records, if they could be located), since the body had been so thoroughly shredded as to leave not a single identifying mark or characteristic, though, perversely, his identity papers had survived in his wallet, and so, they probably knew who he had been. The same was true of the woman in the car, whose purse had survived virtually intact on the seat to the right of her, along with her ID papers … which was a lot more than could be said for her face and upper torso. Reilly looked at the photos of the other victims-well, one presumed they matched up, he told himself. The driver was grossly ordinary, perhaps a little fitter than was the average here. The woman, yet another of the pimp’s high-priced hookers with a photo in her police file, had been a dish, worthy of a Hollywood screen test, and certainly pretty enough for a
“So, Mishka, have you handled enough of these crimes that it no longer touches you?” Provalov asked.
“Honest answer?” Reilly asked, then shook his head. “Not really. We don’t handle that many homicides, except the ones that happen on Federal property-Indian reservations or military bases. I have handled some kidnappings, though, and those you never get used to.” Especially, Reilly didn’t add, since kidnapping for money was a dead crime in America. Now children were kidnapped for their sexual utility, and most often killed in five hours, often before the FBI could even respond to the initial request for assistance from the local police department. Of all the crimes which Mike Reilly had worked, those were by far the worst, the sort after which you retired to the local FBI bar-every field division had one-and had a few too many as you sat quietly with equally morose and quiet colleagues, with the occasional oaths that you were going to get this mutt no matter what it took. And, mostly, the mutts were apprehended, indicted, and then convicted, and the lucky ones went to death row. Those convicted in states without a death penalty went into the general prison population, where they discovered what armed robbers thought of the abusers of children. “But I see what you mean, Oleg Gregoriyevich. It’s the one thing you have trouble explaining to an ordinary citizen.” It was that the worst thing about a crime scene or autopsy photo was the
“Anything else, Oleg?” Reilly asked.
“We continue to interview people with knowledge of the deceased.” Followed by a shrug.
He offended the wrong people,” an informant said, with a shrug of his own that showed how absurdly obvious the answer to the preceding question was. How else could a person of Avseyenko’s stature turn up dead in so spectacular a way?
“And what people are they?” the militiaman asked, not expecting a meaningful answer, but you asked the question anyway because you didn’t know what the answer was until you did.
“His colleagues from State Security,” the informant suggested.
“Oh?”
“Who else could have killed him in that way? One of his girls would have used a knife. A business rival from the street would have used a pistol or a larger knife, but an RPG … be serious, where does one get one of those?”
He wasn’t the first to voice that thought, of course, though the local police did have to allow for the fact that all manner of weapons, heavy and light, had escaped one way or another from the coffers of what had once been called the Red Army into the active marketplace of criminal weapons.
“So, do you have any names for us?” the militia sergeant asked.
“Not a name, but I know the face. He’s tall and powerfully built, like a soldier, reddish hair, fair skin, some freckles left over from his youth, green eyes.” The informant paused. “His friends call him ‘the boy,’ because his appearance is so youthful. He was State Security once, but not a spy and not a catcher of spies. He was something else there, but I am not sure what.”
The militia sergeant started taking more precise notes at this point, his pencil marks far more legible and much darker on the yellow page.
“And this man was displeased with Avseyenko?”
“So I have heard.”
“And the reason for his displeasure?”
“That I do not know, but Gregoriy Filipovich had a way of offending men. He was very skilled at handling women, of course. For that he had a true gift, but the gift did not translate into his dealings with men. Many thought him a
“Is that a fact,” the militia sergeant observed, bored again. If there was anything criminals liked to do, it was boast. He’d heard it all a thousand times or more.
“Oh, yes. Gregoriy Filipovich claims to have supplied mistresses for all manner of foreigners, including some of ministerial rank, and says that they continue to supply valuable information to Mother Russia. I believe it,” the informer added, editorializing again. “For a week with one of those angels, I would speak much.”
“I have told you I do not know. Talk to ‘the boy,’ perhaps he will know.”
“It is said that Gregoriy was beginning to import drugs,” the cop said next, casting his hook into a different hole, and wondering what fish might lurk in the still waters.
The informant nodded. “That is true. It was said. But I never saw any evidence of it.”
“Who would have seen evidence of it?”
Another shrug. “This I do not know. One of his girls, perhaps. I never understood how he planned to distribute what he thought about importing. To use the girls was logical, of course, but dangerous for them-and for him, because his whores would not have been loyal to him in the face of a trip to the camps. So, then, what does that leave?” the informant asked rhetorically. “He would have to set up an entirely new organization, and there were also dangers in doing that, were there not? So, yes, I believe he was thinking about importing drugs for sale, and making vast sums of money from it, but Gregoriy was not a man who wished to go to a prison, and I think he was merely thinking about it, perhaps talking a little, but not much. I do not think he had made his final decision. I do not think he actually imported anything before he met his end.”
“Rivals with the same ideas?” the cop asked next.
“There are people who can find cocaine and other drugs for you, as you well know.”
The cop looked up. In fact, the militia sergeant
“And what people might they be?” the sergeant asked. If there was a growing distribution network in Moscow, he might as well learn about it.
Nomuri’s job for Nippon Electric Company involved selling high-end desktop computers and peripherals. For him that meant the PRC government, whose senior bureaucrats had to have the newest and best of everything, from cars to mistresses, paid for in all cases by the government, which in turn took its money from the people, whom the bureaucrats represented and protected to the best of their abilities. As in many things, the PRC could