Twenty-nine
The traditional animosity between the respective policing agencies had only minimally lessened since the transfer of the renamed KGB to the control of the Interior Ministry, which also governed the Militia, but Natalia guessed from the tone of his voice that the man to whom she spoke would have travelled out to the Yasenevo suburb if she had asked. She didn’t. The policeman formally introduced himself as Mikhail Stepanovich Kapitsa, a senior investigator in the organized crime division, in the thick, frequently coughing voice of a heavy smoker: twice their telephone conversation was interrupted by the sound of a match scraping into life. The man agreed they could meet at once: it was better to get everything sorted out as soon as possible, didn’t she think?
Natalia hesitated at the moment of departure, aware before knowing the circumstances she could be entering a situation of enormous personal danger, danger far greater than she had so far faced from Fyodor Tudin.
Decisively, still in her own office, she ordered her official, chauffeur-driven Zil. In addition, as she went through the outer secretariat she made a point of recording a visit to Petrovka. The chauffeur was a pool driver with a Georgian accent and a painful-looking boil on a thick neck. Natalia remembered Tudin was Georgian. The man, hand constantly on his horn, insisted on bulldozing down the central road lanes which in the past had been reserved for government vehicles. Anxious to get to Petrovka, she didn’t object.
A uniformed officer escorted her to the second floor. Kapitsa’s office was fugged with the anticipated smoke, an ashtray on a cluttered desk overflowing, a half-burned cigarette smouldering in it. Kapitsa picked it up as he sat. His dark blue suit shone with wear and there was a snow-line of ash over the front. The left lapel had a burn hole that looked ancient, the cloth frayed around its edges.
‘I appreciate your contacting me,’ embarked Natalia cautiously.
The man smiled. His teeth were yellowed by nicotine. ‘We’re closer together now as colleagues than we ever were. But it’s not going to be easy. To be honest, at the moment I can’t think of a way.’
A man of the past, accustomed to deals and arrangements, guessed Natalia. ‘What’s happened?’
Kapitsa nodded, lighting another cigarette from the butt of its predecessor: as an afterthought, he offered the packet to Natalia. She shook her head. Kapitsa said: ‘Organized crime has become a serious problem in Moscow. And greatly increased since the changes that were supposed to provide things that haven’t been available. And still aren’t now, unless you go to a Mafia outlet…’ He shrugged, apologizing in advance. ‘The order has been given, for a major crackdown…’ Another shrug. ‘Market forces can’t fill the shops and we can’t fill the work rosters with enough men to do the job we’re told to do. So the Mafia go on winning: we haven’t – and won’t – get it under control.’
Natalia was curious at the generality. It would be a mistake to hurry him.
‘We do the best we can, of course: we’ve got to. We’re publicly accountable now, not like before.’
Natalia detected the nostalgia: definitely someone immersed in the past and mourning it.
‘Occasionally we get lucky. Like this time. It’s one of the known Mafia families, the Lubertsy. They’re young. Violent. Trade in a lot of drugs brought up from the southern republics: across the Polish border from Italy, too. There were two kilos of heroin and ten kilos of marijuana, all from the south. There was a lot of medicines, as welclass="underline" to be sold to people who know what they want but can’t get it through hospitals or from their doctors who prescribe it. We’re still carrying out tests but we think the medicines have been adulterated, to stretch the size and value of the shipment…’ The man paused, to light another cigarette. ‘… Adulterated medical drugs kill sometimes, instead of saving lives. Or maim. Certainly aren’t effective, in doing what they’re supposed to do…’
Natalia couldn’t contain herself any longer. ‘What’s Eduard’s part in all of this?’
‘Organizer,’ said the man, bluntly. ‘He hasn’t admitted it, but there’s no doubt he was in charge. It was a big load, in total. Four lorries. We don’t know where they originated: no one will say. It was on the Serpukhov road.’
‘Only narcotics and medicines?’
Kapitsa shook his head. ‘Quite a lot of domestic electrical stuff, mostly German. That will have definitely come through Poland. Clothing, too. Jeans, naturally.’
‘How did the interception happen?’ This wasn’t just potentially dangerous; it could be catastrophic.
‘Luck, like I said. We chose the Serpukhov direction because we heard drug shipments had come by that route before. Put up a road-block five nights ago and they drove straight into it.’ There was a quick, satisfied smile. ‘There were only eight of us: should have been double that at least if we’d known what we were going into. There were twelve of them.’
‘They fought? Resisted?’ Natalia tried to push back the sensation of numbness threatening to engulf her, clouding her reason.
Kapitsa’s smile remained. He shook his head. ‘They weren’t even worried. I was there, in charge. They laughed at me: asked what arrangements were necessary to solve what they called “a little problem”.’
‘ They asked?’ pressed Natalia.
The man gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Eduard asked.’
‘ Were there weapons?’
‘Enough for a short war. Handguns. Small-arms. A nine-millimetre machine-gun, in the rear vehicle.’ The smile now was sad. ‘There’s enough spare military weaponry to put a gun in every home in Russia. They’re probably there already. But you know what the irony was: they weren’t carrying the guns to oppose the police! They think they can bribe their way out of that sort of difficulty. The guns were to fight any interception by rival gangs.’
Natalia shook her head, disbelievingly. But she couldn’t be overwhelmed: sit there numbed. She had to think: think beyond what she was being told about her own son in this stinking office in this stinking police station. She had to think of Sasha.
‘So you can see my problem?’ invited Kapitsa, hopefully.
Natalia regarded the man with renewed caution, alert for a pitfall. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’
The investigator frowned, disappointed. ‘This is an incredible opportunity for us to show we’re doing our job. One we never thought we’d get…’ The man hesitated, both for another cigarette and for Natalia to respond. When she didn’t he said: ‘But one of the people we have in custody – the organizer, it seems – is your son.’
‘Yes,’ Natalia agreed, slowly. She had to assume Fyodor Tudin would find out: protect herself against how the man might try to use the information.
Kapitsa spread his hands towards her. ‘There must be a way, somehow, to avoid the difficulty.’
Natalia’s first thought was that Kapitsa was seeking a bribe, although not one offered as openly as it had been on the Serpukhov road. Cautiously she asked: ‘What did Eduard say, when you wouldn’t take money?’
Kapitsa didn’t reply at once, recalling in detail. ‘He seemed to think it was the beginning of negotiation at first. Kept smiling, very friendly. That gave us the time to collect the guns. Then he got angry. Not frightened. Angry. Asked me if I had any idea what I was doing, and when I said I did he told me who you were. Said it was a waste of time to make a seizure so why didn’t I save myself a lot of unnecessary trouble, take the road-block down and that would be the end of it. That if I wanted the bribe, I could still have it.’ Kapitsa shook his head. ‘He was carrying $5,000, in notes. Called it his passage money, in case they got stopped. He told me to help myself.’
Definitely not asking her for money, Natalia decided. ‘Which you refused again? Arrested him?’
‘The only reaction to that – from them all, not just Eduard – was shock. Two tried to hit out, but it wasn’t anything like a fight. The others were actually angry at him: they thought he had made a mess of the bribe negotiations. We’ve had to put him in a separate cell.’