“Jake, why fake a suicide? Why not just kill Drummond and Radchenko and get rid of their bodies?”
“Because their disappearance would raise too many questions. At least with a murder-suicide there’d be a good reason to cover up what happened.”
“All right, I can buy that, but what was Drummond doing here with Radchenko, and what was he after?”
The scissors gate rattling open signaled the lift’s arrival. Scott put a finger to his lips.
The porter had eyes bleary from vodka and too much TV. He looked about seventy and smelled like the hoteclass="underline" unwashed and musty. He was painfully thin, with arms like sticks and tufts of white hair that stood straight up on his head as if he’d stuck his finger in a light socket.
“What’s your name?” Scott asked.
The old man started at hearing an American speak good Russian. “Nikita Fyodorovich.”
“May I call you Nikita?”
“That’s what my friends call me.” He glanced around the room with the practiced eye of an innkeeper concerned that his establishment maintain its reputation for quality. He looked at the tossed bed and frowned.
“I was told that you were the person who discovered the dead bodies in this room.”
Nikita hesitated. He looked at Abakov. “Tell him,” Abakov said.
“I didn’t know there was another man in the room with the Amerikanski until I broke in.”
“Why did you break in?”
Nikita fingered white beard stubble while he considered. “The American had been in the room all night and now it was the next day. When he didn’t come down to pay for another day’s stay, I got suspicious.
Here, you always pay in advance for each day that you stay.”
“Do you always break down a door when some one doesn’t pay?”
Nikita had terrible breath, and when he exhaled heavily before answering, it washed over Scott. “I went up three, four times and knocked. I called to him. He didn’t answer. I waited until noon before I did it.
You can’t ever let them go a full day without paying.”
“Why didn’t you use a passkey instead of breaking down the door?” Scott said.
Nikita’s eyes flicked to Abakov. “I already told the police everything.”
“Tell me.”
“The chain lock had been set.”
“You mean the American had set it?”
Scott saw a tremor affect Nikita’s blue-veined hands. He linked them behind his back. “Yes, that’s what it was.”
“Why would he do that?”
Nikita lifted a shoulder.
“How did you break down the door?”
“I kicked it in.”
“This new door is pretty thick. Was the old one this thick?”
Nikita shrugged again.
“You didn’t hurt yourself — kicking it in, I mean?”
Nikita looked as if he’d been insulted. “I’m stronger than you think.” He thumped his chest with a fist.
“Did anyone see you do it?”
“No.”
“Weren’t there other guests on this floor? Did they hear you do it? Did they come out of their rooms to see what was going on? It must have made a lot of noise.”
“This isn’t Moscow. They knew to mind their own business.”
“I don’t understand,” Scott said.
“I think what he means, Jake,” said Alex, “is that old habits from the Soviet era die slowly.”
“I see,” Scott said. “After it was all over, who fixed the door?”
“A man who does odd jobs for the hotel. He does carpentry and fixes plumbing and electricity. He’s also an exterminator.”
“When did he fix it?”
“The next day, after the police had finished.”
“And before Colonel Abakov arrived?”
Nikita shrugged again. “We needed to rent the room.”
Scott gave Nikita six hundred rubles for his trouble and watched him depart.
“He’s lying,” Scott said. “He couldn’t have kicked in that door. He couldn’t kick his way out of a paper bag.”
Abakov said nothing. He tested the lock from both sides of the newly installed door with a shiny brass key tied with sturdy twine to a piece of wood with the number 312 burned into it like a brand. Satisfied that it worked properly, he stood with arms folded across his chest and sniffed, perhaps picking up the faint scent of mistaken assumptions.
“Someone kicked the door in and shot them,” Scott said. “Then they told Nikita to make up a story, to get the door fixed, and to keep his mouth shut. Everyone in Murmansk knows to keep their mouths shut. As you heard Alex say, Colonel, old habits from the Soviet era die slowly.”
Abakov looked shaken, as if his investigative skills had suddenly been proven worthless. The vein in his neck started throbbing impatiently. “Are you trying to make a fool of me, Captain? What do you know that you’re not telling me? Who is this person you think killed Admiral Drummond?”
“Alikhan Zakayev.”
Abakov stared at Scott in icy silence.
Before Abakov could speak, Scott said, “Drummond was sent to Russia to find Zakayev. That’s all I can tell you. Zakayev probably knew Drummond was looking for him and he probably knew Drummond was going to meet Radchenko — not to buy sex but something else. Information. That’s why he killed him or had him killed.”
“What kind of information?” Abakov said with a hint of skepticism.
“There’s only one kind of information Radchenko could possibly have had that would interest Frank.
Information that someone, probably Zakayev, was planning to steal fissile materials from Olenya Bay.”
“How would Radchenko, a seaman, have that information?” Abakov said.
“I don’t know, Colonel. Perhaps he overheard something.”
“Are you telling me that if Zakayev had fissile material, he could build a nuclear bomb?” He rounded on Alex. “Is that possible, Dr. Thorne?”
“Theoretically,” she said, “but it would be very difficult to build a bomb. He’d need U-235 or Pu-239.
But recycled naval reactor plutonium is not easily made critical; plus, he’d need a trigger and a pusher of, say, lithium deuteride and—”
“Are any fissile materials missing from Olenya Bay?” Abakov demanded.
“Not so far as I know. But one can never be one hundred-percent sure. There’s a lot of garbage laying around up there and it wouldn’t be hard to steal.”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Scott said. “Alex, did Frank ever talk to you about the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on fissile material and building a nuclear device?”
“Only in the abstract. Sure, we discussed what it would take, the techinical means and all, but we concluded it would be almost impossible to do without resources that terrorists are not likely to have, like metallurgy labs, that sort of thing. Actually, the weapon that it might be possible for them to build is a radiation bomb: a device that would spread radioactive material over a wide area and contaminate people and cities.”
Abakov, stripped of skepticism, said, “How many people would die if radiation was spread over a population center by one of these bombs?”
“Depends how much radiation was released, the prevailing winds, et cetera. Under the right conditions, perhaps thousands.”
“And if he were to target Moscow…?” Abakov said.
“Colonel, the whole idea is pretty much impossible.”
“Dr. Thorne, please believe me when I say that I know Zakayev, and for him nothing is impossible. He has contacts all over the world with men who would not hesitate to kill millions of people.” Abakov’s brusque manner had given way to solicitation. He was clearly shaken by what Alex had said.