He watched with a smile as Iris reached down her dress between her breasts and removed a small microphone taped to her skin. She held it out for him to look at, which he did. Then he took it and crushed it easily in the palm of his hand.
The door opened without a knock and Pavel Petrov dropped the microphone fragments into a polished mahogany trash basket. A tall woman in a green knit dress came to the desk and set down a tray with a fresh plate of chocolates, although Iris, on the one hand, had not touched the first plate. Pavel Petrov, on the other hand, had devoured the small confections.
“I did not have time for breakfast,” Petrov said with a nod to the woman in the green dress, who retreated out the door. “I know it is not healthy to have a breakfast of chocolate and coffee, but it is very satisfying. I shall have a generous portion of chicken for lunch to atone for this.”
Petrov held out the plate.
Iris reached for a chocolate with a glazed cherry resting precisely in the middle of its raised circular surface. The chocolate did not melt between her fingers. She placed it in her mouth and bit down, half-expecting to taste a hint of poison.
“Good, eh?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Hmm, you want to begin. All right. We will begin. Whatever answers I give to your questions will not leave this room. If they appear in print, two things will happen. First, I will bring suit against the magazine or newspaper. I will win. I have almost endless resources.”
“Then why am I-?” she began, holding her growing anger in check.
“So that your curiosity will be satisfied and you will understand.”
“You said two things would happen if I published this interview,” she said, taking a bite of chocolate, happy that her hand was steady.
“Why, I will have you killed of course,” he said.
She was certain that he meant it, but she was not at all certain that she would not try to find a publisher who would be willing to print the story.
“Did you kill Daniel Volkovich?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You yourself?”
“Yes,” he said with a smile.
“And you want to kill Olga Grinkova?”
“Certainly,” he said.
“I see,” Iris said. “You are the head of a prostitution ring?”
“Business, a prostitution business. I provide a public service. The girls and women are well paid, given excellent medical care, and treated with respect.”
“All of them all the time?” asked Iris.
Petrov shrugged and reached for a chocolate.
“No, not all of them all the time,” he said. “Loyalty is sometimes betrayed.”
“And the price is death?”
“On occasion.”
“How big is your organization?”
“At the moment, six hundred and twenty-eight prostitutes in eight cities, with a staff of one hundred and eighty-two.”
“Income?”
“Approximately three hundred and forty million euros a year,” he said, eyes wide, examining her for signs of surprise.
“Why? You are already a rich man.”
“I could not resist the opportunity to employ business techniques of the highest quality to the rental of women’s bodies. Women are the product. Beautiful women mostly. We advertise exclusively through cabdrivers, bartenders, hotel clerks, waiters, and alert office workers.”
Pavel Petrov held up the coffeepot. This time Iris accepted his offer.
They sat drinking coffee and nibbling at chocolates without saying a word until Petrov said, “Did I tell you that if you reveal anything said in this room, you will be raped before I murder you?”
“No, you did not say that.”
“Well, consider it said.”
“And you will personally. .?”
“With great pleasure,” he said. “Will that be all?”
“Yes,” she said.
Petrov handed her the tiny tape recorder. Iris dropped it into her purse and rose.
“All too brief a visit,” he said, also rising and extending his hand. She did not take it. “I like you. And for that reason I will give you a present. Olga Grinkova can live. She can go back to Lvov and continue to work for the company. As long as she remains silent about what she knows, she will live unharmed. To ensure this, I will be sure that she remains frightened. I will promise the deaths of her mother, brother, sister, and at least one cousin. You can trust me. My word is good.”
Iris believed that he would do what he said he would do. She also believed that his word was good.
“Now I would like the real reason you do this?”
He made a soft clicking sound with his tongue, looked toward the window, and said, “The reason is not as satisfying as the excitement of heading an illegal prostitution business. I have always courted danger. I need it. It is built into me. That is why I am talking to you. Do you understand?”
“Not completely,” she answered, meeting his suddenly wild-looking eyes.
She chose at that moment not to raise the issue of his also being a murderer. She could see by the man’s face that such a mention would not be a good idea.
“Yes,” she said.
Petrov’s fingers were restless in his fists. He did not look away from her face, and then, quite calmly, he said, “Would you like to take a box of chocolates with you for the police officers waiting for you in the car?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good. I will get a small box for you. It will be ready for you by the time you reach the lobby. You can tell them that whichever one of them bites into the one filled with glass wins the prize. No, I am only joking.”
“You can always turn to a life of comedy. Good-bye for now.”
Iris left him standing behind the desk. She moved slowly, deliberately, through the doors and to the elevator. She pressed the lobby button and felt nothing as the elevator descended. In the lobby, a woman behind the reception desk held up a small, neatly wrapped box. Iris took it and walked out the doors to the street, where she got into the back of the waiting car.
“Did you get it?” asked Elena, who sat behind the steering wheel.
“Yes,” said Iris.
Elena pulled away from the curb and Sasha in the front passenger seat reached back to take Iris’s purse. As they drove, he reached deep into her bag and, pushing toiletries, notebook, pills, and makeup aside, lifted the flat bottom of the bag and carefully extracted an ultra-thin recorder. He pressed a button. There was a pause and then a voice, a man’s voice singing in French.
“He recorded over your recording,” said Elena.
The man on the recorder continued to sing.
“Yves Montand,” said Sasha. “ ‘Le Temps des Cerises.’ ”
“Then Petrov wins,” said Iris. “That gloating, sadistic-”
“I know a young man,” said Elena, almost to herself.
“A man?” asked Iris.
“A boy really,” said Elena. “He does magic with electronics. Maybe he can. .”
“Worth trying,” said Sasha.
“Can it be done? Can the original recording be gotten to?”
Pavel Petrov stood by his window. He looked out at the many new central Moscow office towers as he spoke, his back to the tall woman who gathered the coffee cups and the last few chocolates on the plate and placed them on a tray.
“Christiana?” he asked, turning to look at her as she picked up the tray. “Can it be done.”
“I do not know,” she said. “I doubt it.”
“We need certainty,” he said.
Christiana Davidonya was forty-two years old and had lived through many men and many dark days. She had never experienced certainty. She did not believe in it. She believed in having options and escapes. Pavel Petrov, she knew, believed in taking risks. He lived dangerously. He loved backing himself into corners and then using his charm, cunning, and position to get out of trouble. Christiana Davidonya believed that his neurotic behavior would
eventually lead to his downfall.
Daniel Volkovich had almost succeeded in making this happen. Volkovich was dead now, a victim of his own ambition.
Christiana had no desire to rise either in the ranks of the massive infrastructure of the company or within the growing reach of the prostitution ring. Her relative comfort, safety, and longevity were perfectly suited to her needs. She had spent time in jail. She did not wish to return. Ambition would lead to a cell. She was invested in Petrov’s success but feared what she believed would be his inevitable crash.
“There is no certainty the conversation was overridden,” she said, standing with the tray in her hands.
Petrov scratched his head. He trusted her far more than anyone knew, and he relied on her advice and companionship far more than he did on that of his wife, who now resided most of the year in their dacha forty kilometers outside the city.
Christiana, tall, dark hair tied back severely, was still a lovely woman. She had been one of the highest-paid prostitutes in the organization. She had her own apartment for clients who paid not only in rubles but also in dollars and euros. Pavel Petrov had slept with her many times over the years. Then he had hired her as his personal assistant. As a prostitute, Christiana had brought in a great deal of money and a mass of information about clients. Still, she was invaluable as an assistant. On the day that he had given her the job, he took her to bed to celebrate. She did not mind. In fact, she acknowledged something like love for Pavel Petrov, but love would not save him from his precarious behavior.
Christiana had dutifully and skillfully placed the button-sized receiver in Iris Templeton’s case. She had inserted it in the lining at the bottom of the case. Christiana’s skills, learned on the streets of Vilnius as a child, included picking pockets. This task had been no problem at all.
Now Petrov sat listening to Iris and the two police officers in the car. Moments ago he had leaned over and turned a dial on the small monitor that had been in his desk drawer. The conversation continued to record, but the voices no longer crackled from the tiny speaker.
“I think we shall have to kill her,” he said.
“And the two police officers?” Christiana added.
“An accident,” he said.
“Of course,” she agreed, already planning an exit from this madness and a flight, which she had long planned for, to Brazil.
She still held the full small tray.
“This is a request, not an order,” he said. “Would you like to spend the night with me?”
“Yes,” she said, and she knew that she meant it.
She would do whatever he wished her to do until the moment she could escape.
He felt the stirring between his legs and grinned.
“Yes,” he repeated.
Porfiry Petrovich stood looking down at the body of a disheveled man who was probably about sixty years old. The corpse had been covered by a tangle of branches, dirt, and long dead leaves, one of which had rested in his open mouth. Rostnikov knelt awkwardly and removed the leaf.
On Rostnikov’s left when he stood was Emil Karpo. On his right stood Paulinin, wearing a heavy coat and shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Neither Rostnikov nor Karpo was the least bit cold. Paulinin did not like leaving his subbasement laboratory even to go home.
Rostnikov had discovered the body not more than a dozen feet from one of the park’s makeshift bird feeders, which had been moved from a limb next to a nearby path.
Paulinin made a puffing sound through his pursed lips. “He has been here for a few weeks,” said Paulinin. “Like the others, his skull has been crushed from behind. I will tell you more after we get him to my laboratory, where eager hands of the medical examiner’s office are going through my notes and records.”
“What can you tell us?” asked Rostnikov.
Birds were chirping away loudly, possibly in battle. The afternoon was clear. The sun was shining.
“I can tell you his name is Julian Semeyanov. He came to Moscow from Neya. He had been a soldier, a sniper. He has a wife and two grown daughters and one grandson. He abandoned them all and came to Moscow to become a zoo worker. He became alcoholic, lost his job, and has wandered the streets for about seven years. His liver was in the last throes of existence when he was struck down. He had no more than a year to live. His favorite foods were sardines and shrimp.”
“And you got this from simply looking down at him?” asked Karpo.
“No,” Paulinin said with irritation. “I made it all up. How am I supposed to know anything till I look at him on the table? Search the area around here for evidence. Bring me whatever you find. Bone fragments. Bloody leaves. Whatever you find.”
“Yes,” said Karpo.
“He was dragged here,” said Rostnikov.
“Yes,” said Paulinin.
The dead man’s arms were at his sides, shoulders up.
“From over there near the bird feeder,” said Karpo.
“You will see to it that the body is transported to Dr. Paulinin’s laboratory,” said Rostnikov.
“Yes,” said Karpo.
Rostnikov looked down at the dead man, walked slowly to the bird feeder, and looked inside it. The feeder was full of a variety of seeds. Rostnikov reached in, picked up one round yellow seed, and placed it in his mouth. It was dry and fresh tasting. Someone was keeping the feeder full. Could that be done without noticing the dead man? Possibly. Rostnikov turned to Karpo, who was talking to Paulinin, who was now down on one knee, white rubber gloves on his hands, two fingers inserted into the open wound at the back of the dead man’s head.
“Emil Karpo,” he said. “Leave the body where it is for now. See that Dr. Paulinin gets back to his laboratory; then take a position where you cannot be seen and observe who approaches the feeder. Take photographs of anyone who approaches and follow them. Get names and addresses if you can.”
“I need this man now,” said Paulinin. “It may rain. It may snow. Every hour, every minute, he is left in the open means more information lost. How can he talk to me if you take away part of his essence?”
“It will not be long,” Rostnikov said, evenly taking a handful of seeds from the feeder and heading for the path.
“Where are you going?” asked Paulinin.
“Shopping.”
With that Rostnikov continued to walk to and down the path, eating birdseed as he limped forward.
“Inspector Karpo,” Paulinin said, probing more deeply into the wound with his fingers. “Sometimes I think your Chief Inspector is a little bit mad himself.”
Since Emil Karpo thought that the scientist he was talking to was more than a little bit mad, he said nothing.
The man stood at the side of a brackish pool of green water. He was a short, bald man of no more than fifty with a substantial belly. His face was the map of a man who had seen violence. Nose broken. Right ear curled. A faded four-inch-long white scar across his forehead. He had a large white beach towel wrapped around his nonexistent waist. Both of his hands were occupied, one with what looked like a small cucumber, the other with a cell phone.
The ride that had taken Klaus Agrinkov and Ivan Medivkin forty miles outside of Moscow had been particularly uncomfortable for Ivan. The front seat of the small red BMW forced him to ride with his knees up almost to his chest.
They had stopped before a large wooden door in the wall that surrounded the Saslov Community. The young man at the door, pink faced, hair short, wearing a cap with a Molson beer logo on it, leaned down to the window and recognized Agrinkov. Then he turned and slowly pulled back the metal bar across the doors and then pushed open the doors. Agrinkov pulled in.
“You will be safe here,” said Klaus.
“I should be in Moscow finding out who killed Lena,” said Ivan. “I should be finding him and beating him to death.”
“No, you should be here waiting to hear from me,” said Klaus as they walked up a muddy road. “I will keep the police away and try to find what I can about who ki
lled Lena and Fedot.”
“I do not care about Fedot. He and Lena were. . I do not care who killed Fedot.”
“But,” said Klaus, stepping off the path with Ivan towering over him at his side, “it is the same person.”
“Maybe,” said Ivan.
It was then that they saw the near naked man with the large belly at the side of the green-water pool. The man kept talking on the phone and eating his cucumber as he looked up and acknowledged the arrival of the two visitors with a nod.
When they were close enough, Ivan could hear the man say into the phone, “Yes, the Archbishop will be joining us. The church will be ready.”
The man looked beyond the pool and down a small, low valley where workmen were removing lumber from a large pickup truck. A few feet from the truck a small building, clearly a church, was somewhere near completion.
“It will be perfectly safe to bring our friends in the Duma. I have to go now. Visitors.”
The near naked man put the phone down, placed the cucumber in his mouth, and held out his hand to greet Klaus and Ivan.
“Good to meet you,” the man mumbled around his cucumber.
His grip was firm, not as firm as Ivan’s but definitely among the stronger and more confident that Ivan had encountered.
“Artyom will take care of you. We are old friends,” said Klaus, reaching up to place a hand on Ivan’s shoulder.
“You will be safe here,” Artyom Gorodeyov said, hitching his towel up a little higher. “Our people have already been informed that they are not to notice you. Do you know anything about us?”
Gorodeyov motioned for the two visitors to follow him up four wooden stairs to a deck of the one-story house they approached.
Ivan knew a little about the Union of the Return and a little about Artyom Gorodeyov, and what he knew from the newspapers and television was not flattering.
“No,” said Ivan.
“We were founded twenty years ago by seven former military officers, some of whom are now in important positions in the government. We are dedicated to returning to the time when Russia was respected throughout the world, a return to the order brought by Stalin, a return to the religion of our past. An expulsion of the Jews, who have been responsible for our failures since 1917. We are a peaceful fellowship of diverse but like-minded people determined to exert our political power and raise a new generation of the young who will have direction and principles.”
A Whisper to the Living ir-16 Page 11
