Disposable Asset Read online

  His hand moved of its own volition to touch the parcel in his side pocket; a tiny tic stitched the edge of his mouth.

  As he neared Red Square, paved streets yielded to wine-colored cobblestones. A familiar smell cut through the diesel fumes and coal dust, making his nostrils twitch. Suddenly, he was back in his youth, watching his father stoke a bonfire in the small fenced yard behind their modest house. Dad had been burning leaves. Mingled with the scent had been composting brush and frozen loam. Soon it would be winter, time to dig out dusty ice skates from the front hall closet …

  A sudden cross-connection to a day some years later. Ravensdale had become a teenager, absorbed in his own dramas. One night on his way out, he had neglected to close the screen door tightly enough behind himself. His cat Pepper had escaped. The next morning Dad had rescued the mangled corpse from the street, wrapping it in a black towel. They had conducted a funeral near the leaf-burning spot: Dad officiating, Mom crossing herself. Nestled inside a tattered red Kinney shoebox, Pepper had been consigned back to the earth from whence he’d come. Ravensdale had managed not to cry – but he’d been close, cheeks twitching, lips quivering.

  After planting the box in the ground, his father had tossed aside the shovel, set one hand on each of his son’s shoulders, and looked him straight in the eye. It was a stupid mistake, Sean. Close enough that Ravensdale junior could see every fold of sunburned skin in his father’s neck, smell the Marlboros on his breath and in his hair. A stupid mistake, and Pepper paid the price. There’s no way around that. But everybody makes mistakes. You learn what you can from them, and you try to do better next time – and you move on. A man does his best. His best is all he can do.

  Not burning leaves, Ravensdale saw as he reached the edge of the square – burning flags.

  A small, unruly knot before Lenin’s tomb chanted, pumped fists, waved an effigy of the US President on a stick. Hand-lettered signs demanded retribution. A stars-and-stripes smoldered on the cobblestones. Ground Forces soldiers watched nervously, hands on the stocks of their weapons. Passers-by shot video with their phones. A surveillance drone buzzed far overhead, a small gray pinprick against the black sky.

  Ravensdale watched for a moment, stroking his salt-and-pepper beard. Then he turned east, crossing before the brilliantly lit facade of GUM, Glavnyi Universalnyi Magazin – ‘Main Department Store’ – where the body of Stalin’s second wife had been displayed after her suicide in 1932. He moved on to a wide side-street lined with car dealerships, jewelry shops, and upscale clothing stores. Approaching the driver’s side of the parked Jeep, he chirruped off the alarm.

  As he reached for the handle, a vehicle pulled up behind him, spraying slush. Doors opened. Something cold and hard touched the center of his back, dead center between the shoulder blades. A hand turned him around. He found himself facing three men, fortyish and heavyset, wearing woolen greatcoats and dead expressions. A flash of perverse satisfaction: no whitefish or kvas to be found on Tverskaya Ulitsa any more, but some things never changed. A KGB strongman by any other name …

  Behind the men, the rear door of a black Lincoln Navigator yawned open. Two enforcers urged Ravensdale inside with hands on elbows. The third slammed the door behind him. The SUV jerked back on to the potholed street, and he fell into a seat rather than spill across the floor.

  Seated beside him was a man of perhaps eighty years, with deep-set, luminous pale-gray eyes, a drinker’s veined nose, a full head of wavy silver hair, a gleaming Imperial Eagle ring. When the man offered a hand, his grip was surprisingly gentle, with nothing to prove.

  ‘Aleksandr Marchenko,’ the man said. His voice was soothing, pitched low. Beneath a neat goatee, he wore the tranquil, indulgent smile of the career interrogator. ‘And you, sir, have used many names. But the real one, I think, is Sean Ravensdale. You associate with some of the most infamous mraz i slovoch—’ scum and swine – ‘in our fair city.’

  Ravensdale said nothing.

  ‘Yes; so.’ Idly, the man inspected his red, gold, and silver ring. His luminous eyes flashed. The only other occupant of the Navigator, the driver, focused exclusively on the road. ‘What brings you back to Moscow, Mister Ravensdale, after so long away?’

  Ravensdale said: ‘Tourism.’

  ‘Yes? And of course we are pleased to have you. But there is no record of your arrival. Somehow you seem to have missed customs.’

  ‘You must be mistaken.’

  ‘And your friend – Andrew Fletcher. Would I find a stamp in his passport, I wonder, were I to search his room at the Marriott?’ In flashes of light coming through tinted windows, Marchenko’s unwavering smile looked like waxwork. ‘Perhaps I can learn the true nature of your business if I ask the vory Otari Tsoi. Or Senior Inspektor Vlasov, of Bauman Street. A sad case, Inspektor Vlasov. Once, a fine investigator. But now he deals with the devil.’

  Ravensdale held his tongue.

  ‘I have a theory, sir, which explains your presence in Moscow better than tourism. You will humor me, yes? So. I conjecture that you have organized, with the vory Tsoi and the corrupt Inspektor, some sleight of hand. A little bird tells me, you see, that the Inspektor is en route to Petersburg even as we speak. He has made arrangements to take into custody the woman who killed your defector. Presumably, he will escort her back to Serebryany Bor … and then hand her over to you.’

  They bounced across potholes, suspension creaking. Marchenko waited patiently.

  ‘Nyet faktov, tolko versii,’ answered Ravensdale at last. There are no facts, only theories.

  ‘Ah.’ The old man seemed pleased. ‘It is true. At the moment, theories are all I have. But respectfully, sir, I believe that there are facts, in this case, and that I have named them.’

  Ravensdale said nothing.

  ‘So, I beg you. Help me to understand why I should step aside, let you and the corrupt Inspektor and the decadent vory work your sleight of hand. Something, perhaps, about the lesser evil, the greater good. Hm?’

  Ravensdale said nothing.

  ‘Or some penetrating insight about the wickedness of our government. New Russia becomes ever more like Old Russia. Compared to what the Kremlin gets up to – at the expense of her own people! – you and your friends are like choirboys. Hm?’

  The bait sat untouched.

  ‘You have one of those faces, sir, which is difficult to read.’ Marchenko gave his ring an absent twist. ‘Perhaps I have things all wrong. But lacking the benefit of your perspective, I fall back to the most obvious conclusion. This woman has committed a critical offense against Rodina. Once captured, she must be held to account.’

  They turned a corner, hardly slowing. Two tremendous construction cranes loomed up into the night sky like gallows. A bus going the other way, running on an overhead wire, kicked up a sheet of dirty snow, shivering the Navigator with a wet slap.

  ‘Americans, if you’ll forgive me, are stupendous hypocrites. So much lip service paid to the ideal of freedom. Freedom, freedom, freedom. Yet you murder Blakely – for what? Did the genie go back into the bottle? No. The damage has already been done. And now, in trying to avoid getting caught with your pants down, what message do you send? The same one your country sends again and again: that you consider yourselves above your own rules. In my opinion, that is the true embarrassment.’

  A blasting stereo passed outside: The White Stripes singing about a seven nation army. The Navigator recklessly turned another corner, shifting Ravensdale’s weight in his seat.

  ‘Managed democracy is a wonderful thing … for the managers. Its greatest strength is a free press, when “free” is defined by the leaders. But a simple man such as myself can’t help but wonder: who is the true patriot – the one who sacrifices everything to preserve your precious First Amendment rights, or the one who blindly swallows doctrine?’ The gentle smile was lulling, hypnotizing. ‘You’ve done yourselves, with your handling of Blakely, a grave disservice. And now, with this sleight of hand, you will compound the damage. What�
�s really needed is sunlight and fresh air. Throw open the windows and doors. Truth will out.’

  Ravensdale said nothing.

  For an instant, the pleasant smile flickered. Then it returned, widening enough to reveal a single gold crown. ‘I consider myself a patriot, Mister Ravensdale, as you surely do. And I consider it my patriotic duty to interrupt your sleight of hand. I prefer the scalpel to the sledgehammer. But I use whichever proves necessary.’

  They turned another corner.

  ‘So. Of course, I might go head-to-head with the corrupt Inspektor. But then we risk your vory finding some other way to stir up trouble. Yes; so. I might easily deport you. Even more easily, arrest you. But neither guarantees that the woman will be held to account.’ Marchenko made a show of thinking. ‘So. I prefer cooperation. We must try to cultivate the habit, you know. Soon enough, we will find a common enemy in the Chinese.’

  Ravensdale started to speak; Marchenko silenced him with a raised hand.

  ‘Yes; so. When I realized that you were gracing us again with your presence, I made some inquiries. Seeking leverage; I will not lie. In response I received a report from a prison camp in Biysk, where a female detainee passed through eleven months ago. The description was right. The timing was right. The woman had since been moved to a location unknown … but it was encouraging.’ The pale-gray eyes glowed with their crafty inner light. ‘You will be skeptical, no doubt, because you’ve already made every effort to find your wife. But you, sir, work with mraz i slovoch. Everyone you know here is mraz i slovoch. And everyone knows them for what they are. And so, powerful though they may be in certain circles, their influence extends only so far.’

  Ravensdale told himself: this was how it worked; the carrot and the stick. But something suddenly leapt inside him anyway, thudding painfully against his ribcage.

  ‘To be honest, I was a bit skeptical myself.’ They turned a final corner, heading back toward their starting point. ‘But did I wonder, sir, whether I might be on to something? Whether the mother of your child might indeed be tucked away somewhere in Siberia – teeth rotting from her head, sanity fraying – so that she might be trotted out, at some point, as an example of what happens to traitors of the regime? And did I wonder what it might be worth to you to get her back?’ He shrugged modestly. ‘I did. And so I redoubled my efforts. A lifetime of favors, I called in. A long lifetime.’

  From an inside pocket, he produced a phone. As the Navigator pulled to a stop, he thumbed a button and then handed the phone to Ravensdale.

  On-screen: an image of a cramped, murky hallway. A phone on the other end of the connection was carried past drab fraying wallpaper, a drawn plastic curtain, the sound of a wooden spoon clanging in a metal pot. A hand worked a deadbolt. A door leaned open. Inside a room, a figure slumped across a bed. The brandisher of the phone twisted a goose-necked lamp, casting harsh light across her.

  The thing inside Ravensdale’s solar plexus gave a feathery flutter. For a few seconds he couldn’t tell if Sofiya – emaciated, pallor like onion skin, hair cropped almost to the scalp, collarbones pronounced as coat hangers beneath the zek’s uniform – was alive or dead. Then he saw her chest shallowly rise and fall. Her eyes cracked open, revealing two milky crescents.

  A newspaper was carelessly tossed; she flinched away. An imperative male voice instructed her to hold the paper toward the camera. She obeyed slowly, as if drugged. The broadsheet was the late edition of that day’s Izvestia.

  The connection went dark.

  ‘Yes,’ said Marchenko simply. ‘So.’

  Trembling slightly, Ravensdale moved to hand back the phone.

  ‘Keep it. There is only one contact inside. When you are ready, dial again. I propose, as you may anticipate, a simple exchange. You bring me the assassin, after the Inspektor has delivered her, and I bring you your wife.’

  For the smallest of intervals, Ravensdale hesitated.

  Then he nodded.

  VYBORG, NORTH OF SAINT PETERSBURG

  Eight hundred kilometers north, a drama whose resolution would crucially affect both Sean Ravensdale and Cassie Bradbury was already under way.

  Brushing long graying hair from his eyes, Sasha Kudryavtsev settled on to the couch beside Galina Ivanova. He pulled the coffee table closer, broke a rectangle of aluminum foil into two squares, and rolled one into a tube around a cigarette. After rolling the tube, he reached into dirty jeans, producing a cigarette lighter and a small plastic bag. He spread black tar on the remaining square of foil, poked the tube into his mouth, and flicked the lighter’s wheel. Kept the liquid moving to prevent congealing, chasing the vapor with the tube, inhaling deep. Grinning dreamily, eyelids flickering, he passed lighter and foil to Galina.

  And she took them. She ought not to – but she did. She worked the lighter, chased the vapor. And – there it came. She inhaled sharply. Oh, yes. There it came. Oh, yes, there it was. For just an instant, for just one beautiful instant, she was gorgeous and Sasha was gorgeous and all was right with this gorgeous, gorgeous world …

  He took back the foil and the lighter. After smoking again, he produced another baggie, this one of fine powder, and helped himself to a generous snort. His body tensed; he shook his head, wobbling his cheeks. Then he grinned again and took another snort, even more generous than the first. So it was going to be one of those nights. Good, thought Galina colorlessly. When Sasha got wasted enough she was spared having to play his silly little fuck games, with the whips and the wig.

  After he lay back on the couch, she took her own snort. She tilted her head back, noticing for the first time the view through the window: a wedge of moon, a brilliant sprawl of stars. There were more stars in the night sky, Sasha had once told her, than there were grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. He knew things like that. The moon and stars were backlit by shimmering green aurora borealis. Beautiful, she thought. Gorgeous. Looked as if Tinker Bell had floated past, sprinkling pixie dust on everything she passed.

  Suffused by a terrific sense of peace and warmth and well-being, Galina curled up on the floor at Sasha’s feet. Tingling, she listened to distant music. She sank deeper into a sweet, heavy bath. Then she kept sinking, through the floor. Nausea jetted sourly up from the pit of her stomach. She propped herself drowsily on to one elbow, looking for the baggie.

  They took turns, smoking and snorting. When they were about to start in on a new bag, she decided to check on Kolya. Finding her feet, she wobbled from the living room. In heavy darkness she honed in on the floating words ‘THIS ROOM BELONGS TO NIKOLAI’. Gently, she pushed the door open. Her son was breathing softly and evenly. Beneath a glow-in-the-dark Sputnik he slept coiled in a ball, clutching his blanket in two small fists.

  She retreated. Back in the living room, Sasha had cracked open a bottle of samogon. He took a belt, passed the bottle to Galina, and then lifted foil and lighter.

  She slid down next to him, weary eyes refusing to disengage from the flame. She gulped the moonshine. She listened to the whine of wind across the frozen bay, the measured breathing of her young son in the other room. The latter sound could make her shrivel up inside. Kolya deserved better than this. She should give him better. She should get away from Sasha. She should learn to be strong …

  But the foil was coming her way again. She took another belt of samogon and traded the bottle for the lighter.

  She sucked hard, holding the vapor in her lungs. Her heart scampered. The aurora borealis climbed in through the window, flickering and dancing, coating the furniture with pixie dust. She reloaded the foil, worked the lighter’s mechanism again.

  Almost too mellow now to function. The tube seemed as heavy as the wedge of moon outside the window. But she managed to suck down one more tremendous hit. Then another gulp of samogon. Then she made a fist with her left hand, tapped powder on to the declivity near the bottom knuckle of her thumb, and inhaled.

  Her heart shivered like a tiny bird with a broken wing. Her eyes rolled back. She slumped limp
ly on to the floor, a weak papery breath whispering from between lips already turning blue. A final lurching beat, and her heart stopped. In her last instant of life, she could smell the ocean beyond the bay, salty, like tears.

  PART TWO

  SEVEN

  SAINT PETERSBURG

  Something was in Cassie’s eye.

  She blinked awake, trying to wipe at her face with the heel of one palm – but the hand caught fast behind her back.

  Memories rose like popping bubbles. The world darkening from the edges inward; a shadow show of raucous voices and half-perceived images. She had been paraded, semi-conscious, before a line of men and women. Cameras and microphones, shouted questions, blinding lights. One woman behind a microphone had given her a complicated smile, tired and pained and somewhat sweet.

  A ride in a van, slip-sliding in and out of reality. Armed guards on every side. Cuffs biting pitilessly into her wrists. Head throbbing, nose clogging. Struggling to draw each breath. At last, experience had vanished again, like a sheet of paper burning away, and for another stretch of time there had been only darkness.

  Now she lay in a freezing concrete cell. Outside of a tiny barred window: night.

  She groaned. Her nose felt broken and so thickly caked with blood that she could hardly breathe. The wound on her temple had reopened and then messily clotted again. Every rib felt painfully bruised, if not actually fractured. She had a mother of a headache. And some damned thing was still in her eye.