheap flashy clothes. Tonight the male patrons were Russian and Serb mostly, tough-looking guys wearing leather jackets.
Billy could never understand the leather jacket thing with mobsters. As if it was the ultimate symbol of success. His old man was the same. First thing he did when he came to the States when Billy was four, his old man bought himself a black leather jacket. How tacky could you get?
Dumb. It made you stand out like a thug.
Dobrashin, Arkov’s bodyguard, waddled over to the table. Another leather jacket. Built like a sumo wrestler, the effects of too many steroids. His nose looked like it had been hammered into his face, his arms swollen with energy.
He was from one of the ’stans—Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, wherever—an Asiatic hint in his slanting eyes.
He sorta reminded Billy of that ukulele-playing Hawaiian guy, Israel something, who had a hit with “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”
Despite Dobrashin’s ferocious size, Billy knew he could waste him, no problem.
“The boss said to go right on up.”
• • •
Arkov sat behind the laptop on his desk and indicated the seat opposite.
“Take a seat, Billy.”
Billy knew his old man’s cousin was wanted by Interpol and half the cops on the planet, but Billy also knew the supreme importance of kanun—loyalty—and besa, secrecy.
His old man worked for Arkov’s people for years as an enforcer, doing what he did best, muscle and mayhem, until a heart attack whacked him at fifty-six as he watched The Sopranos. His mom buried his old man in his shiny leather jacket, dazzling white shirt with white tie, slicked black hair—Billy thought his old man looked like a penguin in the coffin.
Billy preferred a tailor-made suit or casual jacket. That way, you didn’t stand out like a mobster from central casting.
Billy never finished high school, but six years with the U.S. Marines gave vent to his natural aggression and gave him all the education he needed. Except the weird thing was, if Billy had his way, he would have liked to have been an actor.
Everyone told him he looked like Billy Bob Thornton, only better-looking. He even tried walking the boards but all he’d had to show for twelve months of sweat and poverty were a crappy TV battery commercial alongside the Energizer Bunny, a bit part in his old man’s favorite show, The Sopranos, and a month wearing tights with the rent-a-crowd in Hamlet.
The entire world’s a stage and he didn’t get cast in a decent role. Thanks a bunch, but crime paid better.
Arkov came around slowly from behind his desk and sat on the edge.
The office blinds were drawn, the light on overhead.
Arkov splashed Scotch into a crystal tumbler. “So what’s the story with the woman?”
“You mind if I ask why you’ve got me watching her?”
“Patience, Billy. Give me the story first. It’s why I pay you and the boys.”
Billy removed a manila envelope from inside his coat pocket, and unfolded a sheaf of photograph copies and pages. “It’s all in here. Including some hard copy of stills from the video I took.”
Arkov took the envelope but tossed it on the desk. “I’m a one-sheet man, Billy. Tell me.”
“She lives alone. She wasn’t there when I called to bug the phone. But her grandmother was.”
“Where was she?”
“Abroad. Guess where?”
“I’m past guessing.”
“The old country. Dubrovnik.”
Arkov raised his eyes.
“You certain about that?”
“Yeah, I saw a printout of an airline booking in her name. JFK to Rome, Rome to Dubrovnik. I put a copy in the envelope.”
“Any idea why she went there?”
“Nope, not yet. But I’m working on it—I’ve asked our people back home to keep their eyes and ears open.”
Billy plucked one of the sheets from the envelope and handed it over. “Meanwhile, this ought to interest you. I found two names in a note in her study. Your name is on it, and Mila Shavik’s.”
Arkov flushed, and his hand shook as he read the page. “Keep going.”
“That’s basically it. No one’s used her home phone since I bugged it, so I figure she’s still away.”
“You’re saying you don’t know where she is?”
Billy smiled. “I didn’t say that. She also had a flight booked via Atlanta, to Knoxville, on her return.”
“So where is she?”
“I’m guessing down south somewhere, in hicksville, East Tennessee.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“No idea, but I came across this in her study.”
He handed over a photo of a letter with a logo.
“It’s from a guy in Tennessee. He runs a marina.”
“How do you know?”
“I called the number on the logo.”
“What’s the connection between her and him?”
“Too early to say. But I’ve got something else on her.”
“What?”
“There was some medical correspondence from her doctor and her insurance company in her study.”
“So?”
“I called the hospital where she was a patient after the blast. I pretended I was from the insurance company.”
“And?”
“She’s pregnant.”
“Why’s that important?”
Billy smiled. “You said to look for a weakness, something we could exploit. That’s a major. We can get any information from her you want with that one, if we need to. A woman will do anything to protect her baby.”
“But it doesn’t tell us where she is.”
“I’ve got a plan to find her.”
Arkov drained his Scotch, slapped down the glass.
“Just be careful. We don’t want the feds alerted and all over us like a butt rash, as the Americans say.”
“And after that?”
“You’ll do what you did to her husband. You’ll kill her.”
45
* * *
After Billy left, the side door opened and Shavik strode in.
“You heard everything?” Arkov opened the envelope, handed it over.
“I heard.” Shavik examined the contents, then tossed the envelope on the table. “Lane’s widow is up to something by going to Dubrovnik. She’s got to be.”
“But what?”
“The big question.”
“There was a knock on the office door and Arkov went to open it. Shavik’s bodyguard Dobrashin stood there, a locked briefcase in his hand.
“For you, boss.”
He took it, and the bodyguard left.
Arkov crossed to behind his desk and took out a harmless-looking slim metal rod hidden in a compartment in his desk.
He knelt on the floor and inserted the rod deep into what looked like a wood knothole in the floorboards. He turned it and lifted a false panel, revealing a sturdy safe.
Shavik tossed him the keys to the briefcase. “You’re confident Billy can handle this thing discreetly?”
Arkov grinned and unlocked the briefcase, revealing thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills and two heavy leather pouches. He untied one of the pouches, spilling out the contents to reveal a glittering stash of diamonds.
“Billy’s an actor. He can play any part that’s needed. How much is in here?”
“Just over two million in cash and stones.”
Arkov grinned. “That’ll be six million this quarter. The old man’s going to be happy.”
“Did he call?”
“Right before you arrived. Says he’s got some important family st
uff to discuss when he gets here.”
“About what?”
“He didn’t say.”
Shavik crossed to the window, parted the blinds, and looked out absently at the New Jersey landscape.
Arkov refilled the pouch, opened the floor safe, and dropped in the cash and diamonds.
“What’s up, Mila?”
“I’m thinking.”
“You ever wonder what we’re going to do with all this money when the old man finally goes?”
“Why?”
“He’s getting on. We’ve got to start thinking about the future.”
“Spit it out.”
“Building the business. More power, more territory. The future we used to talk about in the old days when we were dealing with those scum in the camps.”
“This isn’t the old days, Boris. They’re long gone.”
Arkov grinned, locking the safe. “But time’s still on our side. The future’s still bright.”
“You just pay close attention to the business in hand, Boris. Or maybe you won’t have a future. Unless it’s playing someone’s girlfriend in a federal prison. We need to deal with the woman. Now show me her photograph.”
Arkov didn’t like the rebuke and his grin vanished, replaced by a sullen look.
He slid open a desk drawer, plucked out a file, and threw a photograph on the desk. A copy of a newspaper shot of Carla Lane and her husband, dressed up for a concert.
“A lawyer you said?”
“She was with the public prosecutor’s office until she went to work for her husband.”
Shavik studied the woman’s features. She was pretty. Something about her was oddly familiar, but he couldn’t put a finger on it.
“Lawyers are always trouble. I want to know what she was doing in Dubrovnik. And about her background. Who she was before she married the nosy musician.”
“I’m already on it.”
Shavik tossed down the photograph, rubbed his chin. “Something worries me about her. A feeling in my gut we could be looking at trouble.”
“That’s what my old man said. Because she’s a lawyer?”
“Maybe.”
“Keep the photograph if you like, I’ve got copies. There’s something else you need to see.”