Dead Man's Rule (16 page)

The FBI was investigating the attack on Sergei because of the possibility that it was connected to organized crime. Several of his current investigations were at least indirectly related to the
Organizatsiya
. The fact that the victim was a well-regarded former FBI agent didn’t hurt either. They had established him as a “source,” which made it possible for him to participate in the investigation to a certain degree.

As one of the few Russian speakers in the Bureau’s Chicago office, Elena had been assigned to investigate. Unfortunately, she wasn’t having much luck. She looked up from the computer. “We’ve run both the fingerprint and the DNA profile through our database and all the police databases. No hits.”

“Have you tried Interpol?”

“Of course. We’re also working with our legats in Moscow, though that’s taking longer.”

Sergei wasn’t surprised. The Russian police records weren’t as thoroughly computerized as the FBI’s. Many of them needed to be checked by hand, which could take a long time. Also, the agents working in the legal attaché’s office—known as legats—needed to work through local officials, which would take even more time. Understanding the reason for the delay didn’t make it any less nerve racking, though. Somewhere out there was a man who had wanted to kill him
before
he had blown off one of the man’s fingers. Now that assassin was even more motivated and was probably somewhere planning his revenge even as Sergei sat talking to Elena.

Sergei felt extremely vulnerable and jittery—the perspective of a crime victim was new to him. Elena’s eyes flickered down to his lap for an instant, and he realized that he was fidgeting with his pen. He put it down and reflexively covered his fear by making a small joke. “Russians,” he said derisively, shaking his head with a mischievous smile.

Elena smiled back. “I know. My life would be so much easier if they could shoot as well in the dark in their apartments as they can at a shooting range.”

Sergei laughed. “Mine too.” He remembered the wickedly long knife he had found lying on his bedroom floor. “Say, have you asked the Russians to check their military records for this guy?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think he might be a vet?”

Sergei nodded. “That knife I shot out of his hand looked custom made, but it was the same pattern as the knives the
Spetsnaz
commandos use. Maybe he bought it without knowing what it was, but maybe he was trained with that kind of knife and bought it because he knew how to fight with it.”

“Could be,” she acknowledged. As she typed, a new wave of unease roiled Sergei’s stomach. The possible involvement of criminals with
Spetsnaz
training added a higher level of seriousness to the investigation. They were elite commandos equally skilled in combat and infiltrating enemy—meaning American—society. This would make them excellent hit men, couriers, enforcers, and so on. They would be a most unwelcome addition to Chicago’s underworld.

At the end of his opening statement, Ben left the blowup of the minutes on the easel. This was a standard lawyer’s ploy that gave Anthony Simeon two choices: he could either take the exhibit down—which would make him look like he was afraid of it—or he could leave it up to distract the judge during his opening. Either way, Ben would gain a small tactical advantage.

“Good morning, Your Honor,” Simeon said, setting his notes on the podium before he stepped in front of it. “I have a prepared opening statement, of course, but before I give it I would like to take just a few minutes to respond to Mr. Corbin’s remarks.” He gestured to the minutes. “This document on which Mr. Corbin lays such great weight perfectly summarizes the central flaw in his case: he has theories, but no evidence to support them. Lawsuits can only be won with evidence, not allegations—and this document is not evidence. According to Mr. Corbin’s own admission, he received it one day in the mail, in a blank envelope. He does not know who sent it to him, where the original is, or whether it is genuine or a forgery. We heard him speculate as to the answers he would like to each of these questions, and indeed we can each speculate to our own tastes. But the law does not value speculations—only facts.

“What do the facts show here? They show that Mikhail Ivanovsky gave $5,000 to Nikolai Zinoviev, nothing more. Was it a loan? Was it a gift? Was it the purchase price for some thing or service? It could have been any of those or none of them. We do not know.

“What we
do
know is that the evidence will establish no link between that money and the contents of the safe-deposit box that Mr. Zinoviev inherited from his brother. Tragically, Mr. Zinoviev is not here to tell us his side of the story on this point. As a result, Dr. Ivanovsky is barred from telling his side, a point Mr. Corbin ignored in his opening.”

“Objection, argument,” said Ben.

“Sustained.”

“Thank you,” said Simeon in his rich, mellifluous voice. “Once we strip away the plaintiff’s inadmissible story”—he gestured to Dr. Ivanovsky—“his attorney’s skillful speculations”—he gestured to Ben—“and this foundationless document”—he gestured to the minutes on the easel—“what are we left with?” He walked over to the easel, turned the blowup around, and set it back in its place with the blank reverse side exposed. He pointed to it again. “Nothing.”

Elk Grove Village is home to a large collection of light-industrial parks. Low one- and two-story buildings cluster together along small streets in the same way that houses line the roads of residential subdivisions. Much of the town lies under the flight paths of O’Hare Airport, which depresses rents and property values, particularly close to the airport.

At the end of one cul-de-sac less than two miles west of O’Hare, a dilapidated building stood between two vacant structures that were slowly being shaken into ruins by the continual roar of jets taking off and landing. The building had a freshly painted black-and-white sign in front that said “Illinois Industries,” though no Illinoisans worked there and what went on inside could hardly be considered industry.

In the back of the building, a row of cots lined a quiet room that served as a combination barracks and hospital. Only one of the cots was now occupied. On it lay General Elbek Shishani, the man who had been tailing Sergei Spassky and who was now recuperating from surgery to repair the damage done to his left arm by Sergei’s bullets. One shot had removed a finger from his right hand. Another had torn his triceps nearly in half, three inches above the elbow, and his arm would have been crippled permanently without a prompt operation to sew the muscle back together. Fortunately, they had recruited a skilled medic for this mission, one who had extensive experience treating bullet wounds caused by Russians.

The surgery had gone well and Elbek was expected to recover fully, though he would need to learn to hold a handgun with only four fingers. But that would have to wait. He would be bedridden for the next several days with little to do but think. And remember.

The road that had led him to Elk Grove Village had started almost thirty years ago on the other side of the world. Elbek had been a promising young officer in the
Spetsnaz
, one of the few non-Russians groomed for advancement. In the early 1980s, advancement for a commando had meant a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

He had heard enough stories from returning veterans not to believe the version of the war told by
Pravda
and the TV news. But nothing had prepared him for the reality he’d found. The Red Army and their Afghan allies controlled the cities and most of the larger towns. The privileged few welcomed them as protectors, but the wretchedly poor masses watched them with dark, stony eyes wherever they went. The main roads were safe during daylight hours, as long as they traveled in well-armed convoys, checked continually for mines, and avoided narrow gorges and other obvious ambush locations.

After nightfall, the countryside belonged to the
dukhs
, or “spirits,” Soviet slang for the Afghan resistance fighters. Cloaked in darkness, they could creep close enough to Soviet and government strongholds to hammer them with hit-and-run mortar attacks. If the Soviets sent out retaliatory strikes, they found nothing but freshly laid mines and—if they strayed too far from their camps—snipers and deadly ambushes.

In the early years of the war, the Soviets had responded to
dukh
raids with massive artillery barrages and bombing raids of suspected rebel positions, but the
dukhs
had generally vanished by the time the bombers or lumbering howitzers could pound their positions. All this tactic had accomplished was the expenditure of hundreds of tons of ordnance and the annihilation of any Afghan civilians in the target area.

So what to do? The Soviet answer was to send in men like Elbek: highly trained soldiers who could operate alone or in small bands and take the fight to the guerrillas in their caves and mountain camps.

It was a brutal war. Elbek had quickly learned not to show mercy to prisoners, and to expect none if he was captured. He’d also learned that there was no such thing as an “innocent civilian.” The old arthritic man sitting outside his hut might well be hiding
dukhs
inside. The frightened young mother and children cowering by the road would likely be out in the fields after an ambush, looking for wounded Soviets to torture and kill.

Afghanistan made Elbek very businesslike about the administration of pain and death. If placing burning coals in the wounds of an injured fighter would make him reveal the location of a secret camp or the identities of the peasants who had helped him, then Elbek had no qualms about doing it. If calling in air or artillery strikes to destroy a village would make it harder for the
dukhs
to operate in an area, then it would be foolish not to do so.

But if the war desensitized Elbek in some ways, it had sensitized him in others. The more he killed, the more of his comrades he saw killed, the more he suffered through grueling missions, the more he wondered what the point of it all was. Not just the point of the war, but the point of
him
. Surely there was a greater purpose to his life than killing people in a dusty, bone-poor scrap of land in the middle of nowhere.

He spoke of his concerns to a fellow officer one night over a tin cup of “vodka,” the generic term for the wide variety of home-brewed—and occasionally poisonous—alcoholic beverages the soldiers concocted in illicit stills. The man nodded knowingly. He was a veteran, nearly forty-five years old—an ancient age for an active-duty special-forces soldier in the field. He assured Elbek that every soldier who saw sustained combat confronted the same question. Those who made it found an answer that worked for them.

“What’s it all about?” the old vet ruminated. “When you’re fighting, it’s about the man next to you. He’s your brother and you fight for him. When you’re not fighting, it’s about good friends, good times, good women, and bad vodka.” He raised his cup to this impromptu toast and drained it.

“That’s it?” Elbek asked as his companion poured another drink. “That’s enough?”

“It better be,” the man replied, “because that’s all there is.”

But it wasn’t enough for Elbek. He’d gone back to his bunk later that night and had lain awake until dawn.

His mission the next day was routine, but he remembered it afterward as one of the crucial turning points in his life. Bands of
dukhs
had been harassing convoys traveling through a mountain pass ten kilometers away. The Soviets sent two armed Mi-8 Hip helicopters and a top-of-the-line Mi-24 Hind to blast the rebel positions, but a small group of rebels at the top of a nearby peak had fired down on the helicopters with Arrow missiles provided by the Americans. These were not as accurate as the Stingers that would come later in the war, and all had missed their targets. But in trying to evade the missiles, one of the Mi-8s had collided with the Mi-24 and both had crashed, killing twelve men and destroying valuable military hardware.

The air was too thin for a helicopter attack on the peak, which would have been dangerous in any event because the fighters presumably had more missiles. It was Elbek’s job to take a small group up the mountain and destroy the enemy position.