Nate followed Charles’s gaze to the sky into which the plane had vanished, the vapor trail already starting to dissipate. Charles’s ill-timed story bounced around in his head, two words sticking: Execute aggressively. That sounded about right.
He turned and walked briskly away from the gate, passing a continuous loop of storefronts-newsstand, Starbucks, McDonald’s. Just before the escalator to baggage claim, he spotted what he was searching for-a white courtesy phone. Snatching it up and turning his face to the wall, he waited for the operator. When the pleasant voice came on, he said, “I’m calling about American Airlines Flight Four. There’s a bomb on board, planted by the Ukrainian man in the tenth row. If you don’t turn the plane around, it’ll detonate.”
He set down the receiver and, keeping his face lowered, strode the six steps to the escalator. As he descended, he dialed Janie on his cell phone, waiting for voice mail. “Janie, listen to me. I know you can’t turn your phone on till you’re taxiing in, but Yuri’s on your flight, in the row behind you. Don’t look back. Don’t be obvious. But watch yourself. Delete this message now. There’ll be security all over when you land. Get yourself and Cielle to them, and I’ll figure something out by then. Okay. I-”
The question of how to sign off caught him by surprise. He was still searching for words when the escalator sank into the floor and he stepped out into the chaos of the baggage-claim area.
At once the phone was snatched from his grasp, an arm slid around his waist, and a point dug into the side of his lower back, pressing so hard it seemed his skin would pop at any quick move.
He grunted and jerked away, making out only the bill of a baseball cap just behind his shoulder. The arm tightened across his waist so that he and the small man moved as a piece, their bodies in lockstep. Twisting, he craned for a look beneath the cap.
Misha’s boyish face peered up, dense bangs shoved down nearly to his eyes. “Keep walking or I will push the screwdriver straight through your kidney.”
The pressure intensified, sending flames across the band of Nate’s lower back and down the back of his thigh. “Okay,” he grunted. “Okay. Where are we going?”
“To Pavlo.”
“How do I know he won’t just kill me?”
“Because you’re still breathing.”
They hadn’t stopped moving, a brisk pace across the floor. People clustered all around, and yet no one paid them any mind. The automatic doors rolled open, the dry midday heat enveloping them. As they stepped to the curb, a white van pulled up, the side door rolling back with a screech. Valerik waited on a bench seat, gun resting flat against his thigh, the sleek stub of his ponytail so solid it looked carved from wood. The point of the screwdriver prodded Nate up and in, and a moment later Misha hopped up front with Dima.
Valerik pressed the barrel of the pistol to the top of Nate’s knee, and they coasted out into the flow of traffic, Dima returning the traffic cop’s polite nod as they passed.
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, passing hoary 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 passed 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 sturdy 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 hell 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 shirt 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.”