Traffyck (29 page)

While staring at the computer terminal, Lazlo touched his side, expecting to find his old Makarov 9mm pistol hanging in its shoulder holster. But the Makarov never made it to America in 1988. After the KGB took it away and he and Juli escaped over the Czech frontier, the Makarov was last seen in a black Volga and was probably now in a museum or in a private collection in Moscow. If he needed to be armed, Lazlo would take care of this in Kiev, a city whose underworld would surely respond to him … one way or another.

Saturday afternoon, Mariya withdrew the cash in euros and Janos stopped at a travel agency to purchase his ticket to Kharkiv, the same city in which Mariya’s dead husband, Viktor, had roamed the streets as a boy. In a way, Janos felt like a boy when he tried on the red and green silk scarf Mariya insisted they purchase in a Khreshchatik Boulevard boutique. Mariya also picked out a sport shirt and slacks in the men’s department, something more appropriate to wear with a scarf, and much more appropriate for a Kharkiv tourist on a Sunday morning.

“You look perfect,” said Mariya back at her apartment.

On their way to the train station, the militia guards in their turd-green Zhiguli followed as best they could. Inside the Audi, accompanied by the scent of Mariya’s perfume mixing with the odor of the Audi’s leather seats, Janos considered how much his life had changed in one week. Last Saturday he’d been driving slowly across the Carpathians in his rented camper van on his way to meet the widow of a man killed in his adult video store. And now he was being driven, in more ways than one, by this woman who warned she was dangerous, on his way to Kharkiv to meet a man with a high-pitched voice named the Pied Piper. Was he being led away like one of the children of Hamelin? Had the intricate trafficking networks in Kharkiv arranged this visit by corrupting his informant? In one version of the fable, the children, instead of simply disappearing through a doorway in the mountain, were led over the mountain to Transylvania.

Janos had looked up the fable on the Internet earlier that day. Knowing more about the fable simply added confusion to the interconnections between missing children and adult bookstores and trains and boats and the Pied Piper and the Gypsy and the SBU and the Mafiosi of Ukraine and maybe even Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza.

When a truck turned left in front of the Audi, Mariya braked hard, performed a fishtail maneuver around the slow-turning truck, accelerated back up to speed, and glanced quickly to Janos with an intoxicating smile of satisfaction.

“Are you a wild horse?” asked Janos in Ukrainian.

“Yes,” answered Mariya in Hungarian. “One of the wild ones from the Chernobyl Zone.”

Saturday night, while Janos’ train was on its way to Kharkiv, Mariya stood in the dark at the window overlooking the apartment parking lot. The two militiamen who followed her back from the train station were still on duty. She saw a light go on occasionally and could see they played cards. Earlier in the evening, she heard several train whistles in the distance. In her own way, with her own belief in a presence composed of all persons, male and female, the dangerous woman named after the Mother of God prayed. At first she held the quartz crystal, but eventually she lay in bed and wrapped her arms about a pillow named Janos.

When the phone rang, Mariya recalled Janos’ warning not to say anything about his trip or mention any names in his investigation.

Mariya picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“Mariya Nemeth, this is Investigator Svetlana Kovaleva of the Kiev militia. Is Janos Nagy there?”

“No.”

“Do you know where I can reach him?”

“He is out of the city. I’m taking messages for him.”

“Very well. But listen to me. Turn your television to Kiev News Channel One. If you have a recorder, make a copy for Janos. Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza of the Moscow Patriarchate has not limited his evening speech to the so-called ‘false’ Ukrainian Orthodox Church. His speech tonight includes a section about law enforcement, blasphemy, and Janos Nagy. I know Janos will want to see this as soon as possible.”

Pyotr looked out his cabin window at a stormy night on the peninsula. A cold front from Russia was in a fierce battle with a warm front from the Black Sea. Although there was little rain in the storm, there was much wind, lightning, and thunder.

Earlier in the day, SBU Deputy Anatoly Lyashko had called from his upper floor Kiev office, and not long ago Pyotr’s trusted Vasily had come again to express concerns about Ivan and the men stationed on the left bank. This time Vasily had even complained about Pyotr sending Semyon and Tomas back to Kiev so soon after the deaths of Viktor Patolichev and Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved in the video store fire.

“Why have you sent them?” asked Vasily.

Pyotr had answered angrily. “I sent them for an order of Strudel!”

“I thought I was to tell them where to go and when.”

Pyotr tried to console Vasily, but Vasily left in anger, just before the storm.

Pyotr sat at his desk with only the small desk lamp on. A short time ago it had flickered and dimmed, but not from the storm. The light had dimmed, as it did every night when the automatic timer on the generator switched over to batteries. As the lightning flashed and thunder crashed about the cabin, Pyotr concentrated and tried to draw strength from it. Trust was strength, and if he could no longer trust those whom he had trusted in the past, he would be forced to draw strength from elsewhere.

Lyashko of the SBU was a fool, no longer to be trusted. Imagine wanting Pyotr’s compound to suspend its work helping the Chernobyl orphans because a Gypsy had a sketch. Imagine Rogoza’s bodyguards not being able to keep the Gypsy away. And then imagine again the betrayer, a boy nurtured during the early days of the compound, trained to be a devoted follower when the compound was formed. A devotee turned betrayer so soon after his escape to an outside world where he became a seller of pornography.

Betrayers come from the inside. Perhaps Vasily would be his Judas. He had felt it coming and knew he could not sit on his hands forever. It was time to act in the name of those who came before him. Although Pyotr did not like to think about his role in trafficking, he was owed favors not only by religious and governing men thrown to the wolves following the Chernobyl disaster, but also by the underworld. Especially by a monster he had protected for years. A key player in the vast trafficking network. When the Russian Mafia had been after him, Pyotr had harbored the monster here on the peninsula. Maxim Vakhabov, the Uzbekistani who collected teenagers from city streets and sold them for whatever he could get.

Pyotr opened his center desk drawer and looked inside. Then he closed the drawer, picked up the phone, and placed a standard call, bypassing the left bank.

“Hello?” The young woman on the other end sounded tentative, perhaps drugged.

Pyotr spoke slowly and steadily, his voice purposely deepened. “Hello, my dear. I wish to speak with Maxim Vakhabov.”

Vakhabov came on with a sleepy growl.

“This is Pyotr. You have promised to do your part. Now that time has come.”

Pyotr waited a few moments to be certain there was not a negative response from Vakhabov, but there was no response except the sound of his breathing, apparently caused by cupping the phone close to his face.

He continued. “I have protected you for many years, but now I need your help. I know you have connections to the east. There is a man named Janos Nagy traveling on the overnight train to Kharkiv. He will be meeting a man in Kharkiv we both know as one who leads children away. I need to have this man Nagy dead before he returns to Kiev.”

“I understand,” said Vakhabov in a meek voice that contradicted his insane cruelty.

“Thank you,” said Pyotr. “Nagy’s meeting is in the morning at zero eight hundred in Shevchenko Gardens. If he is left to rot in the gardens, perhaps this would be the poetic way.”

After a pause, Vakhabov growled in his usual manner. “Will this pay my debt in full?”

“Perhaps it will,” said Pyotr.

“How will I know?”

“If you meet men from the Kiev government building and they shake your hand in greeting, this would be a sign of reconciliation.”

When he hung up, Pyotr turned off his desk lamp, stood, and walked out the front door. He stood on the porch enjoying the wind and lightning and thunder. The power of the storm reminded him of the power he had accumulated during the years after Chernobyl.

Sofya Adamivna Kulinich’s roof leaked during storms. When her husband had been alive, the roof had not leaked! Sofya realized she had almost thought of taking God’s name in vain, and crossed herself. The electricity had gone out some time ago when there was an especially loud crack of thunder. She should have been thankful her house was not struck, and left it at that.

Her oil lamp was lit, and the drips from the roof leaks sounded like the popping of cork guns boys of the village played with when they were young. So many corks popping all about her, so many little boys, she so joyful to have children about. But this summer, even the buses transporting young workers into and out of the gate back and forth to the city were absent. This summer was nothing but loneliness and depression. She had not even seen one of the Przewalski wild horses that sometimes wandered into the village. Perhaps, like old widows, the herd was doomed.

True, Tatiana had been over as usual for lunch. But the sun had been out then, and now here she was in the middle of a storm. God’s wrath coming down on her roof, popping like cork pop guns from the past…

Sofya realized this time she
had
taken God’s name in vain in her thoughts and, as she usually did during storms, picked up her Bible and sat close to the oil lamp to read marked passages.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

The rough ride between Kiev and Kharkiv was blamed on last year’s floods and washouts. Passenger cars rocked so much, sleep was impossible. Those who complained the tracks should have been repaired by now were answered by shrugs from conductors stumbling down the aisles like drunkards. Motion sickness made the small restrooms into cesspools. Early in the morning, at the Kharkiv station, some ran from the train to station restrooms. A message taped to the track bulletin board sent Janos to the desk. A message from Mariya asked him to call.