The Woods

The mouth closed. I had to hand it to Muse’s investigating skills. She really was incredible.

“I didn’t do anything illegal,” he said.

“That’s debatable, but I’m not in the mood right now. Who wrote the journal?”

“I don’t know. They gave me the pages, told me to feed it to her slowly.”

“And did they tell you how they got that information?”

“No.”

“No idea?”

“They said they had sources. Look, they knew everything about me. They knew everything about Lucy. But they wanted you, pal. That’s all they cared about. Anything I could get her to say about Paul Copeland—that was their main concern. They think maybe you’re a killer.”

“No, they don’t, Lonnie. They think maybe you’re an idiot who can muddy up my name.”

Perplexed. Lonnie worked very hard on looking perplexed. He looked at Lucy. “I’m really sorry. I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that.”

“Do me a favor, Lonnie,” she said. “Just get the hell out of my face.”

CHAPTER 30

ALEXANDER “SOSH” SIEKIERKY STOOD ALONE IN HIS PENThouse.

Man gets used to his environment. That was how it was. He was getting comfortable. Too comfortable for a man with his beginnings. This lifestyle was now the expected. He wondered if he was still as tough as he once was, if he could still walk into those dens, those lairs, and lay waste without fear. The answer, he was certain, was no. It wasn’t age that had weakened him. It was comfort.

As a young child, Sosh’s family had gotten ensnared in the horrible siege of Leningrad. The Nazis surrounded the city and caused unspeakable suffering. Sosh had turned five on October 21, 1941, a month after the blockade began. He would turn six and seven with the siege still on. In January of 1942, with rations set at a quarter pound of bread a day, Sosh’s brother, Gavrel, age twelve, and his sister, Aline, age eight, died of starvation. Sosh survived eating stray animals. Cats mostly. People hear the stories, but they can’t fathom the terror, the agony. You are powerless. You just take it.

But even that, even that horror—you get used to it. Like comfort, suffering can become the norm.

Sosh remembered when he first came to the USA. You could buy food anywhere. There were no long lines. There were no shortages. He remembered buying a chicken. He kept it in his freezer. He couldn’t believe it. A chicken. He would wake up late at night in a cold sweat. He would run to the freezer and open it up and just stare at the chicken and feel safe.

He still did that.

Most of his old Soviet colleagues missed the old days. They missed the power. A few had returned to the old country, but most had stayed. They were bitter men. Sosh hired some of his old colleagues because he trusted them and wanted to help. They had history. And when times were hard and his old KGB friends were feeling particularly sorry for themselves, Sosh knew that they too opened their refrigerators and marveled at how far they’d come.

You don’t worry about happiness and fulfillment when you’re starving.

It is good to remember that.

You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships. You have no idea how lucky you are. You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones, to sit by hopelessly while someone you love, someone otherwise young and healthy slowly dies, and a part of you, some horrible instinctive part of you, is almost happy because now you will get a bite-and-a-half-size sliver of bread today instead of just a bite size.

Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don’t need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so-called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all.

You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.

The message had come in on his computer.

That was how it worked nowadays. Not by phone, not in person. Computers. E-mails. It was so easy to communicate that way and not be traced. He wondered how the old Soviet regime would have handled the Internet. Controlling information had been such a large part of what they did. But how do you control it with something like the Internet? Or maybe it wasn’t that big of a difference. In the end, the way you rounded up your enemies was through leaks. People talked. People sold one another out. People betrayed their neighbors and loved ones. Sometimes for a hunk of bread. Sometimes for a ticket to freedom. It all depended on how hungry you were.

Sosh read the message again. It was short and simple and Sosh wasn’t sure what to do about it. They had a phone number. They had an address. But it was the first line of the e-mail that he kept coming back to. So simply stated.

He read it again:

WE FOUND HER.

And now he wondered what he should do about it.

I put a call in to Muse. “Can you find Cingle Shaker for me?”

“I guess. Why, what’s up?”

“I want to ask her some questions about how MVD works.”

“I’m on it.”

I hung up and turned back to Lucy. She was still looking out the window.

“You okay?”

“I trusted him.”

I was going to say I’m sorry or something equally hackneyed, but I decided to keep it to myself.

“You were right,” she said.

“About?”

“Lonnie Berger was probably my closest friend. I trusted him more than anyone. Well, except for Ira, who’s got one arm locked in the straitjacket as it is.”

I tried to smile.

“By the way, how’s my self-pity act? Pretty attractive, right?”

“Actually,” I said, “it is.”

She turned away from the window and looked at me.

“Are we going to try again, Cope? I mean, after this is all done and we figure out what happened to your sister. Are we going back to our lives—or are we going to try to see what could happen here?”

“I love when you beat around the bush.”

Lucy wasn’t smiling.

“Yeah,” I said. “I want to try.”

“Good answer. Very good.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t always want to be the one risking my heart.”

“You’re not,” I said. “I’m there too.”

“So who killed Margot and Doug?” she asked.