Eternal Empire (15 page)

M
addy sat in the backseat of a parked car, alone, the hood still over her head. It was dark and hot but fairly easy to breathe. The hood had been sewn together from black cloth and smelled mildly of fabric softener. It had been recently washed, perhaps to remove telltale fibers, and this sense of meticulousness, which in another context might have seemed homely, frightened her even more.

Waiting in the car for whatever was coming, she fought away the fear that threatened to overwhelm her, forcing herself to remember what had happened, which was the only way to keep panic from taking hold completely. After the hood came down, she had felt the hard pressure of a gun against her back and heard a man's voice in her ear: “Make a sound, and it ends right now.”

He had pushed her roughly toward the door of her flat, which was open from before. Maddy had nearly fallen, but the hand locked around her forearm had kept her on her feet, steering her toward the stairs outside. She felt cool air as they passed through the door of her building and crossed the sidewalk. Up ahead, she heard an idling engine, along with monotonous dance music from a car stereo, the waves of sound pushing thickly through the hood.

She was shoved into the backseat. Her assailant from upstairs slid in beside her and drew the seat belt across her body, the gun pressed against her rib cage. Maddy heard the door close and the music rise as the unseen driver cranked up the volume, and then they were away from the curb.

They had driven for perhaps half an hour. The music on the speakers was a shapeless wall of noise, each track shading imperceptibly into the next, so it was impossible to tell where one song ended and the next began. Maddy tried to remember the turns they made and listen for clues outside, the way one might do in the movies, but she lost her bearings after the first roundabout.

The car stopped at least twice, once at what seemed like a red light, a second time for close to a minute, at the end of which the front passenger door opened to let someone else in. At one point, Maddy heard a siren approaching from the other direction, filling her with momentary hope, but the vehicle, whatever it was, only passed and receded into the distance.

Eventually they came to a highway. After driving along it for some time, they exited onto a side road, the ground uneven beneath the tires of the car, which slowed its progress to a crawl. At last, they came to a stop. The engine was turned off, ending the music. In the ensuing silence, Maddy heard the front doors open and shut, followed by two sets of footsteps.

The man at her side did not move for a long time. At last, his voice came again in her ear: “Stay where you are.”

With that, the man opened the rear door and withdrew the gun. Sliding out, he closed the door behind him. Maddy heard his footsteps grow steadily softer as he moved away from the car. And then there was nothing.

Now she sat waiting in the backseat, the lump of sickness in her stomach refusing to dissolve. Her arm ached at the spot where her assailant's hand had clamped down, and she found that she had to go to the bathroom. In the end, she wasn't sure how much time passed, but it might have been only a minute or two before she was startled by the shrill ring of a cell phone.

Maddy jumped at the sound. The phone rang again, sending a vibration through the seat beside her. Reaching up, she pulled off the hood, her hair sticking in strands to her forehead, and found that she was alone. The car turned out to be an old-model compact with grimy tinted windows and vinyl seats creased like the palms of human hands. Through the windshield, she saw that she was parked in a field of dry grass strewn with gray trash and debris.

She looked back at the road along which they had approached, the marks of the tires still visible in the dust, then turned again to the windshield. In the distance, a line of trees stood beneath the white sky. Just before the field ended, there was a decrepit house, its front steps sagging with age.

The phone on the seat was still ringing. Glancing down at last, she thought at first that it was her own phone, although the ringtone was strange. She picked it up and saw an unfamiliar number on the display. Only when she opened the phone to answer it did she realize that it was not hers at all, but a different phone of the same kind, a fact that filled her with even more fear than before.

She raised the phone to her ear. Before she could speak, a distorted voice came over the other end, its words channeled through a voice changer, shifting the pitch downward, so that she wasn't sure if it was male or female: “Look in the pocket of the seat in front of you.”

Her eyes fell on the back of the front seat. There was something sticking out from the pocket. Reaching down, she was about to undo her safety belt when the voice abruptly spoke again: “Keep the belt on.”

Maddy looked sharply around. The field was still empty. Keeping her eye on the house in the distance, which was the only place where anyone could be watching, she reached into the pocket and felt her fingers close around a manila envelope. As she withdrew it, the voice came over the phone: “Look inside.”

She shifted the phone to her other hand. The envelope was unmarked and lightweight. Staring at it, Maddy had a sudden premonition of what might be there. All the fears she had been storing up came rising to the surface, but her hands were steady as she unwound the string on the flap and slid out the contents.

The first thing she saw was a set of pictures printed on uncut photo stock. When she turned them over to get a better look, she felt all her strength drain away. The photos had been taken outside Lermontov's house. One showed her going up the steps, while the second caught her in profile as she left something on the porch, and the last was a shot of her walking away.

Beneath the pictures was a sheet of folded paper. Maddy opened it, already guessing what it was, and saw a photocopy of an itinerary for a flight from New York to London. Circled on the form was her own name, as well as the return date below it, just over two years ago.

“You see, we know,” the voice in her ear said, any trace of emotion flattened out by the pitch modulator. “You came to London two years ago to help Ilya Severin kill Alexey Lermontov. Ilya couldn't have done it on his own, but you knew how such a man might be found—”

Maddy closed her eyes, her hands falling open so that the documents fluttered down to the floor. She took a long breath. “You're wasting your time. I have no money. There's nothing I can possibly do for you.”

“You're wrong,” the voice said. “We need you to perform a service for us. Once this task is concluded, you will never hear from us again. You can resume your life as before—”

Even then, Maddy knew that this was a lie, and that there would be no going back. “What do you want?”

“It's very simple,” the voice replied. “We want you to join Tarkovsky on his yacht.”

Maddy opened her eyes. The
Rigden
, she knew, would be departing from Constanta in two days, with Tarkovsky and his guests on board, and there was no way she could get an invitation. “Why?”

The voice rasped in her ear again. “That isn't your concern. You will go to Tarkovsky tomorrow. You will convince him to bring you on the voyage. When you leave, you will take this phone instead of your own. Talk to anyone, and we hand you over to the police. We'll be watching you. But if you do precisely as we say, you can walk away from this as if nothing had happened.”

Maddy looked at the house in the distance. The sickness in her stomach had spread to every corner of her body. “And if I say no?”

“See for yourself,” the voice said. “You can get out of the car now and find out.”

The phone fell silent, aside from the faint rustle of the pitch modulator. “And how am I supposed to get on board?”

“Tarkovsky likes you,” the voice replied. “I'm sure someone as resourceful as you can come up with a way. Call us when you've done it. Keep this phone on and charged. There's a tube station just up the road.”

The hiss of the modulator ceased. Maddy held the phone to her ear for another moment. Then she flung it away so that it struck the back of the driver's seat, bounced off, and fell to the floor of the car.

Keeping her eyes on the house in the windshield, Maddy reached across her lap and undid her safety belt. Nothing happened. Gathering up the pictures, she slid them back into the envelope. She picked up the cell phone. Then she opened the passenger door and stepped out in stocking feet onto the dead grass.

As soon as she was out of the car, she found herself retching, bending almost double, but nothing came out. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to wake up, but when she looked around again, she found herself exactly where she had been a second earlier, her head throbbing with exhaustion and anger as the reality of her situation swept across her once more.

Maddy straightened up and looked back at the car, a Ford Focus, the most common model in the country. The license plates were missing. Going over to the driver's side, she saw that the keys were gone, but a few crumpled pound notes had been left on the seat, enough for a ride home.

If there had been a rock on the ground beside her, she would have smashed all the windows, but instead she turned again to the house by the trees. She took a step forward, then paused.

When she spoke, it was nothing more than a whisper, if indeed she said anything at all. Whatever the words were, they were quickly carried away by the wind and lost at once in the silence.

Opening the door, she gathered up the money. She checked the glove box and found it empty, as were the remaining seat pockets. Going to the backseat, she snatched up the hood as well.

Maddy closed the door, then turned to face the road, which was a hundred yards behind her. She began to walk slowly across the field, not looking back, knowing all the while that she was still being watched.

On the upper floor of the house by the trees, a shadow was outlined against the glass. As Maddy moved away, it withdrew from the window.

Inside the house, a watcher in a leather jacket lowered the binoculars through which he had been observing the car. He turned to the figure beside him. “Are you sure she'll do it?”

Asthana nodded. Her cell phone, a voice changer still attached to the mouthpiece, was clutched in her right hand. “She'll do it. And if she doesn't, we can always get to her in other ways.”

T
he overnight train from Paris to Munich, known as the Cassiopeia line, waited on the platform at the Gare de l'Est. Among the passengers boarding its twelve coaches were two men who had arrived at the station some forty minutes earlier. They were dressed in a similar fashion, in casual traveling clothes, and did not attract any particular attention as they entered a sleeping car toward the front of the train.

Walking down the narrow passageway, they reached their compartment. The man in front slid the door open and went in, followed a moment later by his companion, who walked briefly up and down the car, checking their surroundings, before entering and closing the door behind him.

Putting down his bag, Ilya looked around the compartment that he and Bogdan would be sharing. Two berths had been folded down, each set with a pillow and a white duvet. To his right, a door opened into a private bathroom with a tiny toilet and shower. Above the sink, the mirror confronted him with his unfamiliar reflection. His hair had been cut short earlier that day.

Ilya turned back to the main compartment, where his companion had set down his own bag. Going to the small table in the corner, Bogdan raised the window shade, revealing a view of the station outside, and folded the chair down from the wall. Taking a seat, he drew his bag toward him, opening it, as Ilya sat across from him on the edge of the bed.

Without speaking, the men began to lay out cheese and sausages bought during the walk from the Gare du Nord. From the pocket of his bag, Bogdan extracted a folding knife and used it to slice a piece of sausage for himself. Keeping the knife open, he gave it to Ilya, handle first. After a pause, Ilya took it, knowing that this was not quite the gesture of trust it seemed. Bogdan's real knife, his pike, was somewhere else, probably in his pocket.

They ate in silence, passing the knife back and forth as necessary, as the train left the station. Their journey so far had been uneventful. At St. Pancras, their passports had been stamped without a second glance, and two hours later, they had arrived in Paris. From there, they would travel overnight to Germany, then east to Budapest and Romania. At that point, they would reunite with the rest of the group for the next phase, which would take them, Ilya had gathered, to Moldova.

Bogdan, for his part, had not volunteered any additional information, either out of his own natural wariness or because he, too, was waiting to see where they were going. So far, the other man had struck Ilya as intelligent and careful, and he knew that Bogdan was watching him with the same degree of scrutiny. They had been unable to bring any guns through the metal detectors in London, which meant that they would make the next leg of their journey unarmed.

Once their meal was finished, Bogdan put the leftovers away, then pulled a bottle and two plastic cups out of his bag. Ilya kept an eye on how much the other man poured into each cup, noting that he gave them both generous amounts. Glancing out the window, he saw that they were heading northeast, the train rolling serenely beneath the steel overpasses. It was shortly before sunset.

Bogdan was looking out at the view as well. Now that the most uncertain stage was behind them, he appeared to relax, although an underlying watchfulness remained. “You spend much time in Paris?”

This was the first time he had asked about Ilya's past, or, indeed, had spoken of anything aside from practical matters since leaving London. “Once or twice,” Ilya replied. “You?”

“Not for a long time,” Bogdan said. “But I would often pass through in the old days.”

Remembering what Bogdan had said earlier about his background, Ilya made an educated guess. “You were a driver?”

Bogdan took a sip of vodka. He was careful, Ilya saw, not to drink to excess. “How did you know?”

“I've known many such men,” Ilya said. Sensing that the other man was waiting for him to drink as well, he raised his cup to his lips, keeping his eyes on his companion. “How often?”

“Once a month or so.” Bogdan looked out at the darkening sky as the train picked up speed. “After the army. I would drive there from Corjeuti. The only way a man in my village could see any money.”

Ilya knew that a network of such drivers made the journey by car on a regular basis between Moldova and France, delivering parcels and picking up cash and groceries from illegals in Paris. “And then London?”

Bogdan smiled for the first time since their departure. “Yes. For a girl. Even after she was gone, London seemed more open, shall we say, to fresh talent. And I had my Romanian passport, so . . .”

He trailed off, since there was no need to spell out the rest. Moldova had been Romanian between the wars, and after it achieved independence, many Moldovans had applied for Romanian nationality. “But now you're going back?”

Bogdan grinned more broadly, although there was a faint tinge of anger there as well. “No money to send home these days. Soon all these places will be the same. Easier to be home when the worst of it comes. And after we are done here, it may not be so bad for us after all.”

Ilya watched as Bogdan drank again. “Is that why you want to kill Tarkovsky?”

Bogdan did not reply at once, although the smile lingered strangely on his face. Outside, night was falling. “I do not blame him. He took advantage of the hand he was dealt. Better him than the dogs in the Kremlin.”

Ilya sensed an obvious question hanging in the air. “Yet you're ready to let him die.”

Bogdan shrugged slightly. “I have no quarrel with the man. But where his money goes is another matter. Hard times are coming, and I intend to be ready. Better to be on the winning side. You see?”

Ilya only finished his drink. It was not hard to read between Bogdan's words. What was happening now was only the latest chapter in a secret history that had unfolded in Russia for years.

Glancing at his travel companion, Ilya wondered how much of this Bogdan had seen firsthand. In the aftermath of the war between Moldova and Transnistria, Russia had sent troops to the latter, unasked, and in order to survive, the local criminals had been forced to reach an accommodation with military intelligence. In response, their rivals in Moldova had thrown in their lot with the civilian side, which had also meant establishing alliances with the network of thieves of which Vasylenko was one of the last remaining representatives.

Looking at his own face, which was reflected darkly in the glass, Ilya considered his predicament. He had been hoping to get close to Vasylenko, learning what he could about the
vor
's plans before making his final move. So far, however, the others had been careful, and he doubted that he would be left alone with Vasylenko long enough to end things in the way he had intended.

He had wanted to see this through on his own, but now he saw that this was no longer possible. As soon as he had the chance, he would contact Wolfe with what he had uncovered. He had left her one message already. And perhaps, with enough patience, other opportunities would present themselves in the meantime.

The view from the train had grown too dark to see. Lowering the shade, Ilya glanced over at Bogdan. “Do you want to sleep?”

In response, Bogdan switched on the light next to the table. Reaching into his bag, he removed a book of military history that he had bought at the train station and opened it to the first page.

Seeing the shadow of a smile on his companion's face, Ilya understood that he had no intention of sleeping tonight. For a moment, the two men regarded each other in silence. At last, Ilya said, “You can't watch me all the time.”

“I know,” Bogdan said, not lowering his eyes. “Fortunately, that won't be necessary.”