Siren of the Waters: A Jana Matinova Investigation

by Michael Genelin

  Tutungian walked past the hotel, loitered for a while, then went inside. The tanned man did not have to see Tutungian’s actions to know what he was doing. He had waited until the policewoman cleared the lobby, then gone inside to book a room at the same hotel, on the floor where the woman was staying. Tutungian would already have her room number. He’d make an excuse as to why he wanted the particular floor she was staying on without mentioning her name. Some silly excuse would do: superstition, lucky number, anything would be acceptable to the room clerk. Then, a false passport when he registered, as he explained why his bags would arrive later.

  The man thought for a moment, the thought pleasing him. He made a small wager with himself that he was right: The false name that Tutungian was using would begin with an A for his given name and a T for his surname. One of the consistent mistakes that Tutungian made was the egotism that drove him to wear monogrammed shirts. Therefore, his passport and his registration required the initials A.T., matching the shirt. Otherwise the clerk might notice the difference.

  There was a positive aspect to this, the man granted Tutungian: A matching monogram always eased the methodical minds of desk clerks. No man would go through the trouble of having a falsely monogrammed shirt. Ergo, he had to be the real A.T.

  Twenty minutes later, Tutungian left the hotel, time enough for him to have checked in, gone up to his room to avoid leaving the hotel immediately after checking in, then come down through the lobby. He headed down the block, no cares, not paying any real attention to people on the street. He was no longer following the policewoman. Tutungian’s defenses would be down. He was the stalker, not the quarry.

  Tutungian never saw the tanned, healthy-looking man fall in behind him. Even if he had been alert, he would not have seen him. The man was too adroit at losing himself on a street through years of practice undergone through necessity. Tutungian’s unawareness simply made it easier for the man to keep company with him, and easier for him to remove this actor from the stage. It was merely a question of how and when.

  Chapter 30

  The fax was waiting for Jana at the desk when she picked up her key. It was from Trokan, two pages, including a caution that it was not to be shared with anyone except Levitin. She read it through, than called Levitin’s room, asking him to come down to her room.

  Everything one does revolves around motivation, she thought. Fanatics have a warped abundance of it; businessmen, the most successful of them, have nearly as much as fanatics; nations have it as the sum total of their people’s desires, often skewed badly through the centuries, so they devour and conquer other peoples. For individuals, it varied. She read the fax again and wondered how Levitin’s motivation might have warped him.

  Jana heard the knock and admitted Levitin. He sat on the easy chair, slouching, trying to stretch out his long legs.

  “I’m still tired. Jet lag is catching up with me.” He yawned. “I called you for breakfast, but you were out.”

  “I saw my son-in-law.”

  “So, will you now get to see your daughter and grandchild in Nice?”

  Jana’s mouth immediately became dry, her teeth involuntarily clamping together. She stifled a retort, angry at his invasion of her private space. Levitin, on the other hand, made himself even more comfortable, stretching out farther, giving out an audible groan of pleasure. She snapped out a command: “Take your shoes off if you are going to put those large feet of yours on my bed!!”

  Levitin showed no emotional response to Jana’s irritation, merely wiggling out of his shoes, dropping them to the floor. She noticed that he was wearing athletic socks, rather incongruous with his formal attire of suit and tie.

  “And you need to wear dark socks to coordinate with your other clothes.” Her commanding tone softened and dropped down a notch, losing its edge.

  “You are not my mother,” Levitin pointed out.

  “Why white socks? You are generally fairly careful about your dress.” Before he answered her, Jana came up with it. “You are allergic to the miserable dyes in Russian socks, so you wear white. Or, your feet are allergic to artificial fibers, so you wear cotton.”

  “You are still being my mother,” he reminded her. “And you are being irritable with me because I checked your background and picked up something you don’t want people to know about.”

  “You’re right.” Jana wet her finger and ticked the air, scoring one for the Russian. “Now, am I right about the socks?”

  He ticked the air, giving her a point. “Right on, in your entire analysis.”

  “Feet have to be taken care of.”

  “And the eyes and teeth. My mother, now you.”

  “And what part did your sister play in teaching you?” This time it was Levitin’s turn to respond, his face tightening, his lips thinning.

  “Researching me this time.”

  “I apologize. We have both been slightly uncivil. I needed answers. I knew you were holding back. So I checked.”

  “My exact reason for checking on you.”

  The edge in Jana’s voice came back. “My hope of seeing my daughter and granddaughter has nothing to do with this case.”

  “Your son-in-law may.”

  “How did you reach that conclusion?”

  “He’s in the middle of everyone involved. He knows all the participants. He even knows the people in the photograph you stole from Foch’s house.”

  Jana had considered Jeremy’s connections to all of these people. Only, her thoughts had not reached the category of possible criminality and a need to investigate him.

  “You want to consider him as a possible suspect?” She wondered if Levitin had established a hard connection between Jeremy and Koba. “Evidence, please. What concrete items do you have?”

  “None. Just that we have to think of all the possibilities so we don’t overlook any.”

  “Agreed.” Jana decided to get all the problematic areas laid out. “I received a fax about your sister. And about you. Your sister first. So, tell me about her.”

  Levitin had prepared himself for Jana’s questions. He sank even deeper in the chair so that he was almost horizontal. He hesitated, not sure where to begin, than decided to start with the worst.

  “My sister, like all young women who now grow up in Moscow, was exposed to cocaine at a party. She used it again, and again. And so became addicted.”

  “You tried to help,” Jana guessed. “Your family tried to help. The authorities tried to help. Nothing worked. She disappeared.”

  “Worse.” Levitin pursed his lips, hurting, thinking about it. “We knew she went into prostitution. We knew that she was on the street. I looked for her, my mother looked for her, my uncle looked for her. Nothing.”

  “Your uncle is the minister who sent you here?”

  “Families take care of each other.” His somber mood was broken by an embarrassed giggle. “How do you think I rose so fast in my profession? I’m smart, but nobody is that smart.” He scratched a foot, then put it back on the bed. “I talked to the minister, my uncle, and he sent me here.”

  “Why here?”

  “We know my sister left Moscow. She saw a woman who was an old school chum before she went. The friend told me that Alexandra, my sister, told her she was coming to France. This conference, then, was the perfect cover for me. I have come, on the surface, to attend this meeting, not to look for my sister.” He scratched the other foot. “Then I found you were a delegate, and I recognized a possible ally.”

  Jana came to a rather sad conclusion: Neither of them had come any closer to what they really wanted. She studied Levitin. There was still something awry. Levitin’s face betrayed too much satisfaction. One item, she thought, at least one item in his head he had not told her about: a witness, a piece of evidence he hadn’t revealed, something. Jana decided to push him.

  “You found something in Strasbourg?” His expression changed enough to reinforce her belief. “What is it?”

  He tried to look blank.


  “Levitin, I don’t have time to pretend. You have found some small item.”

  He tried to deepen the look of innocence. It only succeeded in making him appear vacuous.

  “Levitin, you have made me tired enough.” She kicked at his chair, moving it enough so that he landed on the floor with a small thump. He looked up at her with wide eyes as if to say, “What did I do?”

  “Time to give it up, Levitin.”

  He thought about her demand and finally nodded. “You have it.”

  It was her turn to look blank.

  “You have it with you,” he insisted.

  “I have it now?”

  “Yes.”

  Jana went over all the aspects of the case, everything she had done in Ukraine, at the conference. Then she realized the answer. Jana went to her purse, found the photograph she had taken from Foch’s house, the one with her daughter and Jeremy and the others and looked at it closely. No doubt. It was there. She pointed to the woman on the arm of the Czech diplomat who had committed suicide. The facial resemblance was now clear.

  “Your sister!”

  “My sister,” he acknowledged. Levitin stared at the photograph, happy at seeing her, unhappy at seeing her there.

  Ambivalence is a part of human nature.

  Chapter 31

  Tutungian carefully applied pomade to his hair, not too much or it would look greasy, a larger amount on the sides to give his face a slimmer look. When he finished, he stepped back from the mirror for a longer view, then capped the tube and carried it with him into the living room, slipping it into his shaving kit.

  Tutungian had already shipped his luggage off; the room looked as empty as when he had arrived. He checked his jacket side pocket. The gloves were still there. He patted his inside breast pocket. Yes, the thin wire with ends attached to the small bar-handles was neatly coiled within. The handles were important. Tutungian had once garroted a rival gangster without using handles and the garrote had cut into his palms when he tightened the wire around the man’s throat. No reason to let that happen again.

  There was a knock at the door, and he heard the landlady calling for him. “Monsieur Tillo. Le taxi est arrivé.” He enjoyed hearing her use the name he had given her when he rented the small apartment.

  “Merci, Madame.” He exhausted most of his small knowledge of French with his use of the minimal “oui,” “non,” and “merci.” Tutungian was uncomfortable here. He was always uneasy when he was forced to leave his country. He had no desire to be here; but until his business was concluded, he had no choice if he wanted to return home eventually. His employer did not react positively to independent conduct or mistakes.

  Tutungian took a last look around. Satisfied upon his second examination that he had left nothing, Tutungian walked to the door and, with his usual caution, opened it, stepping to the side, ready for whoever might be waiting out there for him. Nothing. He stepped into the hall, then relaxed. It was always the most dangerous time, coming out of an apartment. You could never be assured there was no one lying in wait until you actually took the first step.

  Comfortable now, he walked to the front door of the house, placed his key on a small table next to the door, and again used his customary caution in walking outside. The taxi was not there.

  Tutungian walked the short distance to the street, looking for the cab. The street was narrow, cars were double-parked, making it difficult to see without his moving to the center of the street. Still no taxi. The stupid driver had probably been forced to drive off because he was blocking traffic. Tutungian made himself less unhappy by resolving not to give the driver a tip when he drove back around the block to pick up his fare and took him to his destination.

  Rather than stand outside, a target for anyone, Tutungian walked back to the house. He would stand just inside the door, and when the taxi came he could quickly move to the vehicle.

  Tutungian abruptly realized he had left the key to the door on the table inside, and the door locked automatically when it was shut. He tapped on the door for the landlady to let him in. Then, as a possibility, he turned the door knob. Miracle of miracles, the door opened. Tutungian stepped inside, never seeing the man who waited there for him.

  An hour later, the police received a call from a woman whose hysteria at first prevented them from comprehending what she was babbling into the phone. When they finally understood, they sent two cars to seal off the scene. When the first unit arrived, the woman was incongruously sitting on the ground in front of her building. She was wailing, several neighbors trying to comfort her. The woman adamantly refused to get to her feet or to stop wailing, even when the police tried to get her up.

  One of the cops kneeled to talk to her; the other police officer walked to the open front door and cautiously stepped inside. He saw a man sitting in a chair, his back to him.

  Because of the report they’d received, the cop slid his gun out of its holster, walking a wide circle around the chair. The man was dead, his face puffy and red, his eyes protruding. There was a wire around his neck, so tight it had cut his throat. A considerable amount of blood had spilled down his front. At the back of his neck a pair of wooden handles dangled from the ends of the wire.

  Nestled in his lap, palms up, the man’s hands contained an object. The police officer took a closer look, then almost gagged when he realized what it was: the dead man was holding his tongue in his hands, a small amount of blood pooling onto his fingers.

  If he had been alive, Tutungian would have appreciated one thing: His hair was still slicked back, in the exact way he had combed it, not a single strand disturbed.

  Chapter 32

  Jana called Seges while she and Levitin sat in the lobby, nursing a glass of wine, waiting for the airport shuttle to arrive. Seges immediately began moaning about his caseload. Jana eventually snapped at him, getting Seges’s mind turned in the direction she wanted.

  There was no additional word from Mikhail in Ukraine, and Seges still hadn’t the faintest clue as to what Mikhail had called her about.

  The code book was now with the FBI in Washington, and they were making noises about sending it over to the CIA or NSA for them to decode, claiming those were the agencies that had the equipment that would enable them to decipher it quickly. Everyone was now waiting for an executive decision on whether they would send it and whether it would be accepted. Seges, as directed, had also sent a copy to the man in the Czech Republic who had written a book about codes.

  Jana thought for a moment, then asked Seges to hold on while she talked to Levitin. “Do you know anyone who is good with numbers?” she asked him.

  He tapped his temple with a forefinger, pleased with himself. “I am great with numbers, in any configuration. I never forget them. It helps me to investigate corruption at home.” A grin crept into the corners of his mouth. “My uncle, the minister, didn’t get me promoted just because I’m his nephew.”

  “Do you know anything about codes?”

  “Not formally. Not even informally. There are code experts in my country.”

  “I know.” Jana decided to keep the book out of Russia. The Russians were capricious. If she left it in their hands, they might decide to keep the work for themselves, and she would never be informed of their results.

  Jana went back to the phone. Seges asked if she wanted to talk to Trokan. Jana had Seges transfer her.

  “How are you doing?” Trokan’s voice had a grumbling quality. “Are the French feeding you well?”

  “They feed all visitors well. And how is my sick blind cat doing at the veterinarian?” Trokan’s grumble this time was not so pronounced. The cat had been declared well enough by the doctor to allow Trokan to take the “poor little thing” home.

  “One tiny tidbit,” Trokan confided, his voice taking on a smile. “My wife now likes taking care of the cats. You may have a hard time getting them back from her.”

  “Her interests are transient,” Jana reminded him. “She will be yelling for you t
o return them in another few days.”

  “Assuredly.” Trokan lost the smile in his voice. “But meanwhile I am at peace. Are you getting along with Levitin?”

  “More or less. Mostly more.”

  “Success?”

  “Not yet.” She took a breath. “I believe we will have to go to Nice.” She waited for the explosion of disapproval that never came. “So . . . ?”

  “To see our daughter?”

  “No. To see my daughter,” she corrected him, as she always did.

  The smile came back into his voice. “To see your daughter,” he amended.

  “There is a lead that Levitin and I want to follow. We have to go there to do it.”

  “My wife wants to go there. It is very warm. Palm trees. The blue sea. When she hears you have gone, she will like you even less.”

  “Does this mean I have permission to go?”

  “I want daily reports.”

  “Every few days.”

  “Daily!” insisted Trokan.

  He hung up on her.

  She held out the phone to Levitin. “Do you need to call for approval?”

  Levitin still had that look of self-satisfaction which had appeared when he had told her about his ability with numbers. “You forget, it’s my uncle. No problem.”

  They rose as the shuttle bus pulled up to the front of the hotel. Jana and Levitin picked up their baggage, walking outside with the other passengers waiting to board. The sun was hidden behind the clouds over Strasbourg. It was going to rain. When it did, it would be cold. Even when there was nothing but sunshine in this city, Jana decided, it seemed like it was cold.

  They boarded the bus, the bus driver reading a newspaper as he waited for all the passengers to embark. The headline and the accompanying picture caught her eye. Jana stood behind the driver, reading over his shoulder. The driver finally realized what she was doing.