The Devil_s Garden

by Richard Montanari

  “The son of Jakob and Adele,” the old man said. “How can I help you?”

  Aleks stepped into the inner office. “I am here to enquire about your services.”

  The man nodded, looked Aleks up and down. “Where are you from?”

  Aleks closed the door behind him. “I am from Kolossova.”

  Color drained from Harkov’s face. “I am not familiar with this place.”

  The man was lying. Aleks had expected this. “It is a small village in south-eastern Estonia.” He glanced toward the smudged windows. The buildings across the street had windows facing this office. He crossed the room, lowered the blinds, all the while keeping an eye on Harkov’s hands. He would be surprised if a man in Harkov’s world – a man with a sordid past of trafficking in human flesh – did not possess a firearm, a gun kept close at hand.

  Aleks reached into his coat, removed a cheap, packable raincoat, no larger than a pack of cigarettes. “We have business, Mr Harkov.”

  “And what business would this be?”

  Aleks slipped on the raincoat and a pair of thin latex gloves. “In spring 2005 you brokered an adoption of two little Estonian girls.”

  “I have been legal counsel for many adoptions. I do not remember them all.”

  “Of course,” Aleks said. The subject was talking. This was good. If he said one thing, he may say another. He opened the shoulder bag, took out a roll of duct tape.

  “How old are you?” Aleks asked. “That is, if you do not object to my asking.”

  The man considered him for a moment, his deeply creased brow furrowed. “I am eighty years old on my next birthday. In three weeks.”

  Aleks nodded. He knew this was a milestone Viktor Harkov would never reach. He did the math in his head. Viktor Harkov would have been too young to fight as a soldier in World War II. He was not too old to have been in a concentration or displaced person’s camp.

  “And you?” Harkov asked. “How old are you?”

  Lawyers, Aleks thought. He found no reason to lie. “I am thirty-three.”

  Harkov took it in. “What are you going to do here today?”

  “That depends,” Aleks said. “Are you going to answer my question? About the two Estonian girls?”

  “I cannot tell you anything. This is confidential information.”

  Aleks nodded. “With which hand do you write?”

  Silence.

  Aleks reached over to the desk, picked up a snow globe – a festive winter scene of what Aleks now knew was Times Square – and tossed it. The man raised both hands to catch it, favoring the right. He was right-handed. Aleks walked around the desk. He put his foot against the right wheel of the desk chair. Harkov tried to turn the chair, but was unable. Aleks took the snow globe from Harkov’s grasp. He then took hold of the man’s left arm, just below the wrist.

  He wrapped duct tape around the man’s chest, his left arm, his ankles, leaving the right arm free. This arm he duct-taped to the chair, leaving enough room for the forearm and wrist to move. Enough room to write. He placed a pen in the man’s slack hand, a blank legal pad on the desk in front of him.

  He finished by cutting off the man’s trousers and stained underwear. Harkov, naked now from the waist down, trembled in fear, but said nothing.

  “Do you know Radio Moscow, Mr Harkov?”

  Harkov glared at him, remained silent.

  Aleks would bet that the old man knew Radio Moscow to be the official international broadcast station of the former USSR, the station that ultimately became the Voice of Russia. Aleks had a different meaning.

  From his shoulder bag Aleks removed a pair of electrical wires, each about six feet in length, a pair of alligator clips, and a pair of large dry cell batteries. Harkov watched his every move with his tiny hawk’s eyes.

  Aleks lifted the desk telephone, loosened the screws at the bottom, removed the plate, and hooked the phone up in sequence to the two large batteries.

  He unspooled the wires, wrapped one wire around the man’s big toe – a wire that would act as a ground – and attached the other to the end of the man’s flaccid penis. Harkov winced at the pain, but made no sound.

  “Some have called this the Tucker Telephone, out of respect and courtesy to its inventor, I suppose. To me it will always be Radio Moscow.”

  Harkov struggled feebly against his restraints. Aleks could see bloodied spittle running from the corner of his mouth. The man had bitten his tongue.

  “It really is quite ingenious,” Aleks continued. “Whenever this phone rings, it will send a charge through the wires, to your genitals. I understand it is quite painful. We used it often in Grozny, but then it was only for men who had been fighting for a cause, a cause they believed in.” Aleks took out one of his prepaid cellphones.

  “You, on the other hand, are guilty of something far worse. You stole a child from its mother. In all of nature, this is punishable by death. I do not see why human beings should be any different.”

  Aleks held up the cellphone.

  “You can’t do this,” Harkov breathed.

  “Two little girls, Mr Harkov. Where did they go?”

  “I… I help people,” Harkov said. His body began to tremble even more violently. Sweat dripped from his brow.

  “Have you ever thought for one moment that you might be destroying lives on the other end of your deals?” Aleks touched three numbers on his cellphone.

  “These children are unwanted.”

  “Not all of them.” Three more numbers.

  “You don’t understand. People come to me and they are desperate for children. They give them good homes. A loving environment. Many people say they will help. I take action. I make a difference.”

  “Two little girls from Estonia,” Aleks said, ignoring him. His finger hovered over the final digit.

  Harkov thrashed in his chair. “I will never tell you. Never!”

  “Moscow calling, Mr Harkov.” Aleks hit the last number. Seconds later the telephone on the desk rang, sending current along the wires.

  A flash of orange sparks ignited Harkov’s pubic hair. The man screamed, but it was soon muffled by a greasy garage rag Aleks shoved into his mouth. Harkov’s body shuddered for a moment, then fell limp. Aleks lifted the handset, replaced it. He snapped an ammonia capsule beneath his nose. The man came to. Aleks pulled out the rag, got close to his ear.

  “Tell me where the files are located. Two little Estonian girls. Little girls you had stolen from their mother’s womb. Girls you had a man named Mikko Vanska spirit away in the night. I want to know the name and address of the people who adopted them.”

  Nothing. Harkov’s head lolled on his shoulders.

  Aleks shoved the rag back into the man’s mouth, dialed again. Again the phone rang. Harkov shrieked in pain. This close, Aleks could smell the cooking flesh. He also knew that Harkov’s bowels had released.

  Another ammonia capsule.

  Aleks walked to the window for a moment. Harkov mumbled something into his gag. Aleks returned, tapped the man’s right hand. Harkov wrote a scribbled word on the pad. Unreadable. Aleks hit redial on his phone. Another jolt. This time the tail of Viktor Harkov’s yellowed dress shirt caught fire. Aleks let it burn for a second, then doused the flame.

  The office was becoming a landfill of offensive odors. Greasy flesh, burning hair, feces, sweat. Aleks pulled Harkov’s head back. The man’s face was bathed in perspiration. Aleks pinched the fleshy part of the man’s nostrils until he came back to consciousness.

  “Two little girls,” Aleks repeated.

  Nothing.

  Aleks reached into the bag, pulled out a small alligator clip. He detached the clip from Harkov’s genitals, and connected the wire to the smaller clip. This he attached to one of Harkov’s eyelids.

  On the desk was a photograph taken perhaps sometime in the 1970s, a picture of a thin, nervous looking teenaged boy.

  “This is your son?” Aleks asked.

  Harkov nodded slightly.


  “If I do not find the people I am looking for, I will pay this man a visit. It is far too late to save yourself – indeed, the account of this day was written years ago when you crossed my path – but you have the opportunity, right now, to give me what I want. If you do, you have my word that no harm will come to him.”

  Aleks removed the gag from the old man’s mouth, but Harkov said nothing.

  Once more, Moscow called Viktor Harkov. The charge burned away the entire eyelid in a flash of bright blue flame.

  Two minutes later, the old man told Aleks everything.

  Aleks found the files in the bottom drawer of the steel cabinet in the corner of the outer office. Inside the cabinet he noticed the remains of a long-ago forgotten lunch, a moldy brown paper bag dotted with rodent stool. In this tableau lived the horrors of old age, Aleks thought, of its infirmities and disease and trials, in here were the whispers of these days before death, a feeling he would never know, a…

  … triumph over eternity in the moment he strides up the hill, the field of corpses thick beneath his feet, the screams of the dying a dark sonata in the distance. The stone farmhouse has taken many mortar rounds, its pitted facade now a defiant intaglio. Inside he knows he will find his answers…

  Aleks glanced out the window, at the street. Kolya sat in the Hummer, a pair of earphones in his ears. He smoked a cigarette. The world continued to turn. The world was not going to miss this man who traded in human flesh, who brokered children in the night.

  Aleks turned back to the dead man, took out his knife, and finished his work.

  Beforeopening the door, Aleks looked at the documents. There were two files, two families with twin girls. Both were in the right time frame from four years earlier. Both were brokered through Helsinki. There was no further detail on the children, other than their gender and their date of passage to the United States.

  And, most importantly, their names and addresses.

  Before he stepped into the hallway Aleks turned back to the room. He had not touched anything without his gloves on. He had worn the plastic raincoat and his ball cap nearly the entire time. Although the offices were covered in dust, the path from the door to Viktor Harkov’s desk was swept clean. Aleks had not left shoeprints in the dust. Only the most sophisticated of forensic evidence gathering would reveal that he had ever been in these rooms, and even if a man like Viktor Harkov warranted such attention, Aleks would be long gone by the time he was identified.

  Still, he had now committed murder in a country not his own. He could never undo this, or take it back. Everything had changed.

  In Estonia he knew where all the bolt-holes were, had several identities in several safe houses along the Narva River. He knew how the police operated, how the politicians operated, who could be trusted, who could be bought. He knew the when, the where, the how and, most importantly, the how much. This was different. This was the United States.

  He walked slowly down the hallway to the stairs. He did not use the handrail. When he reached the back door he used his shoulder to open it. The alley behind the building was empty. Moments later he rounded the corner and put the plastic bag containing the bloody raincoat and latex gloves in a trashcan.

  When he slipped into the vehicle, Kolya considered him, but did not say a word. Aleks nodded. The Hummer pulled slowly into the stream of traffic.

  They idled in a parking lot of a McDonald’s. Aleks scanned the files. He wrote an address on a piece of newspaper, showed it to Kolya, who entered the address into his GPS system. Aleks committed it to memory.

  “This is not far,” Kolya said. “Maybe one hour. Maybe less, depending on traffic.”

  Aleks looked at his watch. “Let’s go.”

  They left the city and drove along a magnificent river. It reminded Alex of the Narva. He looked around, at the tidy houses, the manicured lawns, the shrubs, trees, flowers. He could settle here. If this was where his Anna and Marya had grown up, they would be happy in Kolossova.

  At just after six PM they found the address. The house was set far back from the road, barely visible through the trees, approached by a long winding driveway that snaked through the woods, bordered by early spring flowers and low undergrowth. There was a single car in the driveway. According to Kolya, it was a late model compact. Aleks did not know anything about current American models. They all looked exactly alike to him.

  Except for Kolya’s Hummer. This was a gaudy, pretentious tank of a vehicle. It stood out.

  America, Aleks thought. He lowered his window, listened. Nearby someone was cutting their lawn. He also heard the sound of a little girl singing. His heart began to race.

  Was this Anna or Marya?

  Aleksander Savisaar glanced at the gloaming sky. The sun would soon set fully.

  They would wait for darkness.

  TEN

  Abby watched the girls at the dining-room table. They had eaten dinner, just the girls, and done an assembly-line job of rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher.

  When they were done they put two pots of water on the stove, hard-boiling two dozen eggs. The windows were soon covered in mist. Emily drew a smiley face on one of them.

  Twenty minutes later the dining-room table was covered in newspaper, mixing bowls, wire dippers, decals, and egg cartons. The kitchen smelled of warm vinegar and chocolate. It brought Abby back to her childhood, she and Wallace coloring eggs, hand-weighing chocolate bunnies to see which ones were hollow, which ones solid, fighting over the Cadbury Cremes, spiriting away marshmallow peeps.

  When Abby had learned, years earlier, that she could not have children, this was one of the scenes that flashed darkly through her mind, a scene that would never be, along with Christmas mornings, Halloween nights, birthday parties with too-sweet cakes bearing candles shaped in the forms of 2, 3, 4…

  It was one of the million blessings that were Charlotte and Emily.

  At six-thirty the doorbell rang. Abby wasn’t expecting anyone. She crossed the kitchen, into the foyer, looked through the peephole in the front door.

  It was Diane, her neighbor from across the street.

  Diane Cleary was a hotshot realtor in her early forties. She was slender and toned, had collar-length dark-blond hair, and was wearing a navy blue suit that probably cost more than the left side of Abby’s entire closet. Her son Mark was a junior at Princeton, her to daughter Danielle was in kindergarten. Abby didn’t know her well enough to ask about the disparity, but Diane and Stephen Cleary had one of those marriages that were either hell on earth, or textbook romance perfect. Regardless, Diane had the kind of metabolism that allowed her to eat anything and everything – Abby lost count at four pieces of birthday cake at the previous day’s party – and not gain an ounce. She hated her.

  Abby opened the door. “Hey.”

  “Any cake left?” Diane asked with a wink. “Kidding.”

  Diane stepped inside, made a beeline for the kitchen.

  “Time for coffee?” Abby asked.

  “No thanks. I’m showing a condo in Mahopac.”

  “Say hi to Mrs Cleary,” Abby said to the girls.

  “Hi,” Charlotte and Emily said, neither looking up from their egg-decorating chores.

  “You know you have the cutest girls in the world.”

  Now the girls looked up and smiled. Such little divas.

  “You guys have to stop getting cuter every day,” Diane added. “You have to save some cute for the rest of us.” Diane looked at her own face in the toaster. A funhouse visage looked back. “I need all the cute I can get.”

  Abby could almost hear the lead sinker break the surface of the water. Diane Cleary spent half her time fishing for compliments, the other half refusing to reel them in.

  “Oh, I don’t think you have any problems in that department,” Abby said, taking the bait.

  Diane smiled. “So who was that guy who looked like a younger, taller Andy Garcia at the party?”

  “That was my husband’s friend Tommy. They
work together.”

  “He’s a prosecutor?”

  “Yep.”

  “Maybe I’ll get arrested.”

  Abby laughed. “You’ll have to do it in the city.”

  “Speaking of which,” Diane began, looking out the kitchen window, at the absolute blackness of the night, “I’ve never asked you this, but do you miss living in the city?”

  Abby didn’t have to think about it too long. “Well, except for the noise, pollution, crime, danger, and general apathy, not so much. On the other hand, I’m not that suburban. I haven’t burned my little black dresses yet.”

  Diane laughed, glanced at her watch, which probably cost the entire right side of Abby’s closet. “Anyway, I just wanted to remind you about tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow? Abby wondered.

  “The block sale?” Diane asked.

  “Oh, right, sorry.” Twice a year a dozen or so of the neighborhood families pooled their junk and had a block garage sale, hosted by the luck, or misfortune, of the draw. Abby had done her time the previous sale. “I have the boxes in the garage.”

  “Great,” Diane said. “If you have any big stuff let me know. Mark and some of his friends are coming in for Easter and they’ll be happy to haul it over.”

  Abby desperately wanted to get rid of the old waterfall buffet they’d had since she and Michael were married, but it was one of the few things Michael had left that belonged to his parents. It was probably not the right time, or the right way, to dispose of it. “I’ll let you know.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye, girls,” Diane said.

  “Bye,” they said.

  Abby made a note about the block sale and put it on the refrigerator with a Care Bears magnet. She was getting terribly forgetful in her old age.

  Twenty minutes later, with two dozen brightly colored eggs drying on the kitchen counters, the girls turned their attention to coloring an Easter egg drawing. Or, more accurately, a portion of an egg. Emily was drawing the top half; Charlotte the bottom. Even this was not entirely accurate. They were each drawing what would turn out to be a third of an egg – top and bottom – leaving out the center.