Requiem For a Glass Heart (44 page)

A
S SOON AS THE TAXI TURNED THE CORNER OUT OF SIGHT
, I
RINA
headed for the nearest stairwell without saying a word. Cate followed. But instead of going up, they headed down, their footsteps gritty on the cement stairs, every move or bump against the welded pipe railing echoing off the hard surfaces of the concrete stairwell.

The stairwell ended at the next door they came to. This was the bottom of the garage. Irina opened the door cautiously and looked out. It was just another parking level, with residents’ cars lined up against the walls. When she was satisfied, she stepped out, and Cate followed her straight down the first aisle behind the bumpers of all the cars. Irina went the full length of the aisle to the very rear of the garage, where an area was closed off by a cage of chainlink fencing.

It was, Cate guessed, some kind of electrical transformer, a power station or relay station. Irina stood directly in front of the door-size gate, then turned around and faced the last row of cars in the garage. Walking straight to a red car opposite them—Cate noted its rental agency sticker—she knelt down at the back bumper, reached under the license plate, and took out a small packet. It was a plastic security card and four keys wrapped together with masking tape. She studied
the keys as she returned to the gate and then used one of them to unlock the padlock that secured the gate latch.

Inside the cage the floor was damp and dirty, and the entire area smelled of heated electrical wiring. The wind washing through the cage from a huge fan with blades as tall as Cate was hot and dry. Once they were inside, Irina reached through and locked the gate behind them, and then headed around the far end of the roaring equipment to the back side of the cage, where they came to a metal door. Irina used another key to unlock this. She pulled it open, paused, reached down to the floor, felt about for a moment, and then picked up a flashlight that was standing upright just behind the doorframe.

“Sergei is always so precise with his planning,” she said. “He never forgets even the smallest detail.” She didn’t say it to Cate. She just said it.

“What the hell are we doing this for?” Cate asked. “The driver said we weren’t followed.”

“You cannot depend on taxi drivers to tell you about surveillance,” Irina said.

“Then you know we are being followed?”

“We do not know. We assume.”

“Who? Who’s following us?”

“It does not matter who. Everyone is equally unwelcome.”

But Irina didn’t turn on the flashlight. Instead, she felt around on the wall until she located a light switch, which she flipped on.

Stretching out before them was a long, narrow tunnel illuminated by low-wattage bulbs, their discrete illuminations throwing a series of pale highlights on an endless drapery of electrical cables, which stretched far away into a dim infinity.

“Where does this go?” Cate asked.

Irina stood looking into the long tunnel.

“To Sergei,” she said. “And beyond.”

Irina made sure the door was closed behind them and then turned and started walking, with Cate following close behind. The tunnel was clearly a service access for the universe of cabling that was necessary to provide electricity to the three condominium buildings. The air in the narrow corridor was musty and smelled of concrete, and as they proceeded into the tunnel, the trajectory of a curve was clearly visible.
They obviously were going to one of the adjacent buildings, but since they had gone around and around as they had descended into the parking garage in the taxi, and then gone around and around again in the stairwell, Cate had no idea which direction they were traveling in now, whether they were going to Amberson I or Amberson III.

The walk through the narrow service tunnel to the next building, whichever one it was, did not take more than fifteen minutes, though to Cate it seemed excruciatingly long. The echo of their footsteps on the grit, the dark night above them, the jaundiced glow in this subterranean passage through which they traveled, the SIG-Sauer in Irina’s purse, Irina’s cryptic answer to Cate’s question—all conspired to contribute to the eerie feel of this strange journey. And the symbolism of Cate’s situation did not escape her. If she was lost, in how many ways was she lost?

Staring at Irina’s back, Cate tried to ignore the swags of electrical cable all around her. The moment Irina had flipped on the dull lights, the festoons of black wiring had reminded her of a monstrous gnarl of intestines, and now, as she and Irina negotiated their way along this hot, moist passage, she could not avoid the thought that they were pushing their way through the entrails of death.

But the melodrama vanished in an instant when she heard Irina chink the keys together and realized they were approaching another door. Irina stood looking down for a moment, locating the right key. Gate waited.

“Don’t open the door.”

Both women reflexively spun around to the voice, but neither could immediately see its source. Then, momentarily, the smutty shadows gave up the partial figure of a man standing about ten feet away against a backdrop of a black cobweb of wires and cables. The weak light above them caught him just below the waist, so that only his legs were visible, beginning with the skirt of his suit coat.

“Sergei!” Irina’s voice was unsure. “What’s the matter? Why are you here?”

“This is the woman?”

“You told me to come up.”

“I changed my mind.” His hands were not visible, “What is your name?”

Cate was lightheaded. “Catherine.”

“And who do you know who knows me?”

Cate’s mind was lurching. His voice was more sophisticated than she had imagined, which somehow intimidated her. His English was accented but precise.

“Valentin Stepanov,” she said.

“And you know something that concerns me?”

Cate stared into the dark above the trousers of the suit. What in God’s name was he talking about? What had Irina told him? Her mind was as dry as her mouth.

“You cannot expect her to talk about a traitor in the dark like this,” Irina said with a note of indignation. She had recovered her footing. “Who else is here? Do you have the money to pay her for her information? She doesn’t know. I don’t know. This is not what you said would happen. We do not have all night. Valentin will miss her. She will have to explain. If you want to work out something with her, we have to make the most of the time. This is a stupid thing you are doing.”

Irina spoke urgently, hoarsely, her stage whisper echoing, dying away along the cement walls in the sickly light.

Krupatin said nothing. He shifted his weight on his feet, the grit on the floor grinding against the leather soles of his shoes.

Cate’s mind was working like a shuttlecock, back and forth, back and forth, trying to weave together the tapestry of Irina’s hints. It seemed that Irina had told Krupatin that Gate had information to sell him about Stepanov’s betrayal, but something had gone wrong here. If Irina ever had intended for Cate to relate such a story, she would have prepared her. If Irina had expected Cate to have sex on cue, with little preparation, surely she would have had no problem rehearsing her to tell a tale of intrigue—which, by eerie coincidence, just happened to be true. But she had not. No, Irina clearly had not intended for this meeting to happen. Not like this, anyway.

“Give me your purse,” Krupatin said to Irina.

To Cate’s surprise, Irina handed it to him immediately. He put the strap over his shoulder without looking inside.

“And yours.” Cate handed it over, and he did the same with hers. “Okay,” he said. “Go ahead. I’ll follow.”

Irina unlocked the door. They stepped out of the tunnel into a mirror image of the electrical equipment they had seen on the way in—the same huge fan blowing hot air, the same
chainlink wire cage, the same low-ceilinged twilight of a garage. As if they were retracing their steps—-they might have been; Gate was beginning to feel severely disoriented—they eventually reached the garage elevator. They rode up to ground level, which was as far as these elevators went, and when the doors opened, they found themselves forty feet from a set of double doors made of glass, through which Cate could see the lobby of the building.

Irina stepped out of the elevator, walked straight to the doors, and ran the magnetic security card through the track on a panel mounted on the wall. The electronic lock on the doors popped open.

They pushed their way inside and walked to the center of the lobby, where Cate noticed that the security guard’s desk was unoccupied. She doubted that a building of this class would ever have a time when no guard was on duty. His absence set off an alarm in her nervous system.

The three of them rounded the corner of the desk, a curved marble affair sitting two steps above the lobby floor and having three television monitors on which colored surveillance shots flickered for no one to see. When they got to the elevator, all three of them stepped inside.

“Turn around and face the wall,” Krupatin said.

They did as they were told, the doors closed, and Krupatin pushed a button. The elevator began its ascent. When the doors opened again, Krupatin told them to look down as they exited in front of him. Behind her, Cate could hear him punching five or six buttons before he let the doors close behind them.

Only three condominiums had entries from this small anteroom, each one at the end of its own narrow, barrel-vaulted corridor. Krupatin’s front door was at the end of the passage directly in front of them. It had no number on the door. Cate had no idea where she was.

Krupatin opened the door.

“Just a minute,” he said, and stepped inside ahead of them. He walked to a panel on the wall in the foyer and turned a dial. A screen lighted up. “Irina, you first,” he said.

She walked through as Krupatin studied the screen in front of him.

“Now you,” he said to Cate. She followed Irina through the doorframe, which was obviously wired with some kind of
scanner. Satisfied, Krupatin turned off the screen and closed the door himself. Cate heard an electronic lock fasten in the wall behind them.

Telling Irina where to go, he followed them into a living room that looked out over the city. For some reason, all the rooms—Cate could see a hallway opening off the living room, a dining room on the opposite side, a kitchen beyond—were submerged in near darkness, though there was enough light to enable the three of them to move about quite easily without bumping into furniture. No one suggested turning on the lights.

Unlike the vast open spaces viewed from Wei’s strange room, Krupatin’s view was ornamented with a forest of tall buildings punching up out of the darkness like satellite planets, floating illuminations, slowly turning in the night space. Beyond, a sea of glittering lights stretched to the horizon, all the way out to the warm, swift waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Krupatin moved past them farther into the room, nearer the glass walls, his gray silhouette visible against an ocean of sequins. As far as Cate could tell, the room was filled with modern furniture, low-profile bone white sofas and armchairs, glass coffee tables, sleek, expensive furnishings. He took the purses off his shoulder and dropped them in an armchair and then turned to a cabinet nearby. Gate heard the clacking of ice scooped into a glass, the chinking of the crystal stopper in a decanter as Krupatin poured himself a drink. He offered them nothing.

“What is all this about?” he asked, taking a drink from his glass before setting it on an end table next to the chair. He clicked on a lamp, creating a pool of light and illuminating his face. Cate was surprised again. He was handsome. His carefully barbered salt-and-pepper hair and trim mustache were flattering to his oval face and straight nose. He was wearing a charcoal double-breasted suit and a dress shirt with blue stripes, but no tie.

Bending down into the light, Krupatin picked up Irina’s purse and opened it. He took out the SIG-Sauer and laid it on the table with his drink. Then he checked Cate’s purse, and when he found no gun he tossed it back into the chair with a lack of interest.

“First of all,” Irina said, “Wei is finished.”

“I know,” Krupatin said, picking up his drink again.

Irina was silent, and Cate sensed her body stiffening. It was clear that she was surprised by this.

“You know?”

“Yes, dammit, of course I know.”

Irina stared at him. “Who?”

Krupatin took another drink and looked at her over the rim of the glass, relishing the fact that this was a surprise to her but seeming to consider whether or not to answer her.

“One of his Chinese maids,” he finally said, smirking. “The one you found so comforting in Paris. And you saw her here too, the first time you met with Wei and Bontate in the red room. She watched the … spectacle tonight. She said you were a good little whore, Irina.” He turned slightly to Cate. “Both of you were.”

Cate’s face burned. Jesus Christ.

“Did she tell you about Valentin Stepanov?” Irina asked. “Did she tell you about Grigori Izvarin?”

“No,” Krupatin said, “she did not.”

“You are surrounded by traitors, Sergei. You are rotting from the inside.”