As a boy, whenever he managed to escape the prison-like confines of his parents’ home, Arkadin would climb trees, rocks, hills, and mountains, the steeper the better. The more death defying the more he loved it and the higher he was prodded to climb. If he died in the attempt at least he’d die on his own terms, doing what he loved, not beaten to death by his mother.
Without hesitation, he mounted the nether side of the tree, where its thick trunk afforded him deep shadow. Climbing hand over hand, he felt once again the old exhilaration he’d experienced when he was nine and ten, before his mother, discovering him slipping out of the house yet again, had broken his leg.
Once inside the Gordian knot, he paused to survey the scene. He was more or less at the level of the second-story windows, which were, of course, all shut tight against both intruders and the city’s toxic ash. Not that a closed window was much of a problem for Arkadin; what mattered far more was choosing one that fronted an empty room.
He moved closer, looking through the glass from one darkened room to another. There were four windows, two and two, in line with the second story—which he guessed meant two rooms, doubtless bedrooms. Lights out didn’t necessarily guarantee an empty room. Peeling off a bit of bark from the branch nearest his right shoulder, he tossed it against the glass of the second window of the first pair. When nothing happened, he peeled off another piece, larger this time, and threw it harder. It hit the pane with a clearly discernible smack. He waited. Nothing.
Now he made his way through the front half of the Gordian knot until he was almost up against the window pane. Here the knotty branches had been sawed or clipped back, presenting their sheared side to the house. There was a gap of perhaps eighteen inches between the lopped-off stumps and the light-mottled wall of the house into which the windows were set like the dull eyes of a cuboid doll.
As Arkadin set himself in a convenient crotch, he saw his reflection staring back at him as if from out of some mythic, sentient forest. The paleness of his face startled him. It was as if he were looking at a future version of himself who was already dead, a version from whom the fire of life had been suddenly and cruelly drained, not by time but by circumstance. In that face he recognized not himself, but some stranger who had stepped into his life and, like a puppet master, had directed his hands and feet onto a ruinous path. A moment later the image or illusion vanished and, leaning across the gap, he jimmied open the window, slid it up, and clambered silently inside.
He found himself in a very ordinary bedroom with a bedstead, a pair of lamps on nightstands, a dresser, all on a circular hooked rug. Nevertheless, at that moment it looked to him like a room in a sultan’s palace. He sat on the corner of the bed for a moment, luxuriating in the give of the mattress, inhaling the homey swirl of perfume and body powder, which made him salivate like a beast scenting blood. Oh, for a hot bath, or even a shower!
A narrow floor-length mirror announced the door to a closet, which he opened. He had, quite naturally, a marked aversion to closets, a confined space into which his mother locked him as punishment. But here he steeled himself, reaching in to run his open hand along the downy backs of the hanging clothes: dresses, slips, nightgowns, pale and shimmering as his face had been in reflection. What he breathed in, however, along with traces of perfume and powder was the odor of solitude so familiar to someone like him. In his crummy basement lair this scent was altogether familiar, almost a given, but here in a family home it seemed strange and ineffably sad.
He was just about to turn away and go about his business when he sensed something in the well of darkness below. Tensed and ready for anything, he crouched down and, pushing aside a handful of hideous tweed skirts, perceived a pale oval face rising out of the gloom. It belonged to a small child. They stared at each other for a moment, transfixed. He recalled that Lev Antonin had four children—three girls and a rather sickly boy who, had his father been anyone else, would have had his life made miserable by his peers. It was this very boy whom he now faced, crouched in a closet as he himself had once been.
A sense of loathing for his past overcame even his hatred of Lev Antonin.
“Why are you hiding in here?” he whispered.
“Shhh, me and my sisters’re playing a game.”
“They haven’t found you?”
He shook his head, then he grinned fiercely. “And I’ve been up here a long time.”
It was a sound rising up the stairwell from the first floor that refroze them both, a noise so unexpected it intruded upon this momentary and unaccustomed conversation. It was a moan, a female voice caught not in the midst of sex, but in abject terror.
“Stay here,” Arkadin said. “Whatever you do, don’t come downstairs until I come get you, okay?”
The boy, clearly frightened now, nodded.
Quitting the bedroom, Arkadin stole along the hall. The lights might have been extinguished all through the second story, but downstairs they blazed like a house on fire. As he approached the wooden balustrade he heard the moan again, more distinctly this time, and now he began to wonder what Lev Antonin could be doing to his wife to cause her such excruciating terror. Where were the other children while Lev Antonin was punishing his wife? No wonder they hadn’t come upstairs looking for their brother.
Light rose up the stairs in decreasing amounts as Arkadin crept down bent almost double so he wouldn’t be seen. He was not more than a third of the way down when he was greeted by a strange tableau. A man was standing with his back to Arkadin. In front of him was Joškar, Lev Antonin’s wife, hog-tied to a ladder-backed kitchen chair. The gag that had been over her mouth was halfway off, hence the moans emanating from her mouth. One eye was swollen and there were cuts on her face out of which drooled smears of blood. Huddled around her, like chicks around a hen, were three of her four children, all of whose ankles were tied together. Thus hobbled, they couldn’t move and, given the menacing stance of the man looming over them, surely wouldn’t. Where was Lev Antonin?
The man took a lazy swing at Joškar Antonin’s head. “Stop your whining,” he said. “Your fate is sealed. No matter what your husband decides, you and these brats—” He kicked out, the sharp toe of his shoe making contact with a hip bone here, a rib there. The children, already crying, began to sob in earnest, and their mother moaned again. “You and these brats are finished. Dead, six feet under, get me?”
As Arkadin listened to the man’s manifesto, something important occurred to him. The man, whoever he was, must be an outsider; otherwise he’d know that one of Lev Antonin’s children was still free. Could he be the one who had been killing the gang members? At that moment it seemed to Arkadin to be a good bet, one he ought to put his money on.
Retracing his steps, he returned to the bedroom closet, where he instructed Lev Antonin’s son to come with him, but to stay quiet no matter what happened. Keeping the cringing boy behind him, he went silently down the steps until he was perhaps halfway down. Nothing much had changed in the scene below, except the gag was back in place and there was more blood on Joškar’s face.
When Lev Antonin’s son tried to peep out from behind him, Arkadin pushed him back out of sight behind his legs.
Crouching down, he whispered, “Don’t move until I tell you it’s okay.”
He recognized the look of abject fear in the boy’s eyes and something tugged at him, an emotion perhaps, buried beneath the silt of his past. Ruffling the boy’s hair, he stood and drew the Glock he’d tucked into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back.
Rising to his full height, he said, “Why don’t you take a step away from those people.”
The man whirled around, his face twisted into an ugly mask for a split second before the soon-to-be-familiar smile full of condescension replaced it. Arkadin recognized that expression and what it revealed about the man behind it. Here was a man who lived for subjugation; the blunt instrument he used to gain it: fear.
“Who the fuck’re you, and how did you get here?” Despite
being surprised, despite staring down the barrel of a Glock, there wasn’t an iota of concern either on his face or in his voice.
“My name is Arkadin, and what the fuck’re you doing here?”
“Arkadin, is it? Well, well…”
His smile turned smugly ironic. It was the kind of smile, Arkadin thought, that begged to be expunged, preferably with a balled fist.
“My name’s Oserov. Vylacheslav Germanovich Oserov, and I’m here to get you the fuck out of this shithole.”
“What?”
“That’s right, jerk-off, my boss, Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov, wants you back in Moscow.”
“Who the hell is Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov?” Arkadin said. “And why should I give a fuck?”
At this, Oserov’s mouth opened and a sound not unlike fingernails drawn down a blackboard emanated from it. With a start, Arkadin realized the other man was laughing.
“You really are a hick. Maybe we should leave you here with all the other cretins.” Oserov shook with mirth. “For your information Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov is the head of the Kazanskaya.” He cocked his head. “Ever hear of the Kazanskaya, sonny?”
“Moscow grupperovka.” Arkadin spoke on autopilot. He was in shock. The head of one of the capital’s premier mob families had heard of him? He had sent Oserov—and presumably someone else, since Oserov had said “we”—here to fetch him? Either idea seemed improbable, but taken together the scenario seemed absurd.
“Who else is with you?” Arkadin said, trying desperately to recover his wits.
“Mischa Tarkanian. He’s with Lev Antonin negotiating your safe passage out, not that you seem worth the effort, now that you’ve made an appearance.”
There was no particular reason for Arkadin to believe that Mischa Tarkanian wasn’t somewhere on the ground floor—in the toilet, perhaps. “Here’s what’s confusing about your story, gospodin Oserov. I’m wondering why this Maslov sent an incompetent to do a man’s job?”
Before the Muscovite could form a reply, Arkadin reached around behind him, grabbed the boy by the back of his shirt, and brought him into the light. He needed to regain control, and the boy was his ace in the hole.
“Lev Antonin has four children, not three. How could you make such a basic mistake?”
Oserov’s left hand, which had been at his side, out of Arkadin’s sight, gave a flick and the knife with which he had been cutting Joškar’s face whirred through the air. Arkadin jerked the boy away, but it was too late, the blade buried itself to the hilt, and the child was torn from his grasp.
With a feral shout, Arkadin discharged his Glock, then leapt after it as if he could ride the bullet straight into Oserov’s black soul. The bullet missed, but he didn’t. He landed atop the Muscovite and both of them went flying across the floorboards. They fetched up against sofa legs as thick and sturdy as a babushka’s ankles.
Arkadin allowed Oserov to go on the offensive the better to get a sense of his style, strength, and coordination. Oserov proved to be a street fighter, vicious but undisciplined, someone who obviously relied on power and animal cunning rather than his wits to win battles. Arkadin took a few on the chin and the ribs, deflecting at the last instant a rabbit punch aimed squarely at his kidneys. Then he went to work on Oserov.
He was motivated not only by rage and a need for revenge, but by a sense of shame and humiliation for quite deliberately putting the boy in harm’s way, relying on the twin elements of surprise and firepower to maintain control of the situation. Plus, he had to admit that he had been completely blindsided by the Muscovite killing a child in cold blood. Terrifying him, yes, roughing him up a little, maybe, but throwing a knife through his heart? Never.
His knuckles were split and bloodied but he scarcely noticed. As he systematically pummeled the man beneath him he was overcome with images of his childhood, of the young ashen-faced boy he’d once been, who’d been terrorized by his mother, locked in her closet for hours, sometimes for days with scurrying, avid rats that had finally eaten three toes off his left foot. Lev Antonin’s boy had put his faith in Arkadin and now he was dead. This outcome was unconscionable, and the only possible redemption was Oserov’s death.
And he would have killed Oserov, too, without remorse or consideration of the consequences of beating to death someone owned body and soul by Dimitri Maslov, head of the Kazanskaya. In a murderous rage, Arkadin cared nothing for Maslov, the Kazanskaya, Moscow, or anything else. All he could see was that face in the closet upstairs. Whether it was the boy’s or his own he could no longer tell.
Then something hard and heavy hit him in the side of the head and everything went black.
23
MOIRA LIVED in a Georgetown town house of red-brown brick on Cambridge Place, NW, near Dumbarton Oaks. More than a home, it was her sanctuary, a place where she could curl up on the chenille sofa, a snifter of amber brandy in her hand, and lose herself in a good novel. Traveling almost constantly, such nights had become rarer and rarer, making them, when they did come, all the more precious.
Now, as twilight gave way to a glittering evening, she was haunted by the thought that someone was watching her house. Which was why she circled the block twice in a new rental car, because if the house really was under surveillance a second drive-by would surely arouse suspicion. As she went by the second time, she heard a car start up and, checking the rearview mirror, she saw a black Lincoln Town Car pull out of its parking spot almost directly across from her house and take up position several car-lengths behind her. She smiled to herself as she wove her way through Georgetown, whose maze-like streets she knew intimately.
She’d left Bamber at Lamontierre’s house. He’d offered to come along even though he was clearly scared to death. “I appreciate the offer,” she had said in all seriousness, “but you can help me most by staying safe and sound. I have no intention of allowing Noah’s people anywhere near you.”
Now as she took the Town Car through a series of evasive maneuvers she was doubly glad she’d made him stay away, even though this plan would have been far easier to execute with someone else driving the car. They could have left her off and driven on, leading the Town Car away while she doubled back to her house to fetch her Black River laptop. But nothing came easy in life, at least not in her life and not in anyone else’s she knew, so why bother complaining about it. Take the hand you’re dealt and then finesse it, that was what she’d always done, that was what she’d do now.
Night closed in as she drove down streets that became narrower and narrower as they approached the canal. Finally, she wheeled around a corner, made another left, braked to a halt, and, with the headlights still blazing, got out of the car in time for the driver of the Lincoln, its headlights off, to catch a glimpse of her as it nosed around the corner.
It came to an abrupt halt just as she ducked into a doorway, and two men in dark suits got out and jogged down the cobbles toward the spot where she’d disappeared. They discovered a metal door deep in the shadows, and drew their snub-nosed sidearms. The one with a shaved head pressed his back against the building’s brickwork while the other one tried the knob. Shaking his head, he raised his right leg and kicked the door open so hard it slammed back against the inside wall. Weapon at the ready, he stepped aggressively into the stygian blackness. As he did so, the door swung hard into his face, breaking his nose. His jaws clamped shut, his teeth snapping off the tip of his tongue.
His howl of pain was short-lived. Moira drove a knee into his groin and, as he reflexively bent double, brought her joined fists down onto the back of his neck.
The bald man heard a muffled metallic clang, and without further hesitation, he stepped into the open doorway and fired three shots point-blank into the blackness to center, right, and left. He heard nothing, saw nothing, and, in a tense crouch, made his run into the interior.
Moira slammed the spade-shaped end of the shovel she’d stumbled over into the back of the bald man’s head. He pitched headfirst onto the bare concrete floor. As s
he picked her way through the darkness and out into the gathering night, she heard the sound of police sirens. Doubtless, someone had heard the shots and called 911.
She walked back to her car at a brisk pace, an absorbed look on her face, as if she were late for a dinner rendezvous. It was crucial now to appear normal, to blend into the heavy traffic on M Street, until she lost herself amid the cobbled streets, shining in the light of old-fashioned street lamps.
Another ten minutes brought her back to her block, which she circled warily, on the lookout for another car with the lights off, someone in it, a sudden movement inside so he wouldn’t be seen. But all appeared normal and serene.
She parked and took another look around before mounting the steps to her front door. Turning the lock, she opened the door and, drawing her Lady Hawk from its thigh holster, stepped inside. Closing the door softly behind her, she double-locked it, then stood for some time with her back against it, listening to the house breathe. One by one she identified the homey sounds of the hot-water circulator, the refrigerator condenser, the heating fan. Then she sniffed the air to see if there was the trace of an odor that didn’t belong to her or her things.
Satisfied at last, she flipped the switch and the entryway and hallway were flooded with a warm, yellowish light. She let out the long breath she’d been unconsciously holding in. Moving silently through the house, she checked every room, every closet on the ground floor; she made sure the door to the basement was securely locked. Then she ascended the stairs. Halfway up, she heard a noise and froze in midstep, her heart hammering in her breast. It came again, and she identified it as a branch scratching at the rear wall, where a narrow alley ran behind the row of town houses.