Disposable Asset Read online

  Her mouth set in a grim line.

  She trundled the bike from the road, leaving the headlight off, and embarked again across frozen rocky fields. She would head north-north-east until she had given the cordon a wide berth; then she would loop back around.

  Passage across raw countryside proved slow, bumpy, and risky. She was acutely aware that a spill from the bike might crack open her helmetless skull. Somehow the cold seemed even sharper out here. She stopped again, to constrict the parka’s hood as tightly around her face as the drawstring would allow. Even the weak heat generated by her own breath against the inside of the hood offered some scant relief – although within seconds the condensation froze, rubbing painfully against her lips.

  She pressed on. Countryside spread around her as far as she could see, a wonderland of birch, fir, elder, hazel, linden, oak, and larch. She passed shaded glens, rolling snow-covered meadows, frozen ponds, imposing and magnificent rock formations.

  After twenty minutes more, with the road left far behind, she began to doubt the wisdom of having turned into the country. Out here, there were no options. General Winter, the Russians said. The one general who defeats all her enemies. Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler had both underestimated the fury of the Russian winter. Charles XII had lost his empire to her arctic death-grip. Now Cassie had made the same mistake. To General Winter, one lone girl on a stolen motorbike was beneath contempt.

  She began looking for shelter – even for a stand of pines thick enough to act as a windbreak. Survive the night and she would continue in the morning, beneath sunshine. But the woods were sparse, the cold wind merciless. In Manhattan, she had survived freezing nights with the aid of heating grates and back alleys and, when push came to shove, the shared warmth of other huddling runaways. More than once she and Michelle had zipped up inside the same fraying coat and slept in each other’s arms. But out here was nothing and no one.

  Soon the lack of feeling migrated from her extremities, up her arms and legs. Ice crystals formed on her eyelashes. Her teeth chattered so violently that she feared for her tongue. The night sky, far removed from any source of artificial illumination, looked bright as daylight: milky in some spots, ashen in others, brimming everywhere with coldly impassive stars. A worm of fear wriggled inside her stomach. She could die out here, for real. After everything, she could die of exposure: cold, pure and simple.

  Cold. It had worked its way into her skin, her bones. The motorbike felt weightless, suspended in mid-air, as if it floated on clouds. A white moon shone overhead – the same quarter moon under which she had glided at Turygino. How long ago had that been? Cold like this made time meaningless. She remembered the surprising mildness of the day, the way Mr Harris had perspired in his sport shirt. That had been only hours ago. Impossible.

  The motorbike’s gas gauge read one-quarter full. She could still turn back and risk the roadblock. Hell, she could embrace the roadblock. She would be arrested, probably tortured, and perhaps executed – but before that they would put her in a warm car and drive her back to Moscow, and that would make it all worthwhile.

  When she came upon the dachas, they looked at first like gingerbread houses, not quite real, and she thought her frozen eyes must be playing tricks.

  With effort she brought the Minsk to a stop and, after a moment of tottering, remained upright. The rows of holiday houses were laid out in a maze: inexpensive wooden sheds barely the size of outhouses, roofs of corrugated tin peeking out from beneath vanilla-frosting layers of snow. Lacking electricity and indoor plumbing, the cabins would not satisfy many Americans’ conception of a vacation home. But during summers the shrubbery would be flush with wild berries; the gardens would overflow with cucumbers, tomatoes, and oblepikha, the so-called Siberian pineapple, and no lack of Muscovites would be grateful for the brief respite from the city heat.

  She wheeled the motorbike between two cabins, sighting in the process a rough road leading away from the other side of the colony, and forced her way into the nearest shed. A cheap padlock gave without offering even token resistance. In the gloom she found one cluttered room with a claustrophobically low ceiling. Filthy windows blocked out much of the moonlight. She spent a moment exploring, picking listlessly through frosty old papers: a ‘Grandpa Ilyich’ primer, the Soviet equivalent of ‘Dick and Jane’; brittle magazines including the sky-blue Novy Mir, the red-and-white historical journal Znamya, the notoriously anti-Semitic Culture And Life.

  She found no mattress, but a decaying old chair. She collapsed into it, shivering violently. At least she was out of the wind. She made sure her parka was zipped to the top, the fur-lined hood drawn as tightly as possible. She pulled papers on to herself, making a blanket of sorts – any little bit helped – and jammed gloved hands into pockets. It occurred to her that she hungry. And she might conceivably build a fire. But she lacked the energy even to move, and in the next instant she was asleep.

  COBBLER’S COVE: ONE YEAR EARLIER

  After building a roaring fire, Quinn came to join Cassie on the couch.

  Another ordinary manila folder waited on a Williams-Sonoma end-table. Opening it, he passed her a glossy 6x9 inch photograph.

  As she looked at the photo, emotion flared; then a cool, gray fog descended. She knew this fog well, having found refuge in it during her most difficult times. They called it denial, she supposed, or possibly it was disassociation, or some combination of the two.

  When she spoke, she perceived her own voice through the dim mist: faint and dissipated, like a faraway melody. ‘Photoshopped,’ she said weakly.

  Reaching again for the folder, he passed over another photograph. Then another, and another.

  ‘Photoshopped,’ she managed again.

  But more pictures were coming. And more. And more. ‘Fake,’ she insisted faintly.

  ‘Real,’ answered Quinn with conviction.

  A gust of wind chased down the chimney, making the fire jump.

  She must have looked distressed. Above the Dolce & Gabbana frames, his brow gathered. ‘It’s OK to be afraid,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear. Not absence of fear.’

  She said nothing.

  For a moment more, he considered her closely. Then he collected the photographs, returned them to the folder. He reached out to move a strand of hair off her forehead – a gesture at once fond, paternal, and intimate. His hand smelled of tobacco and aftershave. ‘Let’s call it a night,’ he said. ‘Another long day tomorrow.’

  Closing her eyes, she felt herself sinking into the soft bed.

  The cool dense fog surrounded her on all sides. Silhouettes flickered behind it, but they remained comfortably at a distance, like actors moving behind a scrim.

  Once, when reading a biography of John Lennon, she had come upon a passage that described the fog perfectly. The doctor who’d treated Lennon after he’d been shot had come to see Yoko Ono in the waiting room. I’m sorry to tell you that your husband is dead, the doctor had said. There was no suffering at the end. And Yoko had looked straight back at him – dry-eyed, according to the author, and seemingly in complete possession of her faculties – and asked, You are telling me that he is asleep?

  This was that same mist. Cassie had first sensed it creeping in around the edges after her mother had died. After Daddy’s death it had massed, advancing aggressively.

  Mommy had died of breast cancer. Daddy had been killed when his brakes cut out and his car slammed into a street lamp, and in one instant everything Dennis Bradbury had been – a father, a widower, a consultant, a world traveler, a passionate lover of books, a fast and generous draw with a highlighter, a middling amateur chef, a lousy amateur painter, a secret reader of People and Us magazines – had vanished from the planet in a sudden fireball, leaving Cassie forever alone. The official diagnosis of mechanical failure was so inadequate in expressing that loss that it felt dishonest.

  Lying in the soft bed, she thrust out her chin. Her brave little chin
, Daddy had called it. Look at Cassie with her determined, brave little chin. He’d had the same habit. That was probably where she had gotten it.

  After she’d given up on the foster homes, going to New York for good, she had started recognizing the value of the cool gray fog. As life had grown ever harder, she’d drawn it around herself protectively. Fights in shelters, nights spent in the Tombs, hook-ups for the sake of a roof over her head, friends lost to overdoses, endless hunger and cold and pain and fear and loneliness – none could penetrate the carefully cultivated state of twilight half-sleep. Denial: good for what ails you.

  You are telling me that he is asleep?

  She had maintained. Existed. Survived. Still carrying, then, a heaping handful of Daddy’s books, losing herself in them whenever possible, paying particular attention to the passages he’d highlighted, the nearest thing she had to hearing his voice, his advice, his point of view. Soldiering stubbornly through whatever cruelties life threw her way, her brave little chin outthrust …

  Her eyes opened.

  The quality of the moonlight streaming through the bedroom window was silver, hollow, eerie – but it was real, she thought.

  This was real. It was not a trick. There were no hidden cameras. Quinn’s photographs had not been faked.

  The moon shone through the window like a spotlight, piercing the cool dim fog at last. She had been chosen, said the moonlight.

  And now, after years of half-sleep, she would finally be awake.

  FIVE

  THE VALDAI HILLS

  The blanket of newspaper crackled as she sat up: thin sheets of frost breaking, sending tiny crystals of ice puffing into the air.

  Her entire body felt numb. Her teeth were still chattering, had chattered even through her sleep. A strange weight seemed to lie atop her eyelids, her lips, her heart. When she pushed out of the chair, the parka stuck stubbornly before tearing free.

  A shaft of sunlight lanced through the filthy window. Maneuvering into it, she propped her back against one wall. For several minutes she just sat, soaking in the warmth. By degrees, a film of moisture appeared on her cheeks. Tears, she thought at first … and then realized that the moisture was melting ice.

  One by one, her systems began to fire. She was thirsty and – encouragingly – starving. When she tried to reach into the parka, however, her fingers refused to bend. Skinning off the gloves with her teeth, she examined her hands in the sunlight. They were neither visibly frostbitten nor gangrenous. They just wouldn’t function.

  Keeping her back against the wall, she managed to stand. A wave of light-headedness washed over her. When it passed, she leaned open the door and stepped out into bright blinding sunshine.

  In daylight, the snow-frosted colony of miniature dachas looked more than ever like a fairy-tale kingdom. Flecks of poplar floated in a light breeze. A deer stood shockingly close, holding so still that she almost thought it was a statue. Then an ear flicked, a tail quivered, and the statue bounded away.

  She strolled between cabins, working her way outward in expanding circles, trying to get her circulation going. As she walked, she kept her eyes peeled for anything that might come in handy. Through crusty windows she spied vast jumbles of junk – books, lamps, sleds, barbecue grills – but nothing resembling food or winter clothing. Many dachas, however, had small generators attached, which for now she left untouched.

  Once her blood was moving, her fingers came back to life. Then she fumbled the bag of potato chips from her pocket, tore it open awkwardly, and poured the contents into her mouth. With her belly momentarily quieted, she felt halfway human again. She tried the bottle of water, found it frozen solid. Instead she scooped up and consumed handfuls of clean snow.

  In a shallow valley to the east, the snow was deeper, pulling at her boots with each footstep. She plodded stolidly ahead, thrusting out her determined little chin. Wind rose and fell, phantom-like, whipping grains of ice against her face.

  Coming back around toward the Minsk, she started checking generators. The first three were bone-dry. The fourth had a centimeter of fuel still inside. With one shoulder she allowed herself access to the nearest dacha, from which she scavenged a rusted watering can and a grease hose. Dipping hose into generator, she sucked until a sour metallic taste hit her tongue, then siphoned gas into the can.

  Clearing the taste from her mouth with another handful of snow, she kept moving. Twenty minutes and six generators later, she had a watering can half-filled with petrol, which she carried back to the Minsk and fed carefully into the tank.

  Inside the dacha in which she’d slept, she folded ancient paper into a battered old samovar, added a few chips of frozen wood, and – after a few tries – managed to ignite it with the cold cigarette lighter. In a cracked flowerpot, she melted snow. Combining hot water with frozen dirt, she slathered mud across the motorbike’s license plate until the tag was covered.

  She melted more snow, which she used to dampen her hair. Then she took out the henna. Adding dye to the water, she stirred until a thick paste resulted. She applied the stuff to her skull, taking care to avoid dying the skin. Then she sat and waited, letting the color bake, near enough to the dying fire to relish its warmth.

  ENERGETICHESKAYA ULITSA, MOSCOW

  Nothing about the three-story building of yellow brick hinted at its unique place of dishonor in Russia’s history.

  From the ordinary suburban street, a visitor gathered no hint of Lefortovo prison’s famed K-shape. (On the question of whether the design was purely functional, or reflected purposeful homage to Katherine the Great, historians disagreed.) No screams echoed, and no tractor engines ran in the courtyard, as they once had, to drown out the sound of firing squads. But quiet, thought Ravensdale as he entered the sally port, should not be mistaken for serenity. Although official ownership of Lefortovo was always changing – from Peter the Great, for whom it had originally been built, through Stalin’s KGB and Interior Ministry, to the FSB and most recently the Ministry of Justice – the prison’s function remained the same: Lefortovo housed Russia’s most important inmates in secrecy and seclusion, offering interrogators a handy array of physical and psychological weaponry, not least the reputation of the building itself.

  After passing through security, Ravensdale and Vlasov visited the command and control room located at the intersection of the three spokes of the K. Uniformed guards watched video screens, listening to feeds from hidden microphones. To Ravensdale’s eyes these men were kachki, distinguishable only by their liveries from thousands of other young hoodlums in the city. The word, describing an entire subspecies of thug, was short for nakachivat’ –‘to pump up one’s muscles’.

  With passes clipped to breast pockets, they struck off in lockstep down a wide corridor, the main line of the letter K, behind a guard. ‘In the past forty-eight hours,’ said the Inspektor quietly as they walked, ‘we’ve received six hundred calls. Of course, five hundred and ninety-nine were cranks. Anyone with a grudge against an ex-girlfriend can seize the opportunity. But every lead must be investigated. And so my people got around to interviewing this fellow only this morning. He is an American businessman: wireless infrastructure. In Sergiev Posad for the past week, taking meetings with a local company. Credit card records and security camera footage confirm his presence at the hotel. The company with which he was meeting confirms his bona fides. At eleven o’clock yesterday morning, he approached an official at Sheremetyevo-two, saying he recognized the sketch in the newspaper. He claims to have spent Monday night with her.’

  The passageway was lined with black wooden cabinets, hollow pipes, darkened bulbs atop heavy cell doors. They climbed a narrow metal staircase hanging from a wall, Ravensdale bringing up the rear. On the second floor the cells were smaller, the hallway danker, smelling more powerfully of niter and quicklime.

  ‘The camera in the hotel’s elevator,’ Vlasov continued, ‘confirms the presence of a girl. We get a three-quarters view, relatively clear. In my estimation, she
matches the police sketch. We’re now tracking down everyone who checked out of the hotel yesterday morning, in case she managed to hitch a ride. Also going over our businessman’s room with a fine-tooth comb and trying to recover any unwashed linens from the laundry …’

  The guard stopped before a cell. The Inspektor’s expensive cream-colored suit jacket seemed to float, wraithlike, against the gloom. ‘Stand behind me,’ he commanded. ‘Do not address the prisoner directly.’

  The cell had been designed for four, but was occupied by only one. As the door creaked open, Ravensdale saw, shivering on a bunk, a man in his middle years, wearing a rumpled dress shirt and pleated slacks, good-looking in a minor key. The man struggled to a sitting position, sandy hair standing on end.

  ‘Comrade,’ said Vlasov magnanimously, in English. He moved far enough into the cell to allow Ravensdale entrance behind him, and the guard closed the door. The room featured two bunk beds, a combined sink and rimless toilet, a single naked light bulb in the ceiling. ‘How are we, this fine morning?’

  The man focused blearily on the Inspektor. Rubbing a crust from the corner of one eye, he turned his attention briefly to Ravensdale. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse but keen. ‘Are you from the consulate?’

  ‘My name is Senior Inspektor Vlasov, from the Investigative Committee. And I have good news, comrade. If no unforeseen problems arise, you’ll be escorted back to the airport and allowed to depart this afternoon.’

  ‘This … afternoon?’

  ‘If all goes smoothly – and you continue to cooperate fully – yes.’ A reassuring smile, only slightly wolfish. ‘First I’d like to hear your story myself, if you’d do me the honor. To corroborate certain details and so forth. Begin by stating your name.’

  The man planted a hand against his face, slowly rubbed down. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Owen Holt.’