FINDING KATARINA M. Read online

  “Enough!” Bohdan said sharply. “Be quiet, Tanya.” He tossed back the few last drops in his glass, and smacked it down on the wood.

  Tanya picked sullenly at her sweater.

  The mood in the room had completely changed.

  I confessed to being exhausted. Long trip, my worries about Misha, and so on. Thanking them for their hospitality, I said I hoped I could return the favor someday. Tanya showed me silently to the door.

  “Maybe we’ll visit you in Washington, D.C.,” she whispered, without much hope, and I said that would be nice.

  The hallway seemed unduly long and shadowy. In the stairwell, I kept one palm on the wall, planted my feet carefully on the steps. It was a challenge to find the right door.

  Ilmira answered my knock, the TV screen glowing in the living room. She surveyed my disheveled state with a dour frown. “See? It was the same with Misha. They plied him with alcohol and sent him staggering back here late at night. He had to drag himself out of bed in the morning. That’s not right. A person who works with dangerous chemicals needs to be alert.”

  I blinked slowly at Ilmira’s features until they found their correct places. “You are perfectly correct!” I said with rudely mocking enthusiasm, while the words old biddy and virago echoed in my mind. Then, just as suddenly, sympathy overcame me, and I surprised her with a big warm hug. “You are so good, Ilmira! You worry about everyone!”

  She drew back, a little startled and a little pleased.

  “Spokoynoy nochi!” I called over my shoulder. And that motley crowd of mismatched syllables felt so warm and earthy on my tongue that I shouted them a few more times.

  In Misha’s bedroom with the door shut, I dropped like a sack of rocks onto the bed, murmuring, “Look at me, spying like a pro.” And passed into sleep with two seemingly unrelated words spinning around in my head: Dangerous. Chemicals.

  My head boomed with pain, a severe pounding directly behind my eyes, and my mouth was a sand-filled trough. Outside Misha’s bedroom window, the day was well-established, the sky an iridescent blue expanse with feathery filaments of cirrus. I shuffled to the kitchen. There was another pot of oatmeal on the stove; it gave me the dry heaves. I downed two glasses of water with aspirin I found in a cabinet and went back to bed.

  It was after noon when I woke again. A mounded white cloud with a gray underbelly was drifting across the sky. Rain, I hoped, to finally break the beastly heat. All was quiet inside and out, and I floated for a while in blessed semi-consciousness, until a troublesome thought began to nag. There was something I needed to do, something important. Then it came to me. I needed to pass on the intelligence I’d gathered to Meredith Viles. Reaching an arm over the side of the bed, I fumbled for the crappy spy phone in the pocket of the jeans lying crumpled on the floor, and texted the following:

  Ilmira N. says two men ID-ing as police (but really not) came to flat day M went missing and took his computer. Ilmira believes they were FSB.

  Local police said M not arrested.

  M wrote news article about radioactive gulag camp, sent to Novaya Gazeta. Editor rejected, calling topic “dangerous.”

  Camp recently discovered by herders, named Death Valley.

  M friends with neighbors who also work chem plant. Names: Bohdan Duboff, Tanya Karp. They plan to move to city in Georgia (Batumi) and traveled by car to Baku twice (?) on unidentified mission.

  What to do next? Please advise.

  I took a shower and was pulling a comb through my wet hair when the spy phone pinged. The message was from Meredith: Check for black Lada parked on street in one hour.

  I finished dressing, cooked up eggs and toast, forced myself to get them down. More aspirin, more water. Headache persisting. Most likely stress at this point, coming from the creeping foreboding that I was about to end up in water over my head.

  I was waiting at the kitchen window when the boxy little car appeared. I hustled down the stairs and across the quiet street, and piled in to the passenger side seat. Meredith was behind the wheel, wearing big dark glasses and an olive-green headscarf over her hair. She pulled away from the shoulder, and drove six or seven blocks into a congested neighborhood of apartment towers, then turned into a pot-holed gravel lot behind a tiny food market, and backed the Lada into a space by a rusted fence. Advertisements for the day’s specials—beets, chicken stock, yogurt—were plastered on the store’s rear entrance. The engine of the old car continued to ping and wheeze for a few moments after it was shut off. The hot sun blazed through the dirty windshield.

  Meredith took off her sunglasses and angled her body to face me in the cramped space. “Talk to me about Duboff and Karp.”

  I said I didn’t think they were involved in Misha’s disappearance. They’d seemed too natural, too surprised, when they learned how long he’d been missing. As the words were leaving my mouth, I heard their naivete.

  “They charmed you,” she said disapprovingly.

  “I wouldn’t call it charm.”

  “You lost your objectivity.”

  “I guess. I don’t know. They just don’t seem like bad people.”

  “Natalie. Listen to yourself.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Tell me exactly what they said about Baku and Batumi. Think back. Their exact words. Take your time.”

  I closed my eyes and recreated the scene in my mind, starting with the photograph of Bohdan and Tanya in their bathing suits at the edge of the shallow lacy waves, their Russian bodies pale as winter in a blazing Azerbaijan sun. I recited our entire conversation about Batumi, and then Baku, as precisely as I could.

  She sighed with satisfaction. “This is very good work, Natalie. You made some real progress. Now there’s something I need you to do.” She reached into her purse and pulled out some black molded plastic gizmos, three of them, each about the size of a book of matches. She held one up, pinched between two fingers.

  “This little device is fitted with a SIM card. If there’s a sound above forty-five decibels within ten meters, it calls our number, and we listen in. I’m giving you three: bedroom, kitchen, living room. All you have to do is conceal them.” When she tried to drop them into my hand, I folded my arms across my chest.

  “Are you crazy? I’m not trained for that.”

  “It has to be done. We need more information, and we need it as quickly as possible.”

  “Forget it, Meredith. There’s no way I can get into that apartment again. I’ve already used up my only excuse for dropping by.”

  She gave me a reproachful look. “Please. You’re better than that; I know you are. I’ve seen what you can do, what you’ve already done. Now take the devices.”

  I didn’t. Instead, I looked into her eyes. “What’s all this about? What was Misha doing here?”

  She sighed with undisguised impatience. “Nice try. But as I said before, this is a strictly need-to-know operation.”

  “Baku? Batumi? What’s the significance?” I said, undeterred.

  “We don’t have time for this. You want to get on with your life? Get away from all this stuff? Then plant the devices. That’s all. A simple job.”

  “Simple but not easy. Because even if I did manage to get inside their apartment a second time on some pretext, how am I supposed to conceal those things without them noticing? In the bedroom, no less.”

  “You’ll think of something.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “You will. You’re a problem solver. You like the hard challenges.”

  “Is that what it says in my psych profile?”

  “Yes, actually. That’s exactly what it says.”

  The air conditioning had shut off with the engine, and the sun was heating up the car’s interior. I felt claustrophobic, and cracked the window to get fresher air. Sounds streamed in on the draft: mostly passing cars and, somewhere, children shouting.

  After a while, I said, “So what you’re telling me, without telling me, is that Duboff and Karp are probably up to some
shady business in Azerbaijan. And what you’re flatly refusing to tell me is whether that business is in any way connected to what Misha’s objectives were. Which, if it were, would make Duboff and Karp prime suspects in Misha’s disappearance. And, therefore, rather dangerous.”

  “Correct,” she said, eyes trained on the back of the market.

  If I could have boarded a plane to the States right then and there, I probably would have. But Meredith, with her unerring psychological acumen, cut off that impulse before it had a chance to grow.

  “What’s your answer?” she asked sharply.

  “You’re asking me to risk my life. That’s a lot more than I bargained for. Too much, I’d say. Plant the devices yourself.”

  She cut in harshly, “Okay, Natalie. I didn’t want it to come to this, but you’ve given me no choice. You see, I could use what you did in medical school against you. But I really don’t want to do that. Especially when your name’s on the short list for chief of surgery.”

  I groaned without surprise. It was like hearing the second shoe hit the floor, the one I’d been waiting to drop. How wishfully stupid it had been to imagine that the secret episode from my past could have slipped by the CIA.

  “It was self-defense,” I said woodenly.

  “Come on. Own it. You rode an elevator down eight floors to the basement, then took it right back up to the classroom where you and the other student had been studying. You had plenty of time to leave the building and call the police. But you didn’t. Because that would have put you in the limelight, wouldn’t it? It would have given you a reputation as a troublemaker in a very competitive program in which you were determined to come out on top. So you decided to take justice into your own hands. Borrowed a sharp little scalpel from the cadaver room. Sheer luck that you didn’t slice his jugular.”

  “It wasn’t luck. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wanted to scar him close to the artery, and that’s what I did. So he’d have something to remember me by, and would always know what I could have done.”

  “Thank god for your steady, well-trained hand. But, of course, he didn’t see it that way. He filed charges. Attempted murder. He got cold feet when you started squawking rape, and you both slunk away before you could destroy each other’s brilliant careers.”

  “No, Meredith. That wasn’t what happened. He dropped the suit because he knew the truth—that he was the criminal, not me.”

  “You want to talk about truth? Okay. Here’s a question that’s been bugging me: was it rape or attempted rape?”

  I drew in a sharp breath. How did she know? Had there been something in the record, or was she just digging? I could lie, but I found that after all these years, I didn’t want to. I wanted to come clean. I looked her in the eye. “Attempted. I was stronger and faster than he thought I’d be. But, Meredith, if it had been some other woman—”

  “I get it, Natalie. You don’t have to justify your actions to me. I’m a woman in a man’s world, too. You wanted to teach the bastard a lesson—that the good old days of getting away with that shit were over. But you made a rookie mistake: you got too hot, let your emotions lead the way. You didn’t think it through. There were police photographs of the guy’s bloody neck and witnesses who could place you in the room with him. There was no way he wasn’t going to charge you for what you did. You had to lie—make a counter-charge of rape days after it was too late to be proven—to get him to back down.”

  My mouth was dry, and my heart was pounding. I knew where she was going, and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

  She said, “If that police report from twenty years ago were to leak…” the sadness and disappointment on her face looked completely sincere, “…it would ruin your career.”

  “This is blackmail, Meredith.”

  “I don’t want to resort to that.”

  “You just did.”

  “Yeah. I guess I did,” she said without regret. She squinted at me curiously. “Tell me. Do you think you could ever do something like that again?”

  “What? Intentionally hurt someone? Of course not.”

  “If you knew you could get away with it?”

  “What a terrible question to ask.”

  She nodded. “Yes, it is. A terrible question. Still, all things considered, is it fair to say that in certain rare circumstances, you’re capable of premeditated violence?”

  I snorted. “Apparently.”

  She didn’t reply, and I started to sweat profusely, my fists curling inward. My cortisol levels had rocketed—like a cornered animal’s, my eyes roamed in in every direction, scanning the environment for threats. The only threat I could find was the one sitting next to me in the tiny overheated car: Meredith Viles. But she was my lifeline, too.

  She said, “I promise this is the last request I’ll make. As soon as you plant the devices, you’re out of here.”

  “The same day. No delay. That’s the deal.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “Absolutely.”

  I opened my hand, and she pressed the three plastic wafers into my palm. They felt hard and cool against my skin. A flutter of panic coursed through my body. I was officially out of my league.

  THE BRUNT OF the hangover had drained away. In its place was acute anxiety about the job in front of me, and a large doubt about whether I’d measure up—a feeling not unlike pre-surgery jitters, which had never abated, not even after years of practice, because only an idiot wouldn’t be scared as shit about cutting into living flesh. Over the years I’d learned to handle the ferocious stress. You had to kick it to the ground, more than once if need be, and if you had to stomp on it to keep it from getting up again, you did. Because you were the boss—you had to remember that. You stayed calm and analytical, even if you were faking; you rehearsed each part of the procedure in your mind over and over until it was like reciting lines of dialog in a play you’d performed a hundred times before. Once inside the surgical theatre, you didn’t think beyond the moment. You focused on the first small step, then the next, and the next, losing yourself by degrees in the act, until about halfway through, with surreal clarity, you realized that you’d surrendered to something beautiful.

  It was two o’clock when I got back to the apartment. Ilmira was at work, as were most other tenants, it seemed, because the building was hushed and serene. The day had grown hotter; dense, humid air flowed into Misha’s bedroom through the open window as I laid down to rest for a little while. There was still a gentle, painful squeezing around the periphery of my brain, alcohol’s lingering goodbye hug, but it was bearable, and I drifted off, hoping that when I got up I’d have an answer, or the inkling of an answer, about how to go about doing what I had to do.

  Sometime later, I woke with a start to the blaring of a car horn. I plodded to the long casement window next to Misha’s desk and began to crank it closed, glancing out to see what the commotion was. The driver of a small sedan was gesturing rudely to a woman who had dropped a torn bag of garbage in the parking lot and was walking away from it. The woman paid him no mind, and after a few more blasts of his horn, he got out of the car and picked up the messy bag himself, tossing it atop an overflowing dumpster, where it did not stay, but rolled down to the ground, bursting along the way.

  There was a balcony below the window I hadn’t noticed before, similar to the ones overlooking the street. Balcony was a generous term to describe the odd structure: it was more like a narrow fire escape, about five feet long and three feet wide, without the retractable stairs. Floor and sides consisted of thinly spaced iron bars capped by a low rail.

  On a whim, I cranked the long thin window as wide as it would go, and squeezed out gingerly onto the iron bars. They held my weight easily. My eyes fell on the matching balcony below, where a stretched clothesline was draped with drying dish cloths and towels. It occurred to me that at least part of Bohdan and Tanya’s flat must lie directly under Misha and Ilmira’s. Given the different layouts of the two apartments and the fact that the front doors we
re at different ends of the corridor, that hadn’t been clear to me before.

  The small parking lot, which had been nearly empty when I lay down to rest, was now half full. Residents were returning home from work. As another car entered the lot, I clambered back through the window, not wanting to be seen.

  My personal phone pinged. A message from Toyla:

  I talked to a helicopter pilot who remembers taking a guy to Death Valley a couple of months ago. He didn’t remember the guy’s name. Said he was young, new in town, worked at the chemical plant. Stayed at the camp for a couple of hours. Didn’t say why. Hope that helps.

  I wrote back, thanking him for the info. I copied his message into the spy phone and sent it to Meredith, following that text with one of my own:

  Confirmation that Misha went to Death Valley. Obviously found something there editor thought was “dangerous.” Someone should check it out.

  At least that person wouldn’t be me, I thought gratefully. I’d be leaving Mirny as soon as I got these devices off my hands.

  A few minutes later, Meredith replied:

  We’re on it. You stay focussed on Duboff and Karp.

  “Who is it?” came Tanya’s lilt through the closed door. The deadbolts slid open one by one, and the door swung wide. Her face fell when she saw me standing in the hallway. “Oh, it’s you.”

  I held out a bunch of vividly dyed chrysanthemums that I’d bought from a street vendor. “I wanted to apologize for last night. I drank way too much. I actually don’t remember what happened after about ten o’clock. Hope I wasn’t rude.”

  She cracked a hesitant smile. “Oh, no. You were fine. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Whew. I’m glad to hear that. Anyway, the strangest thing happened. I ran across something in Misha’s room that might be a clue to where he is. Ilmira couldn’t tell me anything about it—I wonder if you could. Can I come in?”