Murder in Foggy Bottom

by Margaret Truman

  “So soon?” Pauling said.

  “Yes. I have an early meeting tomorrow, and unlike you, Max, I didn’t have time to nap today.”

  Pauling laughed and stood. “Wonderful seeing you again, Elena. I hope we can do this again many times.”

  “We’ll make a point of it.” She kissed Lerner on the lips, glanced about the dining room, and left the table.

  “Beautiful as ever,” Pauling said, watching the gentle sway of her hips as she navigated the tables and disappeared from view. Elena Alekseyevna was more handsome than beautiful, Pauling knew: tall and sturdy, chiseled features, minimal makeup, and salt-and-pepper hair worn short, businesslike. She usually wore tailored suits, as she had that night, befitting her middle-level position at the Central Bank.

  When the two men had resumed their seats and ordered more coffee, Pauling discerned an unmistakable sadness in Lerner’s eyes. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I envy you. She’s a fine woman.”

  “That she is.” Lerner made a show of drawing a deep breath, sitting up straight, and smiling. “Let’s finish up, Max, and go take a bath.”

  Pauling hadn’t cultivated a liking for banyas, Russian public baths, which were as much a part of the national culture as borscht and vodka. He’d been to them a dozen times when living in Moscow, always at a Russian’s invitation. Most deal meetings had taken place in hard-currency bars and restaurants owned by organized crime, or secluded rendezvous points on the docks, or in dachas, summer country homes popular with those city dwellers who could afford second homes, which included the political elite, plus stars of movies, organized crime, and crooked business.

  But this night it was the baths, the Sandunov Sauna, one of the city’s most popular.

  “You don’t have to come in with me,” Pauling told Lerner as they approached the building on Neglinniy Pereulok. “Tell me who the guy is and go catch up with Elena.”

  “Oh, no, Max, wouldn’t miss it. Things have been dull since you left. Besides, this gentleman is comfortable with me. We’ve—” He laughed. “We’ve bonded.”

  “This is the banker?”

  “Yes. I originally called him just to ask whether he’d consider meeting a friend of mine. That’s you, Max. But when he said tonight was convenient for him, I thought you’d want to take advantage of it.”

  Lerner paid the admission fee and they were directed to a changing room, where they handed their valuables to an attendant, who asked whether they’d brought bathing suits, towels, shampoo, and sandals.

  “Nyet,” Lerner answered.

  The attendant assigned them small, curtained changing rooms and handed them the necessities they’d neglected to bring, including plastic robes. Each was also given a venik, a bundle of birch twigs with which to hit themselves, allegedly to get the blood flowing. They changed and met outside their cubicles.

  “We shouldn’t be here on full stomachs,” Lerner said.

  “Yeah, I remember,” Pauling replied, feeling silly in his outfit.

  “And no more than five minutes at a time in the sauna. Hate to have you pass out on me.”

  “Worry about yourself. Where are we meeting this guy you’ve bonded with?”

  “The sauna. Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  The sauna, a large room with three tiers of benches— the bottom level was the least hot—contained a dozen towel-clad men. Pauling’s dislike of Russian saunas came back to him—the steam, the heat, the smell of aftershave lotion and toilet water and perspiration permeating the room as it sweated out of the bodies. Bodies, he thought as he and Lerner went to an empty space on the lowest bench, next to an overweight man smoking a long, thick, black cigar. Fat bodies, Russian bodies, expanded by all that grain and sugar and fats and oils and potatoes and greasy meat; what was the statistic? Russians have a 70 percent higher caloric consumption than Americans, and America wasn’t a poster nation for svelte.

  “Lerner,” the fat man with the cigar said.

  “Mr. Miziyano,” Lerner said, extending his hand, which the banker shook halfheartedly. “Let me introduce you to my friend, Pauling.”

  Miziyano scrutinized Pauling before saying, “Zdrastvuti.” Pauling returned the noncommittal greeting.

  “So, Yuri, things are well?”

  “Da.” He struggled to his feet from the low bench and waved for Lerner and Pauling to follow him. They left the sauna and went to a small room with a table and four chairs. A bottle of vodka in a bucket of ice, and four glasses, sat in the table’s center. Miziyano barked an order at an attendant for food to be brought to the room. The men sat, and Miziyano poured their drinks. “Na zdrovia,” he said, raising his glass.

  “Yes, cheers,” Lerner said.

  They made small talk until a platter of snacks had been delivered. Once the attendant had left and shut the door, the corpulent Russian banker said, “So, your friend here, Mr. Pauling, is interested in missiles.”

  “Certain missiles,” Pauling said.

  “Yes, certain missiles,” Miziyano repeated. “The ones that shot down your planes.”

  “Those missiles,” said Pauling.

  Miziyano grimaced, finished his vodka, and refilled his glass, not bothering to offer to do the same for Lerner and Pauling. “A dreadful thing what happened to your airplanes, Mr. Pauling. Tragic. My heart was sickened when I read about it.”

  Lerner glanced at Pauling, who he knew didn’t have much patience with self-serving rhetoric.

  “What do you know about those missiles, Mr. Miziyano?” Pauling asked.

  A shocked expression crossed the Russian’s broad face, and he placed his hands on his chest. “What do I know about these missiles? You insult me.”

  Pauling smiled. “Not my intention, sir,” he said, “but I understand we’re here with you because you do know something—or someone who might know.”

  Miziyano shrugged and transferred food from the platter to his mouth. “I know many people,” he said, “and they know many things.”

  Pauling stood up, as if to go. Lerner said to the Russian, “Maybe this isn’t a good time to discuss this, my friend.”

  Miziyano smiled and gestured to the room. “What better time? I would be willing to introduce you to a gentleman who might be able to shed some light on this matter, these missiles.”

  “Might be able to?” Pauling said.

  Miziyano nodded and ate again, took a swig of his vodka. “Come, come, drink up,” he said.

  “When can we meet this gentleman who might know something about the missiles?” Pauling asked, sitting down, and wincing against the heat of the vodka as it slid down his throat.

  “A day? A week? I will let you know. Of course, he will have to be compensated for his time, huh?”

  “Of course,” Lerner said.

  “How much?” Pauling asked, his voice now with an edge.

  Another shrug from the Russian banker. “Let’s talk in round numbers. Your government is very anxious to find out about these missiles. I am right?”

  “Yes, you are right,” Lerner said.

  “Well, then, the information—if this gentleman is willing to provide it—will cost dearly.”

  “Round numbers,” Pauling said.

  “For the gentleman who provides to you the information? Two hundred thousand, although I am not certain if that would be his price. For me?” A low, guttural laugh. “My friend Lerner and I can talk about that at a later date.”

  Pauling started to say something sharp but Lerner cut him off. “A good starting point, my friend. You’ll call?”

  “Da. Good to see you, Lerner. Always a pleasure.” He ignored Pauling.

  “A shower, then home?” Lerner said to Pauling.

  Miziyano laughed. “Shower? The baths, Lerner, always the baths.”

  They left the room, ignored his advice and showered, dressed, and walked up the street. There was a fine mist in the air creating halos around street lamps as they walked in
silence until reaching a Metro stop.

  “I’ll leave you here, Max.”

  “We can share a cab.”

  “No, I prefer the Metro. Almost as good as Washington’s, clearly superior to New York’s. Join me, Max?”

  “No. I’ll enjoy a walk. Bill, I assume coming up with a million bucks isn’t a problem.”

  “No problem at all. The entire budget of the United States is at our disposal. So to speak.”

  “Good night, Bill. Thanks for the sauna.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Lerner took a few steps down into the Metro station when Pauling stopped him. “Bill, do you think our fat friend played a role in selling those missiles to the bastards who used them?”

  “Possibly. Money was involved, and he is, after all, in the money business.”

  “So he collects from both ends.”

  Lerner came back up the two steps. “Max, shelve your feelings. I’ve opened the door for you. Now you can hobnob with your people and get to the bottom of it.”

  “ ‘My people’?”

  “The criminal types to whom our fat banker friend owes his Mercedes and fancy dacha, his whores, and his pinky rings. Large, weren’t they?”

  Pauling smiled. “I didn’t see his girlfriends. Go catch your train, Bill. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  19

  The Next Evening

  Washington, DC

  Roseann Blackburn slammed the door to her apartment and came down the stairs with purpose. She stopped and looked back when the door opened.

  “Look, you know I didn’t mean it,” Potamos, wearing shorts, said from the top of the stairway.

  “Then you shouldn’t have said it,” she snapped.

  “So forget I said it,” he said, hands extended in a gesture of surrender.

  “That’s so typical of you, Joe; say something nasty, then say forget you said it. I’m late.”

  “We’ll have dinner after the gig?”

  “You’ll have dinner after the gig! Or before. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

  She waved down a cab and ten minutes later was seated behind the gleaming black Steinway grand in the large lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, playing an un-characteristically dark version of “It Had to Be You.” She finished that song and had just started “My Funny Valentine” when her eyes went to a cushioned chair across the room, near the bar. Seated in it was Craig Thomas, the Canadian embassy’s public information officer. He raised his glass and smiled.

  She was booked to play two forty-five-minute sets at the Four Seasons. At the end of the first, she went to the bar for her usual diet soft drink. Thomas sauntered up to her.

  “What happened to Cole Porter?” he asked pleasantly.

  “He’s alive and well. Next set.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Fine.”

  “It’s Craig, Craig Thomas.”

  “Oh, I remember your name.”

  “I wouldn’t be offended if you hadn’t. How’s your journalist friend?”

  “Joe? He’s as good as ever.”

  “Look, Ms. Blackburn, I’m not the aggressive type, the ‘I won’t take no for an answer’ type. I’m Canadian.”

  The comment struck Roseann as funny, and she laughed. “Canadians aren’t aggressive?” she said.

  “On occasion, I suppose. Maybe this should be one of them. Free for dinner?”

  “No. Well—”

  “Just a pleasant, nonaggressive, hands-off dinner. To put it simply, I’d like to know more about you.”

  “Not much to know. I play the piano and . . . all right.”

  “A preference in restaurants?”

  “No. I’ll leave it to you. I’d better get back.”

  “I’ll be here. ‘I Concentrate on You’?”

  “If you insist.”

  “The song.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  She finished the final set with a long medley, which brought polite applause from Thomas and two or three others. As she stood, closed the keyboard cover and saw him approaching, she had a fleeting moment of doubt. But when he arrived at the piano, smiled, and said, “Ready?” she simply said, “Yes.”

  20

  That Same Evening

  The State Department

  State’s officer in charge of educational outreach programs to area universities concluded his brief remarks and stepped away from the podium in the smallest of the eighth-floor diplomatic reception rooms. The forty people in the audience applauded, including Mac and Annabel Smith, and Jessica Mumford, who’d invited them along with a few other friends she felt might appreciate the moment and its meaning.

  The event was to honor professors of international affairs and diplomacy whose students had interned at State over the past year. Jessica, as an adjunct professor at George Washington, had one such student, a young Egyptian exchange student she held in high regard.

  “Must be satisfying to see your students go on to successful careers in diplomacy,” Annabel said.

  “No more so than seeing Mac’s law students succeed,” Jessica said.

  “The stakes are different,” Mac grumbled.

  He’d become depressed over the past few weeks, and Annabel recognized it because she, too, had been out of sorts, feeling a vague, nagging discontent that was always there even when events surrounding her were happy and positive. Like most of the country, she mused.

  The downing of the three commercial planes with the loss of dozens of lives, and a sense of the loss of control, had set the nation on edge, although few were introspective enough to realize why their mood had changed. Not that the terrorist attacks had sent the population scurrying to bed and under the covers in fear of another attack. As with the World Trade Center bombing, it was business as usual, it seemed, across the country—except that it wasn’t. Outwardly, perhaps; but inside, every American was a mix of rage and fear, confusion and anxiety. Depression—anger turned inward—was the way the shrinks explained it on the chatterbox TV and radio talk shows.

  In Congress, the White House, and every other agency, federal, state, and local, the outrage was expressed daily in speeches, press releases, and appearances on those same talk shows for which the attacks were the subject of choice, the only subject, it seemed, worth exploring. Whether out of true sorrow, posturing, or genuine mystification, the country couldn’t get enough of it, even though there was little new to get—the same video clips, the same sound bites played over and over while the talking heads tried to come up with different ways to say what had already been said.

  “I’m so glad you could come,” Jessica said to the Smiths as they prepared to leave.

  “Thanks for the invitation,” said Annabel. “Join us for dinner?”

  “Love to but can’t,” Jessica said. “I’m going directly from here to my office, catch up on things. It’s overwhelming.”

  “The attacks?”

  “Yes. The paper piles up. The questions don’t go away.”

  Annabel stepped into the ladies’ room before leaving for dinner, and Jessica accompanied her. While brushing their hair and touching up makeup, Annabel asked about Max Pauling.

  Jessica’s response was a sardonic laugh. “Max who?”

  “I shouldn’t have asked,” Annabel said.

  Jessica touched Annabel’s arm. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “Max is away.”

  “On business, or flying somewhere for fun?”

  “State business.”

  Jessica leaned against the edge of the counter and seemed to deflate. “Funny,” she said, “how the men in my life always seem to ‘be away.’ Skip—you met my ex-husband, didn’t you?”

  “Once, briefly.”

  “Skip’s work with the Bureau had him off somewhere ninety percent of the time. I knew that would be the case when I married him, but wasn’t mature enough to know how much I’d resent it. When I met Max—it was right here at State, at a reception—”

  “I know. I rem
ember how taken you were with him, although you tried to be aloof about it.”

  “You saw through that? Yes, I was taken with him. If he’d still been stationed overseas, in Moscow or someplace else, my antenna would have gone up. But he’d been assigned to DC, a desk job, like me.”

  “This latest trip—only temporary, I assume?”

  “I’m sure it is. But do you know what, Annabel?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not temporary in Max’s mind and heart. He’s been gone from the day he arrived in Washington. He hates being here.”

  “But didn’t hate being here with you.”

  “No, I’m sure not, but he—a man like that—men like that are only happy when they’ve escaped the mundane, when they’re being challenged by something or someone few of us encounter.” She looked up at the ceiling, then at Annabel and smiled. “Max told me he once had a boat. That was early in his marriage. He said he’d take his wife and kids out for pleasure rides and never enjoyed it. It was only when he was alone and the weather was foul that he liked to take the boat out, navigate through the fog, challenge himself. Know what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “Like Skip. They’re capable of loving, and they do love, but we’re more of a biological necessity for them. They love themselves more—especially when in danger. Max told me his former wife, Doris, is involved with an accountant. Smart lady.”

  Annabel considered Jessica’s comments to represent an overly harsh evaluation, and her unstated characterization of accountants to be too general, but didn’t express her feelings. Instead, she said, “Well, time to leave. Wish you could join us, and sorry you can’t make our party next Saturday.”

  “Me, too, Annabel.”

  As they walked from the rest room, Jessica said brightly, “Maybe that’s why I love birds so much, Annabel. They’re predictable, and always entertaining. They stick close to their nests.”

  Annabel rejoined Mac. They said good night to Jessica, rode the elevator down to the lobby, took note of the extra armed security guards at the doors, and headed for a Pan-Asian dinner at Germaine’s. It was after they’d arrived home at their Watergate apartment that Annabel recounted her ladies’-room conversation with Jessica.