Collateral (Tier One #6)

Moscow, Russia

October 7

1802 Local Time

Tatia Lebedev wrapped the Hermès pashmina around her neck and chin and stepped outside into the cold. The lavender-hued scarf was the only splash of color she wore in today’s otherwise black and grey winter ensemble. She’d seen it in a boutique and asked him to buy it for her . . . not because she wanted it, but as a test. When she saw the astronomical price tag of 80,000 rubles—equivalent to roughly $1,200—she thought he’d balk, but Petrov didn’t even blink. There were rumors in the West that the Russian President was the richest man in the world—richer than Gates or Bezos—rumors that Petrov vigorously and repeatedly pooh-poohed, but she believed it true. Unlike the American entrepreneurs who had earned their fortunes, Petrov had looted his.

He was the world’s richest robber baron, and oh, did he wear it well.

She nuzzled the baby-soft cashmere scarf and inhaled the scent to help mask the stink of diesel exhaust lingering from the late-afternoon Moscow traffic. She spritzed the scarf periodically with perfume, Coco Mademoiselle, and was repeatedly amazed at the power of scent to turn heads.

Men were such primal creatures.

She hailed a taxi and told the driver to take her to the Bulgakov Museum—a humble homage to the twentieth-century Soviet dissident-novelist and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov. The driver, a middle-aged Cossack, tried to chat her up about the weather, and when that didn’t work, shared his interpretation of The Master and Margarita, but she ignored him. She was thoroughly and completely hardened when it came to men. Their advances were like bees at a picnic—unwanted, bumptious, and minatory.

A world without them would be dull but oh so zen . . .

The driver stopped at the curb in front of the museum and she paid him in cash, leaving only a modest tip. She had never been to the museum before. She’d once asked Petrov if he wanted to go, but he’d crinkled his nose at her as if she’d farted in bed.

“Bulgakov was a fool and his prose is garbage,” he’d said and ignored her the rest of the day.

“Your typical bullshit comment,” she murmured, reliving the memory and talking to his ghost. “You haven’t read a word of his work.”

Lost in thought, she walked up to the life-sized bronze statue of Koroviev and Behemoth, the two most famous and entertaining characters from The Master and Margarita. A smile curled her lips at the sculptor’s personification of the devil’s henchmen and Moscow mayhem makers. Just as I imagined, she thought, and let her fingers glide over the back of Behemoth’s left paw where the patina had been rubbed away by the caresses of thousands of tourists and Muscovites.

She didn’t really want to go into the museum, but she had no choice.

Tradecraft dictated this little side trip.

Petrov was a paranoid and jealous man. Certainly, she was being watched.

She paid the admission fee and walked through the exhibit, which co-existed inside an occupied residential apartment building. The museum, nothing more than a single flat, wasn’t much to see—a glimpse of Soviet-era communal living in 1930s Moscow under Stalin’s rule. She stopped to look at Bulgakov’s writing desk and his typewriter. Little else of interest was on display. Dishes and silverware, trinkets and trivets. The most interesting part of the self-guided tour was the graffiti-covered stairwell leading to and from the flat. She paused, step-by-step, to read hand-scrawled quotes and excerpts from all of Bulgakov’s beloved novels. Contrary to what some might think, she understood that the graffiti here was etched in homage, not defilement, by pilgrims to commemorate and celebrate a place of great spiritual courage and brazen Communist-era defiance by one of Russia’s great literary geniuses.

If only I could be so brave.

If only I could be so clever.

As she stepped back outside, a single drifting snowflake landed on the tip of her nose and melted. She glanced up. The clouds looked bloated and pregnant. By midnight, Moscow would be covered in snow. She retrieved a charcoal-colored cashmere beret from her coat pocket and pulled it down over her bleached-blond hair. Then, shoving her hands deep in her pockets, she turned right and walked to Café Tchaikovsky, the coffee house that Arkady Zhukov had suggested she visit on a Thursday afternoon after work when she was ready.

Today was a Thursday afternoon . . .

Upon stepping inside, her first observation was that Café Tchaikovsky was not a coffee shop, but rather a posh full-service eatery and patisserie catering to the dinner crowds in Moscow’s theater district. The establishment was cavernous inside, with seating on two stories and balcony dining around a central iris that offered views of the restaurant below.

“Do you have a reservation?” the hostess said in greeting.

“No,” Tatia said, flashing the woman a warm smile. “I’m just here for a coffee.”

“Then you’ve certainly come to the right place.”

“Is Svetlana working today, per chance?” she asked, scanning the bar and barista stations for a candidate matching her imagined semblance of Arkady’s point of contact.

“I’m Svetlana,” the hostess said, her demeanor turning suddenly collegial and warm. “I’m working the front today.”

“Oh,” she said, pausing to run a quick calculus in her head about what to say next. “I’m a tea drinker, you see, and a friend of mine bragged that of all baristas in Moscow, you were the best, and surely the one who could convert me to coffee.”

Svetlana nodded and smiled. “Your friend is too kind. I’ll tell you what, if you have the time to sit and relax, I could seat you upstairs and then duck behind the bar to make you something special. How does that sound?”

“Wonderful,” Tatia replied, slipping off her beret and stuffing it into her coat pocket.

“Follow me,” the hostess said, leading her to a flight of stairs.

But instead of seating her on the second level, Svetlana walked her past all the vacant booths and tables to the back of the restaurant. Glancing over her shoulder, she led Tatia past a server’s station, around a wood-paneled wall, into a short corridor with the men’s and women’s restrooms. Using a key from her pocket, Svetlana unlocked and opened a third door, located between the bathroom doors with a placard beside it that read housekeeping supplies in Russian.

Tatia glanced at the woman, her eyes asking the question.

“Hurry,” was all Svetlana said before ushering her across the threshold. “Proceed until you reach the next door. Then knock five times.”

“Okay,” she said, but the woman had already shut and locked the door behind her.

Tatia took a deep, calming breath, her nerves finally starting to get the better of her. Also, she was beginning to get warm. She undid her pashmina from her neck, let the ends of the scarf fall limp on each side of her chest, then unbuttoned her winter coat. At the far end of the short hallway, which could not be more than five meters long, she noticed a dome-mounted video camera on the ceiling. She stared at it, digesting the fact that she was being recorded right now, here in this place.

“Shit,” she muttered through an exhale. “Now, he has leverage on me.”

Steeling herself, she walked down the little hallway, and when she reached the end, knocked five times on the door. When the door opened, she was immediately greeted by the sound of music—a symphony orchestra playing, and playing beautifully.

Of course, she thought, I’m in Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.

Café Tchaikovsky abutted the Concert Hall, and she’d just been ushered through a private and managed accessway. She stepped across the threshold and was greeted by a man dressed in an usher’s uniform.

“This way, please,” he said and bid her to follow him.

Singing joined the symphony, baritones and sopranos in beautiful concert and yet somehow challenging each other for dominance.

“Requiem,” she whispered, the music causing gooseflesh to stand up on her arms.

“That’s correct,” her guide answered without turning.

The music and voices grew louder as he escorted her into the auditorium and around the curving perimeter on the uppermost level. She stared down from the balcony, over the railing and across the sloping concert hall full of empty seats.

“Dress rehearsal?” she asked, watching the musicians and choir perform Mozart’s requiem mass in D minor, composed and unfinished in the year of his death, 1791.

He nodded and led her all the way around to the other side of the hall to another locked door, which he opened, ushered her through, then closed and locked behind her. Although she’d never been in such a room, she recognized where and what it was—the chamber behind the concert hall’s iconic pipe organ. Standing alone, waiting for her, was Arkady Zhukov.

“Hello, Tatia,” he said with a father’s smile.

“An unusual choice of venue,” she said, her gaze going from him to the towering silver pipes and back again.

“We needed a place to talk where nobody can listen,” he said and took a seat on one of two folding plastic chairs, while gesturing for her to do the same. She complied, but not before repositioning the vacant chair at a more comfortable distance. No need to get so cozy so quickly.

When he said nothing, she took the reins. “They’re looking for you.”

“I know,” he said with an inscrutable smile—born not of arrogance or indifference, but something else. “But I’m very good at hiding.”

“And right under their noses . . . very bold.”

“They know most of my tricks, but not all of them.” After a pause, he said, “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

She nodded. “I wasn’t sure, either, but here I am.”

“Why did you come?” he asked plainly.

This question made her very, very happy. No games, no bullshit, just straight and to the point. “Because I hate him.”

“Interesting,” he said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Is it the man you hate, or what he represents?”

“Both,” she said. “There is no joy in him. No love. His greatest passions are chaos and inuring the dependency of others. He’s bad for Russia, and he’s bad for the world.”

Arkady didn’t say anything for a long moment, which made her uncomfortable, but she resisted the urge to fill the silence.

“My father was a poet. Unpublished, but not because of lack of talent. In the years since his death, I’ve committed his entire body of work to memory, and now he lives here,” he said, pressing his right hand to his heart.

“Do you have a favorite poem?” she asked, not sure how to best manage his non sequitur but certain he had a point to make.

“Too many favorites, but what you said reminds me of a verse in a particularly poignant poem he wrote about Stalin.”

“I would like to hear it.”

He nodded, closed his eyes, and said:

“To burn a man, to burn a book,

Extinguish hope where all do look.

Eyes right, eyes right, soldiers all

Might the Godless King never fall.”

“‘Soldiers all,’” she echoed with a wan smile. “Yes, I think so.”

“Is that why you’re here, to enlist in my army?”

“Now that I know the truth of him, how can I stand by and do nothing?” Then, plucking one of the graffiti-scrawled quotes she’d seen in the stairway at the museum, she said, “After all, cowardice is the most terrible of vices.”

His face lit up at this, and he met her gaze. “On this, it seems we both agree. So, tell me, Tatia, are you auditioning for Margarita in this dark satire we’re writing?”

“No,” she said, “I’m already playing the part.”

Her answer seemed to please him immensely, because he smiled broadly, sat up, and slapped his knee. “Okay, then.”

“Okay, what?”

“We try and see where it goes.”

She screwed up her face at him. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“What did you expect?”

“Something formal. A promise, detailed instructions, a plan . . . something official.”

He laughed at this. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but that’s not how it works, my dear. I’m still gathering my pieces. The board is not set; the game hasn’t started.”

“I think you’re mistaken, old man,” she said with a pitying smile. “Petrov is already playing.”

“No,” he said, getting to his feet. “That match is already over. We’re starting a new game. Someone will contact you when I’m ready to make the first move.”

“Trusting you could get me killed,” she said, not liking the amorphous nature of the alliance they’d just forged.

“I can say the same in reverse. That’s what makes this business so uncomfortable,” he said. “And thrilling.”

In the background, the choir and symphony stopped playing, and the sudden silence set her nerves on fire. “What the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“The hardest thing imaginable,” he said, stepping close to give her a kiss on the right cheek. “Convince Petrov this conversation never happened.”