The party to celebrate Vani Fodorov’s life was held in B. B. King Blues Club on Sadovaya-Samotyochnaya, which had opened to considerable fanfare because of the appearance of the American blues master for whom the club was named. Vani’s party was attended by a few dozen men and women, who feasted on American-style ribs and cornbread, augmented by Russian shashlik—grilled spicy lamb—and pelmeni—stuffed cabbage leaves—with vodichka, a Russian champagne called shampanskoye, and later, konyak, brandy from Georgia.
Yvgeny, of course, was there as the grieving son, receiving words of condolence from his mother’s friends and fellow writers, hearing the expressions of horror at how she died: “The mafiya,” they said. “Pigs! Killers!”
“And all of them writers. Killed. In one day. Why?”
Yvgeny told them he didn’t have an answer. “Maybe it wasn’t the mafiya,” he said. “Maybe it was a sick, demented individual. A nut.”
His suggestion was met with a firm, “Nyet! How could it be one person? Four writers murdered in the same day, many miles from each other. I tell you, it was the damned mafiya.”
The arguments were short-lived because there was too much food and alcohol, and dancing to the infectious blues music coming through massive loudspeakers, to enjoy.
Privately, there were comments made about Yvgeny, few of them complimentary. His brooding, cold nature was well known to those at the party, if not through direct experience with him, certainly because of stories told over the years by his mother. Guests made remarks behind his back about his black suit and shirt and skinny white tie. Some at the gathering were aware of his friendship with the lower echelons of Moscow’s criminal society. They, of course, were not the ones espousing to his face the theory that Vani Fodorov and three other writers had been murdered by the mafia.
The party started at four and lasted into the night. Most stayed—Vani Fodorov’s celebratory party would have made her happy—but Yvgeny left at six, saying good-bye to no one. He wasn’t missed.
He took a city bus to the Mezhdunarodnaya Hotel, got off, and walked along Krasnopresnenskaya-Naberezhnaya until reaching the floating casino, the Alexander Blok, permanently moored there. It was one of dozens of casinos that had sprung up in Moscow, feeding on the inflationary climate of the city and the former Soviet Union.
The gaming tables were already busy when he arrived. He walked through the main room to a door leading to a set of stairs down to a small dock area, where a half-dozen men sat at a makeshift table playing cards. They glanced up at Yvgeny as he descended the wooden stairs, but paid him no more attention than that, returning to their game.
Yvgeny lit a cigarette and leaned against a wooden railing. Below, small craft bobbed in the brown wake of excursion boats. The sky was clear and blue, marred only by fast-moving cirrus clouds high above. A gentle breeze came off the water, carrying the smell of the waterway’s pollution to his nostrils.
He’d been there ten minutes—three cigarettes—when the door opened and his friend, Felix, came through it, followed by an older, heavyset man. The card players laid down their hands and watched. The older man, the second to come down the stairs, waved for them to leave, which they did immediately, and without discussion.
Felix and Yvgeny embraced, awkwardly, as men tend to do. The older man watched, heavy legs planted solidly on the weathered gray wood of the dock, a cigarette jutting from his lips in an ivory holder, giving his crude, large features an odd touch of elegance.
Felix stepped back from Yvgeny and said, “My friend, please meet Mr. Pralovich.” He stepped aside for Yvgeny to shake Pralovich’s large hand.
“Yvgeny Fodorov,” Pralovich said, as though deciding whether he liked the sound of it. “Da. I know of you. From Felix. From others.”
Yvgeny knew Gennady Pralovich by reputation. He was a Moscow mafiya boss, a rukovodstvo, a made man, with dozens of street gangs reporting to him through a cadre of underbosses. He lived in a mansion, was driven in an armor-plated Mercedes 500, and was fond of Fendi fur coats and Hennessy cognac at such favored bars as the Up and Down Club.
Like other mafia organizations in other countries, the Russians didn’t limit their criminal schemes to street-level bullying. Their influence and power reached into the highest echelons of government, into the offices of the secretaries of the party district committees, the Central Committee, and the Council of Ministers. Pralovich, it was claimed, controlled more than a hundred Moscow business enterprises, seemingly legitimate, but firmly directed by him and his lieutenants; a small percentage, perhaps, of more than forty thousand mafiya-controlled businesses in Russia—an estimated half of the country’s one hundred stock exchanges, sixty percent of its 2,200 banks—but lucrative enough to rank him as a leading criminal boss.
It was also said of Gennady Pralovich that when other mafiya bosses needed an assassin for a particularly difficult assignment, they turned to Pralovich. His small group of hitmen, many of them Chechens imported from the Caucasus to Moscow, were considered the best. They’d made a solid contribution to the dramatic rise in Moscow’s premeditated murders, from a little over one hundred in 1987 to almost fifteen hundred in 1993—eight and a half murders a day, more than half of them never solved.
“Felix tells me you are a good man, Yvgeny Fodorov, a good soldier.”
Yvgeny didn’t know what to say.
“I know from others, too, about what you have been doing for us. Impressive. Very impressive.” He pulled a cigarette pack from the pocket of the tight-fitting gray suit he wore, and offered it to Yvgeny.
“Nyet,” Yvgeny said. “Spasiba.” Don’t offend him by failing to say thank you.
Pralovich said to Felix, “Go get a drink or something. Your friend here and I have something to discuss.”
Yvgeny was uncomfortable seeing his friend go up the stairs and disappear through the door, leaving him alone with Gennady Pralovich. The mafiya boss leaned on the railing and looked out over the water, drawing deeply on his cigarette. Yvgeny lighted up, too, not sure whether by choosing his own brand, he would offend. It didn’t seem to matter.
Pralovich continued to smoke in silence, increasing Yvgeny’s discomfort. Then, in a voice void of emotion or inflection, he said into the breeze that had picked up, “You killed your own mother.”
“I was told—”
“Yes, I know, Yvgeny Fodorov. You were told to do it. What is impressive to me is that you followed that order. Your own mother. Flesh and blood. You came from her womb.”
“I want to please,” said Yvgeny, wishing Pralovich would turn and face him.
“Of course you do. So do many other young men like yourself. But most would not …” Now, he turned slowly and smiled. “Most would not follow orders to kill their mother.”
“I—”
“But you did.”
“Da.”
“Did you love her?”
The question stunned Yvgeny. Love her? Why would he ask that?
“Did you? Love your mother, Yvgeny?”
What should the answer be? Which answer would please him?
“I am used to having my questions answered,” Pralovich said.
“I loved her.”
“Did you? I am glad to hear that. We should love our mothers, da? They give us life.”
Yvgeny said nothing.
“It must have been even more difficult for you to kill her, loving her as you did.”
“It was.”
Pralovich now leaned his back against the railing. He looked up into the sky and smiled, drew an audible deep breath. “Today is a good day. A clear day.”
“It is a clear day,” Yvgeny parroted.
“Have you ever been away from the Soviet Union, Yvgeny?”
Yvgeny was surprised that Pralovich used that name for his country. It was pleasing to his ear.
“Nyet,” Yvgeny replied. “Never.”
“Would you like to take a trip?”
“Yes.”
“Are you free to leave immedia
tely?”
“Yes.”
“If I decide to choose you for this very important job, you must realize the great danger you will face.”
Yvgeny’s blood pulsed strong. His heart pounded.
Please, let it be me he chooses.
“We have a customer, Yvgeny, a client who pays us well. He has asked that we do him a great service. It will be difficult to satisfy him, but with the right person—”
“Yes, Mr.—Comrade Pralovich. I am ready to serve.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you do not know what you must do. Do you not care?”
“Da, I care, but I am willing to do anything.”
“Yes, I suppose you are. You killed your beloved mother to prove that to us. I mustn’t forget that. It was necessary to send a message from our Communist friends to the fools in power, huh? Necessary. Your mother, and others whose interests were different from our friends’, wrote bad things about them. Our customers. It will happen to others, I can assure you.”
Pralovich returned his attention to the water. A sightseeing boat passed, and passengers waved. Pralovich returned their greetings. Yvgeny started to, but kept his hands at his sides.
The mafiya boss turned and looked through Yvgeny’s thick glasses into his anxious eyes. He nodded. “Yes, I think you are the one, Yvgeny Fodorov. Here.” He handed Yvgeny an envelope. “In it you will find everything you need. You are to contact the person mentioned in this envelope immediately. He will provide you with other things. You leave tomorrow.”
Yvgeny wasn’t sure he could get the words out. “Yes, tomorrow. Where am I going?”
“America. Washington, D.C. The capital of that powerful country.”
“And when I am there?”
“You will be told when it is necessary for you to know. Go now. The person mentioned in the envelope waits for you. Dobry vecher, Yvgeny Fodorov.”
“Yes, sir. Good evening.”
“Do your job well.”
“I will. I will.”
“One final thing.”
“Yes?”
“Buy a better suit before you leave. You look like a fool in that.”
By midnight, Yvgeny had purchased a more conservative suit and accessories, and had met with the man mentioned in the envelope, who gave him a passport, instructions on who to contact upon arrival in the United States, and emergency numbers to call in the event of trouble. His flight would leave from Moscow at ten in the morning, not much time for most people to pull together last-minute things. But for Yvgeny Fodorov, there was nothing to pull together.
When he met Felix for a drink at one in the morning, his small bag was packed and he was ready to go.
“What are you to do?” his friend asked.
“I don’t know,” Yvgeny answered truthfully. “I will be told.”
“It must be very important, Yvgeny. Very important.”
“Da.”
“I envy you.”
“Yes.”
“Good things will be yours—if all goes well.” He managed to keep the resentment he felt from his voice. He’d brought Yvgeny into the gang. It should have been him, Felix, chosen for such an important assignment.
“I know.”
Yvgeny then did something uncommonly gregarious for him. He raised his glass in a toast. Felix touched his rim to Yvgeny’s.
“To my only friend, Felix.”
“And to a safe journey for you, Yvgeny.”
As Felix said it, he knew he would never see Yvgeny Fodorov again.
18
By the time Mac and Annabel got up the next morning, an hour before their clock radio went off at seven, the Washington press corps was reporting two startling, unsettling stories.
According to “reliable sources,” Congressman Paul Latham had not taken his own life. The autopsy showed that the bullet had been fired from a distance.
And, according to another reliable source, a charge of sexual harassment was to have been leveled against the congressman by a female employee, his scheduling secretary, Marge Edwards.
The latter story broke in that morning’s edition of the conservative Washington Standard, and was reported on local TV. The article had been written by Jules Harris, a freelance journalist, who said in his piece that repeated attempts to contact Ms. Edwards had been unsuccessful.
Harris’s timing had not been good. The thrust of his story was that the sexual harassment charge had been a factor in Latham’s decision to take his life.
But the other story—that Latham hadn’t killed himself—rendered the Harris article itself unreliable, despite its so-called unimpeachable source.
Over melon and berries, toast and coffee, Mac and Annabel watched the early morning news in their kitchen.
“Well,” Mac said, “it’s out.”
“Marge Edwards, you mean?”
“Yeah. I can only imagine what Ruth is feeling.”
“And it was murder.”
“If the ‘reliable source’ is right, which I suspect he or she is. ‘Suicide’ wasn’t in Paul’s vocabulary.”
Annabel shivered against a sudden internal chill. “Murder! A U.S. congressman gunned down. It had to have been a professional killing, an assassination.”
“Certainly looks that way. Whoever shot Paul took the time to place the gun in his hand. Still, not a very smart assassin. Any fool knows that even the most inept medical examiner can determine whether a shot was fired close enough to have been suicide.”
“Maybe he did it to cause confusion, buy some time.”
“Or he decided to improvise.… Why do we keep saying ‘he’?”
“Assassins are usually men,” Annabel said.
“That sort of assassin, at least.”
She let it pass.
“Marge Edwards. I’ll try to reach her again. This story that she was going to charge Paul with sexual harassment might be just that, a story. All she has to do is deny it. That’d put an end to it.”
“If she’s willing to come forward. Looks like she’s gone underground.”
“To avoid having to comment.”
“Do you think your friend Jessica Belle might be the source of this reporter’s story?”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“She was your source.”
“Hmmmm.”
“You’ve been reasonably close to Paul all these years, especially recently. Who would have wanted him dead?”
“No idea. He was one of the most revered members of the House.”
“Powerful, too.”
“Meaning?”
“Power makes enemies.”
“Sounds like something Kissinger might say.”
“He probably has. Mac, this is all just now hitting me. The meaning of it.”
“Me, too.”
The phone rang. Mac reached for the kitchen extension.
“Hello, Jessica. Yes, I’ve heard. Where are you?”
“Still in L.A.”
“It’s three in the morning for you.”
“I haven’t been to bed. Anything you can tell me from that end?”
“No. Annabel and I have been watching the news. We’ve been to see Ruth Latham.”
Mac realized he was reporting to Jessica.
“I’m flying back this morning. I’d like to talk to you again.”
“All right. Any idea who leaked the rumor about Marge Edwards?”
She said nothing right away; time to think? he wondered.
“No. You?”
“No.”
“The allegation that he was murdered hasn’t been verified, has it?”
“Not as far as I know, Jessica. But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think murder ever makes sense,” she said.
“I meant that it was highly unlikely he took his own life. I’ll look forward to your call.”
When Smith hung up, Annabel said, “You seem angry.”
“Not angry. Perplexed is m
ore accurate.”
The phone rang again. A reporter. Another called ten minutes later.
“Want me to answer while you shower?” Annabel asked.
“No. Let technology handle it. Come on, this promises to be a splendid day I’m sure we’ll both rather forget.”
After showering and dressing, Mac called Bob Mondrian at Latham’s Rayburn Building office.
“How goes it?” he asked the COS.
Mondrian answered with an audible exhalation. “They turned the offices upside down, Mac. Walked out of here with boxes of materials.”
“To be expected. Have you been in contact with Marge Edwards?”
“No answer at her apartment. She hasn’t shown up here.”
“That’s cause for concern, isn’t it?”
“Sure. I’ve got a couple of my people looking for her. I talked to her father in Indiana. Mother’s dead. Her father says he hasn’t heard from her.”
“Did he have anything to say about the story?”
“No. And I didn’t raise it. He said he’d have her call me if she showed up.”
“The autopsy leak. I assume it’s true,” Mac said.
“Right. For some reason, the ME is dragging his feet in releasing the results. I heard this morning that Senator Connors is behind it.”
“I heard the president is.”
“I doubt that, Mac. The faster Paul’s death is verified as murder, the faster this ridiculous rumor that Marge was about to charge him with sexual harassment vaporizes. Anything new on your end?”
“No. The FBI is due here at ten. Spoken with Ruth yet about the stories?”
“Yeah. She’s a strong lady. She dismissed the Marge Edwards thing with ‘That’s nonsense.’ End of comment.”
“Good for her. I’d like to come down after my session with the FBI. You’ll be there?”
“I expect to be, trying to put this place back in order.”
“Noon. Free for lunch?”
Mondrian laughed. “Lunch? What’s that? Sure. I’ll order sandwiches up.”
Annabel joined her husband in the den.
“The FBI’s due here in an hour,” he said.
“I don’t have to be here, do I?”
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