Eternal Empire

by Alec Nevala-Lee

  His eyes flashed anger. “I did what was necessary to protect what we had made.”

  “But what came of it? Your army was already depressed, preparing for a kind of war that would never come again. Now the energy side is gone as well. Whatever influence we had is crumbling. And those networks are impossible to restore. Look at what happened to Arkady—”

  “Yet his message came through,” Rogozin said fiercely. “The game is not over yet.”

  His voice softened. For a moment, they were no longer in this cell, but in Cambridge, where they had often talked long into the night. “I know it has been hard. But you need to play your part a while longer. Your presence is even more crucial now. And we still have one ally. Do you understand?”

  “I understand very well,” Asthana said coldly. “But that was never the issue, was it?”

  “No.” Reaching out with one hand, Rogozin stroked her cheek with unexpected tenderness. “You were always my favorite child. Karvonen was an instrument, a killer, but you grasped the larger pattern. But none of it will mean anything if you waver. Not when we are so close to the goal.”

  For a long moment, they sat eye to eye. A second later, Asthana shuddered and drew back from his touch. She turned away, her hand pressed to her lips, as if deep in thought. Rogozin only watched her, waiting.

  At last, Asthana turned back. There was a hard gleam in her eyes as she gave a quick nod. “All right. I will do what I must.”

  Leaning forward, so that she rose slightly from her perch on the bed, she kissed him. If Rogozin was surprised by this, he covered it well, raising his hand again to the side of her face. For an endless second, as their lips met, they seemed to share the memory of all they had been through, separately and together, since their first wary meeting so many years ago.

  Suddenly, Rogozin’s eyes opened. In the same instant, Asthana pulled back. Reaching out, she took his head in her hands, holding his jaw shut, then pushed him away as soon as she knew that her work was done.

  Rogozin rose, staring, from his chair. His right hand, flying to one side, knocked the amulet from the table to the floor. A second later, he fell to his knees, his hands going to his throat. His eyes were still on hers. Asthana could smell the faint bitter scent from the capsule she had placed in her mouth a moment ago, knowing that she only had a few seconds before it dissolved.

  She looked down at the dying man. Her voice was soft. “I’ve made my choice. Russia will be all the stronger with one security service in place. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong side. I’m here to correct that mistake.”

  Rogozin tried to speak but could not. He sputtered, saliva flying from his mouth in a fine green froth, then collapsed to the floor. A spasm ran down the length of his body, as if someone had given his spine a quick snap. Then the light went out of his eyes, and he grew still.

  Silence. On the television set, its sound turned down, a nest of wasps was writhing.

  Once she was sure it was over, Asthana knelt and picked up the amulet from the floor. She lifted Rogozin’s left hand, which was still warm, and folded his fingers around the medallion. Taking the dead man’s right thumbnail, she used it to scratch away a blob of gray wax at the amulet’s base. Earlier, she had drilled a hole there and sealed it, as if to conceal something inside.

  Asthana took a step back to consider her handiwork, then turned to the door of the cell. As she opened it, her pulse remained steady, and it rose only slightly as she ran into the hallway and screamed at last for help.

  20

  The following morning, Ilya was escorted from his cell for his day in court. He knew the routine well. After his hands were cuffed in front of him, he was led out to the landing. As he left, he did not glance back. He was not a superstitious man, but he was aware, like every prisoner, that it was bad luck to pause at the threshold when one departed for a journey.

  He was brought downstairs by an officer, then led through a series of gates, which the guard had to open and lock behind them as they left the secure wing. As they neared the outside world, the color of the walls changed from blue to green to lavender, the reverse of the order he had seen when he first arrived.

  Beyond the receiving spur, it was a cool summer morning. The courtyard was surrounded by a brick wall, thirty feet high, topped with razor wire. At the center, twelve prisoners stood in a row before a white prison van.

  As Ilya approached the other inmates, he observed that the group was a mixture of remand and appeal prisoners. It was easy to tell the difference. Many of the men on remand were still wearing their own clothes, and even the ones dressed in standard prison issue had not yet lost a certain light in their eyes.

  But among all the men who were standing here, there was no sign of Vasylenko.

  Ilya turned his attention to the van. It was a standard security vehicle built from the body of a Eurocargo truck, ten tons or so, with seven opaque windows and doors at the side and rear. Next to it stood the driver and prisoner escort, in black ties and white shirts, chatting with a third guard.

  The van followed an identical route each day. After trundling through the prison gate, it would drive fourteen miles to the Old Bailey, where it would drop off some of its passengers for trial proceedings. From there, it would head half a mile to the Royal Courts of Justice, where appeals were heard, thus saving an extra trip, in line with recent austerity measures.

  It was the same routine every morning. Today, however, the routine changed.

  Waiting in line with the other prisoners, Ilya saw a pair of guards approach from the receiving spur. Like the rest, they were armed with batons but no guns, and after speaking briefly with the driver and the prisoner escort, they mounted the steps into the rear of the van.

  This was unusual. Ilya glanced at the inmate standing next to him, a thin, pockmarked prisoner on remand. “Why the extra screws?”

  The inmate looked at him with an expression of surprise. “You don’t know? Whole city is on alert. Demonstrations over the police shooting in Tottenham. Turned violent. Shops looted, set on fire. Heaving bricks at cops. Worst riot in years, they say. Though if you ask me—”

  He broke off, noticing that the guards were watching, and turned away. Ilya did not reply, but inside, he had already begun to sift through this new information, trying to decide what it meant.

  A moment later, the prisoner escort climbed into the van and emerged with a set of leg irons. The inmates, familiar with the drill, allowed themselves to be shackled one by one. Ilya had worn these irons on a number of occasions, and he knew that the shackles, linked by a short length of chain, were each secured by a cylinder lock more reliable than those used for handcuffs.

  He was one of the last inmates to be shackled. When the prisoner escort was done, he handed the set of keys to the third guard, who would stay behind. For security reasons, the escort did not carry the keys himself. Instead, the shackles would be unlocked by another officer with a duplicate set at the courthouse.

  Once the process was complete, the third guard spoke quietly into his radio, received a transmission in reply, and nodded at the others, who began to load the prisoners into the van one at a time. Ilya was among the last three. He came forward, the chain of his shackles scraping against the ground, and climbed the steps of the prison van. Just before going inside, he glanced back at the receiving spur and saw that Vasylenko was nowhere in sight.

  Inside the van, flanking a narrow corridor, were two rows of numbered cubicles. Each cubicle’s door had a pair of narrow windows, one set above the other, and a separate lock and security chain. A partition stood between the inmates and the driver’s cab. The two additional guards who had entered earlier had taken their seats at the front of the prisoner section.

  He was led to the third cubicle from the back, where he sat down in the sweatbox and was locked inside. As the chain across the door was drawn, he looked out the window as two more prisoners
were led into the van. Neither man was Vasylenko. The outside door slid shut. A second later, the engine started.

  As the van eased its way forward, Ilya wondered what was happening. It was possible, he thought, that Vasylenko’s appeal had been postponed at the last minute, or that something else had gone wrong. Without him, they had to begin again. And they might never get another chance—

  All these thoughts ran through his mind in an instant. He was seriously weighing the possibility of creating a disturbance to delay their departure when, abruptly, the van halted. Outside his cubicle, the guards seated at the front of the prisoner section exchanged a few words, although he was unable to make them out. The engine died. For a long time, nothing else happened.

  At last, through his window, Ilya saw a solitary figure being led across the courtyard. It was Vasylenko. Ilya heard the door of the van open again, and a moment later, he saw Vasylenko come up the central corridor, also cuffed and shackled. There was a pause as the vor was locked into his own unseen cubicle. Then the door closed and the van started up again. Looking outside, Ilya saw the tall electric gate at the entrance to the prison roll slowly back, and then they were out on the road.

  It was a familiar route. They would head south on the Western Way, then continue on to Woolwich Common, a journey of forty minutes in all. Turning back to the van’s interior, Ilya saw that the prisoner seated in the sweatbox across from him was leaning against the window of his own cubicle, his eyes closed, and that neither of the guards was in sight.

  As soon he was sure that he was not being watched, Ilya reached up with his cuffed hands, feeling for the small package taped between his shoulders. Reaching down into the collar of his shirt, he pulled the object free. He had secured it there that morning, using a strip of packing tape from the workroom. It was the lockpicking kit that he had smuggled into prison the year before.

  Ilya kept an eye on the corridor as he undid the tape and extracted the picks. Leaving the handcuffs for later, since he knew they would take only a second, he began working on the shackle around his right leg.

  The process was fairly straightforward, but it was made trickier by the movement of the van as it went over the bumps of the highway. Holding the picks in his mouth, he eased the torsion wrench into the lower part of the keyhole, applying torque to see which way it would turn. Then he inserted a pick, feeling the pins, and raked the lock gently. A few of the easier pins set at once. He turned his attention to the stubborn ones, not hurrying, moving largely by intuition.

  A moment later, the van slowed. Ilya halted, his head going up, ready to abandon his work if necessary. From the front of the van, he heard the voices of the guards, their words inaudible, but as he listened, he sensed an underlying tension. A glance out the window told him that they were somewhere in Woolwich, and that the traffic around them had ground to a halt. In the air, there was a faint scorched stench, as if something nearby was burning.

  After a pause, the van eased forward and began to turn, heading away from the main road. When they had turned nearly all the way, perpendicular to the stalled flow of traffic, Ilya finally caught a glimpse of the scene outside.

  A red bus was parked at an angle across the southbound lanes, blocking the way forward. It was on fire. Flames burned merrily in the windows of the second deck, blackening the surrounding paint and disgorging plumes of smoke. A fire crew was already in place, with a pair of constables directing traffic to an alternate route, motioning mechanically in their yellow vests.

  The van finished its ponderous turn, taking the burning bus out of sight. A minute later, they were driving along a narrow road with a single lane running in both directions, heading away from the scene.

  Seated in his cubicle, Ilya understood the reason for the detour, and he knew that it had not been an accident. He was also aware that he was running out of time. Lowering his head again, he returned his attention to the leg irons around his right ankle. Just one stubborn pin remained.

  At last, the pin set. Ilya turned the lock. And the shackles came open in his hands.

  21

  “I tried to stop him,” Asthana said calmly, with only the hint of a tremor. “I glanced away for a second, and by the time I saw what he was doing, it was too late. His hand was in his mouth. I tore the amulet away, but by then, he had collapsed. I called for help, then went back to try to revive him.”

  Wolfe turned to Cornwall. “The facts speak for themselves. There’s nothing more she could have done.”

  “I agree,” Cornwall said. “But I’m afraid that isn’t the real question here.”

  They were seated together in Cornwall’s office. In an hour, Asthana was scheduled to give a preliminary deposition in the inquest into Rogozin’s death. For the last twenty minutes, they had been reviewing the events of the day before, which had happened with such unexpected, almost ludicrous finality that Wolfe still had trouble believing that they had taken place at all.

  Cornwall, too, seemed to have a hard time accepting this, returning more than once to the same few points. “I still don’t understand why you brought the amulet. The coroner will wonder about this as well.”

  “I’ve already told you,” Asthana said, a note of weariness entering her voice for the first time. “Rogozin had mentioned it earlier to Wolfe, and I knew he’d been sketching it in his cell. I thought if I brought it, it might tempt him to talk. It was clearly important to him.”

  “Well, now we know why,” Cornwall said. “And he said nothing before his death?”

  Asthana shook her head. “I told him we’d discovered Garber’s body and that we knew he had an informant inside the agency. But he refused to answer any of my questions. The only time he opened up was when I showed him the amulet. He said it was a way of warding off evil. Now I know what he meant.”

  Taking a deep breath, Asthana began to speak more slowly, choosing her words with evident care. “I’m willing to take full responsibility. I broke procedure by visiting him alone and without recording the interview. It was my mistake. And I’m prepared to accept the consequences.”

  Cornwall fell silent for a moment. Wolfe could see her working through the situation in her head. Finally, she said, “Well, there’s one silver lining. We’ve removed all doubt about Rogozin’s guilt. And we’ve been lucky in another way. As of now, the press simply doesn’t care.”

  Wolfe knew what she meant. At the moment, no one could think of anything but the riots that had raged throughout the city in response to Mark Duggan’s death. The national consciousness had been seared by images of mobs of looters, of police with shields and dogs, of smashed windows and burning shops. More than thirty officers had been injured and two hundred arrests had been made, and it seemed that they were nowhere near the end.

  She had sensed the difference as soon as she awoke that morning. Even through her own shock over what had happened to Rogozin, she could tell that the city was on edge. Police had been deployed to Tottenham and other potential trouble zones, with Islington and Stoke Newington on lockdown. Rogozin was yesterday’s news. As far as she knew, his death, which a week before might have been the lead story, had been reported only on the inside pages.

  Cornwall spoke again, breaking into her thoughts. She was looking at Asthana with mingled coldness and pity. “All the same, I have no choice but to suspend you from the investigation, pending the outcome of the inquest. In any case, I know you have a holiday coming up soon. Where are you going again?”

  Asthana smiled weakly. “We’re supposed to spend two weeks in Marmaris.”

  “Well, then. You’ll have a chance to get away from all this. And I want you to go home after the deposition. We can discuss the rest tomorrow.” Cornwall’s tone softened. “Maya, we all wish this had happened at some other time. But we’ll get through it in the end.”

  Asthana only gave a short nod. As the two officers rose to leave, Cornwall spoke up again. “Wolfe, pl
ease stay for a moment.”

  Wolfe had a good idea what the deputy director wanted, but she said nothing. Walking her partner to the door, she gave Asthana’s hand a quick squeeze, then whispered, “You know, I’ve decided to ask Lewis to the wedding. I hope you still have a place at the table—”

  Asthana managed to smile at this, although her eyes retained a sheen of sadness. “Of course. I’ll let them know.”

  She left. Wolfe shut the door gently. “Asthana didn’t deserve any of this.”

  “None of us do,” Cornwall said. “In her case, it will turn out well enough. The coroner isn’t known for moving quickly, but it’s clearly a category two suicide. But this isn’t what I wanted to talk about. I’m told that you went to see Ilya Severin without permission.”

  As Wolfe sat down, she saw that there was no point in explaining her reasons. “Yes. But I was turned away by Owen Dancy. I still don’t know why Ilya would agree to be represented by Vasylenko’s solicitor.”

  “I wondered about this as well,” Cornwall said. “So did the Crown prosecutor. I just got off the phone with the sector director. It appears that Ilya is attending a hearing this morning. The rumor is that he’s going to change his plea to guilty and offer to cooperate with the authorities.”

  Wolfe couldn’t believe her ears. “That’s ridiculous. He’s refused to talk for months. And Dancy has no incentive to help him work with the police. His testimony could only implicate Vasylenko.”

  “I know. Dancy is playing a longer game. And that’s what concerns me. Vasylenko’s appeal is being held today as well. It’s hard to think of a strategy that could benefit both men.”

  Wolfe heard the implied question in her words. “But even if Dancy is using Ilya for something else, Ilya wouldn’t work with them without a good reason. If you want, I can pay him another visit—”