The Survivor: A Novel Part 21

Chapter 32.

The van deposited Nate and Misha on a seedy downtown block where, with mounting concern, Nate was led up a set of cracked marble stairs into a sweat chamber announced as a banya on the sole sign providing translation from Cyrillic. They moved through several thick oak doors, pa.s.sing h.o.a.ry valets manning cash registers and towel booths, Misha's mere presence dispensing with procedure of any sort. Broad, hewn-featured men lounged naked on long benches before lockers, eating pickled fish, sipping chocolate-colored liquid from mugs, and arguing in rough Eastern tongues.

The temperature rising with every step, they pa.s.sed a bank of urinals and a stone arch, entering an open antechamber where men of all makes and models sank into icy plunge pools, lolled corpselike in steaming claw-footed tubs, and rinsed beneath shower nozzles protruding from the walls at inexplicable intervals.

Misha shoved Nate onward through the furnace and a st.u.r.dy wooden door into a miasma of steam so dense that Nate choked against it. Bodies sprawled about the stone ledges framing the large room, glimpses of marbled flesh visible here and there through the mist. The men were naked, save a few who were absurdly accessorized with oversize mitts and bell-shaped felt caps. A worker fed a firebox with logs of white birch, the scent and taste as biting as eucalyptus, though less medicinal. The outside air from Nate's forced entrance blew a wavering corridor through the haze, revealing a masculine form sitting centered on the stained stone slab, his flesh an angry red beneath the elaborate ink.

Pavlo Shevchenko lifted a hand, and the room emptied. No rush, no ado. The others simply exited, sweat dripping, feet padding moistly, leaving them alone.

Nate's clothes clung to him, damp and oppressive. The heat was like nothing he had ever experienced. An approximation of h.e.l.l within sweating insane-asylum-white tiles. What kind of men would subject themselves to this for leisure?

The steam reintroduced itself, rendering Pavlo's outline vague and ghostly, smudging the tattoos into bloodstains. The slab was elevated, thronelike. Misha shoved Nate forward, bringing him eye level to the stars tattooed across Pavlo's knees. I kneel before no man.

Pavlo's face was little more than an impression in the heavy air. "I know everything you do. I have eyes on computer screens in important offices. You file police complaint, you spend on credit card, you make flight arrangement, I will know."

Nate stepped forward again until he could discern the old man's eyes. "You never said my wife and daughter couldn't leave. You said I couldn't leave. And I haven't. I'm still here, working on getting into that safe-deposit box."

"You had ticket, too. In your name."

"Just so I could make sure they got on the plane. I didn't go."

Pavlo stared, his face carved from stone.

"Where are they?" Nate asked.

"In Los Angeles. Flight was canceled thanks to your clever call. Everyone was questioned. And released. It is fortunate Yuri has proper work visa. I need one man who can travel."

"Don't hurt them. That wasn't the deal. I haven't broken the deal."

"Kneel," Pavlo said.

"What?"

"Kneel." Shevchenko pointed down, a dog-training command.

Nate stood, dumbfounded, his s.h.i.+rt pasted to him. The cut on his shoulder from the letter opener gave off a healing itch so intense he wanted to reach back and claw it open with his nails. The heat was wreaking havoc with his symptoms, his hand and arm aflame, his legs weak, his lungs straining to draw full breaths in the soupy air. This is what it will feel like soon, he thought. All the time.

Pavlo sprang to his feet, causing a violent disruption of the steam around him. He towered, enraged, glistening with sweat. "On your knees!"

A blow from behind knocked Nate down, Misha kicking out one of his legs. Nate's kneecaps ground against the stone. His muscles screamed beneath the heat.

Pavlo leaned over him. "If you have hope of success to get into safe-deposit box, why do you panic and go to LAX?"

"I have a plan. I know Danny Urban's safe-deposit box is number two twenty-seven, and I've acquired the key. Agent Abara wants me to retrace my steps through the bank one more time to see what I can recall. For obvious reasons the bank manager wants to do it on a Sunday when the bank is closed. Tomorrow afternoon I'm gonna walk the crime scene again. I'll ask to be left alone when I get to the bank vault."

"You will need-"

"A master key. When I went to the bank Thursday, they gave me the VIP treatment, left me behind the teller bank alone." His brain raced a quarter second ahead of his mouth; he was lying as fast as he could speak. "I got to the master key and made an impression. I cast the duplicate Friday."

Shevchenko frowned, impressed. "If you can deliver, why do you put your wife and daughter on plane?"

Nate moved to rise, but Misha shoved him forward again, back onto his knees. He was having trouble breathing, thinking, his left arm trembling. Sweat stung his eyes.

He forced the words out. "My daughter is willful. She gets in my way. It's easier for me to do this with her gone. And"-he sucked in a moist breath-"I don't trust you."

The silence, dense as the air. Then Pavlo gave a resonant laugh. Genuine amus.e.m.e.nt that seemed to catch him by surprise. "These are first words of yours that are not lies." He chuckled a bit more, a deep sound that held little mirth. "You have daughter you struggle with. Who no longer cares for you. Americans let their children speak to them with disrespect. This is why they do not obey." For the first time, his face held a sentiment that Nate found familiar, human. "They are impossible creatures. Daughters. They wind barbed wire around your heart and tug."

He gestured mercifully for Nate to rise. Nate found his feet, stooping in the heat, his legs aching.

"You have a daughter?" Nate asked. "I thought you made some Russian-mafia promise to have no family. Only the brotherhood of thieves."

"Russian mafia." Pavlo chuckled. "Sounds frightening. Like your Marlon Brando. We are not mafia. We are not even Russian. The only real criminals from Russia live in the Duma and the Kremlin. There are no laws. Only loopholes, favors, bribes. We have been under the heel of war for generations. We fear no G.o.d. We believe in nothing. To survive you need muscle. And will. Here you need only lawyers. And I have them. A team of them-Jews-working in concert, burning midnight oil. They protect my businesses. My freedom."

His gaze sharpened, zeroing in on Nate's aching arm, which Nate had been holding against his stomach. He dropped it, letting it dangle, though the skin felt scoured by sandpaper. "Your guy twisted my arm at the restaurant," he said quickly. "Tore something."

Pavlo sneered at him. "We are not our bodies. We are more. Greater. This, our skin, is a cage. We must be more."

The firebox leaked a steady stream of heat. Nate's vision dotted. He had never felt the disease so acutely, his muscles hanging about him like rags. It's not always that easy, he thought.

Pavlo's expression demanded a response, so Nate gestured at his tattoos. "But your body defines you."

"Because I am decorated? No. I am my body no more than you are yours. I have pride in my code. These?" His hands slid across his sweat-slick skin, moving from tattoo to tattoo. "They are my pa.s.sport, my story. They cannot lie. In prison do you know what most valuable currency is?" His thumbs rubbed across his fingertips. "Pigment. One burns a boot heel. Sifts the ash through handkerchief and mixes with urine. The needle? A guitar string sharpened on strip of a matchbook. In the worst conditions, we find a way to speak our truth. To say, 'This is my promise. It is carved into my flesh.'" He slapped his flushed chest, leaving white handprints on both pectorals. "I fulfill every promise written here."

"Then fulfill your word to me," Nate said. "I didn't break the code. Don't touch my family."

"Go home. Your wife and daughter will be waiting. They must now behave. You do not know when we are looking." At last Pavlo sat, his bare flesh slapping the stone wetly. "Enjoy them for next thirty-six hours. The next time you see me, I will either release you or force you to watch your daughter die."

Chapter 33.

Dima pulled up in front of the house, Valerik lifted the gun barrel from Nate's thigh, and Misha rolled back the door and prodded him out. A few shaky steps up the walk, Nate heard a whistle. When he turned, his cell phone was flying at him, and he moved to catch it in front of his face, but his hand couldn't clench in time. The phone bounced unbroken on the pavement, and he stooped painfully to pick it up. The door slammed shut as the van pulled away, leaving Nate alone in the thickening dusk with the smell of wet gra.s.s and a cell-phone screen showing seventeen missed calls from Janie.

Moving toward the front door, he sensed a tingling in his ankle and realized that his left foot was dragging, ever so slightly, along the concrete. The first sign of the dropped foot that heralded, for the afflicted, the beginning of the descent. No wonder Lou Gehrig started having trouble with grounders. With concentration, Nate returned his stride to normal, his pace quickening at the thought of seeing Janie and Cielle.

The front door flung open, two backlit feminine forms crowding the opening, their bearings conveying distress and trepidation and-yes-relief at the sight of him. Firming his leg, he kept on, even as Janie and Cielle rushed out to meet him. His dread, as enveloping as the creeping nightfall, was penetrated by a single p.r.i.c.k of light, a sharp grat.i.tude for the embrace to come.

Three A.M.

Kneading his forearm, Nate sat on the couch with Janie, Cielle looking on with chagrin and flicking the edge of her scarf fretfully across her lips. Watching his daughter, he was reminded of what was at risk and had to look away to keep the dam of emotion from breaking inside him. It had been a day without beginning or end, just a prolonged episode of trauma, twisting through the hours like a trapped creature that refused to die.

After stumbling in from the coerced banya visit, he'd showered, changed into fresh clothes, and driven Janie's car down to find Wendy Moreno-that last name they had from Urban's list. His knock had gone unanswered, and he'd waited outside for six jittery hours until, a.s.suming that Ms. Moreno would be spending the night out, he'd driven home in a state of exhaustion he could describe only as a stupor. While he'd been on his fruitless stakeout, Janie had scavenged every nook and cranny of the Internet to see if she could find anything about Patrice McKenna, the murdered schoolteacher from Brentwood, that might connect her to Pavlo Shevchenko. Janie had turned up little more than stunned testimonials from neighbors and relatives, variations on a common theme: Patrice was a pillar of the community, the last woman they'd ever expect something like this to happen to.

Twenty-one hours to zero hour, and Nate had not one sc.r.a.p of evidence to bring to Abara. In fact, every dead end they hit reaquainted them with the alarming reality: They didn't even know what they were looking for.

Now they were rehas.h.i.+ng the contingency to their contingency plan. First thing tomorrow he'd drive back to Wendy Moreno's and hope that he found her and could, through some Sherlockian miracle, scare up a piece of leverage that might flip the script on Shevchenko. Moreno's house was near the airport, so on his way he'd drop Janie and Cielle at LAX to retrieve his Jeep from short-term parking, where it had been languis.h.i.+ng since he'd been s.n.a.t.c.hed by Misha. Janie would get the Jeep home, pack it, stay visibly present in the house in case Shevchenko's men were watching, and wait to hear from Nate. Short of his finding the magical clue at Moreno's to bring to Abara and the FBI, he'd race home and they'd go on the run together well ahead of Shevchenko's midnight deadline.

"No credit cards," he said. "No flight or hotel reservations. No phone calls."

Janie looked across at Cielle. "That includes Jason."

Cielle's face wrinkled at the injustice of this, and she was about to reply when she registered something in Nate's face. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, honey."

Her gaze hardened. "Remember our deal. No keeping stuff from me."

He looked down at his hands. "I haven't been able to draw a full breath since ... The heat, I think it screwed with me. My arm and then my lungs and my G.o.dd.a.m.ned ankle now-" A glimpse at his daughter's face made him clamp his mouth shut. The words had flooded out, coming with more intensity than he'd intended.

He shook his arm gently, trying to force sensation back into it.

Janie gestured at it. "Do you need-"

"It's okay. I got it." He rested his arm on his thigh and dug at the muscle with his thumb.

Cielle curled her legs beneath herself on the couch. "Is it scary?"

"Being sick?"

She nodded. Her fists rose to her chin, elbows on her knees. She might have been six or ten. "What's it like?"

He could feel Janie, too, focused on him. The stillness was electric.

"It teaches you that no part of you is sacred," he said. "And that other people are."

Chapter 34.

When the garage door lifted, revealing the gray morning sky, Nate heard Janie's and Cielle's breathing accelerate. The world had become a different place, full of dark vows and hidden eyes. He eased Janie's car from the garage, the street drawing into view, but there seemed to be no one there, no dark Town Cars or faces in the bushes. On the freeway, blazing toward LAX, he could feel his heartbeat still surging.

After dropping off Janie and Cielle to pick up the Jeep, Nate drove north toward Wendy Moreno's house. Idling at a stoplight, he glanced across at a board shop, a few kids skating outside and sucking on cigarettes, gliding through another world where cool still mattered. The surf-rat vibe reminded him of the Marina, where he'd paid the ill-fated visit to Luis Millan. Just a few miles farther north.

He felt a faint charge, the precursor to a thought. Pulling over, he grabbed a map and a pen from the glove box and circled the locations of Wendy Moreno's house and Luis Millan's apartment. Then the Brentwood residence of Patrice McKenna. They were in an almost precise line running north-south.

What the h.e.l.l did that mean?

He tapped the pen against the tattered paper, considering, before folding the map and shoving it into his pocket. Three targets, all in a row. How could that possibly be relevant? Why would Shevchenko want to kill three strangers whose addresses aligned?

He pondered this question the rest of the way to Wendy Moreno's house. Though residential, her street was animated with a constant stream of through traffic. Keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, he drove around the block a few times. No one following.

On the porch, as he waited for an answer to the doorbell's ring, more questions hectored him. What if Moreno was out of town? What if Shevchenko's men had somehow identified her already? What if she hadn't answered last night because her corpse had been lying behind the front door, draining into the carpet?

He hardly had time to weigh these considerations when a Honda Civic pulled into the driveway and a bespectacled woman in her thirties climbed out and started for him. High heels looped around one finger, she tugged at an evening dress to straighten it. Her hair was a tangle. Her night out had not been a planned one.

"Wendy Moreno?"

"That's me."

"Can I talk to you a minute? I got your name through someone else, and I had a few questions."

"World of Warcraft?" She suddenly looked embarra.s.sed. "Oh, s.h.i.+t, I thought you were a salesman. Come in. Gimme a minute. I just need to ... you know."

He entered the small house and sat on the couch, listening to her bang about up the brief hall, closet doors opening, water running. Finally she came back out, more put together, and offered him something to drink. Sipping ice water, he ran through the initial questions. She'd never heard of Luis Millan, Patrice McKenna, or Pavlo Shevchenko.

"Wait a minute," she said. "You lost me. I thought you were from the crew I met at Blizzcon. Which realm are you playing?"

He held on to his next breath longer than necessary, contemplating the variety of ways the next moment, if mishandled, would likely combust. An airplane rumbled overhead, buying him another few precious seconds before he confessed, "I don't know you from World of Warcraft. I got your name off a list held by a very dangerous criminal. You did something to get on his radar."

She guffawed, hooked a strand of hair back over one ear. "You're kidding, right? Did Scytharian put you up to this?"

"No. This is real."

A back-and-forth ensued, different versions of the same questions and answers, until finally Wendy Moreno looked convinced. "What the h.e.l.l," she said. "Do the cops know about this?"

"Not yet. Only I do. I wanted to warn you so you can get out of town, maybe, until you or I can find out what this is about."

"It should be easy to stay somewhere. I have friends all over the place from WoW. But still. I mean, Christ."

"You're sure you can't think of anything? Any reason you might have crossed-"

"A Ukrainian mafia guy? Uh, I think I'd've noticed. Unless maybe he's a p.i.s.sed-off gamer?"

"Doesn't seem the type."

Her breaths grew shallow, and then all at once she was crying in short, suffocating spurts. After a few moments, she took a deep, shaky breath and pulled herself back from the edge. "G.o.d," she said. "Your life can just turn on a dime, can't it? Everything's normal, and then..."

"Wham," Nate said.

"Yeah. Wham's right." She pulled off her gla.s.ses, wiped the lenses.

His work instincts kicked in, that urge to comfort, to solve. "Is there someone you want to call to help map out the next steps?"

But her mood, it seemed, was more existential. "Fate's a b.i.t.c.h, huh? You ever think about it?"