"Toby," Spitz said, "I want you to meet Colonel Harry Driver."
Driver grunted and forced an uneven smile. "You must be Bogner."
The two men shook hands. Driver took a drag on his cigar and Bogner took measure of the man he had been briefed about as being instrumental in the early testing of the F-117 at the Tonopah Test Range. Prominent in the array of service ribbons were ones that indicated Driver had seen action in Vietnam and Desert Storm.
Spitz, oblivious to the brief power encounter, led the two men toward Packer's table.
Coffee shop heads turned; Colchin's righthand man with the hawk nose and lack of hair was easily recognizable. It was said that of all of Colchin's aides, Spitz enjoyed the least anonymity.
As they approached, Packer and Miller stood up and headed for the back of the room. The five men walked through a door, down a long hall to a door marked Exit, left the building, and crawled into a Winnebago RV with Minnesota license plates.
By the time the big RV had inched its way into Washington's morning rush-hour traffic, Spitz had pulled down a viewing screen and turned on an overhead projector. "All right, gentlemen," he began, "let's get down to business."
Chapter Five
"This is Inspector Konstantin Nijinsky," the woman said. She made a pronouncement out of it, as though he were a visiting dignitary instead of a homicide officer.
Nijinsky nodded to the two men and inclined his head in the direction of the door. "You are the ones who found the body?"
Both men nodded. The taller of the two appeared to be on the verge of volunteering more, but thought better of it and remained silent. Nijinsky recognized that the ways of the Party died hard.
He opened the door, looked around the room at the array of books, overturned furniture, papers, and clothing before he glanced at the body. The victim's facial features had been obliterated, beaten into an unrecognizable mask. Even after all of the times he had seen it he still had difficulty with something like this. Nijinsky swallowed hard and closed the door again.
"I have a few questions," he said. "May I sit down?"
The woman gestured toward a table, and cleared away some papers.
Nijinsky took out his notebook, opened it, and fished around in his pocket for the chromeplated ballpoint pen he had purchased at the market. It had the word Chrysler written on the barrel. "What time did you discover the body?" he asked,
The two men glanced at each other again. Nijinsky could tell that they were nervous. Finally, the taller of the two said, "Shortly after three o'clock or so…" He appeared to be uncertain about the time. Nijinsky wondered if the man would still be so uncertain if the time of death had already been established.
"May I ask what were you doing here?"
"Wewe had business," the tall one faltered.
"What kind of business?"
"Every Monday we go to the market."
"And what do you do at the market?"
Nijinsky waited while the taller of the two lit a cigarette, puffed hurriedly, and avoided looking at him. He had already taken note of the two men's clothing. Both were dressed in a way that betrayed their profession. Their clothing was soiledstained with the kind of grease and grime he would have expected to find on men who toiled with their hands in one of Moscow's many back-alley, black-market automotive shops.
"We… obtain parts," the shorter one finally answered. Then he waited to see if Nijinsky reacted. When he didn't, the man continued. "Mikolai had contacts. We paid him a percentage…"
"Mikolai?" Nijinsky questioned.
"Mikolai Korsun."
Nijinsky nodded and began to write. He recorded their names, where they could be contacted, and numerous other facts before he dismissed them. The two men appeared to be relieved. When they were gone, Nijinsky turned to the woman.
"How long have you known this man Korsun?" he asked.
When she seemed not to understand him, he rephrased the question. "How long has he been a renter?"
She was an old woman, heavy through the trunk, wearing a faded print dress, thick stockings, and a sweater. The sweater was worn and frayed. She stood with her arms folded to ward off the chill in the unheated hallway. "Two years," she said emphatically. "He was a good tenant. He paid his rent on time. Not many do that."
As he had with the two men, Nijinsky took her name and telephone number, made a few notes, then excused her. He watched her disappear down the dimly lit stairway, and when she crossed over to the second-floor landing, he went back into the room.
With a cold Moscow rain pelting the windows, he picked up an overturned lamp, set it on a table, and turned it on. Then he began systematically sifting through the debris. He found two books that would have been large enough, but both were intact. They had not been hollowed out. The closet, although obviously made to look as if it had been ransacked, revealed that it was at best a halfhearted effortperhaps even an afterthought.
Under the bed, he located several notebooks that contained jottings, little more than musings. On the surface, at least, they revealed nothing. Next to them was an inexpensive Kiriosk computer. Using a handkerchief, he opened the housing and noted that the boards had been removed. Even though they had been clumsy, they had been thorough.
Finally Nijinsky turned his attention to the body. Mikolai Korsun had been a man of considerable robustness. Now he merely looked fat. For the most part, he was bald with tufts of gray wiry hair around the ears. His face had been obliterated, another ex-KGB practice. Either old ways died hard… or someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make it look as though they had.
Korsun's throat had been laid open from ear to ear and the body had been draped over the edge of the bed, facedown.
Peasants.
Poachers.
The blood was drained from a deer in the same fashion. Did they think that a homicide officer was a fool? Mikolai Korsun had been dead long before the scene had been staged.
When he was convinced that he had not overlooked anything of importance, Konstantin Nijinsky sat down on the edge of the bed, picked up the telephone, and dialed the number.
"Da," a voice responded.
"Is he there?"
There was a pause before he heard the phone being placed on what he knew was the leatherbound notebook the secretary kept beside the phone. While he waited, he turned to watch the rain trace patterns in the grime-coated window. It was cold enough, he realized, for the rain to soon freeze. He hoped he would be home before that occurred.
Finally there was a voice on the other end. It was flat, raspy, and impersonal.
''Da," the voice said.
Nijinsky weighed his words. He knew the conversation was being taped. "It is not here," he said.
After a moment of hesitation, the voice said, "Then we must assume that our comrade Korsun disposed of it. And we must also assume that he would have disposed of it only after obtaining the maximum return on his investment. Would you not agree?"
Nijinksy agreed.
"We must likewise assume that the Americans know," the voice continued, "that Air Major Borisov and the Su-39 are missing."
Nijinsky was nodding, even though he knew the gesture was going unrecorded.
"Isotov is a fool," the voice proceeded. Then it trailed off into a protracted silence.
Nijinksy waited before he said, "This will be handled as a routine homicide. I will say that the motive was probably robbery." He looked around the room, wondering if the motive was believable. Mikolai Korsun's belongings were sparse. A thief who robbed Mikolai Korsun would receive little in return for his efforts.
"You will say nothing of the obvious KGB tactics?"