Germany to London. Apparently another man who had been at the dinner where Surkov was poisoned, now labeled as one of the suspected killers, had dribbled radioactivity everywhere he went. This man was hospitalized, according to the television, in Moscow due to radiation poisoning. A third man, in London, claimed he, too, was ill, but he wasn’t in the hospital. British, German and Russian politicians were in a tizzy.
Meanwhile, Grafton and I flew back to the States. He wanted to confer with his bosses, and I wanted to find out if any of my female acquaintances still remembered me.
The day after Surkov died, I was in Grafton’s office watching some of the latest on this story on television. When the talking head went on to another story, Grafton used the remote to kill the idiot beast.
“Pretty amazing,” I muttered.
“A novelist would have rejected a scenario like that,” Grafton mused, “as too far-fetched. A deathbed accusation, the president of Russia, an alpha-radiation source emitting isotopes of helium nuclei..” Obviously, Grafton knew a little more about nuclear radiation than the average Joe. And he knew more than I did.
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why the Russians used a radioactive isotope to pop this dude when the chemists have a cornucopia of undetectable poisons.”
“There is no such thing as undetectable,” Grafton said, sighing, “if you have the time and equipment to run enough experiments. Still, the Brits claim they wouldn’t have tested for plutonium poisoning if it weren’t for a medical-student prodigy working the intake desk, who suggested it as a possibility.” He glanced at his watch and stood. “I have a five o’clock meet downtown. I would appreciate it if you would come along.”
‘Sure,” I said. Although Grafton phrased his order like a request, it was indubitably an order, and I was smart enough to know it.
As he checked his safe and burn-basket and made sure his desk was locked, I asked who we were meeting.
“A Russian.”
“Oleg Tchernychenko?”
“No. I talked to him a while ago on the telephone. He is stunned and devastated, he said. He also claims that the Russian government killed Surkov.”
“Why?”
“He had a dozen reasons.” Grafton made a gesture with his hands.
“This guy we’re meeting — what’s he want to talk about?”
“My guess is a murder in London. Want to lay a little wager?”
I didn’t. Betting against Jake Grafton was a sure way to lose money.
Washington, D.C., in winter is a miserable place. It’s too warm to snow and too cold to be pleasant. The wet, chilly wind that blows most days cuts like a knife. I trudged along beside Grafton after the guy driving the agency heap let us off on the Mall near the Washington Monument. The only people out there were hard-core runners in Lycra and spandex, drug addicts in the various stages of euphoria or withdrawal, winos and a few screwballs from Iowa, snapping away with cameras. The people from Iowa actually thought the weather was warm, but being from California, I knew different.
“So how are you and Sarah getting along these days?” Grafton asked, for want of anything better to talk about. Sarah Houston lived with me for a while after our adventure in Paris.
“We broke up again. She moved out.”
“Ahh,” he said, as if my revelation explained the state of the world. He asked no more questions.
A wino mining a trash can glanced at us as we walked by but said nothing. Probably figured the chances of wheedling change out of us were too slim to be worth the air. We passed the Smithsonian castle and were nearing the Hirshhorn when we passed another wino sitting against a tree. He made eye contact with Grafton and nodded.
We went into the Hirshhorn, Grafton leading and me following like a good dance partner, and headed for the Sculpture Garden. A uniformed guard standing at the entrance told the couple in front of us that the garden was closed, then let Grafton walk on by with me in tow. The woman started to get nasty — another unhappy taxpayer — but I heard the guard tell her we were employees of the gallery.
The man sitting in front of a huge sculpture looking it over stood as we approached. He was tall and spare, wearing a dark suit and muted tie. “Good morning, Jake,” the man said.
Grafton gestured to me. “Tommy Carmellini, Janos Ilin.” He sat down as Ilin and I shook hands. Ilin seated himself on the bench beside Grafton, and I took a seat on a nearby bench.
“You’re clean,” Grafton said. The winos on the Mall, the guards in the gallery — all these people were making sure neither Ilin nor Grafton was followed to this meet. If there had been any problem, someone would have called Grafton on his cell phone. In the old days they would have put a chalk mark on a wall, but technological man was marching right along to the Happy Ever After.
“Very good.” Ilin nodded once. He was still eyeing me. “I have heard of you, Mr. Carmellini.” He didn’t have much of an accent, so perhaps that nuance I heard was irony.
“And I’ve heard of you,” I said brightly, as if he had just released a new album of highbrow jazz. “A mutual acquaintance mentioned your name once, a couple of years ago.”
“Anna Modin.”
I nodded. I wasn’t going to mention her name, but if he wished to, that was his business. Ilin was, I knew, a senior officer in the Russian foreign intelligence service, the SVR — Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki — the bureaucratic successor to the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. His rank, as I recall, was the equivalent of a lieutenant general.
Ilin turned to Grafton, giving him all his attention. “Thank you for coming, Admiral. This Surkov killing — we have to talk.”
So Grafton was right, as usual.
“The timing couldn’t have been worse,” Ilin remarked.
“People never die when you want them to,” Grafton said.
If you’re like me, you know how true that is. Through the years there’d been a few of my bosses that I fervently wished would wake up dead, but they came to the office regardless.
“We didn’t have him killed,” Ilin said flatly.
“Who is we?”
“Putin, the service, the Russian government.”
Grafton made a rude noise. “Years ago I warned you about taking blanket oaths. You’re still doing it. I know you are not naive enough to believe everything you are told by the people in Moscow. Neither am I.”
Ilin lowered his head in acknowledgment of the point. “Let me re-phrase my remark. I do not believe anyone in Moscow ordered or arranged or participated in the murder of Alexander Surkov. I believe the evidence was planted so that it would look as if someone in Moscow were guilty. Surkov, I believe, was picked for assassination because he had a history of conflict with powerful people, and it would be easy for the British, the Germans and the Americans to believe that he had been murdered for revenge. Indeed, his death has cast a pall over Russia’s relations with all three of those nations, and others besides. That is, I believe, precisely why he was murdered. He was sacrificed.”
“By whom?” Jake Grafton said. I was watching his face, and I couldn’t tell if he believed Ilin or not.
“That I don’t know,” Ilin countered. “I have my theories, but no facts. You can form your own.” I see.
“We need your help on this, Admiral. My service has its resources, and I have a few of my own, but they are not enough. We are tainted. We need you to use your resources to investigate this crime and find the identity of the culprit.”
“Don’t tell me you want me to send Carmellini to question Russian officials.”
“That would do no good. They know nothing. The answer is elsewhere in Europe. Someone at that table in Mayfair, or one of the kitchen staff, doctored Surkov’s food or drink with polonium. Someone supplied it to the killer. Someone probably paid the killer. That is the trail you must follow.”
“Why polonium?”
“Indeed,” Ilin muttered. “Why?”
They talked for another ten minutes about how America might help investigate this crime, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I didn’t believe a word Ilin had said. The Russians were a slimy lot. The murder of one little man who pissed off someone powerful wouldn’t even make the back pages of the Russian newspapers. Heck, Stalin had
