The Kobalt Dossier

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Evan seemed, for the moment, rooted to the spot. Her conversation with Ben had rattled her deeply. So many emotions chased themselves through her mind, and she couldn’t catch any one of them. Everything seemed to be slipping through her fingers. Part of her raged, How could he? Another part quailed, terrified of possibilities that she had dared not contemplate. Still another part was hell-bent on keeping her life just the way it was.

  The innkeeper, a heavyset man with cheeks like glowing coals, came bustling up to her, interrupting her inner agony. After a moment’s blankness, she realized he was asking whether she was looking for breakfast or a room to rent or both. She had to pull herself together. This was no frame of mind in which to begin an interview with someone who could bring her closer to Wendy and Michael.

  When she told the innkeeper that she was meeting Dr. Reveshvili, he bowed his head, nodding, as if she were royalty. He discreetly pointed out the good doctor and ushered her over himself.

  “Reveshvili takes his breakfast alone—always,” Otto had told her before they had left her apartment. “He will not be happy to be interrupted. You will need a method to sink the hook deep into his palate so he cannot escape you.”

  Reveshvili was seated by himself at a prime window table. He was staring out past the gravel driveway to the forest beyond, where the treetops bent as if to his will. He wore a rather old-fashioned, charcoal-gray pinstripe three-piece suit that fit him so perfectly it must have been made to measure. An unfashionably wide cream tie completed the picture. She imagined him wearing polished thick-soled brogues.

  “Herr Doktor,” the innkeeper said when they arrived, “your friend is here.”

  Reveshvili was slow turning away from the forest view. When he did, he looked from the innkeeper to Evan. “What friend?”

  Evan put the flat of her hand to her chest. “Carla Johnstone.” Then she held it out to him. “We made this appointment last week via telephone. Don’t you remember, Herr Doktor?”

  “I do not. And I certainly do not book appointments during my breakfast hour.” But as she leaned subtly forward, he took her proffered hand and studied her face intently, with a curious, slight frown.

  “My apologies, Herr Doktor,” Evan said in a reverential tone, “it was certainly not my intention of disturbing you during the most important ritual of the day.”

  This brought him up short. “Do you think so, really?”

  She bobbed her head. “Absolutely.”

  He cocked his head slightly, as a scientist might at the unforeseen outcome of an important experiment. “So you share my theory on the importance of a sound breakfast.”

  “Herr Doktor, that is why you agreed to allow me to join you this morning.”

  He continued to study her a moment or two more. Despite herself, Evan felt sweat break out under her arms.

  “Armand.”

  “Yes, Herr Doktor.”

  The innkeeper had not moved. In the event this young lady turned out to be an interloper he was fully prepared to lead her away from his best patron’s table.

  “Please bring a setting for Fraulein Johnstone. This beautiful young lady will be joining me for breakfast.”

  “At once, Herr Doktor.” Armand scurried away.

  Evan had only just seated herself in the chair opposite Reveshvili when Armand rushed back with a place setting. He filled her glass from the bottled water already on the table and asked her what he might prepare for her.

  “Fraulein Johnstone will have what I am having, Armand.”

  So that’s the kind of man he is, Evan thought. She was hardly surprised, but nevertheless pleased to have confirmation.

  “Very good, Herr Doktor. Right away.”

  A waitress replaced him, pouring coffee for Evan and topping off Reveshvili’s cup.

  “Now,” Reveshvili said, switching to perfect English, “how may I help?”

  “My sister and I—”

  “You have a sister.” His head had come up. His nose seemed to twitch as if he were a hunting dog out in the forest across the road.

  “My twin sister, Bobbi.” Evan painted a smile on her face. She hadn’t meant to use Bobbi’s real name, it had just slipped out.

  “Ah.”

  Reveshvili was about to continue when their plates arrived. Evan had eaten nothing at Otto’s before they set off, so that she could authentically assure Reveshvili that the two of them were simpatico on the devout pleasures of a sound breakfast. She would have to pace herself, but she was prepared to impress him in devouring the feast set out on the massive plates before them: fresh multigrain rolls, slices of black pumpernickel, butter, five kinds of cold salami, sausage and Black Forest ham, four different cheeses, marmalade, homemade preserves, and more strong hot coffee.

  She started eating, slowly but with evident great pleasure, keeping one eye on the Herr Doktor.

  “So,” he said, after washing down several mouthfuls of breakfast with a swig of black coffee, “tell me why you have come to see me.”

  “My sister and I—”

  “Your twin sister.”

  “Yes.” Otto was right, Reveshvili was for some reason interested in twins. “Bobbi and I have a good friend. We met her in Köln while on holiday maybe five or so years ago. We kept up a correspondence for a while, then all of a sudden, her texts stopped, her mobile number went out of service. We’ve been worried about her ever since.”

  Two parallel lines formed above the bridge of Reveshvili’s patrician nose. “You have my sympathies, dear lady. Nevertheless, I cannot fathom why you have come to me.”

  Here we go, Evan thought. It’s showtime.

  She pulled out the photo of Ana and William Onders, keeping the second photo in reserve. Placing it on the table between them. “That’s Ana,” she said. “And that, in the background is, I believe, the Schneller Psychiatric Clinic.” Before Reveshvili could say a word, she turned the photo over and showed him the inscription: To W, from Ana I love you-countryside Koln: a breath of fresh air.

  “You see,” she added, “it’s dated the twenty-seventh of June, only two years ago.” Turning the photo over again, she tapped the hazed building. “That has to be your clinic, Herr Doktor. There can be no doubt about it.”

  “Hm.” Reveshvili took up the photo, the better to study it. “And do you know this man?”

  Evan was so focused on gleaning information about Ana that she was momentarily stumped by the question, but quickly realized that anything she might learn about Onders could be useful as well. “That ‘W’ is for Will—William Onders, I believe.”

  Reveshvili made no reply.

  “Herr Doktor, do you know this woman, Ana?”

  The lines above his nose deepened. “I do. But I am wondering what she is doing here with this William Onders.”

  “I was hoping you could shed some light.” Once again, beads of sweat made their appearance under her arms.

  “I’m afraid not.” Reveshvili set the photo down as carefully as if it were an heirloom of great value. “This man”—he tapped the photo with his long spidery index finger—“I have never seen him before.” He looked up at her. “You’re interested in him as well as in Ana?”

  “Sadly, he’s dead,” Evan said, carefully studying his face.

  “I see.” Most of the time when people say “I see” it’s a placeholder, something perfectly neutral to say to fill a conversational silence. But Evan had learned that every once in a while, it had real meaning. Reveshvili appeared to be lost in thought.

  At length, he came out of his reverie. “And where, might I ask, is your twin sister now? Is she here with you, close at hand?”

  Reveshvili possessed that unique talent of the best interrogators of changing the subject without a hint of warning. “She, also, is dead, I’m afraid,” she told him.

  He set down his knife and fork, and for a long moment, he said nothing. “What a great pity,” he said at last.

  His face had turned to stone. His gaze seemed far away. She foun
d it odd that he hadn’t offered her his condolences. She cleared her throat, and the sound brought him back.

  He looked at her as if she had just sat down. “I have a particular interest in twins. My studies, you see. I am interested in how their thought patterns run parallel at times and then, at others, work at cross-purposes. Quite strange—and, it goes without saying, fascinating.”

  She needed him to get back on track. She smiled and said softly, “Herr Doktor, what if anything can you tell me about Ana?”

  “What? Oh, Ana. Yes.” He shrugged. “She was a clinician here. At barely twenty-one, by far the youngest we’ve ever had at the clinic. She was a genius, really.”

  “But she’s no longer at the clinic?”

  “Ah, no. She left some time ago.” He tapped his lower lip. “Three years, perhaps four.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “Our clinic was not the place for her. Her main interest was in psychopharmacology. That’s not the main thrust of my therapies. Frankly, I distrust drugs, except in the most extreme cases, such as bipolar disorder. There, lithium has been a godsend.”

  “What exactly was Ana working on while she was with you?”

  Reveshvili waved a hand. “Oh, you know, experiments—far more outré, frankly, than I was comfortable with.”

  She was about to ask for more details, when he said, “But look here. You’re injured.”

  Evan touched the healing wound on the left side of her head. “It’s nothing.”

  Reveshvili clucked his tongue. “Even from here I can see it’s not ‘nothing,’ Fraulein.”

  “Of course, Herr Doktor.”

  “I am impressed, Fraulein.” He smiled. “You understand the essentials of German formality.”

  They were way off-topic—her topic. But she was interested now to learn where he was leading the conversation.

  “You must allow me to take a look at your wound. I would very much like to make certain it’s healing properly. Did you go to the hospital originally?”

  “I … didn’t think it was necessary.”

  “There’s no question. You will come back to the clinic with me after breakfast and I will clean and rebandage it.”

  “It’s really not necessary.”

  “Nonsense. You are coming with me and that is the end of it.”

  She had one more physical card to play. Drawing out the second photo that had belonged to the man she and Ben knew only as Jon Pine, she placed it in front of Reveshvili. “Here is a photo of Ana, but in close-up. It was found in the possession of a man called Jon Pine. Does that name ring a bell?”

  Reveshvili took up the photo, held it in front of his face as if he were nearsighted. Something seemed to go through him, a tremor of intent not acted upon. What had stopped him? Evan wondered.

  He continued to stare fixedly at the photo. “I do not know Herr Pine,” he said, after a time.

  Evan made certain not to show her disappointment. “So about Ana …”

  “Yes?”

  She realized that she couldn’t ask him Ana’s last name; they were supposed to be friends. Improvise, she told herself. “We knew her as Ana Logan. But after she disappeared, we could find no trace of anyone with that name who looked like our Ana.”

  “Really?” Reveshvili pursed his lips. “How curious! She presented herself to us, with her impeccable curriculum vitae, as Fraulein Doktor Ana Helm.”

  33

  HIGH NOON

  It is noon when Wendy and Michael are led outside. The sun blazes down, making them squint, bringing tears to their eyes, as if there wasn’t already sufficient cause for weeping. But, if truth be known, following the seemingly interminable days and nights of their incarceration they are all cried out, even Michael, who grasps his sister’s hand with a desperation granted only to children.

  Curiously, no one has accompanied them past the door, and when they are able to look back through clear eyes, they see not a prison at all, but a castle so beautiful it seems to have appeared straight out of a fairy tale.

  “Wendy! Michael!”

  As one, they turn from the castle toward the voice calling their names to behold a very tall, very beautiful young woman, who might easily pass for a princess were it not for her short hair and her large, piercing eyes. They are bewildered how someone so beautiful, so unknown to them knows their names. And then they see her smile. It is a wide smile, a generous smile, and one which, were they a decade older, they might have recognized as a very, very wicked smile, indeed.

  She is crouching down in the walled courtyard beyond the door of the castle, at the edge of a cobbled circle surrounded by a ring of tamped-down dirt. The walls, crawling with ivy, are high and look thick, as well.

  She holds out her arms. “Come here, my darlings.” She wears a suede jacket the color of whiskey over a man’s lightweight wool shirt. Below are riding breeches with inner thigh pads and high, polished boots with, Wendy knows from her insatiable reading, thin soles, meant for riding a horse, not tramping through fields on expeditions.

  Wendy feels Michael’s small hand sweaty in hers as she leads him hesitantly toward the beautiful woman. Sunlight spins off her hair, and now she rests her elbows on her powerful-looking thighs. In fact, now that they are closer everything about her looks powerful, excepting her long, swanlike neck.

  “How are you two?” she says in her singsong voice, as if they just arrived at the castle.

  “Where are we?” Wendy asks. “Why have you brought us here?”

  For his part, Michael says simply, “What’s your name?”

  “Ana,” sings the beautiful woman.

  There is something about her eyes. Perhaps their enormity causes them to be mesmeric. Or maybe it is the intelligence behind them.

  “My name is Ana.” That smile again, creeping across her face like liquid mercury. “You have nothing to fear from me. You have been secluded for your own protection. America is changing. You were no longer safe there, although it’s my opinion you really never were.”

  “But America is our home,” Wendy says.

  “America is where you were born and raised for a short period. But it wasn’t safe. Not for your mother and not for you.”

  Wendy frowns. “Whatever do you mean?” She likes saying “whatever” instead of “what,” just like the heroines in the novels she reads.

  Ana’s face darkens for a moment, a trapdoor suddenly visible. But it’s only for the blink of an eye, and possibly it was never there at all. “Your father was not a nice man. He cheated and stole from people.”

  “Did not!” Michael shouts.

  “He amassed a fortune in other people’s money.”

  Michael jumps up and down, his face empurpled. “Did not! Did not!”

  “Worse, even, he hit your mother, over and over again.”

  Tears spurting. “Did not, did, not, did not!”

  “Hush, Mikey.” His sister squeezes his hand all the more tightly. Flashes in her mind of her father shouting, of a dish or a glass crashing to the kitchen floor, of a slap like a wet bag against concrete that made her jump and then shake. And once a deeper sound, thicker, heavier, and a strangled cry from mom. They thought she was asleep. They thought grown-up things could be kept from their children. But evil had crept in the door and lodged itself inside the house, crawling out at night when the lights downstairs were low, when upstairs there was no light on at all, and fear hung from the ceiling like a rafter full of bats.

  All these hideous memories flash through Wendy’s mind as she stares at Ana. “I knew,” she says in a whisper.

  “I think you both knew.”

  Wendy hugs Michael to her, his shoulders shaking, a thin wail escaping his mouth. Ana’s face is a mask of sorrow. Tears tremble in the corners of her eyes.

  “Now you are safe, protected from all things harmful and evil.” She opens her arms again, and this time Wendy, dragging Michael with her, steps inside that shelter.

  “I have brought you into God’s
own house,” Ana sings, her voice atremble. “I’ve brought you all this long way to meet your family.”

  PART FOUR

  34

  MOSCOW, RUSSIA

  Dima Tokmakov’s office was a dismal affair, suitable for his job as director of Zaslon. It inhabited a corner of the seventh floor of the Lubyanka building. That its window overlooked not much at all bothered Dima not at all. When it came to the subject of nature or artwork, he was a full-on philistine.

  Apart from his massive desk, his chair, and two others on the opposite side, there was precious little to indicate that the space was currently inhabited. On his desk were two laptops, side by side and linked electronically. On the right corner was a framed photograph of Nadya, a candid snap—a selfie. Dima always got a little thrill when he looked at it, knowing she took it while she was naked and wet, just out of the shower. Not that a viewer could tell, since it was a close-up of her face.

  He was thinking of the unique sound Nadya made when she orgasmed, a laugh that sent shivers through him when, like a grimalkin in the forest of the night, Ilya Ivanovich Gurin appeared in the open doorway. How he always managed to get past Feliks was another mystery Dima had yet to solve. When queried, Feliks swore he never saw Gurin, but Dima worried that his adjutant had been suborned.

  In any case, Gurin was here now. He said not a word; there was no need. The expression on his face was message enough: Baev, the director of SVR, awaits.

  Dima rose with a deep sense of foreboding. He knew, of course, that his banker in Istanbul was dead—killed in a particularly gruesome manner. The implications of Ermi Çelik’s murder were as yet unclear to him. He had checked his Cyprus bank statements. They were, thank Saint Matrona, wholly intact. But if the murderer somehow got their hands on Çelik’s ledger, he was sunk. These were the thoughts that occupied his mind as he followed Gurin down the stairs all seven flights to Baev’s first-floor office. Baev, a fitness freak who swam at an indoor pool in lieu of breakfast and played four-wall handball every evening in lieu of dinner, never took the elevator, which meant Gurin never did either.