Eternal Empire

by Alec Nevala-Lee

  “Got it,” Adam said. She could hear the sound of typing in the background. “Go on.”

  “There are several board members from Tarkovsky’s foundation. Lord Norwood, the former foreign secretary, is supposed to join us in Constanta. I’ve also seen Sir George Holder, the banker, and Paul Douglas, the former ambassador to Russia, along with their wives. There are at least three executives from Argo and two founding members of Polyneft with their spouses or girlfriends.”

  Powell came back on the line again. “Good work. But you need to be discreet. You’re giving us useful information, but it won’t be worth it if Tarkovsky finds out what you’re doing.”

  “I know,” Maddy said, reflecting that Powell had no idea what she was doing here at all. “Anyway, I’m not sure how close I can get. I expect that people like me will be kept away from the others.”

  This statement was addressed to Powell, but it was also intended for someone else. The cell phone she was using was the one she had been given by her abductors, and although she had heard nothing from them since her departure, she suspected that every word she spoke was likely to be overheard.

  She had waited until she was at the airport to tell Powell where she was going. Powell had been surprised, but he had also recognized that it represented a rare opportunity. He had cautioned her to remain in the background but to learn whatever she could about the guests, in hopes that it would reveal something about Tarkovsky’s intentions in the Black Sea.

  Maddy remembered that he had also promised to do something else. “Have you had a chance to look into what I asked about?”

  Adam spoke up. “I have. We’ve been checking out the name Tarkovsky mentioned. I don’t know if you’ve looked at Gleb Boky yet—”

  Maddy glanced back at the palace. “Only what I was able to find before I left. He was an officer of the secret police, right?”

  “Among other things,” Adam said. “Boky was a Ukrainian revolutionary who became a leading organizer for the Bolsheviks. Later, he helped orchestrate the Red Terror, and he was one of the major architects of the gulag system.”

  Powell spoke up. “My father kept a file on Boky, who went on to run the secret police in Turkestan. The locals were terrified of him, saying that he ate dog’s meat and drank human blood, but he was also a gifted cryptographer who developed ciphers for the revolutionists. After the civil war, he became the chief code breaker of the security services, as the head of what was called the Special Section, which focused on cryptography, surveillance, and running the concentration camps.”

  “I know,” Maddy said. “I saw most of this online. But why would Tarkovsky care?”

  “Because Boky was obsessed with Shambhala,” Adam said. “Along with its other activities, the Special Section was dedicated to investigating the occult. It was located in a secret building, apart from the Lubyanka, and looked at ways of influencing society on a large scale, through the camps, obviously, but also on a psychological level. Among other things, it researched truth serum, hypnosis, and what we’d consider occult techniques, like mind control.”

  In Adam’s voice, Maddy heard a trace of enthusiasm of a kind that she had last heard many years ago, in the voice of a young man who was now dead. “But why would they waste time on this?”

  “From their point of view, it wasn’t a waste of time at all,” Powell said. “Nearly every intelligence agency has looked into such phenomena. It’s a question of competitive advantage.”

  “And this is where Shambhala comes in,” Adam continued. “Boky’s lead investigator was a man named Alexander Barchenko, a writer and occultist who was convinced that Shambhala was a real place somewhere in Central Asia. According to him, it was a hidden scientific community of immense power, founded on a mathematically precise system of occult knowledge that could control minds, read thoughts, and predict the future. And he managed to convince both Boky and Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, to sponsor his research.”

  Powell broke in. “These were not what you’d call fanciful or sentimental men. I doubt that either believed in Shambhala itself. But they might have thought it worthwhile to investigate traditional forms of mind control, which Barchenko claimed could be found in the East.”

  “And he did his best to prove it,” Adam said. “At first, he tried to organize an expedition to find Shambhala itself, but it was canceled at the last minute. Instead, he and Boky began to look into occult groups closer to home. It’s unclear what the results were, but if you look at the history of Russian intelligence, you find references to experiments in mass hypnosis and the use of Tibetan potions to extract confessions. And in the end, their work was transferred to the Institute of Experimental Medicine, the same laboratory that investigated truth drugs and poisons.”

  Maddy, who had been taking notes on the back page of her guidebook, felt the tips of her fingers grow cold. “What kind of poisons?”

  The men on the other end fell silent. “Poisons like the kind we’ve both seen before,” Powell said at last. “These impulses all arise from the same source. There’s always been an affinity in Russia between poison and black magic. It doesn’t surprise me to see it again here. The real question is why Tarkovsky has taken an interest in this, and why he would mention it to you—”

  As Powell spoke, Maddy heard a familiar voice, carried over a distance in the mountain air. Turning, she saw Tarkovsky emerging from the palace, his wife and daughter to either side. Tarkovsky’s wife, Ludmilla, whom she had met only briefly, was tall, beautiful, and severe, confirming her suspicion that the oligarch had a definite type with which he liked to surround himself.

  She continued to watch Tarkovsky, who was followed shortly thereafter by Elena and the members of his security team. “I can think of one reason. Shambhala is a symbol of social change, or spiritual transformation, which Boky was trying to turn into a science. Tarkovsky is interested in the same thing. As he sees it, the world is about to enter a new era, and he wants to play a role in whatever is coming. It makes sense that he’d be interested in the history of social control in Russia. But I still don’t know what he intends to do with it.”

  Even as she said this, Maddy saw that the oligarch’s assistant was waving at her, motioning for her to join the rest of the group. Maddy spoke quietly into her phone. “Listen, I need to go.”

  “All right,” Powell said. “We’ll keep working here. Call us again when you can.”

  “I will.” Maddy hung up. Rising from the bench, she wondered what her eavesdroppers had made of this conversation, in which she had left her true thoughts unspoken. Tarkovsky’s interest in these matters was only part of a larger picture, one that she had gradually begun to trace, on her own, through the files and records in which it could dimly be glimpsed. It was a story that went back decades, but it gained direction and purpose in the last three years. And if Tarkovsky had found himself drawn to such forces, it came as no surprise that they had also been drawn to him.

  Maddy began to head toward the others. As she did, her eye was momentarily caught by a cottage on the hill above the clearing, about five hundred yards away. Then she went to join the rest of the group.

  Back in the house in the trees, standing before the window on the second floor, Ilya watched Maddy leave.

  At his side, the man at the tripod drew back from the rifle. Vasylenko, who had been observing them in silence for the past minute, spoke at last. “Have you made your decision, Ilyuha?”

  Ilya did not turn away from the window. “And what happens when this is over?”

  “I let her go,” Vasylenko said. “I have nothing to gain from her death, once our work is complete. And I have no fear that she’ll talk.”

  Looking away from the view, Ilya turned to Vasylenko. “How can you be sure?”

  Vasylenko only rose from the edge of the bed. “That isn’t your concern. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  33
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  In the bedroom of the house in Hackney Wick, Wolfe could see several distinct sprays of blood. The bodies themselves had been taken to the mortuary, leaving behind only the thick stench of decomposition, as well as a sour smell, like ammonia, that floated unaccountably above it all.

  At her side, the scenes of crime officer produced a set of forensic photographs. “Two bodies. One was Andrew Ferris, the driver who was taken hostage. The other has been identified as Ivan Sturza. You’ve seen his file?”

  Wolfe studied the photos with a connoisseur’s eye. “Moldovan national with a Romanian passport. Petty criminal record. Based on video from the riots, he was one of the men at the prison break.”

  She pointed to the picture on top, which displayed two bodies, one tied to a chair, the other slumped awkwardly across the other. “Ferris, the hostage, was killed first. Sturza was shot as he was bending over the other man’s body. And I don’t think he was expecting it.”

  “That’s consistent with our analysis,” the officer said. “I spoke with the lab in Lambeth. The bullet was smooth, with no rifling, which implies it was fired from a reactivated gun, possibly a converted starter pistol. And they used ammonia to remove trace evidence from the rest of the scene.”

  “They did the same thing in the van on Mare Street,” Wolfe said. “We should check the database for similar crimes. What else?”

  “One partial shoeprint in the blood. The men in the house wore smooth gloves. Plenty of latex smears, but no prints. With one exception.”

  “You mentioned that earlier.” Wolfe headed for the door. “Let’s take a look.”

  She left the room, glad to move away from the smell of death, and went back into the hallway, keeping to the approach path. The house itself was small and depressing, abandoned, like so many others, in the recent downturn, which had pushed repossession rates to their highest level in ten years.

  At the center of the kitchen stood a warped table with two plastic chairs. The table was covered with gray smears of fingerprint powder, as well as a pair of white cards that marked where two glasses had been found and bagged. Wolfe pointed to the nearest card. “Here?”

  The officer nodded. “The only set of prints we found. Clear impressions on one of the glasses. And they belong to Ilya Severin.”

  Wolfe frowned. “He must have removed one of his gloves. I wonder why—”

  Looking down, she saw something else. On the linoleum floor by one of the chairs, in which Ilya had evidently been seated, there was a worn dishrag, apparently taken from the counter by the sink. Picking it up with one gloved hand, Wolfe saw that it had been tied into a loose knot.

  She set the rag on the table and carefully undid it. There was nothing inside.

  The knot reminded her of something, but before she could put it into words, her partner entered. “I spoke with the sergeant,” Asthana said. “They’re checking cameras nearby. Ferris was a contractor, but he was still an employee of Her Majesty’s prisons, so they’re taking the murder to heart.”

  “Then we’ll leave them to it,” Wolfe said. After thanking the officer for his time, she and Asthana left the house together, moving past the blue incident tape strung across the entrance. Arriving at their car, Asthana got behind the wheel as Wolfe went over her notes. “I want to try Hughes again. Maybe word of the murders will rattle him further. And then I want to go after Dancy.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Asthana said, heading south on the trunk road. “You see anything useful back there?”

  Wolfe thought about mentioning the knotted dishrag, which had continued to stick in her mind, but finally decided against it. “I keep wondering about the resources involved. At least six men on the outside. Vehicles, weapons, a safe house. This takes time and money. But I still can’t figure out why.”

  Asthana did not seem troubled by this. “Vasylenko didn’t want to die in prison.”

  “But that isn’t enough to justify the risk. Vasylenko doesn’t have the authority he once did in London. The younger generation isn’t going to blindly follow a man just because he has the right tattoos.”

  “Granted,” Asthana said. “But a man like Vasylenko can be useful in other ways. He ran extortion and weapons rackets for years. There’s institutional knowledge there. It’s good to have a man like this around.”

  “But you don’t need to break him out of prison to get the benefit of his experience. It’s easy to run operations from Belmarsh. That’s what a vor does. If they broke him out, it had to have been for a specific task—”

  Even as she spoke, she began to glimpse an answer. When you looked at Vasylenko, you saw an old man, but to the right pair of eyes, he was something more. The tattoos on his body weren’t arbitrary symbols but the visible signs of the life he had led. His mind, too, was full of signs that had never been written down. And even if you could pass them along to others, they were still only words, at least in the absence of the man whose history gave them meaning.

  All these thoughts flashed through her mind in a fraction of a second. Wolfe turned to Asthana. “There’s one thing a thief can do that nobody else can. He can talk to other thieves.”

  Asthana seemed absorbed by the traffic. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “Vasylenko is useful only as a symbol. An icon in the form of a man. He can open doors, guarantee safe passage, draw on the full resources of the brotherhood. But only if he’s there in person.”

  Asthana looked unconvinced. “But you said yourself that the thieves are losing their power in London.”

  “But not in other countries.” Wolfe turned to the last page of her notes. “Ivan Sturza, the dead man, was born in Moldova. That’s a country where the old ways still have force. If you want to get something done, you need a vor on your side. And if you don’t have one already—”

  “—you bring him in,” Asthana finished. “All right. Vasylenko isn’t useful here, but they can take him someplace where he’s still valuable. He won’t stay in London. But why bring Ilya?”

  “I don’t know,” Wolfe said. “Maybe they have something special in mind.”

  As she said this, it occurred to her that if Ilya was involved, it could mean only one thing. And she wondered for the first time, with a sinking heart, if Ilya had fired the shots that killed those two men in Hackney.

  She was about to say more when her cell phone rang. As she dug the phone out of her purse, her mind continued to follow the thread from before. The next step was to look at the map of Europe, not by country, but by regions of power that had little to do with political boundaries. Somewhere at the heart of that map, she thought, was where Ilya and Vasylenko had gone.

  Her cell phone displayed an unknown number. She answered it. “Rachel Wolfe.”

  The voice on the other end was uncharacteristically nervous. “Wolfe, this is Owen Dancy. I hear you’ve been trying to reach me. . . .”

  34

  The following morning, a town car brought Maddy and Elena to the Port of Tomis. Maddy had overslept, having spent much of the night going over the material from her conversation with Powell, only to be awakened by a call from Tarkovsky’s assistant. Throwing on her clothes, she had packed and rushed to the lobby, where she discovered that the others had already left.

  When they arrived at the port in Constanta, Maddy found herself at a pretty marina. Leaving their car, they headed toward the berth from which they were scheduled to embark. The day was bright and warm, the salt wind blowing her hair to one side as she hurried to follow Elena. Up ahead, she saw a cluster of guests in fashionable casual wear, standing before a sleek white limousine tender.

  As they approached the passerelle, a uniformed deckhand with epaulets came up to take their bags, saying that they would be departing in a few minutes. Maddy watched as he stowed their suitcases in the compartment in the stern, then saw that Elena had moved off without a word, going to
greet a pair of new arrivals who were standing up the quay.

  Maddy took a step back, pretending to look out at the water while really studying the crowd. She couldn’t see Tarkovsky, his family, or any of the board members. The executives from Argo and their wives stood apart from the others, and a member of the security team was stationed by the passerelle, his eyes lighting briefly on her face as he observed the scene in silence.

  Near the water, standing by himself, was a man who had caught her attention earlier. He was fairly young, perhaps in his late twenties, and a touch on the heavy side. With his hands in the pockets of his jacket and a pair of white headphones in his ears, he seemed less than comfortable here. Maddy had learned a few useful facts about him already, and as she regarded him now, he struck her as a member of a type that she understood very well.

  As the others began to board, Maddy climbed onto the tender, where she was shown into a cabin with two rows of facing seats cushioned in nude leather, the skylight open to the sun overhead. She made a show of looking outside until the man with the white earphones had taken a seat at the end of the row. Without glancing over, she sat down beside him, her camera in hand.

  A second later, Maddy caught his eye, as if by chance. “Hi there. I’m Maddy.”

  In response, the man removed his headphones and reached out for a handshake. Aside from a few extra pounds, he was pleasant enough to look at, with a broad open face and a hint of dark stubble. “I’m Rahim. Nice to meet you. So what brings you to this ship of fools?”

  “Good question,” Maddy said. “The short answer is that I work for Tarkovsky. You?”

  “You might say I work for him, too, in a way.” Rahim looked out toward the quay as the deckhand cast off the stern lines and climbed into the cockpit. “I was on the yacht design team.”

  Maddy knew this already, but she made a show of interest. “Oh, so you’re an engineer?”