It was the Sledgehammer’s latest venture, the flagship of his burgeoning empire, and it was huge. Even during the day, with no pounding music or heaving bodies or dizzying light shows on display, you could easily feel what it must be like in full swing. The place was an opulent maze of black velvet, chrome, Swarovski crystals, and weird opaque glass that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It was unbelievably flashy, although surprisingly tasteful. It had to be, given the globotrashy clientele Mirminsky was after, the Aston Martin–driving European high-fliers and homegrown hedgies whose tabs ran to thousands of dollars a night and the models and Kate Middleton clones who orbited them.
A couple of Cro-Magnons in black suits and dark shirts led us to Mirminsky, and we found him seated at a large banquette, three associates around him. Judging by their furtive looks, I’m pretty sure they weren’t discussing the DJ’s playlist for the night. Mirminsky didn’t exactly light up when he saw us, and his comrades withdrew as we arrived, wisely.
The Sledgehammer was heavier than I’d imagined from the surveillance pictures I’d seen in his file. He’d clearly been feasting on the bounties of life in America in more ways than one. His beady eyes, which looked more reptilian than human, studied us unblinkingly as he invited us to sit down.
He raised a full cocktail glass at us. “Can I offer you a drink, gentlemen? I know you guys never drink on duty, but you really should make an exception in this case. This is very, very special. We call it a ‘Green Feeling.’ You try?”
I smiled. “Love to, Yuri. It sure looks good. Thing is, if we did take you up on that, where do we draw the line? Some caviar canapés? Some of your lovely ladies? Maybe a couple of E’s and some blow?”
Mirminsky smiled back, a forced, cold smile that so clearly had zero connection to what was really swirling behind those shifty slits. “You just name your pleasure, my friend, and leave the rest to me.”
“You know something? I’m a cheap date. I don’t need the Champagne and the caviar.” I pulled out two shots of his dead underlings from my inside pocket and laid them out in front of him, then tapped them with two fingers. “All I need right now is to know what these guys were doing at a motel on Howard Beach yesterday and what’s going on between you and Leo Sokolov.”
I studied his face as I said it, but I didn’t expect to see anything. There was no tell there. Mirminsky was too much of a pro for that. He didn’t even grimace at the sight of the dead men. Instead, his face tightened with concentration that was followed by confusion. “I’m sorry, Agent—”
“Reilly,” I offered.
“—Reilly, I don’t know these men. Should I?”
I gave him a dubious look. “I think so, Yuri. They’ve got these tattoos on them. It’s like they’re animals that have been branded, and those brands lead right back to your ranch.”
The Sledgehammer laughed, making his eyes disappear altogether. “My ranch? I like that. Maybe I’ll call my next club that. Could be fun. A tribute to a great American tradition.” His face morphed into humble contrition. “Maybe they did work at one of my clubs. The problem is, I have so many employees. Maybe they were waiters, or bouncers. Maybe we caught them stealing from the till, or worse even. Anyway, if they ever did work for one of my many enterprises, I have no doubt they were fired for being”—he looked for the word—“undesirable.” He smiled smugly, like we were done.
“And Sokolov?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It’s a very common Russian name, Agent Reilly. Like Smith, or Jones. And my memory just gets worse by the day.”
“Tell you what, Yuri. Go see an herbalist and get some memory-boosting supplements. ’Cause you’re going to need everything you have locked away in that cesspool of a brain when we haul your ass in for conspiracy to murder two homicide detectives. Because in this country, that’s a crime we never, ever let slide. The file on this case—it’ll never get closed, not until we’ve got whoever did this.” I let him stew on that for a moment, then I put on a more détente-esque expression. “You lost two men out there, Yuri. So did we. So unless you enjoy having federal agents watching over every breath you take, you might want to cooperate with us on this one and help us get whoever did this.”
I gave him a pointed, questioning look.
Mirminsky frowned, like he was processing it all. Then his face broke out in another pervy-uncle smile. “If I hear anything, anything at all, that can help you, I’ll be sure to call you, Agent Reilly. You have my guarantee.”
There was no point in sticking around now that I’d delivered our message, so we followed our steroid-boosted tour guides back out into daylight.
Aparo and I walked past a van that I knew to be one of our mobile listening posts—the ones the judge had signed off earlier on that morning—and got into our car.
Mirminsky, I hoped, was about to discover that his privacy settings weren’t anywhere near as robust as he imagined.
25
Sokolov sat on the creaky bed in the small bedroom of the second-floor apartment above the Green Dragon and stared at the cell phone he had taken from Yakovlev after shoving the man out his window.
He had tossed and turned all night, finally falling asleep not long before dawn. He wasn’t used to staying up that late. It was something he hadn’t done with any regularity, not since first arriving in the United States. He and Daphne had found a way to make their lives dovetail, even with her recent move to alternating shift schedules. They had been comfortable in what seemed like perfectly complementary patterns. At least until his past had crashed right through his present with all the subtlety of an eighteen-wheeler.
He had already established that the last call placed by Yakovlev was to a DDI number at the Russian consulate. Which wasn’t surprising, given that he worked there. It was where Sokolov would start, but so far, he hadn’t dared test the number. He didn’t want to make contact until he was ready. He’d removed the SIM card and battery from the cell phone as soon as he’d put enough distance between himself and his apartment to stop and take a breath. He knew that nowadays, locating someone via a live cell phone was a relatively simple task. As an engineer and a scientist, the advent of cell phones had in fact fascinated him. He had become an expert on cell technology, something that had spurred him to renew his own research and advance his work into realms that would have sounded like science fiction a mere decade or two earlier.
Realms that, at the time, he couldn’t resist exploring even though he knew they would only lead to trouble.
Ironically, his work could now prove to be crucial in saving Daphne—and himself.
After replacing the SIM card and battery, he powered up and immediately pressed the Dial button. The call rang through for four long rings, then someone picked up.
And said nothing.
Sokolov grasped the phone close to his ear, also saying nothing. He could hear some faint breathing on the other end.
He imagined that whoever picked up the phone was probably surprised as hell to see the caller ID displaying their dead colleague’s name. And whoever it was probably figured it could only be one of two people: either a cop investigating Yakovlev’s death, or Sokolov himself.
After a few drawn-out seconds, the male voice said, “Da,” flatly and questioningly.
Sokolov felt his throat tighten, then he said, “Eto ya. Shislenko.” It’s me. Shislenko.
More silence.
Sokolov guessed that whoever was on the other end probably wasn’t alone and was almost certainly starting a recording and initiating a trace.
“Prodolzhat,” the man then said. Continue.
Sokolov’s heart was punching its way out of his chest. “You have my wife,” he said in Russian. “And I have what you want. So here’s what we’re going to do. I will call you back at exactly eight o’clock to tell you when and where we make the exchange. There will be no discussion.”
He clicked off and swiftly removed the battery and SIM card.
He stared at his shaking
hands.
What the hell are you doing?
He sucked in some deep breaths and tried to calm himself. He could feel a headache galloping in.
The only thing you can.
He stayed like that, immobile, for a few minutes, questioning himself, second-guessing his actions. Then he pushed the doubts away and stood up.
He got dressed, collected the small number of possessions he had with him, and left his room.
He had an errand to run.
***
“HE JUST CALLED. He’s going to call again at eight. He wants his wife back.”
Koschey listened as Oleg Vrabinek, the Russian vice consul and the city’s senior SVR operative, relayed the little that Sokolov had said.
“All right,” he told Vrabinek. “Call me as soon as he contacts you again.”
He killed the call and glanced in the direction of the small office, where he was keeping Daphne. This was good. Sokolov was feeling brave. He was offering a trade. He was willing to expose himself.
Koschey couldn’t really ask for more.
He’d need more muscle, though. Just in case. Even though it was an added complication, he had no misgivings about killing the two bratki at the motel. He couldn’t let them live. For one thing, they had been sloppy. Yakovlev had failed, and they had been compromised. Proof of that was how easily the Americans had found them. And despite the strict code of silence he knew any bratok would follow religiously, Koschey couldn’t count on that silence. He needed that silence to be permanent, and there was only one way he knew of to guarantee it.
Beyond the risk of exposure, leaving those two bratki alive would have left him open to another, greater risk, one he was even more keen to neutralize: he didn’t know how much they knew. They’d spent several hours babysitting Sokolov’s wife. Koschey didn’t know how much Sokolov had told her, nor did he know what she’d told them. And given what was at stake, given the potential involved, Koschey really didn’t want anyone running around out there who knew, especially not a couple of lowlife incompetent gopniki.
He had a couple of potential sources who could supply him with the muscle he needed, but in a moment of inspired perversity, he decided to go back to the original source. Doing that opened up all kinds of interesting possibilities.
He pulled up the number he’d been given by Vrabinek, and, liking his plan more and more with each passing second, dialed the vor they called the Sledgehammer.
26
Aparo and I were in the A/V lab with Tim Joukowksy from our field intelligence group, our go-to agent on Russian matters who was, as you’d expect, fluent in the language. The listening van outside Mirminsky’s club had been feeding audio files back to home base when they came in, and Joukowsky would listen in on the ones the guys in the van thought merited close attention. He’d alerted us about a call that had just taken place.
It involved Mirminsky and another Russian—a Latvian native, according to Joukowsky, who was an accent and dialect expert. He played the tape for us, stopping it after every noteworthy sentence to explain what had been said.
The mystery caller starts by introducing himself as Afanasyev.
“We have any hits on that?” I asked, knowing it would be a fake.
“Nothing, apart from it being the name of a very prolific author of folktales. Kind of a Russian brother Grimm,” Joukowsky said.
Aparo said, “I’m impressed.”
Joukowsky snorted. “Thank Wikipedia, comrade. No one needs to know anything anymore.”
A caller using a pseudonym like that. It sounded promising. If anything, the guy had a sense of humor.
A sense of humor that disappears right after he introduces himself.
The call continues rather bluntly. Not many words are exchanged. The caller tells Mirminsky he needs some help moving some heavy furniture. Says it’s going to happen tonight. Says he’s gonna need four movers.
The Sledgehammer demurs briefly, then grumbles that he’s already “down two movers on this” and gruffly asks if the caller has any idea what happened to them. The caller then does something unexpected. He tells Mirminsky, “That’s not what I called you about. I called to tell you to get four movers ready for me for tonight.” Just like that. Coldly. Bluntly. Without raising his voice, though the threat in his tone is hard to miss. Even without speaking Russian, I got that. And looking at Joukowsky as we listened to it, he clearly got that too.
Then the Sledgehammer does something even more unexpected. He says nothing for a beat, then he just says, flatly and in a resigned, submissive tone, “It won’t be a problem. They’ll be ready whenever you need them.”
The caller says he’ll get back to him with a time and a place. Then hangs up.
We were stunned.
“A man of a few words,” Joukowsky said.
“Few, but . . . effective,” I added.
“Did this guy just turn Mirminsky into his bitch or what?” Aparo asked. “I mean, what the hell was that? Who talks to a vor like that?”
“Only two possible answers,” Joukowsky offered. “Either this is someone higher up in the organizatsiya than the Sledgehammer—”
“They don’t really come any higher than him around here, do they?” Aparo asked.
Joukowsky shook his head. “Not really. There are others as big as him, other kingpins. But no one with that level of supremacy.”
“What’s option two?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Option two,” he continued, “would be someone with the kind of backing that would make Mirminsky—or any other Russian for that matter—sit up and take notice and do as he’s told, no matter how powerful, how rich, or how connected he is. Someone he wouldn’t dare disobey under any circumstance.”
Meaning someone with the backing of the boys back in Moscow.
Someone doing the Kremlin’s bidding.
If it was option two, my local homicide investigation was going to get even nastier.
We left the A/V room in a fog of unease. Forensics would run the tape for a voice-print match, but I doubted they’d get a hit. I didn’t think this guy would ever allow himself to be identified that easily. Whoever he was, I sensed he was a new player in town. Which made me think back to the motel.
As if reading my mind, Aparo asked, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“We’ve got two new players in the game. The Olympic gold-medal shooter—and Ivan the Terrible.”
“Two new players?” he questioned, his tone dubious.
“Or just one,” I said, finishing his thought.
“Exactly. But if he’s the same guy from the motel, why’d he kill the two tattoos?”
“Because they screwed up,” I speculated. “They couldn’t handle grabbing a sixty-year-old high school teacher, one of them died in a very public way, they used a car that could be traced back to their hideout. Everything we’ve seen and heard about this guy tells us he’s not just a real badass, but he’s an incredibly efficient badass. And guys like that don’t tolerate screwups.”
“Harsh,” Aparo noted.
“It gets results. It also means he has Sokolov’s wife.” The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that this was the same guy. “Makes you wonder if the Sledgehammer knew the guy he was talking to had just taken out two of his men—and he was now asking for four more.”
“If he did, if he even suspected as much— Jeez, Sister Sledge must be just burning up inside.”
“Maybe we can use that. Okay,” I said, “if he’s the guy from the motel shooting, then whatever’s going down tonight is also about Sokolov. And his wife.”
“A trade?”
“Sounds like it. We’d better be ready. Let’s get a handle on where and when this is happening. You, me, Kubert, and Kanigher, plus a SWAT team and local backup on standby. We need to shut this thing down before it gets even more out of control.”
“Shame the Sokolovs are mixed up in this. We could have just sat it out and let these no-necks slaug
hter each other and be done with it,” Aparo suggested. “In case you forgot, this guy’s a pretty decent shot.”
“Yeah,” I replied glumly. “We’re gonna need a whole lot of Kevlar.”
27
Over in a run-down industrial park behind Webster Avenue in the Bronx, Sokolov stood in front of a lock-up single garage and looked around.
It was quiet. There was no one around. There rarely was. This was a place where people came for cheap storage, whether for cars or, more likely, for junk they usually forgot about. They didn’t visit often. Back when Sokolov had paid for his first rental—in cash, as he had done ever since—it had been less of a dump than it was now. Whoever owned the place hadn’t bothered to do much to it over the intervening twelve years. Maybe a quick lick of paint, once, without bothering to burn off previous layers or fill in the cracks. It suited Sokolov perfectly. He needed somewhere quiet, discreet, and cheap. Somewhere he could come and tinker without anyone noticing or asking too many questions.
He scanned left and right again, making sure there was no one around, then he unlocked the two large padlocks and rolled up the bolted aluminum door. He stepped inside and rolled it back down, and hit the light switch.
The white panel van was there, of course. It was a Ford Econoline, the refrigerated model with the bulky roof-mounted condenser. It was almost twenty years old and looked too tired for anyone to consider stealing. Which was exactly what Sokolov intended. The last thing he wanted was for someone to steal it and make off with the culmination of all his efforts, the end result of a lifetime of study and research.
The obsession that had taken over his life from the age of fourteen.
***
THE FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY COULDN’T stop thinking of his grandfather’s journals.
By this point, he’d read them several times. The story contained within their tattered pages was remarkable, and it fired up his imagination.
It also terrified him.