“Looking for someone.”
“For cocaine. Heroin. Now you come here, spread your poison.”
“Sir. May I ask you your name?”
The man pulled his wallet, flipped it open to show his police identification. “Boris Nemkov.”
Despite the hole he was in, Wells couldn’t help but remember a line from the second season of The Wire: Why always Boris?
“You’re a detective.”
“I am head of narcotics police for Volgograd oblast.”
A drug cop. An honest one, too, if Wells could trust the cheap suit.
“Don’t you think it’s odd I have two working U.S. passports?”
“Plenty of smugglers have extra passports.”
“The dog in my room, it found nothing.”
“So far.”
“There’s nothing to find.”
“Maybe you see us coming, you hide it. In the cart of the maids. The trash. I promise, we find it. Then—” Nemkov sliced his hand across his neck and walked out of the room.
Five minutes later, he was back. Scowling. “The longer it takes, the madder I become.”
“I swear on my son’s life. No drugs.”
“All this tells me is that your son means nothing to you.”
Wells felt his temper rise. “I landed in Volgograd yesterday, I came to this hotel, Buvchenko’s men picked me up. I stayed overnight, they dropped me back here. Then you came. Where would I have found these drugs?”
“Don’t talk to me about Buvchenko.” Boris went to the door. He pulled it open, stopped, looked at Wells. “The next time I come back, I have it. Then we take you in. But first I give my men ten minutes alone with you, punishment for wasting my time.” Boris murmured in Russian. The cops laughed. “Tell me now.”
“Nothing to tell.”
Boris shook his head with what seemed to be genuine disappointment and walked out.
Wells thought of Salome, how very wrong he had been about her. Had he tried to convince himself she saw him as anything but an obstacle to her plans? Was he so lonely? So desperate for connection? Maybe she respected him vaguely for his courage, the way the Germans and Russians who had once fought here had respected each other. But even so, they had killed each other without pity or remorse.
An hour passed. Another lost hour, another hour closer to war.
Finally, the door swung open. Nemkov stalked in, tugged a cheap wheeled suitcase, hard-sided gray plastic. Wells stared at it, wondering if it was filled with heroin. He didn’t know if Nemkov was crazy enough to plant evidence on an American he’d never met. Maybe. Any Russian policeman who didn’t take bribes had to be crazy.
“That’s not mine.”
“It is.”
Wells shook his head. Nemkov dropped the suitcase at Wells’s feet. He stood over Wells, tugged at Wells’s left ear like an angry nineteenth-century schoolmaster.
“We found it.”
Wells tried to shake his head, but Nemkov held him fast. Wells couldn’t help feeling the ear-tugging was childish for both sides. Like the detective had decided he was unworthy of a proper beating.
Nemkov said something in Russian. One of the cops went to his knees. Snapped open the clasps and opened the suitcase.
Revealing an empty compartment. Wells looked down at the molded plastic, wondering what he could be missing.
“Where is it?”
It’s nowhere and everywhere. It went to the dick. H. E. Roin, born Helmand Province, Afghanistan, died Volgograd, Russia. Poppies to ashes and dust to dust. Wells’s concussion talking. “Where is what?”
Nemkov pulled harder, twisting Wells sideways. Wells feared the detective might take his ear off. “This whole hotel. My men, they want me to make the evidence. You understand what I mean?”
“Plant it.”
“Prison for you forever. But I don’t do that.”
Nemkov stepped away from Wells, reached behind his back, for a 9-millimeter. First Buvchenko, then Salome’s guard, now this cop. For the third time in eighteen hours, Wells stared at a pistol’s unblinking eye. Maybe it’s time to think about your life choices, son. But Nemkov had to be bluffing. A man who wouldn’t plant evidence wouldn’t shoot a handcuffed prisoner.
Unless his fury ran away with him.
Nemkov stepped around the bed, knelt behind Wells. Wells felt the pistol kiss his neck, the tip of the barrel oddly warm.
“Last time. Where is it?”
This interrogation had gone as far it could. Nemkov would pull the trigger. Or he wouldn’t. For the first time in all his years, Wells understood the words death wish. He was well and truly tired of being so close, of feeling the Reaper creep past, smirking and winking at him. Tired, too, of all the killing he’d done over the years to survive. Do it, then. Let me rest.
But as quickly as the words came to him, he pushed them away, forced the shameful weakness from his mind. And of course Nemkov didn’t kill him. He grabbed Wells’s cuffed arms and pulled him off the bed.
“This suitcase, it’s yours. I give it to you to replace the bag they cut. You see it’s empty, no trick. I give you back your money.” Nemkov held up the passports. “Even these.”
“Thank you.”
“Now it’s time for you to go. In one hour, there’s a plane to Domodedovo.” The largest of the three airports that served Moscow. “What you do after that is up to you, but I advise you, leave Russia as soon as possible.”
An excellent idea.
Nemkov drove Wells to the airport himself, in silence. As they stopped at the terminal, Wells tried to open his door, found it locked. Nemkov reached over, squeezed his wrist.
“Tell me the truth, why you were here?”
“I swear it wasn’t drugs.”
“But the truth.” Nemkov shook his head.
Somewhere in his concussion-scrambled mind, Wells wondered if Nemkov wanted to help. And why not ask? “Detective—”
“Colonel.”
“Colonel. I’m sorry. The hotel has surveillance cameras, yes?”
“Of course.”
“If your men can find a shot of a man and a woman leaving together a few minutes before you arrived—”
“A few?”
“Five or less. Send me that picture, I promise I’ll tell you the whole story when it’s over. Whatever happens.”
“You promise?”
“And what I did with the drugs they tried to plant on me. You know, the ones you and your dog and the whole 23rd Precinct couldn’t find.” The concussion talking for sure. For a moment, Wells feared he had said too much, that Nemkov would drive him back to the hotel and start the beating anew. Nemkov seemed to be trying to decide, too. But finally he nodded.
“And if I find them, what? You want me to arrest them? Use the police for your work?”
“They’re probably already gone from Russia. I just want you to email me the picture.” Wells gave one of his new email addresses. Having an image of her to show other people might make the trip worthwhile.
“If I decide to help you, it’s not for pay, you understand. It’s for—” Nemkov opened his door and spat onto the pavement.
As soon as the cop had pulled away, Wells emptied his new suitcase and ran his hands over the plastic, feeling for compartments where Nemkov might have hidden drugs or weapons. But he didn’t expect to find anything, and he didn’t. The suitcase was what it seemed, a cheap Samsonite knockoff, its walls too thin for any secret panels.
After security, he found an Internet kiosk, booked himself a business-class seat on a 5:40 p.m. Lufthansa flight, Domodedovo to Frankfurt. Then he emailed Shafer and Duto: B no help. LH 1447. Talk from Germany. He needed Shafer to know where to look for him in case he vanished again. Salome would hear soon enough that Wells had beaten her trap. When she did, she would have Buvchenko call his friends at the FSB. How fast the FSB sounded an alarm for Wells would depend on the story Buvchenko told. But Wells would be at risk until the moment that Lufthansa plane left Russian airspace.