“What exactly is Suvorov doing now?”
Another shrug: “I don’t know. Nobody does. I am told he lives well, but the source of his income, no one knows.”
“Cocaine?” the cop asked.
“It is possible, but I do not know.” The one good thing about Klusov was that he didn’t invent things. He told the (relatively) unvarnished truth … most of the time, the militia lieutenant told himself.
Provalov’s mind was already spinning. Okay, a former KGB officer had hired two former Spetsnaz soldiers to eliminate another former KGB officer who’d specialized in running girls. Had this Suvorov chap approached Avseyenko for cooperation in a drug venture? Like most Moscow cops, he’d never grown to like the KGB. They’d been arrogant bullies most of the time, too besotted with their power to perform proper investigations, except against foreigners, for whom the niceties of civilized behavior were necessary, lest foreign nations treat Soviet citizens-worse, Soviet diplomats-the same way.
But so many KGB officers had been let go by their parent service, and few of them had drifted into menial labor. No, they had training in conspiracy, and many had done foreign travel, and there met all manner of people, most of whom, Provalov was sure, could be persuaded to undertake illegal operations for the right inducement, which invariably meant money. For money, people would do anything, a fact known by every police officer in every country in the world.
Suvorov. Must track that name down, the militia lieutenant told himself as he took a casual sip of his vodka. Examine his background, determine his expertise, and get a photo. Suvorov, Klementi Ivanovich.
“Anything else?” the lieutenant asked.
Klusov shook his head. “That is all I have uncovered.”
“Well, not too bad. Get back to work, and call me when you discover more.”
“Yes, Comrade Lieutenant.” The informant stood up to leave. He left the bill with the cop, who’d pay it without much in the way of annoyance. Oleg Gregoriyevich Provalov had spent enough time in police work to understand that he might just have discovered something important. Of course, you couldn’t tell at this stage, not until you ran it down, every single option and blind alley, which could take rather some time … but if it turned out to be something important, then it was worth it. And if not, it was just another blind alley, of which there were many in police work.
Provalov reflected on the fact that he hadn’t asked his informant exactly who had given him this new flood of information. He hadn’t forgotten, but perhaps had allowed himself to be a little gulled by the descriptions of the alleged former Spetsnaz soldiers who’d made the murder. He had their descriptions in his mind, and then removed his pad to write them down. Blond and red-haired, experience in Afghanistan, both living in St. Petersburg, flew back just before noon on the day Avseyenko was murdered. So, he would check for the flight number and run the names on the manifest through the new computers Aeroflot used to tie into the global ticketing system, then cross-check it against his own computer with its index of known and suspected criminals, and also with the army’s records. If he got a hit, he’d have a man talk to the cabin crew of that Moscow-St. Petersburg flight to see if anyone remembered one or both of them. Then he’d have the St. Petersburg militia do a discreet check of these people, their addresses, criminal records if any, a normal and thorough background check, leading, possibly, to an interview. He might not conduct it himself, but he’d be there to observe, to get a feel for the suspects, because there was no substitute for that, for looking in their eyes, seeing how they talked, how they sat, if they fidgeted or not, if the eyes held those of the questioner, or traveled about the room. Did they smoke then, and if so, rapidly and nervously or slowly and contemptuously … or just curiously, as would be the case if they were innocent of this charge, if not, perhaps, of another.
The militia lieutenant paid the bar bill and headed outside.
“You need to pick a better place for your meets, Oleg,” a familiar voice suggested from behind. Provalov turned to see the face.
“It is a big city, Mishka, with many drinking places, and most of them are poorly lit.”
“And I found yours, Oleg Gregoriyevich,” Reilly reminded him. “So, what have you learned?”
Provalov summarized what he’d found out this evening.
“Two shooters from Spetsnaz? I suppose that makes some sense. What would that cost?”
“It would not be inexpensive. As a guess … oh, five thousand euros or so,” the lieutenant speculated as they walked up the street.
“And who would have that much money to throw around?”
“A Muscovite criminal … Mishka, as you well know, there are hundreds who could afford it, and Rasputin wasn’t the most popular of men … and I have a new name, Suvorov, Klementi Ivan’ch.”
“Who is he?”
“I do not know. It is a new name for me, but Klusov acted as though I ought to have known it well. Strange that I do not,” Provalov thought aloud.
“It happens. I’ve had wise guys turn up from nowhere, too. So, check him out?”
“Yes, I will run the name. Evidently he, too, is former KGB.”
“There are a lot of them around,” Reilly agreed, steering his friend into a new hotel’s bar.
“What will you do when CIA is broken up?” Provalov asked.
“Laugh,” the FBI agent promised.
The city of St. Petersburg was known to some as the Venice of the North for the rivers and canals that cut through it, though the climate, especially in winter, could hardly have been more different. And it was in one of those rivers that the next clue appeared.
A citizen had spotted it on his way to work in the morning, and, seeing a militiaman at the next corner, he’d walked that way and pointed, and the policeman had walked back, and looked over the iron railing at the space designated by the passing citizen.
It wasn’t much to see, but it only took a second for the cop to know what it was and what it would mean. Not garbage, not a dead animal, but the top of a human head, with blond or light brown hair. A suicide or a murder, something for the local cops to investigate. The militiaman walked to the nearest phone to make his call to headquarters, and in thirty minutes a car showed up, followed in short order by a black van. By this time, the militiaman on his beat had smoked two cigarettes in the crisp morning air, occasionally looking down into the water to make sure that the object was still there. The arriving men were detectives from the city’s homicide bureau. The van that had followed them had a pair of people called technicians, though they had really been trained in the city’s public-works department, which meant water-and-sewer workers, though they were paid by the local militia. These two men took a look over the rail, which was enough to tell them that recovering the body would be physically difficult but routine. A ladder was set up, and the junior man, dressed in waterproof coveralls and heavy rubber gauntlets, climbed down and grabbed the submerged collar, while his partner observed and shot a few frames from his cheap camera and the three policemen on the scene observed and smoked from a few feet away. That’s when the first surprise happened.
The routine was to put a flexible collar on the body under the arms, like that used by a rescue helicopter, so that the body could be winched up. But when he worked to get the collar under the body, one of the arms wouldn’t move at all, and the worker struggled for several unpleasant minutes, working to get the stiff dead arm upward … and eventually found that it was handcuffed to another arm.
That revelation caused both detectives to toss their cigarettes into the water. It was probably not a suicide, since that form of death was generally not a team sport. The sewer rat-that was how they thought of their almost-police comrades-took another ten minutes before getting the hoist collar in place, then came up the ladder and started cranking the winch.