The Moscow Club

by Finder, Joseph

  “At this point, I can deal with just about anything,” Stone replied, as he followed the boy down into the opening.

  58

  The stench got progressively worse as the two descended the fifteen-foot drop. The boy had a flashlight, which he attempted to direct at the wall and the handgrips, but he succeeded mainly in illuminating the bottoms of Stone’s feet. The grips were slimy and covered in rust; it was hard to get a decent hold. Stone’s foot slipped from the bottom rung, plunging him without warning into the murky water.

  Water it was, mostly. They had entered an egout elementaire, a primary sewage-and-drainage line leading to the collecteurs secondaires, which are broader tunnels through which all the fluids sluice. This tunnel, about five feet wide and barely six feet high, was used to catch runoff from the gutters in the street. Floating in the water—it was so dark that Stone could not make out any hues—was street trash, empty cigarette packs, a plastic bag from Yves Saint-Laurent, a gnarled condom. The stone walls dripped with water and were webbed with pipes.

  The two ran on one of the narrow concrete banks beside the wide, malodorous stream. ‘Til take you as far as the main juncture,” the teenager said, “so you can see where you’re going. Then I’m taking off.”

  “I appreciate it.” They were wading through the thigh-high water. “Do you have a name, by the way?”

  “Jacques. Jacky.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jacky.”

  “My friends and I used to climb around in here. It gets a lot easier once you get out of the egout elementaire. You can start walking on dry land when the tunnels broaden.”

  “You did this for fun?” Stone grimaced. The smell of excrement came in waves, as if from a neighboring tunnel. As they walked, glimmerings of light came in through street grates and manhole covers, fluorescent light from the crowded streets above.

  “Yeah. Sometimes. There’s more than a thousand kilometers of canals, but it’s easy to see where you are. See?” He pointed up at the wall, shining his flashlight on a plaque set in the wall: the name of the cross streets above. “You can learn it pretty fast. Make a left here.”

  The narrow tunnel suddenly met another, much broader one, a river with concrete banks four feet wide on either side. Jacky leaped up onto the bank, and Stone followed. “It’ll be a lot easier now. We can walk on this for quite a while. Not so long ago, I heard, you used to be able to get around on boats down here, but the cops outlawed it—bank robbers used to use them for getaways.”

  Stone reached into his jacket pocket and fished out a pack of cigarettes. “Kill the smell,” he explained, lighting one and then offering one to Jacky, who took it. He coughed. Probably he’d never smoked before.

  “What’d you do, really?” Jacky asked.

  “I told you. I was set up.”

  “Set up,” the boy ruminated. “That means you’ve got an enemy.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Who?”

  Stone paused to inhale, and answered truthfully. “I don’t really know. I’ve got some theories.”

  Jacky considered that for a moment, and then asked, “You married?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  There was a rusding sound, and a dark shape came toward them, along the concrete walkway. “Cat?” Stone asked.

  “Rat.”

  The rat, which was larger than any rat Stone had ever seen or

  390 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  even imagined, scurried by, brushing up against Stone’s wet pants leg. “Jesus,” Stone said, giving a powerful, involuntary shudder.

  The boy let out a whoop of terror, and then quickly regained his poise. “They get a lot bigger than that,” he scoffed, laughing nervously. “Wait. What’s that?” He froze.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Stone said.

  “Shh. There’s someone else down here.”

  They stood completely still for a moment. There was something, faintly, a hollow noise quite unlike the periodic distant thuds from above.

  Jacky shut off the flashlight, plunging them into almost total darkness. The noise became louder: Footsteps, the scrape of metal against stone. Then muffled voices.

  “Can you see?” Jacky asked.

  “A little bit.” Stone’s eyes were gradually adjusting to the dark.

  “Let’s walk. Keep to the wall. I think they found the open manhole cover. Damn it—now I’m stuck with you.”

  As they walked. Stone could hear the voices, quite distinct now, and then a flash of light played against the tunnel wall not twenty feet behind them.

  “It’s them,” Jacky said. “This way.”

  They ran, each of them moving as stealthily and silently as possible, their hands raking against the tunnel wall as they went. “Turn here,” Jacky whispered.

  They entered a narrow tunnel, which descended at a sharp angle, wading in water that was now up to their waists. Stone felt for his passports and cassette tapes, which were in his breast pocket, still dry.

  The voices grew fainter. Jacky led the way to another broad tunnel, and they pulled themselves up onto the bank. There was a splash as the water drained from their clothes. Another sound came, a few feet away: the rustle of a rat. “Shit,” Stone said.

  Jacky flashed his light briefly against the wall and picked out the street signs. “As long as we’re quiet, they may never find us.” They ran along the tunnel, which bent a few times.

  After they had been running for almost fifteen minutes and hadn’t heard a sound from the police. Stone said, “Let’s find an exit.”

  THE MOSCOW CLUB ■ 391

  “That’s no problem. We need another egout elementaire that leads to a quiet street. If we listen, we’ll know which one is safe. The last thing we want is to get out on some boulevard.”

  “Where are we, anyway?”

  Jacky flashed his light against a wall, searched for a moment, and found a sign. “Montparnasse. Intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard du Montparnasse. Right near the Montparnasse Cemetery.”

  This time it was Stone’s turn to hear footsteps. “They’ve caught up to us.”

  “No.” Jacky shrugged dismissively and glanced around. “Wait.”

  “You hear it?”

  “Shit,” the teenager said, imitating Stone’s cadence.

  “Let’s find another egout elementaire,” Stone suggested.

  “There’s one around here. There has to be.”

  Now the voices were loud and distinct: several male voices, shouting to one another, “Over here!”

  “I know a way,” Jacky said.

  “Let’s take it already,” Stone said. “Come on.”

  “It’s near here.”

  “Move!” Stone started running along the walkway, feeling his way, his hands outstretched.

  “No, wait. Over here. I know a way that I think the cops don’t know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Maybe some of them. Not many people do,” Jacky said proudly.

  “Well, let’s go already.”

  The voice came from the tunnel they had left five minutes ago: “Do you hear that? Over there!”

  Jacky leaped off the bank and into the foul sluice; Stone followed immediately. They swam across to the other side, then got back up on the edge and ran around to another narrow tunnel.

  “This is it!” Jacky whispered triumphantly.

  “Where?”

  “Up there. Do you see?” The boy flashed his light at a grating on the wall a few feet above their heads. “Help me up.” Stone locked his hands together and used them to hoist the boy’s feet. Jacky grabbed

  392 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  at a pipe and pulled himself up, his feet now lodged against an indentation in the wall.

  “That wayr The shout was perhaps fifty feet away.

  The teenager grabbed at the top of the steel grating and pulled. The top came open with a metallic squawk. The bottom of the grating was hinged; now it lay open
like a trapdoor. He shimmied his way in, and Stone, taller and stronger, was able to pull himself up on a water pipe. In a minute, he, too, was in the opening. The passage was less than three feet by three feet.

  “Close it!” the boy ordered.

  Stone awkwardly swung his torso around, grabbed at the grating, and pulled it back up until it closed. “Do you know what you’re doing?” he whispered.

  “Shhr

  The voices now came from the tunnel directly below. Stone followed Jacky through the passage, his knees scraping against the damp stone. They did not have to go far. After they had moved about twelve feet, there was another iron grating directly ahead. The boy pushed at it, and it came open. “Careful,” he said. “Getting out is the hard part. There’s a pipe just on the other side of the hole. Crab that, and you can swing yourself down.” The boy reached his hands through the grate and patted them against the wall, searching. “Here.” He grabbed at it, curling his hands inward, and then dangled his feet out of the hole. They had reached a cavelike place, which could not be the sewers any longer, Stone realized: no water, no odor. Something else.

  Stone swung himself down easily, landing on the ground beside the boy. “Is this your idea of an exit?” Stone asked. “Where the hell are we?”

  The boy clicked on his flashlight and shone it against the wall.

  Stone gasped.

  Straight ahead of them was a doorway that led into a chamber of some sort whose walls, on first glance, were brownish and uneven. Stone’s eyes focused on the walls, seeing with terror what they were: human bones. The walls were constructed of human skulls and tibias,

  THE MOSCOW CLUB ■ 393

  packed densely but neatly in gruesomely regular rows. A sign, carved in stone in the lintel at the top of the entrance, explained:

  ARRETE!

  c’est ici l’empire de la mort

  Stop! it said. Here is death’s empire. They were in the Catacombs.

  59

  Chicago

  Paula Singer was not expecting anyone.

  The doorbell rang around fifteen minutes before midnight. She was watching the Johnny Carson show. There was a guest host, a comedian, and he was much better than Johnny usually was. Also, she had begun to nod off, so she had not noticed the bell until the third ring.

  She tied her robe closed and looked out the front-door peephole.

  It was a large man in a suit, a respectably dressed man. He had a round, fleshy face and long muttonchop sideburns.

  “Yes?” she asked. Jesus, it was almost midnight. She refused to open the door unless he identified himself to her satisfaction.

  ‘Tm sorry to disturb you, Miss Singer.”

  So he knew her name. “Who’s there?”

  “I’m a friend of Charlie Stone’s,” the man said. He had a foreign accent of some sort. “He asked me to give you a message.”

  “Co ahead.”

  The man laughed and shrugged. “It’ll take me more than five seconds,” he said. “It’s cold out here.”

  She hesitated, and then unlocked the door. “All right,” she said, an instant before the man shoved his way in toward her, knocking her to the floor.

  He had a gun.

  ”Please don’t,” Paula said. She began to cry at once. “Please.” She tried to get up, but he directed the gun at her face.

  “Don’t move, Paula.” He closed the door behind him.

  THE MOSCOW CLUB ■ 395

  “What do you want? Please.”

  “Where did Charles Stone go?” The man was tall and powerful-looking, and definitely not an American.

  “I don’t know,” she keened softly.

  “Take your time. You do know. Please don’t lie to me.”

  What had happened? Had she and Charlie been seen in Toronto? Maybe at the airport. Then what—

  The phone calls. From her office. Was it possible—had they somehow traced them? Did this have something to do with the American Flag Foundation?

  “Now you can get up, Paula. That’s right. Walk straight ahead, slowly, slowly.”

  Her back was to him, and she was so frightened she could not speak. He would shoot her in the back of the head. “Why do you think I know?” she managed to blurt out. “Please, I have no idea.” She walked, her knees barely able to carry her, toward the bedroom. He was going to rape her! Jesus Christ, she thought. Please don’t let this happen. Please. Oh, God.

  “Lie on the bed, Paula.”

  “No. Please, no"

  “I just want to know where he went. He was with you.”

  She could no longer stand it. “He left the country!”

  “That’s not true. Please tell me the truth.” He pulled from the pockets of his suit several long leather restraints.

  “Oh, God, please don’t do this!” Why wouldn’t he believe her? And then she remembered: Charlie hadn’t used his real passport. What was the name he had used?

  “All you have to do is be honest with me.”

  “Please believe me, he left the country. He flew out from Toronto. He—he didn’t use his own passport.”

  The man stopped for a moment, the leather straps dangling from his left hand. He seemed intrigued.

  “Where did he go?” he said again.

  A thought occurred to Paula now, and her heart leaped. The gun. Charlie had given her a gun, and she had put it in the end table beside the bed. “Let me think,” she said, to gain time. “I have …

  396 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  I have a copy of his itinerary. His travel-agent thing, his voucher,” she faltered. “Would that help?”

  The man gave a grunt.

  She reached down and pulled the drawer open, her fingers sliding past the papers to the back, to the … There it was. She felt the cold steel, and she rejoiced.

  With lightning speed she yanked it out and pointed it. The man flew at her, tackling her, and the gun would not fire. What was wrong with it? Oh, please, Jesus, fire, damn it! Go!

  And she remembered now something about releasing a safety, but the man was on her, and she flung her knee forward, catching him direcdy in the groin. The man doubled over, howling in pain. He was a big, powerful man, and Paula had no doubt he was an expert, but he hadn’t expected meek, cowering Paula to use a self-defense expert’s blow, and that had gien her a momentary advantage.

  The man came back at her, but she grabbed his leg and flung him, hard, to the floor, cracking his head against the floorboards, and then ran out of the bedroom, into the kitchen.

  The man was unstoppable. She had thrown him with a violence from which few people would recoxer, but this guy was an ox, night-marishly strong. He came after her and slammed her against the stove, but apparently he was still weak from the kick to his groin. In the tussle he had dropped his gun; now he was using his giant, powerful hands, but Paula had him, for a moment, slamming his head against the iron top of the stove with all of her weight, his head now locked in a grip she had perfected, and just as he reached around to grab her neck, squeezing with his enormous left hand, an inspiration flashed in her mind, an inspiration born of great anger.

  She remembered the rapist who had tried to xiolate her a year ago, and she almost trembled with the adrenaline surge. In an instant, she slammed her elbow against the burner control at the front of the stove, turning it all the way on, and the gas flame in the rear burner, against which her assailant’s face was pressed, shot up. She never used the burner, because something was wrong with it, something that made the blue flame almost seven inches high.

  Could she keep the hold? The man was far more powerful, and

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  now he was an enraged bull, thrusting his body with great lurches. It took all of her strength, and she knew she could not keep this up for more than a few seconds.

  The first thing she noticed, as she kept the man’s neck wedged against the top of the stove, was the distinctive, sweet, unforgettable odor of human hair burning, and then a peculiar, horrifying little
crackle of the man’s hair, a human torch, and then, just before he overpowered her, the sight of the man’s facial skin singeing and crackling, and the man roaring in unspeakable pain.

  His face and head still afire, the man slammed Paula to the floor and, with an almost inhuman strength, cracked her neck. It was the last killing he would ever do.

  60

  Moscow

  Deep within the Lubyanka, which was once, before the Revolution, an insurance company, there is a private dining room used only by the chairman and his invited guests. It resembles a cathedral: its ceiling is high and slanted, its walls constructed of oak panels and stained-glass windows expropriated from a Russian Orthodox church during Stalin’s antireligious campaign of the 1930s and reassembled here in a flourish of irony.

  The chairman of the KGB, Andrei Pavlichenko, was holding a private meeting with his personal physician. The doctor, who was not much older than Pavlichenko but looked ten years older, his face deeply lined, was the most eminent neurologist on the staflF of the Kremlin Clinic, the hospital that treats members of the Politburo and Central Committee. The clinic is run by the Fourth Administration of the Ministry of Health, which is in turn run by the KGB.

  But the physician’s loyalty to Pavlichenko went much deeper than the mere lines of authority’ suggested. Years ago, he had gotten a woman pregnant, the daughter of a high Part' official, and the resulting scandal threatened to expel the doctor from the clinic and even the medical profession. Pavlichenko had personally intervened to save his career and have the matter expunged from official records. Ever since, the physician had remained unswervingly loyal to Pavlichenko, throughout Pavlichenko’s rise to the chairmanship of the KGB.

  Now the two were speaking quietly, yet the tension between them was palpable.

  In this verv room, Pavlichenko remembered, he had once had dinner with Beria. It was March 9, 1953. He remembered the date well. He had been a young official of the secret police, and he had been taken aback when Beria had asked him to dinner in the cathedral. Especially on such a day.