Last to Fold

by David Duffy

  The final entries were labeled—in chilling Soviet fashion—Chechen Freedom Security Undertaking, CFSU. The list of transactions showed how the Cheka had moved money to purchase the explosive RDX, rent the rooms where the bombs were placed, compensate the bombers, and bribe landlords, janitors, superintendents, police, and others who might interfere. There was a parallel network of payments, with the money emanating from banks in Grozny—obviously to implicate Chechen separatists once the damage was done. No question, no question beyond a reasonable doubt, no question beyond any doubt, that the Cheka organized, financed, and executed the September 1999 bombings of four apartment buildings that killed three hundred people, started a bloody war, and propelled Putin to the presidency. Gorbenko, Chmil, Petrovin—they were all right, and so far, two of them had died as a result. Petrovin said he was marked. I would be, too. The evidence was all there in bits and bytes. The approvals all came from ChK22. The pain in my gut was worse than anything Sergei could have inflicted.

  The door horn sounded, and I jumped eight feet. Foos and Pig Pen. I settled back to earth, my heart still pounding. It went off again. I sprinted to the kitchen and got the SIG Pro from the safe. Carrying it behind my back, safety off, I crept through the last server aisle, where I wouldn’t be spotted. The horn blew twice more. I got to the reception area to see a black guy in a FedEx uniform holding a large box. Feeling only a little bit foolish, I tucked the gun in the small of my back and opened the door. The package had a Moscow return address—Ulica Otradnaja. I signed and carried it back to my office. Inside were the old, dirty, burned remnants of a Russian peasant doll and her travel case of extra clothes. Eva’s Lena.

  I dialed Petrovin’s cell phone, hung up after the third ring, and dialed again.

  He answered on the second ring. “I was wondering when we’d hear from you.”

  “Long night with the FBI. They want to talk to the girl, which I think we should do, if only to get me off the hook. First, though, your package arrived. We should show her the contents.”

  “She’s been asking about her mother. Any news?”

  “No.”

  “She wants to go to the hospital.”

  “Bad idea. My Cheka friends are almost certainly watching.”

  “Agreed. The same could be true of your place.”

  “I’ll come to you. I’ll be sure I’m alone.”

  “Holiday Inn, West Fifty-seventh.”

  “Big spender.”

  “It was that or the Pierre. I’m a poor Russian policeman.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  A call to Bernie confirmed Felix Mulholland was still in a coma at New York Hospital. The doctors weren’t optimistic. The Basilisk verified I had indeed been talking to a cell phone on West Fifty-seventh between Tenth and Eleventh avenues. This was a time to be doubly careful.

  Which is one reason I made it at all.

  CHAPTER 42

  If Five-by-Five had been Russian—or halfway competent—he would have walked up from behind as I left my building, put his gun to the base of my neck, pulled the trigger, and sent my soul to meet its maker, wherever such meetings take place, my SIG Pro still tucked securely in the back of my belt.

  As it was, he tried to run me down from a hundred yards away. Then he tried to follow me back inside. While he was still in his car.

  I was crossing Water Street when I heard the racing engine, accelerating fast, getting louder as it closed. A green Range Rover coming straight at me from the south. Some piece of memory reminded me Mulholland owned one of those. I ran back to my building. The Range Rover skidded and squealed into the crosswalk, turning in my direction. The engine raced again. I made it through the door just before the car jumped the curb and crashed into the steel and stone of the facade.

  The front of the SUV collapsed like an accordion. The windshield shattered. The rest of the cab remained remarkably intact. Five-by-Five was conscious, if dazed, in the driver’s seat, cocooned in multiple air bags, which now hung deflated around him.

  I was able to open the driver’s door. A small crowd gathered behind. Five-by-Five reached for his armpit, but he was much too slow. I yanked out his Colt automatic and tossed it to the back of the car.

  “I didn’t kill no one,” he said.

  “Can you get to your seat belt?”

  “I didn’t kill no one. You fooking lied.”

  “Okay. Seat belt.”

  “I didn’t kill no one. You lied.” He was shouting.

  “That’s why you tried to run me down?”

  “Told you, don’t like fookin’ snoops. Don’t like fookin’ snoops who lie.”

  I reached for the latch. Jammed. I pulled and twisted to no avail. His breath said he’d been drinking beer. A lot of it.

  “I didn’t lie,” I said.

  “He fired me. You did that.”

  That stopped me. “Mulholland? Fired you?”

  “I didn’t kill no one.”

  “When? When did he fire you?”

  “Yesterday. Said you said I killed that kid. I didn’t shoot him. He was dead.”

  I gave up struggling with the seat belt. A voice behind me yelled, “We called nine-one-one. Ambulance on the way. Is he all right?”

  “He’s okay,” I called back. I said quietly to Five-by-Five, “Tell me quick, what happened at that loft?”

  “Don’t like fookin’ snoops.”

  “I can get your job back. He’ll listen to me.”

  He looked at me with blurred eyes, half hateful, half desperate. The beer, the impact, and the air bags slowed his processing ability, never swift, to a crawl. I wanted out of there before the cops arrived. They’d have me back in front of Sawicki and Coyle in no time.

  “Lachlan, if I made a mistake, I’ll make good on it. I mean that. Tell me what happened last Wednesday. I’ll talk to your boss, tell him I was wrong.”

  He looked me over one more time before blurting out his account of events at Greene Street. A few more pieces fell into place.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said when he finished. “Help’s coming. They’ll get you out of here.”

  I backed away into the crowd. “He’ll be all right,” I announced to anyone and everyone. “More shock than anything else.”

  “What’d he say?” somebody asked.

  “Trying to explain what happened,” I replied, continuing to back up until I found myself at the rear of the group, which was collectively pushing forward to get closer to the carnage. I heard sirens as I walked a block south, crossed Water (looking both ways), and trotted up Wall Street. I didn’t stop until I reached the subway platform.

  CHAPTER 43

  I used the entire New York transportation system, excluding only ferries, to make sure I arrived at the Holiday Inn free of tails. The hotel looked out of place in Manhattan, as do almost all chains, but the white brick, balconied, utilitarian architecture appeared true to its brand. The frayed carpet in the lobby and the smell of institutional cleanser in the hallways may have been more true than the brand wanted. Petrovin had rented two adjoining rooms on the fourth floor, the door between them open. He greeted me with a handshake, Eva with a hug and tears. “I kn … know you’re trying to h … h … help, m … me, but it’s all m … m … m … my f … fault.”

  I said, “Your mom’s still in a coma. The doctors aren’t sure what will happen. She was badly hurt last night—which wasn’t your fault at all. Someone else did that to her. You have any idea who?”

  She shook her head. She was dressed in clean jeans and a T-shirt. Petrovin had bought her some new clothes.

  “We can’t take you to see her until we figure out who wants to hurt you. You understand that?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “You’re going to have to talk to the police, tell them what happened last night. Okay?”

  She nodded again.

  “I brought you something. I’ll put it in the other room.”

  I went next door and laid out Lena and her case on t
he bed. Petrovin followed me. I held my breath and called her.

  She saw the doll and collapsed in the doorway. Petrovin and I moved to help, but she pushed herself up and fell again across the bed, holding what was left of Lena in her fingers. She started to cry. Petrovin sat on the bed, moving ever so slowly, and put an arm around her shoulders. “We know about you and Lena and that day in the barn. But we want to hear your story. Will you tell us what happened?”

  She looked up at him and then at me.

  “He’s right, Eva. I want to hear it, too.”

  She looked back and forth between the two of us, her eyes heavy with tears. “I t … t … tried to do s … something! I d … did! I tried so h … h … hard. But the ropes … The fire was too h … hot. I t … tried…”

  She collapsed again, crying without control. Petrovin cradled her.

  “This was your father, right, your real father?” I asked as gently as I could. “You tried to free him. He died in the fire at the barn.”

  She stopped crying just long enough to nod. Then she returned to the Gulag of memory.

  * * *

  Eva cried herself out and fell asleep. Petrovin and I let her rest. We ordered sandwiches from room service and ate next door, not saying much, each of us working through his own thoughts. I wondered if his were that much different from mine.

  She slept for more than an hour before she appeared at the doorway.

  I said, “Hungry?”

  Half a sandwich disappeared in a flash. She was working on the second when Petrovin said, “Feel like talking?”

  She nodded slowly and sat on the corner of the bed. It took a couple of false starts, but once she got going, the story came tumbling out. Having decided to tell it, she wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. The sandwich was forgotten. Only her stutter slowed her down.

  I had pieced most of it together in my own mind—I assumed Petrovin had, too—and her account contained no surprises. As she told the story, Petrovin paced the room. At first I thought he was just antsy. He’d been holed up here for hours. In fact, it was anger. The cool customer was losing his composure, like he had last night. Or perhaps he hadn’t pieced it together after all.

  As Eva wound down, I could sense him glancing in my direction, eager for action. I was forming a plan. It would require his help. But when the time came, he wasn’t going to have any part of it.

  Cheka business, family business. My business to take care of.

  Eva stopped talking and looked at the sandwich in her hand, as if she’d forgotten how it got there. She took a bite and chewed, took another and chewed that, but I doubt she tasted a thing. She’d kept her story bottled up for half her life, her secret—I wondered whether even Polina knew the whole tale. Now that she’d told it, she’d cut herself adrift. Disoriented, disconnected, she’d lost track of where she was. Petrovin sensed the same thing and went to the bed and put his arm around her again. She looked up at him, unsure at first—of him, of herself—then she buried her face in his chest and cried. He waited until the sobbing slowed, then disengaged himself. A few minutes later, she was asleep. He and I went next door.

  “Murdering bastard,” Petrovin said, not bothering to hide his anger.

  I couldn’t argue. I felt the dull ache of loss, as I had the previous night, mixed up with the pains of my other wounds. Friendship masks, loyalty blinds, and I was guilty of both.

  “I have one question,” I said as calmly as I could. “He set that fire last night to mirror the fire in the barn. Eva was going to watch her mother burned alive, just like her father. If she didn’t die, the trauma would drive her over the edge.”

  “The one person who can place him at the dacha that day. She knows he murdered Kosokov.”

  “How did he know she was in the barn? How did he know to stage that fire?”

  “Easy,” Petrovin said. “The Cheka had the whole place wired. We found the bugs in the house. I bet they did the barn, too. If he didn’t know at the time, he did when he listened to the tape.”

  That sounded right. Suddenly I felt my own rage rising, as much at the calculated premeditation—against a child—as at the heinousness of the crimes themselves.

  “I need a favor, some help from your pal Ivanov.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know. I can’t—”

  “You can try. For Eva as well as for me. Tell him Polina’s dead. Eva, too. The papers reported one victim, in critical condition. Ivanov can break the story that there were two—and they didn’t make it. Tell him that fallout shelter was an old KGB meeting place in the 1980s.”

  He gave me a long look. “I’ll try. But what are you hoping to achieve?”

  “I would have thought that was obvious—flush a badger from his lair.”

  “And then?”

  “Haven’t got that far yet,” I lied. “Right now, we need to take Eva to talk to Coyle. She has to sooner or later, and I need her to support my story and get them off my back. Meet me downtown and we’ll figure out how to get into the hospital to see her mother, assuming she’s still alive.”

  Or he could. I’d be doing something else entirely.

  * * *

  Bernie had yet another lawyer meet Eva and me at the FBI’s offices. Coyle was mildly surprised I’d delivered on my promise and was almost friendly until Bernie’s lawyer arrived and started making demands on behalf of his client. Coyle threw me out. I didn’t blame him.

  “Russky! Where’s cutie?” Pig Pen squawked as soon as he saw me.

  “Busy right now, Pig Pen. Maybe she’ll be by later.”

  “Hot number!”

  Petrovin had moved quickly and Ivanov even faster. A new post on Ibansk.com couldn’t have been more than a few minutes old. I took in the substance. They’d done their work well. The recipient would feel one step from liberation. He didn’t know I was that step. Not for sure—yet.

  MURDER MOST FIERY

  Anyone who had any doubt of the Cheka’s long reach (Ivanov’s not one), read on. The Sword and the Shield and the flamethrower claimed two more victims last night—in a former Cheka safe haven in New York City.

  Ivanov’s network reports this particular inferno took place in a Cold War fallout shelter under one of New York’s most famous bridges—named after borough Brooklyn—that was once used by enterprising Chekist spies as a secret meeting hall. Polina Barsukova—long known to followers of Ibanskian intrigue—was one victim. Roasted on a kerosene-soaked funeral pyre. But wait! The Cheka’s cruelty knows no borders. Polina’s daughter, Eva, was lured into igniting the blaze. It roasted her mother—she made it through the night but died this morning—and snuffed her young life as well. New York authorities have clamped on a tight lid, but Ivanov’s sources know no borders either.

  What does the Cheka want? Why take such chances? Murder in Moscow is an organizational right—at least in the eyes of its perpetrators—but American authorities won’t necessarily see it that way.

  Then again, maybe the re-emboldened Sword and Shield is so confident that the flamethrower doesn’t care.

  I had to admire Ivanov’s editorializing—“Murder in Moscow is an organizational right”—but it wouldn’t register where it counted. Ivanov spoke truth to the powers that couldn’t see it anymore. In a society where murder had long been an organizational right, that was one reason Ibansk.com had achieved the status it had among the rest of us.

  On the other hand, the facts, the details, they would register—at least where I wanted them to. The shelter, the kerosene, the fire, the booby-trapped door—they comprised the message I was sending. He’d have to assume I was the source. Time to make sure my message was received.

  I went down to the street and walked a few blocks north until I found a pay phone. I dialed Brighton Beach and put a folded paper towel over the mouthpiece.

  “Read Ibansk.”

  CHAPTER 44

  The empty construction site at John F. Kennedy International Airport wasn’t as cool or pretty as Central
Park had been ten days before—but it was as good a place as any again to contemplate irony and fate. The roar of aircraft above the Valdez, parked in a rain-rutted access road, provided a backdrop of white noise. The airport hummed with early-evening activity, but my spot was empty and lifeless—the reason I’d chosen it. Whatever happened later, I didn’t want any witnesses.

  Play the cards you’re dealt, I’d told Petrovin. Here’s one that’ll change your hand, he told me. Play it straight, Victoria said, and play according to Coyle. Sometimes the straight fills or you draw that fourth queen. This wasn’t one of them. However the hand played out tonight, nobody was going to be happy with the outcome, except perhaps to still be alive.

  Ivanov turned out to be prescient in one respect—Polina hadn’t made it. She’d slipped off into her own netherworld, without regaining consciousness. Probably just as well. The pain would have been unbearable, and the sight of her mutilated face would have sent her screaming into lunacy. I felt more anger than sorrow. She’d done her best to ruin my life and done an excellent job, but no one deserved the fate she got, and neither God nor predetermination had a damned thing to do with it.