Mily turned at the sound of footsteps crunching the red gravel. Yekaterina approached with her eyes turned to her meticulous flower beds. Though it was dusk, the garden was well lit. Yekaterina carried a bucket of gardening tools and several plastic flats with sprouting plants nourished in one of her hothouses. She walked to a patch of plants that had died, knelt, and slipped on gardening gloves.
“What did you learn?” She pulled up the dead plants and shook the soil from their roots.
Mily recounted all that he had done. The prostitute, Pavil Ismailov, the CCTV tape and the medical examiner’s report, the bartender’s recollection. As he spoke, Yekaterina pulled several plants from their plastic containers and placed them in holes she had dug in the soil. Mily handed her the watering jug.
“The only loose end is this third man,” Mily concluded.
“What do you know about him?”
“The bartender described him as big. Almost two meters and 100 to 105 kilograms. He wore a leather coat, but the bartender said he was well built. Gray hair, mottled skin. The bartender said he would guess early to midsixties.”
She turned her head and looked up at Mily, as he thought she might. “And he took down Pavil and Eldar? Show me the video?” She sat back on her calves and removed her gloves, offering Mily her hand. He helped her to her feet.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to just tell you what happened, Comare?”
She shook her head. “Play it.”
Mily flipped open the laptop and hit the “Play” button on the keyboard. He handed her the computer.
Yekaterina did not use a computer—not a desktop nor a laptop. She did not use an iPad or a cellular phone. She did not use technology. It was too easily hacked, especially by the government. She learned from her father to conduct all her business orally and with a firm handshake. Her papers for her legitimate businesses were kept in a sealed, fireproof vault in the basement. The house had been fitted with devices to disrupt and jam directional microphones, as were her cars. Her business was her business. No one else’s.
Mily stepped back to provide her with privacy.
“Did the bartender say whether Eldar or Pavil had been abusive to the prostitute inside the bar?”
Mily did not hesitate. “He said Eldar roughed up the woman when she dropped a beer. He shoved her to the ground and told her to lick it up like a dog.”
She handed him back the laptop. After a moment to get her emotions in control, she asked, “Have you identified this man in the video?”
“He is not in the police system or in the Moscow Department of Information Technologies database.”
She looked at him over the laptop screen. To be in neither was almost impossible in this new Russia.
“Russian?” she asked.
“The bartender said the man spoke Russian, but he did not believe him to be Russian. His speech was too formal.”
“Chechen?”
“No. He said most likely American or British.”
“But not a tourist?” she said.
“It would seem unlikely given his choice of bars.”
“Did the bartender know why this man came?”
Mily shrugged. “For a beer and something to eat. He left a fingerprint on a bottle. I am awaiting a telephone call to find out if it provides any further information.”
She gave this some thought as the video played.
“The bartender said he took an interest in Eldar,” Mily said.
“In what way?”
“This man appeared to be bothered by Eldar’s treatment of the woman. The bartender suggested to the man that he leave the bar, but this man initially declined. He reconsidered when Eldar took the woman into the alley.”
Mily’s cell phone rang. “This is my contact now. He may enlighten us,” he said and turned away.
Yekaterina watched Eldar and Pavil exit the side door into the alley. Eldar dragged the woman with him and shoved her against the wall. A moment later the other man stepped down the alley. He must have said something because both Eldar and Pavil turned and looked at him. After a few moments when more words were likely said, Eldar and Pavil converged on the man with the broken pool cue. The man disarmed Eldar, likely dislocating or breaking his elbow, then disarmed Pavil and knocked him backward, into garbage. Pavil, with his gun in hand, came out of the garbage cans into which the man had knocked him. In that same instant, Eldar rose to his feet. Her son fell forward, into the man’s arms.
Mily hung up the phone and returned his attention to her.
“Are there copies of this tape?” she asked.
“I am told there are not.”
“This man is trained to fight,” she said.
“Yes,” Mily said. “I would say tactically trained.”
“Military?”
“Maybe,” Mily said. He held up his phone. “We have a positive identification. The fingerprint belongs to a Charles William Jenkins.”
“American?”
“CIA.”
“CIA?”
“And he is wanted very badly by the Kremlin. He is on a kill list.”
Yekaterina paced the red gravel of her flower garden. She did not speak for nearly a minute. Then she said, “A CIA officer, tactically trained, just happens to enter a piece-of-shit bar late at night . . . a bar that Eldar frequented?” She turned to Mily. “I want to know who this man really is and who sent him. I want to know why he killed my son.”
“You’ve seen the video, Comare. Pavil shot Eldar.”
“Perhaps, but this man caused it. I want to know why. And I do not for a minute believe it was to protect some heroin-addicted prostitute. I have many enemies, Mily—many with an interest in seeing Eldar dead. Find this man. Bring him to me. I wish to find out for myself his purpose in killing my son.”
19
Korolyov
Moscow Oblast, Russia
Sarafina Chernoff sipped coffee in the front seat of the Lada Vesta, parked in the shadows cast by the tree at the end of the street. She watched the redbrick house in the middle of the street—what ordinarily would promise to be a long and uneventful Friday night, except what had happened that afternoon did not sit well with her.
Petrekova had given every indication she intended to take the Metro to the train station, then quickly slipped into the back of a taxicab. It had happened quickly, without any delay, and the woman who had exited the cab had been dressed similar to Petrekova, with similar hair color, and similar in size. Chernoff had no information, from any source, that Petrekova had an appointment to get her hair dyed and cut, which also seemed odd. Popular stylists were often booked months in advance, though perhaps maybe not for a member of the Duma. Ordinarily this information would not have amounted to much, but in this instance, it had all the earmarks of a target evading a tail.
“You had a close call today,” her partner, Dima Vinchenko, said in between sips of coffee. From the smell in the car, it was more than coffee, likely spiked with rum.
“I had to confirm it was her,” she said. “I didn’t want there to be any mistakes.”
“I should think not. The deputy director would not look kindly on such a mistake,” Vinchenko said with a straight face, though his tone sounded sarcastic.