FINDING KATARINA M. Page 9

  “Does that mean you know where she is?”

  “She’s safely with your grandmother, Katarina Melnikova, in the village she grew up in. It’s quite remote, not listed on any map. It would be impossible for you to find it on your own.”

  “But if I cooperate, you’ll tell me where it is.”

  “I’ll do more than that. I’ll help you get there and bring you out. You’ll be well taken care of.”

  “Sounds like a bribe, Meredith.”

  “Think of it as a win-win.” She gave me a level, businesslike look. “Do you agree to maintain complete secrecy?”

  I hesitated. The quid pro quo was bothersome, but I wanted to help solve Saldana’s murder; I’d wanted that since the beginning. And I desperately wanted to meet my relatives, if only for Vera’s sake. Also, though I’d never thought of myself as much of a patriot, I couldn’t say no to serving my country. But perhaps the most persuasive factor was that if I didn’t find out what all this was about, I’d never stop wondering.

  Meredith interrupted my thoughts. “I need you to give me a verbal yes, Natalie, recognizing that your word is your oath.”

  “Yes,” I said clearly.

  I reached for the glass of vodka on the table and took a long swallow. My fingers were trembling. What on earth was I doing? I was a doctor, not a spy. I looked in people’s ears by pulling gently on the lobe. I warmed the stethoscope under my armpit before I listened to their hearts.

  “Good. Then let me get you up to speed.” She started talking faster. “Your aunt, Lena Tarasova, is one of the few foreign agents we run in Siberia. Like Oleg here. Her position as an executive secretary at Alrosa gave her access to information we found useful.”

  “So you do know her.”

  “Very well.” She pursed her lips. “I didn’t tell you that last night because my goal is to protect my agents. First, last, and always. Nothing is more important to me than that. Which brings me to your cousin, Mikhail. Or Misha, as he’s known. After his graduation from the state-run ballet school, he became a foreign agent as well. I sent him to Mirny in mid-May on his first covert mission. Two months later, he disappeared.”

  “Mirny?”

  “About eight hundred kilometers west of here. Not very big—forty thousand people maybe. There’s a famous diamond mine there, the Mir Mine, and a chemical processing plant.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “When Misha went missing, I had to face the possibility that under harsh interrogation he might expose himself and Lena, too. If Lena was arrested, the FSB might use Saldana as leverage to get either her or Misha to talk. I urged Lena to go into hiding with her daughter, but she refused. Instead, she found an opportunity to get Saldana out of the country, and unwisely insisted on staying in Yakutsk in case Misha showed up there. It wasn’t until Saldana was murdered that she agreed to return to her village.”

  “Why did she pretend to want to see me? She was already in hiding, yet she encouraged me to come.”

  “We thought that once you were in Russia, you’d be more…amenable.”

  “To working with you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then why not pick me up at the airport instead of going through this charade?”

  “Because I wanted to get to know you a bit before we spoke. Also, I needed you to behave like a tourist to please the FSB.”

  “The FSB? Are they watching me?” I said with a gulp. The FSB was Russia’s internal security force, equivalent to the FBI.

  “Possibly,” Meredith said with an oddly reassuring smile. “They sometimes keep tabs on solo American travelers. When you bore them, they go away.”

  Oleg was watching me keenly, the brown bottle clutched in one fat hand. He looked a tad less hostile than before, but I got the impression that if I tried to leave, he’d block the door.

  I tried to collect my thoughts. Everything was happening so fast. “I’m guessing you think the two things—Misha’s disappearance and Saldana’s murder—are related.”

  “That’s one of the things I want to find out. At this point, there isn’t any evidence to suggest a link. According to Lena, Saldana had no inkling that her mother and brother were spying for the US, and she posed no danger on her own account. As far as I can see, there’s no reason why the Russian government would have wanted to assassinate her.”

  “But you suspect it.”

  Meredith shrugged. “I really don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say she was murdered in an interrupted burglary, as the NYPD concluded. But the fact that the two events happened so close together does make me wonder. There could be a hidden connection, in which case I’m missing something important. Not just a puzzle piece, but possibly an entire puzzle, if you know what I mean.”

  I stuck my finger in my glass. The vodka was cold and almost gone. I drank down the rest. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to find Misha.”

  I laughed out loud. “Me? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Not at all. I want you to go to Mirny, ask questions, track down leads. Investigate.”

  “Why don’t you get one of your own people to do it?”

  “Believe me, I’d much rather use one of my own. But it’s not that easy. With the exception of Oleg and your aunt and a few others, I haven’t had much luck recruiting in the Russian Far East, especially among the native peoples, who distrust ethnic Russians and Westerners alike. In short, I don’t have a man or woman in Mirny. That’s why I sent Misha up there in the first place.”

  “But there must be someone in your organization who could do this better that I can.”

  “As you’ll soon see, if you decide to accept this assignment, Westerners are very conspicuous in the smaller Siberian communities. Any Westerner showing up to ask questions about Mikhail Tarasov will be news immediately. It’s hard to provide effective cover in that kind of situation.” She looked at me with a sort of languid force, a soft insistence that was both sultry and powerful. She was clearly used to persuading people to take risks. I was starting to feel like putty in her hands.

  “But you, Natalie,” she continued, “you don’t need a cover. You’re the real thing—an actual relative of Misha’s, a caring American doctor with a true, searchable identity. His sister was just killed in a shocking incident of apparently random violence, an incident publicly recorded in newspapers and online media sources, so you have a valid reason to be in Mirny. Like anyone in your situation might, you want to connect with your cousin, console him, create a family bond. You’ll naturally be shocked to discover that he’s missing—you’ll want to do everything you can to find him, both for yourself and for his mother, who’s inconsolably bereaved. Family bonds are sacrosanct in that community. You’ll have the sympathy and support of almost everyone you meet.”

  “Almost everyone. Just not whoever may be behind Misha’s disappearance. The bad guys, so to speak.”

  Meredith uncrossed her legs and leaned forward confidentially. “Natalie, I’m obviously privy to more information than I can give you at this time, and I can assure you that we wouldn’t be having this discussion if I thought there was significant danger. In the very unlikely event that there’s the slightest bit of trouble, you’ll have the full resources of the world’s most powerful intelligence agency at your back.”

  She glanced at Oleg, who pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and sent it spinning across the coffee table to me. It was a small flip phone, cheaply made. He tapped a cigarette from his pack of Ducats, slipped it between dry brown lips, and began patting his pockets for a light. The end of the cigarette wobbled up and down as he gave me instructions. “That phone has tracking device, so we always know where you are. When you want to contact us, you text or leave voicemail to number programmed in. We reply quickly, maybe ten minutes, hour at most.” Having found what he was looking for, he struck a match and put the flame to the cigarette’s tip, which flared red as he inhaled. His eyes narrowed to beady slits in the haze of smoke. “That phone n
umber is only possible communication so you memorize number in case you throw away phone.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  He shrugged blandly, waving out the match. “Eh? How should I know? Maybe to keep others from finding?”

  Meredith interrupted in a reasonable tone, “What Oleg means, Natalie, is that if there’s ever a question in your mind about whether you should have this phone in your possession, dump it right away and call us from a landline when you can. Don’t use your personal phone to contact us. Ever.”

  A buzz of tension jumbled my thoughts. I looked in quiet disbelief at the burner resting lightly in my hand. I hadn’t agreed to anything. Yet I felt as if I were plummeting down a rabbit hole with Teflon sides, nothing to grab hold of.

  “What exactly am I supposed to do?”

  Meredith smiled and leaned back, sensing that my resistance was crumbling. “Nothing too difficult. Just ask the obvious questions of whomever you meet in the normal course of events—neighbors, friends, co-workers. When was Misha last seen, did he say where he was going, is there someone you could talk to who might know where he is? Did he seem upset in the days before his disappearance? Did he do anything unusual? Did anyone make a police report? If so, have the police investigated, and what did they conclude?”

  I must have had a doubtful look on my face, because she went on, “Remember, as a doctor, you’ve dealt with all kinds of sensitive situations—you’re probably better than you realize at judging emotional states, and your own instincts will let you know how far you can push before you set off alarm bells. At the end of the conversation, you’ll leave your card and ask your contacts to call if they remember anything or learn anything new. That’s it. Simple and natural. Nothing more than what any concerned relative would do. The only difference is that you’ll report your findings to me.”

  My palms were sweating, and my shirt was sticking damply to my back. I was being sucked into something I didn’t fully understand and couldn’t see the true perimeters of. I only knew, as I did when I was pulled into Saldana’s orbit, that getting out wasn’t going to be easy.

  Meredith coaxed gently, “I’m giving you an opportunity to help your country, and your Russian family. And your mother. I know how badly she wants contact with her past.”

  “Oh, no. Keep my mother out of this,” I warned. But I was beaten. Meredith Viles had outmaneuvered me from the beginning. Which I didn’t appreciate. But she had her reasons, just as I’d had mine for doing what I was glad was still hidden in my past.

  “One more thing,” I said hesitantly, trying to put my finger on something important I needed to ask. “Oh, right. What was Misha doing in Mirny? What kind of covert operation was it?”

  “Sorry, Natalie. The CIA operates on a strict need-to-know basis. It’s for your own safety.”

  “Right.” I hadn’t really expected her to tell me, but not knowing made me uneasy. It meant I’d be blind to potential dangers. I’d have to trust Meredith to keep me safe—a dubious proposition given that she’d been playing me all along—but I couldn’t see a way around it.

  “You in?” she asked, as if it were a poker game.

  “Yeah. I’m in,” I said.

  “Good. We’re a team now.” She held her glass aloft. “To our success!”

  Oleg leaned in and the three of us clinked glasses. The seduction had occurred.

  Meredith and Oleg were waiting for me at the airstrip the next afternoon, having made the final checks on the four-seater, single-engine Cessna that would take us to Mirny. Oleg tossed my duffel and backpack into the storage area behind the backseat and we all piled in. Our flight path followed a winding gray line of highway running northward, then veered off over dark green taiga stretching hypnotically in every direction, broken only by flashes of silver streams.

  Eventually, the city of Mirny appeared on the horizon—dirty and ugly and vaguely round, like a brown scab on the earth’s healthy green skin. Its southern edge was cleanly amputated by what appeared to be either a gargantuan black meteor crater or an enormous lake of very dark water.

  As we got closer, the city materialized into a gritty warren of densely packed two- and three-story buildings with the standard Soviet apartment towers rising from its midst like dingy, oddly-colored stalks growing from a concrete bog. The massive, weirdly blue-black crater turned out to be the Mir Mine. Its stunning size, sharp rim, and apparently bottomless depth made me dizzy, even from a distance.

  When Meredith looked back and saw me gaping, my nose pressed to the glass, she yelled over the engine din, “About a mile in diameter and seventeen hundred feet deep. Visible from space. We won’t fly over it because the downdraft can suck a small plane right out of the sky.”

  “That’s got to be the biggest hole in the world,” I yelled back.

  She laughed. “It’s not. There’s an even bigger one in Utah. The Bingham copper mine. Which just goes to show, anything Russia does, we can do better.”

  I glanced over to see how Oleg would react to that dubious brag, and saw the two of them exchange a cozy smile.

  We landed at a small airport outside the city, taxied to an area designated for private planes. As Oleg unloaded the luggage, I was sweating from more than just the heat emanating from the sunbaked tarmac. I felt totally unqualified for what I was about to do. I’d spent most of my adult life in controlled environments—schools and hospitals—where I’d absorbed large amounts of scientific information and learned to follow standard medical protocols exactly. I was used to having answers, to knowing beforehand what I was supposed to do in a given situation, and when and how to do it. Now I felt stripped of both knowledge and skill. I couldn’t say what the next hour would bring, much less the next few days. The information I had was sketchy, and my training was nil. From now on I had nothing but instinct to rely on.

  My face must have shown my unease because Meredith nudged my shoulder playfully, saying, “Hey, don’t worry. You’re going to do fine.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Just trust yourself.” She leaned in, and we air-kissed on both cheeks.

  After watching Meredith and Oleg ferry their luggage down a gravel walkway to a paved lot where they had a car parked, I shouldered my backpack and duffel and headed to the terminal building where I would call a cab. The plan was for them to stay in Mirny on business while I looked for Misha. Meredith had been frustratingly vague about how long she expected the mission to take. When I’d pressed her, she’d shrugged and said, “Let’s just see how it goes.”

  In the backseat of the beat-up taxi taking me to Misha’s flat, I stared anxiously out the window. Mirny was a Soviet industrial city, hastily built at the edge of the diamond mine to service the miners and engineers. Far north, and far out of the way, it was the opposite of a tourist spot. We drove past concrete office buildings and an empty Soviet mega-plaza. Traffic lights blinked through their paces for a couple of cars at a time—no traffic jams here. City Hall slipped past the window—a long concrete rectangle with all the charm of an ice-cube tray. Then a small Russian Orthodox church with gold onion domes sprouted unexpectedly, like a flower out of rubble.

  We turned onto a main thoroughfare, heading east. A small horse bearing a large man plodded down the middle of the road. The driver swerved around them without slowing down; in fact, I had the impression he’d speeded up. I glanced through the rear window at the man’s brown, lined face and tangled mat of dark hair. His little horse, with its long swishing tail and sunlight-colored mane, was sturdy and pretty, like a carousel pony. An incongruous sight in the desultory urban landscape.

  “Where do you think he’s going?” I asked the driver.

  He shrugged. “Evenki. Reindeer people. Who knows where they go.”

  I gazed back curiously at the horse and rider. The sun was sinking dramatically behind them, still enormous, still blazing, turned slightly bloody and distended at the lower fringe, as if tearing from its own weight.

  The taxi turned onto
a side street and rumbled past a few of the usual apartment towers with their washed-out turquoise and tangerine facades. At the end of the road, backing onto a forest and low hill, was a row of nicer-looking, three-story apartment buildings with shingled roofs and brown clapboard siding. Some architect had been granted rare license for self-expression, because the two upper floors had long casement windows opening onto small balconies, lending the place a vaguely European charm.

  The driver stopped in front of one. I paid him and got out, clutching my belongings. Looking up nervously at the building, I silently rehearsed the name Ilmira Nikulina. Ilmira Nikulina was Misha’s roommate, a high school teacher with a quiet life, according to Meredith, who was usually home at this time. She would be my first contact, and possibly the most important one, as she’d likely know Misha’s daily routines, his social life, and, depending on how close they were, his state of mind in the days before he disappeared. My job was to gain her trust and get her to confide in me, while keeping in mind that she might have seen through his cover and outed him as a spy to the authorities.

  Don’t overthink it, I told myself. I quickly ascended a few steps to the door, pressed the outdoor buzzer, and waited. The door unlatched with a weak vibrating hum, and I made my way up two flights of worn but clean wooden stairs. At the end of a linoleum corridor, a woman was peering out of an open doorway, only her head visible. Her hairstyle was a contradictory mix of short blond curls and bangs slicked sideways and affixed to her scalp by a bobby pin. Her most noticeable feature was her mouth—the upper lip thin as a pencil line and the lower lip full and drooping.

  I explained that I was looking for Mikhail Tarasov.

  “Who are you?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Natalie March. An American relative of Misha’s. Sorry to just show up like this. Misha was supposed to meet his mother and me in Yakutsk a few days ago, but he never showed, and he isn’t answering his cell. We’re worried. Is he here?”

  After a quick glance down the hallway, she waved me inside, whispering, “Thank god you’ve come. I didn’t know who to call.”