Traffyck (19 page)

“Aleksandr Shved,” he said again. “Do you know me?”

“Yes,” said the man, his voice distant and weak. “But this cannot be Shved.”

“I am a friend of Shved’s. I was wondering if you know why your name is in—”

But the line had gone dead, and he was not certain whether the cell signal had been interrupted or the man had hung up.

Unlike the frenetic activity of central Kiev militia headquarters, Investigator Arkady Listov’s Darnytsya office was near the river in a park-like setting. Listov was waiting in front of the office when Janos drove up. He had seen Listov a few times at central headquarters, but it had been many months. Listov was a few years older than Janos, but standing at the curb he looked much older. His face was red and fleshy, his eyes shallow. When Listov got into the car, Janos could smell the sourness of alcoholism.

Listov selected a nearby dark restaurant that served generous glasses of vodka. They sat at a table in a windowless corner. Janos ordered tea and borscht. Listov ordered borscht and a second vodka.

“I need to ask a serious question, Arkady. What did Viktor Patolichev say was troubling him?”

Listov put his glass down. “Did I say something was troubling him?”

“His wife, Mariya, said he was troubled by something, and you were his close friend.”

“I had not seen him in weeks. I am the one troubled … by the fire.”

“Do you have any idea who set it?”

Listov stared into his half-empty glass. “I may have implied something … but I do not.”

“So, Arkady, my comrade, why are we here?”

Listov took a sip before answering. “We are here because Viktor and I were friends before I joined the militia.”

“Tell me about it.”

Listov put down his glass and looked up at Janos. “Everyone has secrets from when times were more difficult. Those days after the Union broke up, all was in turmoil. We thought business was business. Much of the time, we didn’t know what … we didn’t know what the children were for.”

Listov took another sip of vodka and, this time, continued staring at his almost-empty glass. “We were young ourselves. Those above us had power. We were simply middlemen, but we were also boys. We had no idea the children would end up trapped in other countries, or that we would someday see them in films.”

“Pornography?” asked Janos.

Listov finished his drink. “Pornography and prostitution. We recruited friends for the trafficking industry. We told them stories of wonderful jobs in other countries. We fed them to the machinery of pornography and trafficking. But no more! We were boys. As we grew older, we realized our mistakes. If you can believe me, this is part of the reason I joined the militia.”

There were tears in Listov’s eyes.

“What about Viktor?” asked Janos. “Did he return to this so-called machinery?

“The machinery came to him,” said Listov. “Those in control of pornography and trafficking put pressure on Viktor. When he failed to yield to their pressure, they burned him to death. I saw Viktor destroy material sent to him … videos he was supposed to sell.”

“Do you know who the distributor was?”

Listov waved his hand. “All I know is Viktor limited his material to the same shit anyone can access in back rooms of bookstores. Viktor’s business survived only because there are fools who assume painted-out windows represent greater perversion.”

“Did Viktor mention specific fears he had?”

Listov handed his empty glass to the plump waitress, held up a finger, turned back to Janos. “Mariya must have told you he spoke in his sleep. I can verify this because when we roomed together, Viktor said things in his sleep … and also when he was awake.”

“What did he say?”

When the full glass of vodka arrived, Listov took a gulp. “Viktor spoke about his boyhood being hell. In his sleep, he spoke of God’s punishment as if he deserved it.”

“Anything more specific?”

“He mentioned an orphanage. He said one needed a boat to get to it. He drew me a symbol for it. It was simply a circle with an
X
filling the circle.” Listov took a notebook and pen from his pocket and drew the simple symbol. “It is funny I should remember this.” He continued staring at the symbol. “When I asked Viktor what the symbol meant, he said it was a symbol for death. It is like this these days, Janos. Traffickers grow weary of recruiters, so instead they kidnap. Girls are dragged off, flown into far-away airports, marched across fields at borders, all of it to wear them down. They used to wait at orphanages until orphans were too old to stay, and then they would ask the girls if they wanted work. Not these days. In other countries, they call all of our young women Natashas no matter what country of origin. The Americans think they are boss, but they do nothing but assign numbers to countries …” Listov trailed off, obviously becoming drunk.

Janos continued. “The symbol Viktor drew … If it were a cross instead of an
X
, it would be the symbol for Opus Dei.”

Listov simply stared at him.

“Do you think Viktor had a death wish?”

Listov looked up and smiled a drunken smile. “Perhaps this is the answer.”

After dropping Arkady Listov off and watching him wobble into the militia office, Janos drove to his new office in north Podil to see if all was well. It was a first-floor unit the size of an overlarge coffin. As he stared at the entrance from across the street, he could see someone had taped a small sign in the window, red capital letters scrawled on a brown sheet of paper. He could make out only the words “Orthodox” and “stone.” He watched and waited until he was satisfied no one else was watching the office, thought of the rock group Rolling Stones, then got out of his car and crossed over.

The sign taped to the outside of the window read:

Office of Gypsy who attacks our beloved or
thodox leader. Let he who is without sin cast the
first stone
.

Devout Supporters of Father Vladimir
Ivanovich Rogoza
In the lower corner of the window, near the door, were several spider-webbed holes, apparently made by the first stones.

Janos did not go into his office. Instead, he turned to cross the street. When he did, a car sped around the corner and came toward him. Its horn sounded. It was an old Zil, its massive chrome grill growing larger as he turned and dove back to the curb. The huge car rumbled past, its exhaust hissing like a snake.

Another horn sounded as the Zil turned left in front of a car in the distance. Before he could react, the Zil was gone. A black Zil with tail fins.

He ran to get to his Skoda. No license plate; the Zil had no plate! He was sure of it! When he finally got the old Skoda started and made a sputtering U-turn on the narrow street, he knew the Zil was gone, but he still drove up and down side streets, becoming angrier and angrier and recalling Mariya saying the man in the van had said to watch for
traffyck
.

Janos knew he should not have gone there. His state of anger left him unprepared. But he did go. He went to Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza’s office in the Moscow Patriarchate Ukrainian Orthodox Church building amidst cathedrals and government buildings in central Kiev, and made a spectacle of himself.

He drove like a maniac, swerving through traffic, his mind made up there was a connection between Rogoza and the bomber who blew his old office window into his ass. Rogoza’s people were after him. The Moscow Patriarchate had gone insane.

When Janos arrived, he walked up the stairs to the second floor past two men in dark suits before they could stop him. The men followed him into the office, then grasped his arms and shoulders. Rogoza sat with his jeweled fingers intertwined atop his desk, his beard and ecclesiastic hat perfectly straight. Janos slumped in total disarray, held by two bodyguards.

“Allow him to speak,” said Rogoza in Russian. “Does he know a civilized language?”

Janos shouted in Russian. “You should have them put me in the street and hold me down so you can personally run me over with your Zil!”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t even know who you are.”

Janos tried to step forward, but the two guards held him back. “My name is Janos Nagy!”

“Am I supposed to recognize this name?” asked Rogoza, pulling at the tip of his beard.

“I’m a licensed investigator! There is a threatening sign at my office with your name on it! As I read the sign, a large Zil, the kind you ride in, tried to run me down!”

Rogoza stared at him for a moment, folded his hands on his desk again, and said, “I thought investigators were supposed to ask questions, Mr. Nagy. Not make threats.”

“Very well, I have one for you. What is the difference between a cult and an Orthodox religious group?”

Rogoza stared at him a moment more, then sneered and motioned toward the door.

As Janos was being dragged through the outer office in front of a gawking young secretary with blond hair and beautiful blue eyes, Rogoza shouted to him from his office.

“I want you to know, Inspector Nagy, all of this is on tape! I am certain the authorities will be interested in your behavior!”

After the bodyguards dumped him on the sidewalk, Janos sat there for a moment and watched as a bus rolled past. The people in the bus stared at him with sad faces as he pondered his fate, wishing he were with Anatoly the Cossack back in the Carpathians heading to Nikolaev, where they would find jobs building ships.

The van was parked across the street from a car rental agency specializing in executive vehicles. Leonid, in his red baseball cap, sat in the driver’s seat, while Lena sat in the passenger seat. Katerina sat on the floor in the back of the van. They awaited Semyon’s return so they could begin the long drive back to the garage on the left bank, and then the boat back to the peninsula where Lena would finally see Nadia. If they did not leave soon, they would have to stay overnight somewhere. Lena did not want another overnight stay because her time of month was near.

Leonid turned toward the back. “Where are those driver’s licenses?”