Eternal Empire (19 page)

O
n the roof of the house in Leova, there was a wooden pigeon loft with two pens, one for paired couples, the other for young birds after weaning. An old man stood before the loft with a crested pigeon in his hands, stroking its black neck and tail. Hearing the sound of footsteps, he paused, then put the bird gently back through the trap and eased the door shut.

From over his shoulder came a man's voice. “Peace and health to all honest thieves.”

The old man, whose name was Dolgan, turned to face the two figures standing behind him. Only one of them was familiar, although he knew perfectly well who the other man was. “And death to all informers.”

As Dolgan came up to kiss Vasylenko on the cheek, Ilya regarded him from a few steps away. He was in his late seventies, dressed in a white shirt and flannel trousers, his teeth stained dark by tea. His posture was slightly stooped, the mark of a man who had spent much of his life in prison, where you kept your head down to avoid knocking it on the bunk above. “And this is the Scythian, I see.”

Vasylenko stood aside, allowing Ilya to come forward. “Yes. He has come to pay his respects.”

Dolgan studied Ilya's face. “Do you know anything about birds, my son?”

“Only a little.” Ilya indicated the loft with a nod of his head. “These are the Armenian breed. They look like strong tumblers.”

“Yes, they are,” Dolgan said proudly. “We can have
chifir
. Please, come with me.”

Moving slowly but without a cane, the old man headed for the stairs that led down from the roof. The weather was cool but pleasant, as it had been since their arrival in Moldova. After escorting them here, Bogdan and the others had returned to the lodging house. On an errand like this, only one man could accompany Vasylenko, and the lot had fallen naturally to Ilya.

Ilya followed the two older men downstairs, closing the door to the roof behind him. They accompanied Dolgan to a table and chairs with a view of the yard outside. The front door had been removed from its hinges, indicating that all honest men were welcome, and that Dolgan owned nothing of his own. As a saint, one of the few criminals allowed to touch money, he wielded tremendous authority, and he was the only man who could get them what they needed now.

When they had each taken a seat, a girl emerged from the kitchen, bringing the ingredients for
chifir
without being asked. She was young and rather plain, her dark hair pulled back from her face, and she did not look at any of the men at the table as she set down the tray and withdrew.

In the fireplace, water was bubbling in a blackened pot. Dolgan gestured toward the saucepan. “Make us some tea.”

Ilya rose, knowing that he was being subtly tested. He extinguished the fire, then added leaves of black tea from a tin. Covering the pot, he wrapped it quickly in a towel to keep in the heat, then returned to the table.

As he sat down, he saw that Vasylenko had lit a cigarette. Taking a short puff, the
vor
passed it to Dolgan, who did the same and returned it. He fixed his sparkling eyes on Ilya. “Your skin is quite pale,” Dolgan said. “And unmarked. I find it strange to see a man like this in my house.”

Ilya was used to the question implied here. “My skin wasn't always this clean.”

“I understand.” Dolgan took a pull of smoke and passed the cigarette to Vasylenko. “I know your history. You haven't always been at home in the brotherhood. May I ask what changed your mind?”

“I lost my freedom,” Ilya said. “It reminded me how sacred a man's liberty can be.”

“A careful response.” Dolgan turned his eyes to Vasylenko. “And you are willing to present him to me?”

Vasylenko nodded. “I am. Even if I did not trust his loyalty, I trust his good sense. He knows what needs to be done.”

“A quality rare in the younger generation,” Dolgan said. “Such men don't always understand the sacrifices that must be made. Although perhaps, before long, even the young will learn this as well—”

Dolgan trailed off, looking out the door at the yard. Ilya wondered what he was thinking. He knew something of the sacrifices that the saint had mentioned, which continued to be felt by the brotherhood, even as those who had struck the original bargain died out one by one.

Years ago, in the gulag, the intelligence officers responsible for maintaining order in the camps had made alliances with the imprisoned criminals and thieves, who had been used to keep other prisoners in line. In the end, however, the arrangement had cut both ways. The thieves had taught the state new forms of violence, but they, too, had been subtly transformed.

Ilya knew that the two old men seated before him now had only been children when these deals were negotiated, but they had inherited these arrangements when they came of age. It was easy to blame them for having lied to their followers, but in his more honest moments, Ilya was aware that he was only in this position because of the choices he himself had made.

As he glanced into the kitchen, however, and saw the girl at the stove, he reminded himself that there were also those who had been drawn into this world through no fault of their own. He had seen another through the rifle scope at Peles Castle. And even if he could no longer protect himself, he could at least make sure that the innocent did not suffer for his mistakes.

The tea was ready. Rising from his chair, Ilya went back to the fireplace and used the towel to raise the lid of the saucepan, seeing that the leaves inside were no longer visible on the water. Taking the saucepan back to the table, he poured the tea through the strainer into the pot, reserving the leaves for later, and finally emptied the
chifir
into a heavy iron mug.

As the two old men watched, Ilya raised the mug to his lips and took three sips, feeling the effects at once. When he was done, he passed it to Dolgan, who did the same before handing the mug to Vasylenko.

They sat this way, drinking in silence, for some time. At last Dolgan, who had taken the last few sips, rose and carried the mug into the kitchen. Going to the sink, he rinsed it out and put it away. As he did, he spoke a few words to the girl at the stove, who went at once into the next room.

When Dolgan returned to the table, he seemed to have come to a decision. “I can see you as far as Yalta. There is a person there who can furnish you with what you require, as long as you travel under my protection. However, before you go, you will need a sign of safe conduct.”

As Dolgan spoke, the girl returned to the main room. In her hands, she was carrying a small wooden box. She set it down on the table before Dolgan, who undid the latch and raised the lid.

Vasylenko was the first to speak. Both he and the saint were looking at Ilya. “Well?”

Ilya considered the contents of the box. Inside, there was a set of needles and a coil tattoo machine.

He regarded them for a long moment. Then he turned to the others. “I'm ready.”

“I
had not intended to come forward, but now I have no choice,” Owen Dancy said, accepting a drink from a silent waiter. “I've served as Vasylenko's solicitor since his arrest. Last year, he informed me that he and Ilya had reached an accommodation. And he asked me to assist Ilya in preparing his defense.”

Wolfe studied the solicitor, who was sweating heavily despite the air-conditioning in the club. “But Ilya was planning to cooperate with the police. That could only have hurt Vasylenko's case.”

“Not necessarily.” Dancy took a sip of whiskey. “Ilya was prepared to give evidence that Vasylenko had played no part in any criminal enterprise. He was ready to implicate other organized crime figures, most of them deceased or serving long sentences. But not Vasylenko.”

Wolfe looked into the solicitor's broad face, searching for any sign of dissimulation. “But you must have known this wasn't true.”

Dancy only gave her a weak smile. “I knew that it would help one of my clients.”

They were seated before a bow window at a gentlemen's club in Westminster. Women, she had been told, were allowed only in the visitors' room, with its deep leather chairs and reading lamps. A hall at the rear led to the overnight accommodations upstairs. It was there that Dancy had evidently been residing for the past few days, claiming that he felt safer here than anywhere else, as if an assassin might hesitate to violate the membership rules.

Wolfe still had her doubts about why Ilya would have agreed to cooperate with Vasylenko, but she decided to let this pass. “Why did you schedule the hearings for the same day?”

Dancy looked as if he had been expecting the question. “It was necessary to schedule Ilya's hearing as soon as possible, for the sake of Vasylenko's appeal. As it turned out, there was only one date that was suitable. I had planned to attend Ilya's hearing myself and have an associate file an extension for Vasylenko. But I had no idea that an escape was in the offing. No compensation of any kind could possibly make up for the damage to my reputation.”

Wolfe saw the solicitor touch his club tie, evidently unconsciously. “So why come to us now?”

“Regardless of what you may think, I have not been standing idle,” Dancy said. “And I have concluded that Ilya is far more dangerous than I once believed. I was ready to defend him against the charge of murdering Lermontov, but there are other incidents that are impossible to overlook. The death of Anzor Archvadze, for one, whom Ilya poisoned because of his interference in the illegal art trade. And it appears that he may have killed another man at Belmarsh.”

Wolfe stared at the solicitor, whose face was bright with perspiration. “What are you talking about?”

“A prisoner was murdered last week,” Dancy said haltingly. “He was brought to the infirmary suffering from acute respiratory arrest. The toxicology report indicates that he received a massive dose of nicotine. Such a murder would have required a great deal of ingenuity, of course—”

Wolfe forced herself to keep her voice level. “So what makes you think it was Ilya?”

“He was seen with the dead man shortly before he died. I'm told that traces of nicotine were found in a syringe on the waste ground not far from his cell. It appears that he would have had access to all the necessary materials. And we both know he had the expertise.”

Wolfe saw that it was impossible to deny this, but part of her still resisted the implication. “But why would he kill this man?”

“The victim was part of Vasylenko's circle. My understanding is that he had offered to inform on illegal activity within the prison, perhaps including the escape, but was killed before he could talk. It's also possible that Ilya got rid of him to create an opening. You see, I believe that Ilya wanted to get close to Vasylenko, not the other way around. Which means we need to consider the possibility that he, and not Vasylenko, was the one driving the prison break.”

Wolfe began to grow angry, although she would have found it hard to explain why. “And what makes you say that?”

Dancy finished his drink, the glass rattling against the table as he set it down. “I knew Vasylenko well. And what I concluded was that his power was long gone. But the more I reflect on Ilya, the more he frightens me. I suspect that what he wants, more than anything else, is revenge. And if so, he may have seen Vasylenko as his best way of getting close to the men who betrayed him.”

With visible effort, Dancy rose from his chair. “I've told you everything I can. The authorities at Belmarsh will confirm the rest. If you need anything else, you know where to find me.”

He left the room. Wolfe let him go. For a moment, she remained alone at the window, the solicitor's last few words, which were so close to her own fears, echoing in her brain. Looking down at the seat of his chair, she watched as the impression of his heavy frame slowly disappeared.

An hour later, she was at the office, on the phone with Powell, who agreed when she asked for his thoughts. “Vasylenko might still be useful under the right circumstances. Have you read the files I sent?”

Wolfe looked at the stack of folders on her desk, nearly two feet high, that had been delivered the day before. “I'm afraid not.”

“You should,” Powell said. “My father spent years at Thames House, tracing the relationship between organized crime and the intelligence services. There's one file in particular you should study. It's an orange folder with the image of a double eagle on the cover—”

Seeing the folder in question in one of the stacks, she extracted it with some difficulty. “Yes, I have it.”

“Give it a read when you can. It's a collection of what we know about the symbols of the
vory
. Tattoos, codes, ritual questions and responses. These are practical tools, you understand, a means of transmitting secure messages without words. If you send a broken knife to another thief, it means death is on the way. It's called a throw, a kind of symbolic shorthand, and it's precisely the sort of thing that only someone like Vasylenko would know.”

Flipping through the folder, Wolfe saw a list of these significant objects, written in an old man's spidery handwriting. “I'll take a look. You said you had something else to tell me?”

“I did,” Powell said. “I'd like you to review some material based on something Tarkovsky told Maddy. She's looking into it now, although I haven't spoken with her since she left with him for Sochi—”

It took Wolfe a second to connect this statement with what she knew about the oligarch's departure, which had been widely covered by the press. “Wait a minute. She's on Tarkovsky's yacht?”

“It's strange, I know,” Powell said. “And it wasn't my idea. But she's aware that she needs to be careful. There's more about this in the report. We can talk it over at the wedding, if not before.”

At the mention of the wedding, Wolfe glanced at her partner's empty desk. Asthana had taken the rest of the week off, ostensibly to prepare for the ceremony on Saturday, which seemed to belong to another order of reality. All the same, there was no escaping their other concerns, so in the meantime, Asthana had been persuaded to take the lead in the hunt for the informant.

When Wolfe hung up a moment later, she realized that she was exhausted. After listening to Dancy, she no longer knew what she believed, about Ilya or anything else. All the same, she also knew that the solicitor, or his clients, might have good reason to place the blame for the escape on Ilya's shoulders.

She was about to put the file aside when she was struck by another thought. Looking at the list of symbolic objects that thieves used to send a message, she ran her eye quickly down the column. An apple cut in half meant it was time to divide the loot. A piece of bread wrapped in cloth said the police were closing in. And a piece of rope or fabric with a knot in it—

Wolfe read the words, then shut the folder and sat back at her desk. She remembered the scrap of cloth that she had found at the house in Hackney Wick. It had been left under Ilya's chair, tied in a loose knot. Most likely it was nothing. But she couldn't help but wonder.

Because according to the file, it meant:
I'm not responsible for what you've heard.