“For escape,” Dinara observed.
I nodded.
“Why didn’t he use it?” she asked.
I nodded toward a drill that was wedged between the safe and the surrounding panels. There were circular scores near the lock.
“I think he forgot his key,” I replied. It was a mundane mistake, the kind that littered most people’s lives. Unfortunately for Ernie Fisher, he had paid the ultimate price for it. “I think that’s why he went back to his apartment.”
“He was getting very forgetful,” Agafiya said. “And sad. He drank too much.”
“Do you know why?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“We’d better search it,” Dinara said.
She crouched beside the safe and started sifting through the contents.
“What will happen to the money?” Agafiya asked.
“This is your house,” I replied. “How you handle this discovery is up to you.”
Agafiya brightened. “For the first time in many years, fate gives me pleasure.”
I was only half listening. Dinara’s shoulder had brushed against something that had been stuck to the inside of the door, and dislodged it. As it floated to the floor, I realized it was a Polaroid photograph. It landed face down, and when I picked it up and turned it over, I almost recoiled in shock.
The faded old image was of Ernie Fisher, Elizabeth Connor and Karl Parker as smiling teenagers, arms around each other’s shoulders, the familiar pose of close friends caught in a moment of pure joy.
CHAPTER 68
“I TOOK THAT picture,” Agafiya said wistfully. “I didn’t know he had kept it.”
I studied the picture, my mind in freefall as I tried to come up with a logical explanation for its existence. Two things shocked me about the image. The first was the Spartak Moscow top sported by Karl Parker, and the second was the Russian imagery and signs that surrounded them.
“That was the bar where I met Ernst,” Agafiya continued, “where I used to work.”
She took the photograph from me and stroked Fisher’s likeness tenderly.
“I loved him very much,” she said. “I was younger then. Not too much older than him, but enough. He told me I was his first.”
Dinara had halted her search and looked at the photo in disbelief. “Ernest Fisher, Karl Parker and Elizabeth Conner knew each other,” she remarked in astonishment. “In Russia?”
“I didn’t know the others. Just Ernst,” Agafiya said. “He was a fine young man. It’s very sad what has happened to him.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“Where was this?” I asked.
“Volkovo, north of Rybinsk,” Agafiya replied.
“Do you know what they were doing there?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Ernst always said he could never talk about it. But he told me it was the biggest mistake of his life. Not then, but now. He said he regretted it every day.”
Dinara and I shared a knowing look. Her theory about guilt being behind his drinking was starting to sound plausible. It seemed clear Ernie Fisher had been living a lie.
“But back then he was full of himself. He would come to the bar often and try to win me with his words,” Agafiya said. “His friends only came once. When I took that picture. They were greedy for drink. Vodka. Like it was their last day alive.”
“Were they talking Russian?” I asked.
“I don’t remember about the other two, but Ernst definitely spoke to me in Russian,” she replied. “How else could he hope to win my heart? I didn’t learn English until I came to Moscow many years later.”
“Were you still …?” Dinara trailed off, but Agafiya got her meaning immediately.
“No, no,” she replied. “Our love is a memory. When he found me again, we were only friends. Not even that. I think he just wanted someone to listen to him while he drank. Or maybe he just wanted this basement.”
I looked at the photograph she held in her pale hand, and struggled to make sense of what she’d just told us. My friend, the man I’d crossed half the world to seek justice for, wasn’t the man I thought he was. The younger version of Karl Parker, who grinned up at me from the old picture, was a stranger who wasn’t supposed to exist. Karl Parker had been raised in Clarion, Iowa, and according to all the information Mo-bot had been able to find, he had never once been to Russia.
“You said Ernie Fisher spoke Russian to you in the past. What about now?” I asked.
“Of course,” Agafiya said. “What else would he speak? He was an office administrator for a trading company in Moscow.”
“Didn’t you read the article?” I asked.
She stared at me coldly. “Not beyond the headline announcing the death of my old friend,” she said bitterly.
“Ernie Fisher was the chief of staff for the US ambassador to Moscow,” I said.
“No,” Agafiya responded. “That’s not possible.”
She looked to Dinara for confirmation, and my colleague nodded emphatically.
“We’ve got to go to Volkovo,” I said to Dinara. “I need to find out what they were doing there. I have to know who Karl Parker really was.”
CHAPTER 69
GHANI TOOK US back to Fisher’s apartment building where Leonid was waiting. I paid the Afghan cab driver a couple of hundred bucks for his help, and he went away smiling.
“Where to?” Leonid asked.
“Volkovo,” Dinara replied. “Yaroslavl Oblast.”
“Really?” the former cop replied uncertainly.
I nodded. “Karl Parker, Elizabeth Connor and Ernie Fisher were there as teenagers. We need to find out why.”
“OK,” Leonid said. “But it’s a long drive, especially in this weather.”
It wasn’t snowing, but the clouds were bruised and swollen and the air had sharp teeth.
“I’ll call Feo and let him know where he can collect his truck,” Dinara said.
“No,” Leonid responded. “We’ll take it. The heating in my uncle’s Lada still doesn’t work.”
Soon we were inside Feo’s truck with the heating on full as we sped through the city. While Leonid drove, I tried the Parker home in Long Island, but there was no answer. I dialed Justine and she responded almost immediately.
“Everything OK, Jack?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “How are things there?”
“The Otkrov story has broken and we’re catching some heat. Mainstream media is reporting the allegations, but some of the conspiracy bloggers are having a field day and digging through every high-profile case we’ve ever worked.”
“And our clients?” I asked.
“No one’s said anything,” Justine replied. “At least not yet.”
“No one will,” I remarked. “We’ll just get termination emails from their lawyers if things get too hot.”
“Speaking of heat, NYPD has been leaned on,” Justine revealed. “We’re not getting their cooperation anymore. Rick Tana, the detective in charge, says it’s come from City Hall, a precautionary measure in case Private really is in bed with the Ninety-nine.”
I sighed. “The Ninety-nine probably doesn’t even exist.”
“The lack of cooperation is making Sci and Mo’s lives more difficult, but they’re fighting on,” she said.
“I’ve got another battle for them. I need everything we can find on Karl Parker’s childhood,” I said. “And I want confirmation he never left America as a kid. Same goes for Ernie Fisher and Elizabeth Connor.”
“Why?” Justine asked.
“We’ve found a photograph that puts them in a small town a few hours north of Moscow. It suggests they knew each other as teenagers.”
“Photos can be faked,” she countered.
“This one feels genuine,” I replied. “And we have a witness.”
“People lie, and the best fakes always seem real,” Justine observed. “But I’ll ask Mo to look into it. Sci is in Washington checking the evidence from the Robert Carlyle crash.”
“Thanks,” I said. “One last thing. I just tried to call Victoria Parker, but there was no answer. Can you ask her to phone me as soon as possible?”
“Sure,” Justine replied. “What time is it there?”
“Ten,” I replied. “We’re heading out of the city to check out the place the photo was taken.”
“Be careful,” Justine cautioned, before hanging up.
“She doesn’t think the picture is genuine?” Dinara asked.
“She’s right,” I conceded. “It could be a fake.”
I took the photograph from my coat pocket. I’d put it inside a cellophane evidence bag to protect it. Everything about the old Polaroid seemed authentic, but Justine was right, it was not beyond the capabilities of a good forger.
“Of course, if it is real …” Dinara trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish her sentence.
I knew exactly what she was implying. If the photograph was genuine, there was a distinct possibility Karl Parker was a Russian agent. Was that what he’d wanted to talk to me about on the day he died? And if so, why now? I couldn’t believe my old friend, a man who’d served our country with distinction, could ever betray it. There could be a more innocent explanation, but I was struggling to come up with what that might be.
The possibility continued to trouble me as Leonid drove north out of the city into the frozen wilderness beyond.
CHAPTER 70
WHAT SHOULD HAVE been a five-hour drive became ten. The bad weather turned a 250-mile straight line into a crooked route of road closures and diversions. We shared the driving, and I took the dawn shift after a few hours’ bad sleep on the back seat. We’d passed Rybinsk and were traveling through the ancient pine forests of Yaroslavl, along a deserted single-lane road. Dinara was asleep on the back seat, and Leonid was dozing next to me. The truck’s heater filled the cabin with warm air, but just looking at the huge icy drifts that had been carved by snow plows was enough to make me shiver. They were so cold, their edges were tinged a toothpaste blue and the air seemed to shimmer around them.
Halfway between Rybinsk and Volkovo, we passed the wreckage of an accident. Two overturned, burned-out cars lay at the edge of the vast pine forest, their scorched rusting shells half covered in snow, suggesting the accident had happened months ago. I wondered whether anyone had survived. Even if they’d lived through the crash, what chance did they have in such hostile conditions, so far from help?
The sun had risen by the time I drove into Volkovo, and the town was just starting to wake up. Less than a mile in diameter, Volkovo straddled an inlet that branched off the enormous Rybinsk Reservoir, which lay to our west, concealed by thick forest. The town was made up of a couple of hundred homes and a handful of businesses. Most of the wooden houses had been constructed on spacious lots and many of them were in a state of disrepair. Volkovo reminded me of an Alpine village without the money.
Every building was capped with a thick layer of snow, which had turned to ice in the freezing temperatures. The tracks and driveways that lay off the main road were lost beneath deep drifts, and the parking bays that lined the street were populated by hillocks of snow, each of which marked a buried car.
Agafiya had told us the bar had been on route P104, the main drag that ran through the heart of town, and I followed the directions given by my phone’s GPS to the location. I slowed and turned right into a yard in front of a square white single-story building. Leonid and Dinara stirred when I brought the car to a halt near the bright green front door.
Leonid yawned and stretched, and as I looked past him, I saw the bar was gone. Judging by the contents of the misty windows that flanked the entrance, the place was now a bakery.
“This is it,” I told the others.
“Wait here,” Leonid said, before getting out.
The blast of cold air countered the soporific effects of the heater and revived me after the long drive. I looked around the deserted town and tried to picture Karl Parker here. He simply didn’t fit, and the more I thought about it, the more I found myself drawn to Justine’s suggestion that the photograph might be fake.
“What would an American be doing out here?” Dinara asked. “Even Russians don’t come here. At least not willingly.”
“It must be nice in summer,” I observed, and she replied with a snort of derision.
Leonid emerged from the bakery with a fully laden plastic bag.
“Breakfast,” he said, signaling the bounty of bread and pastries as he jumped in the car.
“I’m not hungry,” I responded.
“Any kalach?” Dinara asked.
Leonid nodded and ferreted in the bag for a hooped bun, which he handed her.
“Head up the street and make the next left toward the water-front,” he said, before taking a bite from a glazed pastry. “The bar closed ten years ago, but the owner still lives in town.”
Ten minutes later, we were in the living room of a small wooden house that overlooked the frozen inlet. Nikita Garin, the bemused former owner of the Novoko Bar, was in the kitchen and Dinara, Leonid and I sat on frayed green corduroy couches and exchanged furtive glances. They’d fast-talked our way into the house, but the gray-haired, puffy-faced ex-barkeep hadn’t needed too much convincing. I counted six cats, a para-keet and three dogs, and got the sense this was a man in desperate need of company.
The old instincts of a host hadn’t died and Nikita emerged from the kitchen with a pot of tea and four glasses. He sat next to me in his pajamas and a threadbare dressing gown, and spoke to Dinara and Leonid as he poured the tea. His English was limited to “hello” and “OK,” which is what he said when he handed me a glass of milky sweet tea.
“Show him the picture,” Dinara advised me.
I produced the photograph Agafiya had taken in the Novoko Bar and showed it to Nikita.
The old barman smiled and started talking.
“He says he remembers them. Well, the one in the middle, at least,” Dinara translated as Nikita pointed to Ernie Fisher. “He would always come to the bar and try to impress Agafiya. He would hang around trying to get her to go on a date.”
“Where was he from?” I asked. “Was he local?”
Dinara translated, and Nikita shook his head.
“No, not local. Not really,” Dinara said. “Apparently Ernest Fisher got very drunk one night and Nikita had to drive him home. He took him to the gatehouse of Boltino, an army base six kilometers north of here.”
My stomach lurched as my worst fears about my friend gained substance.
Dinara continued. “Boltino Army Base was shut down in 2002, but before then it was a key strategic installation. One of the most restricted places in all of Russia.”
CHAPTER 71
IT TOOK DINARA and Jack almost an hour to cover six kilometers. Boltino Army Base was located northeast of Volkovo, and they almost missed the overgrown access road off route P104. The rusty way-markers were largely lost to snow, and only the very tips of the metal poles were visible.
The access road was buried beneath two feet of snow, and the truck’s four-wheel drive struggled to cope with the conditions. Jack had to jump out every so often and clear a path with Feo’s shovel where the snow had drifted higher in places.
Leonid had stayed in town. Nikita had given him the names and addresses of locals who’d worked at the base, and Leonid planned to quiz them for more information, and see whether anyone else recognized Karl Parker, Ernie Fisher and Elizabeth Connor.
Dinara tapped the steering wheel as Jack returned to the truck, tossed the shovel in the back, and climbed into the passenger seat. He was sweating and breathing heavily, which wasn’t surprising. He’d just cleared a twelve-foot stretch of road. Dinara drove slowly forward, the car inching along the furrows Jack had dug, the chunky snow tires digging into the crisp powder. The trees were close on both sides, and cast everything in shadow. The edges of the road weren’t clear, so Dinara simply stayed in the middle of the long thin scar that had been cut through
the forest. The route banked right; then, after a long, sweeping turn, it straightened up, and Dinara saw the remains of a gatehouse ahead of them.
Beyond the derelict structure lay a dozen buildings, ware-houses, silos and stores. Even with the cleansing blanket of snow, Dinara could see the extent to which the structures had decayed. There were dark holes in the roofs, and rust was eating every visible surface. Most of the windows were cracked or missing entirely, and steel shutters were either buckled or absent.
“The snow is getting deeper,” Jack said. “Let’s leave the car here.”
Dinara nodded and slowed to a halt. She put the truck in neutral and pulled on the parking brake, but left the engine running.
“So nothing freezes,” she explained as she and Jack got out.
They grabbed their coats from the back seat and trudged through thick snow to the deserted base.
Once they were away from the vehicle, the only noise came from their steps. Otherwise the place was eerily quiet. The snow deadened sound, but there was none to be heard. No animals, birds or people, not even a whisper of wind. The clouds hung low above them and didn’t seem to move. Dinara shivered as she and Jack approached what looked like the main administration building, but she wasn’t sure the chill she felt was entirely a result of the cold. She couldn’t shake the sense they were being watched, and, out here, far from help, they were vulnerable.
If such fears troubled Jack, he didn’t show it. His eyes were fixed with grim determination. Dinara could only imagine what he was feeling. Each new revelation would shake the foundations of his friendship with Karl Parker, so the need to discover the truth must be unbearable for him.
The faded sign beside the long three-story structure said “Central Command,” and Dinara translated it for Jack. The main doors were locked but the floor-to-ceiling windows had been smashed, so they stepped over the rusting frames and went inside.
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