“Breathe,” a man said. “Don’t waste your breath screaming, you’re safe now.”
A swirl of activity went on around me as I frantically gasped for air. The lights were still off and the man who instructed me to breathe had gotten me off the floor and onto the couch.
He took the cord from around my neck as other men entered the room and the person who had been on the floor was rolled into a rug and carried out. No words passed between the men. None of them wore those jackets with big letters like NYPD or FBI on them that you see on TV.
The man who helped me wore a suit, with the top button of a white shirt unbuttoned. He didn’t look like an accountant; more like a cop. The other men wore workingmen’s clothes.
None of them wore uniforms.
I sensed that something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what to say or do. There should be uniformed officers hovering around, paramedics asking me if I was okay …
For sure, the man with the suit had saved me from being strangled. At least that much I knew.
A burn stench hit my nostrils.
“I smell something,” I said.
It was not the most insightful thing to say, but it suddenly struck me that the apartment could be burning with Morty in danger.
The man in the suit handed one of the workers a rod about eighteen inches long. “I zapped him with more than he gave you.”
“Zapped him?”
“Like a stun gun. Only deadlier.”
My God. What I smelled was burnt flesh.
“Is he…?”
He nodded. “He won’t bother you again.”
I detected a foreign accent; Russian maybe.
“Who are you?” I rubbed my sore neck.
“FSB.”
“Who?”
He shrugged. “Think of it as Russian intelligence. In Soviet times we were called KGB.”
“FSB—KGB. What’s going on? Why are you in my apartment?”
“I’ll explain over a drink. I think you need one.”
A drink? I didn’t know if my jaw hung slack at his comment. A man had just tried to murder me. He was killed in my apartment and rolled up in a rug, and this person wanted to take me for a drink.
Had I entered another dimension?
I looked over at my handbag. Someone had picked it off the floor and put it on the table. My cell phone was in it.
I resisted the urge to grab it and dial 911 only because there was a dangerous-looking man between me and it.
Instead, I calmly got up, turned on the light, and went to the closet to comfort Morty. I opened the closet door to find him asleep. He opened one eye to look at me and then closed it.
Little bastard could have cared less if I’d been murdered.
When I turned around, the Russian agent was putting the rolled-up piece of cord that had been around my neck in his side pocket.
“He tried to strangle me with that,” I said.
“I know. It’s a slip noose.”
“A what?”
“A knot that can be tightened slowly without loosening.”
“Why? Why that kind of knot?”
“They call it death by orgasm.”
11
We went down the stairs of my building together.
Thoughts flew through my head. I remembered reading somewhere that when you’re in danger, when a serial killer or a thief has a knife at your throat, instead of yelling “help” you’re supposed to yell “fire.”
The theory is that people will come running for a fire … but will run the other way from a human threat.
I didn’t yell anything. I was too confused, too traumatized. Too stupid, I guess.
The one thing that I wasn’t naïve about was the source of my troubles.
Somehow, someway, it went back to Lipton.
Stepping outside, it was dark and a little chilly, but otherwise the world seemed normal. It was only my life that had entered another dimension.
I hesitated at the top of the stairs. Even though it was late I could see a man and woman walking toward us half a block away. If I was going to yell or make a dash for it, this was the moment.
The man beside me walked down the stairs to the sidewalk and turned and looked back up at me. “I’m going to the nearest bar. You can run the other way if you like.”
I hesitated, not sure which way to turn—or run. It was all insane. Thoughts were swirling around my head like a merry-go-round on meth. I was confused. Scared. I sat down on the stairs and sobbed.
He squatted beside me and offered me a handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I’ve dealt with so many bad people, I sometimes forget how to deal with the innocent ones.”
“What is going on?”
“Why don’t we have a drink in a nice public place where you’ll feel safe and I’ll tell you.”
I blew my nose and got to my feet.
“The bar’s that way,” I said.
I chose the bar over running down the street screaming for help because I needed to know why someone had just tried to kill me. And to confirm that Lipton was somehow connected with it. But I had no intention of going into any dark alleys with this stranger.
As we walked along, I took measure of him out of the corner of my eye. He wasn’t a big man, although he appeared both athletic and able to handle himself, what I’d call street-tough—some men have a hardness to them that warns others to tread softly around them. My father, a college art professor and gentle creature, used to say that winning doesn’t depend on the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog. This man, whose name I still didn’t know, had fight in him.
“Chief Inspector Yuri Karskoff,” he said as we walked. He took a wallet out of his inside pocket and flipped it open to a picture of him on an official-looking laminated card.
“I don’t read Russian. It could say you’re a Moscow cab driver.”
“Impossible. Moscow cab drivers earn much more than FSB officers.”
“What does FSB stand for?”
“Federal Security Service.”
I nodded. “I seem to remember that the KGB was like the FBI and CIA combined, only much worse. Spies and killers. Nasty people. Is that what you are? A spy and killer?”
I wasn’t acting overly grateful to him for having just saved my life.
He shot me a look. “You’re right, we’re a lot like your FBI and CIA. Read anything lately about your country’s reputation for torture of prisoners?”
* * *
SEATED AT CHAPIN’S, he ordered dark malt beer and a shot of vodka on the side.
I ordered an apple martini. “Make it a double.”
“Apple martini?” my new friend asked.
“To each his own.” I was too stressed to be Manhattan sophisticated and order something “in.” I preferred wine and champagne, really couldn’t stomach hard liquor drinks, but tonight I needed something with a faster kick than wine.
“Why did he try to kill me?”
It wasn’t just the question of the hour, I realized it might be the most important question of my life. I had no doubt in my mind that the answer to my question would spin around one word: Lipton.
“You’ve been asked to come to Dubai.”
I knew it. Lipton was involved. The dirty little rat-bastard had gotten me in deep shit again.
“That’s none of your business.” Weak, but that was all I could think of to say.
He raised his eyebrows. “Really? I saved your life tonight.”
I raised my eyebrows. “The night’s still young. And your motives are still unclear. The reason why you managed to be in my apartment to save me is also unexplained.”
He shrugged. “You didn’t ask for my credentials when you were being strangled.”
“Can we stop playing games? Maybe you do this sort of thing for a living, but it scares the hell out of me. What is going on? This is all—insane. That man in my apartment used some sort of stun gun on me. You did the same to him.”
“Not quite. He only used it to s
tun you. I used it to … terminate him. With prejudice, as your movie heroes say.”
“Why?”
“So he wouldn’t come back—”
“Why was he after me in the first place?”
“Your friend Lipton has gotten you in a mess.”
I took a deep breath. Several of them. “He’s not my friend. I don’t even know what he’s involved in. He wants me to come to Dubai. He said he’d explain there. That’s all I know.”
“Okay … I will take your word that you don’t know what Lipton is involved in. Do you know who the Patriarch Nevsky is? Boris Alexandrovich Nevksy?”
I shook my head. “No. Sounds like the title to a Russian novel.”
“He will probably end up on the pages of one. Nevsky is both a political and religious leader in my country. Unfortunately, he is also a crazy fanatic who would turn the clock back to the days of imperial Russia and the czars who were absolute rulers of a vast empire.”
“What does he have to do with Lipton? And me?”
“Nevsky is plotting to take over my government. He’s looking for a way, something that will rally the people behind his movement. Your friend Lipton has made a deal to find something of importance to Nevsky. Something Nevsky believes will unite tens of millions of Russians behind his movement.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. A religious object of some sort. An icon, we think.”
Something buried with Christ, Lipton had said. But I didn’t trust the man I was with enough to tell him that. Not yet.
“I still don’t see where I fit in. Or why someone would want to murder me.”
“You know what the Bratva is? The Russian mob? Sometimes called the mafiya?”
“Yes, I live on this planet, I don’t know that Bratva word, but I’ve heard that there is a Russian mafia or mafiya, whatever it’s called.”
“This icon that Lipton knows about—he had two bidders for it.”
I nodded. “Let me guess. The mafia and Nevsky?”
“Exactly.”
God … that rang true. Elena had talked about Russian criminals stealing icons. And there was nothing new about criminals being involved in art theft. The Russian mob had been mixed up with the looted Babylonian piece that Lipton had suckered me into. He had criminal connections to sell the items—and they had the money to buy. Criminal syndicates from Colombia to Moscow and Shanghai had discovered that buying and selling big-ticket art pieces was a terrific way of laundering money.
A ten-million-dollar painting was almost as easy to cash in as a ten-million-dollar stock certificate—but unlike the stock certificate, the painting left no tracks. There were literally no laws governing transactions in art. You could pay millions in cash for a painting by a master in Rome and sell it in London or New York for clean money in the form of a check or wire transfer without any forms being filled out or inquiries from a government agency.
I bent over and rubbed my head with my hands. I felt like banging my head on the bar counter. I hadn’t even officially accepted Lipton’s offer yet and I already had someone wanting me dead.
“I take it Lipton has done something to anger the mobsters?”
He smiled. “Excellent! You would make an outstanding FSB agent. That is exactly what has happened. He teased the Bratva with making millions off the piece, then turned around and made a deal with Nevsky. The Bratva are not happy.”
“So why kill me? I had nothing to do with it.”
“Information.”
“How do you get information from a dead person?”
He shook his head. “He was going to kill you very slowly. He would have strangled you close to death … then let you breathe and questioned you. And kept it up.”
“Till he got out of me information about Lipton—”
“Yes—”
“That I don’t have. I don’t know what Lipton is after. I got a phone call from him and a plane ticket to Dubai that I’m not going to use. He’s trying to lure me into a scheme.”
I didn’t mention the money, which I was keeping now for sure. Hell, I earned it a thousand times over by nearly getting murdered.
“That’s all? Not telling me will cause—”
“Stop.” I leaned in closer and glared at him. “You know nothing about Lipton and me. I’m not his friend. He obviously has set out to use me—again. Maybe he knew the mob was involved and decided to throw me to them, throw them off his track or something. I don’t know. But all Lipton told me was that he needed help searching for a piece for a rich collector. He didn’t tell me what, where, or how, or why.”
Yuri nodded. “I believe you … but unfortunately, the Bratva will not be satisfied until they have beaten the truth out of you. Like medieval inquisitors, they believe pain is a miraculous path to the truth.”
He leaned close enough to me so that I could smell sweat and cheap cologne. “They won’t give up until they are satisfied you know nothing. And there is only one way of getting information that totally satisfies them.”
I rubbed my head with my hands. How could this be happening to me? I got one call from that son of a bitch Lipton … and my world was on fire.
“You understand, it doesn’t matter if you know nothing.”
“It doesn’t matter if I know nothing,” I repeated. “Because they will kill me to make sure.”
“Yes.”
“This is wonderful. Really wonderful. Just what I needed when my life is melting down. Look—I don’t care about Lipton. I’ll take out a newspaper ad. I’ll advertise on television. Lipton is in Dubai. Go kill the bastard.”
Yuri shook his head so frantically it looked as if it would spin off. “No—no—no. You don’t understand. They know where Lipton is, they know he’s in Dubai. But their reach doesn’t extend there. Besides, he’s a moving target. He’ll be in Dubai today and tomorrow … who knows? But you…”
“Live in New York.”
“Their territory.”
“I’ll move.”
“Better move to Dubai then. People in the Middle East are not friendly to the Bratva. Unlike New York businessmen they extort from, no one owns a shop in the Middle East without having an AK-47 under the counter.”
“This whole thing is insane. I’ve beamed up to Planet X or something.” I reached across the table and grabbed Yuri’s arm. “How do you know all this? You must have Lipton bugged to know he’s been calling me.”
That empathetic head shake again. “Lipton has been too smart for us. He uses satellite phones and keeps on the move. We knew about the hit on you because we have Bratva people bugged in Moscow. Along with the transatlantic calls they make to places like New York, where they have gangs.”
I threw up my hands. “All right. What am I supposed to do? How do I convince these people I know nothing?”
“We can do that. Our people in Moscow can get the New York mafiya off your back by dealing with the highest levels of the Bratva.”
I heaved a big sigh of relief and lowered my head. “Thank God. I thought for a moment that I was stuck forever in some sort of surrealistic Kafkaesque nightmare—”
“For a price.”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“We don’t care about you and Lipton. Nevsky is our problem. We need to know what Lipton is doing for him.” He leaned closer to me. “You need to get the Bratva off your back. And you need money.”
“My finances are none of your business.”
“Help us find out what Nevsky is up to and my superiors in Moscow will bring pressure on the Bratva to leave you alone.”
“And if I don’t?”
He shrugged. “If you don’t … you go your way, we go our way.”
I leaned closer to him. “You know what? I’m going to take this story to The New York Times, CNN, Internet blogs, any and every news-spreading organization in the city. I’m going to expose these mob thugs and your spy organization and the whole insane mess.”
I leaned closer and locked eyes with hi
m so he could see I meant every word I said. “How does that sound?”
I was so angry and agitated I had to control myself from standing up and screaming.
He smiled and stood up. “What did Shakespeare say? ‘Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ All that anger inside you, it means nothing. Do what you said you would do and they will kill you, if for no other reason than to let others know that they can’t get away with exposing them.”
He started to walk away and I let him go all of two steps before I caved in and called him back.
“Tell me exactly what you want me to do.”
“Fly to Dubai. I will be on the same plane.” He grinned. “Coach, not in first class with you. Tell us what Lipton is up to.”
“That’s it? I go to Dubai, listen to Lipton, tell you what he says, and that’s it—you get these crazies off my back?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’ll put this in writing?”
He gaped.
“Okay,” I said, “but a promise on your honor?”
“Would that mean anything to you?’
“Absolutely nothing. But I have a theory that what goes around, comes around.”
He leaned closer. “You can’t lose helping us. You get a vacation in Dubai, a big payday, and killers off your back. It’s what you Americans call a win-win scenario.”
He was beginning to sound like that other devil.
He smiled. “The reverse of that, of course, is … lose-lose.”
“What did you mean when you made that disgusting remark—death by orgasm?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Oh, yes I do.”
“All right. When a man is hanged, it’s common for him to get an erection. You understand?”
I thought about it. “You’re saying that the loss of oxygen when a man is being hanged can cause him to get sexually aroused? If that’s the case, you’re right about one thing: It’s more than I want to know.” But it was also more than I could walk away from. “Okay, tell me the rest.”
“When a woman’s choked, her … her—”
I put up my hand. “You don’t have to say it.”
“Gets engorged with blood—”
“Oh my God, I have been beamed up to Planet X.” I shook my head in pure frustration. “Are you telling me that that man was strangling me to get me horny?”
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