Eternal Empire (4 page)

M
a
ddy sat at a café in Knightsbridge, her newspaper turned to a story about Rogozin's arrest. Next to the paper stood a rapidly cooling cappuccino that she had purchased at an outrageous price before losing all desire to drink it. She knew without looking that Adam Hill was watching from a table in the corner.

She was about to force herself to take a sip when she heard a woman's voice. “Maddy Shaw? Or is it Blume?”

Maddy looked up. Standing before her was a tall blonde in Armani, her bone structure aggressively perfect, carrying a leather folder. Maddy rose. “Either one works these days. And you must be—”

“Elena Usova, Mr. Tarkovsky's personal assistant. Come with me, please.”

Without a pause, the woman headed for the door of the café. Maddy scooped up her things and followed, leaving her coffee behind. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw Adam looking after her in surprise.

It was a cool, gray morning. A black sport utility vehicle was parked illegally at the curb, sitting low and heavy on its wide tires. Standing next to the rear passenger door was a chauffeur in a dark suit and tie, with a hard look that made Maddy think that he hadn't been hired based entirely on his driving record. As the women approached, he opened the door. Elena slid inside, and Maddy, after a moment's hesitation, got into the backseat as well.

She found herself in a plush leather interior with a pair of swivel seats facing the rear of the car. Across from them, next to Elena, was a man in shirtsleeves and slacks. It was Vasily Tarkovsky. He was speaking quietly on the phone in Russian, but as Maddy sat down, she could feel his eyes on her face.

As the chauffeur shut the door and went around to the front of the vehicle, Elena opened the folder in her hands and extracted a pen and stapled document. “A standard nondisclosure form.”

Maddy looked blankly at the pages as the engine started. “Where are we going?”

“This is the only way we could fit you into Mr. Tarkovsky's schedule,” Elena said smoothly. “A car will return you when you're done.”

As they pulled away from the curb, Maddy caught a glimpse of Adam on the sidewalk, staring after them as they drove off. She looked down at the nondisclosure agreement without seeing it, studying Tarkovsky as discreetly as she could. He was in his early fifties, more polished than she had expected, with a neat beard and a receding hairline that emphasized his forehead and his intense eyes, which at the moment were directed out the window.

Finally, Maddy signed the document and returned it to the assistant, who slid it back into her folder. In almost the same motion, Elena took out her phone and began checking her email.

Looking outside, Maddy saw that they had crossed the Albert Bridge. They drove in silence for some time, heading south from the city on the trunk road. At last, Tarkovsky finished his call. Without missing a beat, Elena handed him the leather folder, which he opened. Inside, Maddy caught a glimpse of her own résumé, as well as a highly effusive letter of recommendation from Alvin Beardsley.

Tarkovsky spoke without looking up, his English soft but fluent. “You understand what this position entails?”

Maddy sensed that the assistant was watching her closely. “I believe so. You're looking for a consultant to advise your foundation on repatriating works of art from Russia. I've been told that you've taken a particular interest in an object at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.”

Tarkovsky looked up, his dark eyes lighting on hers. “And the work in question?”

Maddy fell back on her briefing with Powell. “It's one of the fifty imperial eggs made for the Romanovs by the House of Fabergé. Five of them are held in Virginia, which has the largest collection of Fabergé outside Russia. The Peter the Great egg is worth at least twenty million, and inside—”

“Yes, I know what is inside,” Tarkovsky said impatiently. “You don't need to tell me that the egg is priceless. What I want to know is if you understand why I have taken an interest in this particular piece.”

Maddy switched gears easily. “I think you believe that its legal status is vulnerable to challenge.”

“I see,” Tarkovsky said. “And how would you rate our chances of success?”

Maddy knew that this was a man who valued honesty in his employees, so she calibrated her answer accordingly. “The case has problems. A number of attempts have been made to contest the ownership of Romanov artifacts, and they've all failed. On the face of it, you have no legal right.”

Tarkovsky had listened to this in silence. “Is there any other approach we can take?”

“There's always a way in,” Maddy said. “But I'll need to look at the circumstances.”

The oligarch closed the folder. “Tell me about the moral aspect. Doesn't my country have a right to its own heritage?”

“Of course,” Maddy said, her mind working quickly. “But there are other considerations. Art also deserves to be kept in a place where it can be seen by the greatest number of people.”

“But by that standard, art has no place in private collections. Not to mention the art fund where you used to work.”

Maddy saw the trap that had been set. “That was a long time ago. And I gained useful experience there. I don't imagine that you see eye to eye with all of your business partners.”

This was meant as a light remark, but Tarkovsky didn't smile. “It's about more than business. Your fund traded in art that had been illegally taken from Russia, in collusion with Alexey Lermontov, your former employer. It isn't unreasonable to conclude that you saw the signs but were willing to overlook them, as long as you could advance your career. Am I so wrong?”

Maddy paused. Through the window, she saw that they were passing through a village of gardens and country houses. Over the last two years, she had learned to protect herself and live free from fear, a journey that had finally left her standing alone, a prepaid phone in one hand, at the front porch of a house in Fulham. And as the car turned onto a narrow wooded track, she understood with perfect clarity that she had nothing to prove to Tarkovsky, or to any man.

“Let me tell you something about the art business,” Maddy said at last, keeping her eyes on the view outside. “It's based on access and connections. There's a huge incentive to keep transactions secret and to pursue an unfair advantage whenever you can, because the stakes are so high. As a result, it attracts a certain kind of personality. Does that sound familiar?”

She thought she heard the trace of a smile in Tarkovsky's voice. “I suppose so.”

“It should. I don't condone illegality, but I suspect that someone in your position knows what it means to make decisions that can come back to haunt you. The real question is what you do next.” Maddy paused. “I'm the last person to judge anyone based on what they've done in the past. And I expected that you, of all people, would understand this.”

In the long pause that followed, Maddy sensed that she had blown her best chance, but she was also beyond caring. Tarkovsky nodded to his assistant. In response, Elena took a phone from its cradle and spoke into the receiver.

A second later, the car slowed to a stop. As Maddy sat there, her face warm, she heard the chauffeur come around to open the passenger door. She looked across at Tarkovsky. “Are we done?”

Tarkovsky only gave a short nod. After a beat, Maddy gathered up her coat and purse and got up to leave. As she was about to climb out, Elena spoke up. “Can you begin work on Monday?”

Maddy halted halfway out of the car. At first, she wasn't sure she had heard correctly. “Yes.”

“Good,” Elena said. “I'll give you a call later today to discuss compensation?”

“That would be fine,” Maddy said, after realizing that she was being asked a question. She turned to Tarkovsky. “Thank you.”

Tarkovsky nodded absently and took out his phone again. Maddy climbed the rest of the way out, finding herself on a flinty private road lined with magnolia trees. Overhead, the sun was breaking through the clouds.

The chauffeur closed the door without looking at her, got back behind the wheel, and drove away. Following the car with her eyes, she saw it approach a guardhouse at an iron gate, with a town car and jeep parked nearby. A moment later, the gate rolled softly back with a low electric whine.

As the car drove through, Maddy saw the house beyond. It was a mansion at the end of a long drive, with five gables and a newer extension surrounded by a lawn and formal gardens. Along the road that led to the house, the grass had been turned into a polo field. On it, she saw a girl of twelve or so, in jodhpurs and a bomber jacket, riding a roan horse near the main house.

Maddy watched as the girl reined in her horse and waited stonily as the car went by. A second later, turning her head, the girl noticed Maddy standing on the other side of the gate. For a moment, their eyes locked.

“Miss?” The voice came from over her shoulder. Turning, Maddy saw that a second driver had appeared by the town car parked next to the guardhouse. He was holding open the rear passenger door.

Maddy walked over to the car, feeling as if she were dreaming. Just before she got inside, reminding herself to call Powell, she glanced back over her shoulder. The girl on the horse was gone.

I
n the underground detention center at Paddington Green, there was a security desk with four monitors. Only one of the sixteen cells was occupied. The camera was set at a high angle, with a white square glued to the monitor to cover up the bathroom area, but otherwise, Wolfe could see the entire room. In it, a man was seated at a desk with a pad of paper. He was sketching something using a felt marker, but from here, she couldn't tell what it was.

The officer headed for the corridor. “You'll want him in the interview room, then?”

Wolfe followed him down the hallway, noticing that Asthana had remained behind. “No. I'll talk to him in his cell. And I want the camera off. It will make it easier for him to open up.”

They arrived at a row of featureless blue doors with the round eye of a security camera set above each one. Halting at the cell at the end of the hall, the officer unlocked the door and swung it open.

Wolfe went inside. The cell was twelve feet square, with a Perspex window in the ceiling. Its walls were bright yellow. A vinyl mattress and pillow lay on the bed, next to a bathroom with a toilet and tiny sink.

On the television, a nature video was playing with the sound turned down, showing a mill of army ants marching in an endless circle, each following the scent of the soldiers in front until all had died of exhaustion. Seated beside it was Rogozin. As Wolfe entered the room, he covered the page on his desk with another sheet of paper. Before he did, however, she caught a glimpse of what he had been drawing. It was a sketch of a man on horseback.

Rogozin turned to face her. His thinning hair was uncombed, and he was dressed in slacks and a plain white shirt. Wolfe could still smell the faint odor of the petroleum spirits that had been used to wash the printer's ink from his hands several days before. She had seen the fingerprint card herself, with the prints of the first two fingers on his left hand missing.

The officer closed the door behind him, leaving it unlocked. Once they were alone, Rogozin smiled. “I was wondering if I'd see you again. It seemed unfair of you to leave me without so much as a visit, given how we parted.”

“I know. But I thought we could talk.” Wolfe pointed to the camera in the ceiling, the red light of which had gone dark. “We aren't being recorded. This is an unofficial conversation. I want to tell you why you're really here.”

As Wolfe sat down, she reflected that she had never wanted to be in this position. She had convinced Dana Cornwall, the deputy director of the intelligence directorate, that Rogozin should be held as a terror suspect, allowing them to detain him without charge for fourteen days. So far, however, their searches and interrogations had failed to uncover anything definitive, and with time running out, she had been left with no choice but to confront the prisoner herself.

Wolfe gathered her thoughts. “I'd like to talk to you about Lasse Karvonen. Before he carried out the attack last year, he destroyed his computer, but we've recovered more than a dozen emails from a man who appears to have been his contact in Russian military intelligence.”

“So your case should be easy to prove,” Rogozin said. “Who was this man?”

“It isn't clear. The emails were routed through intermediate servers to disguise their origins, and all were relatively short. In one of the messages, however, there was a phrase that stuck in my mind. The contact is talking about a woman Karvonen will meet in Helsinki to help carry out his plan, and he writes:
She already fell for you, three times over, before she knew your face or name.
”

As she spoke, she looked to see if Rogozin would react, but he did not. “I didn't know much about Karvonen,” Wolfe continued. “But he loved the poetry of John Donne. It's strange, because he was a former soldier, not a literary man. And I wondered if he might have acquired this taste from someone else.”

She leaned forward. “So I began looking into Donne. And while I was going through his work, purely by chance, I found a phrase that sounded familiar.
Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee, before I knew thy face or name
—”

Rogozin's expression hardened. “I know the line. But what does it prove?”

“At first glance, not much,” Wolfe said. “But when I looked at the original email in Russian, I found that it was a direct quotation from a recent translation of Donne. And the translator was you.”

Rogozin gave her a thin smile. “It's always good to hear that someone has read my work. But I don't see how it gives you a case.”

“It doesn't, but it was a start. At first, I thought it just meant that the handler had read your translation, but your books weren't ones I'd expect to see in the hands of an illegal agent. I also knew that you had served in the Russian army, that your position as a prominent dissident allowed you to travel widely, and that you had the confidence of the same opposition movements that were targeted by Karvonen. You also flew out to Helsinki the week after the crash.”

“Your men have already asked about this,” Rogozin said irritably. “I was attending a symposium. You can check the records.”

“I have,” Wolfe replied. “But I was also taught, a long time ago, to read behind the meanings of the words themselves. So I had forensic linguists at Hofstra and Georgetown compare your published work with the emails that had been sent to Karvonen. And the analysis concluded, with a high degree of probability, that they were written by the same man.”

Rogozin started to laugh. “I can't believe that this is your case against me. I'm not some mindless thug for you to intimidate.” He leaned closer, his eyes suddenly bright. “I know it must be hard. Your future seemed so promising, only to be lost in politics, and with a traitor at the desk next to yours, no less. Now you're grasping at straws. And sooner or later, you'll need to let me go.”

He sat back in his chair. “Your argument is meaningless. With a small sample of one text and a large sample of another, you can prove anything. On one end, you have a few short messages. On the other, a lifetime's work—”

As Wolfe listened to these words, something occurred to her, but she kept it to herself for now. In any case, Rogozin had touched a nerve. She had killed Karvonen, but the agency had failed to prevent the attack. As time went on, that was the only fact that mattered.

And then there was Arnold Garber. Garber had been an officer at the Serious Organised Crime Agency, working at the desk next to hers, someone she had liked and trusted. Just before the attack, he had disappeared, leaving behind a trail of evidence that indicated he had been working for Russia for years. Intelligence sources had hinted that he was somewhere in Moscow, but no one knew for sure. It was one of the most humiliating law enforcement failures in decades, and ever since, she had been obsessed with finding Garber, if only to ask him why.

Wolfe rose from the edge of the bed. “All right. I was hoping that we might be able to talk, but I'm also willing to do this the hard way. You and I aren't finished. Not by a long shot.”

She went to the door of the cell. Before opening it, she looked back at Rogozin, who was still seated at his desk.

“I'm aware that forensic linguistics can be inexact,” Wolfe said. “But even after all your objections, I can't help but wonder how you knew that Garber's desk was next to mine.”

Rogozin said nothing in response, although Wolfe thought she saw something flicker in his hazel eyes as she left the cell. Closing the door, she went down the hallway, where Asthana was standing with her phone to one ear.

As she approached, Asthana hung up. Before her partner could say anything, Wolfe spoke first, not wanting to lose her insight from a moment before. “Something was missing from Rogozin's house. If he's a writer, where are his manuscripts? His papers have to be somewhere.”

“That's a good idea,” Asthana said, following her to the end of the hall. “But there's something you need to hear first. That was Cornwall on the phone. The director general wants to hold a hearing into the circumstances of the arrest. It's scheduled to take place in five days.”

Wolfe pressed the button for the elevator. “I'm surprised it took him this long.”

As she waited for the elevator to descend, she found herself thinking of Powell, who had escaped before the agency degenerated into an endless political nightmare. Five days wasn't nearly enough. But now it was all she had.

The elevator doors opened. Wolfe got in, pressing the button for the first floor.

Caught up in her thoughts, she did not notice, except in passing, that her partner had lingered for a second in the hallway outside. And she did not see Asthana look for a long moment at the closed door of Rogozin's cell, her face unreadable, before entering the elevator as well.