Hotel Moscow (25 page)

B
ROOKE ADJUSTED HER
scarf to cover the abrasions on her neck. She had considered removing her Star of David as the chain irritated her skin, but it might have been the shield that had spared her life. Too preoccupied and tired for a social chat, she spread her coat across the seats at the back of the bus. She could see the tips of Judd’s sneakers sticking out from the double seat up front, where he was tightly curled, asleep.

Only twice the bus stopped at checkpoints teeming with armored vehicles and soldiers brandishing automatic weapons. Each time, Brooke saw Aleksandr presenting his documents, and the bus was allowed to go through.

Soon, they pulled to the curb on a wide, unusually clean street. A regal line of cypress trees shadowed benches underneath, and the tree beds were planted with flowers, the first Brooke had seen since her arrival. The street opened to a square bordered by the whitewashed stone wall of a fortress. Above it rose magnificent gold-and-blue domes shaped like tulips.

Strolling into a large plaza, Brooke relaxed as she examined merchants’ tables with displays of matryoshka dolls, ornate Easter eggs, and oversize wooden spoons—all painted with miniature scenes of Russia’s proud past. For a fleeting moment, the present seemed like a bad dream.

The high wall surrounded a cluster of monastery buildings. At the gate, Brooke handed a packet of gum to an old woman who, in spite of the warmth of the day, had wrapped a gray, woolen scarf over her head and around her hunched shoulders. Profuse words of thanks poured out from her toothless mouth as she grabbed Brooke’s sleeve and kissed it.

As the group headed into the monastery grounds, Brooke glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes until her meeting with Belgorov. She fell back, half listening to the guide’s talk as the group ambled along wide paths past priories and dining halls decorated with magnificent filigree carvings of leaves, birds, flowers, and cherubim. She turned alone into a cathedral. Its cool, high-vaulted ceiling enveloped her with a sense of peace and serenity, so incongruous with the cannonade in Moscow. A smell of burning wax hung about the place, biting and sacred.

Facing an exquisitely decorated gold altar, Brooke’s stomach tightened. She could never visit a church without feeling the weariness of knowing that at such places of worship—as Olga had confirmed—priests, pastors, preachers, and ministers had been teaching their parishes that Jews killed Christ. From such places Soviet children had learned to taunt Jewish children; here Christians’ hearts hardened as they were indoctrinated to view Jews as evil. It was in places like this that wild crowds decided to
loot Jewish villages, defile girls and women, and kill babies. And the church forgave them time and again.

I am a Jew, and I am proud of it,
she told the faces on the icons that loomed over her, glowing with gold and semiprecious stones. Their eyes seemed deceivingly compassionate.
Isn’t it time to rid yourself of your prejudice and hatred of my people?
It occurred to Brooke that she had never given so much thought to how being a Jew defined her. Now she was certain she wouldn’t have wanted to be anything else.

She dropped a coin in a box and lit a candle for the teenagers who had died that morning, boys whose only sin was recklessness. “May their souls rest in peace,” she murmured, and considered adding the Jewish prayer for the dead, “
Baruch dayan emet
,” but held back. The words meant praising God’s fair judgment no matter what. But taking young lives? She did not share that unfailing faith. Suddenly Brooke understood her mother, who couldn’t forgive Him for what He had done to His people.

As she turned to leave, she recognized Judd’s silhouette leaning against a large marble column, melting into it like one of the life-size sculptures scattered about. She walked past him without changing her pace.

He caught up with her outside. “Are you all right?” His voice had that rich-as-cream quality she had grown to like. He was freshly shaven and wore a short-sleeve shirt printed in small geometric designs, and a beige cotton sweater draped casually over his shoulders. No trace was left of the disheveled figure in her room before dawn.

“I feel great. Thanks.”

He pointed at her neck. “What happened?”

She stopped to face him. “Look, Judd. I’m from the what-you-see-is-what-you-get school. And what I see, I don’t like.”

His face clouded. He stared at a point above her head. “There’s a good explanation for everything. A dignified one, even.” The words came out slowly, as though they were coins he held up to the light. “It’s unfortunate that I’m not at liberty to talk about it.”

“Take your time,” she said. “You seem to have more than one situation that you need to process.” She swiveled on her heel and walked away.

T
HE MUSEUM WAS
a low and wide building that crouched at the back of a small flagstone plaza with a water fountain at its center. The whitewashed walls looked unadorned and timid, so unlike the wedding-cake opulence of the other buildings.

A man waited next to the fountain. He was in his early fifties, dressed in an Italian-cut suit and a pink silk tie, and his hair was slicked back from a graying widow’s peak. In spite of his short stature, his dark mustache brooding over full lips gave him the look of a star from the silent movie era.

At Brooke’s approach, he signaled to two sunglass-wearing men with square faces and TV-size chests, who stood forty feet apart on either side of him, their bulging arms angled away from their sides.

“Roman Belgorov,” he said, and bent to kiss Brooke’s hand. “You should not miss this museum. Small, but one of our best.” The pride in his voice reminded her of Olga’s when she spoke of “her Russia.”

He handed ticket stubs to a uniformed attendant at the door and led Brooke into a vestibule. From an open trunk he pulled
out felt booties, which they put on over their shoes to protect the ancient polished parquet floors. As they shuffled along a display of religious artifacts, she was too apprehensive to give them attention. “Explain to me what you do,” she said.

“We represent Western clients in their dealings here and lobby our government to pass the necessary regulatory laws or mandate tax concessions to make the investments worthwhile both for them and for Russia’s long-term future. But we categorically refuse to pay the
nomenklatura
apparatchiks
to allow us access—be it for the rights to natural resources or for the purchasing of heavy industries.”

Brooke’s glance was fixed on the richest collection of tabernacles, censers, Gospel covers, pendants, chalices, and holy water basins she had ever seen. All were inlaid with thousands of semiprecious stones and millions of seed pearls.

“How successful are you brokering deals without bribing?” she asked.

A sad smile quirked his lips. “My partner, Yuri, disappeared six months ago on a trip to Georgia.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “I’m so sorry.”

They walked in silence through a display of jeweled crowns. “Do you have any dealings with the Economic Authority?” she finally asked.

He shook his head. “They’re mandated to work only with small businesses, or ones with under one thousand employees. I deal with giant ones, or whole industries.”

“Well, then.” She gave him a brief description of Olga’s investigation, the results she had glimpsed from the files, and her current predicament. “We started with a bang, wanting to stop the
extortion of the women’s cooperatives, and we’re ending with a whimper—if we’re lucky.”

“You are a courageous woman to get involved—or a foolish one.”

“Probably the latter.” She took a deep breath. “But these local women couldn’t have done it without me. All I want now is to save them and get out while I still can.”

“Are you aware of the complex network Sidorov has developed, stretching outside our borders?”

“Outside Russia?”

They stopped in a hall with hammered-gold icons inlaid with diamonds and colorful precious stones.

“The Gorbachevskaya Street Factory, for instance,” Belgorov said. “Forget about their men’s briefs. You’ve said they do well with their leather outerwear. Here’s a hypothetical scenario, but one that takes place here every day in one version or another.” Belgorov gestured with both hands as he spoke. “Someone needs the leather coats to bribe the Iraqi Republican Guard, for instance.”

Iraq? Brooke couldn’t hide her mocking tone. “Leather coats in the desert?”

Belgorov smiled. “Inside their air-conditioned palaces, elite Iraqi women dress in high fashion. Along with vodka, furs, caviar, and bales of wool, the leatherwear may be shipped from Russia to Iran, which then trades these to Iraq for ammunition. In turn, Iraq sends oil to Russia.”

“You’ve lost me on two counts. First, Russia sits on huge reserves of oil; it doesn’t need to import it. Second, Iran and Iraq have been at war for years; they don’t trade with each other—
especially not ammunition. Saddam Hussein has bombed Iran with poisonous gas.”

“Nonetheless, commerce of all kinds is alive and well between them.” He paused. “To answer your first point, Russia’s oil production has fallen drastically this past year and a half, and what’s produced is not used domestically. It is shipped to countries outside the Republics. In fact, Russia has cut off most of its former oil allocation to Belarus and Ukraine.”

“How does oil from Iraq get to Russia? They don’t even share a border. You can’t smuggle oil in a suitcase.”

“In tankers through Turkey.”

“Turkey?” She scanned a mental map of the area.

“By land, and then through the Black Sea.”

“Never mind the U.N. sanctions against Iraq?”

“The United States closes its eyes because the Kurds are the link between Iraq and Turkey, and the U.S. supports the Kurds. It hopes they will kill Saddam Hussein.”

Brooke’s head reeled. Whatever specialty she had planned to acquire in Russia for her job security, this lecture was one lesson she must memorize. “I have underestimated Sidorov’s business savvy and his reach,” she said. The scheme involving Vera’s pots and pans now seemed simple compared with these elaborate machinations.

Belgorov went on strolling, his bodyguards trailing at a respectful distance. “Once the oil tankers get to Crimea, the oil is sold right at the port in Sevastopol—that’s in Ukraine, at the southern tip of the Black Sea—or in Odessa, less than two hundred and fifty miles away from there. The smugglers need not bother to transport the oil inland. You should see the scene at
the ports. There are so many ships docked that there’s a ten-day wait at sea. The demand here for goods and raw materials is so huge that in addition to oil, dealers buy, sight unseen, full containers of whatever they can lay their hands on. They bribe the local authorities to allow their selected ships to dock at the top of the queue.”

“They have no idea if the container is filled with toaster ovens or canned peaches?”

“Right. There’s a huge market for everything. That’s how your friend Svetlana’s leather coats end up as oil, which is far more valuable.”

“And your firm can circumvent such practices?”

“In the long run, it’s the only way for a healthy economy. We’re pushing for tough legislation and tough enforcement. Right now, without a conspiracy law—like your RICO laws in the States—no mob boss can be prosecuted.” His shrug contained a note of resignation.

The room smelled of lemony wood polish and light mildew. Brooke chewed her lower lip. “Svetlana believes that we are in physical danger, having found Sidorov out.”

“If I were you, I would not return to Moscow. I can drive you right now to friends an hour away from here. They’ll get you to Odessa, where you can board the night train to Vienna.”

She could desert her luggage in the hotel; her passport was in her money belt. She could leave Russia tonight, just as she had hoped. “You make going back to Moscow sound like suicide,” she said.

Then it occurred to her: What if Hoffenbach had been wrong, and Belgorov was actually in Sidorov’s service? What
if Belgorov meant to scare her into becoming a willing kidnapping victim?

She stepped to the window. Across the plaza, her group followed the tour guide around a church and snapped photos of its ornamental facade. Then they stepped toward the museum, under the lowering afternoon sun. Bathed in the sun rays, Jenny’s hair ignited in bright red and Amanda’s skin shone like polished ivory. But Svetlana’s flowery dress under an open jacket looked faded.

A new wave of guilt washed over Brooke. Would Sidorov’s minions be waiting for Svetlana when she returned the files? Brooke would have suggested abandoning the files, but their disappearance would cause irrevocable harm to the four businesses, each employing hundreds of workers—the majority of whom were women, mothers of children. They would be the ones to bear the consequences of her cowardice.

Brooke took a deep breath. She must keep herself together, and her mind sharp. She must believe that Belgorov was an honest man; her fear was causing her to become suspicious, to unravel at the seams. Without turning away from the window, she said, “I can’t just run away. I’m involved with two Russian women. I must first ensure their safety.”

“How are you planning to do that?”

She shook her head. “I’m at a loss. And I have less time than I thought.” With Olga’s phone tapped, Brooke couldn’t even warn her. She had never taken Olga’s home address, and had no idea how to get there even if crossing the city were possible.

She kept her gaze on the group. Amanda was attempting to entice a response from Aleksandr, whose shoulders did all
his talking in a series of shrugs. Judd was chatting with one of the women, his hands animated. He threw his head back in laughter.

Suddenly, behind the group, Brooke spotted two unfamiliar men in rumpled gray suits. “Am I being followed?” she whispered to Belgorov.

He looked out. “
My
tail. Right now it serves me well; the more they know of my daily access to foreigners, the less likely they are to meddle with Yuri, if he’s still alive.”

“Will this meeting hurt me in regard to Sidorov?”