Disposable Asset Read online

  An old woman’s watery tear tracked down one cheek. She gave her head a small shake. Had Ivan truly been here, he would have shaken his head back at her. You’re still breathing, Mariya Zaslavsky, he would have said. As long as you’re breathing, you have more to offer the world than carpets which never get sold and food which never gets eaten.

  Maybe. The Lord worked in mysterious ways. Even a fat lonely old widow, friendless, drinking too much, spending nights alone with a loom and a bottle and a stove and old memories … even she may have had something to offer.

  She blinked. The pots, bubbling aromatically, needed stirring. The loom sat forgotten by one hand. Grunting, she pushed out of the chair.

  By the time she doused the light, the small cottage had filled with the smells of meat and dough and cloves and ravioli and tea.

  Sitting back down in the damask chair, she let her eyes close. The small radio she kept playing at all hours murmured weather, traffic, news. Mariya sighed, hardly listening. Clear and cold, traffic jams on the M-10 after the apprehension of a terrorist, a groundswell of political demonstrations, a rising star in women’s tennis making waves with her skimpy outfits—

  A window in the kitchen scraped in its frame.

  Mariya’s hearing was as good as her appetite – both had survived a long life with minimal wear – and she knew the sound of a break-in when she heard it. It had happened twice already, since Ivan’s death, always during these early-morning hours after she finally turned off the lamp. Not for nothing was Saint Petersburg known as the Crime Capital of New Russia. Both times the intruders had been young drug addicts, looking for a few kopecks with which to score their next fix, more deserving of pity than of fear. Mariya had given the trespassers food, a few coins, and several items of warm clothing, and they had left humbly, guiltily, good kids at heart, as baffled by the twists of fate that had brought them to the mystifying present as was Mariya herself.

  Without stirring from the chair, she watched the kitchen doorway, the food sitting on the table. A breath of chilly air wafted through the room. The window scraped quietly back into place. Furtive mouse-steps as the intruder crossed the floor. Then a young woman appeared, falling to the food. She was not much over twenty, dirty, with hair poorly cut and badly dyed. One of the besprizornye, thought Mariya – the countless orphans and waifs and runaways who lived in sewers and public urinals and cemetery vaults.

  Moving carefully, Mariya found half-moon glasses on a fine gold chain around her neck. She took another, more careful look at the girl. Quite lovely, beneath the mess – but not at her best. A bit shaky. Dressed in a sodden coat, a bad idea in this weather. In fact, now that Mariya looked more closely, she saw bruises – and crusts of blood—

  The girl collapsed across the table, spilling dishes, crumpling after them on to the floor.

  SEREBRYANY BOR

  Ravensdale’s hands knotted into fists.

  After a few seconds he made them loosen, leaving small bloodless half-moons printed across his palms. He looked at Tsoi closely. The gangster held himself erect, maintaining conscientious eye contact. The cast of the body wall suggested candor. But, of course, this, perhaps Ravensdale’s closest living friend in the world, was a professional criminal, a man who lied for a living.

  Nevertheless, Ravensdale trusted Otari Tsoi – more than he did Andrew Fletcher, and more, he reflected wryly, than Fletcher should trust him. The Vorovskoi Mir had forsaken State-given privileges, during the corrupt Communist regime, in favor of something more primal; they maintained their own community, enforcing their own system of justice and code of moral conduct. They kept a common fund called an obshchak, where profits were pooled and then distributed, not just among working thieves but among the families of those who were dead or in jail. In the Thieves’ World, honor – a peculiar, selective, brutal sort of honor, but honor nonetheless – meant everything. By contrast, Andrew Fletcher and his ilk subscribed only to the eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Not Get Caught.

  ‘How?’ asked Ravensdale finally.

  ‘Broke a window in her holding cell. Used the glass to kill two guards.’ Tsoi moved his shoulders helplessly. ‘She was handcuffed; they got sloppy. No excuses. But Inspektor Vlasov remains in Pieter. He can supervise the recovery effort in person. And the Petersburg police are notoriously ruthless. She will not get far.’ He sank on to the foot of the bed, let a moment spool away before adding: ‘You have your own concerns here, tovarish.’

  For an instant, Ravensdale thought he meant Sofiya; he felt himself flush. Then he realized that the gangster referred only to his own interests: the imminent strelka, the summit of organized crime leaders.

  ‘Her escape,’ allowed Tsoi after a moment, ‘is a profound disappointment. But we have many balls in the air. The fumbling of one must not be allowed to disrupt all the others.’ He toyed with a shiny black button on one cuff. ‘To be honest, I considered not telling you. No need to risk distraction at this crucial time. And the problem will doubtless be rectified soon enough. But I’ve always been truthful with you. To a fault, perhaps.’

  Ravensdale looked at his hands, closing again of their own volition into fists. He thought of Sofiya – sawdust complexion, blistered gray lips, hair shorn like an animal’s, collarbones standing out beneath the zek’s uniform. He thought of the pytka, the torture, she had doubtless endured at the hands of interrogators after her return to the Motherland. Stainless steel cables, cedar splinters beneath fingernails, nerve bundles bludgeoned with truncheons. And the pytka, if he failed to rescue her, still to come …

  He shoved the image away. Had not Orpheus ruined everything, right at the moment of truth, by turning to look back at his wife?

  ‘The point is,’ Tsoi said, ‘you can believe me now when I promise you: she will not get far. You must concentrate, my friend, on delivering your end of the bargain.’

  Tightly, Ravensdale nodded.

  The restaurant created, in the center of Moscow, the atmosphere of a large country house, with exposed brick walls and rustic floor lamps. Now, on the leading edge of the lunch hour, a placard out front declared the venue closed for a private event.

  Ignoring the card, Ravensdale knocked commandingly. He wore a suit of blended polyester and wool, procured by Tsoi, suitable for a mid-level apparatchik. Before leaving Serebryany Bor, he had inspected his reflection at length in a mirror. Looking back had been an anonymous government functionary, a long-time middle manager, whose face betrayed appropriate world-weariness, and nothing else.

  The door opened. ‘Ischezni,’ said a man rudely – Get lost.

  Ravensdale showed his papers. The man leaned forward, heavy brow lowering. Moments later, a prim maître d’ appeared behind him. ‘Sir, we’re closed for a private—’

  ‘Minsotsrazvitiye,’ announced Ravensdale: Ministry of Health and Social Development.

  The maître d’ stiffened; his Adam’s apple worked.

  Drifting through the doorway: soft canned Italian music, strings and mellifluous vocals, Ol’ Blue Eyes crooning about strangers in the night. The smells of red sauce and cooking oil and Parmesan cheese. Glimpses of a coat check, fresh yellow flowers against robin’s-egg blue tablecloths, framed oil paintings against ruddy brick walls.

  The maître d’ stepped closer. ‘Come on,’ he said reasonably. ‘Karlo—’

  ‘Karlo’s been transferred. Now you’ve got me to deal with.’

  ‘Let’s be sensible. Right now is not—’

  ‘Let me in, comrade, or you’re shut down. Effective immediately. Sensible enough?’

  ‘Come back at four o’clock.’

  ‘And give you time to scour the kitchen? Forget it.’

  ‘You must understand. Some of our—’

  Ravensdale reached threateningly for a pocket. The maître d’ stopped him with a quick hand, hissed: ‘Go around the back.’

  The alleyway was littered with ice-encrusted garbage. A trash can had fallen over, and Ravensdale told himself that he hadn’t really
seen the petrified body of a dead rat inside. The walls to either side of the restaurant’s back door were sprayed with graffiti. The smells, thank God for small favors, were deadened by frost.

  Upon stepping through the rear entrance, Ravensdale was stopped and searched by a crew-cut man wearing a sober dark suit. After losing possession of phone, wallet, and wristwatch, he was searched by a crew-cut man wearing crisp white and a red carnation in a lapel. Then by a crew-cut man wearing black leather, with flat, glossy eyes.

  The maître d’ stood by a stove, watching. Having run the gauntlet, Ravensdale arrowed toward him, asked hotly: ‘These men work for the restaurant?’

  ‘Private security. We’re hosting an event.’ A shrug, a hint of a sneer. ‘I told you it was not a good time …’

  ‘Off to a bad start, comrade. These gorillas are blocking escape routes, in case of emergency. And the outdoor area is not to be used for all-purpose dumping of trash.’

  Raised eyebrows conveyed mild disbelief. ‘We’ve never had a problem before.’

  ‘Karlo cut corners. That’s why he’s gone. I’ll need to see all past records of inspection reports.’

  Walking the kitchen with the maître d’ sticking close, Ravensdale scowled steadily, noting aloud inadequate ventilation, greasy floors, sharp corners, overloaded electrical sockets, soiled dish-towels. He counted nine flat tops in the kitchen. At least five remained at all times between him and the dining room. Civilians included three cooks, two waiters moving in and out, and the maître d’. Fifteen altogether, in addition, of course, to the five targets up front, and whatever guards and hangers-on attended them. And then there were the families back home: the sisters and brothers and children and wives …

  The old Ravensdale would not have indulged this line of thought.

  Drawing near the flap doors leading to the dining room, he paused to check the batteries in a smoke detector, sifting murmuring voices from the background noise of clinking silverware and cocktail jazz as he did so. Genrikh Volovich, the leader of the Balashikhiniski gang, was complaining about a shipment which had recently come through Pankisi Gorge. Grisha Chukin, of the Podolski, was suggesting that the Chechens took them all for fools. Aleksandr Vyshinsky, who had started as a fartsovshchik selling knock-off blue jeans and bootleg cigarettes on Moscow sidewalks, and was now considered a serious contender for the city’s next mayor, was negotiating a trade: a share in Dmitri Tsereteli’s lucrative MDMA trade for a slice of Vyshinsky’s copper piping business, which although unglamorous could always be counted on to turn a tidy profit …

  Ravensdale made himself move away from the flap doors, running a fingertip along a counter as if searching for dust.

  The service bathroom was dirty. Wilting flowers filled a pencil vase beneath a sputtering fluorescent bulb. A notice on the wall proclaimed that ‘EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK’. When Ravensdale stepped inside, the maître d’ tried to follow. ‘If you don’t mind,’ Ravensdale said.

  Alone, he locked the door, dropped his pants, and settled down on to the toilet. Carefully, he worked the capsule free. Keeping the device concealed as much as possible in case of hidden cameras – you never knew – he flushed, rolled up his sleeves, and washed with soap and hot water. Then he unscrewed the capsule, found the needle, and punched through the tender white skin inside his left elbow. Naloxone entered his bloodstream in a hot rush. The used part of the capsule went into his front left-hand pocket.

  The remaining half, containing aerosol etorphine, stayed concealed in his right palm. The synthetic opiate known to animal researchers as M99 caused respiratory paralysis, freezing the muscles of the heart and lungs. Death from hypoxia was nearly instantaneous. Efficacy was beyond question. When Spetsnaz commandos had pumped the substance into Dubrovka Theater in October of 2002, following the seizure of eight hundred and fifty hostages by Chechen separatists, one hundred theatergoers had perished along with the intended targets.

  He rolled down his sleeves, fastened the cuffs, and reached to unlock the door. He was watching this moment from the future, from a safe well-lighted room he shared with Sofiya and his son, very far from here.

  He stepped out into the kitchen and wandered back toward the flap doors.

  The maître d’ paced him. A waiter jostled past, opening the way to the dining room.

  He triggered the capsule hidden in his palm.

  Ol’ Blue Eyes was inviting listeners to come fly with him. The maître d’ was checking his watch. Something sizzled; the smell of pesto shrimp filled the kitchen. Aerosol etorphine, soundless and odorless, spread invisible deadly fingers. A droplet of sweat trickled down Ravensdale’s temple. His testicles had drawn up tight. The urge to hold his breath was almost overpowering. But the naloxone would block his opiate receptors; he made himself draw a normal, easy breath. He was a man to whom killing came naturally, no matter how much he pretended otherwise. He was a husband and a father. He was a spy and a murderer. He was the old him and the new him and something else: another him still undiscovered. He was an animal – he could smell himself, a hot rank animal tang, his own brutish fear and excitement.

  A waiter went down heavily, splashing pesto shrimp, and began convulsing. The maître d’ spilled face-first across the greasy kitchen floor, cracking his jaw loudly against unyielding tile. The flat tops were collapsing too, like so many bowling pins: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Perfect strike.

  Pocketing the capsule, Ravensdale pushed through the flap doors. From beneath a fallen flat top’s coat he liberated a semi-automatic Tokarev TT-33 pistol. He picked his way over corpses, some still jittering, and climbed three carpeted steps to the VIP area. The targets were already dead, expensive suits stained with expensive food. Faces mottled, sightless eyes staring blindly. Ravensdale shot them anyway: one, two, three, four, five head shots.

  He picked up a linen napkin and, stepping over another corpse, went past the coat check and then out the front door. Cold fresh air hit him like a blessing. He turned down the sidewalk without hurrying, moving past busy and distracted Muscovites, wiping down the Tokarev and leaving it in a garbage can on the corner. He hailed a passing Sylphy – in Russia, any civilian vehicle becomes a gypsy cab in exchange for a few rubles – and gave the elderly man behind the wheel an address two blocks from his parked Jeep Commander.

  As they pulled back on to the street, a muscle worked in his right cheek. Inside the pocket, he squeezed the spent half-capsule mechanically. His breath came fast and shallow. His testicles remained drawn up tight into his body, clenching.

  A man does his best. His best is all he can do.

  He set his jaw firmly, sat up very straight in the back of the Sylphy, and rode away from the restaurant without looking back.

  NINE

  MOIKA RIVER EMBANKMENT, SAINT PETERSBURG

  The view through the window would have been of the Admiralty Building’s gilded spire, had the glass been clean enough.

  Inspektor Vlasov was kept waiting in an office furnished with blond wood, daguerreotype portraits of Lenin and Marx, and a chipped bowl of wrapped hard candies. After ten minutes he was fetched and led down a corridor to a heavy door, behind which he found a hastily-assembled war room: larger and higher-ceilinged than the office, but still relatively humble, and musty with smells of wet wool and stale tobacco.

  Amidst younger men manning laptop computers and mobile phones, Inspektor Mikhail Bordachenko stood out. Six-four, with an athlete’s shoulders barely contained beneath a straining sports coat, he towered over everyone else in the room, including Vlasov. His eyes were a vibrant hazel, his nose large and fleshy. ‘So,’ he said, guiding Vlasov to a quieter end of the room after shaking hands. ‘It is an honor and a pleasure, sir, to welcome Moscow Sledkom—’ Sledstvennyi komitet, Investigative Committee – ‘to Pieter. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope to send you happily on your way in the very near future.’

  They pulled chairs out from a fading conference table
lined with crème-colored telephones labeled VCh: vysokochastoty – high-frequency. Bordachenko proceeded to lay out a strategy along the lines Vlasov had expected. Having trumpeted the fugitive’s capture, the Kremlin had now placed an embargo on news of her escape; therefore the use of nashnik, informants, would be strictly limited. But official agencies could pick up the slack, quietly and effectively. Police, military, and Investigative Committee agents had been watching transit hubs since early morning. Within the city, door-to-door sweeps had commenced, radiating outward from the girl’s last known location near Demidov Bridge. Checkpoints had been put into place not only on streets but also on frozen canals and rivers. An impressive array of technical equipment (Bordachenko made an expansive gesture toward the young men and their laptops) was at their disposal. Photographs taken during the perp walk had been fed into state-of-the-art facial recognition software. Eighty nodal points of the assassin’s face had been identified, a face print and 3D model constructed. Now the program was combing through vast amounts of footage gathered from countless security cams, drones, and mobile phones; any computer connected to the Internet could be remotely accessed without the owner’s consent.

  Vlasov lit a thin cigarette. ‘Comprehensive,’ he allowed. ‘But if I may – the whole thing smacks somewhat of déjà vu. We should not find ourselves in this position at all.’

  ‘In hindsight, we clearly underestimated her. But every factor must be taken into account. To all appearances, she seemed helpless.’ Bordachenko’s gaze did not waver. ‘Rest assured; once the current situation has been resolved, heads will roll.’

  Vlasov examined the glowing ember of his cigarette and said nothing.

  ‘She is resourceful,’ continued Bordachenko after a moment. ‘But not in any condition that easily escapes notice. She’s likely concussed from the incident on the M-10. On the run for over seventy-two hours, through bitter cold and harsh countryside. Broken ice on the Griboyedova suggests that she got a good soaking. Weak, dizzy, frightened, starving …’