Wolfe stared. It was broad daylight. To her astonishment, not only did nobody make a move to stop the looting, but several ran over to join in. The scene was quiet, deliberate, dreamlike.
Turning away, she tried to view the street as Ilya might have seen it. She was about to call Asthana again, hoping that her partner could check a map of the area, when she saw something else. Parked on a side street, three cars from the corner, was a blue panel van. And its rear doors were dented.
She slid the baton out of her bag and approached the van, coming at it from an angle. There was no sign of movement as she inched up to the driver’s window and looked in. It was empty. She headed around back and did the same, edging sideways to the rear window and peering quickly inside. Nothing. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, however, she saw something on the floor of the van, next to one of the seats. It was a set of shackles.
Wolfe took a step back, mind working furiously. They had left the car here because they couldn’t drive on Mare Street, but it would not be safe to stay, which meant they had to move on foot to a second vehicle. Going again to the front of the van, she put her hand on the hood. It was warm.
From behind her came a series of shouts. Heading to the corner, she saw the crowd draw back as the line of riot police began to advance, moving in lockstep to push the onlookers away from the barricades. Most of the bystanders yielded quickly, but a few held their ground.
A second later, at a prearranged signal, the police charged forward in a body. Wolfe took a step back as the crowd scattered, some screaming. After twenty yards, the charge halted, not far from where she was now. She saw that many of the onlookers were breaking off from the main group, and for a moment, she thought the crowd would simply disperse.
Then, as if from nowhere, an object was flung at the police. Wolfe didn’t see who had thrown it, but in the instant that it continued to pinwheel forward, she realized that it was a piece of wood, perhaps from a barrier, or a board pried from the front of a shop, or even just part of a chair.
Whatever it was, it struck an officer near the end of the line squarely in the forehead. He fell to his knees. There was a pause that could have lasted no more than a fraction of a second.
Then the crowd rushed forward. The line of officers wavered, trembling from end to end, and broke as more debris went flying through the air, the mob yelling as it flung itself at the police.
It was a moment that Wolfe would never forget. As the two halves of the scene collided, it felt like the culmination of something that she had sensed, in fragments, for much of the last two years. In a flash, she understood that this was not about Mark Duggan, dead with two bullet holes in his chest. It was about the waste of energy and potential, the broken promises that had piled up for decades, and it made her see how fragile the mask had been all along.
Staring at the chaos, feeling the crowd’s energy pass over her in a wave, Wolfe found herself looking across the street at a cluster of men who were not part of the larger commotion. They were moving as a group into the trees of a small park across the way. And one of them was someone she knew.
She took a step forward. Ilya had changed into street clothes, but there was no mistaking who he was, or that the man beside him was Vasylenko. And it was only as she took another step, the noise of the crowd fading to nothing, that she saw that Ilya had seen her as well.
For a moment, the world went quiet. Wolfe felt Ilya’s eyes on hers. She heard her own voice rise in a shout, but it was oddly distant, the syllables lost in the empty space surrounding her on all sides.
Then Ilya turned away and the world snapped back into place. The space around her was not empty, she realized, but the middle of a mob that was growing worse by the moment.
As the men continued into the park, Wolfe threw herself into the crush of bodies, pushing past the rioters, feeling herself buffeted in all directions as she searched desperately for an opening. A group of protesters was standing in her way. She lowered her head, carried by pure adrenaline, and plowed forward, managing to break through the crowd at last.
Wolfe made it to the other side of the street, her breath coming in gasps, and crossed into the park. Here in the shade, where it was strangely peaceful, she saw nothing but the trees. Ilya and the others had disappeared.
24
Some time later, a gray minivan parked on a deserted street in Hackney Wick, far from the disturbances elsewhere in the city. As the van stood at the curb, engine idling, the front passenger door opened and a man slid out. With his surgical mask removed, he had a surprisingly intelligent face, with blunt but sensitive features and blue eyes that were narrow but bright.
The man had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. Keeping one hand on the shotgun inside, he glanced up and down the street, then headed for the steps of a house a few doors down from the van. He took out a key ring, then unlocked the front door, leaving it slightly ajar as he went inside. For a moment, all was quiet. Finally, the porch light winked on.
At the signal, the van’s engine shut off and its doors slid open. The first to get out was Andrew Ferris, sweating and pale, with another man’s hand firmly grasping his shoulder. A pistol, concealed by a folded coat, was wedged into his ribs. He was followed by the driver, then Ilya and Vasylenko, both in street clothes, who walked up to the house with the others.
One of the men had been left behind in Hackney, after inciting the riot that had covered their escape. Ilya was impressed by how smoothly it had been arranged. He had seen Vasylenko give the order as they crossed the street, with a man in a red jacket breaking off from the main group as the rest went into the park. Glancing back, Ilya had seen him stoop to pick up a billet of wood.
Then, raising his eyes, Ilya had been startled to see Wolfe standing on the opposite curb, staring at the commotion. He had barely had time to register this fact when the man in the red jacket flung his piece of wood, striking an officer in the face. That had been all the crowd needed. As the street, already tense, exploded into confusion, Ilya and the others had turned to go under the trees.
It was then that he realized that Wolfe had seen him as well. He was normally imperturbable, but in that instant, his blood had gone cold. Her presence, after all he had done to get this far, was enough to destroy everything. And as they passed into the park, he had seen a grain of distrust in Vasylenko’s eyes.
Inside, the house in Hackney Wick looked as if it had been deserted for some time, with a child’s bicycle leaning against the wall of the entryway. Behind Ilya, the door swung shut. As the others took their hostage into the next room, the one with blue eyes entered the kitchen, along with Ilya and Vasylenko.
Setting his bag with the shotgun on the floor, the man rinsed out a couple of glasses in the sink, drying them off with a threadbare dishrag. Vasylenko sat at the kitchen table, which had a set of plastic chairs. Reaching inside his jacket, he took out a pistol and laid it on the tabletop.
As the man with blue eyes poured them each a drink, the two former prisoners sat in silence. Accepting a glass, Vasylenko took a sip, then asked carefully in Russian, “Why was Wolfe there?”
Ilya put his own glass aside. “I don’t know. She’s a clever one. Perhaps she figured it out on her own. In any case, she could not have learned it from me. I didn’t know where we were going.”
Vasylenko seemed to grant the point. He drained the rest of his drink, then rose from the table, taking the gun with him, and went into the next room. Through the open doorway, Ilya saw him dial a number on his phone.
Next to him, the man with blue eyes was leaning against the kitchen counter, studying Ilya with evident curiosity. After a moment, he poured a drink of his own and said, “My name is Bogdan. We will be traveling together.”
Opening his bag, he fished out a large envelope. Ilya took it, then undid the flap and looked inside. The first thing he saw was a passport, Israeli, apparently authentic, with his own pictu
re and a false name. It also contained a wallet with a few credit cards and the usual pocket litter, all of it nicely done. Ilya held up a set of keys. “Are these for anything real?”
Bogdan only grinned at him above the rim of his glass. “You’ll find out soon.”
The final item was a railway ticket for Brasov in Romania. Ilya studied it, then slid it back inside. “You’re from Moldova?”
Bogdan nodded. “Came here to work. Of course, there are no jobs now.” He glanced out the window, which disclosed a tired garden. “I’ll be glad to go. There is no future in this city—”
He finished his drink. As he raised his glass, Ilya caught a glimpse of the blue tattoo on his inner forearm. It was the image of a snake.
From behind him came the sound of footsteps. Turning, he saw Vasylenko enter the kitchen again, his phone nowhere in sight. As the old man motioned for the others to follow, there was a thoughtful look on his face.
They went into the next room. Inside, Ferris had been bound rather inexpertly to a chair, his eyes and mouth covered with tape. The other men stood in the corners, smoking. As Vasylenko entered, they straightened up at once, and Ferris raised his head at the sound.
Vasylenko spoke quietly in Russian. “We need to go. Time to clean up.”
Without another word, he drew his gun and shot Ferris in the forehead. The spray of blood from the back of his skull sent the driver rocking forward, and he slumped in his chair, his face hanging down toward the floor.
Looking at the body, Ilya forced himself not to react. One of the other men, the one who had freed Ilya in the prison van, laughed.
Vasylenko gestured at the body. “See if there’s anything we can use in his pockets.”
The man who had laughed came forward. And as he bent down over the body, looking for the best way to search the dead man, Vasylenko raised the gun again and shot him in the back of the head.
Ilya could taste the blood on the air. In the shocked silence that followed, Vasylenko spoke once more, so softly that Ilya had trouble hearing him over the ringing in his ears: “I’ve been in touch with my source. This fool said something about Mare Street. If we had not managed to leave when we did, the whole plan would have fallen apart.” He turned to the others, who were staring at the dead men. “I will not tolerate weakness or stupidity. Are we clear?”
There was no response. Looking around at their faces, the old man seemed satisfied. “Good. Leave these two. We won’t be back.”
As the others filed out of the room, Ilya remained where he was. Looking down at the bodies, which were lying almost in each other’s arms, he saw his own situation clearly. He had chosen to play along, to risk the possibility of violence in exchange for what he might discover, but now it was too late.
What was more, he found that he knew precisely how it would all conclude. The details remained unclear. But it could only end in death.
Vasylenko spoke up behind him. “We are past the point of second thoughts. What are you willing to do?”
“Anything,” Ilya said. “But I need to know why we are going to Romania.”
Vasylenko told him. It took only a sentence or two. Ilya listened in silence, then turned away from the bodies to look at the vor, who was regarding him with what seemed like amusement.
As they left the room, Ilya said nothing, but Vasylenko’s words continued to echo in his mind. All along, he had been prepared for the worst, but even he couldn’t believe what he was being asked to do now.
“We need you to kill a man,” Vasylenko had said. “His name is Vasily Tarkovsky.”
25
During the riots in London, a number of observers in the media noticed an increase in sales of baseball bats, both online and at sporting goods stores, which was unusual for a country where baseball had never been particularly popular. One of these bats was leaning against the wall just inside the front door of Maddy’s apartment. Buying it hadn’t made her feel any better. Instead, it had given her the uncomfortable sensation that she had succumbed to the atmosphere of fear.
She had not gone to work that morning. When she telephoned to call in sick, Elena’s response had been frosty. “You should give us more notice in the future. Vasily is leaving for Constanta in two days, and we need to sort out your duties before his departure. We want to make sure that you’ll have enough to do—”
Normally, Maddy would have responded with something slightly chilly of her own, but she had more important things to consider. After confirming that she would be in tomorrow, she hung up, glancing at the riots on television, and turned back to the image on her laptop, a picture of Ovid Among the Scythians.
As she studied the image on the screen, Maddy wondered what Elena would have said if she knew her real plans for the next two weeks. Tarkovsky’s impending departure had left him vulnerable. Until his return, she would be left on her own with the files, which, beneath their surface accretion of detail, contained traces of a darker narrative that she was slowly piecing together.
The first clue had been before her eyes the entire time, hanging in the hallway outside her office door. She had begun to assemble other fragments from the records of Tarkovsky’s art transactions and filings for his public holdings, but the picture was still unclear. And she would share it with no one, not even Powell, until she had seen its full shape for herself.
In the meantime, however, she had been presented with another part of the story, the nature of which was still a mystery. Yesterday, the first official photographs of the damaged canvas had been released. The pictures had resulted in another flurry of news coverage, some of which had mentioned her by name, along with other famous acts of artistic vandalism.
Maddy was familiar with these cases, of course. She had read up on the subject years ago, after realizing that she would be numbered among them. Yet the man at the Met seemed different. Arkady Kagan had been born in Russia, served in the army for several years, and emigrated at the age of twenty. In New York, he had worked at a number of undistinguished jobs, mostly in data entry, and according to his friends and coworkers, he had been single, fairly private but not antisocial, and without any obvious signs of mental illness.
And there was another point, not mentioned in any of the news stories, that put his case in a somewhat different light. This was the fact, according to Powell, that the dead man had been an agent of Russian intelligence.
Closing the article on her computer, Maddy remembered something else that Powell had said. Since last year’s attack, the networks within military intelligence had been destroyed, with illegal agents left stranded without any means of contacting their handlers. Which explained why the dead man had been found with a number in his possession for a phone that no longer worked.
And this, in turn, led her to another idea, one that had been gathering slowly over the last day. For much of that time, she had tried to ignore it, but as she considered it now, she was unable to think of anything else.
Maddy rose from the table and began to pace around the room, feeling like a caged animal in its confines. This was a dangerous state of mind to be in. She had been here before, reading meaning into facts and events that had no real significance. But she couldn’t let it go.
Arkady Kagan had been abandoned in New York. With his handler’s phone disconnected, he would have had no way of sending a message. But there was one other possibility. A dramatic act of vandalism would be widely reported. And if his face and name appeared in the news, sooner or later, it would be seen by the right people. Perhaps he had only intended to be arrested, trusting that the story and the painting’s image would be carried overseas.
Which implied that the painting’s destruction had been a sort of code. He had chosen this particular work for a reason. And to see what this message was, and whether it had gotten through, she had to look at the incident through the eyes of those who had been meant to see it.
The
re was, of course, one obvious interpretation. Maddy knew a man who had once been called the Scythian. The more she thought about it, however, the more doubtful she became. Ilya was already in prison and certainly known to military intelligence. Drawing their attention to him would have been beside the point. Moreover, this message, if it existed, had to be one that would be clear to its intended recipient but not to most other observers.
Maddy opened a new window on her laptop, switching to a view of the painting as it had been before its desecration. Here was the poet reclining on the ground, the perfect image of an exile. No one knew why he had been banished. He had offended the emperor in some unknown way, and ever since, his fate had remained one of the most mysterious episodes in classical history.
Whatever it was, Maddy thought, it had been serious enough to send him as far away as his adversaries could imagine. Deprived of his books, he had been exiled to a country where he did not speak the language, at the edge of what was then known of the civilized world, on the shore of the Black Sea—
Maddy paused. On the table, next to her laptop, sat a pile of reference books she had checked out of the library shortly after talking to Powell. One of the volumes was already open. Picking it up, she flipped to the passage that gave the name of the place where the poet had been exiled. She had read it earlier that morning and still remembered its position on the page. At last, she found it.
Ovid, it said, had been exiled to Tomis, now the port city of Constanta in Romania.
Maddy shut the book. Rising from the table, she went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her, and turned on the cold tap. The water on her face was freezing, but it had the desired effect, and the world, which had threatened to blur out of existence entirely, snapped into focus again.
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