Legends

  “He does affirm it,” Stella said.

  The rabbi favored her with a pained look. “He must speak for himself.”

  “I do,” Samat said. He glanced at Martin, leaning against the wall near the door with one hand in his jacket pocket. “I affirm it.”

  “Is there any issue from this marriage?”

  When Samat looked confused, Stella translated. “He’s asking if you and Ya’ara had children.” She addressed Shulman directly. “The answer is: You can’t have children when you don’t consummate the marriage.”

  One of the older rabbis chided her. “Lady, given that he is not contesting the divorce, I think you are telling us more than we need to know.”

  Shulman said, “Do you, Samat Ugor-Zhilov, here present, stand ready to grant your wife, Ya’ara Ugor-Zhilov, a religious divorce—what we call a get—of your own free will and volition, so help you God?”

  “Yes, yes, I will give her the damn get,” Samat replied impatiently. “You guys use a lot of words to describe something as uncomplicated as a divorce.”

  “Kabbalah teaches us,” Shulman noted as his two colleagues nodded in agreement, “that God created the universe out of the energy in words. Out of the energy of your words, Mr. Ugor-Zhilov, we will create a divorce.”

  Stella smiled at Martin across the room. “It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that words have energy.”

  Samat looked bewildered. “Who is this Kabbalah character and what does he have to do with my divorce?”

  “Let’s move on,” Shulman suggested. “Under the terms of the get,” he went on, reading from Stella’s scrap of paper, “your wife will keep any and all property and assets that you may possess in Israel, including one split-level house in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, including one Honda automobile, including any and all bank accounts in your name in Israeli banks.”

  “I have already agreed to this. I signed the paper.”

  “We must ascertain verbally that you understand what you have signed,” explained Shulman.

  “That you were not coerced into signing,” added one of his colleagues.

  “According to the terms of the divorce,” the rabbi continued, “you are putting on deposit with this rabbinical board one million dollars in bearer shares, with the intention that the said one million dollars, less a generous $25,000 donation to a Jewish program to relocate Jews to Israel, will be transferred to the ownership of your wife, Ya’ara Ugor-Zhilov.”

  Samat glanced at Martin, who nodded imperceptibly. “I agree, I agree to it all,” Samat said hurriedly.

  “That being the case,” the rabbi said, “we will now prepare the scroll of the get for your signature. The document, along with the $975,000 in bearer shares, will be sent by Federal Express to rabbi Ben Zion in Kiryat Arba. Ya’ara will be summoned before a rabbinical board there to sign the get, at which point you and your wife will be formally divorced.”

  “How long will it take to prepare the scroll?” Martin asked from the door.

  “Forty-five minutes, give or take,” Shulman said. “Can we offer you gentlemen and the lady coffee while we prepare the document?”

  Later, Martin and Samat waited outside the Synagogue while Stella brought around the Packard. Martin slid into the backseat alongside Samat. “Where are we off to now?” Stella asked.

  “Take us to Little Odessa.”

  “Why are we going to the Russian section of Brooklyn?” Stella asked.

  “Get us there and you’ll see,” Martin said.

  Stella shrugged. “Why not?” she said. “You certainly knew what you were doing up to now.”

  She piloted the large Packard through rush-hour traffic on Ocean Parkway, past block after block of nearly identical gray-grim tenements with colorful laundry flapping from lines on the roofs. Twice Samat tried to start a conversation with Martin, who sat with the butt of the Tula-Tokarev in his right fist and his left hand gripping Samat’s right wrist. Each time Martin cut him off with a curt uh-huh. Up front Stella had to laugh. “You won’t get far with him when he’s in his one of his uh-huh moods,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Turn left when you get to Brighton Beach Avenue,” Martin instructed her. “It’s the next traffic light.”

  “You’ve been here before,” Samat said.

  “Had two clients in Little Odessa before I became a famous international detective tracking down missing husbands,” Martin said. “One involved a kidnapped Rottweiler. The other involved a neighborhood crematorium run by Chechen immigrants.”

  Samat pulled a face. “I do not comprehend why America lets Chechens into this country. The only good Chechens are dead Chechens.”

  Stella asked Samat, “Have you been to Chechnya?”

  Samat said, “Did not need to go to Chechnya to come across Chechens. Moscow was swarming with them.”

  Martin couldn’t resist. “Like the one they called the Ottoman.”

  The seaweed in Samat’s eyes turned dark, as if they had caught the reflection of a storm cloud. “What do you know about the Ottoman?”

  “I know what everyone knows,” Martin said guilelessly. “That he and his lady friend were found one fine morning hanging upside down from a lamppost near the Kremlin wall.”

  “The Ottoman was not an innocent.”

  “I heard he’d been caught doing fifty in a forty-kilometer zone.”

  Samat finally figured out his leg was being pulled. “Speeding in Moscow can be dangerous for your health,” he agreed. “Also littering.”

  “Turn left on Fifth Street, just ahead. Park on the left where it says no parking anytime.”

  “In front of the crematorium?” Stella asked as she turned into the street.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Who are we meeting?” Samat inquired uneasily as Stella eased the Packard alongside the curb and killed the motor.

  “It’s almost eight,” Martin said. “We’ll wait here until it’s dark and the streets are empty.”

  “I’m going to close my eyes for a few minutes,” Stella announced.

  Stella’s forty winks turned into an hour-and-ten-minute nap; all the driving she’d done that day, not to mention the worrying, had taken its toll on her. Samat, too, dozed, or appeared to, his chin sinking onto his chest, his shut eyelids fluttering. Martin kept a tight grip on the butt of the Tula-Tokarev. Curiously, he didn’t feel bushed despite his having slept fitfully on Samat’s couch the night before (woken every few hours by Samat calling from the locked closet that he needed to go to the toilet). What kept Martin alert, what kept the adrenalin flowing, was his conviction that revenge was a manifestation of sanity; that if he played this thing out, his days of being imperfectly sane were numbered.

  As darkness settled over Little Odessa, the Russians began heading back to their apartments. Behind them, on Brighton Beach Avenue, traffic thinned out. Lights appeared in windows on both sides of Fifth Street; the bulb in the vestibule of the funeral parlor across the street came on. Two floors above the door with the gold lettering that read “Akhdan Abdulkhadzhiev & Sons—Crematorium,” an elaborate chandelier fitted with Christmas tree bulbs blazed into life and the scratchy sound of an accordion playing melodies that sounded decidedly Central Asian drifted out of an open window. A lean man and a teenage boy dragged a pushcart filled with tins of halavah down the middle of the street and turned into one of the driveways near the end of the block. Two young girls skipping rope as they made their way home passed the Packard. An old woman carrying a Russian avoska filled with vegetables hurried up the steps of a nearby brownstone. When the street appeared deserted, Martin leaned forward and nudged Stella on the shoulder.

  She angled her rearview mirror so that she could see Martin in it. “How long did I sleep?”

  “A few minutes.”

  Samat’s eyes blinked open and he swallowed a yawn. He looked up and down the street. “I do not understand why we have come to the Russian section of Brooklyn,” he said anxiously. “If it is to meet someon
e—”

  Martin could hear a voice in his ear. For once in your life, don’t weigh the pros and cons—just act violently.

  “Dante?”

  You don’t want to shoot him, Martin—too noisy. Use the butt. Break his knee cap.

  Stella said, “Who are you talking to, Martin?”

  Don’t think about it, just do it, for Christsake!

  “I’m talking to myself,” Martin murmured.

  He was sorely tempted—to jailbreak, to set foot outside the Martin Odum legend; to become, if only for an instant, someone as impulsive as Dante Pippen. Clutching the Tula-Tokarev by the barrel, Martin slammed the grip down hard on Samat’s right knee. The sharp crunch of the bone splintering filled the Packard. Samat stared in disbelief at his knee as a brownish stain soaked into the fabric of his trousers. Then the pain reached his brain and he cried out in agony. Tears spurted from his eyes.

  Stella twisted in the seat, breathing hard. “Martin, have you gone mad?”

  “I’m going sane.”

  Samat, cradling his shattered knee cap with both hands, thrashed in pain. Martin said, very softly, “You killed Kastner, didn’t you?”

  “Get me a doctor.”

  “You killed Kastner,” Martin repeated. “Admit it and I will put an end to your suffering.”

  “I had nothing to do with Kastner’s death. The Oligarkh had him eliminated when the Quest woman told him you were trying to find me. My uncle and Quest … they wanted to cut off all the leads.”

  Stella said, “How did the killers get into the house without breaking a door or a window?”

  “Quest supplied the keys to the doors and the alarm box.”

  “You killed the Chinese girl on the roof, too,” Martin said.

  Samat’s nose began to run. “Quest’s people told the Oligarkh about the beehives on the roof. He sent a marksman to the roof across the street. The marksman mistook the Chinese girl for you. Her death was an accident.”

  “Where is the Oligarkh?”

  “For the love of God, I must get to a doctor.”

  “Where is the Oligarkh?”

  “I told you, I do not know.”

  “I know you know.”

  “We speak only on the phone.”

  “The 718 number?”

  When Samat didn’t say anything, Martin reached across Samat and pushed open the door on his side of the car. “Read the name on the crematorium door,” he ordered.

  Samat tried to make out the name through the tears blurring his vision. “I cannot see—”

  “It says Akhdan Abdulkhadzhiev. Abdulkhadzhiev is a Chechen name. The crematorium is the Chechen business that was accused of extracting gold teeth before cremating the corpses. If you don’t give me the phone number, I’ll push you out of the car and ring the bell and tell the Chechens sitting down to supper upstairs that the man who hanged the Ottoman upside down from a lamppost in Moscow is on their doorstep. There isn’t a Chechen alive who doesn’t know the story, who won’t jump at the chance to settle old scores.”

  “No, no. The number … the number is 718-555-9291.”

  “If you’re lying, I’ll break your other knee.”

  “On my mother’s head, I swear it. Now take me to a doctor.”

  Martin got out of the Packard and came around to the other side of the car and, taking a grip on Samat’s wrists, pulled him from the backseat across the sidewalk. He propped Samat up so that he was sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the door. Then Martin pressed the buzzer for several seconds. Two floors over his head a young woman appeared in the open window.

  “Crematorium closed for the day,” she shouted down.

  “Crematorium about to open,” Martin called back. “You ever hear of a Chechen nicknamed the Ottoman?”

  The woman in the window ducked back into the room. A moment later the needle was plucked off the record. Two men stuck their heads out of the window. “What about the Ottoman?” an older man with a flamboyant mustache yelled down.

  “The Armenian from the Slavic Alliance who lynched him and his lady friend within sight of the Kremlin is on your doorstep. His name is Samat Ugor-Zhilov. Your Chechen friends have been looking all over the world for him. There’s no rush to come get him—he’s not going anywhere on a shattered knee.”

  Samat whimpered, “For the love of God, for the sake of my mother, you cannot leave me here.”

  Martin could sense the excitement in the room above his head. Footsteps could be heard thundering down the stairs. “Start the motor,” he called to Stella. A current of pain shot through his game leg as he made his way around the car and climbed in next to the driver. “Let’s go,” he said. “Don’t run any red lights.”

  Stella, biting her lip to keep from trembling, steered the Packard away from the curb and headed down the empty street. Martin turned in the seat to watch the Chechens drag Samat into the crematorium. Stella must have seen it in her rearview mirror. “Oh, Martin,” she said, “what will they do to him?”

  “I suppose they will extract the gold teeth from his mouth with a pair of pliers and then put him in one of their cheapest coffins and nail the lid shut and light off the burning fiery furnace and cremate him alive.” He touched the back of her hand on the steering wheel. “Samat left behind him a trail of blood—the Ottoman and his lady friend, your father, my Chinese friend Minh, the scavengers locked in cages on an island in the Aral Sea who died miserably when Samat used them as guinea pigs to test biowarfare viruses that he eventually gave to Saddam Hussein. The list is long.”

  Using hand gestures, Martin directed Stella back into the heart of Brooklyn. When they reached Eastern Parkway he had her pull over to the curb. He retrieved the paper bag from the trunk and, taking her arm, drew her to a bench on one side of the parkway. “There’s a million dollars in bearer shares left in the bag,” Martin explained, handing it to her. “Go to ground in a motel on the Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel for the night. Tomorrow drive to Philadelphia and go to the biggest bank you can find and cash these in and open an account in your name. Then drive to Jonestown in Pennsylvania. Not Johnstown. Jonestown. Find a small house, something with white clapboard and storm windows and a wrap around porch at the edge of town and a view across the corn fields. It needs to have a yard where we can raise chickens. There’s a monastery not far away over the rise—you want to be able to hear its carillon bells from the house.”

  “How do you know about Jonestown and the monastery?”

  “Lincoln Dittmann and I both come from Jonestown. Funny part is we didn’t know each other back then. My family moved to Brooklyn when I was eight but Lincoln was brought up in Pennsylvania. I’d almost forgotten about Jonestown. He reminded me.”

  “Who’s Lincoln Dittmann?”

  “Someone I came across in another incarnation.”

  “What do I do when I find the house?”

  “Buy it.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?”

  “I have some loose ends to take care of. I’ll turn up in Jonestown when I’ve finished.”

  “How will you find me?”

  “Jonestown is a small town. I’ll ask for the gorgeous dish with a permanent squint in her eyes and a ghost of a smile on her lips.”

  Stella relished the coolness of the night air. The headlights streaking past led her to imagine that she and Martin were stranded on an island of stillness in a world of perpetual motion. “Do you really remember what happened to you in Moscow?” she asked.

  He smiled. “No. A curtain screened off the fragment of my life that I lived under the legend Jozef Kafkor. But what I’ve lost won’t change anything for us. The part of Martin Odum’s life that I want to remember begins here.”

  1997: LINCOLN DITTMANN CONNECTS THE DOTS

  “U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE ANNEX. HARVEY CLEVELAND speaking. How can I help you?”

  “Do you recognize my voice, Felix?”

  “Tell you the truth, no. Am I supposed to?”

&nbs
p; “Does a hangar under the Pulaski Skyway ring a bell? A crazy Texan named Leroy was about to shoot you. You jumped a mile when you heard his wrist bone splinter.”

  Felix Kiick could be heard chuckling into the phone. “Speak of the devil,” he said. “Lincoln Dittmann. How’d you get this number? It’s supposed to be an unlisted hotline.”

  “How are you, Felix?”

  “Hang on—I’m going to scramble this call.” There was a burst of static, then Felix’s voice came on line again, loud and clear. “I’m almost but not quite retired. Six weeks, three days, four and a half hours to go and I’m out of here. What about you?”

  “I’m more or less okay.”

  “Which is it—more or less?”

  “More, actually.”

  “Your memory coming back?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with my memory, Felix. You’re confusing me with Martin Odum.”

  Lincoln’s remark startled Felix. “I guess I am,” he admitted warily. “You are … Lincoln Dittmann?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “I’m connecting the dots. I thought you could fill in some of the blanks.”

  “Tell me what you know,” he said guardedly. “Maybe I’ll hint at what you don’t know.”

  “I know what happened to Jozef Kafkor in Prigorodnaia, Felix. He was the cutout between Crystal Quest’s operations folks at the CIA and the Oligarkh, Tzvetan Ugor-Zhilov. When Jozef figured out that Quest was part of the Prigorodnaia operation—when he figured out she originated the operation—he must have threatened to take the matter up with an assortment of congressmen or senators, at which point Jozef was tortured and starved by the Oligarkh’s hired hands, and eventually buried alive.”

  “I’m hanging on your every word, Lincoln.”

  “You were a counterterrorism wonk before they put you out to preretirement pasture, changing diapers for clients in the FBI’s Witness Protection Program. I seem to remember you’d been posted to the American embassy in Moscow at one point in your career. Were you in Moscow when they brought in Jozef Kafkor, Felix?”