by Paul Levine
***
Nikolai looked up, stunned. “Mr. Foley, what are you—”
“Shouldn’t leave your door open, kid. Who knows what’ll come in. Goblins, spooks, half-assed lawyers.” Foley glared at me. “You tell him yet? Or should I?”
“He told me.” Nikolai answered for me. “But, deep in my heart, I already knew. We had a system. Vladimir could get messages to me through an Aeroflot pilot who flew to New York. Every other Sunday, he would—”
“Not talking about your brother, kid.” Foley’s voice had softened. Behind his rimless glasses, his eyes were tired and sad. He grabbed a wooden chair, swung it around, and straddled it backward, placing his forearms on the chair’s back. He looked like a cowboy in a gray suit. “We tap Yagamata’s phone. Hell, all his phones. We scan his cellulars, bug his home, his office, his boat. The son of a bitch is under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Yesterday, I’m in Washington, the Miami bureau picks up a call from Miami Beach to Yagamata’s home. A male voice: ‘The Finnish bunny has flown the coop.’ And Yagamata says, ‘What a shame to lose a bunny with such pretty fur.’ The caller asks, ‘Lose?’ And Yagamata says, ‘Lose like a cherry blossom in the snow.’”
Nikolai’s voice echoed his disbelief. “They killed Eva-Lisa?” He slumped into a chair.
Foley said, “In Miami, my people thought it was just another bullshit code about the artwork. Some agent just out of training even asked what artist painted bunny rabbit pictures. It took the better part of the day for the tape to be transcribed and faxed to me in D.C. By then, I was at a reception at the Polish embassy. Nobody in D.C. understood the importance of the transmission, either, or they would have gotten me out of there. I get home late and call the night desk. It’s an old habit, and they read me the fax. I’m yelling to get somebody to the girl’s apartment on the Beach. They do, and there’s no sign of her. Another crew heads up to Lake Worth, but it was too late.” He opened his palms on the table in a gesture of helplessness. He did not look at me. “I’m sorry. As soon as I heard, I caught the next flight to Miami.”
Nikolai’s face was white with anger, and tears glittered in his eyes. “You swore you would protect her. You knew what she was like. So impetuous. So young.”
So dead, I thought.
“She didn’t follow instructions,” Foley said. “I assume from the message to Yagamata that she was bailing out. She never even warned us.”
“Who did it?” Nikolai asked, his voice cracking. “How was it done?”
“Why don’t you ask Lassiter?”
I didn’t like the way he said it, his tone changing from mournful friend to sarcastic cop in the blink of an eye. When I didn’t say anything, Nikolai turned toward me. A vein throbbed in his neck.
Foley said, “We checked every police report yesterday in Miami Beach. Yesterday afternoon, a restaurant worker called the cops about a scuffle in an alley. Seems like a guy was tussling with a woman, may have hit her. By the time the cops got there, the couple was gone. Our people showed photos of Lassiter and Eva-Lisa to the worker. Positive ID on both of them.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Foley, what kind of bullshit is this?”
“Shut up, Lassiter.” He turned back to Nikolai. “We’ve gotten some help from Palm Beach County homicide, too. Eva-Lisa was butchered in the sauna behind her parents’ house. A short-handled hatchet did the job.” I sensed Nikolai shifting in his chair, angling toward me. “They picked up latents all over the place. The wooden benches, the hatchet handle, even one on her shoulder using the methyl methacrylate test. We faxed Lassiter’s prints to them. A perfect match. If you look on the inside pocket of Lassiter’s sport coat, you’ll find the initials ‘R.H.’ If we scraped under his nails right now, we’d find . . .” He grabbed one of my wrists and turned my hand over. “… a speck of dried blood, and I’d bet you a hundred bucks DNA testing would match up with the decedent.”
I tore my hand away. “You bastard, Foley! You know I didn’t kill her. Tell him!”
“You tell him, asshole.”
Before I could respond, Nikolai’s hand came up. In it was a stainless steel push dagger that must have come from a sheath on his leg. He pressed it hard against my neck, forcing me back in my chair.
I hate a knife.
When I spoke, I felt the tip of the blade pierce the skin. “I didn’t kill her. Foley, dammit, you know it.”
“Who killed her?” Foley asked.
The knife pressed harder. “Kharchenko. He called Yagamata when she tried to quit. Your office picked up the call, you said so yourself.” Warm blood trickled down my neck. “Why are you doing this?”
Foley shook his head. He seemed genuinely sad. “I don’t know any Kharchenko.”
“Of course you do! He works for Yagamata. You were there in the warehouse when Yagamata told you about him.”
“What’s he look like? Where is he now?”
Too weird. I was about to have my throat cut, and Foley was taking a statement. It didn’t make sense. Or did it? I was arching backward, trying to escape the knife. If my chin went any higher, I’d snap my cervical vertebrae. Nikolai didn’t seem to mind.
“What’s with you, Foley? I thought this was your operation.”
“So did I,” Robert Foley said. “Now, what’s he look like, this Kharchenko?”
“You really don’t know him?”
“Jeez, Lassiter, if I knew, I wouldn’t have asked for your detailed statement at the Crespo scene.”
“I thought that was a trick to get my signature.”
“That was a bonus,” he said, “like having a big-boobed secretary who can type.”
I let out a breath and tried to relax. Foley wouldn’t let Nikolai kill me. At least not yet.
“I know Kharchenko when I see him,” I said, lowering my head enough to look at Foley. “And I know where to find him tonight, but if Nikolai slices me, you won’t learn a thing.”
His eyes dismissed the notion as irrelevant. “He cuts your jugular, I’ll clamp it shut with my hands. Make a hell of a mess, but give you another two minutes to live. For those two minutes, you’d tell me your mother’s darkest secrets and your father’s fondest dreams.”
“My mother was platinum blonde who ran off with an oil worker after my father was killed in a barroom brawl.”
Killed with a knife.
I shifted my gaze to Nikolai, whose face was a dark mask. “Don’t you see what he’s doing? He can’t kill me. Against regulations or something. But he could let Yagamata do it. Or you. And he wants to make a quinella out of it.” A flicker of puzzlement crossed Nikolai’s face. “He wants to get the information he needs, then have you kill me.”
I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my cheek. The pressure of the knife eased just a bit. Foley’s palm slapped the table. “Half right again, Lassiter. Sure, I want information from you, but I don’t want you dead. I just figure you deserve to piss your pants a little after that trick you pulled at the airport. Just answer my questions.”
I was having trouble breathing. A lump of rage was stuck in my throat. “First, you tell Nikolai the truth, you bastard. Tell him they found another set of prints in the sauna. Tell him you don’t know who Kharchenko is because the prints don’t match up with anything you’ve got. Tell him how Yagamata took your nice little Operation Riptide and made it his own.” I licked my lips, salty with sweat. “Tell him I didn’t kill Eva-Lisa.”
Foley shrugged his shoulders. “The lawyer’s right,” he told Nikolai impassively. “He didn’t kill her.”
The knife clattered to the floor. With a strangled sob, the young Russian pushed away from the table and stood at the grimy window with his back to us.
Foley’s eyes tried to apologize. “I’m sorry, kid, but this is a lot bigger than you are.” He said it as if he believed it. Then he turned to me. “Okay, Lassiter, let’s you and me kiss and make up.” I didn’t care much for the phrase but figured it was better than bury the hatchet. Foley gave me his sn
oop’s imitation of a friendly grin. “Where do we find Kharchenko?” he asked.
“At the ballet,” I said.
20
ART FOR WHEAT
I didn’t move in time, and a woman the size of Larry Csonka, but not as attractive, stomped on my feet and plopped into the seat next to me, elbowing me in the ribs. Foley on one side of me, a Russian babushka on the other. Welcome to the Bolshoi Ballet, at least the touring version. The audience was an eclectic mix of South Florida society and Russian émigrés. Foley and I were sitting in the balcony with the Russians. I was wearing a rented tux with an undersized shirt collar that felt like a garrote.
Foley owned a formal outfit, or was it government issue? He was practicing his Russian by silently reading the bilingual program. I tried to get his attention. “First, you said our government was trying to stop the art thefts, help out the reformers.”
Foley didn’t look up from his program. He was tracing under the words, moving his lips slightly, but he was reading Russian, and that’s more than I can do.
“Then, I learn you’re really behind the thefts. You were trying to get the goods on the hard-liners, protect the Yeltsin crowd, help make the country a colony of the West, or something like that. What’s your expression, ‘drive a coffin nail into the godless heart of communism.’”
“That was for the benefit of Soto and the Finns. Jeez, Lassiter, do you believe whoever talks to you last? Don’t you have the ability to reason for yourself?”
“Yeah. All by myself, I figured you’re a lying scumbag, because now I know you’re the thief. You and Yagamata are stealing the art.”
Ordinarily, I am much more polite in ornate surroundings. But I doubted that many of our newest immigrants bustling into the gilded red velvet balcony of the Performing Arts Center would care, even if they could understand my poison-tipped whispers.
“Look, Lassiter, you don’t even know the players, much less the rules of the game.” Foley folded the program neatly and placed it in his lap. He leaned close enough for me to smell the tobacco on his breath. “Severo Soto is a rabid anticommunist. He’s crazy as a bedbug. All he cares about is overthrowing Castro. He figures that if the Russians can’t subsidize the bearded one, the Cuban government will fall. He wants to be the first president in a democratic Cuba, or maybe it’s a fascist Cuba, who the hell knows. Everybody hears what they want to, and Soto heard me talk about nailing communism. The Finnish girl, too.”
“So what the hell are you doing here?” I demanded. “What’s the U.S. interest in Russian art?”
“What I told you was true at one time. A couple of years ago, the Russians let us know they were starting to lose valuable artworks, primarily from churches, but then some of the less valuable artifacts from the museums were missing, too. It was part of the crime phenomenon all through Eastern Europe, once travel restrictions and other controls were eased. All the Russians wanted was a little help on our end, trace where the stuff was being sold in the West, make some arrests, get people to talk, and find the source here that was funding the flow.”
I used a finger to get some breathing room between my neck and my shirt collar. “Sounds like drug interdiction.”
“Same idea. Anyway, we help them out, pick up a stolen Rubens at an auction house in New York, track it back to some semi organized crime types in Minsk who have Party ties, and everybody’s happy. But then, somebody at Langley’s talking to somebody at State about how perestroika is stuck, and the nomenklatura are getting itchy because Gorby is cutting off their caviar, and suddenly, everyone’s scared shitless there’ll be a coup. So, with the reformers’ blessing, we take the initiative. We target some of the real assholes in the army, the Foreign Ministry, the KGB, and set them up for a sting. We’re paying off these guys in return for some valuable pieces from the museums. We’re taping the transactions, tracing their deposits into foreign accounts, and pretty soon, we have enough evidence to send some important commies to Siberia for treason. It would have gotten some of the real hard-liners out of the way. Then, all of a sudden, way more art is coming out of the country than we need to hold the top Reds’ feet to the fire.”
“Yagamata,” I murmured.
“You got it. Stuff starts turning up in private collections in Japan, and KGB agents there get word back to their masters in Moscow. So our cover is blown, and—”
“Gorbachev gets a short vacation in the Crimea, all expenses paid by the guys who got caught.”
Foley finally looked at me. “Lassiter, you’re not as dumb as you look.”
I didn’t tell him I’d had a Finnish tutor. “But the coup fails, and you go into business for yourself with Yagamata.”
“Wrong! I spoke too soon. Just listen. After those bozos screw it up—hey, they let Lesley Stahl interview Yeltsin when Parliament was surrounded—everybody at State is so happy they’re walking around with hard-ons. If you know anything about history, you know that when the Russians are unified—no matter what form their government takes—their neighbors aren’t going to get any sleep. It’s in the West’s interest to break down the Union into individual republics with no strong central authority. What the hell does Estonia have in common with Tadzhikistan, anyway?”
I didn’t know, but Foley wasn’t looking for an answer. “The trick, Lassiter, was to separate the republics from central authority without fostering civil war. It wouldn’t do to have the Russian army in Georgia tossing nuclear warheads at rebel troops in Azerbaijan. We have to support the reformers, the nationalists in each of the key republics. They don’t need tanks and mortars. They need food for their people. Central planning kept the country from feeding itself. You wouldn’t believe the inefficiency and corruption. There’s a city on the Volga called Astrakhan. The biggest industry is fishing—huge sturgeon from the river, excellent caviar. But you couldn’t even buy a stinking herring in the city. The central planners ordered it all to be shipped elsewhere.”
Below us, the orchestra was tuning up. The strings and the horns seemed to be at war with each other. “So send them foreign aid,” I said. “Send them some of our surplus wheat.”
“Not that simple. Who gets to distribute it, the old incompetent bureaucrats or the new incompetent bureaucrats? And how will they pay for it? They have no hard currency.”
“Gold,” I suggested. “They have stockpiles. I’ve read about it.”
“Had. A few years ago, their reserves were probably thirty-five hundred tons. If they have two hundred tons left, it’d be news to us.”
“Where’d it go?”
“Some was traded for credit with the West, some for dollars and pounds and marks that ended up in Swiss accounts of Party bigwigs. Hey, we’ll never know. The last two Party treasurers, Pavlov and Kruchina, threw themselves out windows before anybody could ask them questions. Lassiter, the fact is, their damn country is broke. So what’s our government to do? Give them easy credit? Forget it, might as well give the money away, but that’d never fly in Washington.”
I was beginning to understand, but I didn’t know if it was true. How could you tell with Foley? I said, “So instead of going through diplomatic channels, our government supports a bunch of burglars, just like Watergate, only on a bigger scale. You borrowed Yagamata’s idea. You steal the Russians’ art, sell it to Japanese and German collectors, and use the money to send Wheaties back to Moscow. Is that what you’re telling me? Instead of arms for hostages, art for wheat?”
The lights were beginning to dim, and the music came up. Foley chuckled. “An oversimplification, and I would object to your characterizing us as burglars. Russian officials with the appropriate credentials authorize the sale of the art. We can be considered legitimate brokers. Look, Lassiter, we’re not bad guys. We’re doing the reformers a favor. We’re feeding their people and keeping them in power. Of course, it’s all surreptitious, and we spread some dollars around, but that’s a cost of doing business with the Russians, always has been. Under the communists, everyone who could swing it
was vzyatka, on the take. Why should it change now? Besides, it suits our purposes.”
“What purposes?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t have to. I was catching on. “You’re doing the same thing again, aren’t you?”
Still, he was silent.
“Do the new bureaucrats in the republics know you’re setting them up, too? Do they know you’re wired when they make the deals?”
“What we do is in the American national interest. We have bought a certain amount of loyalty there, and we take precautions to assure that our friends stay that way.”
The curtain went up, and on the stage, some European peasants in a colorful village were dancing up a storm. “You’ve bought the whole country,” I said, “just like you used to do in Latin America and Africa and Asia and anyplace else that was for sale. You’ve turned the Soviet Union into just another banana republic.”
From behind us, a loud “Shuush!” I turned around and smiled at a large woman who was slicing a salami and wagging her finger at me.
On the stage, a guy in a brown vest and tights seemed to have a thing for a pretty village woman in a blue dress. “So what went wrong?” I whispered.
“Yagamata got greedy.”
“Again! Why were you still using him?”
“All was forgiven. As it turned out, the coup attempt was the best thing that could have happened for us. So Yagamata was sort of an inadvertent hero, and we needed him as the middleman for the Japanese buyers. But the bastard wasn’t satisfied with his broker’s commission, and with the country in chaos, he smelled an opportunity. He started skimming the artwork, making his own deals with the Russians for unauthorized pieces, selling to collectors who are security risks.”
“But you’re helping him! I heard you back in Yagamata’s warehouse.”
Foley dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I had to find out what he was up to if I was going to stop him. Now that the operation’s been canceled, my job is to terminate the transfers by any means possible and get the stuff back to Russia before any more damage is done.”
