The Solomon Effect

by C. S. Graham

  Dropping his hand to the dog’s neck, Stefan swerved sideways into a narrow rutted lane choked with weeds and broken clumps of concrete. Flattening himself behind an old garage, he listened to the buzzing of insects in the grass, smelled the drift of cooking onions from a nearby house, and tried to stop trembling. Beside him, the dog whined. Stefan whispered, “Shhh!”

  It was a full minute before he summoned the courage to peek around the corner of the garage. Two men in turtleneck sweaters and dark trousers were working their way down the row of shops on the far side of the square. They had something in their hands—a piece of paper? a picture?—that they kept showing to everyone they came to. The townspeople would look at the paper for a moment, then shake their heads. Stefan could imagine them saying, This boy? No, I haven’t seen this boy. What has he done?

  Then one of the men turned, and Stefan recognized the big Chechen with red hair and a ruddy complexion who’d shot Uncle Jasha. With a gasp, Stefan drew back his head, his heart pounding so hard his chest hurt.

  “We’ll find another village with a butcher,” he told the dog, turning. “Come on.”

  The dog gave a low woof and darted out into the square.

  “No! What are you doing?”

  Sniffing the Durango’s tires, the pup swung around and calmly lifted its leg.

  Stefan’s gaze flew to the men across the square, but both were turned away. He brought his gaze back to the SUV.

  Against such men and their guns, Stefan knew, he could do nothing. But that didn’t mean he was helpless.

  The dog came bounding back, its tail wagging proudly. Stefan closed one hand convulsively around the lucky amber in his pocket, then reached out and touched the dog’s shoulder. “You stay.”

  The dog sat down and cocked its head.

  “Good dog. Stay.”

  The dog lay down, its head on its paws.

  Hunkering low, Stefan sprinted across the alley to crouch behind the Durango’s big fender. Over the broad, shiny expanse of the car’s black hood he could see the men on the far edge of the square, still busy working the shops. Jerking his penknife from his pocket, he dropped to his back and wiggled underneath the SUV.

  The familiar, pungent scent of hot oil from the Durango’s engine engulfed him. Stefan had grown up working with his dad on truck engines; it took him only a moment to locate the Durango’s brake line. Breathing a small prayer of thankfulness that the line wasn’t made of metal, he started hacking at the rubber.

  He could feel the sharp stones of the roadway digging into his back and rump as he sawed the small blade back and forth. His arms began to ache from the effort of working over his head in the cramped space, but he kept cutting, desperately aware of the passage of time.

  The blast of a train’s whistle, sounding unexpectedly close, distracted him. He jerked his head out of the way just as the line finally broke, sending a stream of brake fluid squirting out into the dirty road. He was tempted to leave it at that, to run while he had the chance. But a cut brake line could be quickly dealt with; a missing section of line was a lot harder to fix. Biting his lip, he started a second cut some six inches from the first.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he realized the men were now standing together at the corner, talking. Just as the big redheaded Chechen stepped off the curb to cross the square, the section of hose came loose in Stefan’s hand.

  Scooting out from beneath the Durango, he pushed to his feet…and heard a shout go up across the square.

  “Mother of God,” gasped Stefan.

  He pelted down the alleyway, the black-and-tan dog leaping up and yelping with joy at the sight of him. “Come on, boy!” he shouted. “Run.”

  “Get the car!” the Chechen yelled. “Cut him off at the street.”

  The dog bounding at his heels, Stefan ran down a rutted weed-grown lane hemmed in by high fences of vertical weathered boards. He could hear the pounding of running feet behind him, the loud gunning of the Durango’s engine in the square. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder and saw the big Chechen, red-faced and gaining on him fast. Then the driver of the Durango floored the gas, and Stefan heard a horrendous tearing crash.

  Whooping with delight, he swerved to his right and squeezed through a gap where a board had broken off one of the fences. The dog wiggled in behind him.

  The Chechen was too big to slip through the hole in the fence. As Stefan darted across the overgrown yard and down the gravel drive leading to the street, he could hear the big man grunting and swearing as he heaved himself up over the tall, jagged fence. He hit the ground on the other side hard. But by then Stefan was already flying down the street toward the railway embankment.

  He was aware of the train thundering closer, its whistle now a loud shriek of warning. And he realized that if he didn’t make it across that embankment before the train cut him off, he’d be trapped.

  He heard a whimper and looked back. Its head drooping, the pup faltered, stumbled.

  “No!” Reaching down, Stefan scooped the dog up against his chest. Staggering beneath the weight, he stumbled across the street, tripped over a rock buried in the rank grass of the elevated rail bed. He could hear the Chechen drawing nearer, his breath coming in determined grunts. Gritting his teeth against exhaustion and pain, Stefan raced up the embankment, his legs reaching, his arms hugging the pup tight.

  Big and black and deadly, the engine bore down on them, its shrieking whistle a painful physical blast. Lungs bursting, Stefan sprinted across the tracks. He felt the sucking vacuum as the train roared past behind him, the earth trembling beneath him as he half fell, half slithered down the far side of the embankment, the pup at his side.

  At the base of the slope he paused, his heart pounding, his hands shaking as he drew the dog to him and buried his sweaty face in the animal’s thick, warm coat. Then he pushed up, the rhythmic clickity-clack of the train’s wheels loud in his ears.

  Looking back he could see an endless line of boxcars stretching out across the marsh, and he smiled. “Come on, boy,” he said to the dog. “Let’s go.”

  Salinger parked the silver Range Rover in the shadow of a ruined Teutonic castle and cut the engine. “That’s it.”

  Rodriguez studied the tidy stucco house halfway down the street. “Wait here,” he said, pulling on his gloves. He was opening the car door when the call came through from Borz Zakaev.

  “There’s been a new development,” said Borz in his deep, gravelly voice. “We were near Znamensk, showing the kid’s picture to some townspeople, when he cut the brake line on the Durango.”

  Rodriguez glanced over at Salinger. “You’re sure it was the kid?”

  “We chased him,” said Borz. “The little shit ran across the railroad tracks right in front of a train. By the time we got around it, he was gone.” Borz hesitated. “We’re going to need a new car.”

  “You can’t get the Durango’s brakes fixed?”

  “We didn’t know about the brakes until Zoya crashed into a cement wall. He’s okay, but the SUV’s a wreck.”

  “Fuck,” said Rodriguez. How much trouble could one fucking little shit be?

  A movement overhead drew his gaze to the cold expanse of northern sky, where a dozen or so ducks flew in a perfect V formation, their wings beating the air as they fled the coming ice and snow. Rodriguez smiled.

  “This kid, he thinks he’s smart. He thinks he just bought himself some time. But he’s not smart, he’s stupid. He let us know he’s alive.” He reached for the map, spread it open on the Range Rover’s console. “Where is this Znamensk?”

  “Just south of E77 and A229, on the railroad line.”

  Rodriguez followed the route with his finger. Most maps of Kaliningrad were shit. But this one had come from the Russian army. The town lay about a third of the way between Kaliningrad and Yasnaya Polyana. He smiled and folded the map away. “Looks like our little pigeon is flying home.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Keep checking the towns a
long the route. You may flush him out. When we’re finished here, the rest of us will move operations to Yasnaya Polyana.”

  Nodding to Salinger, Rodriguez closed the car door quietly behind him and started down the walk toward Anna Baklanov’s well-kept little house.

  31

  Izmir, Turkey: Tuesday 27 October 7:35 A.M. local time

  Serene and sun-kissed, the city of Izmir stretched out in a graceful arc around its wide Aegean bay. Once, the city had been called Smyrna, birthplace of Homer and site of more than three thousand years of Greek civilization. Then came the devastation and ethnic cleansing that followed World War I, and this new city, Izmir, had risen from the ashes as a symbol of modern Turkey, with wide tree-lined avenues and—for more than half a century now—a strong U.S. military presence.

  As they circled in for their landing, Jax was aware of October leaning forward beside him, her shoulders set in a straight, tense line as she stared out the window.

  “For some reason, I thought your father was a petroleum engineer,” he said, watching her.

  She shook her head, her gaze still on the city wedged between the mountains and the sparkling blue sea below them. “My stepdad’s in the oil industry. My real father was in the Navy.”

  “Then if he was stationed at Izmir, he must have been in intelligence.”

  She turned to look at him. “How did you know that?”

  “Maybe I’m psychic,” he said teasingly.

  She wrinkled her nose at him, and he laughed and said, “Most Americans stationed in Izmir are Air Force personnel assigned to the air base. But there’s also a huge listening station here that’s been operational since the fifties. So if your dad was in the Navy, and here, I figured he must have been in intelligence.”

  “Ah.”

  “How long was he stationed in Turkey?”

  “Two years.” She was silent a moment, then said, “He died here. His plane crashed in the Aegean.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s strange is that your buddy Andrei mentioned my dad when we were in Kaliningrad.”

  “Andrei is not my buddy.”

  A glint of amusement lit her eyes, but all she said was, “How could he have known about my dad?”

  “The Russians have always kept files on U.S. military officers, especially intelligence personnel. They get their information from everything from open sources like the Army Times to reports fed back to them by their own people.”

  “But my dad died when I was a kid.”

  Jax shrugged. “Andrei started out in the KGB. They might have run into each other.”

  She fell silent, her gaze returning to the city that now rushed toward them, its whitewashed walls turned to gold by the light of the rising sun.

  They stepped off the plane into a soaring, ultra-modern glass-and-steel airport terminal to find a tall, lanky man in a United States Air Force uniform waiting for them.

  He had the short-cropped sandy hair, tight jaw, and rigid bearing of a career military man. “Jax Alexander?” he said, assessing Jax with a flinty gaze and obviously finding him wanting. “Rita Catalano suggested I meet you.”

  “Ah. Dear Petra,” said Jax.

  The Captain frowned. “Petra?”

  “Never mind.”

  The Captain’s gaze slid past Jax to October, and an amazing transformation came over his face. His eyes widened. His sneer faded. Jax squinted at her, trying to see her through the Captain’s eyes. Sure, she was an attractive woman. But after two long flights and a day spent being chased around Russia, she was looking more than a little ragged.

  “You’re Ensign Guinness?” said the Captain, shaking her hand with cheerful enthusiasm. “I’m Lowenstein. Tom Lowenstein. I’ve got a car waiting for us out front. If you’ll follow me, your bags should already be on their way down.”

  He ushered them toward a nearby stairwell, where a uniformed guard toting a machine gun stepped forward menacingly. Lowenstein flashed his ID. The guard saluted and stepped back.

  “It’s always so nice operating in countries where the military keeps a tight hand on the reins,” said Jax as their footsteps echoed down the enclosed stairwell. “Little things like customs and immigration are just inconveniences, easily dispensed with in the right circumstances.”

  Lowenstein’s eyes narrowed. “Catalano wasn’t kidding about you, was she?”

  “Why? What did she say?”

  But Lowenstein turned his back on Jax and said to Tobie, “Is this your first time in Turkey?”

  She shook her head. “I was here as a kid.”

  He gave her a smile that showed two rows of straightened white teeth. “So you travel a lot, do you?”

  Jax turned a snicker into a cough and buried it in his fist.

  They walked out of the air-conditioned terminal into a blast of dry heat just as a black Mercedes driven by a Turkish policeman slipped in next to the curb and stopped. Jax drew up short.

  “This is your car?”

  “That’s right. I’ve already arranged an appointment for you with the owner of the shipbreaking yard up in Aliaga. He’s expecting us this morning.”

  “Us? Hang on. I don’t suppose it occurred to you that Mr. Erkan might be a lot more open to talking to the Ensign and me if we arrive without a uniformed policeman and a U.S. Air Force captain as escorts?”

  “Maybe. But it’s not happening. Things aren’t as cozy between Washington and Ankara as they used to be. The last thing we need is some cowboy coming in here scattering dead bodies all over the place. I have orders from the station chief not to let you out of my sight.” He opened the back door for Tobie and said to Jax over his shoulder, “You can have the front seat.”

  Jax indulged in a fantasy that involved wringing Petra Davidson’s neck and tossing her lifeless body in the wine-dark Aegean Sea. Then he slid into the seat beside the driver.

  The driver’s name turned out to be Mustafa. He was lean and short, with the bushy dark mustache that seemed a requisite badge of manhood in this part of the Middle East. As they swung in an arc around the city’s sweeping bay and headed north, he chain-smoked a series of short, foul Turkish cigarettes that made Jax’s eyes water.

  In the backseat, Lowenstein leaned in closer to October and said, “Do you ski?”

  “Some.”

  “We have a great trip planned to Oberammergau this—”

  “The shipbreakers yard,” said Jax, slewing around in the seat so he could face him. “Tell me about it.”

  There was a moment’s pained silence, then Lowenstein said, “It’s owned by a man named Kemal Erkan. His cousin is the Minister of the Environment, which is how he gets away with what he does. You usually see operations like this in places like India or China. They used to do it in Europe, but the costs of meeting health and safety standards got too high. Workers here have no health and safety standards, no Tyvek suits or breathing apparatus. Asbestos, dioxin—you name it, it doesn’t matter to these guys.”

  “It’s a big business?” said October.

  “It’s huge. Thanks to the Chinese, there’s a boom in the world’s steel industry. Only about two thirds of today’s steel comes from iron ore; the rest is recycled from stuff like cars and washing machines—and ships. You can get over a million dollars out of an end-of-life vessel.”

  “So this guy’s rich.”

  “You better believe he’s rich.”

  Jax said, “Does he do much business in pre-1945 steel?”

  “It’s one of his specialties.”

  They were driving along the coast now, through dry rocky hills covered with fragrant olive groves and rows of grapevines withering with the shortening of the days. Many of the villages along this part of the Aegean had become tourist destinations, attracting overseas visitors to their sandy beaches and clear blue waters. Not Aliagra.

  They came upon the shipbreaking yard just before the outskirts of town, its dirty gravel beach dominated by the looming half-dismantled hulk of what looked as if it
might once have been a cruise ship. Jax eyed the mustachioed Turkish driver beside him. “How about the two of you stopping at a taverna for a raki, and letting the ensign and me take it from here?”

  “Not a chance,” said Lowenstein as the Turk turned in through the gates and drew up next to a pile of rusty barrels and stained old urinals. “I’ll stay with the car. But I’m not letting you out of my sight until I put you back on that plane.”

  32

  The ship-or what was left of it-had been dragged a quarter of the way out of the water and up onto the beach. Someone had made the token gesture of casting booms around the worksite, but a spreading sheen of oil and debris fouled the water that lapped a nearby sandy beach. A haze hung over the site, the pungent smoke from old fires mingling with the fumes from a droning diesel engine.

  The ship’s superstructure had already been removed. Now, men with blowtorches were cutting into the sides of the hull. Two huge 150-ton cranes loomed nearby. One stood idle, but as they watched, the second crane rattled into action, lifting a slice of the hull and swinging it toward the beach. The din was horrendous, the hiss of the blowtorches punctuated by the reverberations of a sledgehammer at work someplace out of sight within the bowels of the ship. Jax could see one man wearing an orange hard hat. The rest were bareheaded, many stripped to the waist, their work-hardened bodies browned by the sun and smudged with black grease and carbon and gleaming with sweat.

  The office was in a battered construction trailer set on a weedy patch of high ground. Beyond it spread a vast open dump site where half a dozen barefoot kids were scrambling around, scavenging for anything they might be able to sell. Jax was turning toward the trailer when October touched his arm.

  “I think that might be our Mr. Erkan, there,” she said, nodding to where a balding, middle-aged businessman in an exquisitely tailored Italian suit, white shirt, and tie was wading in the dirty surf beside the idle crane. A passel of shouting, gesturing workmen splashed around him. “Something must be wrong.”