Patriot Acts

by Greg Rucka

  On an impulse, I did a search for “Elliot Trent” and got much the same result. Alena joined me as I tried it again, this time adding “Sentinel Guards,” and that came back with a surprise. She moved her chair closer beside me, leaning in and resting her chin on my shoulder, reading as I did.

  “He sold it,” she said. “He sold his company, Sentinel Guards.”

  “Yeah.”

  “‘Citing declining health.’”

  “It’s a better excuse than a broken heart,” I said. “His health’s fine. It’s his will that’s broken.”

  “You’re so sure?”

  “He was a widower, Natalie’s mother died from breast cancer when she was young. I can’t remember Natalie ever mentioning Elliot so much as dating another woman. It was just the two of them. And now he’s outlived his daughter, as well.”

  Alena stayed silent for several seconds, leaving me to my thoughts, which weren’t particularly pretty at that moment. Then she said, “You should check.”

  I shook it off, nodded, and typed in the address for Billy Kork’s LiveJournal.

  “‘February’s wind, it blows so cold,’” I read, aloud. “‘Is this my bones, as they grow old?’”

  “In the name of God,” Alena groaned, burying her face against my shoulder, “please stop.”

  I pointed at the screen. “You sure? The third stanza is all about his acne trouble.”

  “Check, damn you,” she said.

  I logged in as mountainclimber998, tapped in our password, then followed the appropriate link to reach the private messages.

  2330 NORTH WILLAMETTE BLVD.

  #202

  PORTLAND, OREGON

  Alena and I stared at the monitor, neither of us speaking. At my feet, Miata stirred, repositioned his head to rest on my shoes.

  “Tbilisi to Berlin—” I started to say.

  “No,” Alena disagreed. “We take the ferry from Poti to Sochi, to Russia. Sochi to Krasnodar, by plane. Krasnodar to Istanbul, by plane. From Istanbul to London, from London to target.”

  I pulled my eyes from the words on the monitor to look at her. Her expression had hardened, her mouth drawn to a tight line. She turned her head, met my gaze.

  “To target,” I echoed.

  “To target,” she confirmed.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  The condominium was built on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a place called Swan Island, presumably because once upon a time, swans had held a great fondness for the place, or maybe because the land below, spilling into the wide swath of the Willamette River, had been owned by a man named Swan. I didn’t know, and I didn’t bother to find out, because I didn’t care to. That wasn’t why I’d come to Portland.

  There were two buildings in the complex as you faced it, each block about four stories tall, and from the looks of things, I figured the condos were two stories each within. It gave the place height enough that anyone taking a leap from one of the upper balconies would be lucky to get away with a broken leg and nothing more. If someone were to take a header, the cement poisoning would be fatal.

  It was seven in the morning, and it was raining cold and steady, and when I looked opposite, across the river, I could just make out the tree-covered mountains to the west through the veil of falling drops. I was sitting in a Nissan Pathfinder, with Danilov Korckeva behind the wheel and Alena seated directly behind me. According to my watch, we’d been on the ground in Portland for precisely twenty-seven minutes. Thirty hours earlier, we’d left Miata in the care of the Raminisshvillis and made our way to Frankfurt, instead of London, catching a direct flight on Lufthansa to, what I was informed by the signs at the airport, was the City of Roses. I hadn’t seen any roses yet. Like learning about the origins of Swan Island, I didn’t think I’d have the time.

  Dan had arrived two days prior, on the Gulfstream. Vadim had made the trip with him. Together, the two had put Illya Tyagachev under immediate surveillance, each of them taking turns.

  “You’re positive it’s him?” I asked. The words sounded strange to me, the English still alien on my tongue.

  Dan nodded. “I made the ID myself, Atticus. Here, we go around the back, you can see the approaches. His place is on the second floor, second apartment from the south.”

  “Lives alone?”

  “Far as we can tell, yes. Haven’t taken a look at the apartment. Didn’t want to do anything that might warn him. I don’t want to lose him again.”

  “Probably wise,” I told him.

  Dan spun the wheel, and we turned up North Holman, now heading roughly east, but then he swung an almost immediate right, and we were heading south again, this time coming along the block at the rear of the condominiums. Houses were spaced evenly on both sides of the street as we approached, with shallow lawns running down to the sidewalk. The houses showed their age, beaten with weather and use. The nicest place in the immediate vicinity seemed to be the condos themselves.

  We’d seen a black iron security fence at the front of the complex, with a call box and a gate. The fence enclosed a parking lot at the rear, with berths for each automobile built under the walkway for the second-floor condominiums, providing meager shelter from the rain for driver and vehicle. The fence was eight and a half, maybe nine feet high, with vertical bars, no crosspieces, to deter attempts to climb it. A motorized gate ran on a track, closed for the moment, where the cars could enter and exit, and perhaps six feet north from that was a smaller gate, for pedestrian traffic. There was no one in the lot as we went past, but most of the berths were full. I counted the spaces from the south side, saw that the fourth one was empty. Assuming each condo had a companion berth, and assuming the odd-numbered ones went with the apartments on the second floor, Illya Tyagachev was missing his car.

  “Where is he now?” Alena asked from the backseat.

  “Working, he drives a cab,” Dan said. “Graveyard shift. I didn’t want Vadim following him all night long, he might’ve made that. I told him to get rest, instead, so he’s back at the hotel.”

  Alena hissed softly with displeasure.

  “When does he get off work?” I asked.

  “Another hour—he drives midnight to eight,” Dan said, quickly, as if trying to assure us that his lack of surveillance didn’t translate to a lack of information. “Heads home, crashes, gets up again around four in the afternoon, heads out again.”

  “To his other job,” I said.

  Dan had turned us away from the condos, had us on a main thoroughfare heading south, back towards the heart of the city. He shot me a glance, vaguely suspicious.

  “You know about the other job?”

  “He didn’t pay for that place on a hack’s salary,” I said. “And if he did what he did to us for money, I’m sure it was spent long ago. There’s another job, got to be. That’s probably how you found him.”

  “There is another job,” Dan confirmed. “He sells meth.”

  “Russians,” Dan told us. “Add in the others: Ukrainians, Armenians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, all the rest. Over sixty thousand of them are here. That’s why Illya came here. He didn’t want to leave the U.S. of A., but he couldn’t leave his people, either. He probably went to Seattle first, maybe San Francisco, we haven’t been able to track all his movements yet. But he ended up here, maybe six, seven months ago.”

  Dan leaned his chair, threatening to topple backwards on the people eating their McDonald’s burgers at the table behind him. We were in the food court of an indoor shopping mall. The court was on the third level, open in the middle with a view down to the ice rink below, where maybe two dozen boys and girls were wobbling about on skates. Music drifted up at us, distorted, the Vangelis theme from Chariots of Fire. Between that, the cavernous acoustics, and the ambient noise of shoppers and diners, there was little chance of being overheard.

  “Anyway, he finds where the Russians are, you know how it is. Meets the people he needs to meet, gets himself a gig running meth from the labs outside of town to
the sellers here in the town. Lot of meth here. They have a lot of the wide open spaces here in Oregon; you need that if you cook meth. Stuff stinks like shit in sunshine.”

  I nodded. When he said “Oregon,” he said it “ore-ee-gone.”

  “You know the people he’s working with?” I asked. “That how you found him?”

  “One of them I know from the old days. He heard from a friend who heard from a friend who heard from a friend that I was looking for this guy, that it was personal for me. Illya, he changed his name, he calls himself Maks Dugachev now.”

  “And you’re certain it’s him?” I asked again.

  Dan sat forward, bringing his chair down with a slam, getting angry. “I told you, I checked for myself, I made visual confirmation. This is personal for me.”

  “And the people, your friend’s friend’s friend, you trust this guy?”

  “I told you, I trust him.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “It doesn’t matter! I know him, he won’t fuck with me, he understands the personal, okay?”

  “It matters to me,” I insisted. “It matters if he tips ‘Maks’ that we’re on to him.”

  Dan shot me a look, then spoke to Alena in Russian, asking why the hell he should put up with my bullshit. She’d been sitting with her chair turned away from us, chin on the railing, gazing down at the skaters. Without looking back, she told him that he had to put up with my bullshit because my bullshit was her bullshit, and if he didn’t like hearing it from me, he could hear it from her instead, and that the questions would be the same, but her patience for the answers would be much shorter.

  She sounded only vaguely annoyed when she said it, and she never raised her voice, and Dan looked from her back to me, sighing.

  “His name’s Semyon, okay? Semyon Pagaev. We were outside the White House together when the hard-liners tried to take Yeltsin in 1993. This man, I trust him with my life.”

  It took me a moment before I remembered that the White House he was referring to was the White House of Russia, where the Supreme Soviet had been housed. Now it held the Russian cabinet, if my memory was serving me right.

  “This satisfy you? Are you happy now?” Dan demanded.

  “Almost. How’d Semyon make Maks for Illya?” I asked.

  Beside me, still looking down at the skaters, Alena snorted softly, grinning, and muttered, “Say that ten times fast.”

  The joke caught Dan off guard, and he’d started to answer me, then did a double take, looking at Alena strangely. Then he said, “One of Semyon’s boys—”

  I interrupted. “He’s got kids, too?”

  “No, no, one of his crew, this one has a sister—Kiska, I think, is her name. Supposed to be a real beauty. Maks, a couple of the others, they’re trying to get on Kiska’s good side, trying to impress her. Talking about what they’ve done. And Maks, he tells her that he was with a crew out of Brighton Beach when he first came over. This gets back to Semyon, Semyon remembers me putting the word out, he contacts me, sends me a picture on the Internet, taken with camera phone. Looks like Illya. Vadim and I come out here, positive visual ID, like I say.”

  Dan put his big hands on the table between us, leaned forward.

  “Are you happy now, Mr. Atticus? Please tell me you’re happy now.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I told him. “But for the moment I’m satisfied.”

  “So are we going to take care of this?”

  “We’re going to get some sleep,” I said.

  Alena and I checked into the Heathman Hotel in downtown, six blocks south of where Vadim and Dan were staying, at the Hotel Lucia. I used a credit card that said my name was Christopher Morse, and then showed the young woman who checked us in a California driver’s license to prove the fact. We got a two-room suite on the sixth floor with a view overlooking the street.

  It was just after noon when we got into the room, and the jet lag was beginning to make itself known by then. I pulled the blinds and closed the curtains, hung the Do Not Disturb sign, then did five minutes of yoga to fight off the stiffness from the flight while Alena used the shower. When she was out, I took my turn, and then we both fell into bed, and fell asleep almost as quickly.

  When I woke, the curtains and the blinds were once again open, and the gray sky of the day had turned into black night. I could hear Alena speaking to someone at the door, out of sight. Then I heard the door close, and a moment later she came into view, wearing one of the complimentary bathrobes and carrying a room service tray. She set the tray on the coffee table, saw that I was awake, and grinned.

  “There’s a fitness suite on the third floor,” she told me. “Open twenty-four hours.”

  “Are you wearing anything under that robe?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “I can think of a better workout.”

  “Cardio, maybe,” she said.

  “Muscle control, body awareness,” I said. “With a little imagination, maybe even stretching and balance.”

  Alena looked down at the room service tray, and I watched the corners of her mouth curl up in a mischievous smile. She unfastened the belt holding her robe closed and let it fall away from her as she came back to the bed, sliding beneath the covers and beside me once more. We kissed, and despite the banter it was long and slow and tender, and when it was over I ran my fingers through her hair, looking at her, and deciding she was very beautiful.

  “Dinner’s going to get cold,” I said, after a moment.

  “It’s yogurt and granola.” She ran her fingers along my cheek, lightly traced the scar that had been left from a pistol-whipping I’d taken ages ago. “It’ll keep.”

  “I think Dan’s figured it out.”

  “You don’t think Vadim told him?”

  “I think Vadim told him, but Dan didn’t believe it until today, not until you made that joke when we were at the mall.”

  “Joke?”

  “Ten times fast.”

  She grinned, pleased with herself, then slid closer, pressing her body against mine. She kissed me again, still slowly, but this time with rising passion, and I responded in kind, moving my hands lightly over her body, delighting in the feel of her, the way I always did, the way it felt I always had. The first time or every time, it didn’t matter; making love together was the only way she would tell me all the things she could never say, the only way I could answer her, saying that yes, I understood, and yes, I was here, and yes, I would stay, and I would forgive her for the sins she had committed and the sins she had yet to commit, just as she would do the same for me.

  That yes, I loved her, too.

  “One time slow,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  At seven minutes past four in the morning I went up and over the black iron security fence at the back of the condominium complex. It was still raining, or maybe it was raining again, and the bars were cold, but my hands were strong, and once I had a good grip at the top it was easy to use my hips and swing my lower body over, to follow my legs down. I missed a puddle, landed without a splash, and moved immediately to the carport, to shelter there from both the rain and the security lights that illuminated the lot.

  There were two sets of stairs running up to the second-story condos, a main set of artificial-looking stone between the two buildings, and then a second, narrower flight on the south side of the building. I used that one, took it quickly up to the second floor. The stairwell was positioned to dump out facing the row of apartments on the floor, and I could stay low in it, hidden, and make a survey before proceeding. Not a single light burned in any of the residences.

  I considered my options. A block and a half away, parked in an overlook, Alena and Dan were waiting in the Pathfinder for my call. The plan was for me to enter Illya’s home, take a thorough look around, remove the potential of any surprises he might wish to spring on us. Once I was satisfied the condo was secure, I’d ring Dan on the rented cell phone he’d provided me. Then I’d wait for h
im and Alena to call up from the front gate, just like they were any other visitors. I’d buzz them in, they’d join me in Illya’s home, and we’d get comfortable and wait until he came home from work. Vadim, currently staking out the Rose City Cab Co., would give us a call to alert us the target was on its way.

  Then I’d take the answers I wanted from Illya, and when I was done, Dan could do whatever he damn well wanted. That what he wanted was most likely going to cause Illya a lot of suffering and misery before his final reward was of only minor discomfort to me; the way I saw it, if Illya hadn’t sold us out, Natalie Trent would be alive and well and still a joy in the world.

  My problem, at the moment, was finding a quick and quiet way into Illya’s apartment. The quickest and quietest would be through the front door, so I checked it, and wasn’t surprised to find it securely locked. There was a large window to the right of the door, blinds drawn but their slats parted enough that I could peek through into what appeared to be the main room. It was dark inside, but I could make out street light coming through another set of windows opposite, and I could see the door onto the balcony.

  Rain was dripping off the edges of the rooftop above me, and I turned away from the window and back into cover, looking up. The rooftop extended about halfway across the walkway, another attempt to provide partial cover against the Portland weather. Whoever had designed it had done so with at least a token nod to security, because even with the rake of the roof, its edge hung perhaps twelve feet from the floor at its lowest point. There was no way to reach it without a ladder.

  Except that the walkway had a railing, four feet high, in all ways identical to the security fence surrounding the complex, but here it was meant to keep people from wandering over the edge and smashing themselves into the parking lot below. The security lights made the water that had collected on its surface shimmer, shining orange. The top of the fence couldn’t have been more than half an inch wide, and it had to be slippery.