“I have some constraints, my friend,” Mariya said. “I brought you and C.J. here to see if perhaps he would confess, but also to see his demeanor. It’s always nice to see your victim before he dies.”
“Dies?”
Mariya gazed in the direction of C.J., who was getting back into his Suburban. “Isn’t it prodigious? Even exhilarating? To look at a dead man walking. This evening, as he walks through the lobby of his apartment building on Zubovskiy Bulvar. As he presses the elevator button and thinks about his warm supper and satellite television show. Before the elevator door opens, his life will terminate violently—a terrible, sudden thrombosis, not completely unusual for a man with rather high cholesterol in his late forties.”
“Just like the old days, huh,” Jonathan grinned. “Trademark moves of the old KGB.”
C.J.’s convoy drove away.
Mariya shook her head and smiled. “It’s not quite like the old days. Today, every day, in every way, there are the same dirty tricks. Vengeance. Gamesmanship. Power. Gambling. All sides still draw the line and take care of loose ends. What has changed is that it has become more polished, at times more restrained.”
Jonathan was chilled by her icy matter-of-factness, but he knew the result of her predatory hunt would make justice reign in one small corner of the tragedy that had overtaken his life. One wrong that could, in a strange way, be right. While he didn’t agree with that, he had to admit that he admired her stamina and her ability to shut off emotions to make what she believed to be rational decisions.
Mariya took out a pen and wrote a few words down on a napkin, and then handed it to Jonathan, looking into his eyes. “You will go to this address, in a town called Bobrov, though you will not be happy with what you find there,” Mariya said. “But you will have your answer; you will find your brother. I am sorry I didn’t know about this sooner.”
Goose bumps crawled up Jonathan’s spine. His heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”
Mariya didn’t answer.
Jonathan took a deep breath. “He’s not alive, is he?”
She dug deep into a leather duffel bag by her feet, next to her purse. “Here, take this with you,” she said, pulling out a compact video camera to show Jonathan, who was puzzled. She put the camera back in the bag.
“What that’s for? What am I going to find?”
She shook her head and then caressed Jonathan’s face with her hand. “Beregi sebya.”
He rested his hand on hers for a second and then let go, leaning back into his seat.
“Now, go. You don’t have much time.” She opened her door and stepped out. “My driver will take you to the airport. Do as you are told.” She shut the door and tapped the top of the car twice, signaling the driver to get going.
The limo pulled away, and Jonathan gazed at Mariya as she strolled toward the twenty-foot-high wood doors at the bottom of Spasskaya Tower. Two red gyro lights flared on each side of the doors, which the guards opened for her as she walked inside.
The driver never said a word during the entire drive to Sheremetyevo airport. When Jonathan arrived, two husky men in suits yanked him out of the limo by his arms and rapidly ushered him through the terminal. All Jonathan had was the duffel bag Mariya had given him. The two suitcases of clothes he’d brought to Russia were still at Alexandre’s.
The men waved ID cards at security clerks manning the checkpoint to the departure lounge, still holding Jonathan tightly. The trio bypassed security, prompting strange looks from other passengers.
“Look there,” said one man holding onto Jonathan, his accent thick. “Security agent from American embassy.”Jonathan glanced at a man in a trench coat, his paper folded under this arm. They locked gazes.
“He here for make certain you go on plane for America.”
Jonathan was getting angry. “But Mariya said I had seventy-two hours.”
“Da, you do.”
The men escorted Jonathan past the crowded waiting area and led him through the gangway to the aircraft. But prior to reaching the plane’s hatch, Jonathan felt a tug at his arm. One of the men pulled him toward the side exit door.
“Quick, go down,” the lead man said. “You not take this plane. Only for show to American.”
Jonathan now understood. He ran down the metal stairs to a waiting van that quickly took off the second the men were seated. The vehicle sped under the aircraft’s wing and headed across the apron. Jonathan looked back at the terminal building behind him. The van hurried down the taxiway as if it were an aircraft preparing for takeoff. They crossed the two parallel runways and approached a set of buildings on the other side of the airfield.
“Your plane is that one,” Jonathan heard the man next to him say. “You take to Voronezh, where you go to city and take bus to Pavlovsk—it make stop in Bobrov.” The man then jotted down some notes on the back of what looked like his plane ticket. “If problem, this is instructions.”
The van drove right up to the plane, and the two men waved for Jonathan to head up the stairs. The smell of jet fuel filled his lungs. With his ticket and duffel bag in hand he walked up and entered the plane, where he waited nearly an hour before the other passengers began boarding.
25
“You will find your answers there.” Jonathan recycled the words he had heard from that demented woman some nine hours ago. Mariya’s frosty, elusive expression—the gaze of a seasoned killer—gave no hint about what he would face. It was all he had to go on, along with an address scribbled on a napkin.
The bus slowed down, jolting passengers as it navigated over deep potholes in the muddy, rural road. Jonathan sat alone in his row, gripping the handle above the seat in front of him. He glanced at the people around him. Some were young, some old. They all wore rugged faces. Mostly women. Had he not known better, he would have guessed they were refugees of a distant war, the vestiges of which lay in their gloomy stares and leathery, fatigued faces. The floor creaked as the bus maneuvered its aged chassis across a land none of them would by choice call home.
He wiped his sleeve over the fogged glass and peered out. The sky was a patchwork of charcoal clouds ready to unleash more snow. Tall, powder-covered trees were everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Aside from the dirt road and utility poles, there was no other imprint of civilization. Jonathan had seen miles of virgin land in his home state of Louisiana, but never as much as here. He hadn’t spotted a single house or farm in over an hour. Nothing at all except fields and forests.
The ride had been filled with recollections, an uncomfortable, silent journey with people who spoke a strange language and ignored his foreign face. Strangers with no clue who he was, no idea of the pain holding his psyche hostage. All they saw were his stylish but wrinkled clothes, steel blue eyes and expensive watch.
He thought about what waited for him, what Mariya had said—that he would find his brother. And from her hesitation and apologies, all he could imagine was a tombstone in some godforsaken place. The sadness again drowned his thoughts, just as it had on the evening flight to Voronezh and at the city’s bus terminal, where he waited nearly six hours through the night for the next bus to Bobrov. While at the station, he had written four postcards to Linda, spilling his fears, his tribulations and his hope that the truth was no longer so distant. He had reread them dozens of times as he lay for hours on an uncomfortable bench, but he decided not to send them. He didn’t want to stress her out, and he’d likely be home long before the cards would reach New Orleans.
He replayed all that had happened. Every detail. Every word. Every face, friend and foe alike. He looked up at his backpack on the overhead bin, crammed among the many rudimentary red- and blue-striped vinyl bags common to travelers in this nation.
What will I film? Jonathan asked himself, thinking of the video camera Mariya had given him. A fucking grave? He inhaled the stale air.
The bus’ fatigued engine growled, and its gears ground loudly. The bulbs on the ceiling flickered. But the wreck, like
its passengers, slaved forward unfazed.
Despite the emotional agony that had plagued his days in Russia, Jonathan’s two-hour bus journey was a physical respite from a terrifying course of events. His shoulder ached, but the painkillers helped. His legs were finally at rest. He was safe, for now.
“Matt,” Jonathan whispered. “Oh, Matt.” His eyes moistened, but he wiped away the tears before they reached his cheeks.
He pulled out an envelope from his coat pocket and removed the letter inside. The note was fragile, its edges torn and the ink smeared at the top. He needed to read it again, even though he had long ago committed every phrase to memory. His fingers trembled, perhaps from the sweet, heavily caffeinated teas and sodas he had consumed over the past few days to stay awake.
Dear Jonathan,
I heard you’re kicking butt in court these days. I guess a lawyer in the family can be a good thing. It’s just as well that you, and not I, take on those astronomical student loans, spend a fortune on fancy suits and write those incredibly dull briefs! On a more serious note, though, I’ll be coming home soon. I’m scheduled for tests at Walter Reed—that same problem again, my blood condition. And the uncertainty makes me homesick. I’m having those strange dreams again—our bike rides along the lake and at the old lighthouse. I’m afraid, but I don’t know why.
Love, Matt.
It was the last letter he received from his younger brother. He tried to contain his sorrow, and make sense of his unanswered questions, and everything else that troubled him. But how could he? It had only been a couple weeks since everything he had been told to believe had taken a sudden, cataclysmic turn.
Another pale, frail face had boarded the bus at the small town of Peskovamka. She sat across the aisle, her crescent shaped back uncomfortably leaning on the barely padded seat. Jonathan gazed at her for a moment.
A light drizzle began tapping on the bus’ fatigued metal skin as it bounced over the dirt road. The lush forests had passed, giving way to immense, barren fields—miles and miles of snow-covered land left for nature alone to rule.
He looked at his watch again, perhaps for the tenth time. It was nearly seven in the morning. A deep nervousness swept again through his body. Three weeks ago, it would never have occurred to him that a lie under oath would have led to all the death and mayhem he’d experienced from New Orleans to Moscow.
But now, certainty could no longer escape his reach, and it shouldn’t—not after all that had been plundered, lost and stolen. Fairness, justice, divine certitude had to, in his eyes, have its place somewhere, somehow, or how could anyone think there was anything more to our mortal, molecular existence? Had the world aspired to such a shallow slavery to mere coincidence, man-made events and eventualities? Had it all been exclusively directed by the hands of the Tranquility madmen, in their positions of power, separating national security from conscience, and choosing more often than not the former, undeterred by history’s punishing powers or by a higher being able and willing to dispense vengeance from one hand, equity from the other? The cold warriors had cast their spell on one and then two unsuspecting men, and they had won long ago, hadn’t they?
Jonathan knew not what to think, only what to sense. Like an animal relying only on what was apparent, not what was promised or owed, he held on, waiting for the endless journey to conclude at the village. A final stop, which he hoped would be just that.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Jonathan stood up, grabbed his duffel bag from the overhead bin and followed two elderly women towards the front of the bus.
“Do svidaniya,” he said to the bus driver, who returned a curious stare.
He was at an intersection of dirt and pavement, two paths that led nowhere familiar. A dozen drab concrete buildings lined the adjacent square. Bobrov was at best Russia’s armpit. And from a quick scan of the surroundings, he knew there would be few redeeming qualities to this place. There was no sign of the magnificent architecture and vibrancy he’d seen in Moscow. This was not entirely unexpected. When he had told a fellow passenger on the plane he was headed to Bobrov, the woman’s tilt of the head and raised eyebrows were enough to signal that there was no apparent reason for anyone to travel to this destination.
Jonathan walked over the dirt-covered sidewalk, observing the eeriness of this near-vacant town. The passenger in the plane had also told him of the factories that lay dormant, but which still saturated the soil with noxious pools of sulfides, dioxin, and other chemical carcinogens, courtesy of Mother Russia’s state-controlled industrialists. She’d also told him about the uranium reprocessing plant that contaminated countless residents until it closed in 1993. Yet, more than two thousand people, among them the few on the bus, still called this wasteland home. The people who’d stepped off the bus quickly dispersed to their final destinations, mostly in a cluster of six-story prefabricated dwellings a half-mile down the widest street. They appeared to have been erected haphazardly, as if the only purpose was to provide concrete in three dimensions void of any aesthetic qualities. There were few sidewalks or traffic lights.
Jonathan glanced at the note Mariya had given him. He couldn’t read her cursive Cyrillic, but he understood that it was some sort of address. He crossed the street to what appeared to be a bar or restaurant. There were few cars around, but in the distance he noticed a horse-drawn cart lugging a pile of large logs.
Jonathan pushed open the door and walked inside. The bar was a smoke den, with three obvious regulars lounged over the shabby wooden chairs and tables.
“Dobriy den,” Jonathan cordially greeted, unsure at the reaction to his presence. His accent seemed to convince everyone within earshot that the Americans had finally arrived, though it seemed not as invaders, just curious anomalies of an otherwise gray, monotonous existence in the middle of an all-too-Russian nowhere. Jonathan smiled as he grasped their surprise.
The aging, large-breasted bartender smiled, pointed at Jonathan and shouted, “Piva?” Fortunately, it was a Russian word Jonathan had picked up during his short stay. It meant beer, and after all he’d gone through, he was happy to have one.
Holding the note that Mariya had given him, Jonathan asked—putting together a collage of poorly pronounced Russian words—the bartender for directions.
She read the handwriting, grinned and shrugged her shoulders. The words rolled so fast off her tongue that he couldn’t grasp a single thing. She then repeated her words louder, as if that would help him understand Russian any better.
Then, as the bartender handed Jonathan a beer, a rough-looking man with matted hair and mismatched clothes seated at a table in the corner of the stale, smoky room got up and made his way toward Jonathan. The man tapped his knuckles on the bar. His body reeked of booze, but, to Jonathan’s amazement, he began uttering words that resembled English.
“Fack, facking good dahy,” he said at first with a deep laugh. “Mikhail Jackson compatriot?” He laughed again, stumbling forward toward Jonathan and then babbled some more. “Angliyski, Americanski?”
Jonathan responded with a simple, somewhat desperate nod and then sipped his beer.
The bartender rolled her eyes as the man stumbled onto the stool next to Jonathan and grabbed the note with his oil-stained hand.
“Me Igor,” the man said, reaching his hand out to Jonathan’s. “You?”
“Jonathan Brooks.” He reluctantly shook the man’s filthy hand.
After reading the note, Igor scratched his bristly cheeks and nodded.
“Where is it?”
Igor said something in Russian to the bartender, who peered over Jonathan’s note, her pair of gold teeth sparkling from the two oil lamps on the bar’s weathered Formica surface.
The disheveled man patted Jonathan’s shoulder—his wounded shoulder—making Jonathan cringe from the pain. Igor held out his hands, gesturing the international sign for steering wheel. “Poshli k mashyne. Drive. Yes?” he said, smiling and pointing to his chest. “Me have caar.”
&nb
sp; Jonathan understood. For lack of any other apparent means of getting to the address, he reluctantly agreed to go with the drunk. He took a last sip and paid the woman.
Igor waved for Jonathan to get into his filthy four-door Lada, a vehicle that appeared stripped to its core.
* * *
It was a short drive out of the village, about four or five miles. They turned onto a wide paved road, with no buildings in sight. Woods approached on the left, and a thicker forest appeared on the right. After about a half-mile, the pavement ended and they continued over a dirt road. Finally, after another five minutes, a small five-story cement block building came into view. Igor leaned into Jonathan and again glanced at the note. He seemed uncertain and pulled off the side of the road. He grabbed the note again, his drunken eyes focusing on Mariya’s rough penmanship.
“Da, da, tam,” Igor said, nodding in the direction of the small wooded area across the road to their left.
Jonathan stepped out as Igor pointed into the woods at what appeared to be a metal gate between two cement pillars. On it was a sign, barely legible, its paint weathered. Crossing the road, Jonathan recognized the number—it was the same as on his note. Boris waved and drove off.
Approaching it, Jonathan realized to where he had been led. He noticed behind the wrought iron fence at the edge of the woods one, then two, three and then dozens of headstones. He stopped in his tracks a stared ahead, his eyes quickly filling with tears. A few thoughts came to mind, but they no longer mattered.
“This is it,” he whispered to himself.
The dew had lifted, but the air was still dense, and the smell of pine filled his lungs. He breathed in deep, two long breaths, and then walked through the gated entrance. His shoes quietly stepped over the broken pavement, cushioned with withered, wet leaves and powdery snow.
He entered the cemetery, scanning the first group of graves with the scrutiny of a scribe. He pored over the Cyrillic words on each headstone, hoping to find something familiar. His feet trod lightly near the burial spots as he leaned forward to read each name aloud.
Tranquility Denied Page 29
