Extreme Faction (5 page)

“Which one is his?” Jake asked.

Tully snubbed out his cigarette and pointed toward the second floor across the street. “You still have the Makarov?”

Jake patted under his left arm.

“Let's go.”

They got out quietly. The street was lit only by a few short lamp posts. Many of the lamps were burned out. They slipped inside and made their way upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, Tully drew his gun and pointed toward apartment 2A. Jake followed his lead. The door was unlocked.

Inside, the two men scanned the darkness for any movement. Nothing. Then Tully, who had been in the apartment one other time, closed the curtains and clicked on a small table lamp. The room was completely destroyed. There was sofa stuffing scattered about the floor, desks overturned, lamps stripped of bulbs, and papers blanketing an area near a far wall.

“Who the hell did this?” Tully whispered.

Jake sniffed the air. “Something's not right here.” He moved toward a small kitchen off to one side, clicked on the light, and peered inside.

“What's the matter?” Tully was right at his side.

“I'm not sure.” Jake moved back into the living room and then saw a door at the far end of the apartment. There was a black cord, a telephone line perhaps, leading under the door. “Where does that lead?”

“A small lab,” Tully said. “Tvchenko did some research here.”

Tully was about to open the lab door when Jake grabbed his arm. “Do you smell that?” Jake asked.

Tully shook his head. “Smells like old books or something.”

“Not that. There's something else. I've smelled it before, but I can't place it.”

Frowning, Tully started to shift the door lever downward.

“No,” Jake screamed. “Let's get the hell out of here, now.”

“We're not done yet.”

“That's my point,” Jake said, pulling Tully out of the room by his arm.

They had just gotten to the outside hallway and closed the door, when they heard the phone ring. A second later, the door blasted outward into Jake and Tully, as the entire room exploded in flames.

On the ground, Jake shook his head and looked at Tully at his side. He was unconscious. Jake grabbed him by the coat collar and dragged him to the stairs. Then he hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him downstairs.

Outside, Jake stuffed Tully into the passenger side, pulled the keys from his pocket, and hurried to start the car. By now, other residents of the apartment building were making their way out of the front door and through windows.

As Jake drove off, he heard the sound of fire engines and police cars making their way to the fire. Jake drove only a few blocks, turned up a side street, and parked between two cars.

Tully was finally coming out of a groggy rest. “What the hell happened?” He reached inside his jacket for his cigarettes and retrieved a crumpled package. “Shit.” He found one that was bent but not broken, and lit it.

“The place blew up,” Jake said. “I realize what I smelled now. It was isopropyl alcohol, combined with ammonium fluoride. The cord under the door was the trigger. Someone had to be watching the place, saw us go in, and waited a few minutes to make the phone call. We were pretty damn lucky, because the air would have surely been toxic—probably with Sarin, a nerve gas. Or something like that.”

Tully puffed on his cigarette, his hand shaking uncontrollably. “You saved our ass.” Then he thought for a moment. “We've got to go back.”

“Are you nuts?”

“We've had the place bugged for two weeks with a remote, sound activated tape. Our tape machine is across the street in another apartment. Armstrong changes the tape twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. We might have caught who did this on tape. Drive.”

Jake started the car and headed off.

Tully directed Jake to round the block and end up across the street and behind the building where Tvchenko's apartment was burning. They could both see the smoke, white and puffy now, streaming over the building roofs. The Odessa station kept a room on the second floor with a direct view of Tvchenko's apartment. The officers never entered the building from the same street that the scientist would, but instead from a side door, parking on an entirely different street. That way they could come and go without anyone noticing.

“Stay here,” Tully said, as he got out and slid a watch cap over his head. With his dark wool coat, his hands stuffed into his pockets, and now the cap, he looked like a merchant marine just off a ship.

Jake kept his eyes open, scanning the rearview mirrors, and continually peering toward the door Tully had entered. He wondered if someone had hung around after calling Tvchenko's apartment, and then followed them there.

In a few minutes, Tully exited the building carrying an old leather suitcase. He shoved it into the back seat and got into the front. “We're off.”

Jake started driving, checking the mirror every few seconds. So far, they were alone. “Did you close down the place?” Jake asked.

“Yeah.” Tully searched for another good cigarette, but not finding one, he threw the pack to the back seat.

“Those things will kill you anyway,” Jake said, smiling.

Tully laughed. “Yeah, like this job won't do a number on our ass first.” He pulled a cassette tape from his pocket, shoved it into the player, and hit rewind. When it stopped, he pushed play.

The first thing they heard was a door opening and closing and the sound of footsteps on a wooden floor. Then the sound of things flying, ripping, tearing. And finally whispered words.

“What was that?” Jake asked.

Tully stopped the tape and rewound it slightly. He played it again, only louder. “What language is that?”

Listening carefully, Jake cocked his ear toward the speaker. Then there was a louder sentence, and it became clearer to him what was being said. He smiled.

“What is it?”

“It's Kurdish,” Jake said. “I only understand a little. It's sort of a cross between Farsi and Arabic, with a little Turkish thrown in. I learned some working in Kurdistan during the Iran-Iraq War.”

“Halabja?”

“Exactly,” Jake said. “The Kurds must have something to do with the message Tvchenko passed me.”

“What do you suppose they were looking for?”

“I don't know. Maybe Tvchenko was about to sell them something. A new nerve gas. Or even a biological strain. But he was killed before the deal went through. So they go to his place, look for the formula, and set a bomb.”

“Why bomb the place?”

Jake shrugged. “Maybe they figured if they couldn't have it, nobody would.”

It made some sense. But Jake was still confused as to why Tvchenko had passed him the message, and what the Kurds wanted with Tvchenko's information.

One thing was certain. He'd make it his business to find out what was going on.

Tully had dropped Jake off at the Chornoye Hotel, saying he'd meet with him for lunch. Jake planned to sleep in. It had been a long night, with Tvchenko's death and Jake and Tully almost getting blown to pieces. The problem was, he had been so tired and pumped up from the night's events, that he had not slept well at all. He had tossed and turned, checking his watch every half hour.

By seven in the morning, he had decided the hell with it, get up and face the day.

He went to the bathroom, thought about shaving, and then decided against it. He was drawing the bath water and relieving himself when he thought he heard a noise in the room. Looking around he realized he had left the Makarov under his pillow. He was standing in his black jockey underwear. Nothing else. There was nothing in the bathroom he could use for a weapon. Damn. Not even a plunger.

Opening the door a crack, Jake peered out into the semi-dark room. He could only see the door to the hall, the window, which gave the room its light, and a chair next to the wall mirror.

Jake closed the door and thought. Had he really heard anything? He turned off the faucet and splashed around with his hands, as if he had stepped in and taken a seat. Then he moved behind the door and waited, his right fist clenched and ready to strike at head level.

He didn't have to wait long. In a moment, the door handle slowly lowered, and then the door swept into the room. Jake expected to see a gun, but did not. Instead, a brown leather pump stepped in, followed by dark hair.

Jake grabbed the door handle, quickly opened the door, and started to swing at the person's head, but pulled up short.

“Jesus Christ,” Jake yelled. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

It was Chavva with a shocked look on her face, having just jumped back against the sink. She was dressed in a black leather waist coat and brown slacks. She relaxed and crossed her legs at the ankles, looking Jake up and down.

“I'm sorry if I scared you,” she said. “I tried knocking, but there was no answer. So I let myself in. I could hear the water running.”

Let herself in? It had been late when he got in. Had he forgotten to lock the door? He didn't think so, but it was possible. “I'm sorry I almost hit you. It's just—”

She raised a hand. “It's my fault. A bath is a sacred place. I shouldn't have come.” She started for the door.

“Wait.” Jake closed the door. “Why are you here?”

She hesitated. “I thought we'd have breakfast. Talk. Get to know each other better.”

Standing in his underwear, Jake felt a chill across his body. He studied her large, round eyes, those moist lips, her perfect body. “Let's talk in the other room,” he said.

She agreed and they both went into the main room, her taking the chair by the mirror, and Jake sitting at the head of the bed nearest the pillow with the Makarov. He wasn't sure why. He had no reason not to trust Chavva, other than the fact that she was so mysterious and had been the last person to actually touch Yuri Tvchenko before his death. Besides him, of course.

Jake slipped a T-shirt over his head, cutting the chill. He waited for her to say something, staring right at her, taking in every square inch of her.

Finally she said, “That was terrible last night... Tvchenko's death.”

She looked visibly disturbed, as if she would cry, or had cried over the man's death.

“Were you two friends?”

She shook her head. “No. But it was a horrible way to die. The twitching.” She shuddered.

Jake had seen so many people die, perhaps he was a bit too familiar. Too insensitive. Maybe that's why Chavva had disappeared after the man collapsed.

“It must have been worse for you,” she said. “Him falling into your arms like that. Did he say anything before he died? Did he know he was dying?”

He thought about that. He hadn't even considered how Tvchenko had felt. How would it feel knowing you were dying? Jake had been shot before. Once, when he was grazed in the head, he had felt as though he were floating from the ground, and imagined himself rising to heaven. If such a place even existed, he wasn't entirely sure he'd be heading in that direction. He wondered about others he had seen die, or having died recently. The worst of all had been in Halabja. With those people, mostly innocent civilians, whose only crime was having been born a Kurd, he could read their contorted faces. There was the mother who had searched for her fifteen-year-old daughter, and collapsed in the street gazing upward to Allah. What had she done? Jake found himself staring at Chavva.

“I'm sorry,” he said, thinking of her questions again. “I'm not sure what he was thinking. I guess he must have known he was dying, but assumed it was a heart attack or something.”

“He didn't say anything to you?”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Maybe ask you for help.”

“Why would he ask me for help? A stranger.”

“I thought you said you knew him.”

That was strange. They hadn't even discussed Tvchenko. “We had met years ago,” Jake said. “But I'm sure Tvchenko didn't even remember me.” Jake was rubbing the cut on his right hand where the scientist had passed that single word, Halabja, scribbled on a tiny note.

“How'd you hurt your hand?”

“What?” He looked at his hand and thought quickly. “I cut myself yesterday on a metal railing heading down to the Catacombs,” he lied. He had been to the vast expanse of tunnels on the outskirts of the city, nearly a thousand kilometers in all, while working out of Odessa with the Air Force. They were dark and dreary places quarried in the 19th Century, the stones used to build the city. He also knew that anyone who needed a place to hide, or had been in trouble for some reason or other, had used the Catacombs. His briefing upon first arriving in Odessa included a warning to stay away from them. There were no bodies buried there officially, but many had lost their way in the mazes, never to be heard from again.

“The Catacombs,” she said, skeptically, like she had questioned his working for the fertilizer company. “I've heard they can be a dangerous place.”

Jake shrugged. “You can get killed walking across the street. Sometimes you have to take chances.” He realized he had summed up his philosophy on life in two sentences.

They looked at each other for a moment. Then she slowly rose.

“I'm sorry to come here and bother you,” she said.

Her face seemed to reveal so much, yet nothing at all. Her lips would quiver, as if she were about to say something, and then she would hold back. Jake was entranced with her. He felt like he knew her, had some tie with her, but he couldn't figure out how. They had met twice, three times now, and each time had been strange. He met her at the door, feeling a bit funny letting her out in his underwear, considering they hadn't done anything.

She stood in the hallway outside, about to say something.

“What about coffee?” Jake asked.

She looked toward the elevator and then at her watch. “I should get to the conference, really. My boss is expecting me by eight.”