Altar of Bones

by Philip Carter

  “I’m looking, O’Malley,” Zoe said. “But I’m also thinking.”

  “Oh-oh.”

  “If America’s Kingmaker once helped a Soviet agent assassinate President Kennedy, then what’s he doing to the country now with all his power and influence and money? For all we know he might still be working for the KGB, or whatever they call themselves these days—”

  “The FSB. Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti.”

  She waved a hand. “Whatever. He can tell it to the judge after we expose him. But what I’ve been thinking is, how do we expose him? We could turn the film over to somebody in the government, like the CIA. But, oh, wait, the triggerman was one of their agents, who just also happened to be a KGB mole—”

  A horn blew behind them. Ry glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a red Mini Cooper darting back and forth across the center line, wanting to pass both him and the VW bus, but not quite ballsy enough to try to do it blind.

  “It’s possible they found out my dad was a mole a long time ago,” he said. “They might even know he was the man on the grassy knoll. But whatever they know now or knew then, you got to figure the minute the assassination happened, people started covering their asses all up and down the chain of command, from the CIA to the cops in Dallas, because they let it happen. Take the Secret Service, for instance. Never mind that they let the president ride around in an open convertible that day; as soon as the first shot was fired, the guy behind the wheel should’ve floored it and gotten the hell out of there. Instead, he practically came to a complete stop to look around, I suppose. Who knows? But that left Kennedy and everybody else in the car just sitting there like wooden ducks in a shooting gallery.”

  Zoe rolled the magazine up into a tight cylinder and turned to look out the window. “See, that’s what I’m most afraid of, Ry. We give them the film, they tell us we need to consider what’s best for the country, yada, yada, and then they turn around and bury it.”

  “Babe, they’re gonna bury it so deep, the only way it’ll ever see the light of day again is if some kid in China accidentally uncovers it while digging around in his backyard.”

  “While we’ll spend the rest of our lives locked up in a cage somewhere.”

  The Mini Cooper honked again, and the VW bus retaliated by belching a cloud of black smoke and slowing down even more as they started around yet another bend in the road. Ry braked and forced his hands to relax their death grip on the wheel.

  He said, “We could take it to the media. I know a guy who works for the Washington Post who’s pretty good. He’s smart, thorough, and not easily intimidated. And whatever his personal biases are, he seems able to keep them from bleeding into his stories.”

  They came out of the curve, and at last Ry saw straight road and no oncoming traffic ahead. He pressed down on the gas pedal and was within a split second of pulling out around the van when the Mini Cooper blew by them. The guy behind the wheel gave them the finger, and Ry thought, Asshole.

  “What an asshole,” Zoe said, and Ry laughed.

  He said, “We could take the film to my guy, but the trouble is the film is only half of it. It shows who did it, but not why, and he is going to want to know the why before he breaks the story.”

  “And the minute he starts asking questions,” Zoe said, “Miles Taylor is going to have him killed.”

  “Exactly.”

  They were quiet for a moment, then Ry said, “There is one guy I know who’s powerful and connected enough in his own right that Taylor might have a hard time getting to him. Although, he might not have the juice to get the film exposed—in fact he wouldn’t do it if he honestly believed it would hurt the country more than it helped.”

  “Who is this paragon?”

  “Senator Jackson Boone.”

  Zoe whirled around in her seat to gape at him. “Oh, my God. You know Senator Boone?”

  “Hey, don’t swoon on me here.”

  “It’s just … Senator Boone. People are saying he could be our next president, Ry. How do you know him?”

  “From when I was in the Special Forces. He was my commanding officer.”

  Zoe laughed. “You know what I like about you, Ry? You not only speak fifteen languages, but everywhere we go you know ‘a guy.’ A guy who can get us guns. A guy who can make us fake passports. A guy who is a U.S. senator.”

  She unrolled the Vanity Fair and it fell right open to the Taylor article. Opposite the first page of the text was a photo display, and as she tilted it toward the sunlight that streamed through the window to get a better look, Ry repressed a groan.

  The photograph that had her so obsessed was one of Miles Taylor standing alongside the president of the United States, awarding some inner-city educator the Freedom Medal. Behind them a small knot of people were grouped around an American flag, and a little apart from them, as if she’d deliberately stepped back to get out of the picture, was a woman in a bright red suit.

  And, okay, maybe she had red hair, but you couldn’t really tell because she had it up, and she was so far on the edge of the picture that half her face was cut off and the half you could see was out of focus. But Zoe was sure the woman was Yasmine Poole because she had on a red suit. As if there weren’t a million red suits in the world. It had to be a woman thing, he thought.

  And, of course, because she could read his mind, Zoe said, “I’m telling you, O’Malley, it’s her. It’s that same killer designer outfit she had on in Paris.”

  Ry bit the inside of his cheek to keep from opening his mouth, then said, “Hey, I’m with you, at least as far as Yasmine Poole working for Miles Taylor as his hit man, hit woman, whatever. I’m just saying the woman in that particular photo could be anybody.”

  Zoe studied the photograph a little longer, then closed up the magazine, put it in the side-door pocket, and uncapped one of the water bottles they’d stocked the car with. As they came around another bend in the road, she pressed her face against the window glass.

  “This really is spectacular,” she said. “But Strauss got it wrong. The Danube isn’t blue, more like a dull, muddy brown.”

  “It still is blue most of the time. It’s probably just got some runoff today from the melting snow.”

  He let a couple of beats go by, then said, “So Agim is one good-looking dude, wouldn’t you say?”

  Zoe took a swig of the water. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  RY FELL IN love with Szentendre at first sight.

  “It’s almost too charming to be real,” he said to Zoe. “Cobbled lanes, red-tiled roofs, brightly painted houses, quaint Orthodox churches. Look, they’ve even got horse-drawn carriages. I could hire a couple of guys to play violins, buy you one perfect red rose, and we could go for a ride in the moonlight—”

  “It’s February, O’Malley. Get a grip,” Zoe said, but he saw she was smiling. “It’s almost two. We need to find Professor Kuzmin’s place. Agim said it was on a hill overlooking the river.”

  They found it easily, but Ry drove by without even slowing. He hung a right, then a left, so that they were on a street parallel and downhill from the villa. He parked alongside a set of steps that led up to what looked like the wall of a cemetery.

  They got out of the car, stretched out the kinks, and looked around them.

  Zoe said, “I haven’t seen any sign of Yasmine Poole yet. Have you?”

  “No. But then we wouldn’t.”

  Ry took the Glock out of the glove compartment where he’d stowed it while he was driving, slipped it into the small of his back, then stuffed the side pockets of his cargo pants with extra ammo clips.

  “Are we going to be the Carpenters again? Jake the chauvinist pig and clueless Suzie with a z?” Zoe asked.

  Ry shook his head. “No, the only thing the same is going to be the names. I figure this guy’s spent years looking for your icon, and the minute he lays eyes on it, he’s going to want it. If he thinks we’re a couple of rubes, things could get nasty. They could get nasty anyway.”


  Ry took one last look around, then said, “Do you mind waiting by the car for a bit? I want to scout the villa before we go inside. Find the back way out, just in case.”

  “A plan B.” Zoe was grinning and kind of rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, and Ry thought, Damn, in spite of everything, she’s actually loving this.

  And he smiled to himself, because he was loving it, too.

  PROFESSOR DENIS KUZMIN’S villa—a two-story stucco painted a pale peach—sat behind a stand of cypress trees and a green wrought-iron fence. The gate was open to the gravel drive, and Ry slipped through without being seen. He circled around to the back and found a door that led out from the kitchen into a vegetable garden and a small apple orchard. On the other side of the orchard was a lane that led to the rear of a church.

  He walked down the lane, past the church, and came upon a small cemetery of leaning stone crosses and crumbling monuments. A wall ran along one side of the cemetery, and on the other side of the wall, some stone steps. Ry looked down the steps and saw all but the front end of their rented Beamer, but no Zoe anywhere.

  He trotted down the steps, still not seeing Zoe, panic uncurling in his belly. Then he saw the back of her, leaning up against the front bumper. He must’ve have made some noise because she stood up suddenly and whirled, a bottle of water in one hand, and a Glock in the other, pointed at his heart.

  “Jesus Christ, O’Malley, what are you doing? I almost shot you.”

  “Sorry, I thought you … Sorry.”

  Ry drew in a deep breath and tried to get his racing pulse under control. He needed to get a grip here. He’d let Agim get inside his head with all that talk about the One, and now it was distracting him. And when you got distracted, you not only got yourself killed, you got the people who depended on you killed, too.

  “Well, give me some warning next time. I’m a little jumpy here.” Zoe slipped the gun back into her satchel. “So what did you find? Have we got us a plan B?”

  Ry described the layout of the villa while he got out his Swiss army knife, opened the BMW’s passenger-side door, and pushed the seat back as far as it would go so he could get at the center console.

  Zoe peered over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “Disabling the air bags. I should have done it sooner. At some point we might need to haul ass out of here in a hurry, and if we end up colliding with something along the way, I don’t want us to get hit with a faceful of nylon.”

  “That’s probably illegal, what you’re doing. But I won’t tell.”

  “Hey, if I go down, sister, I’m taking you with me. Shit, I was afraid of this. I’m gonna have to cut the carpet to get at the control box.”

  “Fine, but when it comes time to take this sucker back to the rental company, you’re on our own.” She leaned over so she could stick her head in the car for a closer look. “If we do have to haul ass, though, can I drive?”

  Ry laughed at the very idea.

  THE DOOR TO the villa was opened by a rather attractive, but cold-eyed, blonde in her fifties, who told them she was the housekeeper and the professor was expecting them. As she led them across a spacious black-and-white-tiled foyer, Ry admired her legs and wondered if perhaps she was the reason why Denis Kuzmin had never remarried.

  She showed them into what she called “the professor’s library,” a room full of sunlight, rich mahogany paneling, and walls of built-in bookshelves.

  “What a lovely garden,” Zoe said, walking up to a pair of French doors that opened onto a sloping green lawn hedged with hawthorn and azalea bushes.

  The housekeeper didn’t even crack a smile at the compliment. She said, “The professor will be with you shortly,” and left, pulling the double doors to the foyer firmly shut behind her.

  Ry took a turn around the room, but saw no other door. “I don’t like it that the only other way out of here besides the door leading in from the hall is out through the front garden.”

  He stopped at the library table that served as the professor’s desk. On the wall behind it hung a framed propaganda poster of Joseph Stalin—the famous one of the Great Leader posing with a little apple-cheeked peasant girl. “I wonder if he knows that Stalin ended up having that little girl’s father shot,” Ry said to Zoe.

  “Maybe he doesn’t care. Or, since he was an informer himself, maybe he just figures the guy deserved it.”

  Ry leafed through a stack of manuscript pages that sat next to the professor’s computer. “It looks like he’s writing a book. On medieval witchcraft in Siberia.”

  “Hey, don’t knock it. For all we know, I might come from a long line of witches.”

  Zoe walked along the wall of shelves that held not only books but icons of all sizes, some so old most of the paint had worn off, others richly gilded with silver and gold. “He’s got some good pieces,” she said.

  Ry was about to ask her how the professor’s collection compared with her mother’s when the double doors opened beneath the hand of a small, thin man who looked like central casting’s idea of a retired college professor, complete with a red polka-dot bow tie, tweed trousers, and a sweater with elbow patches.

  He held out his hand to Ry as he came into the room. “I am Professor Kuzmin. And you are Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter, I take it?” His English was almost accent-free, but he spoke slowly and carefully, as if he dreaded making a single mistake. “Forgive me, but I did not hear your car pull into the drive.”

  “We came on the HEV,” Ry said.

  “You climbed all the way up here from the train station?” Pale gray eyes, the color of cement, assessed them from behind thick tortoise-shell glasses, and Ry got the sense Denis Kuzmin sized people up at first meeting, then stood back and waited smugly to be proven right.

  He smiled, showing teeth that were small and yellow, like kernels of corn. “Ah, but you are both so young and fit, and it’s not too chilly a day for February. So what did you think of Szentendre’s town square? Charming, yes?”

  “A little too froufrou for my tastes,” Ry said, “but my wife was charmed. She wants me to take her for a moonlit ride in one of those horse-drawn carriages.”

  Kuzmin chuckled. “A romantic sentiment, indeed, Mrs. Carpenter, but you might want to wait for more clement weather.” He gestured at a sofa and a pair of flanking armchairs unfortunately upholstered in lurid green velvet. “Shall we sit by the fire?”

  Ry paused on the way to study the large, framed print that hung over the mantel. Kind of a weird thing to put up on the wall in your library, he thought. But then the Stalin poster wasn’t exactly conducive to happy thoughts either.

  “I’ve seen the original of this print hanging in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow,” Ry said.

  Kuzmin sighed almost happily and rocked back and forth on his heels. The professor was about to launch into one of his favorite lectures.

  “Ah, yes. Oil on canvas by Ilya Repin, Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16, 1581. It captures the moment after the Tsar Ivan, in a fit of uncontrollable rage, has just bludgeoned his son and heir over the head with an iron staff. The father kneels on the floor, cradling the bloodied body of his son. You see the lunacy in his bloodshot eyes, but also the horrible realization of what he has done. By contrast the face of the dead boy is calm, almost Christ-like in death. Fascinating, is it not?”

  “And sad,” Zoe said.

  Ry didn’t answer, for he was lost in that terrible moment captured by the artist. The tsar in priestly black, his son dressed in a robe of the purest white. The murder weapon, the iron staff, lying nearby, on the bloodred Oriental carpet.

  “You seem particularly interested, Professor, in the more mentally deranged figures from Russian history,” Zoe said, picking up from the mantel a silver-framed, black-and-white photograph of a gaunt, bearded man in a long black robe, seated at a desk before an open Bible.

  An odd smile pulled at Denis Kuzmin’s thin slit of a mouth. “So you recognize the Mad Monk, do you? Grigori Ra
sputin. Some argue that his influence over the Tsar Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra, led to the Bolshevik revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. He variously has been called a saintly mystic, visionary, healer, and prophet on the one hand. And on the other, a debauched religious charlatan. Perhaps he was all those things, or perhaps—”

  He cut himself off as the double doors opened and the housekeeper came in, carrying a tray loaded with three tall glasses, a cut-crystal carafe of water, and a squat, round bottle full of a dark brown, herbal-looking liquid.

  “Ah, here is Mrs. Danko with some refreshment. Have you ever tasted Unicum? Some call it our national treasure, although the first-time imbiber might find it a tad bitter.”

  Bitter, hell. Ry had tried that stuff the last time he was in Budapest. It smelled like a hospital room, tasted like cough medicine, and the hangover he got after only two glasses had been truly spectacular.

  “Maybe I’ll have some water later, but I’m fine for now,” Ry said.

  The professor’s face fell in disappointment. “Mrs. Carpenter?” he asked, picking up the liquor bottle and a glass.

  Zoe flashed her brightest smile. “I’d love to try some, Professor, but I get a headache if I drink in the middle of the day.”

  He shrugged. “I hope you don’t mind if I indulge myself without you.”

  The professor poured his drink, and they sat down, Ry and Zoe beside each other on the couch and the professor in an armchair. Ry noticed Denis Kuzmin couldn’t seem to look at Zoe directly, as if he were afraid of meeting her eyes, of having her see too much in his. He could just be a chauvinist, Ry supposed, but he wondered if something more was going on.

  “In your telephone call,” Kuzmin said, “you told me you have acquired an icon that you wish for me to study.”

  “My grandmother gave it to us as a wedding present,” Zoe said. “We were told there are often myths and fables attached to particular icons, and we wondered, since ours is so unusual, if maybe there’s a story to go along with it, you know? And since this is your area of expertise …”