She was gorgeous. Almost my height in three-inch heels, slim but with rolling curves that challenged the tailored navy blue skirt suit and white shirt she was in, and the wickedest combo of lips and blue eyes I’d ever seen, the lot topped by perfectly coiffed light auburn hair that fittingly veered more toward fiery red than stately brown. I flicked a glance at my newly single partner and could just visualize the wet ’n’ wild clips that were unspooling in his lecherous mind. In this instance, it was hard to blame him. Any man would have had a hard time keeping them in check.
Ever the perfect gentleman, I told her, “I’m sorry for your loss. Did you know him?”
“Not really,” she replied. “I met him briefly at some official functions, but our duties didn’t really intersect.”
She spoke with the barest hint of a Slavic accent. And as if she needed it, her voice only made her more attractive.
Focus.
“Who was he?”
“Fyodor Yakovlev. He was Third Secretary for Maritime Affairs at the consulate here.”
Maritime Affairs. I hadn’t come across that one yet.
I asked her, “And you? You said your duties didn’t intersect.”
She fished a card out from an inside pocket of her jacket and handed it to me. I read the small letters under her name out loud. “‘Counselor for Public Affairs.’”
Well, at least it didn’t say “attaché.”
I left the words hanging there and looked up from the card. Our eyes met and I just gave her a small, knowing grin. She obviously read me and my suspicions, but didn’t seem fazed by it at all. It was a dance I’d danced before with, among others, Chinese, French, and Israeli “diplomats.” But most of all, it was the Russians who never stopped hogging that particular ballroom.
The one for spies.
4
Even with the Berlin Wall down and the Evil Empire a relic of the past, we were still playing the same old games.
Russia was no longer the USSR, the head honchos of the KGB and their organized-crime kingpin partners now owned the country outright instead of just controlling its people, and Communism was lying in some shallow grave while a wildly perverted version of capitalism was dancing the kalinka on it. But that didn’t mean we were friends. Even though we no longer had any ideological differences, we still pretty much hated each other’s guts, and we both spent a lot of time and resources snooping on each other.
We had spies over there; they had spies over here. Mostly, the ones the Russians shipped our way were pretty much of the classic kind: some would be here under “official cover,” meaning they’d have some mundane job at their embassy or consulate, typically an attaché, secretary, or counselor; others, the more adventurous ones, would be here under “non-official cover”-the ones we call “NOCs”-meaning they didn’t have a government job as a cover and, as such, they didn’t enjoy the associated diplomatic immunity if they were caught. And given the stiff penalties sometimes handed out on espionage charges-execution, for one-being an NOC was by far the more hazardous of the two.
Then there was the new breed of “penetration agents,” like Anna Chapman and her bumbling crew of social butterflies who we nabbed and expelled a few years ago. The media had giggled at the notion of a glamorous redhead and her Facebook-addicted posse posing any kind of threat to our great nation. The truth was, a Russian spy in our midst was far more likely to have a degree from NYU, start out as an intern somewhere, have an affair with someone who had an important position in an area of interest to the Kremlin-finance, industry, politics, media, among others-and end up working in some target institution and sending back insider knowledge about that sector.
It was no longer about destroying each other militarily. It was now all about making money and getting the upper hand economically. And if a terrorist attack or a war in another country helped to distract, weaken, and bankrupt us while messing us up as a society-all the better.
We had a dead third secretary downstairs and a counselor here to assist us in the investigation.
More old-school. But potentially nastier.
I turned and took in the rest of the room. There was a sofa, well used and floral patterned, and a couple of plain armchairs on either side. There was a big old TV set facing them, and massive bookshelves all along one of the side walls. The shelves were crammed with books and held what looked like a pretty elaborate stereo system, with two beefy speakers sitting on opposite ends of the top shelves. There was the broken coffee table I noticed earlier. And there was the large window that gave onto the street. Its glass was mostly gone, and the timber frame was cracked and splintered.
“So where are we with this?” I asked the three of them, pointing at the damage. “What do we know? This wasn’t Yakovlev’s place, right?”
“No,” Giordano answered. He handed me another framed photo. It was of the same couple as the picture in the hallway, only this time they were on vacation somewhere sunny. “You’re looking at Leonid Sokolov and his wife, Daphne. They live here.”
“So where are they?”
“Well, they ain’t here, are they?” Adams pitched in.
His tone wasn’t particularly friendly. Not that I cared. But I didn’t have much patience for juvenile sulking or for a jurisdictional pissing contest. I’d seen it played out in too many bad movies to ever want to suffer through it in real life.
Giordano stepped back in. “Sokolov teaches science at Flushing High. He didn’t show up at work this morning.”
“And his wife?”
“She’s a nurse at Mount Sinai. She was on the night shift last night, came off work at seven.”
“No sign of her, either?” Aparo asked.
Giordano shook his head. “Nope. We had a look around the place. Toothbrushes in the bathroom, bed’s been slept in, reading glasses still on the night table. There’s a couple of empty suitcases tucked away in the hall closet where you’d expect them. The toaster’s got a couple of slices of bread in it. Doesn’t look like they’re on a trip.”
I nodded and, avoiding the debris on the carpet, stepped over to the window. I looked down. The tent was directly below us. Then I looked across the street. It might have been helpful if there had been similar buildings across from where I was standing. Maybe someone there would have seen something. But there was only a single-story row of shops. Great open view for the Sokolovs and their neighbors. Not so great for us.
“Anyone hear or see anything useful? Neighbors, people out on the street?”
Zombanakis said, “We’ve got uniforms and detectives out canvassing, but nothing so far.”
I turned to Larisa. “So why was Yakovlev here? What was he doing?”
“I don’t know. I spoke to the first secretary for Maritime Affairs-his direct boss. As far as he knows, Yakovlev had no official business here.”
“Did Yakovlev know the Sokolovs?”
“Not that we know of,” she replied. “But we need to talk to people who knew him.”
“Was he married?” Aparo asked. “Any next of kin we should be talking to?”
“He was single,” she replied. “Any relatives he has are back in Russia.”
“Girlfriend?” Aparo pressed on. “Boyfriend? Sponsor?”