In that moment Pasha felt a pang of regret—much stronger than the general malaise he’d felt since he’d left Lily with Mansoor Nassa. He wondered if, perhaps, the two of them could have made a go of it together. It was a selfish thought, even if born out of a basic human need. Pasha was no good for anyone. Especially now, as a fugitive and traitor. The ruse of his death would work for a while, of course, but not forever. Somewhere, someone would see him, hear about him, feel the touch of his unseen hand. Lily Tassos would have enough to worry about in the coming years without finding herself trapped in the schemes of a high-level Russian defector. Pasha hoped that at some point—some point soon—he would be able to put his emotions behind him.
“You know, General Pushkin’s plane will be arriving today,” Chandler said, looking out the window at the dissipating storm. “We’d better get out of here.”
Pasha nodded. His mind was still elsewhere—with Lily in a bathtub at the Lavra, her wet fingers touching his lips.
“I’ll have my boy help you bathe and change your bandages. We’ll scare up some pain relief for you between here and Tabriz, too.” Chandler rang a small bell on his desk.
Chandler’s boy entered the room promptly. A small man of about thirty, although he looked much younger. Wearing a fedora tipped to the side, the boy leaned on Chandler’s desk and tossed a stone in the air, catching it in his breast pocket. He looked like trouble. Chandler mumbled something in Farsi, and the man nodded, setting the stone on his desk.
“Mr. Tarkhan,” he said, offering Pasha his shoulder to lean on. But the Russian refused his help—at least until they entered the bathing quarters.
Chandler closed the door after they left. He went to his desk and picked up the bronze Kali once again, turning it over and using a letter opener to pry off part of the base. He pulled the curl of microfilm from his breast pocket, rolled it around his index finger and went to stuff it up Kali’s back before thinking better of it.
“Not for you, dear Kali,” he said, ramming her base back on with a blunt blow from his palm. Instead, he plucked a small bottle of Coca-Cola from the right-hand drawer of his desk and opened it. He poured the cola into a whiskey tumbler and watched it bubble and form a collar at the rim, then dropped the microfilm inside. If Coca-Cola could eat the varnish off his wife’s dining table, it could certainly dissolve a little film.
It’s nonsense, anyway, he thought. A fanciful tale of clandestine propaganda if he’d ever heard one. Chandler had no intention of sticking his neck out for that. Not when there were so many more important things—real wars of the world that he needed to stick his neck out for. And Tarkhan—if his defection was even real, and Chandler had seen no facts to support that at all—was either an unwitting pawn in Soviet misinformation or even the author of this particular ruse. He’d always thought Tony Geiger’s recruitment of a “spiritual underground”—whatever that meant—was a load of hooey. He’d seen absolutely no facts to support their existence, other than a few metal cards that anyone could have had made. One of Geiger’s Derevo spiritualists had probably done him in, too.
“And Sputnik,” he said aloud. “What a stupid name.”
Chapter 66
Boston, MA, November 13, 1956
Politically, not to mention from a fundamental human standpoint, the news from Hungary was devastating—even if not surprising.
Lily sank plaintively into her leather club chair and placed the newspaper onto her desk. The chair was nearly identical to one belonging to Richard Putnam’s father, and she’d always admired it. Although she’d made sure to decorate her townhouse in as contemporary a style as possible given the limitations of Boston architecture, she’d made an exception for the chair. It was her strategizing chair, her pondering chair, her dreaming chair. The chair she sat in when she allowed herself to think about Pasha Tarkhan.
She picked up the newspaper again. Fighting in Budapest has died down, it read. Up to five thousand civilians are reported to have been killed or wounded. Many buildings in central Budapest have been damaged or destroyed, and thousands of refugees have begun fleeing across the border to Austria. Tens of thousands have been jailed. Some 700 Soviet soldiers are said to have died in the uprising, including some executed for refusing to fight. There are even reports of freedom fighters being hunted down where they live and tortured to death. The article went on to describe one such death—Lily suspected it was the only such death. An ethnic Hungarian with Romanian citizenship had been found in his hotel room on the 11th of November. He had been dead for at least two days and was discovered wearing a “mask of infamy”—a grotesque and farcical mask made of copper and other metals. Such masks were designed for the individual wearer, and in this case, the mask was one of a comical devil—with three horns, rounded cheeks, and a strange, constipated smile. Masks of infamy were commonly used in medieval Russia as a means of public humiliation, as the masks tended to be permanently fused onto the wearer’s face. The ethnic Hungarian was described as having died of extreme “blowt,” after having been forced to swallow several hundred rocks and crystals one at a time.
“Fedot, is that you?” Lily called.
Fedot slipped into her study carrying a small bag of groceries. The bounty of America was overwhelming for him, and he preferred to shop for his needs a day at a time. He removed an apple and a sack of pistachios from his bag and sat across from Lily on an ottoman.
“Good work,” Lily said, passing him the article.
Fedot scanned it and handed it back to her. He’d spent a day at a library in Budapest when he’d first arrived, researching medieval Russian torture methods—ones he thought Lily and her uncle, Baru, might appreciate.
“Miss Lily,” Fedot said.
Lily Tassos was prone to reverie—tapping her pen along her desk, stroking her chin. Right then, she was running her finger along the newspaper’s edge, her face a menagerie of recent sorrows.
“I’m sorry about your uncle.”
At his insistence, Baru had been present at the Hungarian’s death. He had especially enjoyed lining up the various stones—charoite, jade and rhodinite for understanding destinies, green amber for atonement—and watching his son’s and brother’s murderer swallow them with his customary level of contempt and defiance. Even toward the end, Gulyas was loath to admit his agony. But Baru knew, and it satisfied him. The Greek died in his herb garden only three days later, falling into a rosemary bush after his heart had simply stopped beating.
Lily was glad her uncle’s revenge had been fulfilled, even if Fedot had been concerned that in his physical anguish, Beryx Gulyas might repent and at last go to the arms of God. A rapturous death was a gift Gulyas didn’t deserve, and Fedot resented even giving him the opportunity for such an end. An end he, himself, would welcome.
Lily doubted the Hungarian was capable of any sort of penitence, but had shared Fedot’s misgivings with Ivanov nonetheless. Ivanov told her that however unworthy the Hungarian might seem, he was, after all, a creature of God, and Lily had relayed this wisdom to Fedot word for word.
“He spoke of you, you know,” Fedot said.
“My uncle?”
“No, the Hungarian.”
Lily didn’t care to know what he’d said. She had gone with her uncle to Hungary when Fedot had sent word that he’d found Gulyas. She stayed for most of the death ritual Fedot had chosen for him and admired the Russian’s steadfast implementation of each effect. The way he pushed the individual stones into the Hungarian’s throat with a pair of pincers and massaged his esophagus, forcing him to swallow. It was a long, arduous day, but Fedot had hardly broken a sweat.
“Watch me,” Gulyas had whispered. “Stay.” He wanted desperately for Lily to gaze upon him at his death and had the nerve to request that he be fully naked for the occasion. The request was denied, but Lily did assist Fedot in applying a toxic adhesive to the Hungarian’s skin and affixing the mask of infamy to his face before she left. Beryx Gulyas’s death was to be her uncle’s satisfac
tion alone.
“We should go, Miss Lily,” Fedot said.
He removed an itinerary from his coat pocket and placed it in front of Lily, laying it over her newspaper. She glanced at it absently before meeting his eyes, and it was then her expression changed. Whatever troubles she had been nursing were vanquished from her expression, and her gaze centered on him in a way that reminded Fedot of her father.
“Have you spoken to the general?” she asked.
“General Pushkin doesn’t like to be contacted directly, for the obvious reasons. I’m communicating with him through our back channels.”
Lily folded their itinerary and slipped it into the pages of the book she was reading—a dog-eared copy of Faulkner’s A Fable that Tony Geiger had given her the first time they’d met.
“Money impresses General Pushkin,” Lily said. “And my father has paid him handsomely over the years. You can tell him that if he’s a good boy, my father’s daughter will continue to pad his Swiss bank account and allow him the very luxuries he deems capitalist and bourgeoisie. But only if he’s a very good boy.”
Lily Tassos gave Fedot a look he was coming to know well. It said both I’m not my father and his blood runs deep in my veins. It was a look, Fedot believed, Lily had been practicing, and wisely so. She would have to give it to a great many of her father’s associates in the coming years as she solidified her charge of his affairs.
Lily’s new assertiveness had surprised her mother and siblings upon her return with her father’s remains from the Middle East. But the shock of grief demanded someone take charge. Whatever her father had been to men like Tony Geiger and Sandmore Chandler, to the Tassos family, he was daddy. His loss was unfathomable, shattering—especially to Lily’s mother, who had loved her husband without reservation and had known no other man. In the end, Lily’s assumption of leadership had been silently acknowledged as the most sensible course of action for the family. Theron Tassos’s death had been violent and mysterious, after all, and deep down no one really wanted to know why he’d been taken from them.
Oddly, it had been easier for Lily to begin doing business in her father’s less legitimate endeavors than his straight-up shipping business. In the above-the-board world of industry, skepticism about a woman running things ran high, whereas in the underworld, people were used to going against the grain and cared only about results. Lily had decided to let her brothers front her father’s strictly lawful enterprises while she began to navigate the others. And as Lily contemplated General Pushkin, part of her wished she could send one of her brothers in her place. Pushkin, of course, straddled both worlds but, as a military man, felt most comfortable on the more appropriate side of things.
“On second thought,” she said. “Tell General Pushkin only you will be coming. I want him to be knocked off guard when I walk through the door. His first acquaintance with his new chief should be a surprise, I think. Don’t you, Fedot?”
“Surprises are good, Miss Lily,” Fedot concurred.
Lily picked up the newspaper from her desk and dropped it into a tall, cylindrical trash bin. She slid her arms into her raincoat and held her purse in her hands, waiting for Fedot to take her suitcase.
“And after Moscow, Fedot, I’d like to take a trip to the Russian countryside.” Lily smiled. “You don’t think we’ll have to contact His Holiness, Mr. Ivanov, through back channels, do you?”
Fedot shook his head, his smile almost imperceptible. “Perhaps he will be able to tell us something of Pasha.”
Lily studied him for a moment. “Perhaps,” she said. She didn’t wish to appear too eager—not even to Fedot.
Lily opened the top drawer to her desk and removed a pair of gloves, draping them over her purse. Under her gloves was an oval of amber that she’d taken from Beryx Gulyas in Hungary. Trapped in the warm, golden gem was a spider—old as time—and a dance fly that had been less than a moment away from becoming prey but was instead interred within the amber for all of time: one of life’s little dramas captured in the prehistoric equivalent of a still photograph. It would always remind her of her father.
“A man holds power in his hands,” he’d once told her. It was a long time ago now. She was barely into puberty, and she’d had no idea what he was talking about, really, except that he was perhaps making a vague reference to sex. “But a woman,” Theron Tassos had continued. “She weaves power into a web with strong, silken thread and diabolical strategy.”
It was true, Lily supposed. And that smooth piece of amber, with its ancient drama and timeless wisdom, would always serve as a connection to her father—between this world and the beyond, if there was such a thing—even if it had come from his killer’s trouser pocket, the only gemstone Fedot and her uncle did not force the Hungarian to consume.
Outside, the weather was strangely glorious for so late in the fall. The sun made every remaining speck of color on the mostly-bare trees appear crisp and dazzling. Lily hardly needed a jacket.
“Where on earth is the car, Fedot?” Only minutes earlier, her Chrysler Imperial—hunter green, not the black or navy her father favored—had been parked just outside of her townhouse with her driver waiting inside. She was beginning to hate when such simple expectations weren’t met and barely stopped herself from stomping her foot.
Fedot didn’t answer her little tantrum and didn’t need to. The Chrysler turned the corner at the bottom of the street and coasted to a purring stop at the curb where Lily tapped the toe of her toasted-brown pump. It occurred to Lily how alike in temperament her new car was to Fedot Titov—solicitous, always, but never subservient.
Case in point, her driver opened the back door for her while Fedot turned his back and began to walk away.
“Now where are you going?” she demanded.
“I have business, Miss Lily,” he said. “I’ll see you at the airport.”
Lily rolled her eyes and threw her purse and coat into the back seat. “Of course you have business,” she told him. “With me!”
“You, I think, have business, too.” He didn’t bother turning to face her when he imparted this last bit of information; he simply glided along the sidewalk like he had a date with eternity. No need to rush—the universe would wait.
But it would not wait for Lily Tassos, as they came to a near standstill only a few minutes from the airport.
“Oh, Linc, isn’t there another way?” she asked her driver. She habitually cut it too close whenever she had to get to the airport, an unfortunate character trait.
“I’m afraid not, Miss Tassos.”
She hadn’t thought so. At least it was a nice day. Lily rolled her window down and leaned out, laying her head gently on the crook of her elbow. Despite the filthy stink of car exhaust, she could still make out the scents of fall in Boston, mostly burning leaves and yeast. Comforting aromas. A taxi edged up next to them, however, blowing black smoke out of its muffler. Lily coughed and sat up, waving away the wretched odor. She started to roll up her window but then spotted the passenger in the back of the cab.
Turning to her, the passenger put his palm to the window. His face was defined, almost sculpted—he had never gained back the weight he’d lost at the Lavra.
“Pasha!”
The taxi inched up, then pulled onto the curb and began rolling past the other cars.
“Damn it, Linc—go after that cab!” But they were stuck, sandwiched between the other cars and unable to cross the next lane and pull onto the curb the way Pasha’s cab had done.
Lily kicked the seat in front of her, threw open the door and began to run. She could hear Linc calling after her. The cab was a good distance ahead, but it, too, had been forced to stop. Lily ran up the lane between the cars, incurring the irate honks of already wound-up drivers. She pounded on the hood of an aging Ford—at least ten years old—and its driver spit out a string of curses that would make a pickpocket blush.
Finally coming up on the back of the taxi, Lily skirted its bumper and slapped her hands flat onto
the rear passenger window from where Pasha had greeted her. It was empty.
“What the hell are you doing?” the cabbie said.
“That man—the man who was in your cab—where is he?”
The cabbie shook his head.
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about lady, I didn’t have nobody in my cab. I’m going to pick someone up—at the airport, see?” He held up a sign he took from the shotgun seat. It read: Mr. Donald Frazier.
“Don’t you bullshit me, you son of a bitch, where is he?” Lily grabbed his woolen cap and threw it to the ground. She started slapping him, then grabbed the man’s shirt, but that was going too far. The cabbie tore her hands away and jumped out of his taxi, coming nose to nose with her.
“You crazy bitch,” he hollered. “You touch me again and I’ll break your neck!”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Another man, well-dressed, jumped out of his Bel Air. “That’s no way to talk to a lady!”
“Miss Tassos!” This time, it was Linc. “Please, traffic is starting to break up.” He was out of breath, running toward her.
Lily could hardly breathe. She put her hand to her cheek and looked around. Pasha was nowhere. She was afraid she was going to cry or scream.
“Bastard,” she hissed to the cabbie. She took Linc’s proffered elbow and walked with him back to her car. Linc was shaking like a leaf, and so, Lily realized, was she.
Once inside, she reached into her purse and took out a soft, cotton handkerchief. “It was Pasha, goddamnit,” she whispered. Lily lifted the handkerchief to her nose and blew. Softly, she began to hum a song she’d once heard Pasha sing at Alyona Artemieva’s subterranean apartment. He’d sung it in Russian but had translated its lyrics for her. “It is not a dream, not a dream,” he’d sung. “It’s all my truth. It’s my love, it is my love.” It had been one of his mother’s favorites, he’d explained, although when she’d sung it, she was referring to Stalin and the Russian revolution. It comforted Lily to feel the melody in her throat. She started to sing louder, and another voice joined hers—deep, baritone. Lily covered her ears and shook her head.
The Hungarian Page 29
