The Disposable Man (27 page)

Great, I thought, but I didn’t have anything better. I did, however, have one more question to ask. “Mr. Corbin-Teich—”

“Please call me Lew. It is a wonderful custom. I like it very much.”

“Okay. You can call me Joe. I understand your friend had no enemies and you don’t think he was the target, so don’t misunderstand what I’m about to ask, but thinking back, do you remember the shooter ever taking aim at you, especially after he hit Andrei?”

There was a stunned silence. “You are thinking I was spared on purpose.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m thinking it’s possible.”

“To lure
me
out?” Rarig asked. “I’m in the phone book, for Christ’s sake.”

I shook my head in the darkness, reviewing the conversation I’d had with Sammie the night we’d all met with Olivia Kidder and Rarig at the inn. “Not you—somebody else.”

“It is possible,” Corbin-Teich admitted, his voice harder now, its inflection suddenly reminding me that this man had once been a protégé of Padzhev and a rising star within the KGB.

“The automobile,” he continued, “had no reason to speed by. There was no other traffic, no other people on the street that I could see, and it was an automatic weapon, yet all the bullets struck Andrei.”

“Who’re you thinking of?” Rarig asked me. “Padzhev? It still doesn’t fit.”

“No, not Padzhev. Someone else. Someone we haven’t thought of yet. Someone who would benefit from getting things all stirred up. Killing Antonov on your front lawn, tapping your phone line to find Lew, staking out his apartment and then knocking off his friend in a fake drive-by. It all feels like somebody’s trying to get something, or someone, to rise to the surface.”

“Snowden must be behind it,” Rarig said.

I shook my head. “If it’s Snowden, then who’s his target? Antonov’s already dead, you and Lew could’ve been knocked off anytime. There’s somebody missing in the equation.”

“It is Georgi,” Lew said softly.

“What is?” I pushed him.

“The target. It is Georgi Padzhev. Sergei Antonov would never do anything without Georgi’s blessing, so we can assume Sergei was in this country under Georgi’s orders.”

“Probably because they saw your picture in that article about the inn,” I added, excited that some of this might at last become untangled.

Rarig didn’t answer, but I saw him run his hand through his hair as if considering the idea.

“Would Georgi Padzhev be after you?” I asked Lew.

“Not to kill me. We are old men now. The KGB is gone. All that is history. Georgi might want to talk, to reminisce, as old men do. I might like that, too. It is what John and I did, after all, for hours and hours. This image you have of the KGB, much of it is propaganda. Georgi Padzhev is no monster. He was a chess player, like John here, like many others. The pieces were human beings, it is true, and many died but not as Hollywood would have it. We didn’t go around shooting people.”

I didn’t bother quibbling semantics. What did I really know, after all? “So Padzhev wants to reminisce. But he’s old, he’s now into the Mafia, and he has lots of enemies, which cuts down on his mobility. Antonov goes instead to check things out. But he’s known as Georgi’s henchman. Which means he’s followed to Rarig’s place, knocked off to lure out Padzhev, and Rarig’s line is tapped for insurance. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Yes. That is possible. Sergei was not a henchman, as you say. He and Georgi were like brothers.”

“So John told me,” I said. “But John hiding the body confused things enough that Padzhev held back, unsure what was happening. In the meantime, we circulated Antonov’s picture in the papers, which stimulated you to call John, which is how Padzhev’s enemies located you. It’s also why they probably framed me, to give themselves some breathing room. But they didn’t kill you. They still needed bait to get Padzhev into the open, to show him that whoever killed Antonov was still in Vermont. Knowing Padzhev, might that work?”

“
I
think so,” Rarig agreed. “Padzhev’s a ruthless, ambitious man. One of the things Olivia told me last night was that he’s fighting for his life right now, trying to hold off competitors. It’s purely theoretical, but if he let Antonov’s murder go unavenged, it could be used as a sign of weakness that would unite the opposition against him.”

“I would agree with that,” Corbin-Teich said. “The Georgi Padzhev I knew would never allow such a transgression. It was what made him so powerful in our organization.”

“And why he went to such lengths to snatch Yuri,” Rarig finished.

“So the people behind all this,” I concluded, “are Padzhev’s competitors from Russia, choosing the time and place for a showdown far from Padzhev’s home base.”

“It fits,” Rarig said, “except for Snowden. Where’s he belong?”

“You actually believe he killed Antonov?” I asked impatiently. “I thought that was just to get me all bent out of shape.”

Rarig remained stubborn. “Then who tried to have you knocked off in Washington?”

My head was already hurting, and the thought of this extra complication pushed me away from the entire subject. “I don’t give a damn anymore, at least not right now. Let’s just get out of Middlebury so we can figure out what to do next.”

“I would like that very much,” Corbin-Teich said with obvious relief.

I took his elbow and guided him gently toward the door we’d entered. “Lead the way, then. The car’s in the lower parking lot, away from the field houses.”

We began traveling the quiet, darkened corridors and staircases like trespassers, pausing furtively to look around, keeping our voices low and our footsteps silent. In the dim light, I cast a glance at Lew Corbin-Teich, studying what I could see under what turned out to be masses of snow-white hair. The plastic surgery had obviously been of high quality, although not knowing the “before,” I was hard pressed to judge the “after.” Nevertheless, there was a stillness to his features, an absence of mobility that suggested a mask. Watching it, I couldn’t help feeling his face embodied everything that had happened to me since discovering “Boris’s” body. Nothing had turned out as it had at first appeared, and none of the subsequent explanations had been any more real than Corbin-Teich’s remodeled appearance. Given what I’d been through these last few days, I couldn’t help wondering how he’d survived half a lifetime of it.

Our silent progress stood us in good stead. Just shy of the building’s entrance, we rounded a corner and saw two men in dark clothing loitering in the lobby, one of them with his eyes glued to the scenery beyond the plate-glass door.

We backtracked quickly but not before the other one saw us.

“
Stop
,” he shouted, as Corbin-Teich grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back along the wall. Rarig was ahead of us, heading for a door to the left. I was about to follow when Lew yanked on me again. “No, this is better.”

We slipped through a door on the right and vanished as into an absolute vacuum. From the comparative light of the hallway, we were now in total blackness.

Lew continued pulling at me, keeping me off balance. “This way. Follow me.”

I sensed from how his voice vanished into thin air that we were in a huge room, probably another of the theaters, but this realization was of no use whatsoever as I stumbled down a sloping aisle, sightless and clumsy until falling down outright, brought low by a cluster of metal chairs that had been left in our path.

Corbin-Teich fell with me in a tangle, smacking my hand against one of the chair backs and sending the gun I’d just unholstered skittering across the carpeting.

Simultaneously, the door we’d used flew open, outlining our pursuer in silhouette, a pistol in his hand. Without thought, I reached for the front of Lew’s jacket as he squirmed on top of me, yanked out the laser pointer he’d clipped there earlier, and pointed it at our pursuer. The tiny red dot stuck to his chest like an angry insect.

“
Freeze
,” I yelled, disentangling myself.

I saw the man’s head duck down to look at the red dot, misinterpreting it, I hoped, for an infrared gun sight.

“That’s right,” I said. “Face down on the floor.”

I saw him following my instructions as the door slowly swung to behind him. Before the light vanished, however, I was close enough for the laser alone to supply a poor substitute.

“Slide your gun over here.”

He did as he was told. I picked it up, pocketed the pointer, put my knee into the small of his back and his gun to the nape of his neck, and frisked him for more weapons. I retrieved a dagger from a sheath strapped to his lower calf. I then dragged him over to the edge of the aisle, placed his hands between the legs of one of the bolted-down row seats, and snapped my handcuffs around his wrists.

I returned the pointer to Lew and asked him to search for my own gun.

“Where’s your buddy?” I asked my captive, twisting one of his thumbs.

His voice was understandably tight. It, too, was heavily accented. “We help you.”

“Right.” I twisted a little harder, making him wince. “Answer the question.”

He tried to wriggle away. “No English good.”

“You Russian?”

“Yes, yes. Russian.”

Lew Corbin-Teich was back, crouching by my side, my gun in his hand.

“Ask him who he is,” I told him.

Corbin-Teich shot out a short, guttural question, which the other man answered with obvious relief.

“He says he works for Padzhev,” Corbin-Teich explained. “That they were sent here to protect me from Edvard Kyrov.”

“Who’s he?”

Corbin-Teich rapidly asked a couple more questions and then translated. “He says Kyrov is an old rival of Padzhev. That he is a very bad man—a longtime criminal, even back to the old days.”

The clear sound of a gunshot reverberated out in the hallway. I quickly moved to the door, opened it a crack, and squinted into the dim light. Rarig was standing over the body of the second man, having obviously doubled back from the door he’d used, to reemerge into the corridor behind his follower. It seemed clear he’d shot him in the back.

“Drag him in here,” I told him.

He grabbed the man’s feet and pulled him toward me. There was no blood on the carpeting.

After he’d passed by, I propped the door half-open so we could see what we were doing. “You just killed him, no questions asked?”

Rarig looked at me angrily. “I’m seventy-five years old, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to play around with some bastard like this. I just hit him in the back of the head. It was his gun that went off. Not mine.”

I checked the body and found a pulse, slow but steady. There was no saying how bad an injury he’d suffered, though. Reluctantly, I undid half of the first man’s handcuffs, and chained him to his buddy. “This one says they were sent by Padzhev to protect Lew—from someone named Edvard Kyrov. You ever hear of him?”

“Only by reputation. He’s a crook—a black marketeer.”

“He may be the one behind all this.”

There was a noise from outside. We both scurried to the crack in the door and looked out as a young man wearing a small backpack trudged by, earphones perched on his head.

“I don’t give a goddamn who anyone is right now, or says he is,” Rarig whispered. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

In the light from the corridor, I could see his forehead shining with sweat. His job was done, or almost, and he’d spared no one, deserving or not, in achieving it—from possibly killing the man behind us, to using me from the start. His blatant self-service finally burned through the desperation that had been driving me, leaving me clear-eyed, furious, and decided on my course.

“Fine,” I said, “but as soon as we get Lew to a safe place, I’m calling the cops. This thing is ending now. Is that clear?”

He nodded. “It’s all I wanted from the start.”

“You crap artist.” I held out my hand. “Give me your gun.”

His jaw tightened. “Not till we’re out of here.”

I exploded with rage. I took the dagger I still had in my hand and shoved its tip into Rarig’s nostril, making his head snap back until it smacked against the wall. His eyes popped open with fright.

“Look,” I said, my eyes five inches from his, “I’m sick of all this horseshit. Give me the fucking gun. Now.”

There was no doubt he could have just shot me at close range, but my obvious disregard for any such logic persuaded him to merely push the gun into my hand.

I removed the knife. “Thank you. Now collect your friend and let’s go.”

Feeling his nose gingerly, he nodded toward the two men on the floor behind us. “What about them? What if they do belong to Padzhev?”

“I don’t give a damn,” I told him. “I’ve played this game long enough, and not a single person involved in it has turned out to be what they said they were.” I walked over to Corbin-Teich. “Give me my gun.”

He complied without comment. I noticed then that the unconscious man’s arms were outstretched before him, his hands empty. My fury reignited, I swung back on Rarig, pushed him hard enough against the wall that the air flew out of his lungs, and went through his pockets as he doubled over in pain. I quickly found the Russian’s pistol and added it to my collection.

“You asshole,” I muttered to Rarig and spun him around to face the door, motioning to Corbin-Teich to join us.

“Simple plan,” I explained to them, speaking softly. “We move quickly out to the parking lot, get in the car—me driving—and we leave town the fastest way possible, Route 30 heading south. Understood?”

Nobody made a sound. I pushed them out ahead of me, and the three of us marched down the hallway, turned the corner, and entered the welcoming daylight of the building’s lobby. The sunshine, even fading as it was at the end of the day, made me feel for the first time that regardless of the consequences, I was regaining some measure of control. I knew it wouldn’t make any difference overall. Fred Coffin and the court were still waiting to give me the run of a lifetime, and I still had no contrary evidence to stop them, but my temporary elation made all that immaterial.

WE WALKED IN LONG STRIDES TOWARD
Rarig’s car, my jacket swinging heavily with its cargo of weapons, until Lew faltered and stopped, pointing up the curving drive that connected the parking lot to Route 30 above. “That is the same car. The man who shot Andrei.”