The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(27)

With each stop, additional passengers commuting to downtown Moscow boarded, and the car filled with the aroma of aftershave and body odor. At the fourth stop, the young woman in heels departed the train. Jenkins had not expected this. He watched to see if the woman made eye contact with any commuter entering the train, but he did not detect it. He looked behind him. The man remained on the car, on his phone. Jenkins looked at the other passengers, but if the man had texted a message to one of them, Jenkins couldn’t pick out the person.

He swore under his breath. This could complicate things.

After roughly thirty minutes, they arrived at the Kazansky railway station, one of three major hubs in Komsomolskaya Square. Jenkins knew it well. He and Paulina Ponomayova had taken a train from the Leningradsky station to Saint Petersburg while being chased by the FSB.

Petrekova exited. So, too, did the man in the black T-shirt, and presumably an unidentified second tail. Petrekova said goodbye to her commuting friend on the platform and proceeded inside the opulent railway station, crossing marble floors beneath frescoes on the arched ceilings and hanging chandeliers. The hall included multiple businesses, coffee shops and shops with various sundries. Jenkins checked his watch. At 7:48 a.m. Petrekova stepped into an Anteka pharmacy and browsed the aisles. She would stay no more than three minutes.

Jenkins looked again. The man outside the pharmacy had his head tilted up, as if to read the elevated board listing the arriving and departing trains. Jenkins considered the other commuters, then scanned the patrons inside the store, but he could not find the second tail.

With a minute to spare, Jenkins entered the pharmacy and proceeded down the aisle with eye-care products. Petrekova came down the aisle in the opposite direction. Jenkins forced himself not to look at her. He stopped and picked up the first product Petrekova had clicked on the night before.

Visine.

It gets the red out.

Petrekova stopped beside him, picked up contact lens solution to acknowledge she had seen his confirmation. She put the solution in her basket. He noticed her hand shook, despite her polished fa?ade. A good sign. She was afraid. If this had been a setup, she would have nothing to fear.

Jenkins paid for his item at the cash register, turned, and broke off surveillance. He had confirmed Petrekova had a problem and communicated her message had been received. That was the easy part. The harder part would be Petrekova shaking her tail long enough for the two of them to meet someplace and communicate in privacy.

He left the pharmacy and doubled back several times, entering and exiting stores to be certain he was not being followed.

Clean, he went to work on setting up a secure meeting location.





11


Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Building 38, Petrovka Street

Moscow, Russia

Arkhip Mishkin arrived at his desk in the Criminal Investigation Department after spending much of the early morning feeling like a dog chasing his tail and losing ground. Uniformed officers canvassed the establishments and apartments near the Yakimanka Bar, especially those overlooking the alley. No one had heard or had seen anything. Like most Muscovites, they did not want to complicate their lives with a police matter. Arkhip had advised the officers not to mention it could also be a mafiya matter, which would have only exacerbated his predicament.

Upon the decedent’s identification, Arkhip issued a gag order on the medical examiner’s office and instructed that the ME’s preliminary report be expedited and for his eyes only. He had issued a similar order to the Criminal Investigation Department’s Technology Center. The video from the designated CCTV camera outside the bar was to be for Arkhip’s eyes only. Despite these precautions, he suspected the decedent’s identity would leak sooner rather than later.

It had been sooner.

Arkhip wiped his handkerchief across his brow. All the exertion that morning in the muggy Moscow air caused him to perspire profusely.

“You look like you could already use a shower, Mishkin,” Faddei, another criminal investigator, said as Arkhip blew past his desk.

Arkhip smiled but did not slow.

Faddei turned and leaned back in his chair. “I heard you caught a homicide, and so close to your retirement. Maybe someone is trying to screw up that perfect record of yours, eh?”

In his twenty-five years as an investigator, Arkhip had not once left a crime unsolved. Some investigations took longer than others to resolve, but he fancied himself the tortoise more than the hare. Persistence and determination. The thought had crossed his mind, though, that this case, were it not quickly resolved, could delay his forced retirement.

“Anything of interest?” Faddei asked.

“Just a shooting in a bar.” Arkhip pulled out his desk chair and sat.

“You need to learn to slow down, Mishkin. You move like a man getting zapped with a cattle prod. What will you do in retirement when you don’t have a case to chase?”

He had no idea.

Arkhip removed his sport coat and porkpie hat, sat, and picked up the phone, hoping to dissuade Faddei from further questions for which Arkhip had no answers. He didn’t have time to think about his future. Already he was behind. Veteran uniformed officers working the Yakimanka District had found the prostitute, Bojana Chabon, a.k.a. Isabella. Unfortunately, someone else found her first, though it had been made to look otherwise. Arkhip had climbed three flights of stairs in a dilapidated and soon-to-be-demolished apartment building only to find Chabon on a bed, a tube wrapped around her emaciated bicep, and a needle and syringe stuck in the crook of her arm. Having worked narcotics as a young investigator, Arkhip surmised the drug in the syringe had likely been heroin, and likely laced with a deadly poison such as strychnine or fentanyl. He’d know for certain when the labs were completed, though it wouldn’t help his investigation any.