Black Wolf, page 12
Without a word the clerk led them to the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. As the cage rose, the music grew louder, until it became clear that the playing was coming from William’s apartment.
“What’s that?” Dan asked Julie. “Debussy?”
Julie shrugged. “Chopin, maybe?”
Mel searched her memory for the composer. She knew the melody. It was one that her mother often played when she was in the doldrums.
The clerk rapped his knuckles on William’s door, and the playing abruptly stopped. He exhaled as though irritated by the exchange of opinions and gave Dan a scornful look. “It’s Satie.” As he returned to the elevator, he threw over his shoulder, “Je te veux.”
William’s expression was somber when he opened the door. He ushered them inside, saying, “Terrible about the woman found this morning. Evidently, she worked for the minister of external affairs. I’m just sorry that Melvina and Ben had to witness it.”
William gestured for them all to sit in the living room. “The body is with the medical examiner now,” he explained. “This is not the first time this type of killing has happened in Minsk.”
He grew even more subdued as Dan explained what had occurred when their van was stopped. “The Minsk Mafia is growing bolder by the day,” William said when he’d finished.
“I know there’s increased chaos because of Soviet dissipation, but where are the police?” Dan asked. “The abduction, or whatever it was, was done in broad daylight, on a main street. Nowhere in our briefings were there warnings about the Mafia in Byelorussia.”
William sighed. “It’s becoming a war that the Soviet officials are ambivalent about pursuing. Most of the Bratva in Minsk are young men who fought in Afghanistan. They’re hungry, and they’re angry. And, because of the black market, they’re now better armed than the local Byelorussian militsiya. Some of whom, I might add, are being paid better by the Brotherhood than the State. Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges.”
He turned to Julie. “And our resident language expert translates it as—?”
“In times of war,” Julie said without hesitation, “the law falls silent.”
William nodded with approval. “What did your driver do?”
“He pulled a gun from under the front seat,” Dan said.
“Good, that’s good. It means you won’t have to worry about him letting the Mafia kidnap you for a hefty ransom.”
Dan started to laugh, but the seriousness of William’s expression stifled it.
“I’ll be sure and let the appropriate officials know what transpired,” William said.
“‘The appropriate officials’ such as your friend Martin Kavalchuk?” Julie asked. Her tone was sharp, but William smiled.
“Indeed. He’ll be here tonight, by the way.” William took note of the Americans exchanging concerned glances. Dan frowned with displeasure and shook his head. Mel was torn. Her impulse, and training, told her to stay well away from the head of the Byelorussian KBG. But, at the same time, a perverse curiosity to observe the man named the Black Wolf gave her a jolt of nervous energy. The same kind of excited energy she got from reading about serial killers. Only this time there’d be no prison bars or courtroom bailiffs separating her from the monster.
William stood and wandered over to an antique chess set positioned on a small table. The set where, Mel assumed, their host played chess with the Black Wolf every Friday night.
“You know,” William said, carefully moving one of the pieces, “there’s a Russian saying, ‘The wolf and the dog can always agree about the goat.’” He looked briefly at Mel, as though sensing her nervousness. “Right now, in Byelorussia, the Americans and the Russians share a common cause. We want to do business, and they want to do business.”
“But that won’t be possible with a strengthening Mafia,” Ben said.
William nodded his assent. “If anyone can put a leash on the Brotherhood, it will be Martin.”
Dan poured more vodka into his glass. “I’ve heard that the Afghanistan veterans are popular with the people.”
“But,” William said, holding up a finger, “the more crimes they commit, the faster that sympathy will wane. Trust me, Martin is waiting for his moment.”
Julie turned to Mel and muttered, “Gosh, if I’d known Martin Kavalchuk was going to be here, I would have dressed more suitably for the gulag.”
William clapped his hands together, signaling a change of subject. “So, the rest of the guests will arrive about six thirty. There will be some from the ministry, some from the institute, and some from internal security, along with their wives and ornamental incidentals. Security will be listening in anyway, so I might as well make it easier on them. Besides, the more vodka they drink, the shorter their memories.
“Dan, why don’t you assist me in the kitchen for a few minutes. The rest of you can help yourselves to refreshments.”
Dan, carrying a file of notes, all converted to code, followed William into the kitchen, and Mel trailed after Julie and Ben into the formal dining room. The large table was covered with platters of food, and a sideboard held bottles of vodka, whiskey, and Russian champagne.
Mel could hear the water in the kitchen sink running, a teakettle bubbling forcefully on the small stove, and pans being rattled noisily, all to mask the men’s voices. Their first information dump to their liaison had begun.
They piled food on their plates and returned to the living room to eat. Both Julie and Ben had helped themselves to vodka, from bottles nestled in a large bucket of ice. But Mel poured herself a glass of tea from the samovar, hoping it would clear her head before she had to mingle and, more importantly, remember all the other guests. She was beginning to regret her overindulgence at the Planeta.
The three sat quietly for a while, Julie only nibbling at her food and Ben restlessly rattling something in a prescription pill bottle. It took a moment for Mel to realize that it wasn’t a lone pill making noise, but the tiny roll of film that had been extracted from the Minox camera in his briefcase. Ben would pass that along to William too.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mel could see him studying her.
“Before, in the van,” he said finally, “I got the feeling you recognized the younger Mafia guy.”
Mel kept her expression relaxed. “I remembered him from the hotel. He’s one of the kitchen workers.”
“I’ve got a pretty good memory for faces, but I don’t recall ever seeing him.”
Under different circumstances his close attention could have been flattering. Few had ever tried so hard to know her. And fewer still had taken note of her abilities. But here, with so much at stake, his scrutiny made her increasingly uncomfortable. Regrettably, she’d have to be more cautious around him now too.
At that moment, Dan stuck his head out of the kitchen, crooking his finger at Ben to join him.
Julie made a sour face as the door closed again. “Left out of the boys’ club once more, and last on the totem pole. They do know we won the right to vote, right?” She swallowed the last of her vodka. “William’s idea, no doubt.”
The vehemence of her words surprised Mel. Julie could be prickly in her assessment of people, but Mel had assumed her colleague had the same perception of William that she did: that he was a brilliant, resourceful man with the full confidence of the Central Intelligence Agency. “What’s your problem with William?”
“My problem? I don’t trust him.”
“Why?” Mel asked. Uncomfortably, the memory of Ben’s arrest resurfaced.
Instead of answering, though, Julie got up and wandered over to the piano, her brow furrowed in thought. The cover was still up, and she pressed a finger firmly onto one of the black keys, letting the tone ring out. She was wearing a formfitting dress with a tight bodice instead of one of her usual practical pantsuits—like the one Mel was wearing now—her plentiful black hair back-combed for more fullness. The diffused light from the table lamps softened her angular features, and Mel, in that instant, wished she had taken more care with her own appearance. She felt drab by comparison.
Ben was right about Julie and Dan, she thought. Julie’s dressing like a woman who’s concerned about keeping someone’s attention.
Julie struck the key several more times in rapid succession and grinned. “That ought to blow the eardrums out of the Crazy Ivan listening in.”
She came back to the couch and sat close to Mel. “I don’t trust William because he’s too glib,” she said in a whisper. “He talks a lot without revealing much. It’s all folktales and clever sayings. I also don’t understand how an American can work, and socialize, so closely with Soviet functionaries, and the KGB, and not be considered a spy. Unless—”
“Unless?”
“He’s playing both sides.”
Mel sat back in her chair. She’d never seriously considered this possibility. Julie was a seasoned agent and had spent years in and out of Soviet Bloc countries. She was experienced in assessing people’s true intent, discovering their hidden agendas and their deceptions. Mel wondered, and not for the first time, what she was missing through her inexperience. She had placed her trust in William, but this new thought gave her pause.
Mel was the last one to join William in the kitchen. Her three colleagues had ultimately been seen all together, their reports handed over, but she was called into William’s presence alone. He had turned off the faucet but had switched on a small radio, tuned to a classical music station, the volume turned up high.
“You know, this is not going to endear me to my coworkers,” Mel said. “Being debriefed without the others.”
“Is that so important to you?” he asked. He had just pulled a porcelain baking dish out of his oven and placed it on top of the stove.
“It’s important that my colleagues trust me. How are you going to explain that you’re seeing me alone?”
“I’ve told your three colleagues that you, tasked with being ‘the secretary,’ don’t need to be included in their debriefings. It will serve to cement your omega status.” He grinned. “Thus, hiding you in plain sight.”
William dipped a large spoon into the mixture in the dish and offered it to Mel to taste. It was a stew, dark and rich, and pungent with mushrooms.
“The mushrooms aren’t fresh, unfortunately,” he said. “They’re dried, left over from last year’s harvest. You’ll still be here when the gathering season starts in two weeks, though. I think you’d enjoy it. I’ll take you, if you like.”
She gave a nod, not certain she’d actually enjoy stooping for hours over the forest floor. She handed the spoon back to William.
Mel moved closer to him, keeping her voice low. “Ben asked me this morning if I was spying on the group.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I wasn’t.”
“And did he believe you?”
“I don’t know. He also…” She paused, considering how much to reveal. “Ben is uncomfortable with my methods of observation.”
William took his time, carefully nestling a decorative cover over the dish to keep the stew warm. “There’s an Arabic saying that, loosely translated, means ‘Get together like brothers, but work together like strangers,’” he said. “A little seed of doubt is never a bad thing, especially for someone in the intelligence field. It makes you depend more on yourself, and less on those around you.”
The core of Mel’s conversation with William had centered around trust—her colleagues’ trust in her, and, in return, her trust in them—to ensure success in their mission. But Julie’s lack of total trust in their host had planted a dark seed in Mel’s mind. A “little seed of doubt” that William seemingly encouraged.
“Especially if that distrust between coworkers is encouraged by an outside party with an agenda,” she offered, watching closely for his reaction.
He peered at her over his glasses and gave her a friendly, grandfatherly smile. “Now you’re thinking like a spy. Melvina, my only agenda, besides passing along your reports, is to foster your access to foreign scientific visitors. That begins tonight, and the less your compatriots know about it, the better, don’t you agree?”
She studied him for a moment longer: an older, roundish man dressed in a worn but bespoke suit, improbably wearing a woman’s full apron to keep his shirt and tie pristine. To any outside observer, he might appear to be an aging professor, or an antiquarian bookseller. He certainly didn’t look like a man smuggling clandestine state documents out of the Soviet Union. And that was probably the point.
“How do you get the reports, and Ben’s film, out of Byelorussia?” she asked suddenly. “It can’t be easy. I mean, you live right across the street from the KGB.”
“Again, hiding in plain sight,” he answered cheerfully. “If nothing else, I’ve learned to be conspicuously invisible. Something, I have a feeling, you’ve learned to perfect as well.”
So, it wasn’t just Ben who saw below the surface of things. After the cold, impersonal evaluation of her trainers, it was comforting to be assessed, and appreciated, beyond the parameters of her mission. William was smart, but he was also warm and approachable. Another one of the Moscow Rules: Trust your gut. Mel was about to ask him if he’d heard about the Strangler when there was a loud rapping at the front door. “Ah,” William said, glancing at the wall clock and taking his apron off with a flourish. “That must be Sveta.”
Disappointed at being interrupted, Mel followed William out of the kitchen and rejoined everyone in the living room. Ben made room for her on the couch, and Julie handed her another glass of tea. It took her a few minutes to realize that William had avoided answering her question about how their reports would be smuggled out of Byelorussia.
William opened the door to a small, attractive woman who greeted him with a volley of rapid-fire Russian and the Slavic triple kiss on both cheeks. She looked middle-aged in a well-constructed woolen dress, twenty years out of fashion, and a single strand of pearls, and sported a rigid helmet of hair, lacquered into immobility.
“William’s girlfriend,” Dan muttered, suppressing a smile.
“Everyone, this is Comrade Sveta Ulanova,” William said, his arm wrapped snugly around her shoulders. “She doesn’t speak any English but I’m leaving her in your good hands for now.” He nodded and smiled encouragingly at Sveta while guiding her to a chair next to Julie.
He whispered into Julie’s ear, “Careful, she’s probably wired for sound.”
Julie grinned impishly and whispered back, “So you suggest we speak loudly into her bosom? Don’t worry, I think I can handle Comrade Ulanova.”
William laughed, wagged his finger, and said something Mel didn’t understand.
“What was that?” Mel asked.
“It’s Hebrew,” Julie answered, looking pleased with herself. “Dr. Cutler is charming, I’ll give him that. He said, ‘Tafasta merubeh lo tafasta.’ It means, don’t bite off more than you can chew.”
Soon after, the next guest arrived, a young captain of the KBG’s elite Alpha group, all jutting chin and restless eyes, sent in advance to ensure the safety of the invited guests. William busied himself carrying several bags of kitchen garbage out into the hallway while the captain searched every room and every cupboard, and Mel realized that this was a commonplace occurrence.
Things moved quickly after that. Within half an hour there were at least forty invitees filling the apartment, most of them talking animatedly in Russian, some in halting English, helping themselves to food and drink as though they’d been rescued from a desert island. There were more men than women, and those who were not wearing tired-looking suits were dressed in full military uniform, heavily freighted with ribbons and medals. The women sparkled among them, wearing brightly colored cocktail dresses in shiny acrylic fabrics that Mel was certain would flare like acetylene torches if touched with a lighted match.
William walked them around, introducing the Americans to his Byelorussian guests in their official capacities as accountants, translator, and secretary in that order. Ben and Dan were greeted enthusiastically while Julie and Mel were welcomed in a more formal way. At least by the men. The women looked them over like prize hens at a 4-H exhibit, scrutinizing every article of clothing and piece of jewelry brought from the West. Julie, in particular, trailed hungry gazes as she moved around the room. Mel, in her plain blouse and slacks, was immediately dismissed, which suited her purpose perfectly.
Sipping her tea, she scanned the room and recognized at least a dozen men. Some she had seen in person, and others she recollected from the many photographs in Minister Ivanov’s office. But others were wholly unfamiliar. Their faces were absorbed into her memory for future reference.
She noticed Ivanov talking discreetly to two men in military uniforms, the lenses in his dark-framed glasses fogged from the heat of his body. As though sensing her gaze, he turned toward her, his face unreadable, and she wondered how he felt knowing his receptionist had been found dead that morning. Again, she remembered the glowering look he had thrown at Katya. And how Katya’s makeup had looked tearstained the last time Mel spoke to her.
A loud voice distracted Mel, and she turned to see Academician Oleg Shevchenko holding court with some of the male scientists she had met at the Heat and Mass Transfer Institute. He’d probably been a good-looking man at one point, but now he had the dense network of broken capillaries across his nose and the paunch of a lifelong drinker. He snuck frequent appraising glances at the female guests, who by now had all gravitated toward one another at the far side of the room. They pretended to ignore him while they sipped at the caustic Russian champagne. He caught Mel’s eye several times and raised his glass in a friendly salute. His attention at first startled her. Next to the other women, she thought herself to be nearly invisible. But Mel collected herself and smiled back. Maybe William was right. Given more time, Oleg might put on a more amiable front.
William had earlier fitted a music cassette of Western pop songs into a large Sony Boombox and now the music buzzed softly from the dusty speakers. Mel hadn’t been listening closely to the songs, but in that moment, she recognized the plaintive voice of a popular British rock star singing “Russians.” She smiled at the irony. Or perhaps William had purposely included the song for his own amusement.
