The Solomon Effect

by C. S. Graham

  Tossing it aside, he searched Tweed Coat’s pockets, the lining of his jacket, the soles of his shoes. But the assassin was obviously a professional. Jax found a handful of euros and rubles, but no ID.

  He started checking clothing labels. The guy’s jacket had come from London. His shirt was French. His shoes, Italian. A European, perhaps. Judging from the rubles, possibly a Russian. But not necessarily.

  Jax sat back on his heels, his gaze going to the dead man’s gun. A Walther P99. The Russian mafia liked Walthers. But so did a lot of other people. Jax knew guys in the Company who liked to carry Walthers.

  He pushed to his feet. He was getting hungry. Unwilling to take the chance of having Tweed Coat accidentally discovered by some room-service personnel, he rummaged around until he found a spare blanket on a shelf in the closet. Rolling the dead body up in blue polyester, he dragged the corpse into the closet and shut the door before dialing room service. Then he put in a call to Matt.

  Matt’s voice was gravelly with concern. “I heard your flight had been canceled,” he said. “This isn’t good, Jax. It means you won’t be in Kaliningrad to meet October when she lands.”

  “At the moment, babysitting Beckham’s remote viewer is the least of my problems.” The phone was encrypted, but Jax still chose his words carefully. “I had an unexpected visitor.”

  There was a moment’s pause. Matt said, “Was this someone we know?”

  “One of our competitors’ representatives. Fortunately I managed to convince him we had this market all sewn up, so he’s moved on to greener pastures.”

  Matt groaned. “Oh, jeez; not again. Did you call Peter Davidson?”

  “Petra. Petra Davidson.” Jax glanced at the closed closet doors. “My concern is, there are indications the competition found out that I was going to be working this market from our own home office. You might want to check and see if there’s been any interest in my being assigned to this area.”

  “Shit. I’ll look into it.” Matt drew a deep breath. “In the meantime, be careful, okay?”

  “I’m always careful.”

  Matt laughed and hung up.

  Jax sat for a time staring unseeingly at the phone in his hand. Then he went to pull the folder with October Guinness’s remote viewing session out of his bag. He’d been so convinced it was all a bunch of woo-woo bullshit that he hadn’t even bothered to look at the report. The arrival of Tweed Coat changed things.

  He thumbed quickly through the Colonel’s report, then read the transcript of the viewing itself. Jax had witnessed one of October’s viewings last summer, and he’d done enough research on the subject to understand how RV worked…just not enough to believe in it.

  He flipped to the drawings at the back of the report and felt a faint chill run up his spine. October’s sketches were rudimentary but detailed enough that Jax had no doubt he was staring at a picture of a World War II-era U-boat resting on a long, flat barge. The barge was tied up at a wharf beside a line of what looked like warehouses. To the right she had drawn a smaller corrugated metal building located about halfway up a hill; an office, perhaps. Beyond that he could see a rocky point covered with wind-stunted pines.

  Jax thumbed back through the report. He wanted to think the Colonel must have given her some indication of the target, but Jax knew McClintock was too careful, too professional, to have frontloaded the viewing that way. There was little doubt that October had “seen” a U-boat. The only question was, how accurate was their interpretation that the target location was Kaliningrad? The arrival of Tweed Coat seemed to suggest that it was pretty damned accurate.

  It was nearly ten o’clock, long after Jax had finished his trout amandine and put the tray outside the door, when he heard a desultory squeak, squeak coming down the hall toward his room. He’d been reading Herbert Werner’s Iron Coffins. Now he lifted his head and listened.

  The squeaking stopped outside his door. He heard a murmur, followed by a knock. A female voice with the unmistakable intonations of the Bronx said, “This is Petra Davidson. I’ve got your agricultural reports.”

  Setting aside his book, Jax went to open the door.

  The woman standing in the corridor was short, probably no more than five foot two. She had thick dark hair she wore cropped boylike in a style that might have given her a gamin look when she was in her twenties. Now that she was in her mid-thirties, the effect was somewhat different. Her body had begun to thicken with the approach of middle age, although she still looked solid. Jax had no doubt she ran her three to five miles every morning with the same determination as she practiced regularly at the shooting range. Her dark synthetic pantsuit was eminently practical, her low-heeled pumps sensible. She was a short woman in a man’s world, which meant she had to try twice as hard and be twice as tough.

  She snapped, “Jason Aldrich?”

  “That’s right.” He looked beyond her, to the two burly guys in buzz haircuts pushing a big maid’s cart covered in canvas. “And these, I take it, are the Marines?”

  The Marines were obviously anxious to get out of the hall. They shoved past Jax and into the room, the wheels on their maid’s cart shrieking with each revolution. Jax glanced down at the large briefcase Petra carried. Since she hadn’t known if she was being called to the scene of a shooting or a knifing or something worse, procedure called for her to bring along first-aid equipment, luminol, and a black light. If necessary, the luminol and black light would be used to find blood traces she’d then corrupt to prevent DNA analysis, while the first-aid kit was to patch up Jax.

  “You won’t need the kit,” he said, shutting the door behind her. “There’s no blood. I broke the guy’s neck. This is going to be simple.”

  She whirled to face him, her face tight. “Simple? You think this is simple? I’ve got a body to dispose of. That’s never simple, especially these days. This isn’t the Cold War anymore, you know. The Germans aren’t as understanding about these things as they used to be.”

  Jax held up his hands, palms outward. “I only meant you won’t need to worry about trace evidence. He didn’t even leave prints in here.”

  Her frown deepening, she glanced around the room. “Where is he?”

  “In the closet.”

  At her nod, the two Marines opened the closet doors. Blue polyester cocoon unfurling, Tweed Coat flopped out. “Who is he?” she asked as the Marines moved to lift the body between them, one at the head, the other at the feet.

  “I don’t know.”

  She brought her gaze back to Jax’s face, her eyes narrowing. Her name wasn’t Petra, of course. Probably something like Gina Guiliani or Maria Centrello. She had that Sicilian look about her. She said, “I called Langley. They told me you’re just passing through here. So you—what? Had some time on your hands and just decided to kill someone?”

  Jax tried to clamp a lid on his temper. “I take it you’d have preferred I let the guy shoot me? You’d still have had a body to deal with, you know—only it would have been mine.”

  She shrugged. “We’d have just passed you off as some stupid dead tourist. We deal with dead tourists all the time. This—” She pointed to Tweed Coat, now being stuffed into the maid cart. “This is a political disaster waiting to happen. What do you think the Germans are going to do if we get caught with this dude? The boys here in Berlin don’t like it when we treat the place like it’s an American colony. It’d be different if we were in Cairo or Seoul or someplace like that.”

  He gave her what was supposed to be a disarming smile. “I have confidence in you, Petra.”

  It was a lie, of course. Until he found out how Tweed Coat came by that official photo, Jax wasn’t trusting anyone associated with the Company except Matt.

  She was neither disarmed nor charmed by Jax’s smile. She walked right up to him with a bandy rooster kind of strut, her hands on her hips as she leaned forward, head tilting back. “I’ve heard about you, Mr. Jax Alexander.” She said his name slowly, just in case he missed the fact she wasn
’t using his alias anymore. “You’ve caused trouble every place from Guatemala to Indonesia and back. You don’t play by the rules. You’re a loose cannon. I don’t understand why you’re even still with the Company.”

  Jax picked up Tweed Coat’s gun and handed it to her. “Here. You might as well get rid of this while you’re at it.”

  He watched a dark tide of anger sweep up her face. “When do you leave?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Good.” She shoved the Walther in her bag and turned toward the door. “See if you can get out of here without killing anyone else, will you?”

  “I’ll try.”

  She waited for the Marines to open the door, their cart going squeak, squeak as they pushed it out into the hall. She followed them, only looking over her shoulder long enough to say, “And don’t come back.”

  16

  Kaliningrad, Russia: Sunday 25 October

  6:10 P.M. local time

  Stefan forced himself to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. Each step had become an act of will, every mile a penance of pain. At first the salt-stiffened trousers chafing his inner thighs had been an inconvenience. Then soreness turned to raw agony. By now, he was forced to admit that if he didn’t find clean clothes somewhere, he was never going to make it back to Yasnaya Polyana.

  He drew up at the top of a small rise, his breath ragged with pain. There was a cold wind blowing from the north, and he shifted into the shelter of a sturdy pine, his eyes narrowing as he studied the hamlet that straddled a stream at the edge of the wood below.

  He could see a string of dilapidated cottages with a few shops, a power line, and a half-renovated church. A horse pulled a cart loaded with apples and driven by an old woman in a shawl.

  The banging of a door drew his attention to the back porch of a frame cottage on the outskirts of the village. A woman wearing a thick gray sweater and a nondescript skirt, a basket balanced on one hip, strode across the hard-packed yard to where clothes hung up to dry flapped in the frigid air. As Stefan watched, she started to unpin a dress, then paused to run her hand down the cloth to the waistband. Frowning, she reached out to feel the cuffs of a nearby shirt. With a shake of her head, she stomped back toward the house. Stefan, watching her, let out his breath in a small sigh.

  If he could, he would gladly pay the woman for the blue work shirt and trousers he could see hanging at the end of the line, near a weathered old shed. But he only had ten rubles in his pocket. If he wanted a change of clothes, he was going to need to steal them.

  He felt his stomach roil with shame and despair at the thought. Five years ago, Stefan’s father had been faced with a choice: cooperate with a corrupt scheme to skim electrical components from the shipments his small trucking company ferried to the port, or die. Uncle Jasha always called his brother a fool, a martyr to an outmoded system of honor. But Stefan had been proud of his father, proud of his choice. Now, Stefan realized he had more in common with his uncle than he’d ever wanted to admit.

  He crept painfully down the hill, his gaze on the cottage’s back door. His breath bunching up in his throat, he darted across the muddy road. Ducking behind the shed, he stood for a moment, hands splayed against the rough boards of the outbuilding, heart pounding. Swallowing hard, he threw one last, quick glance at the light that now flickered in the cottage window, and sprinted toward the clothesline.

  He snatched the trousers and a clean shirt on the fly. With every step, he kept expecting to hear a shout, a cry of Stop! Thief! Trousers and shirt clutched to his chest, he ducked back behind the shed. He waited, trembling and listening. But all he could hear was the breeze rustling the autumn-shriveled leaves of a nearby birch and the lowing of a cow somewhere in the distance.

  Hunkering down, he shucked off his sweater, stiff trousers, and shirt. The cold air bit his bare skin. He shivered and quickly scrambled into the purloined clothes. The trousers were a little damp around the cuffs, but blessedly soft. He pulled his own sweater back over his head, turned up the too-long trouser legs, and carefully transferred the contents of his pockets to his new clothes. He didn’t have much—the ten rubles, a piece of amber shaped like a horse’s head he’d picked up on the beach and kept for good luck, and the penknife his father had given him for his tenth birthday.

  His heart was still hammering so hard his chest hurt, but he forced himself to roll up his own clothes and dash back into the farmyard to leave them as a kind of trade on the back stoop. He was just tucking the clothes roll under the step’s unpainted railing when the door jerked open and the woman in the gray sweater took a step out onto the porch.

  She drew up abruptly, her eyes going wide, her jaw slack. She looked to be somewhere in her thirties, rail thin and bony, her straw-colored hair fading toward gray. Her gaze locked with Stefan’s. She swallowed convulsively and let out a shriek.

  “Victor!” she screeched, whirling back into the house. “Victor. Come quick. Someone’s stolen my washing!”

  Dropping his clothes bundle, Stefan bolted across the yard and down the rutted drive. It wasn’t until he reached the muddy road and threw a quick glance over his shoulder that he noticed the blue militia van parked out front.

  Idiot! he thought, arms pumping and legs stretching out as he dashed up the street. What kind of imbecile steals clothes from a policeman’s wife?

  Gasping with fear, he pelted over the arched bridge and into the hamlet. A bent old man in suspenders appeared at his doorway as Stefan streaked by. From the far side of the creek came Victor’s furious shout, “Stop that boy! He’s a thief!”

  Stefan caught the sound of running footsteps pounding the dirt road behind him. His jaw clenched with concentration, he veered to his left, dodging another man in a butcher’s apron who made a grab for him. He could see a line of trees ahead, the beginnings of a patch of ancient forest that stretched across the next hill. The temperature was falling, the light cold and flat. It would be dark soon. If he could just make it to the trees…

  He heard another shout from the militiaman behind him. Then a second man’s voice joined with his, the pounding of footsteps drawing nearer. Stefan could smell the sharp scent of the pines, the deep earthy humus of the forest floor rising up to beckon him on. Lungs aching, legs shaking with exhaustion and fear, he gave one last desperate spurt. Ten meters. Five. Then the darkness of the woods closed around him, like the embrace of a loving mother drawing a penitent son to her breast.

  Monday morning dawned cold and overcast, the air pregnant with the scent of wood smoke and the dampness of coming rain. Rodriguez was up early, his feet pounding the pavement as he ran down a tree-lined avenue past an ancient graveyard with lichen-covered stones engraved with German names. Looking at the sturdy old houses and the red brick Gothic church, he could easily have imagined he was in Hamburg or Potsdam—except for the jarring reminder offered by the Cyrillic street sign at the corner.

  He circled around the rusty iron fence enclosing the half-ruined church and started back. This place gave him the creeps. It reminded him of his grandparents’ house in Havana—lost, like these houses, to the spread of Communism.

  Rodriquez had taken a night class in twentieth-century history in college, but it had left him more confused than anything else. He’d always been told that France and England declared war on Germany because Hitler invaded Poland. But the problem with that explanation was that the Russians had invaded Poland at the same time, in alliance with the Nazis. The Russians had also invaded Finland, although nobody declared war on the Russians. And when the war was supposed to be over, the Russians were still in Poland—and a hell of a lot of other places, too. So it seemed to Rodriguez that if the war had been fought to free Eastern Europe from invaders, then the whole thing had been a failure. Sure, it had gotten rid of the Nazis. But the Nazis had always been a lot more interested in fighting the Communists than they were the Western Allies—which was why they’d let the Brits escape at Dunkirk, and why they kept resist
ing Roosevelt’s repeated efforts to drag them into a war with the States. Only, for some reason, people seemed to forget that.

  Rodriguez was breathing hard now, legs pumping as he sprinted down a quiet lane, his wet T-shirt sticking to his back despite the chill. He passed a park with a statue of Lenin staring straight ahead, as if he could see all the way back to Moscow, and he found himself wondering what would have happened if the West had just let the two motherfuckers fight it out. Hitler and Stalin. Nazis and Commies. He had a feeling the world would look a lot different today.

  He slowed to a walk as he neared the house, then did a hundred push-ups and a hundred crunches in the yard before heading inside.

  “Heard from our guy in Berlin yet?” he asked Salinger as he let the kitchen door slam behind him.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Rodriguez grabbed a liter of water and downed it in one long pull. “Something’s gone wrong.”

  “Could just be a delay.”

  Rodriguez shook his head. After years of running operations, he’d learned to trust his gut. “Get onto our source at Aeroflot.”

  Salinger tapped at his computer for a few minutes, then looked up. “The representative from Langley checked in for his flight to Kaliningrad twenty minutes ago.”

  “Fuck.” Rodriguez glanced across the kitchen to where the other men were clustered around a big oak table and eating breakfast out of takeout containers from a local inn. “Dixon, you and Salinger come with me. We’ll get the son of a bitch when he lands.”

  17

  Burrowing deep into her jacket, Tobie stepped off the flight from Copenhagen into an icy Baltic wind and found herself staring into the muzzle of a machine gun.

  A stony-faced circle of guards herded the flight’s passengers across the nearly deserted tarmac to an ugly Soviet-era terminal. A row of battered booths controlled the passage from the immigration hall to customs, but only one booth was manned. Waiting in the endless line with her bag clutched to her side, Tobie had plenty of time to watch the way the tall, thin guard was subjecting each passenger to a ruthless scrutiny.