by Thomas Waite
After placing Alexandra on a couch in the medical examiner’s office, the two policemen led her out under bright fluorescent lights to a body bag laid out on a table. Tattoo unzipped it from the top of the dead man’s head to his feet in a single flourish, as if he were a magician unveiling the final stage of an illusion.
But this was terribly real. Gritty beyond all measure, no matter how much Tattoo tried to make a performance out of it. The worst, though, was the reason she couldn’t identify the body: The dead man’s head was turned to the side—and missing all of its features. All she could see was bone and brain expressed through a gaped and cracked cranium, and the mashed inside of his torso—chest and stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, squashed and mangled and scarcely recognizable. His legs had been flattened by a force so powerful that even the femur was less than a quarter inch thick.
“Somebody pushed him into a garbage truck,” the nice policeman said. “We have a witness. I’m sorry, but you must look.” He reached past Tattoo to turn the head aside. “This is a better angle.”
And there was half of Viktor Vascov’s face: one nostril, one eye, a mouth cleaved neatly—almost surgically—down the middle. Alexandra’s father.
She’d had so few expectations of him, but never had she thought she’d end up down there identifying his crushed body on a gurney.
“Yes, I know him,” Galina said, turning away as she spoke, her voice shaky.
“Who?” Tattoo demanded. “Who is this?”
She gave him the name.
“You are certain.” Tattoo held up his hands flashing two peace signs. “V for Viktor,” he waved his left hand, “V for Vascov,” then his right.
She was still looking away, missing the show.
“Yes, Viktor Vascov. I know him.” She looked at the open door of the medical examiner’s office, making sure Alexandra was still on the couch. She didn’t want her to come out and see this nightmare face that belonged to her father. “He is my daughter’s father. Please, can we go? The smell.”
“Not so good,” Tattoo agreed, sniffing and smiling.
He zipped up Viktor’s body with another dramatic sweep of his hand.
Galina thought she would be sick. She stumbled away. Good Cop wrapped his arm around her back for support, then guided her toward the stairs.
“Take her to my office,” Tattoo ordered from behind them.
“Alexandra,” she said.
“She’ll be okay,” said Tattoo.
Galina pushed past him and lifted her daughter off the medical examiner’s couch. Each arm felt heavy as a ship’s anchor as she carried her up the stairs. Good Cop led her into an office with a large portrait of Stalin on the wall. He was making a brilliant comeback, even in death.
“Sit,” Tattoo said, apparently oblivious to the fact that she had already settled on a chair with Alexandra on her lap.
Tattoo swung his legs over his chair, macho style, and faced her, nodding to his left for Good Cop to sit.
“How did you kill this Viktor Vascov? You must tell me now,” Tattoo said, a wry smile on his face. “You are so small, and he’s so much bigger. You must be very good at it.” He scratched his neck, right by the crossed axes.
“What?” she shouted, almost jumping out of her chair with Alexandra, whom she startled enough to look around, panic once more straining the girl’s face. “It’s okay,” Galina whispered to her.
“What did you say?” Tattoo shouted. “There are no secrets in here. You must learn that quickly or it won’t go well for you.”
“I told her ‘It’s okay.’ That’s all. Because I didn’t do what you say.” She chose her words carefully, trying to spare Alexandra a reference to her father. “I would never do that. What does your witness say? I’ve been around people all day. I couldn’t have done this.”
“Last night you could have,” Tattoo retorted. “That’s when it happened. Our witness says a woman with dark hair, short, pushed him in.”
“How? How could I push someone so big into a garbage truck? That’s crazy.”
“Not crazy,” Tattoo said. “Because we are also following the money. Always follow the money,” he repeated, as if enunciating a principle of investigation that had never been uttered before, much less one that had become a cop-honored cliché. “It wasn’t like that in his time,” Tattoo added with a respectful nod at Stalin.
Galina refrained from saying the reason Russian police hadn’t needed to “follow the money” back then was that the Soviet state had been so impoverished there was no money to follow, though privileged Party members were often compensated richly in other ways. Often unspeakably so, even to this day.
“But now we have to follow the money,” Tattoo repeated. “So let’s do that. You just took out a life insurance policy on Viktor Vascov.”
“What?”
“Don’t play the innocent with me.” He opened a file and peered at it. “Yesterday. What a coincidence. And within hours, Vascov is dead and you’re supposed to get fifty million rubles. But my computer here found something else, a publicly registered document. It is Viktor Vascov’s will. Such a careful man, making sure his estate was delivered directly into the hands of his daughter’s mother. Isn’t that something? The executor is someone named Oleg Dernov. He controls when you get the money to make sure you are ‘responsible’ with it. That is the very word Vascov used, ‘responsible.’ So tell me,” Tattoo closed the file and leaned over the desk, “who is Oleg Dernov?”
As if you don’t know. As if this whole thing isn’t a show.
Good Cop eyed Tattoo: “Oleg Dernov is a son of—”
“A son of a what?” Tattoo asked.
“Of an oligarch. Petroleum and mining.”
“I know what they are.” Tattoo smiled, his every move as choreographed as a Kremlin dinner. “They’re all sons-of-bitches. But that looks like your problem,” he said to Galina. “My problem is your confession. We have a witness. We have followed the money. Everything leads to you. Would you like to make everything easy and confess?”
Only to stupidity, Galina thought. She wanted to kick herself for believing—if only for a moment—that Oleg would ever have done anything for anyone other than himself.
“Or do you think this Oleg Dernov killed your Viktor Vascov?” Tattoo asked, all his humor gone, his eyes as steely as the bars of a cage.
Good Cop shook his head almost imperceptibly, but Galina caught his eye and his meaning. Not that she needed the hint. She was sure Oleg had set this up, and it all came down to whether she would try to implicate him. If she did, she was dead. She was, in every sense, betting her life on her next few words:
“I can’t imagine Oleg Dernov doing anything like this.”
Tattoo’s grimace softened. “Maybe we need to talk to our witness again.” He waved her away. “Go. Take your sick kid and go home. You’re a rich girl now. Or would you like me to give you a ride?” He winked at her. “I’m a very good driver.”
She already had her phone out, dialing a cab. And Tattoo was already laughing again, closing a file as treacherous as his offer.
Oleg’s ring tone went off—John Lennon’s “Instant Karma.” He had just downloaded it. With oceans sure to rise around America, it sounded so good: “Instant Karma’s gonna get you . . .”
Lennon was the best Beatle. Ringo’s an idiot.
But better to be lucky than smart, Oleg reminded himself in the next breath.
Reluctantly, he forced himself to mute the webcast of the Midget World Windsurfing Championships in Manila, men’s competition. Dwarves in purple thongs were shredding tiny waves on tiny boards with tiny sails, using the surf to launch miniloops that took them twelve, thirteen feet in the air. Surreal. And these tykes were tough. Looked like little balls of muscles.
But the call had to be taken—from the medical examiner’s office.
; “She identified the body?” Oleg asked.
“Yes,” the cop told him.
“And how did that go?”
“It set the mood.”
“And when she heard about the life insurance and me?”
“She did not look so happy when your name came up.”
Oleg cut the line.
Not happy? He’d raised fifty million rubles for her, made himself the executor so she wouldn’t make foolish female money mistakes, like PP’s many wives had done. And she’s not happy? Not grateful?
Maybe he wouldn’t give her any money now. But he knew he could never deny Galina, that his generosity would win out, after all. He would give her an advance on the life insurance. Like a payday loan, like they have in America for all the unfortunates. He would have to charge interest and special fees, of course, but if he gave her a little cash now under those conditions, he could afford to be generous to others, too, and use most of the money to pay off the operatives in the U.S.—before their impatience turned into something he’d rather not consider. Besides, they were on standby to pay special attention to the children of certain sailors, should their fathers fail to cooperate fully. After satisfying the operatives, he could then place an equal amount in a Channel Islands account for Uno.
His own benefactors were holding back until they saw a Trident II hit the WAIS. Then the first $2 billion would be released to him. A trifle, considering the long-term profits they would make, but enough for him to launch the construction of the AAC plants, which would be Oleg’s real money mill.
He returned his attention back to the Midget World Windsurfing Championships where Mr. Universe, a muscled tiger of a man, was crowning the men’s and women’s winners. Both were sponsored by Neil Pryde, sailmaker to champions of all sizes, and both were built like fire hydrants with excellent glutes—like bowling balls—flossed so neatly by their matching thongs.
Please, drop trophy. Pick it up.
Oleg liked midgets. Maybe that was why he’d been so attracted to Galina. Not truly a midget, but pretty damn short.
He loved midget tossing even better than midget bowling. He once threw a midget more than a hundred feet. Won a big bet when, as he’d expected, a boaster in the hotel bar said nobody could throw a midget that far. Many thousands were bet against Oleg.
At gunpoint, Oleg marched the midget over to the elevator, and when they got up on the roof, he threw him off. Everybody paid up.
When you’re right, you’re right.
Maybe next year he would sponsor the championships right there in Russia. Extend a big Russian welcome to the little people of the world.
But those dreams would have to wait. He texted Uno: “So r u ready?”
“For prime time.”
“EST, U.S.” Better be, Oleg thought.
“Yes.”
“Gives u 10 hrs.”
“Gives me all I need.”
Uno would have to get a bonus, even if it cut into Galina’s share.
Galina fed Alexandra a bowl of her favorite cereal and tucked her into bed. Tomorrow, they would go to the oncologist, and Galina would beg.
For now, she returned to her keyboard. She logged on and typed in an elaborate code, planning to find the submarine hacker. After what she’d seen at the morgue, she’d made her decision. She couldn’t trust Oleg not to kill her. Viktor, dead. For Oleg, that was more than just money. That was a message.
She sat back and watched the screen open to something she never expected and surely had not programmed:
WHO ARE YOU? in big block letters.
Galina froze, wondering who had left the message. But what shook her up the most was the timing: she had been asking herself the same question over and over the past few days.
Who am I? What have I turned into?
CHAPTER 11
EMMA HAD BEEN QUIET on the drive from Tanesa’s. Lana had fought morning traffic, hoping she’d eke out enough time for her daughter to wash up, change, and head off to school. Or even talk, if she needed to. Emma’s life had been a jumble of late with her mother gone so much. Lana also needed all the time she could squirrel away to brief Holmes about her findings, and certainly wasn’t comfortable committing that information to the “hackisphere,” as she’d started to think of it.
But one of the knotty challenges of raising a teen was they often didn’t appear to want your attention—and were perfectly content to study their smartphones as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls—until a light went off in their heads, instead of on their screens.
This would be one of those times.
After they arrived home, Lana toasted Emma frozen waffles, her favorite breakfast, and remembered that it was the same meal she’d fed her on the day the grid suddenly went down. Not so much coincidence as consistency, because left to her own devices Emma would have eaten frozen waffles with oodles of butter and warm syrup every day of her life. Nevertheless, she got to finish her meal this morning without the lights going dark. Success of sorts. And a smile. A teen fed and fueled and ready for the day with a load of simple carbohydrates to wreak havoc with her blood sugar levels.
“Dad gets out of the pen tomorrow,” Emma said without preamble.
The pen? How much has she been talking to him? Argot already?
“Yes, I heard,” Lana replied as neutrally as possible, which is to say that her jaw was so tight she could have ground her molars flat. Of course, Lana knew Doper Don was getting out of the . . . pen . . . tomorrow. As a matter of fact, she’d been waiting to see whether—more likely, when—the subject would rear its ugly head with Emma.
“Where’d you hear?” the girl asked.
“His parole officer.”
“So do you know where he’s going to live?” Emma asked.
“I presume somewhere close to a parole office.” So he may be remanded to the . . . pen . . . as soon as possible.
“I do. It’s a beach house near Annapolis. He’s just rented it. He said he can’t wait to walk along the shore and get his feet wet again.”
Chesapeake Bay? Lana figured he was likely to get the whole of himself wet, given what she feared was on the horizon. Besides, a single man in a beach house? Donny boy wanted to get more than his feet wet. But Lana reined herself in. This was, after all, her daughter, so she posed a question instead:
“Does he follow the news at all, Em? There’s a horrible cyberterrorist threat to the oceans. And the Union of Concerned Scientists says that the Annapolis area is already at huge risk from rising seas. After the last big hurricane up there, it cost the government $120 million to fix things up. And that was before those cybernuts said they were going to blow up the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.”
Emma offered a knowing shake of her head. “Dad says that Antarctica stuff is just a big conspiracy of bankers and real estate agents trying to drive up the price of homes that aren’t on the shore because there’s actually a whole bunch more houses behind them.”
“Do you believe that?” Please say you don’t.
“You’ve got to admit, it could be true.”
Lana replied more calmly than she felt: “That’s the nature of conspiracy theories. If they don’t sound like they could possibly be true, nobody would believe them. Those are the same terrorists killing those sailors on the submarine.”
“Dad says that’s like the moon landing, easy to fake.”
“What?” Lana was losing it. She looked at the clock. Emma was going to be late. “Let’s save this for another time.”
“You could be a little more open-minded, Mom, like you’re always telling me to be. Anyway, he’d like me to spend the weekend there. Kind of a ‘Welcome home, Dad’ thing.”
“A welcome home thing? You’re not going anywhere near Chesapeake Bay right now.”
“So do you know something about that thing on the news?”
“Y
ou mean the conspiracy?” Lana raised her eyebrows.
“Well, I’m not saying you’re part of the conspiracy. Just tell me, is that what you’ve been working on?”
“You know I can’t discuss my work ever.”
“Look, Mom, if I can’t go to Dad’s new beach house, how about if he comes here for the weekend? He’s getting out after only four years for good behavior. He should be with his family.”
“He could have been with his family fourteen years ago, Emma. But he decided to be a pot pirate instead. And to do that he emptied out all our savings so he could fill a forty-four-foot sailboat with pot and punch his ticket to prison. We never heard from him again until last week. I think he should stay the hell out of our lives.”
“I don’t. He’s my father and I want to see him, and I can’t go stay at his place because you’re worried about a little bit of water.” With that, Emma stormed toward the front door.
“Stop, Em. I’m sorry. I’ll give you a ride. He can come here,” she added with such a false note of accommodation that her daughter rightfully rolled her eyes.
“Mom, you’ve been a big success. He’s not. Show a little compassion.”
That phrase stuck firmly in Lana’s craw: more of her own words coming back boomerang style.
“You’re running late, aren’t you? First period’s gym, right?”
“I hate it.”
“I’ll give you a note. Let me shower quickly and change.”
“Maybe you’ll actually like him.”
It wasn’t Emma’s words but the sudden longing in her voice and eyes that stunned Lana. “Meaning?”
Emma shrugged. “Even you admitted he’s good-looking.”
“Not that good-looking, and he’ll never be for me, so put that impossibility right out of your mind. He’ll sleep in the basement on the pullout bed.” And I’ll bring in a surveillance team so I can monitor his every breath.
“Not even the guest room?”
Lana shook her head.
“I thought you might say that. If you’re going to make the guest room off limits for my guest, then I’ll sleep down there and he can have my room. It is my room. Why can’t you show him a little respect?”
