The Fourth Courier Read online

  He was probably right, Jay thought. Two or three major newspapers covered the country. Kulski had provided him with copies of his missing-persons ads, relying on artist sketches of the victims, not identifying them as murder victims but simply unaccounted for. The sketches were remarkably good, but of course, only one side of the victims’ faces had been ruined.

  “Okay, the odds are that they’re Russian,” Jay conceded. “They are all missing a wedding ring. Why haven’t their wives reported them missing?”

  “Maybe the wives have boyfriends and haven’t noticed.”

  “Wouldn’t your wife notice if you disappeared?”

  Kulski smiled. “I hope she doesn’t have a boyfriend! But there is something else. All their hands were soft.”

  “Soft?”

  “They were not workers.”

  “You mean laborers.”

  “I suppose they worked in an office,” the detective elaborated.

  “Tell me about the murder weapon.”

  “The TT?”

  A 7.62 mm pistol designed by Fedor Tokarev in the 1930s for the Russian army and able to rip through a bulletproof vest if discharged at close range. Standard issue for nearly forty years to soldiers and reservists. Freely available in the flourishing post-Soviet black market. All that according to the FBI’s briefing files, to which Kulski added: “It is a favorite gun of the mafia because it is so powerful. We think all the wounds are made by a TT, but without the bullets, we cannot be sure.”

  “And they all passed through their bodies?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell me about BPZ,” Jay said. “Why is Husarska involved in the case?”

  “Because the mafia could be involved.”

  “Could be involved. Is there any proof that it is?”

  “Only the suspicion.”

  “And that’s enough for BPZ to get involved?”

  “We don’t expect much help from the national authorities.”

  “You mean it’s political?”

  “If it is a big case, it is a big victory.”

  “And if it’s not, who cares?”

  “Exactly,” Kulski agreed.

  Jay glanced back at the three red dots on the detective’s case board on the wall. “I’d like to see where the bodies were found.” They both glanced out the window at the darkening sky.

  “Today is not a good day. It will snow soon,” Kulski decided. They arranged to meet in the morning.

  Jay stood to leave. “There’s not much to go on, is there?”

  “We only wait for the fourth courier. Maybe we will be lucky and have a witness.”

  “We might be lucky, but not the fourth courier,” Jay said and left the detective’s office.

  Back on the street, Jay aimed for the river. He had a good sense of direction and felt confident that he would end up close to the waterway’s bend where the couriers’ bodies had been found—if they were couriers, he had to remind himself. He passed through working-class neighborhoods that had a sense of depleted familiarity. Unlike its sister city Warsaw across the river, which had been rebuilt after World War II to recreate its center in precise architectural detail (except for upgraded plumbing), Praga had risen from the war in long relentless blocks of monochromatic concrete. Even the sky was pavement gray.

  As Detective Kulski had predicted, it started to snow heavily, and Jay gladly let a taxi rescue him. Soon they were dodging traffic in Praga’s bustling commercial center. A church’s onion dome loomed over the bent women and broken men who plied those streets. Here a man sold oranges displayed on his car hood; there a woman used a stick to rummage in a refuse bin; and everywhere the poor scuffed their shoes in the gritty snow, bargaining for toss-offs.

  Back at the embassy, Jay grabbed a cup of coffee, which he dumped in the men’s room before reaching his temporary office. He checked his watch. It was too early to call his assistant, Ann Rewls, back home. He couldn’t fault Detective Kulski for not making much progress in the case; there wasn’t much to go on, and he hoped Ann had found something in the DOE’s inventory reports. Killing time, he flipped through the case files, hoping something might jump out that he hadn’t noticed before.

  He checked his watch again. Still another hour to go. He was debating whether to go in search of an alternative coffee machine when his telephone rang. He picked up the receiver. By habit, he answered, “Porter here.”

  Ann said, “Hello, Jay.”

  “How did you know I was waiting to call you?”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t. Impatience is your best virtue.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Did you find anything in the DOE reports?”

  “Nothing that merits an alert.”

  “You mean something else.”

  “What I mean, Jay, is that if you have enough pennies, you have a million dollars.”

  “How many pennies do we have?”

  “Does ten kilograms add up to a million dollars?”

  “Close to it.”

  “And that’s only in fourteen months,” she reminded him.

  “You’re going to tell me about the research reactors, aren’t you?”

  “You’re a mind reader.”

  “I was raised on this stuff. I’m surprised I don’t glow in the dark.”

  “Maybe you do.” She sighed. “Noise Machine is snoring in the bedroom and a baby is kicking my bladder. I hope you’re having more fun than I am.”

  “Are you that pregnant?”

  “There aren’t degrees of being pregnant, Jay. Only stages.”

  That’s what his wife—ex-wife, Jay sometimes had to remind himself—had said about both of her pregnancies. She had to get through the stages to get to the baby. He flashed on his sons, newly born, before he said, “Tell me what you learned about the research reactors.”

  “There are hundreds of them all over the Soviet Union—former Soviet Union—and periodically they need to reprocess their fuel, which can be done at only three reactors inside Russia. For two of them, I have reports for two years, and I’ve gone through them comparing how much uranium was sent in by each research reactor and how much was returned.”

  “If the measurement is precise enough, there will always be some natural attrition,” Jay told her. “Fuel-in never equals fuel-out.”

  “Would measurements to four decimal points in milligrams be precise enough for you?”

  “Probably.”

  “Good, because I stayed up all night adding them up. Nobody thought to total the columns.”

  “The Russians don’t like to make their cheating conspicuous.”

  “Well, their strategy worked. When you glance at the numbers for individual reactors, nothing seems to be missing. In fact, for two of the reprocessing reactors, I don’t think anything is missing. In percentage terms, their numbers are comparable, and in most instances what’s not returned is in milligrams. Then there’s the third reactor.”

  “Which one?”

  “Kosmonovo.”

  Jay let out a soft whistle. “Kosmonovo? The DOE has inventory reports from there? I’m impressed. Until three years ago, the Russians didn’t even acknowledge it existed.”

  “Apparently it does, and every month for fourteen months, it’s come up short on the reprocessing roster. Fifty grams here, a hundred there, but spread out over hundreds of batches of uranium, no one noticed.”

  “And who’s to say it only started fourteen months ago? Someone could have been stockpiling material a lot longer.”

  “Enough pennies for a million dollars?” Ann asked.

  “More than a million dollars. That’s good work.”

  “Good, because I’m going back to bed.”

  “Thanks for spending the night working on this.”

  “I didn’t exactly volunteer.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  Jay called Detective Kulski. “It’s Agent Porter. I think that I can confirm
that you’re right about where the couriers are coming from, and that they are couriers.”

  “Tell me the details in the morning,” Kulski suggested. “I can’t be sure that I have a secure line.”

  Now that Jay had a likely place of origin to associate with the couriers, he was curious to see their pictures again. He retrieved the files from his briefcase and laid out the grisly portraits. All had blunt foreheads, thin noses, and mops of sandy hair. They could have been brothers. Or maybe Director Husarska was right: all Russians looked alike.

  Kurt Crawford knocked on the half-open door and walked in. He grimaced when he saw Jay’s photos of the victims’ lacerated cheeks. “Facial cuts hurt,” he said, touching his own scarred checks. “Beirut 1983.”

  “The barracks?”

  “Twenty-fourth Amphibious Unit out of Camp Lejeune. I was shaving when the mirror exploded. Fortunately most of the mirror hit my chest, not my face. A few stitches and nothing hit my eyes. I was on my feet the next day looking for my buddies’ body parts. It added new meaning to ‘all accounted for.’ You ever been in the service?”

  “My dad was one of the original conscientious objectors.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t explain the FBI.”

  “I wasn’t allowed to play with guns as a kid. Now I can.”

  “Except in Poland,” Kurt complained. “It pisses me off that we’re not allowed to carry a weapon. I don’t like the disadvantage.”

  “You’re an unlikely agent for Poland,” Jay said, “with or without a gun.”

  “I spent two years as an embassy guard in Moscow. When Langley was looking for a Russian-speaking spook, I fit the bill.”

  “They speak Polish here.”

  “After English, Russian is the lingua franca for the bad guys in the weapons world.”

  “You’re that good at languages?”

  “I can say ten thousand megatons and ten million dollars, and that was good enough to get me the assignment. Are you any closer to sorting out who these guys are?”

  Jay briefed him on what his assistant had uncovered in the DOE reports. When he mentioned Kosmonovo, Kurt said, “That’s a serious place.”

  “You know about Kosmonovo?”

  “Top secret weapons research. The Russians only confirmed it existed a couple of years ago when they were taking glasnost seriously. I’ll check with Langley if there’s any buzz about the place.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I came here to bring you this.” Kurt gave Jay a handset.

  “A walkie-talkie?”

  “Do you know how to use one?”

  “Roger that. My brother and I had a set when we were kids. We warned each other when danger was approaching—like parents or teachers—when we weren’t just using them to goof around.”

  “This isn’t for goofing around. It’s our emergency security system. Home base—that’s the embassy—is Graceland. You press this button and you’re automatically connected to the duty officer. Press here to broadcast. Otherwise you’re receiving. Your code name is Cher.”

  “Cher?”

  “All the subscribers are rock stars.”

  “But Cher? Is that a Langley joke?”

  “Don’t worry, your secret is good with me, but if someone ever says anything, just say that ‘Sonny’ was taken.”

  “Roger that.”

  Kurt handed him a form. “You need to fill this out, too.”

  “What is it?”

  “Basic information in case you get lost, wounded, or go missing in action. You’re divorced, right?”

  “Didn’t Langley brief you?”

  “You might need this, too.” Kurt handed him another form. “These are the rules for fraternizing with the locals. Unlike in the past, fortunately we don’t have to report everyone we talk to, but you do have to file a report if you sleep with someone. Women, or men if that’s your thing.”

  “That’s a little personal, isn’t it?”

  “Ambassador Lerner insists on it. He sent a guy home last year missing a vital body part. His dick.”

  “Shit. I wasn’t briefed on that.”

  “DC is good at withholding the juicy stuff.”

  Kurt started to leave. He turned at the door to say, “Between you, me, and the US government, I only report men. Is that a problem working together?”

  “Sounds like we’ve got all the bases covered.”

  When Kurt left, Jay unfolded the napkin with Lilka’s blurry telephone number. Hoping he’d be lucky enough to have to report her, he dialed it.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JAY WANDERED BETWEEN THE GROUPS of spectators, peering over shoulders and around hats to see a juggler, or Peruvian flutists playing music too tropical for the nippy air, or a man with a lopsided grin lurching around with a divining stick—all braving the cold for coins dropped in a can or on the corner of a shawl. Snowflakes hung suspended in the air, defying gravity. He kept an eye out for Lilka. She was late and Jay worried that he was being stood up. Finally he recognized her silhouetted by lights on the pink Krolewski Castle, and hurried across the square to meet her.

  “Lilka.”

  She turned to him.

  “Ja-ay.”

  Once again, she made his name sound new.

  She offered her cheek for him to kiss, but Jay surprised her by taking her hand and brushing his lips to the back of it. It was something else his Polish tutor had taught him.

  Lilka laughed. “How do you know that Polish men do that?”

  “I had a good teacher.”

  “Maybe you are a little Polish, too?”

  “I’m probably more Neanderthal than Polish.” She laughed again.

  “Where are we going for dinner?” he asked.

  “Restauracja Kurczak.”

  “Kurczak? Chicken Restaurant?”

  “You don’t like chicken?”

  “No, I like chicken. I like almost everything. Which way?”

  “We go by that street.” Lilka pointed across the square. Wearing short heels, she had trouble navigating the slippery cobblestones, and he offered his arm. She gladly took it, and as they walked, she pointed out different buildings, all pastel-colored and awash with the warm light of lanterns swinging from hooked posts. The street artists had set out lanterns, too, that illuminated the faces of spectators pinched red by the cold. They paused to watch a mime, shiny with grease paint, act out a sad story before he hooked his fingers in his frowning mouth and pulled it into a smile. Jay dropped coins in his beret before he scurried away, crablike.

  Lilka shivered.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “Only a little.”

  “Let’s go eat.”

  He steered them toward a carriage, its draft horse snorting as they approached.

  “We can walk,” Lilka protested. “It is not so far.”

  “It’s too cold. Restauracja Kurcza,” he told the driver and helped her into the buggy.

  The driver clucked, and with a jolt, the horse started across the uneven stones, throwing them together on the seat. They laughed and braced themselves upright, though Jay didn’t try very hard; he was happy for an excuse to fall against Lilka. Through the side flaps they glimpsed the passing shops; their weak lights displayed dusty collections of icons, chunky jewelry, overblown crystal: the old wares. The driver soon tugged at the reins. The horse stopped and they climbed out.

  The restaurant’s heavy door groaned on iron hinges, and just inside, a squat woman with twists of gray hair on her chin took their coats.

  A waiter appeared and Lilka told him, “We have reservations.”

  “Of course, Pani,” he said, and led them into a dining room filled with tables draped with white cloths; candles behind glass cones flickered on the silver settings. Except for them, the restaurant was empty. “You may sit where you want.”

  “What table do you want?” she asked Jay.

  “You pick.”

  “Here, I think, not s
o close to the door.”

  The waiter pulled out the seat for her and handed them menus.

  Jay glanced at it and was surprised by its extensive selection. It was a struggle, but he could make out basic category headings such as meat or vegetables. He zeroed in on something called nadziewana kapusta and asked what it was. “Not that I want to eat something that sounds like kapoot,” he added.

  “Stuffed cabbage,” Lilka answered.

  The waiter piped up and said, “Nie ma.”

  “Nie ma?”

  “There is none.”

  “Oh. Okay. Next question. What is cielence kotlety?”

  Lilka asked, “What is your name for baby cow?”

  “Veal. No, I don’t eat veal. I believe in meat but I don’t believe in torture.”

  Not understanding what he said, the waiter volunteered, “Nie ma.”

  Jay closed his menu. “So what do you have?”

  “Tylko kurczaka.”

  “They only have chicken,” Lilka translated.

  “Then why did he give us menus?”

  “It is his job to give us menus.”

  Jay smiled and handed his back. “Kurcza,” he ordered.

  “And you, Pani?”

  “Also I will have the chicken.”

  “And wino biały,” Jay thought to add.

  “Nie ma wino.”

  “There’s no wine?” Jay was ready to leave.

  “We have only szampan.”

  He asked Lilka, “Is champagne okay with you?”

  “I like champagne.”

  “Sure, we’ll have champagne.”

  The waiter walked off.

  They sat, two complete strangers in an empty restaurant without the diversion of watching other people. Jay finally asked, “Are you a flight attendant, too? Besides working in the lounge, I mean.”

  “You mean in an airplane?”

  Jay nodded encouragingly.

  “I am too afraid to fly.”

  “You work at an airport and you’re afraid to fly?”

  “Like LOT, I never leave the ground.”

  It took Jay a moment to get her joke made at the expense of the national airlines. He chuckled. Of course she had told it before. He realized she must have a patter for the men waiting for flights in the Executive Lounge: set lines, jokes, and witticisms for almost any occasion, all used to keep the men at arm’s length without discouraging tips. He’d been in enough business class lounges to know the scene. “Is that who you work for? LOT?” he asked.