Traffyck (9 page)

In his cabin on the peninsula, Pyotr Alexeyevich Andropov also considered the fate of the summer’s new arrivals. Almost three months and many, especially the ones from the Romanian raid, still seemed independent.

Pyotr’s cabin was large, furnished rustically with wooden chairs and tables, walled in knotty pine. He sat at a massive desk. Despite its size, the desk did not have the finely finished surface of an executive desk. It was rough hewn, its smoothness furnished by layers of lacquer.

Pyotr had his elbows on the desk, his face in his hands. Like the others on the peninsula, he wore a blue sweatshirt and blue jeans. He was thin, and this emphasized his height. His hair was silver and thick, too silver for his age. A pair of black-framed glasses rested on the desk beside a black telephone. He took his hands from his face and put on his glasses. He seemed to concentrate for a moment, staring at his hands. The glasses made him look bookish. The face seemed pleasant and kind.

He rose from the desk and went to a floor-to-ceiling wall cabinet. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked the cabinet. Inside were several computers, a video recorder, a satellite receiver, and a large-screen television. He flipped a switch on a power strip inside and sat on a sofa facing the open cabinet as the television came to life. The sofa was wood framed and covered with thick cushions.

Kiev’s evening news came in via satellite from the dish antenna behind the cabin. He watched the news every evening for information about the outside world and, more recently, to see if there was any mention of missing young people or of the deaths of the pornographers in Romania. The last time he’d heard mention of Ivan and his soldiers kidnapping a teenaged prostitute from the streets of Kiev had been two weeks earlier. The last time he heard mention of the Romanian massacre, which had been conveniently blamed on rival Mafia traffickers, had been two months earlier.

The evening news was Pyotr’s only source of up-to-date information. The evening news had led him to Ivan Babii and to the eventual “rescue” of his newest members. No news broadcast had actually mentioned Ivan Babii. What had been broadcast was a report of an American pornographic filmmaker named Donner disappearing at the very time Pyotr had assigned two of his soldiers to watch a store that sold such items.

His soldiers, witnessing Donner’s abduction in Kiev, had followed the kidnappers and brought back a name. A man named Vakhabov from Uzbekistan was involved. After this, his soldiers followed Vakhabov whenever possible. Last spring, they’d followed him to the Romanian Carpathians. Thus, his soldiers, dressed as priests, and ironically led by
his
Ivan, had saved young people from an operation run by another Ivan.

News on television that evening was mostly depressing. Mothers disposing of children; trafficking on the rise in Ukraine despite the work of international agencies and NGOs; construction of the new Chernobyl sarcophagus bogged down by lack of funds; Russia, the US, NATO, and Islamists continuing their bickering; economic systems in disarray. It was an insane world. Victims in need of help, and the only way one was able to help was to recruit the abandoned youth of Kiev and other cities in Ukraine. And of course, when necessary for required funds, the selling of hooligans who refused to cooperate. He had no choice. There was no other way. And despite his so-called preaching, he regarded all religions as false. He knew it in his soul. God was God, and that was all. Knowing this, he had been forced to make the hard decisions to help the victims of Chernobyl.

During a report about the anti-trafficking marketing campaign across Ukraine, an inane news editor put in La Strada’s old statement from Eva Polenkaya. The handsome widow who was said to be sixty but looked years younger made her statement vigorously into the camera as if scolding him.

“Traffickers mold the softness and innocence of youth into human software. Young people lured or kidnapped are sold through networks and moved along established routes like the Balkan Trail. Once ‘trained,’ young people are commodities to be used again and again.”

The statement had been aired so many times Pyotr had memorized it.

The only uplifting news tonight was an interview with a scientist from Kiev University studying the herd of wild horses and other animals in the so-called Exclusion Zone. After this brief story, Pyotr stood and went to the cabinet. After turning off the main power switch, he closed the cabinet door and locked it. Carved on the door front, by a soldier named Shvedson, who met an untimely death in a so-called female clinic in Odessa, was a circle with a cross inside. Shvedson considered it a design for the caring of Chernobyl victims, showing all four limbs intact. The carving had been an innocent gesture, yet some of the older members had taken it to heart. Pyotr returned to the sofa and sat down. He turned out the lamp next to the sofa. Now the only light came from windows. From an upper window in his sleeping loft, the moon shone down at an angle, lighting up the front of the cabinet. The symbol on the varnished surface of the cabinet in the moonlight was an eerie sight. For years trafficking had made him rich, and now he was admired, one of his followers seeing fit to create this symbol, a symbol he knew was shared with a so-called religious organization.

It was ironic this symbol be used for his compound, because his beliefs had changed radically over the years. Despite what he taught his followers, he now believed religion served a universal purpose as yet undiscovered. The planet Earth, functioning on a much larger time scale, and in order to regenerate itself and begin anew, evolves creatures to destroy all life so the basic elements can begin again with a clean slate.

His own life was a representation for the theory. As a boy in Moscow, he had been trafficked to the Moldavian Republic and used by many so-called men—brutes who admired his lanky frame. Then, as a young man, he escaped to the Ukraine Republic, and there he found religion. Yet, like everything else in this changing world, religion had failed him and he’d become the trafficker, until Chernobyl changed everything.

When moonlight no longer shone on the symbol of his compound, Pyotr climbed the stairs to the sleeping loft. The steep stairs symbolized turning points in his life—his childhood climb to escape torment in the Moldavian Republic, his brief stay at the monastery in Kiev, his entry into the business of trafficking, his creation of the compound for Chernobyl victims, and finally his alteration of this dark world when he discovered he could so easily make use of SBU Deputy Anatoly Lyashko and Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza.

CHAPTER
SIX

Mariya Nemeth walked quickly from the parking lot to the terminal at Kiev’s Borispol Airport, glancing back to be certain she was not followed. In the parking lot she saw a brown station wagon behind her in the aisles, but other cars had also driven up and down aisles looking for parking spots. Inside the terminal, she confirmed the gate number of the outgoing Aerosvit flight to New York and, after going through security, stopped at a ladies’ room and stayed inside for some time. The departing flight at which she was to meet Janos Nagy did not leave for two hours. A long stay in the ladies’ room would discourage anyone following her.

At the gate, Mariya found a seat in a corner near the windows. From there she could see everyone in the waiting area, and also new arrivals. She sat nearly an hour, watching as activity increased at the gate desk and the waiting area filled with what seemed mostly business people. She also looked all business because she wore a skirt, blouse, and jacket. Yes, the business of determining who murdered Viktor and why, the business of finding out about the vengeance of God or of those who made themselves into gods.

On the way down the long hallway to the gate, Mariya had seen billboards advertising casinos and “dance clubs.” Two of the clubs were familiar because several years ago she had worked at them. The billboards for the clubs were grouped among billboards for restaurants and apartment rental agencies and warnings to Ukraine’s youth about trafficking recruitment scams. The billboards for the dance clubs, run by the Mogilevich syndicate when she worked there, used idiot names for dancers … Hers had been Kimmy.

As Mariya waited at the gate, she saw a huge man walk past who could have been Igor, a bouncer at one of the dance clubs. When the man glanced her way and smiled, Mariya ignored him, and he got into the boarding line. Outside the window, multicolored suitcases on a conveyor resembled pills being fed to the plane … Birth control pills taken in order to avoid pregnancy. Her marriage to Viktor was to have been a time of joy and promise for the future, a time of financial freedom and Viktor’s escape from the adult video business. As for children, she and Viktor had discussed the possibility. Viktor had been the one to bring it up…

The man who stood above her in a wrinkled blue suit, green and red tie, and multicolored shirt had disheveled salt and pepper hair, bushy black eyebrows, and thick sideburns. His nose was pointy, and his eyes were dark brown. He held a crumpled newspaper in front of his chest. When she glanced at the newspaper, she saw a word on a small headline at the fold of the paper was circled with red ink. The word was “Gypsy.”

“And your name?” he asked, staring at her as he lowered the paper.

“Mariya Nemeth. I did not take Viktor’s name when we married.”

“Yes, Viktor Patolichev.” He turned. “Please follow me.”

He walked quickly, staying ahead of her, making it obvious they should not walk together. He was thin, about her age. His shoulders were broad, his hair long enough to touch his collar. Viktor’s friend, militia Inspector Listov, had said Janos Nagy was ex-militia; she wondered if knowing this made her think he walked like a militiaman, or if there really was something about the walk. A hesitation at each step as if something unknown lay ahead.

They sat at the back of a terminal lounge among morning vodka sippers. Although his name was Janos Nagy, she kept thinking
Gypsy
as they spoke. They ordered coffees. In the darkened lounge, his eyes reflected the light shining in from the busy terminal behind her.

“Why me?” asked Janos.

“A friend of my husband recommended you, militia Inspector Listov from Darnytsya. When I told him the militia had not been aggressive, Listov wondered why Viktor would park his BMW inside the storage room at the back of the store if he planned to escape. Viktor loved his BMW and would not have turned it into a pile of rubble.”

Janos stared at her a moment, then said, “May I call you, Mariya?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone calls me Janos when they’re not calling me Gypsy, or other names.” He smiled but quickly became serious. “I should tell you I visited Kiev militia headquarters before coming here. It will not be necessary to go through the entire episode. I know about the insurance investigation. I know your husband’s body was found beside a gasoline can. I know another man in the store also died. I know about the BMW parked inside and the overhead door shut and locked. So, tell me, Mariya, what are these suspicions the militia is ignoring?”

“It’s more than intuition if that’s what you mean. The presence of gasoline and Viktor’s substantial insurance has pulled a curtain. No one is willing to listen. Viktor and I lived together before we married. When two people live together, they learn things.”

“Things one says in one’s sleep?” asked Janos.

When she did not answer, he continued. “I read the reports and spoke with investigating officers. I must focus on dreams and words your husband said in his sleep, if you don’t mind.”

Janos stared at her, his eyes reminding her of her father’s eyes long ago when she announced she was leaving home. Sad eyes watching a child go into the hard, cold world.

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“Good. Please leave nothing out, no matter how personal.”

And it was personal. When she spoke of Viktor talking in his sleep, she imagined being in bed, Viktor’s chest rising and falling against her shoulder as his breathing quickened and the dream surfaced, causing him to shout in the silence of their bedroom.

“He said many things,” said Mariya. “Mostly about God’s judgment. God’s hand lowering in judgment … Armageddon, I assume. He spoke of himself in a self-deprecating tone. Once, as I listened, it occurred to me I’d heard this in a film. The devil and the angel speaking in the person’s own voice, but each with a slightly different tone.”

“Do you recall some exact words?” asked Janos.

“The night before the fire he said, ‘Before God’s fellowship lowers in final judgment of the children, I pledge.’“

“Do you know what this fellowship is?”

“No.”

“A religious experience from childhood?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was he pledging?”

“Viktor asked the same thing when I told him about his final dream. It was the last time I spoke with him. He called from the store.”

Janos watched as she took a tissue from her purse. She held the tissue in her hand but did not weep. Perhaps all her tears were gone.

“Tell me,” said Janos. “Did your husband call you from the store specifically to ask what he had said in his sleep the night before?”