Requiem For a Glass Heart (39 page)

“Stepanov is big,” Volkov said to one of the men with gloves as he backstepped to avoid the dark pool of blood spreading on the concrete floor under Stepanov’s deformed head. “You may have to make the hole in the hides a little bigger.”

The Lincoln nosed around the corner of the Global Maritime warehouse and paused. There was some radio communication in Sicilian, and then the Lincoln pulled out onto the quayside and moved to the doorway of the warehouse. When it stopped again, the front passenger door flew open and one of the young Sicilians got out and opened Irina’s door.

Irina turned to Cate. “Wait here,” she said and swung her legs out the door. Then she paused. She turned back and looked at Cate. “On second thought, Catherine, I think you should come with me. I want to show you something so you will understand what is going to happen later.”

Cate nodded. Immediately her own door was opened, and she got out under the lee side of the huge freighter, which loomed high above her, fifty feet away. She could hear the bilge splashing into the channel, falling from high up on the filthy bow of the ship. Suddenly, silently, out of nowhere, half a dozen Sicilians were standing around, their weapons much in evidence but not flourished.

The smells of the channel side were thick with petroleum and mud and garbage, enough to induce an involuntary grimace, but were nothing compared to the much stronger stench that assailed their nostrils as they stepped into the musty and cavernous warehouse. Volkov was waiting for them just inside the door, smoking. He cast a quick disapproving eye at Cate.

“This is my decision, Valery,” Irina said.

He offered no further protest before he turned and headed into the warehouse. Cate felt her gorge rise at the hideous odor and could not stop herself from clamping her hand over her mouth and nose. Immediately she recognized what was strapped down on the pallets, and for some reason
it struck her as nightmarish. This was not leather, it was piles and piles, acres, of flesh stripped from animals whose deaths seemed to have occurred only moments earlier, their still liquid blood seeping from living cells, their bawling deaths still reverberating in the upper regions of the fetid warehouse.

Cate fixed her eyes on Irina, just ahead of her. Her long striding legs and sensuous hips created a graceful rhythmic sway in the hem of the black dress—black, clean black. Her blond chignon was immaculate, her head held straight and proud. Beauty and symmetry suitable for paradise were taking a strange, deliberate walk into corridors of leaching tissue.

Finally they all stopped a few yards from a partially disassembled pallet of hides. Irina walked alone to the edge of the pallet and stared into the center of it. Cate noticed that she had no expression of distaste on her face. She didn’t seem to shrink from the filth of the oozing pallet of hides, though she never touched them. Everyone held back, waiting for her.

Irina turned. “Catherine.”

One of the Italians took her arm and went forward with her. Irina turned the other way and reached out her hand and said, “Valery.”

As Cate stopped at the edge of the pallet, she saw the hole in which a body was curled on its side, not quite in a fetal position, its head bent forward. There was blood everywhere. Cate’s heart deserted its natural rhythm and began slamming against her sternum. She recognized Stepanov, sleeping in his own blood, asleep in a cocoon of alien flesh.

“He’s already dead,” Irina said. “At least, he looks dead, doesn’t he?” She raised her hand and fired the gun.
Phut! Phut! Phut!
Stepanov’s body shrugged one, two, three times.

Cate’s knees almost buckled, and she felt the Sicilian’s arm around her waist.

“You are now free of Valentin Stepanov,” Irina said. “Over here,” she said, stepping over to another pallet, “is Grigori Izvarin.”

She raised the gun again, and again fired three times, the silencer sputtering quickly, abruptly.

“It is done, then,” she said, and she turned and handed the gun back to Volkov.

“J
ERNIGAN!”
H
AIN YELLED OVER THE RADIO.
“W
HERE THE HELL
are they? Quick!”

“Looks like the signal’s coming from the vicinity of the Ship Channel … the wharves … uh, somewhere between the Turning Basin and Brady Island—closer to the Turning Basin.”

“Curtis,” Ann said steadily, trying to control her rage as she glared at Hain over the top of the equipment in the center of the table, “you want to tell me what in the
hell
I just heard? Did my man just get nailed in that warehouse? Is that what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Hain said. “It sounded like he’s been killed, yeah, but I don’t think she did it—”

“She said, ‘He’s already dead,’” Jernigan said, cutting in. “She was making sure—that’s what it sounded like to me, that she was making sure.”

“Jesus, Leo.” Ann shook her head as she turned to Ometov. “That was damned cold-blooded. Leo?”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Ometov’s face was grim. “I don’t know what is happening here. No, I do not under—”

“She said ‘Valery,’” Erika snapped. “She and Volkov are in this together.”

“Is that what you read?” Hain asked. “I heard his name
too, but I don’t know what in the hell she meant by saying it. You sure she was speaking to him?”

“Well, what the hell else?” Ann was furious. “It was like a command. She said ‘Valery,’ you know, like a command.”

“I heard the shots,” Hain said. “And Izvarin—him too. They killed him just then, or before.”

“She wanted Cate to see what she was doing,” Erika said. “She called her over to watch.”

“I don’t know …” Ometov equivocated.

“That’s what it sounded like to me, too,” Ann said.

“What does that mean?” Hain asked. It wasn’t clear whom he was talking to or what he was talking about.

“They’re back in the cars,” Jernigan said. “They’re moving.”

“What is it? Is she crying—is that it?” Ann’s voice jumped around the intermittent transmissions from the Lincoln.

“Goddamn Sicilians again,” Jernigan muttered. “They’re moving …”

“Jernigan,” Hain barked, “where the hell are you?”

“Navigation Boulevard.”

“You’re not moving pickets in …”

“No, do you want me to?”

“No—no, definitely not,” Hain confirmed quickly. “We don’t want to spook them now, not now. The burst transmitter’s doing its job. Let them go. That’s what we wanted. We don’t want them jumpy. They gotta calm down.”

“Damn, I sure as hell didn’t hear anybody upset in that warehouse, except maybe Cate,” Jernigan said. “They sounded like a pretty damn cold bunch to me.”

Hain turned on Ometov. “What is this, Leo?” he snapped. “It sounded like Volkov hit these two before Cate got there. He was there when Irina arrived. They were dead already, but she knew the hit was coming, didn’t she? What is it—is she working for Krupatin, or is she turning against him? And Volkov?”

“And Bontate?” Erika said. “Leo, these are
Carlo’s
men with Irina.”

“We don’t know that,” Ometov said.

“Oh, come
on”
Ann groaned.

“These are Carlo’s men,” Erika pressed, “and they were involved in these hits. Carlo is moving against Krupatin, I
think. They have been working together in Europe for five years. Now this …”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Ometov was muttering. The others could almost hear his mind racing, stumbling on the heels of his words.

“Izvarin was Krupatin’s senior lieutenant in Europe,” Erika persisted. “Stepanov was his senior man here in the States. Either they have done something to make him think they needed to be eliminated—”

“Jesus,” Ann interrupted, her eyes widening, “do you think Krupatin found out that Stepanov was working with us?”

“-—or Carlo is moving in on him,” Erika finished.

“If Bontate is moving against him, it looks like Valery Volkov is in on it with the Sicilians,” Hain said.

“Or maybe Volkov is maneuvering his own coup,” Ann said. “Everybody always wants to be at the top. What I want to know is, where in the hell did this innocent little art student get such a bloody cold streak? Leo, I don’t believe this is a surprise to you.”

“Okay, people,” Jernigan said. “They’re out of the port authority grounds now and heading back into the city. What about the men back at the warehouse, Curtis? You want to pick them up? Volkov, whoever’s with him?”

“Volkov didn’t come out?”

“No. Only car that came out was the dark Lincoln. The Sicilians.”

“No!” Ometov interjected. “This is obviously very closely coordinated. The moment you pick them up, Carlo, and perhaps Krupatin, will know of it instantly.” He paused in a moment of frustration. “Remember, remember—we want Sergei Krupatin. That is what all of this has been set in motion to do. We must not be distracted by these unexpected events.”

“Curtis, this is Strey. One of our agents who speaks Sicilian just got into the tech room here. He’ll have to play catchup from the tapes, but he’ll start monitoring live transmissions in about twenty minutes.”

“Better late than never,” somebody muttered.

“Thanks, Ennis,” Jernigan said. “Okay, people, we’re headed into the city on Navigation.”

As they frantically tried to sort out what was happening, sporadic transmissions were coming from Cate’s implant. There was more Sicilian dialect, calm, precise, and infuriatingly unintelligible, and then there were softer words, whispers that prompted everyone to lean forward in concentration.

“Listen to me—listen to me, Catherine.” Irina’s voice was hoarse, low. “Come here to me.” Now the volume was intimate, close, hushed. Cate was absolutely silent.

“Catherine. That must have seemed brutal to you, what I did back there. But I had to do it. The two men were dead, but I had to make sure.
My
life, and yours, depended on my being sure they were dead. Listen to me. Shhhh … shhhh.” Comforting sounds. “Listen.” Whispers, barely audible. “You are in the middle of a dangerous situation. Through no fault of your own, only your misjudgment. A simple misjudgment should not have such grave consequences, but that cannot be helped now. What is important is that we make no mistakes from here on.”

“From here on …”

“No, no, please—listen. Catherine!”

“What is going
on
here?” Cate’s voice was impatient, frightened.

Silence. Then Irina’s voice, calm, careful: “I am in the process of extricating myself from a very long slavery. I will let nothing get in the way of my deliverance. Nothing.” Pause. “Not even you, Catherine.”

Silence.

“Do you understand what I am saying?” Irina asked.

There was another moment of silence, and then Cate said, “Yes.” Her voice was steady. “I do understand.”

“Good,” Irina said. “Now listen to me, Catherine. You must know that everything I do now is to save our lives. We have fallen into a well of serpents. You have to understand serpents, how they think and what they want, if you expect to have any hope of surviving.”

“Why did you get me into this?” Cate asked evenly. She did not know herself whether it was Catherine or Cate speaking.

“What?”

“We haven’t fallen into this well. You took my hand and jumped in. You said I made mistakes, you said ‘misjudgments’—that that’s why I am where I am. But that’s not
strictly true, is it? I didn’t have to be involved in this—you brought me in.”

“You wanted to save your daughter.”

“I did, yes. But I’m not stupid. What happened to Stepanov back there, and to the other one, the fact that they were killed, wasn’t done in order to save my daughter. There’s a hell of a lot of other stuff going on here. He was going to be killed anyway, wasn’t he? And you’ve brought me along tonight for some other reason, haven’t you? It has nothing to do with my daughter.”

In the silence that followed, the voices of the young Sicilians skittered over the airwaves like the conversation of ghosts, sibilants hissing through the aural nightscape, as elusive as an audible ignis fatuus.

“No, Catherine, you are right,” Irina said after a long time. Her voice was flat and hard. “I will not lie to you about this anymore, because our lives depend on your doing as I ask you to do. It is true, I have used you for my own purposes. I am not ashamed of that. And I would do it again. My life, all that I am—all that is left of me—is at stake here. And now, so is yours.”

“Are you really with Russian intelligence?”

“Yes.”

“Then what on earth are you doing? Why aren’t law enforcement people involved here, people from the government—somebody?”

“Listen to me. I told you my story. I tried to make it clear to you that my situation is more personal than professional. Russian intelligence was useful to me as long as it was useful to me. My only concern here is personal. The government be damned, as far as I am concerned. The truth is, if you are human, everything you do is personal. It does not matter whether you are a peasant or a prime minister. Everything is personal. What I am doing here now is entirely personal.”

“To save your life.”

“And Félia’s.”

“Even if you have to sacrifice mine.”

“No. If I die, you must live. Under the circumstances … I have to make sure of that, above all.”

Cate shook her head in frustration. “I don’t understand this.”

“No, you do not yet, but you will. But what you
must
understand now is that your life is tied to mine, even your body. Perhaps right now, especially your body.”

“My
body?”

“The man we are going to see now is an associate of Sergei Krupatin’s. He is Asian, a man of enormous wealth. I am taking messages to him. But that is not all. I am taking my body to him as well. It is part of the deal.” She paused. “He prefers the ménage é trois.”

“What?”

“I have made promises to him.” “About me!”

“About someone like you. It happens to be you.”

“You expect me to do this because
you
promised?”

“If you were willing to give your body to Stepanov for money, you should not find it so difficult to give it to this man to save your life.”

“To save my life?”

“That is the situation we are facing now. Anything less than what I have promised would bring suspicion on both of us. And with these people, whatever causes suspicion is treated like gangrenous flesh—it is quickly cut out wherever it is found, as soon as it is found.”

“I don’t know if I can do this … God, really, I don’t know.”

“Yes, I counted on that,” Irina said. “This man is predatory. He will quickly sense that your timidity, your natural anxiety and reluctance, are genuine. It will be like catnip to him.”

“My God, this is incredible. Don’t you … don’t you have any conscience at all?”

“Conscience?” Irina spoke the word with a gentle gasp, a softened inflection that carried an unmistakable note of longing. “Dear Catherine, you have no idea what you are saying. My heart is made of glass. You have no idea.”

“Jesus Christ, Curtis.” Ann’s voice was tight. “Jesus.”

“Wei Tsing,” Erika snapped. “She’s talking about Wei Tsing.”

“Yes, I think so,” Ometov agreed, nodding, turning to look at Hain. “I think this is who it will be. I have no doubt about that.”