The Family Hightower (27 page)

“Who is it?”

“It's Alexandru. Open up, Claudiu.”

Alexandru is standing there in a light coat over what must be pajamas; Claudiu's never seen him look like that outside, not near the open space in the center of Negostina near the bus stop, not heading into the store in Siret for crackers. He looks exhausted. There's a young man with him who looks like he's close to homeless, and maybe sick. There's dirt on his face, his hands, his clothes. A hole in his pants just below his left knee. This young man has come a long way. He's taken days to get here, hitched four rides from Kiev across the Ukrainian steppe to the Romanian border, in a blind panic, sure that he's being followed, until the ride's ended and he's found himself in a village he's never heard of, and he's collapsed from exhaustion in a hotel he can't read the name of. He's walked, run, and stumbled six miles out of his way to cross the border where no one's looking, because he's sure someone's waiting for him there. And he's knocked on three doors in the middle of the night in Negostina, trying to find out where Madalina's family is, but because no one can understand his Ukrainian, they've given him to Alexandru
—
who speaks a little English—instead.

“This boy says his name is Petey,” Alexandru says, “and he knows your daughter. He's in a lot of trouble.”

Petey. Yes, Petey. The boy he's never met, the one his daughter loved. There's no way, just no way, that he's here to give good news. Claudiu feels a hot prickling along his skin, like someone's doused him in oil and is about to set him on fire. Now it's in his head. A bomb has gone off in his brain and put a crack in his skull from his forehead to his crowd and down to his neck.
Madalina, my Madalina.
He knows the answer, the only answer that matters, before he asks the question:
Where is my daughter?
He says it twice, in Romanian and Ukrainian, and his jaw drops when Petey can't answer. The American starts shaking his head, asks Alexandru something in English, in a very small voice. Alexandru's been studying from books, movies, and tapes. He practices in his yard sometimes, speeches from Shakespeare and gangster movies. Lots of time spent rolling the words around in his mouth, though it must come out all wrong. He says the four words that Claudiu thinks must make up the question as if there's a question mark at the end of every one. It's obvious that Alexandru's not sure he's saying it right. But Petey seems to understand, because that's when he shakes his head even more. He looks at Claudiu and his face twists with sadness, sadness and guilt and terror. He says something in English over and over, until he's sobbing too much to speak. A rope of spit hangs from his open lips until he's covered his face with his hands, his fingers so tense that Claudiu thinks, just for a second, that it's as if he's trying to rip the skin off. So that nobody would recognize him, and he could be someone else.

“Alexandru,” Claudiu says. “What did he say?”

Alexandru gives him a good long look. Holds out his hand.

“He says he's sorry.”

 

 

Chapter 17

By
now, dear reader, I bet you want to know where Peter is. You know, Rufus's son. Maybe you think of him as the good Peter, your first friend way back at the beginning, at Sylvie's wedding on the lawn of the house, and in Granada, when he was forced to start running. That Peter is still running. If this were a different kind of story, that Peter would do everything. He would travel the world himself, uncover the criminal enterprise, tip off the authorities, and help bring the whole thing into the light, family and syndicate and all. Maybe he'd kill the Wolf himself, put a bullet in the man's head. Or no, wait: Maybe there'd be some standoff with his cousin Petey, his evil twin, in which the bare fact that they haven't seen each other in years is ignored so that Petey can get down on his knees before the cousin he's wronged and atone for his sins. Then maybe Petey would sacrifice himself for the cause, go on a suicide mission that lays waste to his body but redeems his immortal soul, as the organization can't be brought down without it. That would leave the good Peter standing on top of the wreckage he's made and wondering what on earth he's going to do next, until Sylvie somehow appears to give him more money than he could spend in his life. A fresh start. An earthly reward for the work he's done serving a higher justice.

But all that would be telling a lie, a bigger lie than the ones that fiction allows. It would be giving you false hope, that one person could do all that. I'm not saying that no one person can ever right a tremendous wrong. God knows it's been done, and maybe it's the only thing, in the end, that keeps the rest of us going, or just alive. But the problem here—of what happens when the laws get weak, the market takes over, and people get hurt—isn't something one person can fix. Only decide how much to be involved, and how hard to push back. Or how much to steer clear, because nobody ever thanks the guy who stands in the way of other people making money. Peter doesn't steer clear, because it's his family under threat, the family he's always wished he was closer to, wished things were different with, and he loves them, even though he hardly knows them; even though he knows, now, so much they've done.

So Peter's running, by which I mean that he's flying, back to Africa, to warn his father. He flies back to New York from Cleveland, then has to wait six and a half hours for the connecting flight to Johannesburg. After that is another flight to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe—this is before Zimbabwe takes its serious nosedive—which puts Peter within spitting distance of his father, who's put himself down in Livingstone, Zambia. A lot of thoughts cross his mind in the almost two days he spends on airplanes and in airports. By the time the plane's stopped for refueling in Cape Verde, he's taken his own life apart and put it back together in his head three times. Because what Sylvie told him—and she told him almost everything, more than she'll ever tell the FBI—is driving him a little crazy.

It all hinges on how much his father knew about it before he left the United States forever. Peter had always thought Rufus was driven by something more personal, a version of the mix of conflicting feelings some rich hippies feel, the shame at having so much, wrapped up in a childish selfishness, the glorification of being able to live with so little. It's impossible to imagine that it's not part of the equation. But it never occurred to Peter that maybe Rufus was also protecting himself, and after Peter was born, him, too. That Rufus's refusal to tell him much at all about his family, his complete ambivalence about Peter wanting to visit them, wasn't just him projecting some long-held grudge onto his son. If his father knows as much as Peter does now, then it took some strength—holding back for so long, not unloading the entire family story onto him the minute Peter said he just wanted to visit his cousins. At the end of this train of thought, Peter's respect for Rufus rises, until he's proud of the way the man raised him, of how Rufus taught him to get by in the world, to survive on so little and yet be able to do almost anything he wanted, even if he didn't know what that was. He wants to call his dad and tell him he's sorry. He wants to thank him over and over. But then he starts swinging the other way. If Rufus knew everything, why didn't he just tell his kid after a while? He could have just let it all go, let it go and stayed with Peter's mom. Peter's only seen one picture of her, a woman with dark hair and a long face. They lost it years ago, somewhere between Addis Ababa and Kampala, but he had memorized it by then anyway and still thinks about it all the time. In the picture, her arm is flung over Rufus's shoulder; she's thrown her head back and letting out what must be a huge, big-toothed laugh. Rufus is smiling so wide you can see it under his mustache. They could have stayed together, the three of them, stayed even in the town where Peter was born. Lived a simpler life, one that didn't involve cash in bottom drawers, cash under the bed, cash in kitchen cupboards. Just clothes, a few toys for him, pots and pans, plates and spoons. They might still be there, then, and this whole misunderstanding, the mistaken identity, that's drawn Peter into something he didn't ask for and wants no part of, would never have happened. Then Peter wants to call his father and scream at him. But both extremes assume that Rufus knows.
How much do you know about your sister, Dad?
Peter wants to say.
What do you know?
But then what if Rufus doesn't know anything? How much is Peter allowed to tell him? Because his family's toxic legacy is still alive, the animal is still out there and coming for him, and he's scared of it, of what it can do. Scared of what Rufus might do if he learns just how much Peter's been pulled in.

Peter doesn't know who his father is right now, and he just needs to talk to him and can't, because he's on an airplane and this is
1995
; because there's no way he's going to talk to Rufus about any of it over an airport payphone. In a flicker of self-awareness in between the bouts of self-doubt, he thinks of how awful airports and airplanes are for people who are in a real hurry to get where they're going. All that waiting around at the gate, not moving at all. All those hours sitting on the plane, which feel like you're not moving, even if you are. It's dead time, dead space, and Peter's the kind of person who winds up counting every minute. He doesn't know that Sylvie's done the same thing; that she's using him as much as she's helping him. Stalling with the FBI until she's sure Peter's on the ground in Zimbabwe and crossing over into Zambia. Banking on what Peter would never assume: that Rufus is, in the end, much more his father's son than he would ever admit, and when the beast comes for him—because after what Sylvie does, it will—he'll know what to do.

Sylvie's liquidated almost everything now, her legitimate and illegitimate holdings. The legitimate transactions, she knows, the FBI can see, but she can explain it as getting ready for the witness protection program, to go into hiding. They'd be able to see the illegitimate ones after a while, but by then everything will be done. She's moving too fast. She knows so much about the Wolf's organization, thanks to years of dealing with him, getting him to let his guard down by putting so much money with him. She knows who's involved, who's been doing it for a while, who's new to the game. She knew when Petey joined as a fellow investor and asked Kosookyy to try to talk him out of it. She felt a little sick to her stomach when Kosookyy told her later that he hadn't. She remembers what Kosookyy told her then.
You could stop him, you know. All you have to do is tell him the truth.
She winces a little at how she responded.
It'll blow my cover. He has too big a mouth.
What Kosookyy must be thinking now.
Look what your silence cost you and everyone around you. And so many people you don't even know.

And thanks to Feodor, who's been spying on the Wolf, just as the Wolf has been spying on him, she knows who Mercedes is and how to get to him. Mercedes—a government official who, for some reason, has decided to name himself after a car—works for the Moldovan ministry of the interior and also the Wolf. He's in his office, in a blocky Communist-era building overlooking a small park with a bust of Stefan cel Mare, the hero and icon of Moldova who, some say, also cursed it. His beeper goes off, gives him a number he doesn't recognize, but that doesn't matter; he knows that whoever has his beeper number means business. Hours later, Mercedes is in a part of Chisinau where he never goes. He gives twenty dollars to the owner of a hardware store with a painted sign out front to let him use the phone. Makes his call. It's Feodor on the other end, though Mercedes doesn't know that.

“You've wasted a lot of time, waiting so long to call,” Feodor says.

“I had to make sure it was safe. Who am I talking to?”

“An acquaintance of the Wolf,” Feodor says.

“Do you have a name?”

“Is it important to you?”

It is. Mercedes is very suspicious; it's how he's gotten this far.

“I can wire you money to indicate my seriousness,” Feodor says.

“That would be better,” Mercedes says, and gives him the details for an account in his uncle's name, a man who died a few months ago of tuberculosis, though he knows the various authorities involved haven't put the picture together enough to shut the account down. He'll use it for maybe a month more, he thinks, and then close it out. But what he's wired turns out to be a lot of money, much more than Mercedes thought it would be. And the number isn't random; it's just under the limit where the bank starts to ask questions before allowing the transfer. That evening, Mercedes finds a tailor in a different part of town, gives her fifteen dollars, and calls the number again.

“You're going to need a lot more accounts,” Feodor says.

“I figured,” Mercedes says. “How many?”

Feodor tells him, and Mercedes, for a moment, balks. It's a huge transaction.

“Can you come up with the accounts?” Feodor says.

“Yes,” Mercedes says. “But before I do, I have to ask what this is for.”

“I have learned that there's a mole in your organization, sir,” Feodor says, “and to scare him out, each member of your organization has a part to play. I thus need contact information for everyone down the line—”

“I don't have it.”

“Of course you don't. But you have it for the next in line. And you can distribute the money.”

“Yes.”

“Perfect. Tell me how to contact the next in line.”

“How many of them?”

“All of them.”

Mercedes takes a deep breath. Then gives Feodor information on more bank accounts than he ever thought he would in one phone call. The money's wired to them the next day. Then there's a third phone call from a barbershop in yet another part of town, when Mercedes gives Feodor the beepers for the eighteen managers he oversees, tells Feodor to wait a couple hours before calling so he can tell them, in a general way, what's up. Feodor agrees and thanks him for his cooperation; if they find the mole, he says, there'll be something in it for him. They hang up almost at the same time. Mercedes walks out of the office and gets a haircut. Looks at himself in the mirror, himself and the other men getting their hair cut, the men waiting in a row of seats by the door. Outside, it's a beautiful day. If he were in a better mood, he would think of the light as bright, but today, it seems hard to him. Harsh. Glaring. Angry. The barber, who hasn't seen what happened between Mercedes and the owner, asks him a routine question—
do you live around here?—
and Mercedes struggles to answer before remembering that it's better to lie and say yes. The minutes in the vinyl chair seem much longer. His eyes are always on the front door reflected in the mirror. He's waiting for someone to open it and come for him. If it's the police, he thinks, they won't wait for the barber to finish. They'll drag him out of there with the cut half done. The pictures in the paper will be embarrassing, enough to earn him a nickname in the press. He doesn't want to think about what it might be. The police'll finish the job in jail by shaving his head, as if he had lice. But that's better than the criminals who might come for him instead. He realizes that, as many times as he's talked to his managers on the phone, he doesn't know what any of them look like. They're all high up enough in the organization that it's been in everyone's interests not to know. It means they can't identify each other to the authorities, can't acknowledge each other on the street if they happen to be tailed, which is great when it comes to protecting themselves. But now the problem is inside the organization. What if one of them is the mole? Or what if, somehow, the organization makes a mistake and thinks Mercedes is—despite, or no, no, because of his eagerness to cooperate?
I'm fucked either way on that one,
Mercedes thinks, and feels sick to his stomach, swallows back the bile rising in his throat. Either way, one of the people he oversees could come for him right now. He could walk into this barbershop, get right behind Mercedes, and blow his brains out of his face, all over the mirror in front of him. It wouldn't take more than five seconds, because Mercedes knows that the rumors are true: some of them are ex-KGB and know what they're doing when it comes to executing people. Nobody in this barbershop would save him; they wouldn't pretend to be able to identify the killer, because nobody's that stupid, or righteous. If there's a difference.

For the rest of the haircut, Mercedes is in a cold panic every time the door opens. He regrets everything he's ever done for the Wolf's organization, every little thing.
When this thing dies down,
he thinks,
I'm getting out.
He pays fast, leaves too big a tip, and walks home—it takes him over an hour—because he's too paranoid to get in his car. There's someone hiding in the back, he thinks, or there's a bomb under the driver's seat. He decides he'll come back for it later, and the bus is just out of the question. But halfway home, the terror leaves him.
They'll find out who it is very soon,
he thinks.
They'll know it's not me.
If this was the Wolf testing him, he thinks he might have passed, maybe excelled. He starts to feel almost euphoric, thinking of the good things coming his way. He wouldn't mind moving up in the organization one bit. Maybe in his official job as well. Maybe he'll take over from the Wolf one of these days. Meet the man at last, just in time for him to shake Mercedes's hand before he retires to a villa on the Black Sea.
Someday you'll be here too,
the Wolf will say to him. Mercedes can't wait, and his impatience makes him reckless. He calls all seventeen of his contacts from a phone in a hotel lobby in central Chisinau, maybe six minutes from his office.
You're about to get some very specific and very important orders. And yes, the compensation to carry them out.
The news shoots down all seventeen branches of the organization's operations, loses a bunch of the official finesse along the way.
You're about to get a weird order and a lot of money.