David Duffy - In for a Ruble

Aleksei answered on the first ring. I wouldn’t describe either of us as paranoid, at least not overly so. I spied on the United States for twenty years, and I suspect there are some old members of the U.S. intelligence community who are sufficiently curious about what I’m up to these days to listen in to the occasional phone call. Aleksei has more immediate reasons to worry. He’s an honest cop in a system where honesty is not only shunned but feared. That makes him a target, and there’s little question that his phone is tapped. We’d agreed on one thing when we saw each other in Moscow—a system for getting in touch, using phones that can’t be traced and a fake coffee date to set a time.

“How’re you doing?” I said.

“Don’t ask.”

“Bad day?”

“One more in a sequence.”

“Sorry. Work?”

“Among other things.”

I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I didn’t want to appear uncaring either.

“Your mother?”

“Bad subject.”

The Cheka stomped in, wearing high leather boots with steep heels, Lavrenty Pavlovich at the head of the column.

“Maybe I should call another day.”

“You’re on the phone now. You wouldn’t have called unless you wanted something.”

Ouch. And true. “Aleksei, I…”

“Don’t. I’m sorry. That wasn’t called for. It’s been a bad few days, as I said.”

“You’re right, though. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m just not used to…”

“I understand. It’s your kopek.”

“All right. Efim Konychev.”

Pause. “What about him?” His tone had been sour. Now it was sour and on guard.

“I might be bumping up against him.”

“Be careful.”

“I figured that out. Ivanov says he’s been in hiding since the Tverskaya attack.”

“I guess so.”

Sour, on guard, and evasive.

“Any idea why he’s showing himself now, or why the Feds here are letting him into the country, or why he’d want to be let in?”

A pause before he said, “I can’t talk about that.”

So the CPS was involved. “He causing your string of bad days?”

“You’re not listening to me.” Annoyance in his voice now.

Change the subject. “You ever run across a very tall Belarusian, maybe six seven, bald, pockmarked face, bad teeth, exceptional strength?”

There was a longer pause this time. “Why?”

“He laid a pretty good thumping on your old man a few nights ago. More than that, he seemed to know all about me, which suggests certain connections.”

“That’s your department.”

I let that go.

His voice softened. “Okay, few nights ago? Where?”

“Here. Second Avenue. He had four guys with him, but they could’ve been rent-a-thugs.”

The voice changed. “What are you working on?”

“Something I can’t talk about.”

Another pause. “I’ve heard about a man like that. Knack of appearing out of nowhere. Superhuman strength. Don’t know his name, no one does. Lots of stories, though. He likes to tie people up conscious and slit their wrists so they feel themselves die. If he has time. Otherwise, he just breaks their necks—with his hands.”

I was starting to look lucky.

“He’s supposed to be the chief enforcer of the Baltic Enterprise Commission.”

The connection I was looking for. I paused before I played my next card. I told myself I hadn’t been sure I wanted to when I placed the call, but that was rationalization.

“That photo of Konychev yesterday on Ibansk—it was taken outside an office building here in New York. One of the tenants is a big-time Wall Street investor, Sebastian Leitz.”

I was listening for curiosity, but he kept his voice flat, intentionally or not. “So?”

“Leitz is bidding on two TV networks here. Sixty-five billion dollars. His computers were bugged eight weeks ago. Right after I discovered that, I got a visit from the bucktoothed Belarusian. I call him Nosferatu, by the way.”

“More coincidences than you can tolerate?”

“One way to sum it up.”

“And what do you want from me?”

“Information. Background. I’m trying to put pieces together, figure out what’s going on.”

“You working for—what’s-his-name?—Leitz?”

“Can’t say.”

A long pause this time. “You think we’ll ever trust each other. I mean, really trust? Both of us?”

I started to answer— I hope so —but he was asking a two-sided question. His lack of trust was given and warranted. We both understood that. He was also asking if I could overcome a lifetime of cynical calculation and trust anyone—him—based on things as ethereal as blood and love.

Beria put in an appearance behind the public phone, wearing his Cheka uniform, pince-nez balanced on his ski-jump nose. Eyes dark and humorless, but not without curiosity.

Not so simple, is it? he said.

Go away, I said.

That’s not so simple, either. I’m here. I’ve always been here. I’ve always been part of it. I’ve always been part of you.

“Hang on,” I said to Aleksei. I let the receiver dangle and walked around the phone stand. The vision vanished. I came back and put the receiver to my ear.

“Sorry, bag lady listening in. I can only say, I’m willing to work on it. I can’t think of much that’s more important.”

“I can tell you’re trying. I hear it now. Keep at it. That’s all I can say. It’s going to take a while.”

“I understand that.” I looked around. Beria was nowhere to be seen.

He said, “I’m still trying to work some things out. You and the Cheka. You and Polina. I can’t say how long it will take. Or make any promises.”

Aleksei used our given names, as he’d done since we’d become reacquainted. I was his father, she’d been his mother, but neither of us had been there much in those roles. I had the unrealistic goal of someday being called Nana —Dad—but I doubted it would ever happen. A price of fate, and my own decisions, which I also understood all too well. I caught another glimpse of Lavrenty Pavlovich, on a park bench, shaking his head. I shook mine. Beria grinned before he evaporated into the cold morning sun.

“I just want to stay in the game. I won’t try to tell you how to play your cards,” I said.

“You told me that once before, remember? Don’t fold, make the other guy go out first.”

“I remember. I didn’t know who I was talking to at the time.”

“Chekists aren’t usually so slow on the uptake. Sorry—I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“No offense taken.”

A long pause. “Tell me this, if you can: This man Leitz, he seeing a woman named Alyona Lishina?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Around. You know who she is?”

“Konychev’s sister, ex-wife of Alexander Lishin. Current wife of Taras Batkin. Also the mother of a girl Leitz’s son spends a lot of time with. Why?”

“You’re well informed. We’re interested. But every time we start to ask we run into roadblocks.”

“Cheka roadblocks?”

“What do you think?”

No response to that.

“This your case?”

“Uh-huh.” Another long pause. “We’ve been building a case against the BEC for years, under the Kremlin radar. The problem, as you can appreciate, is that it’s a totally online business. Everything is done in the ether—or what they call the cloud these days. You’re a phisher and you need a base for your phishing expeditions. You have some contacts in the biz, or you visit a few online sites frequented by like-minded crooks. You get checked out, if you pass muster, you get access to a passworded site that’s essentially a shopping mall. Everything you need—applications, storage, memory, processing, protection—all available for sale or rent. You put together your package and use a version of PayPal to pay. You’ve never met anyone, no one’s met you. After a few months, the Web site’s taken down and another set up somewhere else. You get access if you’re still a customer in good standing. Simple, really, and totally anonymous.”