by Lee Child
I said, ‘She doesn’t speak English.’
Lee said, ‘She spoke English fifteen minutes ago.’
The light behind the woman was coming from a table lamp set deep inside the room. Its glow dimmed briefly as a second figure stepped in front of it and headed our way. Another woman. But much younger. Maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. Very elegant. And very, very beautiful. Rare, and exotic. Like a model. She smiled a little shyly and said, ‘It was me speaking English fifteen minutes ago. I’m Lila Hoth. This is my mother.’
She bent and spoke fast in a foreign language, Eastern European, quietly, more or less straight into the older woman’s ear. Explanation, context, inclusion. The older woman brightened and smiled. We introduced ourselves by name. Lila Hoth spoke or her mother. She said her name was Svetlana Hoth. We all shook hands, back and forth, quite formally, crossing wrists, two people on our side and two on theirs. Lila Hoth was stunning. And very natural. She made the girl I had seen on the train look contrived in comparison. She was tall but not too tall, and she was slender but not too slender. She had dark skin, like a perfect beach tan. She had long dark hair. No make-up. Huge, hypnotic eyes, the brightest blue I had ever seen. As if they were lit from within. She moved with a kind of lithe economy. Half the time she looked young and leggy and gamine, and half the time she looked all grown up and self-possessed. Half the time she seemed unaware of how good she looked, and half the time she seemed a little bashful about it. She was wearing a simple black cocktail dress that probably came from Paris and cost more than a car. But she didn’t need it. She could have been in something stitched together from old potato sacks without diminishing the effect.
We followed her inside and her mother followed us. The suite was made up of three rooms. A living room in the centre, and bedrooms either side. The living room had a full set of furniture, including a dining table. There were the remnants of a room- service supper on it. There were shopping bags in the corners of the room. Two from Bergdorf Goodman, and two from Tiffany. Theresa Lee pulled her badge and Lila Hoth stepped away to a credenza under a mirror and came back with two slim booklets which she handed to her. Their passports. She thought official visitors in New York needed to see papers. The passports were maroon and each had an eagle graphic printed in gold in the centre of the cover and words in Cyrillic above and below it that looked like NACNOPT YKPAIHA in English. Lee flipped through them and stepped away and put them back on the credenza.
Then we all sat down. Svetlana Hoth stared straight ahead, blank, excluded by language. Lila Hoth looked at the two of us, carefully, establishing our identities in her mind. A cop from the precinct, and the witness from the train. She ended up looking straight at me, maybe because she thought I had been the more seriously affected by events. I wasn’t complaining. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
She said, ‘I am so very sorry about what happened to Susan Mark.’
Her voice was low. Her diction was precise. She spoke English very well. A little accented, a little formal. As if she had learned the language from black and white movies, both American and British.
Theresa Lee didn’t speak. I said, ‘We don’t know what happened to Susan Mark. Not really. Beyond the obvious facts, I mean.’
Lila Hoth nodded, courteously, delicately, and a little contritely. She said, ‘You want to understand my involvement.’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘It’s a long story. But let me say at the very beginning that nothing in it could possibly explain the events on the subway train.’
Theresa Lee said, ‘So let’s hear the story.’
And so we heard it. The first part of it was background information. Purely biographical. Lila Hoth was twenty-six years old. She was Ukrainian. She had been married at the age of eighteen to a Russian. The Russian had been knee-deep in nineties-style Moscow entrepreneurship. He had grabbed oil leases and coal and uranium rights from the crumbling state. He had become a single-figure billionaire. Next step was to become a double- figure billionaire. He didn’t make it. It was a tight bottleneck. Everyone wanted to squeeze through, and there wasn’t room for everyone to succeed. A rival had shot the Russian in the head, one year ago, outside a nightclub. The body had lain in the snow on the sidewalk all the next day. A message, Moscow style. The newly widowed Lila Hoth had taken the hint and cashed out and moved to London with her mother. She liked London and planned on living there for ever, awash with money but with nothing much to do.
She said, ‘There’s a presumption that young people who get rich will do things for their parents. You see it all the time with pop stars and movie stars and athletes. And such a thing is a very Ukrainian sentiment. My father died before I was born. My mother is all I have left. So of course, I offered her anything she wanted. Houses, cars, holidays, cruises. She refused them all. All she wanted was a favour. She wanted me to help her track down a man from her past. It was like the dust had settled after a long and turbulent life, and at last she was free to concentrate on what meant most to her.’
I asked, ‘Who was the man?’
‘An American soldier named John. That was all we knew. At first my mother claimed him only as an acquaintance. But then it emerged that he had been very kind to her, at a particular time and place.’
‘Where and when?’
‘In Berlin, for a short period in the early eighties.’
‘That’s vague.’
‘It was before I was born. It was in 1983. Privately I thought trying to find the man was a hopeless task. I thought my mother was becoming a silly old woman. But I was happy to go through the motions. And don’t worry, she doesn’t understand what we’re saying.’
Svetlana Hoth smiled and nodded at nothing in particular. I asked, ‘Why was your mother in Berlin?’
‘She was with the Red Anny,’ her daughter said.
‘Doing what?’
‘She was with an infantry regiment.’
‘As what?’
‘She was a political commissar. All regiments had one. In fact, all regiments had several.’
I asked, ‘So what did you do about tracing the American?’
‘My mother was clear that her friend John had been in the army, not the Marines. That was my starting point. So I telephoned from London to your Department of Defense and asked what I should do. After many explanations I was transferred to the Human Resources Command. They have a press office. The man I spoke to was quite touched. He thought it was a sweet story. Possibly he saw a public relations aspect, I don’t know. Some good news at last, perhaps, instead of all the bad. He said he would make inquiries. Personally I thought he was wasting his time. John is a very common name. And as I understand it, most American soldiers rotate through Germany, and most visit Berlin. So I thought the pool of possibilities would grow enormous. Which apparently it did. The next thing I knew was weeks later when a clerk called Susan Mark telephoned me. I wasn’t home. She left a message. She said she had been assigned the task. She told me that some names that sound like John are actually contractions of Jonathan, spelled without the letter H. She wanted to know if my mother had ever seen the name written down, perhaps on a note. I asked my mother and called Susan Mark back and told her we were sure it was John with the letter H. The conversation with Susan turned out to be very pleasant, and we had many more. We almost became friends, I think, the way you sometimes can on the phone. Like pen-pals, but talking instead of writing. She told me a lot about herself. She was a very lonely woman, and I think our conversations brightened her days.’
Lee asked, ‘And then what?’
‘Eventually I received news from Susan. She said she had arrived at some preliminary conclusions. I suggested we meet here in New York, almost as a way to consummate our friendship. You know, dinner and maybe a show. As a way of saying thank you for her efforts, certainly. But she never arrived.’
I asked, ‘What time were you expecting her?’
‘About ten o’clock. She said she would leave after work.’
‘Too late for dinner and a show.’
‘She planned to stay over. I booked a room for her.’
‘When did you get here?’
‘Three days ago.’
‘How?’
‘British Airways from London.’
I said, ‘You hired a local crew.’ Lila Hoth nodded.
I asked, ‘When?’
‘Just before we got here.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s expected,’ she said. ‘And sometimes useful.’
‘Where did you find them?’
‘They advertise. In the Moscow papers, and in the expatriate papers in London. It’s good business for them, and it’s a kind of status check for us. If you go overseas unassisted, you look weak. And it’s better not to do that.’
‘They told me you brought a crew of your own.’
She looked surprised.
‘I don’t have a crew of my own,’ she said. ‘Why on earth would they say that? I don’t understand it.’
‘They said you brought a bunch of scary types.’
For a second she looked mystified and a little annoyed. Then some kind of comprehension dawned in her face. She seemed to be a fast analyst. She said, ‘Perhaps they were inventive, strategically. When Susan didn’t arrive, I sent them out looking. I thought, I’m paying them, they might as well do some work. And my mother has a lot of hope invested in this business. So I didn’t want to come all this way, and then fail at the last minute. So I offered them a bonus. We grow up believing that money talks loudest, in America. So perhaps those men were making up a story for you. Perhaps they were inventing a scary alternative. To make sure they got their extra money. So that you would be tempted to talk to them.’
I said nothing.
Then something else dawned in her face. Some new realization. She said, ‘I have no crew, as you call it. Just one man. Leonid, one of my husband’s old team. He couldn’t get a new job. He’s a bit of a lame duck, I’m afraid. So I kept him on. Right now he’s at Penn Station. He’s waiting for you. The police told me that the witness had gone to Washington. I assumed you would take the train, and come back the same way. Did you not?’
I said, ‘Yes, I came back on the train.’
‘Then Leonid must have missed you. He had your picture. He was supposed to ask you to telephone me. Poor man, he must still be there.’
She stood up and headed for the credenza. For the room phone. Which gave me a temporary tactical problem. Because Leonid’s cell was in my pocket.
THIRTY-ONE
In principle i know how to turn off a cell phone. I have seen it done, and I have done it myself on more than one occasion. On most models you hold down the red button for two long seconds. But the phone was in my pocket. No room to open it, and no chance of finding the red button by feel alone. Too suspicious to take it out and turn it off in full view of everyone.
Lila Hoth hit nine for a line and dialled.
I put my hand in my pocket and used my thumbnail and found the catch and unlatched the battery. Separated it from the phone and turned it sideways to avoid any chance of accidental electrical contact.
Lila Hoth waited, and then she sighed and hung up.
‘He’s hopeless,’ she said. ‘But very loyal.’
I tried to track Leonid’s likely progress in my head. Cops, paramedics, probably an obligatory trip to the St Vincent’s emergency room, no ID, possibly no English, maybe worries and questions and detention. Then the trip back uptown.
How long of a detention, I didn’t know.
How fast of a trip, I couldn’t predict.
I said, ‘The local crew mentioned John Sansom’s name.’
Lila Hoth sighed again and shook her head in a tiny display of exasperation. She said, ‘I briefed them when we arrived, obviously. I told them the story. And we all got along quite well. I think all of us felt that we were wasting our time, humouring my mother. We shared jokes about it, frankly. One of the men was reading the newspaper about Sansom. He said, here’s an American soldier called John, of roughly the right vintage. He said, maybe Sansom is the guy you’re looking for. For a day or two it became a kind of catchphrase. An in-joke, I suppose. We would say, let’s just call John Sansom and have done with it. I was really only joking, of course, because what are the chances? A million to one, perhaps. And they were joking too, really, but later they became somehow quite earnest about it. Perhaps because of the impact it would have, because he is such a famous politician.’
‘What impact? What did your mother do with this guy called John?’
Svetlana Hoth stared on into space, uncomprehending. Lila Hoth sat down again. She said, ‘My mother has never spoken in detail about it. Certainly it can’t have been espionage. My mother was not a traitor. I say that not as a loyal daughter, but as a realist. She is still alive. Therefore she was never suspected. And her American friend was not a traitor, either. Liaising with foreign traitors was a KGB function, not army. And personally I doubt that her interest was romantic. It was more likely aid of some sort, personal help, either financial or political. Possibly covert. Those were bad times for the Soviet Union. But possibly it was romantic. All she has ever said is that the man was very kind to her. She plays her cards close to her chest.’
‘Ask her again, now.’
‘I have asked her many times, as you can imagine. She’s reluctant to say.’
‘But you think Sansom isn’t actually involved?’
‘No, not at all. That was a joke that got out of hand. That’s all. Unless, of course, it really is a million to one thing. Which would be extraordinary, don’t you think? To joke about something and have it turn out to be true?’
I said nothing.
Lila Hoth said, ‘Now may I ask you a question? Did Susan Mark give you the information intended for my mother?’
Svetlana Hoth smiled and nodded again. I began to suspect she recognized the words my mother. Like a dog that wags its tail when it hears its name. I said, ‘Why would you think Susan Mark gave me information?’
‘Because the people I hired here told me you told them that she had. Computerized, on a USB memory stick. They gave me that message, and transmitted your photograph, and resigned their commission. I’m not sure why. I was paying them very well.’
I moved in my chair and stuck my hand in my pocket.
Scrabbled down past the disassembled phone and found the Radio Shack stick. I felt the soft pink neoprene sleeve against my fingernails. I pulled it out and held it up and watched Lila Hoth’s eyes very carefully.
She looked at the stick the way a cat looks at a bird.
She asked, ‘Is that really it?’
Theresa Lee moved in her chair and looked at me. Like she was asking, Are you going to say it, or am I? Lila Hoth caught the glance and asked, ‘What?’
I said, ‘The whole thing looked very different to me, I’m afraid. Susan Mark was terrified on the train. She was in big trouble. She didn’t look like a person coming to town to meet a friend for dinner and a show.’
Lila Hoth said, ‘I told you at the beginning, I can’t explain that.’
I put the memory stick back in my pocket. Said, ‘Susan didn’t bring an overnight bag.’
‘I can’t explain it.’
‘And she dumped her car and approached by subway. Which is weird. If you were prepared to book a room for her, I’m sure you would have sprung for valet parking.’
‘Sprung?’
‘Paid for.’
‘Of course.’
‘And she was carrying a loaded gun.’
‘She lived in Virginia. I heard it’s compulsory there.’
‘It’s legal there,’ I said. ‘Not compulsory.’
‘I can’t explain it. I’m sorry.’
‘And her son is missing. Last seen leaving a bar, with a woman of your age and roughly your description.’
‘Missing?’
‘Disappeared.’
‘A woman of my description?’
‘A total babe.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘A good-looking young woman.’
‘What bar?’
‘Somewhere in LA.’
‘Los Angeles?’
‘In California.’
‘I haven’t been to Los Angeles. Never in my life. I have only been in New York.’
I said nothing.
She said, ‘Look around you. I have been here in New York three days on a tourist visa and I occupy three rooms in a commercial hotel. I have no crew, as you call it. I have never been to California.’
I said nothing.
She said, ‘Looks are subjective. And I’m not the only woman my age. There are six billion people in the world. Trending young, for sure. Half of them are fifteen or younger. Which means there are still three billion people sixteen or older. Following the curve, perhaps twelve per cent of them are in their middle twenties. That’s three hundred and sixty million people. About half are women. That’s a hundred and eighty million. Even if only one in a hundred of them might be judged good-looking, in a bar in California, then it’s still ten times more likely that John Sansom was my mother’s friend than I had anything to do with Susan Mark’s son.
I nodded. Arithmetically, Lila Hoth was right on the money. She said, ‘And it’s probably true that Peter is away somewhere with a girl, anyway. Yes, I know his name. In fact I know all about him. Susan told me. On the phone. We talked about all our problems. She hated her son. She despised what he is. He is everything she disliked. He is just a shallow fraternity boy with immature altitudes. He rejected her in favour of his father. And do you know why? Because he was obsessed with his ancestry. And Susan was adopted. Did you even know that? Her son thought of her only as a person conceived out of wedlock. He hated her for it. I know more about Susan than anybody. I talked to her many limes. I listened to her. She was a lonely, isolated woman. I was her friend. She was excited to come here and meet me.’
* * *
At that point I sensed that Theresa Lee needed to get going and I certainly wanted to be out of there before young Leonid showed up again. So I nodded and shrugged as if I had nothing more to say and no further issues to pursue. Lila Hoth asked if I would give her the stick that Susan Mark had given to me. I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no. I didn’t answer at all. We just shook hands all around once more, and then we made an exit. The door closed behind us and we walked through the silent corridor and the elevator chimed open. We stepped in and we looked at each other in the mirrored walls and Lee said, ‘Well, what did you think?’
