didn’t he, Doctor?”
The coroner’s thin face registered his distaste. “Yes. He expelled feces. What of it? That’s quite common — especially in a death of this kind.”
Helen pressed further. “Were there any signs of urine? Any evidence that he lost control over his bladder at the same time?”
“No.” Rachinsky shook his head. “But the two things do not always occur together. Usually, but not always.”
“Usually …” Helen repeated. She let that sink in before going on.
Maybe the inconsistency meant nothing, but she wanted to make absolutely certain. “Then I would like you to examine that area again, Doctor — more thoroughly this time.”
“I will do no such thing!” Rachinsky said flatly. “Nothing in the facts of this case warrants such an absurd, even ghoulish reexamination. I’ve given you my medical finding, and that should be enough!”
“No, Doctor.” Koniev moved closer to the coroner, his mouth tight with barely suppressed anger. “Your finding is not sufficient. Not in this case. Not when it is now clear that your initial examination was incomplete.” He stabbed a finger repeatedly into at Rachinsky’s chest, emphasizing each point. “You will do as Special Agent Gray requests. Is that clear?”
The militia doctor stepped back-away from the MVD officer’s prodding finger. He licked his lips nervously, glanced briefly at the three grim faces in front of him, and then shrugged. “Very well, Major. If it will convince you of the perfectly obvious — so be it.”
“Rachinsky picked up a scalpel and moved slowly down the autopsy table to stand poised over Grushtin’s pelvic cavity.
Helen was sure she heard him mutter something about “a crazy, sex-starved American bitch” in Russian before he started cutting, but she chose to ignore it.
After making several short, swift incisions, the coroner leaned forward to take a closer look at his handiwork. Suddenly, he turned deathly pale. “Mother of God!”
“What is it, Doctor?” Helen asked sharply.
Rachinsky stared up at her, still horror-stricken. “There are massive burns and major scarring inside this man’s urethra. It’s completely obstructed.”
Helen fought down a sudden sense of triumph. Her instincts had been on target. “What might cause injuries like that?”
The militia doctor shook his head slowly in dismay. “I have not seen such things for a long time.” He stopped, and quickly checked the overhead mike to make sure it was still switched off before going on.
“Not since the Chekists … you understand?”
Helen nodded, knowing Rachinsky was making a coy reference to KGB torture during the Soviet era. Russia had still not come to terms with the atrocities routinely committed under its abolished communist government. Too many of the same people were still employed by the KGB’s successor agencies. “We need specifics, Doctor.”
The coroner nodded rapidly, now apparently eager to make up for his earlier intransigence. “Of course.” He flipped on the mike again, dictating his new findings onto tape. “Upon closer scrutiny, it is now clear that the subject, Nikolai Grushtin, was tortured for a prolonged period of time. Perhaps by means of severe electrical shocks applied to the inside of his genitals. Or possibly by a superheated wire inserted into the same region.”
Helen winced at the gruesome images evoked by Rachinsky’s dry, matter-of-fact evaluation. Grushtin’s involvement in the downing of the An-32 certainly warranted punishment, and probably even the death penalty. But no one deserved the kind of agony the Russian Air Force captain had apparently suffered before dying.
Moving with more energy and interest than he’d shown before, the coroner examined Groshtin’s legs and arms more carefully, turning them first one way and then another under the bright lights. He reddened.
“Find anything else, Doctor?” Koniev asked dryly.
“Perhaps,” Rachinsky admitted reluctantly. “It is difficult to tell with the postmortem lividity, the pooled blood, but there may be faint traces of bruising around the wrists and ankles. Very faint. As though whoever bound him took great pains to avoid leaving evidence.”
Helen motioned Peter and Koniev off into the corner, leaving the now thoroughly embarrassed militia coroner to continue his work. She lowered her voice. “Well, now we know why Captain Grushtin wrote and signed that suicide note.”
Koniev nodded grimly. “Somebody is covering their tracks.
Somebody capable of great evil. Somebody with enormous resources.
Somebody who found out we were interested in Grushtin almost as soon as we knew ourselves.”
“But is that somebody here in Moscow? Or back at Kandalaksha?” Helen asked.
Koniev’s mouth turned downward. “Who can say? All we know now is that this affair is far more than a murderous quarrel between two heroin smugglers.” His shoulders slumped.
“Grushtin was our only solid suspect. Even now that we know he was murdered, I don’t know where to begin looking. There are more than two hundred Mafiya syndicates in Moscow alone — any one of which might be involved in this matter.”
“Kandalaksha,” Peter said suddenly.
“Kandalaksha?” The MVD officer looked curiously at him.
“You seem very certain. Explain that, please, Colonel.”
“Gladly.” Peter ticked his reasons off one by one. “Okay. Kandalaksha is at the center of everything we’ve investigated. First, the O.S.I.A inspection team plane takes off from there — and it crashes.
Second, one of the men killed aboard that plane is carrying two kilos of pure heroin — which he apparently picked up somewhere on the base.
Third, the man who sabotaged the plane was stationed at Kandalaksha.”
“But not as a regular maintenance officer,” Helen chimed in abruptly, remembering their interrogation of Lieutenant Chernavin.
“Grushtin was supposed to be working on some kind of secret project, right, Peter?”
He nodded, smiling crookedly at her. “Exactly. A special engine project. One Chernavin seemed to believe an American military officer should know about. But General Serov’s aide certainly seemed mighty pissed when the kid mentioned it to us.”
“You think there is a connection?” Koniev asked. “That this project is somehow tied in to Gasparov’s heroin smuggling?”
“I really don’t know, Major,” Peter admitted. “Not for sure.
What I do know for sure is that something big and nasty is going down at that air base. Something Grushtin was willing to kill to conceal …”
“Something that meant he had to die once we started zeroing in on him,” Helen finished for him.
“Yep.”
Koniev nodded slowly. “It makes sense.” He sighed. “I will file another request with the Ministry of Defense this evening. We will need its authorization to conduct an in-depth investigation on the air base.”
“I really wish you didn’t have to do that, Alexei,” Helen said slowly.
“Yes,” the MVD major agreed sadly. “It seems evident that the men we are hunting have allies somewhere inside my own government. And that they will doubtless know of our decision to return to Kandalaksha within hours. But we must have permission to enter the base. How else can we proceed?”
Helen nodded her reluctant agreement and saw Peter doing the same thing. She had the uneasy feeling that following the proper channels was keeping them at least one step behind the bad guys, but what other options were open to them? Once you started cutting corners to obtain results, you were on a slippery slope — headed toward the dangerous paradox of breaking the law to uphold the law. No. She and Koniev were officers of the law — and that meant obeying the law, even if that put their investigation at risk.
Rolf Ulrich Reichardt leaned forward from the back seat to check the time on the dashboard clock of his Mercedes-Benz sedan. It was nearly midnight. He sat back-staring out the window at the rows of tombstones crowding the cemetery to his right. During the 1930s, Kalitnikovskoe had been infamous as a dumping ground for the bodies of those murdered in the KGB’s Lubyanka Prison. Did the man he had come to meet remember that? The German rather suspected he did. Felix Larionov, “the Lariat,” was known for his heavy-handed sense of irony.
