Vargunin sneered. ‘The Bill. I hate that thing, too.’
‘I know,’ Borovsky said. ‘A plague on it.’
‘It ruined enough people to qualify as one.’
‘It was necessary.’
Vargunin shook his head. ‘So is a tooth extraction. One doesn’t hate the dentist, but don’t ask me to cheer the decay.’
Borovsky laughed at the comment. It was the same debate that they’d had three years ago, mercifully reduced to this shorthand.
‘The Bill’ was the Bill on Police, one of the first major reforms of the department since 1917. It had previously been the People’s Militia, but after almost a hundred years of growing corruption, President Dmitry Medvedev had introduced sweeping reforms in 2010. They were ratified by the State Duma in early 2011 and put into effect on March 1st of that year.
Borovsky had been one in the group of officers whose responsibility it had been to reduce the one million, twenty-eight thousand police officers to one million, one thousand. Most of his peers found it either an odious or vengeful task, but Borovsky approached it with the same professional pride he had brought to every aspect of his life.
In fact, he found it relatively easy. One recent study had maintained that twenty percent of the force routinely took bribes as well as extorting money from tourists and locals alike. Borovsky understood that the police department’s poor pay contributed to that, but he felt more sympathy for the reported sixty percent who sought more work rather than affiliations with local mobs. The police officers that he and his confederates found worthy got salary increases of up to thirty percent. Those that they found unworthy were now, more than likely, part of the criminal organizations they had taken money from. The ranks of the criminals were swelled by the reforms.
Then there were the men like Vargunin. Men who were better suited to life in an office. Men who were not corrupt but who believed that confessions beaten from suspects were just as valid as those obtained by detective work.
Vargunin changed the conversation with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Just two old war horses, eh?’
‘War horses, yes,’ Borovsky agreed. ‘But not so old.’
‘My spirit feels as if it fought the Mongols in the thirteenth century.’
‘Maybe it did,’ he teased. ‘I think this office was here, too.’
Both men laughed, and Vargunin took a step back, finally taking the time to look his old friend up and down. If Anatoli were a workhorse, it was clear that Borovsky was still a thoroughbred. No thickening of his middle. And while his slicked-back hair may have had a little more gray on the temples, it was still enviably substantial.
In fact, age seemed to make Borovsky look even more impressive, from his angular face, probing light brown eyes, and sharp chin, all the way down to his long flat feet. Encased in specially made boots, they were one of Borovsky’s only concessions to personal comfort.
‘The changes to the uniform become you,’ Vargunin decided, releasing his friend’s forearms and turning back to the desk. ‘Apparently, so do the changes to the force.’
‘It’s not that,’ Borovsky said. ‘I have just never been a pessimist like you.’
‘That’s anti-Russian,’ his old coworker said. ‘So. What brings you down here?’
‘Couldn’t it be a friendly visit?’ Borovsky asked innocently, pulling forward a seat.
‘Couldn’t Lenin rise from his tomb and take a stroll around Red Square?’ Vargunin shrugged. ‘I suppose it is possible.’
‘I was wrong,’ Borovsky said. ‘You’re not a pessimist. You’re a cynic.’
Vargunin barked out a laugh. ‘Years after “the Bill”, you come to say “hi” to one of the officers who notoriously escaped your net and then slipped through another at the Forensic Expertise Center? I am not so old a detective as to consider your arrival merely a coincidence.’
‘We were friends, despite the task that was given to me.’
‘We were, yes,’ Vargunin said. He hoped he hadn’t emphasized the ‘were’ when he spoke it. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Why not?’ Borovsky decided. ‘For old times’ sake.’
27
Andrei Dobrev didn’t ask for a single train engine; he requested
Less than a day later, Dobrev watched with pride as the massive, red-and-black engine that he recommended lumbered up the sidetrack at the Moskva-Kazanskaya station. ‘The Lugansk 2TE116,’ he said to Jasmine. ‘The true beast of the RZD.’
‘RZD?’ Cobb inquired.
Jasmine waited until Dobrev had finished explaining.
‘It’s what they call the Russian railways,’ she simplified.
Cobb nodded and continued to watch the behemoth approach. He couldn’t help feeling that this must be what a tyrannosaurus looked like when it tried to sneak up on its prey. He glanced over at Jasmine while Dobrev continued to speak. But for some reason, she didn’t translate.
‘Well?’
‘Technical specs,’ she said. ‘I don’t quite understand.’
‘All Greek to you, eh?’ McNutt teased.
‘No,’ she clarified. ‘If it were Greek, I’d actually understand.’
‘Let’s have it anyway,’ Cobb told her.
‘All right. Let’s see. Diesel engine, fifteen-twenty millimeter gauge, three thousand horsepower at one thousand rpm-’
Cobb let out a low whistle of appreciation. That would be a very powerful dinosaur.
‘Thirty-six meters long, twenty feet high, twelve feet wide, axle weight of twenty-three tons, full weight of two hundred and seventy-six metric tons-’
‘My head hurts,’ McNutt complained.
‘Wait,’ Jasmine said. ‘He’s off the details, talking about something else now.’
Cobb waited for Jasmine to catch up. Dobrev didn’t seem to care, or even notice her translation. He seemed to be lost in his own railroad world.
‘He’s telling us what else we’ll need,’ she said, reciting the list to Cobb, who did not take notes but remembered every word she said.
Finding Dobrev a standard railroad worker’s green shirt, green pants, green cap, black belt, black boots, and orange vest was not difficult — what with all the locker rooms within the station. In fact, the whole team except Papineau was dressed that way, so as not to draw unwanted attention. The Frenchman was in one of his suits as always. Jasmine had minimized her conspicuousness by pinning her hair into a bun, wearing sunglasses, and raising her shirt collar to cover the bruises that Kadurik had given her.
The team was gathered beside the massive vintage locomotive — all except Sarah and Garcia, who had disappeared into the first train car.
‘According to Andrei,’ Jasmine said, ‘this engine was easy to obtain. The modernization of the Russian railways started around 2008, and they’ve been rolling out a thousand new locomotives a year. This vintage one was in a storage facility about an hour out of the city.’
Dobrev took a second to spit onto the track.
Cobb smiled. ‘Apparently our friend doesn’t think much of the new engines.’
‘He does not,’ Jasmine agreed. ‘“Give me this old beauty anytime,” he says. With all the new trains running around, there were plenty of these vintage engines to pick and choose from.’ Jasmine looked up at Cobb. ‘He actually knows this one in particular. He says he could take it apart and put it back together blindfolded.’
‘Good to know if we break down at night,’ McNutt said.
