by Gordon Ryan
Jim opened the envelope just wide enough to verify that it was all hundreds, then slipped it into his jacket pocket. He’d just doubled his winter income. Usually, he’d be taking the boat out of the water for the year, ready to start his seasonal job driving a groomer at the ski resort.
He was used to carrying tourists for an afternoon sail, not moving goods back and forth in the middle of the night. He also wasn’t accustomed to taking payment in cash-stuffed envelopes.
“You know the island?” Black Horse asked.
“Never been there, but I know the water well enough,” Jim said. “I’ve sailed around it maybe fifty, a hundred times.”
“Then it should be easy enough to avoid attention, especially at night.”
Jim could see King’s Island from here. It was privately owned, heavily wooded. Supposedly some railroad guy had built a full-scale replica of a Scottish castle on the north end in the late 19th Century. Various eccentrics had owned the castle over the years.
He used to see a helicopter buzzing across the lake to and from Burlington or Plattsburgh. Not since the 90s. Then, two years ago, someone had enlarged the island pier and he’d occasionally see a yacht or sailing boat in dock. He hadn’t given King’s Island much thought until approached two days earlier.
Black Horse nodded. “I can’t be sure we’ll talk again, and certainly not for awhile. Repeat the plan one more time.”
“I’m going to dock on the island no later than 7:00 PM on November 26th. Two men will help me unload the first crate.”
He felt uneasy when he thought of taking the boat out at night that late in the year. The water was smooth at the moment, like a steaming mirror. But two-hundred and fifty years of shipwrecks sat in the mud at the bottom of the lake, many victims of the winter storms that rolled into Vermont from northern Canada.
“Then what?” the man asked.
“I’ll return at the same time on November 30th. Some more guys—wait, are they the same two men?”
This gave the man pause. “Probably,” he said at last. “But things happen. I don’t want you to count on it. These men, or even one guy, they know your name, you hand over the crates.”
Why not deliver all the crates at the same time? For that matter, why not take them over now? “Okay, it’s your stuff.”
“Good,” Black Horse said. “You’ll get ten thousand more after you make the second delivery. You see, I’m a reasonable man, Mr. Grossman. I looked into you, and you seem like a guy I can work with. Nice wife, son in high school. I hear he’s on the wrestling team.” He gave a predatory smile. “And your daughter, very beautiful. I hope she does well at college, takes care of herself, doesn’t talk to any strange men. You did explain about that, didn’t you? I would hate to see anything happen to your children.”
“Don’t worry, you can count on me.” Jim could feel the wad of cash against his chest, an almost uncomfortable bulge.
“Good, but I just need to be clear. You fail me and you’ll be—what’s the expression in English?”
“Screwed.”
“Yeah, almost. But screwed means a couple of guys throw you down and kick you in the ribs.” His lips hardened into a tight line. “Doublecross me, Mr. Grossman, run off your mouth, or whatever. You’ll be more than screwed. You’ll be fucked.”
Chapter Nine:
The worst part wasn’t the pain, it was the anticipation of pain.
The pain came in spurts. A few seconds, maybe a minute. Then Dmitri would wait for the next torture, see it coming by their preparations. And that was almost too much to take.
Henri stood to the side, watching, while the American shoved Dmitri’s left thumb into a vice and tightened it just enough to make it uncomfortable. Then he would plug the chair itself into the wall and the metal would grow warm, but not yet hot, on Dmitri’s naked skin.
They were underground somewhere. He could hear cars driving overhead and the roof would occasionally vibrate as a heavier truck passed. Pipes lined the room. It was warm, the air damp. As good a place to die as any, he supposed.
The American was a big guy, darker complexion. Maybe Greek or Lebanese, or just a native American ancestor somewhere along the line. Henri leaned against a wall, smoking a cigarette.
“Try not to scream,” the American said after standing back for a few minutes while a cold sweat drenched Dmitri’s naked body. “Nobody will hear you and it won’t help.”
He stepped forward and tightened the finger vice—a biting, medieval-looking thing. The pain blurred his vision. He let out a single, shuddering sob.
And then the man stopped and stepped back to watch, while the Belgian took another drag from his cigarette.
After that, the American fiddled with a dial on the cord and the chair grew hot. Dmitri jumped and thrashed like a drop of water hissing across a skillet. His hands strained at the cuffs behind the chair back and he pushed off on his toes in an attempt to get his buttocks and genitals away from the heat.
More vice. More chair. Five seconds of relief and then terrified anticipation as the American brought out a pair of needle-nosed pliers and opened and shut them with a thoughtful look.
“Now,” said Henri. “Tell me about your friends.”
Dmitri said nothing.
Pliers at the nipple, then the tongue. The chair again. The thumb. This time, he heard the bone crack. The pain, almost unbearable. He blacked for a few seconds.
Henri leaned close. “Tell us who you really work for. Black Horse, who is he? A Russian? Friend like that, you don’t want to protect him.”
Still, Dmitri said nothing. He didn’t know how much more he could take. But he knew that telling wouldn’t help. They’d get their information, then they’d make him suffer some more. Then he would die. And Dmitri wasn’t working for money, or even the smug satisfaction of rescuing cultural artifacts, as were Tess and Lars.
“That’s enough,” a voice said as the tears cleared from Dmitri’s eyes. A man stepped from behind Dmitri, where he must have been since they cuffed him to the chair and pulled off the hood.
Dmitri couldn’t believe his eyes. “Kirkov. You?”
Kirkov shook his head. “I’m sorry, my old friend. I had to be sure,” he said in Russian, then nodded to the others and continued in English. “He’s good. Let him go. Do it, now.”
Dmitri waited, sullen, seething, while Henri and the American cut the plastic cuffs and helped him to his fee. His left thumb throbbed. It was already swelling. His backside was red and raw. A handful of blisters on his hamstrings. The American handed him his clothes.
He dropped the clothes at his feet and stared at Kirkov, then fixed Henri and the American in his gaze. The Belgian looked away. The American wore a look that was hard to read at first. Disappointment? He’d wanted to continue with the torture.
“You’re a hero, my friend,” Kirkov said. “Ready for anything. Ready to ride the Black Horse into battle.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why would you do it?”
“I had to be sure,” Kirkov repeated. “I had to know what you could take.”
“You didn’t trust me? Are you out of your mind? And what about Borisenko? He was mine, he was going to die.”
“No, not really. The whole thing is a setup. No, not a setup, a game. Peter Gagné’s game.” Kirkov held up a hand. “But it’s perfect for what we’re trying to do. I’ll explain everything, but first, get dressed.”
Dmitri held up his hand. “What about my goddamn thumb?”
“Jesus, it’s your thumb, not your leg. We’ll put a splint on it. But move, I’ve got a lot to tell you and you’ve got to meet your friends later before it looks even more suspicious. I can’t have Gagné asking questions about you.”
He looked down at his clothes, still lying where he’d dropped them. Behind, he could feel residual heat from the chair. Those bastards. “One thing first. Do I get Borisenko, or not?”
Alexander Borisenko. His father had worked with Dmitri’s in a chemical plant in Ma
riinsk. The older Borisenko was the factory manager, his friend, Ivan Federov—Dmitri’s father, his foreman. As boys, Dmitri and Alexander—Sasha—would stand next to the river and watch the trains wheeze into the station. Men and women poured out to spend a few hours in the city on their way across Siberia: finely dressed party officials from Moscow, Ukrainians, Tatars, even Mongolians and North Korean guest workers. In the winter, the two boys snowshoed in the woods and set snares for rabbits.
Somehow, in the collapse of the Soviet Union, Alexander Borisenko and his father took ownership of the chemical plant. Federov and his family lost their jobs and migrated first to Kiev, then Moscow. Dmitri returned years later, as an adult, but his old friend was long gone. Borisenko had plundered Kemerevo Oblast and moved on to make his billions in the larger world.
Their village of Moest was a ghost town on the outskirts of Mariinsk. The road lay broken and frost-heaved and forced Dmitri to leave his car. He had to see it all. Broken shutters hung from the windows of abandoned houses. Others had burned to husks or sprouted trees through their roofs. A rusted Lada sedan sat in the middle of the road.
This is what the end of the world looks like, Dmitri thought. And he was surprised to see that it was beautiful. Even the river, a steaming morass that sometimes caught on fire and burned for days, now flowed clear with the chemical plant shut down. In Mariinsk he’d seen a boy fishing from the rail bridge.
The old housekeeper still lived in the ruins of the Borisenko house. A hideous tumor dangled from her neck like the wattle on a turkey. She greeted him at the door with a rusty pair of garden shears.
”Privet, babushka,” Dmitri said. “I don’t mean to frighten you.”
She put down the shears and squinted through watery eyes. “I thought you were the dogs, come back.”
“Where is everybody?” He stared at the tumor, unable to help himself.
“They’ve gone away, I’m the last one.”
“Surely there’s someone else in the village.” He walked past the woman, into the front room.
The woman shook her head. “There were some families, squatting down the road. Chechens, or Gypsies, dirty people.” The woman wore rags and smelled sour, sickly, but she said this with no sense of irony. “Their kids were feeble from drinking river water.”
“What about you?” he asked. “Why don’t you leave?”
“I have nobody, nothing, where would I go?”
“I don’t know, away. Somewhere better than this.”
“This house is all I need.” She gestured at the open parlor of the Borisenko house. Sunlight streamed through the broken window and illuminated dust that Dmitri had stirred up when he’d entered. “I grow a few potatoes in the back yard and I get a small check every month. My husband died in Afghanistan and Moscow pays me for it.”
He’d heard the stories about widow’s pensions; the check would be tiny. And who would bother delivering it out here? “What about the Borisenkos, can’t they help you?”
She cackled. “They’ve forgotten about me. They sold the machinery from the chemical plant, and tore down most of the houses to mine silver under the village. But there wasn’t any silver.” Another cackle. “What a waste of money. They couldn’t keep up the house after that. Fools!” Sudden venom infected her voice. “I hope they rot, I hope they’re living in a ditch somewhere. That boy, he’s probably in prison, the pig fucker.”
Dmitri was taken aback by her crude turn. “Actually, Sasha is—”
“He is, isn’t he? You know him, you were his friend. What, you think I don’t remember you? You see Sasha in prison, you tell him that he deserves it. You tell him I laughed when you told me. I laughed so hard my false teeth fell out and went chattering across the floor like in an old movie.”
Dmitri decided not to tell her that Borisenko had given up the house because it was worthless, that Sasha was a minister in the government now, and doing to Russia what he’d done to Moest. And profiting very nicely in the process.
He took her gently by one bony wrist, breathing through his mouth so as not to be overcome by her smell. “Come, babushka, come with me. I’ll take you to Mariinsk. There’s a shelter where you can get hot soup, and someone to look after you, maybe even a doctor.”
She pulled away. “No, I’m not going anywhere. I need to be here when those bastards come back, they owe me money. I’m fine here, don’t you see? The water can’t hurt an old woman like me. Go, leave me alone.” She scratched at the thing on her neck. It oozed.
Dmitri drove to Mariinsk to buy flour and cooking oil and a little bacon, which he brought back to the old housekeeper. After that, he left Moest and never returned.
Two thoughts warred in his mind as he drove through Siberia with its poisonous, dying, industrial cities and villages populated by old women and dogs. First, hatred at the people who’d done all this, and second, that the problem was that the Soviet Union had not crashed hard enough. Sweep all this away, purge the Borisenkos of the world, let the poison and the pollution work itself out, and then start over.
But first, he wanted Borisenko. Would Black Horse give him that opportunity?
Sweating, cold, broken thumb and angry where Kirkov and Henri had tortured him, he still wondered the same thing.
“You’ll get Borisenko,” Kirkov said with a nod. “I swear it.”
Dmitri picked up his underwear and started to put them on. His broken thumb was swollen and throbbing and useless. Kirkov took his arm to steady him while Dmitri started awkwardly on his pants.
“But Borisenko is just a start.” Kirkov helped button Dmitri’s shirt and it was incredible that just a few minutes earlier he’d been watching Dmitri’s torture. “When we’re done, the world will be cleansed of all its Borisenkos.”
Chapter Ten:
Tess’s fear turned to anger at the sight of the man on the other side of the table. He folded his copy of Le Figaro, then took off his hat and set it on the paper, seemingly oblivious to her glare. She put a hand on Lars’s wrist to warn him not to draw his gun.
“Nice,” Tess said. “Months of silence, refusal to take my calls, and here you show up out of the blue? You know that was a really shitty thing to do.”
“I know it was. I was going for the band-aid approach. Just rip the damn thing off and it hurts less.”
“Well maybe I didn’t want the band-aid taken off at all? And did you ask Nick what he wanted?”
“Mind telling me what’s going on?” Lars asked.
“This is Peter Gagné,” Tess said.
”This is your ex-boyfriend?”
“Yeah, take your hand out of your pocket. If anyone is going to shoot him, it will be me. How is he, anyway?” she asked Peter.
“Nick is fine. He misses you, of course. I think he really loved you, Tess.”
“Nice. Is that supposed to make me feel any better?”
Peter looked pained. “Would you rather I told you he’d never mentioned your name again? Would that make you happier?”
“Jesus, Peter. Can we back up to the part where you cut the two of us off?”
“Maybe you can catch up later,” Lars said. “While someone tells me what is going on.”
“That is a good question,” Tess said. “Why don’t you start with this, Peter. Where is Borisenko?”
“Probably in Moscow. He’s got some new items for his collection.”
“So this is what your friendship is about,” Tess said. “The two of you go plundering together, or are you just his wingman?”
“Tess, calm down for a minute,” Lars said. “Let him talk. I want to hear this.”
Tess was breathing heavily and she felt lightheaded with anger and the aftermath of the adrenaline that had flooded her as they’d approached the presumed-Borisenko’s table.
“Here,” said Lars, “let’s get coffee, talk about this.” He waved for the waiter, then made Tess order. As soon as the waiter was gone, he said, “What I want to know, is this a setup?”
Peter gav
e his disarming smile. “Isn’t that what you were up to, a setup? You were going to rip off Sasha. So your outrage is hypocritical, wouldn’t you say?”
Sasha. Not Borisenko, or even Alexander, but his familiar name. Whatever else Peter was, she couldn’t believe he’d be friends with someone like the Russian oil minister. But maybe Peter had finally found a use for his father’s billions. A private collector.
The coffee came and she took a sip, grateful for something to calm her. “But what’s this all about, Peter? I mean, is it all a lie?”
“No, it’s not a lie. Borisenko bought a bunch of artifacts in Damascus and Beirut. He didn’t steal any of it, you know. It was already stolen, during the sack of Baghdad.”
“Second time I’ve heard that excuse,” she said.
“It’s not an excuse. Borisenko was safekeeping it.”
“Safekeeping? Right, whatever,” Tess said. “The Iraqis would love to have their history back. They’ll give you a medal. In fact, I can make the call if you’d like.”
Peter said, “There’s no rush, let him keep it for a few months, then he can return it.”
“I can’t believe you, you’re justifying him. That stuff belongs in the Baghdad Museum, where it can be appreciated, and protected.”
“Did you go to the Bardo when you were in Tunisia? You know, to get your story straight. They’ve got so many mosaics, half of them are right on the bloody ground.”
She knew it. There was only wall space for the spectacular mosaics with gods or animals, or Roman historical figures. A friend at the museum—the one who’d tipped her to the bad curator—had pointed out that the mosaics were flooring, meant to be walked on. Sure, but they wouldn’t last forever. They’d survived two thousand years of abandonment, but how many decades would they last under the feet of a thousand tourist feet a day?
“Let’s get back to the stuff from the Baghdad Museum,” Lars said. “Where is it?”
“I can get it all,” Peter said. “I convinced Sasha to turn it over.”
“Where? Here in France?”
Peter nodded. “You’ve got the dagger already. I’ve got more of the same on the way, including the bronze head.”