over at October and said, “You all right?”
She pushed the loose hair out of her face with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. “Yeah.”
She was quiet for another moment, then said, “Someone seems to be pretty serious about making sure we’re dead. How can you be so positive it isn’t your buddy Andrei?”
“Andrei is not my buddy. But if he wanted us dead, he’d do it quietly, in a basement, or an abandoned quarry somewhere, with a single shot to the back of the head. He wouldn’t send someone to hit us in the middle of the city or ambush us out on an open road.”
“So who are these guys?”
“Someone who thinks we’re getting too close for comfort.”
“You’re kidding, right? We don’t know jack shit.”
“Yeah. But they don’t know we don’t know jack shit.”
She put her head down between her knees. After a moment, she said, “Do you ever rent a car without wrecking it?”
They found the town of Zelenogradsk near the tip of the Sambian Peninsula, where the dunes of the spit just began to rise. It wasn’t on the map, and they’d driven right past it on their way to Rybachy.
“I don’t see how an entire town can be a military secret,” said Tobie as they rolled down weed-choked streets nearly empty except for the inevitable stalls selling amber. “The map makers must have left it off by mistake.”
Once a thriving resort, Zelenogradsk did not appear to have fared as well under the Soviets as Rybachy. Most of its elegant, prewar seaside villas had been reduced to rubble by the fighting of 1945, while the few old houses that remained were largely abandoned and covered in moss.
“I don’t know,” said Jax. “I think I’d be tempted to keep this place a secret, too.”
Jasha Baklanov’s office lay on the second floor of a seedy, two-story Soviet-era concrete block a few hundred feet from the water. Leaving the car parked in the rubbish-strewn square out front, they entered the open street door and climbed a set of dirty concrete steps to a frigid second-floor hall lined with rows of battered slab doors. A small, chipped sign on the door at the end of the hall read BAKLANOV SALVAGE.
“Why did he need an office?” she whispered, hugging herself against the chill of the concrete building. “A smalltime operator like this?”
Slipping a silver pen from his pocket, Jax quickly disassembled it into a set of picks and eased a slim tension wrench into the lower portion of the keyhole. Applying a light torque to the wrench, he thrust a pick into the top of the keyhole, his eyes closing with concentration as he deftly eased each pin out of the way. There was a faint click, then the cylinder turned and the door opened. “I suspect the people our Jasha was doing business with weren’t exactly the type he wanted visiting his family.”
Tobie watched him pack away the lock-pick set. “They teach you to do that in spy school?”
“Yes.” He put a hand on the door and pushed it inward.
The hinges squealed in protest. A single, uncurtained dirt-encrusted window on the far wall let in just enough light to show them a square cubbyhole sparsely furnished with a desk, a table with a couple of chairs, and a battered filing cabinet that looked as if it had been salvaged from an old ship. A chessboard, a half-empty bottle of vodka, and a couple of glasses littered the tabletop. But the chess pieces had been knocked into disarray; a glass lay on the floor, shattered. The drawers of the filing cabinet and desk hung open, their contents spilling out onto the floor.
“Looks like whoever hit the Yalena beat us here,” said Jax, quietly closing the door behind him.
“How do you know it wasn’t the militia?”
“Because the militia would have taken the vodka.”
“Ah.” She reached to turn on the light, but he put out a hand, stopping her. “Better not.”
Her gaze met his, and she nodded.
While she started on the files, he went to hunker down beside the shattered drawers of the desk. After ten minutes of searching, she let out an exasperated sigh. “If there ever was anything here to find,” she said, picking up another handful of scattered papers, “it’s gone. You know that, don’t you?”
But all he said was, “Just watch out for broken glass.”
They worked in a tense silence punctuated by the rustle of paper, the thump of furniture being righted. She was gathering up the last of the scattered files when she found a half-spilled box of business cards, printed on cheap stock. They looked new.
She pulled one out and held it up to the fading light.
BAKLANOV SALVAGE
Baltiskaya 23b
Telephone: 7-4112-21352
Fax: 7-4112-31698
She started to put the card back, then stopped to look around. “Do you see a phone?”
“There isn’t one,” said Jax, nodding to the fax machine that sat at a drunken angle on the edge of the desk. “Looks like he just had a dedicated fax line.”
“Who has a fax these days?”
“People who do business with the Third World.”
“But if he only had a fax, then why is there a telephone number on his business card?”
“Let me see that.” Reaching out, Jax took the card between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s a cell phone.” He gave her a grin. “See. You did find something.”
“This is good?” Tobie pushed to her feet. “Why is this good?”
“Because even as we speak, the geeks at the NSA are busy snooping on the telecommunications of the world. We like to think we’re the only ones doing it, but the truth is, every country with a good tax base does it, too.”
She took the card back and stuck it in her bag. “Which means?”
“Which means, now that we know Baklanov’s cell phone number, Matt ought to be able to pull his records.” He glanced toward the patch of smudged sky visible through the window. In the fifteen minutes they’d been in the office, the sky had grown significantly darker.
“It’s getting late,” said Tobie, following his gaze.
“No shit. We’ve got just enough time to make it back to the cathedral before Andrei turns us into pumpkins.”
It was when they were backing out the door that Tobie noticed the sheet of paper that had slipped beneath the desk, one small white corner protruding from the edge.
“What’s that?” Jax asked as she reached over to pick it up.
“It’s a fax. And oh, look; you’re in luck. It’s in English.”
“Very funny,” he said, pulling the door shut behind them. “When was it sent?”
She frowned. “According to the dateline, it came through less than an hour ago. From somebody named Kemal Erkan. In Turkey.”
“Turkey? Let me see that.”
He scanned it quickly, then grunted. “Listen to this. “Been trying to reach you for two days now. Have buyer lined up for steel from U-boat. Great price. Let me know when to expect arrival.’”
“Nothing ominous-sounding about that,” she said. She was walking ahead of him and had almost reached the stairs when she felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck, and slowed.
“What is it?” said Jax, just as a black-leather-gloved hand appeared around the corner from the stairwell with a Glock 17 held in a professional grip.
She lunged forward, grabbing the unseen assailant’s wrist with both hands to yank the gun up just as he fired off three suppressed shots in quick succession.
Sounding like muffled pops, the percussions filled the narrow hall with the stench of burnt powder and a film of blue smoke, and knocked chunks of plaster off the dingy walls. The man let out a roar of rage, swinging around
