The Burial Society Page 6

  The guy seizes his hand and leads him to a dark corner.

  Later, when he stumbles out of the chaos of the nightclub, Jake hurries through the cobblestone streets, dipping in and out of the sulfurous pools of light cast by the iron streetlamps.

  God, he needed that. Needed to feel anonymous and free and wild, even if just for one night. The pressure has been incredible. Natalie fading and wilting before his eyes, Uncle Frank short-tempered, yelling into the phone at colleagues, embassy workers, Aunt Della. The three of them cooped up in that hotel suite, driving each other mad.

  Jake enters the plaza in front of the Pompidou Centre. The building is always jarring to look at, its modern architecture with loops of exterior tubing anachronistic against the formal elegance that defines most of Paris. The plaza in front of the museum seethes with darkened forms: homeless settling in for the night, huddled couples moaning in release.

  A mural covers the side of a building on one end of the plaza: a huge face, eyes widened in surprise, one finger placed against lips in a gesture that means “shhh,” in any language. Jake quickens his steps as he passes.

  He’s been sleeping on the foldout sofa in their suite, freeing one bedroom for Natalie, the other for Uncle Frank. He knows Frank gets up early, around dawn. He’d better hurry if he wants to slip back in without anyone being the wiser.

  The night clerk at the hotel doesn’t bat an eye when Jake rushes in half-naked, just offers up a polite “Bonsoir.” Jake greets him in return and heads to the elevator.

  His key card slips in easily, the release light turns green. Jake pushes open the door to their rooms, intending to slip into bed as quietly and quickly as possible.

  Wide awake and wide-eyed, Natalie perches in the center of his rumpled sofa bed. Knees drawn up to her chest, long-sleeved oversized nightshirt tucked around her legs.

  “So, where’ve you been?”

  “Out.”

  “I can see that, asshole.”

  “Give me a break, will you, Nat? I went dancing, all right? I wanted to, you know, just stop thinking about everything for five fucking minutes.”

  “I get it, all right? I’m not mad. I was worried.”

  Jake sits down next to her. “You don’t have to worry about me, okay?”

  “Sure I do.” Natalie’s tone aims for light, but there’s a hardness in her words.

  Jake gestures at Frank’s closed bedroom door. “Are you going to tell him I went out?”

  Natalie shakes her head. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay, then. I won’t. I want something in return, though.”

  Jake raises an eyebrow.

  “I want to get out of here on my own for a few hours too. Uncle Frank means well, but he’s hovering all the time. I just need…I need…a little time to myself.”

  Jake nods, understanding. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Just out. For a walk. You’ll cover for me, right? Later today? Tell Uncle Frank I’m taking a nap or something?”

  Jake hesitates. Should he worry about Natalie walking around alone in Paris? He hasn’t much wanted to put his suspicions and fears into words; they’ve teased the corners of his brain, tickled at the back of his throat, without being allowed to fully flower. But now they rear up fully fledged.

  What if death had followed them here? What if that motherfucker who killed their mother murdered Brian too?

  Or are the police right? Was Brian’s murder a random robbery gone south? Isn’t that the more likely scenario? And if it is, would the greater danger to Natalie come from her continued confinement? He studies his sister’s face searching for signs she is telling the truth, that this isn’t some ploy that will allow her to hurt herself again. Finally he nods.

  “Okay.”

  I book the first flight I can to Budapest. Out comes the Canadian passport in the name of Rhonda Daly. I send a Tor email to Gillian with our intended rendezvous point and head to Charles de Gaulle Airport. I stride through the broad, gleaming corridors lined with shops selling everything from luxury handbags to pastel-hued macarons and make my way to my gate.

  Waiting to board, impatient, scrolling through one of my phones, I realize it’s worse than I thought. The Instagram of Elena has gone viral. Countless websites spew innuendo about Elena’s smiling appearance in an Italian resort city without her powerful husband, fueled in part by prior observation by the same gossipmongers that since her marriage she has rarely been seen without him or a bodyguard. Her image is everywhere, smiling, thick blond tresses blowing in the wind.

  Elena had been discreetly escorted off the cruise ship in Genoa and transported by car along the coast to Santa Margherita Ligure by a confederate of mine in Italy, Gillian Spencer. Gillian’s a former client of mine, the first I had when I left the States and came to Europe. (Of course Gillian Spencer is not her real name. Perhaps a tale for another time.)

  That all went according to plan.

  Gillian’s husband, Giuseppe Tonorelli, generates the most pristine false documents I’ve ever seen. Passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, diplomas—he can do it all, at a level that passes even the most sophisticated scrutiny. The passport I carry today is Giuseppe’s exquisite work. He comes from a long line of papermakers, famed for their beautiful marbled prints. Still operates a storefront on a narrow side street near the harbor selling paper and leather-bound journals to tourists.

  The plan was for Elena to stay in Santa Margherita long enough to have new papers generated in the name of a dead double (the identity of a deceased woman of similar background and age—good old Rhonda Daly from Manitoba is one of mine). When the papers were ready and the ransom paid, Elena was heading to Australia, where she would no longer be my problem.

  Stupidity got us where we are now. Elena was smitten by the beauty of the port city of Santa Margherita, the curved marina with its bobbing boats, the red-roofed stucco buildings, the rock beach cluttered with candy-striped umbrellas. She begged Gillian for a chance to walk outside, “to taste her freedom.” I can just see poor Gillian, a solidly built British woman of red nose and comfortable shoes, dazzled by the beautiful, imperious Elena, helpless in her sway.

  One American teenager with an iPhone later and we’re screwed. I study the pictures of Elena again. Behind her, there are glimpses of cobalt water, a yellow building with forest green shutters. It’s Giuseppe’s shop.

  Shit.

  When I arrive at Ferenc Liszt International Airport, I brush through the terminal and hail a taxi. Recite the address of my destination in passable Hungarian.

  Despite the circumstances, I’m pleased to be back in Budapest. Not all of the memories are good, and the city itself has a haunted quality for all its old-world glamour, but I’ve always felt at home here. Something about the way the elegance of the old city knocks up against the rigid blandness of the Cold War–era architecture, the subversive atmosphere that permeates the nightlife here, the fierce traditions of public art and protest.

  The Danube River crests into view. A shiver crosses over me as I remember the sixty pairs of iron 1940s-style shoes constructed on its bank to commemorate those murdered by the fascist Arrow Cross Party. Shoes were scarce during the war, so the victims were ordered to step out of theirs before being shot in the back, their bodies dumped in the river.

  I killed someone at that site two years ago. Threw that body into that same stretch of river. Definitely a story for another time.

  I check my messages. Through the encrypted email address I provided in the ransom note, the Russian (let’s call him “Boris,” just for fun) has requested proof that I have his wife before he makes the transfer. Nothing unusual there, but I don’t understand what he’s asking for. It’s not a photo of his wife with a current newspaper, or even the chance to talk to her on the telephone. Boris wants to see a picture of “his monogram.” His email says Elena alone will know what that means.

  I’ve come to Budapest in person to im
press upon Elena that from here on in, she must do exactly as I say. I still haven’t let her see my face, and I won’t now, but she needs to hear the steel in my voice. Truth is, I don’t care if Elena lives to see another day as much as I care about taking down her husband, but above all I need to be in control.

  After Elena reached out to me through the darknet channels that lead to the Burial Society, requesting a disappearance from her “abusive husband” and a relocation to a new, anonymous life, I researched, as I always do. She was telling the truth. He is abusive to her. But I also found that Boris traveled in the same cyber world I did, the shadowy recesses of illegality and encryption, where life is bought and sold cheap along with drugs and guns. Boris, I discovered, is an arms dealer.

  I hate guns. It’s personal. I don’t use them in my work. I have distaste for those who do.

  I decided I’d give Elena her new life while dismantling Boris’s business as a bonus.

  Just because you have your own agenda, it doesn’t mean you’re not servicing someone else’s.

  The taxi pulls up to the gaping metal roll-up door of the given address. My driver looks doubtful. Asks if I’m sure. I am.

  It’s daylight so there are no burly bouncers manning the front entrance. I pass through the rusty gate and into the ruin pub, struck again by how the vast, empty place transforms from day to night.

  At night, the pub seethes under the darkness, sparkling with the energy of countless people desperate to reinvent themselves by morning.

  The light of day reveals why this is called a ruin pub. Chicken wire seems to be the only thing holding up large sections of the ceiling. Exposed silver ductwork crawls along graffiti-sprayed walls. Scaffolding rims the perimeter. Broken bicycles and mutilated store mannequins hang from the three-story-high ceiling. Fairy lights wrap around a bank of televisions displaying only static. A foosball table dominates one corner of the enormous room; a tireless and topless Trabant sedan has been converted into a kind of booth.

  I nod to Balint. The bartender nods in return. We go back, Balint and I.

  I pass through one dim room into the next, each one decorated differently, the walls covered in yellowed newspapers and sepia photographs or dominated by abstract canvases, a collection of huge stuffed giraffes or mirror balls and battered chandeliers. The place is an enormous, crumbling rabbit warren that can hold up to a thousand revelers on a good night.

  A courtyard emerges at the far end of this tangle of rooms. I cross through it, blinking at the sudden sunshine, and ascend the creaky metal staircase. At the top, a battered door, rusty and weathered. I rap softly: two knocks, a pause, then three in rapid succession.

  The door opens.

  Thrilled to be out and free, anonymous, integrated into the world, Natalie speaks to no one. She observes.

  She watches mothers with their children, shopgirls with linked arms. Street artists and beggars. Tourists with sensible, ugly walking sandals and bulging tummy packs. Tough guys on motorcycles. Women wrapped in hijabs, men with yarmulkes and sidelocks.

  She drops down on a sunny patch of grass. Her body aches. She realizes she had forgotten how physical grief can be.

  An elfin-looking girl of the Audrey Hepburn/Audrey Tautou variety poses for photographs. Dark hair parted in the middle, two braids hanging down the back of her simple white shift, the girl seems the quintessential Parisienne. The young man with her, scruffy beard and lanky limbs, Converse sneakers and a worn T-shirt, croons and clicks away as she skips and pouts.

  Natalie feels bitterly sorry for the two of them, so nakedly, blindly happy. Disaster can strike at any moment. It will. That’s life. It’s just what happens. No one should be as happy as those two fools.

  The young man sweeps the elfin creature up in his arms and kisses her in the hollow of her throat. The girl wraps her legs around his waist. Get a room, Natalie thinks, turning away.

  She’s irritated now. The dazed fog that shrouds her lifts. She’s out alone and unsupervised. Why is she wasting her time drifting around Paris like a wraith?

  Natalie springs to her feet and heads toward Brian’s job site with a new kick in her step. She checks the time. Just past four P.M. Her dad’s co-workers should still be around.

  Lilja Koskinen is just leaving for the day. The Finnish project manager pulls the silk scarf from her head when she sees Natalie. Unexpectedly, she enfolds Natalie in a hug before murmuring in her ear, “I’m so, so sorry about your papa.”

  Natalie had liked Lilja right away when they met at the Burrows family’s “welcome to Paris” dinner. She’s married to a Frenchman, a painter, and has lived in Paris for five years.

  Lilja links her arm through Natalie’s and steers her into a café. She orders thick, warm sipping chocolate for both of them as well as an array of cream pastries, their crusts flaky with butter. Lilja chides Natalie for looking thin, but in a way that doesn’t make Natalie feel defensive. Natalie bolts down one pastry and a half of a second. Lilja looks pleased.

  When Natalie sips the very last drops of her chocolate, Lilja leans back in her seat and crosses her arms.

  “Much better. You know, I am convinced that chocolate and pastry can fix just about anything.”

  How Natalie wishes that were true. The sweets in her stomach turn suddenly sour. Natalie is horrified to feel tears brimming. Crap. She swipes them away.

  Lilja leans forward. “Not the death of your father, I didn’t mean that.”

  Natalie gives a nod. She knows Lilja doesn’t mean to be unkind.

  “What do the police say?” Lilja wants to know.

  It’s the wrong question or the right one, depending on your point of view. The words gush from Natalie’s mouth, all her frustrations about the robbery theory, her own helplessness. Lilja nods and listens. Pats Natalie’s hand.

  “I can tell you this,” Lilja says when Natalie finally pauses for breath. “Your papa was scared of something.”

  Natalie’s pulse quickens. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

  “The last day, you know, that he was at work…”

  Natalie nods. The last day he was alive.

  “He stopped by in the morning to check on progress. I realized he had forgotten a bid he was to analyze that night so I ran after him.” Lilja pauses, as if debating exactly how to describe what happened next.

  “He had just turned the corner when I caught up to him. I was out of breath, so I tapped him on the arm. He jumped nearly clear out of his skin! He turned on me with a look like he was going to…I don’t know. Take my head off.”

  Lilja rushes to continue as she sees the confusion on Natalie’s face. “It was nothing like your papa. Nothing at all! And he apologized right away. Said he was jumpy, distracted, that he had things on his mind. We laughed it off. But of course later…” Lilja trails off. They both know what happened later.

  “Did he say what was on his mind?”

  “No. He made a joke about being paranoid.”

  “Did you tell the police?” Natalie is disgusted with the squeak that emerges as her voice.

  “Of course. But I will tell you this, I don’t think they made much of it.” A frown creases Lilja’s angular face. “What was he afraid of, do you think? Or who?”

  Natalie doesn’t know. Not yet. But she will find out if it kills her.

  Elena is blindfolded, ramrod straight on the purple velvet sofa, her right hand splayed on the tufted armrest. While her bearing is regal, I can see the tension in her long, thin fingers, the color draining from her cheeks.

  “Tell me about the monogram, Elena,” I repeat. Gillian shoots me a glance.

  We’re in my Budapest safe house, at the back of the ruin pub. Thousands of locals and transients pass through here every week; it’s a perfect place to hide short term. The rooms themselves mirror the eclecticism of the pub: a mix of shabby antiques, art nouveau mirrors, Turkish lamps, and 1960s kitsch. One of those cat clocks with bulging eyes and a swinging tail hangs on the wall, next to a series
of heavily framed bold prints: communist-era propaganda posters.

  “We had been married four months,” Elena begins, her voice soft and heavy with Russian inflections. “We had argument. I was tired and didn’t want to go with him to party. He gave in. Brought me drink, to help me sleep, he said.”

  The cat clock’s eyes swing back and forth, sightlessly scanning the room.

  “When I woke up, I was tied with ropes.” Elena pushes off the armrest to stand, unsteady and uncertain with her eyes covered by the blindfold. I grip the Taser I hold more tightly.

  She unbuttons her pants. Slides them down so her taut lower belly is exposed. “He did this to me. With branding iron. While I was tied like pig.”

  Burned into the very spot even the tiniest of bikinis would cover are the Russian’s initials.

  “You know how many times he hurt me? Where no one can see?” Elena buttons her pants back up and sinks down onto the sofa. “Next he say if I cross him again, he throw acid in my face. You see now why I want him blame for my kidnap? He should burn in hell.”

  When Elena had hired me, she’d communicated the broad outlines: Shortly after her marriage she’d learned that Boris wasn’t exactly a clean-living modern captain of industry, but a ruthless and sadistic gangster. Their relationship soured; he became controlling and abusive, she felt like a prisoner. She summoned her courage and asked for a divorce. Then she found out Boris planned to have her forcibly taken back to his home in Moscow. Terrified, she contacted the Burial Society to arrange a “kidnapping” in advance of Boris’s “arrangements.” The plan was to extract a sizable ransom, pay me, and use the rest to make Elena disappear. Then I was to release the evidence Elena had collected of Boris’s plans to abduct her, placing him under suspicion for her disappearance and presumed death.

  It was a good plan, and my private intention to dismantle Boris’s gun-smuggling operation along the way made it even better. Until Elena proved unpredictable. And Boris even more sadistic than I anticipated.