“We’re in a meeting,” Dorothy said. “Is there a problem?”
“I forgot to take this out of the printer.” She held up a large glossy color photograph. It was an enlargement of the photograph from Alexa’s iPhone of her kidnapper’s tattoo.
“Thank you,” Dorothy said, taking it from her.
“I think I know what it is,” Jillian said.
“That’s an owl,” I said. “But thanks anyway.”
Then she held up something else, which she’d been holding in her other hand. A slim white paperback. On the front cover was a black-and-white line drawing of an owl.
It was identical to the owl tattoo in the photo.
“What’s that?” I said.
“It’s a book of tattoos my brother found?”
She handed me the book. It was titled Criminal Tattoos of Russia.
“Dorothy,” I said. “What time is it in Russia right now?”
64.
One of my best sources in Russia was a former KGB major general. Anatoly Vasilenko was a whippet-thin man in his late sixties with an aquiline profile and the demeanor of a Cambridge don. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, he was already cashing in on his access and connections.
I couldn’t say I liked him very much—he was one of the most mercenary men I’d ever met—but he could be affable and charming, and he did have an amazing Rolodex. For the right price he could get you almost any piece of intelligence you wanted.
Tolya always knew who to call, who to bribe, and who to throw a scare into. If a client of mine suspected the local manager of their Moscow plant was embezzling, Tolya could take care of the problem with one quick phone call. He’d have the guy hauled in and interrogated and so terrified he’d be scared to steal a paper clip from his own desk.
I reached him at dinner. From the background noise I could tell he wasn’t at home.
“Have I never taken you to Turandot, Nicholas?” he said. “Hold on, let me move someplace quieter.”
“Twice,” I said. “Shark-fin soup, I think.”
Turandot was a restaurant a few blocks from the Kremlin, on Tverskoy Boulevard, which was the favored dining spot of oligarchs and criminals and high government officials (many of them all three). It was a vast gilded reproduction of a Baroque palace with a Venetian marble courtyard and statues of Roman gods and Aubusson tapestries and an enormous crystal chandelier. Burly security guards gathered out front to smoke and keep a watch over their employers’ Bentleys.
When he got back on the phone, the background clamor gone, he said, “There, that’s much better. Nothing worse than a table full of drunken Tatars.” His English was better than that of most Americans. I didn’t know where he’d acquired his plummy British accent, unless they taught it at KGB school. “That’s quite a picture you sent.”
“Tell me.”
“That tattoo? It’s Sova.”
“Who?”
“Not ‘who.’ Sova is—well, sova means owl, of course. It’s a criminal gang, you might say.”
“Russian mafia?”
“Mafia? No, nothing that organized,” he said. “Sova is more like a loose confederation of men who’ve all done time at the same prison.”
“Which one?”
“Prison Number One, in Kopeisk. Quite the nasty place.”
“Do you have a list of all known Sova members?”
“Of all Sova members?” He gave a low chortle. “If only I had such a list. I would be either very rich or very dead.”
“You must have some names.”
“Why is this of interest to you?”
I told him.
Then he said, “This is not a good situation for you. Or for your client’s daughter, more to the point.”
“Why’s that?”
“These are very bad people, Nicholas. Hardened criminals of the very worst sort.”
“So I understand.”
“No, I’m not so sure you do. They don’t operate by normal rules. They’re … untroubled, shall we say, by conventional standards of morality.”
“How bad?”
“I think you had a very unpleasant incident in the States not so long ago. Do you remember a brutal home invasion in Connecticut?”
He pronounced the hard C in the middle of “Connecticut.” A rare slip.
“Not offhand.”
“Oh, dear. Some wealthy bedroom community in Connecticut—Darien, maybe? Truly a nightmare. A doctor and his wife and three daughters were at home one night when a couple of burglars broke in. They beat the doctor with a baseball bat, tied him up, and tossed him down the basement stairs. Then they tied the girls to their beds and proceeded to rape them for seven hours. After which, they poured gasoline on the women and lit them afire—”
“All right,” I said, unable to hear any more. “These were Sova members?”