by Mark Terry
“So,” Derek said. “I thought I saw you in the Armani store, but I wasn’t sure.”
Konstantin’s expression was grim. “Do all Russians look alike?”
Eyebrows raised, Derek said, “Is that a joke, Agent Nikitinov? If it is, it’s the first one I’ve heard from a Russian so far.”
“Yes, it is a joke. Maybe not a good one. Call me Konstantin. You’re not getting Nikitinov right. It seems like an awkward name for Westerners.”
“Sure. Call me Derek. We’re such good buddies, after all.” Derek leaned back in his seat. “The food’s not bad. I’ll wait if you want to get something.”
Konstantin studied the food on Derek’s plate. “How is the fettucini?”
“Reasonable.”
With a nod the Russian went to get some food, returning a few minutes later with a meal similar to Derek’s. Derek said, “You didn’t go for the Russian cuisine?”
“I like Russian food just fine, but Italian is my favorite, especially pizza.”
“We’re more alike than I would have thought.”
Konstantin nodded. “I am glad to see you alive. You’re all over the Internet, your adventure with the assassin and your swim in the Moscow River. Most people would not survive in the river for long this time of year.”
“I almost didn’t.”
Konstantin pointed a fork at him. “And yet, here you are.”
“Here we both are. What do you want?”
“Do you know the man who tried to kill you?”
“Personally? No. Do you know him?”
“I believe I do, although like you, not personally. I believe he is a professional assassin known as the Gekko.” Konstantin paused for a moment, considering. “Not a very frightening name, actually.”
“No. There’s an insurance company in the states that uses a talking gecko as its spokesperson. Hard to see him as an assassin, although I’ve known a couple stone killers that looked like middle-aged accountants, complete with potbellies and thinning hair.”
“In the past he has traveled in Russia under the name Mikhail Grechko. Why did he try to kill you, Derek?”
Derek finished off his pasta and sipped his Coke. “I don’t know. But I think he tried to kill me again today.”
Leaning forward over his food, Konstantin said, “Yes. I wondered about that. How is Ms. Kirov, by the way?”
Pushing his tray aside, Derek said, “I’m so glad the embassy does such a great job of keeping secrets. Why don’t you tell me?”
With a shrug, Konstantin said, “That I don’t know. And I wasn’t certain that it was you in the vehicle, but when I heard the eyewitness reports and found out that you had just arrived in Moscow from Novosibirsk an hour earlier, I thought it was probably not a coincidence.”
“Your instincts are good.”
“I don’t think this is something you want to mess around with. I can help you, but you have to come clean with me. You don’t understand everything that’s going on right now.”
“That’s for damned sure.” Derek leaned forward, gesturing with his hand for Konstantin to come a little closer, as if he had a big secret to share. “Here’s the truth, Konstantin. I. Don’t. Fucking. Know. Anything.” He leaned back and waited.
Konstantin twirled pasta on a fork, then swallowed. “I apologize for warning you away. It was an overreaction on my part.”
“Okay. I suppose I accept your apology. What do you want?”
Pushing his tray aside, Konstantin surveyed the room before turning his attention back to Derek. “I am in a very peculiar position. About six months ago I was approached by an official very, very high up in the FSB. Although the FSB has its own internal affairs division that looks at internal corruption—” He waved his hands in a futile gesture. “—they are corrupt. This official, an old friend of mine, trusts me. Back from our days in the army together. And I trust him. He told me that he and people above him were worried that there were members of the FSB that were actively supporting domestic terror groups in our country. It is possible they are doing it with some intention of possibly overthrowing the government, perhaps they are just troublemakers with bomb-making skills, or perhaps they do it for money. He asked me to conduct a quiet internal investigation while still continuing my counterterrorism investigations.”
“And you agreed,” Derek said.
“Yes. Not that I really had a choice. Besides, I already suspected there were severe issues with internal leaks. There were too many raids and missions my teams were involved in that came up empty … very much as if the targets had knowledge about our plans ahead of time.”
“Is that what happened to the raid in Novosibirsk?”
Konstantin nodded. “I lost my top team. And the forensic evidence indicates there were no weapons there, just booby-traps.”
They fell silent for a moment. Finally Derek said, “Again, what do you want?”
“I believe we are at a critical point. The Red Hand, who was behind the disastrous raid in Novosibirsk and appears to be taking credit for the attack on your embassy, is becoming very aggressive. But I don’t know who to trust in my own organization. So once I realized that someone was trying to kill you—perhaps someone in my own government—I decided we might be better off working together. I believe the Red Hand was behind the theft of a number of experimental weapons, including weaponized smallpox and nerve gas. I believe they plan something quite large and dramatic and I want to stop them before they do.”
He locked eyes with Derek. “I want your help. I suggest we work together.”
Leaning over, Derek pulled out his laptop computer and booted it up. Konstantin shot him an enquiring look, but Derek held up a hand for him to wait. He brought up the photograph of Zoya Maximova and the dark man. “Do you recognize these people?
Konstantin studied the photograph. “The woman is Captain Zoya Maximova, who seems to have disappeared recently. She was part of the security contingent at Vector.”
“Not a coincidence, I assume.”
“It might be, that’s the problem.”
Derek cocked his head. Konstantin said, “In the course of the investigation, we inquired as to Captain Maxoimova’s whereabouts. The people at Vector indicated she had been reassigned. When we asked where, they said they did not know. When we asked by whom, they said by people higher in the military. When we tried to track those orders down, we got nowhere. Ivan was working on that, but he died. She may be AWOL and they don’t want us to know. She could be part of something and they don’t want us to know that they don’t know. She could be part of the Red Hand and they know it and don’t want us to know. This is Russia.” He pointed a finger at the computer. “The man, he seems familiar to me. Who is he?”
“I don’t know. But James McGill took this photograph and I think he got killed for it.”
“May I have a copy?”
“I’ll email it to you.” Derek took care of that business and was about to continue when Konstantin’s phone sang a jingle of some sort. Konstantin answered it, listened, spoke in Russian, then hung up the phone and put it away. Derek thought the man’s complexion had gone a little pale, the lines etching his face growing momentarily deeper.
“What?”
Konstantin waved a hand at Derek, a gesture that was part frustration, part warning, part request for Derek to give him a few moments to think. Chewing on his upper lip, he stared at the table in front of them, finally saying, “I was becoming convinced that my immediate boss, Commander Pietr Titov, was behind the leaks. I was able to compartmentalize much of the information available to people below me, but not from Titov. There were … other reasons as well….”
Konstantin shrugged his shoulders. “That was Commander Titov’s aid. Titov died an hour ago of a massive heart attack.”
Derek studied Konstantin for a moment. “Coincidence?”
Hands clenched into impotent fists, Konstantin said, “I don’t know.”
Leaning forward, Derek said, “If his body’
s at the morgue, I’d like to take a look.”
15
Konstantin’s apartment was on the fifth floor of a five-story apartment building with a sliver of a view of Luzhniki Stadium. Derek looked around curiously, only slightly winded from the hike up the five flights of stairs. The apartment was small, only two bedrooms. The furniture looked comfortable, but there was something odd about the apartment, almost as if it was a museum. Derek couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.
Konstantin had smiled when Derek said he wanted to look at Titov’s body. “If you keep your mouth shut, I might be able to pass you off as one of my people. I want to stop by my apartment, pick up a couple things first. Make some calls. Run that photograph past some people.”
Just inside the apartment was an end table next to a sofa. On the end table was a photograph in a gold frame. It was of a woman and a little girl and Konstantin. Konstantin was younger in the photograph. The woman had brown hair and was attractive with a heart-shaped face and a dazzling smile. The little girl looked a lot like her mother. Almost as if he did it automatically, Konstantin kissed his fingers and touched them to the photograph as he passed.
“I’ll be right back. Have a seat.”
Konstantin disappeared into one of the bedrooms and closed the door behind him. A moment later Derek heard Konstantin talking on a phone in Russian.
Instead of sitting, Derek prowled the apartment, which didn’t take long. The view out the window was of other high-rises. There were feminine touches to the apartment, and family photographs, but no real evidence that anybody else lived here with Konstantin. The second bedroom was the little girl’s — flowered coverlet, posters of horses on the walls, dolls on the bed. It seemed almost too neat, though. It was dusted and the carpet apparently vacuumed, but something about the room seemed oddly static, just like the rest of the apartment. It didn’t give the impression of actually being lived in.
Divorce? Was this a room for a little girl who was rarely here?
He walked back to the tiny kitchen and dining room area, studying the sink. Dishes in the drainer suggested only one person ate here. A single coffee mug, one plate, a fork.
Behind him Konstantin said, “Titov’s body is being held at Morgue Number Two. You must follow my lead, but don’t talk. I’m introducing you as a consultant with the FSB. You can look at the body in a convincing manner?”
“Da.”
Konstantin held his gaze. “Don’t screw this up or we’ll both be in a great deal of trouble.”
“I understand.”
Looking him up and down, Konstantin said, “Do you have a suit? Or dress pants?”
“No. I didn’t come to Russia expecting to work.”
With a snort, Konstantin said, “And yet…. We need to dress you up a bit.”
“Say I’m an eccentric visiting forensic expert.”
Nodding his head from side to side, Konstantin considered it. “Not American. I don’t want you to speak.”
“My lips are sealed.”
The woman at the front desk of Morgue Number Two was young, maybe twenty. She had dishwater blonde hair she pulled into a ponytail and wore a black wool dress that showed off her figure nicely. A perpetual frown marred her face, her complexion blotchy, teeth crooked.
Konstantin flashed his identification and rattled off a stream of urgent Russian. He gestured at Derek and continued to talk. Derek still wore the jeans, the leather jacket, and the ushanka. The woman seemed cowed by Konstantin’s credentials and his stern demeanor. But Derek got the impression that the woman was resistant. Konstantin leaned over her desk, voice harsher, more demanding.
Finally she nodded and buzzed them in. Konstantin led Derek into the morgue proper, past what looked like a secretarial pool, toward a staircase. Down steel steps to the basement, to an autopsy suite. A burly man wearing surgical scrubs, a white lab coat, and a plastic apron, was performing an autopsy on a female child that must have been six or seven years old. Based on the scorched skin, she had died in a fire.
Konstantin froze, staring at the body on the table. The pathologist looked up, said something. Konstantin did not respond.
Stepping forward, Derek gripped Konstantin’s arm just above his elbow, applied pressure. The look Konstantin gave him shot right to Derek’s soul. Grief. Sorrow. Devastation.
Derek jerked his head. Konstantin seemed to snap out of whatever hell he had stepped into. He spoke to the pathologist, who waved him further down the hall. They found a large refrigerated room lined with metal shelves. Body bags filled about half the shelves. Konstantin started looking at the tags, and pointed to an enormous bag. Derek wondered how they’d managed to get it zipped shut, the body was so big.
Glancing around, making sure no one was within earshot, Derek whispered, “How the hell are we going to move him onto a table?”
Fingers to his lips, Konstantin stepped outside the room. A moment later two morgue attendants appeared, looked at the body, glanced at Derek curiously, and brought over a wheeled table. With great effort, they moved the body of Pietr Titov onto the table and trundled it out of the room and down the hall, Konstantin and Derek following.
It was an empty autopsy suite with six tables. Derek always thought there was something incongruous about the stainless steel shininess of morgue tables. The attendants slid the body with dual grunts onto the table and asked Konstantin something. He shook his head and responded curtly. They left through the swinging doors.
Softly, Konstantin said, “Make it quick.”
Finding a box of latex gloves, Derek gestured that Konstantin should put on a pair as well. He found an apron, took off his coat and the ushanka, hanging them on a hook by the doors. For a moment he felt the world recede. Blood roared in his ears, heart hammering against his chest. The taste of acidic metal filled his mouth. In his nose, the stench of death.
For a moment he was digging up corpses in Pakistan at night. The bodies, buried in a shallow grave, swollen by death gases, maggots wriggling in the flesh. Rain poured down, turning the grave into a mire of mud and decay. A clandestine CIA mission to look for proof of chemical weapons experimentation.
Konstantin said something sharply in Russian.
Shaking his head, Derek snapped back to the present, thinking that both he and Konstantin carried demons around with them in their back pockets, ready at a moment’s notice.
Whispered, “Did they catalogue any belongings?”
“I’ll find out.” He disappeared out of the room. Derek didn’t like that much, hoping nobody came in demanding to know what the hell he was doing. Unzipping the body bag, he peeled it back.
Konstantin appeared with an envelope. Derek leaned down and smelled the body. Konstantin let out a little grunt of surprise.
Sweat. Urine and shit. The stench of death. Nothing unusual otherwise.
Derek took the envelope and poured its contents onto a separate table. Wallet. ID badge. Pack of cigarettes. The pack was dark blue, almost black, with a double-headed eagle on it. He couldn’t read the Cyrillic. Car keys, a BMW fob, a pack of nicotine patches. Frowning, Derek opened the pack of patches and studied them for a moment, holding them up to the bright lights of the autopsy suite before returning them to their container.
Derek started to quickly undress the body. He started with the two black leather shoes, warped by Titov’s immense weight. The man’s feet had pronated, which had twisted the shoes inward. Derek handed the shoes to Konstantin, gesturing for him to place them on the adjoining table. He peeled off Titov’s black wool socks.
He studied Titov’s feet. Calloused, a plantar wart on the bottom of his left foot. Ragged toenails with a yellowish color. Some toenail fungus.
Unzipping the man’s gray suit pants, he pointed for Konstantin to help him get them off. Not easy. Normally a medical examiner would just cut them off, but Derek was trying to cause as little damage as possible to any forensic evidence, although he supposed that was bullshit. He’d contaminated the crime scene ju
st by his presence. Finally, disgusted, he pointed to a tray of autopsy instruments, making a scissoring gesture with his fingers.
Konstantin, eyebrows raised, handed him scissors. Derek deftly cut Titov’s pants off to reveal red silk boxer shorts. Konstantin let out a stifled laugh, shaking his head. Derek cut them off. It was his turn to stifle a laugh. Titov’s dick looked like it belonged on a horse. He glanced at Konstantin who just shrugged, a small smile on his face as if to say, Hey, he’s Russian.
The wine-colored shirt was next, followed by an undershirt. Titov’s giant belly looked like a hairy pile of mashed potatoes. Derek studied Titov’s mouth, frowning. Leaning close, he sniffed. Vomit, he thought.
He went over every inch of the man’s body, stopping at what appeared to be a nicotine patch on the man’s right shoulder.
Glancing around the room, he whispered to Konstantin, “Let’s roll him over. It ain’t gonna be easy.”
It wasn’t. For a horrible moment Derek thought they were going to flip the body right off the table and onto the floor. With a thunk Titov rolled over on his belly.
Derek was going over Titov’s posterior side, which was still darkly discolored from blood pooling while he was on his back, when the door swung open and a slender man with wire-rimmed glasses and thinning blond hair wearing green surgical scrubs stomped in and started screaming at them.
Konstantin stepped forward, credentials held out, voice icily calm. Derek continued his inspection. He didn’t think the confrontation was going very well for Konstantin. The doctor didn’t like the FSB butting into his autopsy suite, apparently. Suddenly the doctor was in Derek’s face, waving his arms at Titov’s body and shouting at him.
Derek reached over to the tray and retrieved a pair of forceps and a plastic evidence bag. He peeled off the nicotine patch and carefully placed it in the bag and held it up for the doctor to see. Then he started talking in the only other language he was fluent in than English—Krio.