It was as Koschey, a code name that inspired a deep-seated fear in those who heard it. A code name drawn from an old Slavic folktale.
Koschey the deathless.
Just then, Koschey was in London. He’d spent a lot of time in the British capital in the last decade. London was where a lot of the Kremlin’s enemies came to find a safe haven. It was also where a lot of its big hitters and their friends stashed their ill-gotten gains—billions that they parked safely in hedge funds, fabulous properties, and high-profile investments. The thinking was that, besides being a great place to live and to party, London provided a secure and stable hideaway for their fortunes. There, they would be unreachable by those running things back home if and when their old friendships turned sour.
But no one was unreachable. Not in London. Not anywhere. And certainly not with someone like Koschey on tap to reach them.
He’d been in London for six days, preparing to take out a GCHQ analyst who’d been recruited by Moscow eleven years earlier and who the SVR suspected had been rumbled by the British intelligence services. Then the call had come in on his encrypted cell phone.
The general told him he was to drop that assignment and fly to New York.
A file, also encrypted, had been attached to an e-mail and left in the drafts folder of a Gmail address that had been created specifically for that single task.
A file that Koschey retrieved and read immediately after terminating the call.
A file that Koschey found astounding.
The analyst had caught a lucky break. He would get to live a little while longer.
Koschey had a plane to catch.
7
The rest of the day didn’t bring about any great revelations. We were covering all the bases on the Yakovlev case, but so far, we didn’t have much to show for it.
Visits to the school where Sokolov taught and to the hospital where his wife worked didn’t give us any leads. In the case of the former, he hadn’t shown up for work, which we already knew. The principal said he’d ask around to see if anyone had noticed anything unusual in Sokolov’s behavior of late, but as far as he knew, the Russian had been just as he always was: dedicated, pleasant, loved by his students, an all-round nice guy. Sokolov didn’t seem to have any family that needed notifying or that we could interview. Daphne Sokolov, on the other hand, had a sister, Rena. By the time we got to Delphi Opticians, her store over on Steinway, she’d already heard the news and was, to put it mildly, concerned. Rena’s maiden name, which she’d reverted to since her divorce, was Karakatsani, and her Greek blood was on full display.
Aparo and I calmed her down as much as we could, telling her there had been no evidence of foul play—a small lie, I know—and assuring her that all efforts were being made to find the Sokolovs and make sure they were safe. She eventually did calm down, and I finally got to the questions I needed to ask.
“Tell me, Rena. Your sister and Leo . . . is everything okay in their lives?”
“Yes, of course,” she said in her throaty, full-bodied voice. “Daphne and Leo—they’ve always been drama-free, you know? They’re like a fairy tale. He loves her to death and she’s the same. They’re like teenagers, which is weird, especially in this day and age.” She shrugged sweetly. “Lucky them, right?”
“They’ve been together a long time?”
She rolled her eyes. “Forever.”
“How long?”
Rena thought about it. “Let’s see. They got married in”—she ransacked her mind—“eighty-three, I think it was. Leo was new to the city, he hadn’t been here that long. Maybe a year or two. His English wasn’t too good, and when she first introduced him to us, we were like, ‘Seriously? This guy?’ I mean, he was a nice guy, but he was bussing tables in an Egyptian restaurant down on Atlantic Avenue. My parents, God rest their souls, they had bigger ambitions for their daughter. I did too. I was dating this E. F. Hutton guy at the time—don’t get me started on him. And Leo . . . lousy job, no prospects, and a drinking problem too. And boy, did he drink. Russian-style. He had a serious problem. But not violent, you know? No temper. He was just miserable, that much was clear. Sad, deep inside. But that didn’t excuse the fact that he was still a drunk. And Daphne knew it. But she saw something in him, and she said, ‘Yeah, him. He’s the one. He’s a good man. You’ll see.’ And you know what? She was right.” She paused, then her eyes darkened. “Where are they? What’s going on? What are you not telling me?”
“We don’t know anything, we’re just trying to figure out where they might be,” I replied truthfully. “But go back a second to Leo. So he was bussing tables? How’d he get from that to teaching science at Flushing High?”
“I’m not sure. I just remember thinking he was clearly smart, from day one. Even with the booze, you could see it. Too smart to be bussing tables. That was obvious. But his English wasn’t great, and he kind of kept to himself. Then Daphne got him off the bottle and they got married, and not long after that, I remember he was let go by the restaurant. Something about a cousin of the owner needing a job. So he got a job as a janitor at the high school. And we were like, yikes, you know? But then somehow, he started giving private lessons, here and there, bringing in some extra cash. God knows how he got that going. And through word of mouth, he got more and more work, and he got his teaching qualifications and ended up with the full-time teaching job, and that’s pretty much how it’s been ever since.”
I could see the Good Will Hunting wisecrack germinating inside Aparo’s head, and headed it off with a follow-up question.
“And no big arguments, nothing going on that caused you any concern? Nothing that could lead to them leaving home all of a sudden like this?”
Rena’s face crumpled with concentration. “Not really. I mean, I always thought it was a bit weird that we never met anyone from Leo’s family. He never talked about them. Daphne said any family he had were all back in Russia and it wasn’t as easy back then; it’s not like they had e-mail and Skype, right? But he was a quiet guy anyway. A loner, really. Which Daphne didn’t mind. In our family, she was the quiet one too.” She softened, and a bittersweet smile warmed her face. “She was his life.”
I nodded and wondered about the Sokolovs again. I didn’t think Rena was hiding anything from me, which meant that whatever it was they’d gotten themselves into, they hadn’t shared it with her. It was time to move on and dig elsewhere.
Then she said something that resonated with me.
“Maybe the one thing that did give them some hard times was when they were trying to have a kid and it wasn’t working—they were shattered when they found out they couldn’t. But with time, that sadness went away. Leo’s students kinda took their place.”
I just nodded and said nothing. Tess and I had been through that, of course. And we’ve been lucky to have little Alex fill part of that hole. I understood what the Sokolovs must have gone through, and it explained the lack of kids’ photos in their apartment.
“That’s all I can think of, really,” she added. “That, and a bad day for the Yankees. You don’t want to be around Leo when they lose.” She smiled again, but it didn’t really disguise the worry in her eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. Money problems, God knows we all have them these days. Gambling, maybe. The kind of stuff you guys must come across a lot. But there’s none of that. Not with Leo. He’s a sweet man and stand-up guy. Big on values, you know? Lives in a dream world. Like with Russia. He loves his homeland. We all do, right? But seeing it like that, even from this distance and after all these years. All that promise after the Wall came down and how it got all screwed up instead, all these gangsters running around, robbing the place blind . . . that made him sad. The rigged elections . . . he cared, you know? Like when that activist was killed last week, you know the one I mean?”
“Ilya Shislenko?” Aparo asked.
I gave him a look of surprise and admiration. He winked back, proud and cheesy.
“Yeah, him. Leo was so bummed about that.” She let o
ut a small, wistful shrug. “Daphne told me he even went to their embassy and joined the protesters. She said she’d never seen him like that. Really down, she’d said. And he’d taken a few pulls of vodka—one too many, according to her—which he didn’t do, not anymore. You see what I’m saying? He’s a decent guy.” She paused, then added, “You’ve got to find them. Please.”
We left Rena’s shop without much more to go on than we had going in. We’d need to follow up at the school and at the hospital and see if any of Leo’s or Daphne’s colleagues had anything else to say about the missing couple. The CCTV footage from the hospital’s security cameras would be checked to see if anything unusual was going on around Daphne, especially at the time she had left. We’d also be checking any footage we could get from any cameras in storefronts or on ATMs close to the Sokolovs’ apartment building, as well as video and still images taken on cell phones by bystanders who had been there when Yakovlev had taken his dive.
Beyond that, I didn’t see that there was much more we could do. Not until we caught a break with some new piece of information, or if the Sokolovs decided to resurface. So Aparo and I headed back to Federal Plaza. I had a few loose ends to follow through on a couple of other files I was working on, then I was looking forward to going home to catch some quality time with Tess, Kim, and Alex, then mull over the plan that I was finding harder and harder to resist.
8
Little Italy, Manhattan
Without bothering to remove his shoes, Sokolov swung his legs up onto the creaky bed, sat back, and closed his eyes. He tried to master his breathing and slow his still-racing heartbeat, but all he could think was that his life, his second life, the one he’d built up over decades and had grown to love, was now over.
Out in the open, he had very deliberately kept his mind away from the circumstances of his flight and from that debilitating conclusion. Now that he was alone and—he hoped—safe, at least for the time being, his attention slipped back to earlier that day, back at his apartment, back when he merely thought his wife was late, rather than in the hands of those monsters.
They have Daphne.
They have my laposhka.
The thought forced Sokolov to sit up again, bolt upright. His lips were quivering, as were his hands. He looked around his crummy hotel room in abject panic. The sight was as grim and desperate as he felt. The walls were cracked, and two columns of dirty yellow light were leaking into the room through moth-eaten drapes from a streetlamp outside. He could almost hear the mites and roaches scratching and scurrying around beneath him. He shut his eyes again and tried to imagine that he was back at home in Astoria, listening to his beloved music with his even-more-beloved Daphne curled up next to him on the couch, but his mind wouldn’t play along and forced him to confront the reality of his situation: that he was hiding in a thirty-dollar-a-night roach-fest in Little Italy, his wife was being held captive, and he had killed a man.
***
THE APARTMENT’S ENTRY BUZZER sounded in the hallway, and Sokolov checked his watch. It could only be Daphne, of course—who else would it be that early in the morning? No doubt she was running late and her keys were buried at the bottom of her bag. Not the first time that had happened, nor would it be the last.
“Here you go, laposhka,” he said as he buzzed her in. “I’ll get the tea ready.”
Leaving the front door open, he hummed along to the Rachmaninoff coming from the living room as he padded back to the kitchen, thinking he didn’t have that much time before he’d have to set off to work. He turned the kettle on and slipped a couple of slices of rye bread into the toaster, but as he waited to hear her walk into the apartment, something deep within clawed at him—and the unfamiliar, sharp footfalls he heard coming his way only confirmed his unease.
His body taut with apprehension, he stepped out of the kitchen and into the foyer, only to come face-to-face with a complete stranger. Sokolov immediately knew he was Russian. Not just Russian. An agent of the Russian state. He emitted that unmistakable combination of arrogance, resentment, and thinly suppressed violence, traits Sokolov knew well.
Traits he’d happily left behind many years ago.
They’d found him.
And given the ominous timing, it meant they also had Daphne.
Sokolov’s heart imploded. He’d finally made the mistake of sticking his head above the parapet, just once, after all this time, and almost immediately, his wife had paid the price. Nothing was more Russian than that. Not even the unblinking eyes staring at him.
“Dobroe utro, Comrade Shislenko,” the man greeted him with a sneer of blunt irony as he pulled a handgun from his black leather coat and leveled it at Sokolov’s chest.
Sokolov stared at the gun and backed away from his uninvited guest, as instructed by the sideways flicks of the gun in the man’s hand, until he was standing in his living room.
“Thank you for alerting us to your whereabouts—and, indeed, to your intentions—in so unambiguous a manner,” he told Sokolov in Russian.
Sokolov was standing by the stereo. “Where’s my wife?” he asked as his fingers reached out and hit a button on his CD player, killing the Rachmaninoff.
The man’s face soured. “Why’d you stop it? I thought the concerto added a nice nostalgic ambiance to our little gathering, no?”
“Where’s Daphne?” Sokolov insisted, his voice breaking.
“Oh, she’s fine. And she’ll stay fine as long as you behave,” the man told him as he sat down in an armchair facing the window.
He gestured for Sokolov to sit on the sofa adjacent to him, by the wall of bookshelves that were jammed with books and home to an elaborate hi-fi and a pair of expensive-looking speakers.
The speakers were positioned in such a way that the far armchair was the optimal listening point. Sokolov had spent many hours sitting in that very chair, reading the Times and listening to Scriabin preludes and Tchaikovsky ballets. Right now, it was precisely where he needed his guest to be sitting.
“We should charge you for all the resources we spent looking for you all these years, both here and back home. But no matter. We have you now. Once you’ve given us what we want—what you stole—we’ll let your wife go free. I can’t promise the same for you. That’s out of my hands.” The man scratched one unshaven cheek with the muzzle of his gun. “Does she even know who you are?”
Sokolov shook his head.
“Good. We suspected that would be the case. So her safety depends entirely on your actions,” the man said—then an odd, confused look flooded his face, and a thin film of sweat broke out across his forehead.
Sokolov watched nervously as the man switched the handgun to his left hand and back again as he shrugged himself out of his coat.
“Why do you keep the place so hot?” he asked. “And what’s that noise?” The man rubbed his ear irritably. “Sounds like you have cockroaches in the walls.”
Sokolov leaned forward and, concentrating as hard as he could to stay in control, stared directly into the man’s eyes.
“Don’t worry about the tarakanchiki. They don’t care about you. Tell me, Comrade. What is your name?”
The man furrowed his brow and winced, as if he had just stepped on a tack. He seemed to wonder about the question for a moment, then, his expression vacant, he said, “Fyodor Yakovlev. Third secretary to the Russian Consulate of New York.” He looked lost, as if he wasn’t quite sure that this was the case.
Sokolov kept his eyes lasered on his captor, his concentration absolute. He knew his whole existence from here on depended on this moment, and with each sentence, he slowed and deepened his voice, accentuating seemingly random syllables.
“If they see the gun, they will be angry. You should place the gun on the table,” he told the man.
“Who? Who will be angry?”
“You know who will be angry,” Sokolov told him. “They will be very angry. Now, why don’t you show them you mean well and put your gun down on the table.” He tapped the cof
fee table with his fingers. “This table right here.”
Yakovlev stared at him for a moment, then slowly placed his gun on the glass table between them. Sokolov made no attempt to pick it up.
After a moment, Yakovlev shifted in his chair, then made to retrieve his gun, as though he knew he’d just made a grave mistake.
“No,” snapped Sokolov.
Yakovlev withdrew his hand as though an electrical charge had just run through it. He looked like a child who’d just had his knuckles rapped.
Sokolov immediately reverted to the deep and arrhythmic intonation. “They’ll think you mean them harm. Go over to the window and see if they are still watching you.”
The man’s entire face was now covered in perspiration. He stood, leaving the gun on the glass table, and wandered silently over to the window. He peered outside, taking several seconds to scan every element of the window’s aspect.
Sokolov remained in the armchair, motionless. “Do you see them?”
“Yes.”
“So now, you can understand why I need to talk to my wife. She will be worried. About both of us.”
Yakovlev nodded, then took out his cell phone and pushed a speed-dial button.
And then it happened.
At that exact moment, a fire truck’s siren pierced the air outside. A blaring wail ripped through their ears and kept coming. Yakovlev blinked twice, looked down at his empty right hand, then swiftly located the gun on the glass table. But before he managed his first step away from the window, Sokolov had launched himself out of his chair.
He threw himself across the room and crashed his entire body weight into the off-balance target, sending the man smashing through the glass, then shoving him over the windowsill and out through six stories of New York air and onto the sidewalk below.
Sokolov heard the splat and the screams, but he didn’t dare look out the window. His heart was kicking and screaming its way out of his chest. He looked around in desperation, then acted. He picked up the cell phone from the carpet where Yakovlev had dropped it, and slipped it into a pocket. He also picked up the handgun that had fallen from the Russian. Then he crossed to the shelves and hit the Eject button on the multi-CD player. While he waited impatiently, the tray slid out. He fished out the disc that was in the front-most position and slipped it into another pocket.