Eternal Empire (10 page)

L
ater that afternoon, Ilya was seated at his table by the window, reading, when he heard the door of his cell unlock. Looking up, he saw a pair of unsmiling officers in the doorway, both wearing blue nitrile gloves. The older of the two guards spoke. “Time for a spin. Get up.”

Ilya rose silently from his chair. He had been expecting this visit for some time. Without being asked, he pulled off his shirt, raised his hands, and turned a complete circle. Then, as instructed, he ran his fingers through his hair to show that it concealed no drugs.

After putting his shirt back on, he took off his trousers. As one of the officers checked the clothes and examined the soles of Ilya's feet, the other tested the bars on the window with a tuning fork. When they told him to get dressed, he could see that they were already bored. “Do you have any contraband belonging to another inmate, or legal papers you do not wish us to read?”

Ilya said that he did not. As the older guard remained behind to begin the full search, the younger escorted Ilya to a waiting room at the far end of the spur, where he was left alone. He was not particularly concerned by what the guards might find, but the overall pattern was troubling. Security at the prison had recently been heightened, evidently because of Sasha's death.

Ten minutes later, the door of the waiting room was unlocked. Ilya was taken back across the landing, where he found that the search, as usual, had left his cell looking incongruously tidy. Even the book that he had been reading was open to the same page as before.

Ilya waited until the officers had left, locking the cell door behind them. Once he was alone, he went up to the window, where a watch had been looped around one of the bars. Checking the time, he saw that it was nearly five.

He went to the shelf. Among the other odds and ends was a jar of instant coffee. Picking it up, he walked over to the area by the toilet, which was the only part of the cell not visible through the Judas hole in the door. He sat down, unscrewed the lid of the jar, and dug through the coarse crystals with his fingers.

A second later, his fingertips brushed an object inside. Ilya fished out the bundle, which was secured with a rubber band. Undoing the plastic, he removed the larger of two items, the cell phone that he had been given by Vasylenko. Each day, he would turn it on for ten minutes, once at nine and again at five.

He had been expecting a call, so he was not surprised when the phone vibrated a moment later. Ilya answered. “I'm here.”

On the other end, Vasylenko spoke quietly in Russian. “You had a visitor.”

“Yes. But she went away with nothing. She knows I have nothing to tell her.”

“I see,” Vasylenko said, his tone of voice revealing nothing of his thoughts. “But I am curious as to why she came at all.”

“I don't know. I haven't spoken to her since last year. Whatever she wanted has nothing to do with us.” Ilya weighed his words before continuing. “Unless, of course, her suspicions were aroused in some other way.”

Vasylenko seemed to sense the unspoken implication. “I do not think so. It certainly had no relation to what happened to our friend. Did something about his passing concern you?”

Ilya had been taught to be careful on the phone, no matter to whom he was speaking. “No. But I have been wondering why security was increased, since he so clearly died of natural causes.”

“I do not pretend to know how the guards think,” Vasylenko said. “But there are always questions after the death of a
suka
.”

The word caught Ilya's attention at once. If Vasylenko was telling the truth, it meant that Sasha had been an informant. “Are you sure?”

“I believe so. Our friend, it seems, was working with the authorities. Thankfully, he knew nothing of importance. But it should come as no surprise that he met such an unfortunate end. Do you understand?”

Ilya felt himself being pulled forward by forces set in motion long before. “I do.”

“Good. I do not require love from my men. Nor do I demand perfect loyalty. All I ask is that they understand that our interests are one. On the day I cease to be useful, I will be ready for any betrayal. But that day has not yet come.”

The
vor
hung up. Ilya lowered the phone. Then he turned it off and slid it back into its plastic bag, along with the second item, a lockpicking kit that he had obtained what seemed like a lifetime ago.

Ilya stuffed the bundle into the jar of coffee, making sure that it was fully covered by the crystals, and screwed on the lid. Rising, he went over to the shelf by the window and put the jar away. Then he glanced down at the page of the book he had been reading before the guards came.

The Khazars, it noted, were a race of horsemen, bound by the rains, so they naturally worshipped the god of the sky. Turning their eyes to the west and south, however, they had witnessed the growing power of nations whose authority was derived from history and scripture. In the end, the story went, they resolved to seek a more worldly religion that could survive in the land of the Scythians.

According to legend, the Khazar king granted an audience to representatives of three great neighboring faiths. After hearing arguments from all sides, he made his decision. Christ and Muhammad had empires of their own, so instead, he would take a third way, embracing the faith of another tribe of nomads without an earthly army. The warriors of the steppes, he proclaimed, would become Jews.

Even now, it was unclear what form the conversion had taken. Some claimed that the Khazars had practiced a heretical Judaism, while others said that they had carefully studied the commentaries on scripture, tracing their descent back to the brother of Ashkenaz. And most were of the opinion that the change, whatever form it took, had been felt only among the ruling classes.

Yet the result had been the first authentically Jewish kingdom since the time of the Bible. A nation of warriors had opened its borders to merchants and tradesmen, standing as the only barrier between Europe and Islam, dreaming that a lasting empire could take hold where so many others had been consumed.

But in the end, one could never be sure. Even if the new order endured for a time, history, like the steppes themselves, often had plans of its own. And this was true for men as well as nations.

Ilya found himself remembering the day Lermontov had died. Once the gallerist had come to terms with his fate, he had gone to it with equanimity. When the deed was done, Ilya had left the house, only to see a young woman on the street. Earlier, he had told her not to wait, but she had refused.

At the very end, however, it had seemed to him that she sensed the real difference between them, and when they parted ways for the last time, he had keenly felt the gulf that separated their two lives. For all the compromises she had made, she could still go on to find a place in the world, while he was forever estranged from it, as recent events had made all too clear.

In order to finish his work, Ilya thought now, he had to accept his true nature, even if it meant a plunge into iniquity. Yet as he closed the book, another set of words appeared in his mind, and they would continue to haunt him throughout all that followed:
Whosoever is partner with a thief hateth his own soul
.

O
n Sunday, the papers were full of the death of Mark Duggan, a black man in his twenties who had been killed three days earlier by police during an arrest in Tottenham. Several sources claimed that additional shots had been fired, but the details remained unclear. In the meantime, a neighborhood demonstration had resulted in riots and looting, and the city was filled with unease.

Maddy had paid little attention to the news. Instead, she had her eye on a story in the business section, one that might have run on the front page a few days before. Tarkovsky had made his decision. Polyneft would form a venture with Argo, the British oil company, to drill in the Black Sea.

Powell seemed as surprised by the announcement as she was. “I thought we had more time. You're sure you didn't hear any word of this?”

“Of course not,” Maddy said into her cell phone. “Is it what you expected?”

“Yes, although we're still sifting through the details.” Maddy heard a rustle on the other end as Powell retrieved his notes. “It's a billion-dollar venture. In exchange for capital and infrastructure, Argo will own a third of the company, and the stock swap will make Tarkovsky one of Argo's largest shareholders. There's going to be a signing ceremony in Sochi—”

“I know,” Maddy said. “The staff has been talking about it all week. Tarkovsky's new yacht is waiting for him in Romania. He's planning to invite policy makers and executives from both companies. Needless to say, I'm not going.”

Overhearing herself, she realized that she was rambling as a means of avoiding the real point. She rose from the dining table in her apartment in Hoxton. “So what do we do now?”

“We'll push forward with the information you've provided. Trying to identify these intermediaries is a nightmare, but it's all the more important, now that they'll be funded with British capital. As far as I'm concerned, however, your obligation to me is fulfilled. Do you think they want you to stay?”

Maddy flashed back on her last conversation with Tarkovsky. “Yes. Even if the Fabergé deal falls through, they have other projects in the pipeline. Tarkovsky seems to think I have useful insights.”

“I have no doubt of that.” Powell hesitated. “Which reminds me. There's something else. It's probably nothing, but since you know a bit about art, I thought you might have some ideas—”

Something in his voice made her straighten up. She was standing in her sorry excuse for a kitchen, with its square foot of counter space and ancient gas oven that she was afraid to touch. “What is it?”

“It involves Karvonen,” Powell said. “After his death, police found a mobile phone buried at the house where he was staying in Helsinki. It had been burned before disposal, but forensics managed to access a list of recent calls, many of which went to a London number. It was for a prepaid phone, long since destroyed, and we have no way of knowing whose it was. The other day, however, this number turned up again. It was written on a card in the wallet of a man named Arkady Kagan.”

As Maddy listened, her eyes fell on a picture that she had posted on her refrigerator. It was the only photograph she had of an old friend, taken years ago at a party in the Hamptons. “The man who vandalized the painting at the Met.”

“That's right,” Powell said. “I got a call about it yesterday from a contact at the Bureau. No one has drawn any public conclusions, at least not yet, but we've assumed for a long time that the number belonged to Karvonen's handler. Which implies that Arkady Kagan—”

“—was working for Russian intelligence.” Maddy exhaled, leaning against the kitchen counter. “But why did he attack the painting?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. Even now, the police seem to think that he suffered some kind of breakdown. But can you think of any reason why he'd target this particular work?”

Maddy left the kitchen, heading back to the laptop on her dining room table. “I don't know. It doesn't make any sense.”

“Well, think it over. If anything occurs to you, you know where to find me.”

Powell hung up. As Maddy set down her phone, a voice in her head, familiar but insistent, told her that this was the time to walk away. Soon, she thought vaguely, it would be too late. But it wasn't that easy. Because even if this new information meant nothing, there was still one more thing she had to do.

Opening her laptop, she looked up directions to an address she knew by heart. Then she got ready to leave.

An hour later, Maddy was standing across the street from an elegant town house in Fulham, which looked much as she remembered. It was evidently unoccupied, the windows in need of a wash, and the front door had been repainted. Since moving to the city, she had avoided coming back, and she still didn't know what had brought her here today. Whatever she had hoped to feel wasn't there. All her feelings had been used up long ago. Except, perhaps, for one.

After Lermontov's death, she had gone back to New York expecting to be arrested at any minute. She had spent two years moving from one job to another, paying down her debts, always waiting to be found out. And when she had been discovered at last, it had been over something completely trivial.

Or so she had thought. Now she wasn't so sure. But that was a problem for later.

What she knew, standing here again, was that she wasn't done yet. There was a question that remained unanswered, and if she walked away now, it never would be. Tarkovsky had known Lermontov. If he had supported his work, even indirectly, he bore part of the blame for the consequences.

Maddy didn't think that Powell would approve of this line of reasoning. She knew it was best to let the dead bury the dead. But she could never forget the promise she had made. And it meant that she had work to do.

She remained there, looking out at the town house, for another ten minutes. At last, she crossed the street and left something on the front steps. Then she turned and headed back to the train.

A red Peugeot was parked nearby, facing away from the house. As Maddy walked up the block, the figure in the car raised a camera and took a series of pictures, thinking they might be useful later.

Asthana lowered the camera. The day before, she had positioned a watcher, a local informant who had done small jobs for her in the past, across the street from Maddy's flat. Today, he had followed his target from there to the train, and when he had telephoned to say that she had gotten off at Parsons Green, Asthana had known at once where she was going.

She wasn't sure when she first began to guess the truth. A routine check of travel records, the sort of thing that anyone at the agency could do without attracting attention, had revealed that Maddy had spent several weeks in London two years ago. And although her whereabouts for much of that time were unknown, she had clearly been in the city on the day that Lermontov had died.

Following up on this slender clue, Asthana had started to look more closely at Maddy's background, and she had finally managed to see what everyone else had missed. Lermontov had killed someone whom Maddy had cared about deeply. Asthana, as much as anyone, knew what a woman like this could do when pushed. The real question was how to use this information.

She climbed out of the car and headed for the house across the way. Going up to the porch, she picked up what Maddy had left behind on the front steps. It was a photograph, weighed down with a small stone, of a young man in a suit, his face slightly flushed, grinning into the camera.

Asthana studied the picture for a few seconds, then slid it into her pocket, where it brushed against something that was already there. Turning, she headed back to her car, moving at a brisk walk. It was almost time for her next appointment, and she didn't want to be late.