Traffyck (32 page)

The room was brighter than the hallway. A shaft of late-afternoon sunlight lay across the floor at the foot of the bed. Janos checked behind the door, checked the bathroom, and then went to the bed, where Comrade Strudel lay very still and very dead.

Comrade Strudel wore slacks and a white shirt gone gray. His eyes were open, and his face looked fatter. A piece of frayed cloth hung between his purple lips, and when Janos pulled on the piece of frayed cloth, the lips opened and Janos could see that a towel had been stuffed into Strudel’s mouth, puffing up his cheeks and stretching his skin. He had not been dead long. His forehead was warm to the touch. When Janos rolled him over, crimson red, uncoagulated blood glistened on the back of the shirt and puddled in the sagging mattress.

A knife … slash marks on the back of Strudel’s shirt, slash marks on his shoulder blades and lower back, a dripping wound near his spine … It was obvious he had been tortured before the fatal gash. But not for long, because everything was warm.

A noise other than televisions and radios. Someone running! Janos ran out into the hall, heard the door at the bottom of the stairwell slam. Stairs two at a time, desk clerk pointing to the door, sound of an engine sucking air as he pushed open the door to the street. A silver BMW sped away. He saw the plate number, many digits: 4085743. He repeated the number over and over as he ran down the narrow street and finally stopped, out of breath.

It was dark before Janos finally arrived at the metro station near Mariya’s apartment. He had called the militia about Comrade Strudel and also given the plate number. He had met with Investigator Nikolai Kozlov at the hotel and told him what happened. The only information from the ancient desk clerk was that he had awakened to see a young man in a red baseball cap running out the door. As usual, Kozlov had not seemed enthusiastic about the incident.

The trace showed the plate was stolen from a truck several months earlier while it was parked in a warehouse lot in Korosten, northwest of Kiev. There were no fingerprints in the hotel room, except Comrade Strudel’s, and no murder weapon. None of this had excited Kozlov. He simply shrugged, said the BMW was probably one of hundreds stolen in the last few months, and said there was no way of proving Comrade Strudel’s death had anything to do with his connection with Janos. Before leaving the hotel, Janos gave money to another Strudel-like man who promised to use it for the funeral.

After Janos exited the metro tunnel, he saw a man had come up the stairs behind him. Although the man walked behind him for some distance, he lost him in the darkness. In less than three hours the militia watch would be off at Mariya’s apartment. According to Kozlov, what happened to Strudel had not changed Chief Investigator Boris Chudin’s mind. As Kozlov said, “He is from the old Soviet militia days.” Janos knew this meant Chudin could not be convinced to keep the guard on longer.

As Janos approached the apartment building parking lot, a man in a dark suit walked out of the shadows. The man was between him and the parking lot security light, his face obscured. Janos grasped the oak club in his duffel bag.

The man stopped several meters in front of him. “Please, Janos Nagy. I simply wish to speak. I have already shown my credentials to the militiamen in the parking lot, and they said it was perfectly all right to speak with you before you went inside.”

“Credentials? Who the hell are you with?”

“My name is Mikhail Juliano. I represent the interests of the Vatican here in Ukraine.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY

Janos was exhausted and sweaty and needed a shave. During his absence, he had become part of her; this is how she felt as she held him in her arms.

“We should go to bed,” said Janos.

“I know,” said Mariya. “But we cannot.”

Janos stepped back and stared at her, his eyes wide. “The militia guard leaves at midnight! I must think—”

Mariya held his shoulders tightly. “I’ll make strong tea. We will think together.”

“We are inside a folk tale,” said Janos. “Yes, strong tea. Comrade Piper and his killer are dead. My informant here in Kiev is dead. Men are dying around me, and soon the SBU and militia and Mafia will be coming. As I arrived outside your apartment, a man from Opus Dei came to me, worrying I will blacken the eye of the Pope in Rome.”

“The Pope?”

“He is probably still outside. His name is Mikhail Juliano. He said he serves the Vatican’s interests in Ukraine. Opus Dei dislikes Father Rogoza’s inflammatory statements on television. I told him Rogoza’s statements were nonsense, but he insists I do something to stop Rogoza’s attempts to connect me to the Vatican. If I do not do something—”

“What can Opus Dei do?”

“I don’t know. We are in the hornet’s nest of competing organizations. The trafficking network has set them upon us. The only way out is escape.
Opus Dei
means ‘God’s work’ in Latin. I learned of its work in seminary school. If Opus Dei is involved, this is insanity!”

Janos looked toward the door. “There was something particularly frightening about Juliano. I don’t know if it was because he represented the Vatican, but something about him brought back fears from childhood. He spoke so calmly. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Viktor had dreams … someone speaking calmly. Janos, listen to me. When religion meets violence, good men become disillusioned. This was Viktor’s message to me!”

Janos nodded. “The kind man with a knife hidden in his sleeve, the poor vagrant with a pistol hidden beneath his tattered coat. We must leave now.”

Mariya held onto him. “The two of us together?”

Janos stared into her eyes. “The two of us together.”

“Eva Polenkaya called this afternoon. She has information but didn’t want to tell it to me. She wants you to call her. And there was another call. Yuri Smirnov from the SBU. Can he help us? Can anyone help us?”

“Both can wait. Heat water for tea. Quickly!”

After Mariya turned on the teakettle, Janos pulled her by the hand into the bathroom, turned on the shower water, and whispered into her ear. “Someone may be listening.”

They stood together in the small bathroom whispering ideas for escape to one another under cover of the apartment’s noisy plumbing clearing its throat. It took several minutes for Mariya to convince Janos her plan for escape would work. He was reluctant because it meant exposure for her. But finally it seemed the only way out. She would play decoy while Janos eluded the crowd. Mariya’s final whispered statement was “Janos, I know the bicycle paths.”

Janos took a quick shower as he gulped the strong hot tea Mariya brought him. He was a beautiful fish she had caught. All she wanted now was to protect him, to keep him. As she toweled him dry, she thought, so many others in her life had been thrown back into the sea, and now, at a time like this…

A few minutes before midnight, Janos wrapped his shoulder holster, pistol, and a change of clothes for Mariya in his jacket. After kissing her and taking the keys to her Audi, which she assured him would be faster than the Skoda, he left the apartment. Mariya watched from the window as Janos pretended to head toward his Skoda but stopped to lean into the window of the militia Zhiguli, speaking to the men on duty.

Mariya wore her riding outfit—shorts, shirt, helmet, and a pullover for the evening chill. She taped a small flashlight to the handlebar of her bicycle and rolled the bicycle through the apartment. She stopped at the kitchen sink, filled the water bottle halfway, took a drink and put the bottle into the holder on the downtube. The ratcheting of the rear sprocket, as she walked the bicycle to the door, reminded her of the night Janos rode naked into the bedroom.

On the landing, she locked the door, lifted the bicycle, and carried it down the stairs. In the vestibule, she saw Janos standing in front of the militiamen, blocking their view of the doorway. She pushed the door open and wheeled outside, making a right turn across the lawn toward the street. Once on the street, she got on the bicycle and started riding.

As planned, the militiamen assigned to watch Mariya’s apartment gave chase, and Janos ran to her car. She headed north and east toward the river, the militia car following and Janos right behind in the Audi. He was surprised how fast Mariya was able to pedal. Within two blocks, they had picked up another set of headlights. They were all going close to forty kilometers per hour—Mariya, the militia car with Janos close behind, and another car farther back. Another car with Mafia assassins or SBU or the Vatican secret service. So tempting to make a U-turn and confront them. But Mariya had her plan, and Janos stayed in line. He had Mariya’s cell phone and his cell phone in his pockets, both of them turned off so their direction of travel could not be traced by SBU or militia access to Kiev’s cell tower network. His GPS showed him upcoming roads and turns.

Two blocks from the wooded entrance and the river bicycle path, Janos made his move. He accelerated the Audi, easily passed the militia car, tucked in behind Mariya, and then passed her, moving ahead at seventy kilometers per hour. In his mirror, he saw Mariya and the militia car and, finally, the other set of headlights turn to the right toward the path. Mariya, the woman who said she was dangerous, leading them away. Janos accelerated the Audi hard, passing everyone else on the road, because soon Mariya would go around the cable marking the bicycle path and pedal as fast as she could down the path. Soon the militia and the others would be forced to double back and come looking for the Audi.

As planned, Janos took a zigzag route toward the north, hitting one hundred kilometers per hour on the straights, scrubbing off tire rubber on the turns. Mariya’s exit from the bicycle path was several kilometers away where the path exited to the boulevard near the Monument to the Unknown Soldier. The zigzag route served two purposes. He would lose anyone who might try to follow him, and he would give Mariya enough time to arrive at the monument exit before him. By then, she would have the quick-release front wheel off her bicycle so it would fit in the trunk of the Audi. Then they would speed into the central city and turn back south toward the campground fifty kilometers southwest of the city to the hidden spot no one would be able to find except God the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and all the saints and angels in heaven.

That is who Mikhail Juliano reminded him of: a drawing of Saint Mikhail the Archangel from an old prayer book. Saint Mikhail the Archangel driving Satan from Paradise with a sword, a knife hidden up his sleeve, a silenced pistol, or whatever weapons he might have.