Black Wolf, page 38
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because this man is yet unknown to your intelligence services.” He put the photo back into his pocket. “He’s a ghost who will haunt every mine in Kazakhstan until he has enough uranium to make a bomb. I want you to seek him out. Keep both eyes on him.”
“Can you give me the photo?”
“The man on the right is the current president of Kazakhstan. The photo was taken inside a safe room. It would not be good for relations if he knew that we were spying on him.”
He took her elbow and began slowly guiding her toward William and the departure gate. “You ask yourself, why would such a man as myself be concerned about this? A man with such a reputation for violence.” His fingers tightened slightly on her arm. “It is because a cannon fired leaves a hole a few feet wide. Then the dust will clear, the resulting dead will be manageable, perhaps even predictable. And the damage is done. But a nuclear explosion poisons everything, everywhere.
“It’s not only out of compassion that I tell you about Ghorbani, but out of common sense. It’s madness to assume other countries will be responsible when it comes to using the ultimate weapon.”
Mel had a moment of intense vertigo, a startling déjà vu, as though the floor had been shaken in an earthquake. The bear in the forest had told her there was nothing that could be done. And yet the Black Wolf had just given her a way to continue her work.
Kavalchuk halted and turned to face her. “I believe that you can help stop this man.” If Mel hadn’t been looking at his face, she would have missed the ghost of his smile. “And lest you think I’ve grown sentimental because I admire your fortitude, I tell you all this because you may be useful to me as an ally in this cause. Although it’s not likely you and I will ever see each other again.” He turned his head to the large windows revealing the runways and planes and the dense expanse of birch trees beyond. “To answer your question, I did care about the women. They were, after all, Byelorussians. Like me.”
He signaled to his driver that it was time to leave. “You were right, you know. The poem I quoted to you for dictation was Pushkin’s. It was my wife’s favorite.”
Once the plane had landed in Germany, William and Mel emerged into bright sunlight. They linked arms and descended the ramp slowly onto the tarmac, led by a Lufthansa official who accompanied them into the terminal. William took exuberant breaths of what he called the Berliner Luft—the Berlin Air. It was heavy and organic, with errant traces of wet sewage. He told her it was because the old sewers were built too close to the city’s surface. Also, he said, Berlin was built on a swamp, that the city name came from the Slavic word for swamp, berl.
Two consular officers from the Clay building, the US Mission Berlin, located in what had been West Germany, met them at the internal arrival gate. Mel would be taken to the embassy; William would stay to catch his flight to Tel Aviv.
William grinned wickedly. “The Germans converted their VIP lounge, their ‘special room’ for the Stasi, into Terminal C to accommodate security-sensitive flights to Israel. Evidently, there’s still some scandalous, anti-Semitic graffiti scratched into the walls. Now I’ll know.”
He turned to her, giving her an enveloping, paternal hug. “Take care, Melvina. Come visit me when you need a break from chasing villains.”
Mel felt as brittle and thin as an eggshell. There was so much she wanted to say to him, but the words were thwarted by the conflicting emotions roiling within her, threatening to crack through her skin. Instead, she watched William until he was lost in the crowd of restless travelers, the numberless strangers who were swept up into her memory banks and stored forever. Strangers who were not as they appeared to be.
She’d realized from an early age that most people spent a good portion of their waking hours masking their true selves behind ever-changing wardrobe and hairstyles. Glasses, jewelry, makeup—all of it working to separate the inner self from the outer self. Masking the secret internal places where the monsters hid from the glaring light of day.
Mel turned to let the two embassy officers lead her to their car, noticing for the first time that one of the men was carrying her suitcase. Kavalchuk must have had her things from the hotel packed and put on the plane. Her first thought was to burn everything inside. It would all smell of fermenting cabbage and disinfectant. But then she smiled, trying to remember Julie’s translation of that very description upon their initial arrival.
The two officers were young, probably close to her own age, although she felt a hundred years old now. They kept trading looks when they thought she wasn’t paying attention. They had not, of course, been told the whole story of her mission. She was hesitant to ask after her colleagues Ben, Julie, and Dan, in case they’d already been reassigned. She desperately hoped that they would still be in Berlin to welcome her.
While driving from the airport, one of the officers informed her that there was a doctor waiting at the mission. So they knew she’d had a bad time of it, at least. The bruises on her arms and legs were still vivid. Her neck was still visibly scratched red by the rope. She imagined the look on the doctor’s face if, in response to his asking how she was doing, she said, “Actually, I’m dead.”
Mel felt a rising bubble of hysterical laughter and made a small hiccupping sound. The officer in the passenger seat gave her a concerned look.
The constant feeling of dread was dropping away, and in its place was the expansive sensation of being safe and alive. She was out of the crumbling chaos of the Soviet Union. She was out of Byelorussia, soon to be back in US territory. She’d survived it all: the Svisloch Strangler, an ill-timed love affair, and the Black Wolf of the BSSR, who’d called her a potential ally. Although she too hoped that their paths would never cross again.
But Kazakhstan…what did she know of Kazakhstan? A Central Asian country, part of the Soviet Union, bordered by China and Russia, homeland of the descendants of Genghis Khan and the ancient Silk Road. Rich in uranium deposits. For now, that was it.
She remembered what Special Agent Thomas Hunter, the agent who had initially recruited her for the CIA, had told her. “In your training, you’ll be learning about the four potential blast rings following a nuclear detonation.
“But Donleavy, there are really only two you have to worry about. The ‘You felt it’ ring, and the ‘You saw it’ ring. If you felt it, you’re dead, sooner or later. But if you’ve only seen it, you can survive. If you’re smart and if you take the right precautions.”
Mel had been near the innermost ring, not of a nuclear detonation, but of a serial killer. And of the decaying, noxious core of the Soviet Union itself. Her mission had changed her in a way that no desk job or domestic field assignment could have. As her father would say, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. She wondered how long a flight to Almaty would be, but then she pushed the thought away. Time enough for that in her debriefing.
“Thank you for being my taxi service,” she said to the officers.
“Our pleasure, ma’am,” the driver said. “Berlin’s finest.”
She thought of one of Dan’s jokes and finally understood that, for him, they were a coping mechanism. Gallows humor. Whistling past the cemetery at night. A way to balance out the world’s dangerous absurdities. She hoped she’d get to hear another soon.
Mel smiled and asked, “Why do Stasi officers make such good taxi drivers?”
A pause. The officer in the passenger seat turned, earnest and eager. A young, optimistic American.
“You get in their car,” she said, “and they already know your name and where you live.”
Acknowledgments
Although this is a work of fiction, it is based partly on true events. I’ve changed the names of some of the Soviet leaders in Byelorussia (now Belarus) who were in power in the 1990s, but many of the towns and cities, monuments, street names, and landmarks are real. The prolific serial killer known as the Butcher of Rostov, Andrei Chikatilo, was all too real and was the model for the Svisloch Strangler.
This book is dedicated to Lowell A. Mintz, entrepreneur and visionary, former chairman of the Board of Governors of the Commodity Exchange, Inc., in New York and chairman of Byelocorp Scientific, Inc. (contracted by the US Department of Defense), which introduced previously unknown Soviet technologies to the US, as well as my boss for twenty years.
Dr. William Cutler is based on Dr. William Begell, a brilliant chemical-nuclear engineer, talented linguist, partner in Byelocorp Scientific, and survivor of the Holocaust. A frequent travel companion of mine to the former Soviet Union, he was a colleague and friend. He is greatly missed.
This is my seventh novel with the Little, Brown/Mulholland Books family, and I feel incredibly fortunate and grateful to have been supported and encouraged by the following dedicated and talented magic makers: Josh Kendall, Helen O’Hare, Ben Allen, Pat Jalbert-Levine, Massey Barner, Alyssa Persons, Liv Ryan, Bruce Nichols, Lauren Hesse, and Gabrielle Leporati. Many thanks also to Barbara Perris, whose copyediting skills kept the manuscript sharp and consistent, and to my agent, Danny Baror, who helps steer the ship. Happily, once more, Pamela Marshall has, with a keen eye, corrected many of the things I got wrong.
Gratitude to my friends and family and, as always, to my husband, Jim.
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About the Author
Kathleen Kent is the Edgar Award–nominated author of the crime trilogy The Dime, The Burn, and The Pledge, as well as three bestselling historical novels: The Heretic’s Daughter, The Traitor’s Wife, and The Outcasts. She has written short stories and essays for D Magazine, Texas Monthly, and Literary Hub, and has been published in the crime anthology Dallas Noir. In March 2020, she was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for her contribution to Texas literature. Kent lives in Dallas.
Also by Kathleen Kent
Detective Betty Rhyzyk
The Pledge
The Burn
The Dime
The Outcasts
The Traitor’s Wife
The Heretic’s Daughter
Kathleen Kent, Black Wolf
