FINDING KATARINA M.

by Elisabeth Elo

  She was in her late twenties, square and muscular, dressed in an old T-shirt and sweatpants, with bare feet that were short and thick, like fleshy paws. Back home, she might have been a former college rugby star who still played in a weekend league. She ushered me into a kitchen at the front of the apartment and motioned for me to sit down, introducing herself as Ilmira Nikulina—which I already knew.

  “Tea?” she asked, running water into a kettle and placing it on the stove without waiting for an answer. She sank heavily into the chair opposite me, a pained look in her pale blue eyes. “I have some very bad news for you. I haven’t seen or heard from Misha in over six weeks.”

  “Are you serious?” I said, acting surprised.

  “I’m so sorry. I wanted to notify someone, but Misha was a very private person: he said almost nothing about himself. I tried his mobile dozens of times. I called the chemical plant, but they said he hadn’t shown up for work. The phone number he’d put on his job application was the same one I’d been calling, and he’d given no prior address or emergency contact. I had no one to notify. All I could do was pray that someone in his family would come looking for him, but no one did, until you, tonight. Thank god.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said in feigned distress. “Six weeks? And you have no idea—”

  “None.” Her lopsided mouth screwed into a tragic pout. “But I can tell you something else. On the day he went missing—July twelfth, it was—two men pushed their way into this apartment and searched his room. They refused to tell me anything. They were very rough, rude men. I thought they might hurt me, so I backed off. They left with his computer.”

  “Do you know who they were?”

  “Policemen, they said.”

  “Police? Did they say if he’d been arrested?”

  “No, they gave no more information.”

  “Did you call the police station to see if he was there?”

  “Yes, right after the men left.” Her eyes slid sideways. “They said they never heard of Mikhail Tarasov.”

  I paused, trying to square the contradiction. “So the men who said they were policemen?”

  “Were not. Local, I mean. They were maybe a different kind of policemen.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Secret police.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She shrugged. “How can anyone be sure?”

  “Well, did they show ID?”

  She looked at me askance. “If they did, I’d have known they were lying. Instead, they lied about being policemen. That’s how I know.”

  She got up to turn off the whistling kettle, and I was left to ponder this most Russian logic.

  If Ilmira’s suspicions were correct, the situation might be as bad as Meredith feared. Which led to other questions. If Misha had been captured as a spy, who had outed him? Now that I’d met Ilmira, she seemed an unlikely candidate, unless she was a very good actress. And where was Misha now? Imprisoned? Executed? But there was no proof that the men really were “secret police”—which I assumed meant FSB agents—other than Ilmira’s fearful assumption.

  She returned with mugs of steaming tea. A bowl of crusty sugar and a vase of limp yellow wildflowers occupied the center of the wooden table. Ilmira sipped the hot tea quickly, without pleasure, and turned her head away, fingers splayed across her mouth.

  “Things are getting worse all the time. At night, I lie in bed and think, This must be what it was like before, under Stalin. You get your name on a list, or you have the wrong friends, or someone accuses you—and the next thing you know, you’re disappeared.”

  I pressed her, “Is it possible that these men were not FSB agents? Could they have been anyone else?”

  She gave a blasé shrug. “Sure. It’s possible. They could have been criminals, mafia. Thieves.” There was no conviction in her voice.

  “Did Misha gamble, deal drugs—anything that might have gotten him into trouble with those kinds of people?”

  “You don’t know him, do you?” she said with pity in her eyes.

  “No, actually I don’t.”

  “Then let me be the one to tell you—Misha’s the sort of boy who gets into trouble in school, the sort you worry will never amount to anything. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone, not even a dog. He is not the sort to get into drugs or crime.”

  “Then why would anyone want to hurt him? What could he have done?”

  With bitter resignation, Ilmira said, “Anything. Nothing.” After a pause, she added, “It’s not right. But that’s how it is.”

  Letting my head fall into my hands, I said, “Oh god, what will I tell his mother? She’s going to be devastated.” I took a few deep breaths, as if trying to quell my panic. “I have to give her more information, Ilmira. She’ll never be satisfied if all I can tell her is that he’s missing and the FSB took his computer. She’ll be sure to wonder what he could possibly have done. Most of all, she’ll want to know where he is now. Maybe you can help me. I need to talk to people who knew him. Go to his workplace. And we should go to the police—or did you already do that?”

  “I did, but the local cops don’t actually look for missing people. It’s just in case a body turns up. Then they notify you.”

  “Oh god. This is horrible. Is there anyone he might have spoken to? Did he have any close friends?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. He’d only been here a few months. There’s a couple on the second floor—he used to go down to their apartment nights and come back drunk. I’d hear him banging around in the kitchen, looking for something to eat. They also work at the chemical plant—he probably met them there. Those are the only friends I know of.”

  “What are their names?”

  “Bohdan Duboff and Tanya Karp,” she said with a sneer in her voice. “Loud, flashy people who pretend to be jetsetters. Jetsetters in Mirny. What a joke.”

  “Did you talk to them after Misha disappeared?”

  “We don’t get along. I know what they think of me, and they know what I think of them.”

  Night had fallen beyond the open window. Cooler air was spilling over the sash. I sipped the strong black tea. My heart was pounding wildly. I was playing my part well, I thought. But I was also facing the stark fact that Misha was gone, most likely not through his own choice, and even though I’d known that coming in, seeing the fear on Ilmira’s face brought the reality home in a new and terrifying way. I was almost convinced at this point that Ilmira knew nothing of Misha’s real identity and that she’d played no role in his disappearance. She seemed too open, sincere, and innocent to have busted a spy and turned him in. But Meredith had told me to trust no one, a rule I intended to live by for the brief time I was in her employ.

  Ilmira drained her tea and set the mug down firmly, indicating the end of our conversation. “I’m sorry you came so far only to hear such terrible news.” She pushed herself up from the table with solemn weariness, plodded to the sink, washed and toweled off her hands with slow deliberateness. With her back to me, she said, “I don’t know how long to keep Misha’s room for him. If I get another roommate, and Misha returns…that would be awkward. But I can’t afford the rent myself. I paid his share last month. Another month’s rent is due next week. I can’t pay it again.”

  I saw what she wanted. “I’ll pay what he owes, and this month’s as well. And stay here for a few days, too, if you don’t mind.”

  She nodded in obvious relief. “Yes, that’s a good solution. Come with me, then.” She marched off down the hallway briskly, as if my offer might not last, scooping up my duffel on the way. I grabbed my backpack and followed her, passing three doors on the right that opened into a living room, bathroom, and bedroom.

  The door at the end of the hallway was closed. She dropped my luggage on the floor outside it. “When you leave, would you pack his things and take them with you? I shouldn’t be the one to do it.”

  Musty air and the stale smell of dirty socks. A twin mattress on the floor, partly covered by a rumpled sleeping bag a
nd cast-off clothes—T-shirt, sweatpants, underwear. On the floor, a pair of muddy Nike sneakers and a nylon backpack with a water bottle stuffed in the mesh pouch. I reached for a framed photo on the desk, his sister and mother standing close together in front of a body of water that might have been a lake. Saldana’s innocent smile, her simple, natural beauty, brought back the familiar flood of sorrow and anger. I quickly moved my gaze to Lena. Her short haircut and black-rimmed glasses gave no indication of a clandestine life: she might have been any working middle-aged mom. I returned the photo to its place next to an opened jar of peanut butter crossed by a crusty knife. Scattered across the desk’s worn surface were sunglasses, neon green ear buds, a computer charging cord, a phone charging cord, and a backup battery charger. A coffee cup was half filled with a liquid made unidentifiable by a thick scum of mold on its surface. It was obvious that the person occupying this room had intended to return.

  I rifled through the desk drawer. Pulled out a paystub from the Mayadykovsky Chemical Plant, pens, stamps, and a large serrated hunting knife with a curved ivory handle.

  I searched the closet. Misha had a typical teenage boy wardrobe of jeans, sweatpants, and zippered hoodies. Most of it was on the floor. Nudging the pile with my toe, I uncovered a pair of old hiking boots lying on their sides, yellowish dirt caught in the rubber treads.

  I dipped my fingers into the pockets of every article of clothing, finding nothing more interesting than a couple of rubles and lint. I peered under the mattress, checked for loose floorboards. Finally, I sat on the bed and visually scanned the room. The walls were dirty white, empty of pictures or posters. The only ornamentation was a horsehair talisman, similar to the one I’d bought at the festival a few days before. It was hanging on a suede string from a gooseneck lamp beside the bed.

  His photos and emails, his music and web searches, would have been on his computer. What remained was telling me nothing, except that Misha was a real person. A trace of his masculine odor still lingered in the folds of the sleeping bag. I could almost feel his presence in the room.

  Strange, but I felt like I knew him. We were both grandchildren of Katarina Melnikova; our cells carried the same DNA. There would have to be a few shared traits. I wondered what they might be. He was athletic enough to have been a serious student of dance. I had no special abilities in that regard. We didn’t look alike either. I knew from Saldana’s Facebook page that he had a striking, rugged quality, while my features were unremarkable. Maybe I was trying to read too much into the family connection, scrounging around to find a worthwhile reason for having put myself in danger. It hardly mattered at this point. I was here in his messy room, in a stark industrial city near the top of the world. The only way out was through.

  I gently fingered the silky horsehair talisman. His lucky token, a constant reminder of his Sakha roots. Had it kept him safe?

  I called Vera a little later, my nightly ritual. I couldn’t tell her where I was or what I was doing, so I concocted a trip to the Archeology Museum of Northeast Asia, where I reported having laid astonished eyes on human artifacts dating back three million years.

  She burbled a laugh. “And you enjoyed that?”

  “Very much!”

  “Three million years—amazing. I can’t begin to fathom it.” Her voice softened to its warmest tone. “It’s so nice to hear you’re having a good time, sweetheart.” A pause. “Any message from Lena?”

  “Not yet. We’ll give it a few more days.”

  She sighed. “Do take care, Natalie.”

  “Of course, Mom. You know me.”

  After the call, I felt more distant from her than I ever had before. It wasn’t just geography; it was the lie, and how smoothly I’d told it.

  ILMIRA WAS GONE when I shuffled into the kitchen the next morning at nearly ten o’clock. There was clotted gray porridge in a saucepan on the stove. I’d read somewhere that porridge was Vladimir Putin’s favorite breakfast, a fact that made the gooey substance even less appetizing. I opted instead for a bruised banana and cup of chai.

  The apartment was baking, so I opened the kitchen window, but there was no breeze. Just humid, gritty air that hung motionless, oppressive. I took my tea and banana into the sparsely furnished living room, kept dim by drawn mustard-colored curtains. I opened the curtains and the windows, and turned on the TV—anything to breathe life into the drabness. The news show that came on was slow and somber, stern announcers plodding heavily from one topic to another against an eye-straining backdrop of blue and gray chevron stripes.

  I switched channels. A boxing match between two bloodied, bare-chested hulks popped up on the screen. I watched the grotesque spectacle of skull-jarring frontal face punches and pounding jabs to the torso, noticing the fine horizontal rain of sweat and blood droplets spewing off the bodies, and thought about concussions, contusions, infections, broken bones, chronic pain, and brain damage. Someday, these men would show up in a doctor’s office asking to be made whole. Good luck with that.

  Next, I wandered to the bookcase, reading titles with my head at a slant, until I came across a stack of unopened mail on a shelf. Four or five envelopes were addressed to Mikhail Tarasov and postmarked after July twelfth. Ilmira had probably been putting them aside for his hoped-for return. Flipping through them, I found a credit card offer and an advertising flyer, nothing special. Then the return address of one caught my eye. Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper with a Moscow address. I sliced it open, and a half piece of paper with a printed message slipped out.

  Dear Journalist,

  Thank you for your submission to Novaya Gazeta. We regret that your article is not suitable for our publication and wish you luck in placing it elsewhere.

  The Editors

  Below that, a handwritten note: Be careful. You can get in trouble with a subject like this. –MG.

  I tried to fathom what it meant. Misha was a journalist, as well as a dancer and a spy? Well, why not? I traced my finger over the blue-ink scrawl on the bottom of the form: Be careful. Whoever wrote those words had pressed down hard on the pen, making shallow indentations on the thin sheet, as if he or she were feeling especially adamant. I checked the postmark, almost illegible over the highly colored Russian stamp. August fifth.

  What kind of dangerous article had Misha proposed? And why would he do something that reckless while he was working undercover for the CIA?

  If Novaya Gazeta was a typical magazine, it received dozens, maybe hundreds, of submissions a week, so the chances of getting more information about Misha’s story were slim. Still, it was worth a try. I pulled out my laptop and connected to the internet with the password Ilmira had jotted down for me the night before, navigated to the magazine’s website, and skimmed the masthead for an editor with the initials MG.

  There was a features editor by the name of Maxim Gusev. I scribbled down the newspaper’s main number, turned off the TV, and paced around the living room, swinging my arms, clearing my throat, rolling my Rs against the roof of my mouth, and flapping my lips with my index finger to make the drone of a puttering motor boat—exercises I’d learned from the play-to-win coach of the debating team at Rockville High. On the inhale, I envisioned my voice being pushed down into my diaphragm where it belonged; on the exhale, I brought it forth in the long, round Ohm of the lowest register possible. I might not be able to fully disguise my American accent, but I felt pretty confident about passing for a man.

  A pleasant-sounding woman answered.

  “Maxim Gusev, please.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Mikhail Tarasov, journalist.”

  “What is this regarding?”

  “A story we’re working on. He told me to call.”

  “Just a minute, please.”

  A minute later, Gusev came on the line. “Who is this?” He had a dry, gravelly voice that conveyed both impatience and a certain good-humored openness. I pictured a man in his fifties who was used to being pitched, who gave a writer thirty seconds free of charge,
not a heartbeat more, to say something interesting.

  “Mikhail Tarasov. You read my manuscript recently.”

  “Tarasov. Hmmm. Don’t remember the name. Remind me what the subject was.”

  “It was…ah, controversial. You were worried it might get me into trouble.”

  After a lengthy pause, he said, “Oh, yes. I remember now. The abandoned gulag camp in Siberia. The one the herders discovered.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “In a valley, as I recall. Very remote. What did they call it again?”

  I had no idea what the herders called the valley, so I punted. “Would you mind discussing the story with me for a minute, Mr. Gusev. You see, I’m not sure where to go from here, and if you could share more of your thoughts…”

  “Russia isn’t ready for your story, Tarasov. It may never be. People want jobs, food, opportunity; they don’t want to read about the gulag. Most Russians don’t know what went on there in the first place, at least not the full extent of it. Don’t forget that Stalin is still a god among many, and Putin has made criticizing him a traitorous act. And, frankly, Tarasov, even if your story wasn’t so controversial, I still wouldn’t publish it. The allegations you made weren’t supported by your evidence. Those photos could easily have been doctored. You’d need better proof than that to make the story credible, and I have no idea where you’d find it.”

  I started to say something but he barreled on.

  “I’ll tell you something, just between the two of us—I believe you and I’m not surprised. But I’m an old liberal whose days are numbered. A lot of my friends have been pushed out of the business, a couple of them arrested for crossing too many lines. I worry about you young ones, you idealists. Fact is, Tarasov, there’s little hope of change. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true. Why risk yourself pushing boundaries that can’t be moved? Take my advice, and be careful what you say.”

  “I understand, Mr. Gusev. But this story is very important to me; I’m not sure I can give it up.”