Politika

straps that would lower Rosie into the ground, gone from him until the next life claimed him, too.

His heart nearly burst from the pain of it.

He reached out and took his daughter’s hand, squeezed it.

The news cameras hummed and clicked.

Even their grief was a public matter.

The coffin was slowly lowered. When it reached its final resting place, the thud of the wood hitting the dirt was the loneliest, most final sound he had ever heard in his life.

Like the noise of the blast, it would haunt him, too.

The preacher intoned words of comfort. The sounds washed over him, useless now, but perhaps later, alone, as he sifted through his memories of this day, he would find a small measure of the peace they were intended to impart.

Now he dropped the bouquet of roses he’d brought with him onto the casket. Bright splashes of scarlet against the polished wood surface, they were slowly, slowly covered by the white flecks of snow, still falling gently. Like his heart, the blossoms were soon sheathed in ice.

Tasheya’s forget-me-nots joined his offering. As the service wound to a close, he watched them, too, fade under the onslaught from heaven.

He had lost his Rosie. The emptiness inside him was so vast he wasn’t sure how his body could contain it. But he had something to do that kept the grief that threatened to swamp him at bay.

He was the police commissioner of the city of New York. It was his job to find out who had done this. The day he brought those people to justice, his healing could begin.

TWENTY-TWO

MOSCOW JANUARY 6, 2000

The bathhouse on ulitsa Petrovka was a favorite recreational spot for gangsters, government officials, and those for whom the distinction was negligible, and Yuri Vostov came there two and often three times a week to relax in the hot tub or sauna, always at noon on the dot, and never without at least two women on his arms.

Vostov considered his visits to be therapeutic as well as sources of profound physical pleasure — and pleasure was something he would not let himself take for granted. This was because of a scare he’d had some years back, when he was approaching his fiftieth birthday. Right around that time, he had found his sexual vigor to be on the wane, and even begun to fear he was becoming impotent after several horrid and ignoble embarrassments between the sheets. Though he had a large roster of young, beautiful women available as bedroom partners, and though each was talented and imaginative in her own way, nothing they did seemed to stimulate him. His encounters with these lovers continued in a rather lackluster, almost perfunctory fashion until one night, under advice from a friend in government, he engaged in a menage a trois — something he’d inexplicably never done before — with a pair of sisters known for their willingness to perform as a team, and gained salvation between their sweating bodies.

He supposed the secret had been in admitting that he was a man who valued quantity above quality. As with food, drink, and possessions, the key to his greatest fulfillment turned out to be getting what he liked all at once.

Today his companions in the sauna were Nadia and Svieta, not the sisters who had originally shown him the path to middle-aged carnal enlightenment — not relatives at all, to his knowledge — but a willing and enthusiastic pair in their own right. An auburn brunette, Nadia was wearing a pair of gold hoop earrings and nothing else. Svieta, a cinnamon redhead, had chosen to accent her nudity with a gold anklet. Both were on their knees in front of Vostov, who had also shed his towel, and was seated on a wooden bench watching their heads bob up and down below his ample stomach, their breasts swimming freely in a pearlescent haze of steam.

That was when a rap on the door suddenly tore Vostov and his companions from their rapture. Nadia’s gold hoop stopped banging against his inner thigh, Svieta’s spread of red hair rose off his lap, and both looked up at him with somewhat baffled expressions on their faces, as if unsure how to proceed.

He frowned, thinking foul thoughts about whoever had ruined the moment.

“What is it?” he barked.

“Prasteeyeh, Mr. Vostov,” the attendant said from the hallway. “There’s a call on your cellular phone—”

“A call? I told you we weren’t to be disturbed!”

“I know, sir, but it’s been beeping constantly and—”

“Shit! Enough!” Vostov stood up, snapped his towel off its hook, and wrapped it around his waist. Then he opened the door a crack and reached an arm out, steam curling around his fleshy elbows. “Hand it to me, will you?”

The attendant passed the phone to him and backed away. Pushing the door shut, Vostov fingered a button on the keypad to accept an incoming call.

“Yes?” he said, lifting the phone to his ear.

“Ah, Yuri. I sincerely hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Vostov recognized Teng Chou’s voice and frowned again.

“You are,” he said.

“Forgive me, then. But I had been trying to reach you at your office for some time.”

Vostov glanced over at Nadia and Svieta, who had taken places on the bench and were speaking to each other in whispers punctuated by low giggles. Was there something funny here that he was missing?

“Never mind,” he said, growing more sharply annoyed. “What is it?”

“I’ve had trouble getting calls through to a certain party of our mutual acquaintance. Indeed, I’m sure that I transferred some of my impatience with him onto you.”

“I told you to forget it,” Vostov said. “Why get me involved, anyway?”

“My friend,” Teng said in a mild tone, enunciating his words carefully in Russian, “you are already quite deeply involved.”

Vostov blanched.

“You know what I mean. I’m not some permanent go-between between the two of you.”

“Of course not. But you did broker the deal.” Teng paused. “Probably the deficient line of communication, shall we say, means nothing. These are hectic days for us all. Still, my backers need some reassurance that they will receive full satisfaction. That matters will proceed as had been discussed.”

Vostov turned away from the two women and dropped his voice a notch.

“Look, I don’t give a damn about them,” he said. “Regardless of what you’re trying to imply, my part in this is done. You want me to call our friend, see what’s going on with him, I’ll do it. But as a favor, not an obligation, you understand?”

Teng paused.

“Yes,” he said finally, his tone still soft. “Although you should remember the search for truth can be steered back on course as easily as it was diverted.”

Vostov’s gut pulled in. These Asians made him edgy with their elliptical ways. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“You need to reexamine your interests, my friend. It would be unfortunate if they suddenly came into collision with my own. The backers you so casually dismiss have a long reach, and an even longer memory for holding grudges.”

Vostov felt his stomach tighten a little more. There was a sharp burning sensation in the center of it. Damn, he thought. His ulcers hadn’t acted up like this for ages.

He tossed a glance over his shoulder at Svieta and Nadia. They were still whispering and tittering and seemed to be paying him no attention.

Desire was a precarious and fickle sort of thing, he reflected. It could pull a man from the filthiest gutter to the top of the world, then push him right over into the abyss.

“I’ll call our friend right now,” he said, and pushed the Disconnect button on the phone.