Moscow, 1992. The Soviet Union is gone, the rules are changing, and an American shipment has vanished somewhere between a warehouse and the paperwork that says it exists.
Elizabeth Rowan believes rules matter. Daniel Mercer believes people matter—and he seems to know nearly everyone in Moscow. Finding the shipment should be simple. Instead, it draws them into the uncertain new world taking shape around them—and into each other’s orbit.
A story of adventure, romance, and wonder at the edge of a changing world.
Part One
The fax machine had been trying to reach London for eleven minutes, and Natalya Sokolova had begun to take it personally.
It stood on a metal cabinet beside the window, an aging Japanese machine the color of old teeth, surrounded by cartons of toner and three varieties of paper, only one of which was the correct size. Every few minutes it dialed, listened, shrieked hopefully into the telephone line, and was answered by either silence or a click.
Natasha pressed REDIAL.
Across the room, Daniel Mercer looked up from the telephone.
“You have to encourage it.”
“I am encouraging it.”
“It sounds more like condemnation.”
“It knows what it did.”
The machine began dialing again.
Mercer Business Services occupied five rooms on the second floor of a building that had once belonged to something with a very long Soviet name and now contained, according to the brass plates downstairs, an accountant, a dental laboratory, a Hungarian trading company and a man who sold automobile tires. There was no sign outside for Mercer Business Services because the sign painter had taken Dan’s deposit in February and had not been seen since.
The office was overheated. A radiator beneath the window clanged at intervals with the authority of somebody trapped inside it. Two telephones rang without reference to one another. A copier ran in the next room. Somewhere beyond the half-open door, a young Russian woman was explaining in patient English that six cartons of Canon toner were not the same thing as six Canon copiers.
On the telephone, Dan said, “How many passengers?”
He listened.
“Luggage?”
Another pause.
“You’d be surprised.”
The fax machine found London. Its shrill handshake filled the room.
Natasha raised one finger toward Dan without looking at him.
Dan lowered his voice.
“All right. Sheremetyevo at one-thirty.”
Natasha turned her head.
“No.”
Dan covered the receiver.
“I wasn’t asking you.”
“You were going to.”
“Misha?”
“Two o’clock.”
Dan returned to the telephone. “One-thirty is going to be difficult.”
The voice at the other end became loud enough for Natasha to hear but not quite distinct enough to understand.
Dan waited it out.
“No, I understand. Yes. Absolutely. I was given a watch when I left America. It works here too.”
Natasha almost smiled.
The fax machine chattered into life. A sheet of thermal paper crept slowly from its mouth.
“See?” Dan said. “Encouragement.”
“Quiet.”
He went quiet.
The first page emerged. Then the second.
The telephone on Natasha’s desk rang.
She answered in Russian, listened, transferred the call to the next room and returned to the fax without appearing to have moved.
A third page appeared.
Then a fourth.
Then half a fifth.
The fax stopped.
Natasha stared at it.
“No.”
Dan said, “Machine?”
“It is not the machine.”
“How do you know?”
“Yesterday it sent twenty-three pages to Frankfurt.”
“Frankfurt says twenty-two.”
“Frankfurt lost one.”
“That’s a serious allegation.”
“Frankfurt will survive.”
She tore off the incomplete transmission.
“How many pages were coming?” Dan asked.
“Fourteen.”
Dan considered the five and a half pages in her hand.
“We’re making progress.”
Natasha looked at him.
“You are an American.”
“You’ve known that for three years.”
“Some days I know it more.”
The outer door opened and Mikhail Antonov came in carrying a cardboard carton against his chest.
“Dobry den.”
Natasha glanced at the clock.
“It is nearly afternoon.”
“Then good afternoon.”
Dan covered the telephone again. “I thought you weren’t back until two.”
“I am not.”
Dan looked at him.
Misha set the carton down.
“The car is.”
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
Dan frowned.
Misha shrugged out of his jacket.
“This is because you are American.”
Natasha returned to the fax machine.
“Today especially.”
Harold Bennett had reached the stage of anger at which a man becomes extremely polite.
Elizabeth Rowan had learned to recognize it.
He sat opposite her desk in the U.S. Embassy with his briefcase upright between his shoes and both hands folded neatly on top of it. He was perhaps fifty, pink around the eyes from too little sleep, with the solid, competent look of an engineer who had spent his adult life expecting machinery to obey the laws of physics.
Moscow had apparently offended him by declining to do so.
“I have four people arriving from Houston tomorrow,” he said.
“I understand.”
“My office was supposed to be operating Monday.”
“Yes.”
“Monday was yesterday.”
“That would explain why you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset.”
Liz waited.
Bennett exhaled through his nose.
“I’m furious.”
“That’s clearer.”
For the first time, some of the strain left his face.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“No, I do. You didn’t lose the shipment.”
“As far as I know.”
That almost produced a smile.
His company, Bennett explained again, was an engineering-services firm working with a Russian industrial concern. Nothing glamorous. Pumps, processing equipment, manufacturing systems. They had leased two rooms in Moscow, hired a secretary, installed a telephone that worked on alternate Thursdays and shipped almost everything else from Houston.
“Two computers. Printer. Fax machine. Copier supplies. Technical manuals. Files. Office supplies. Spare parts.” He lifted a hand. “Coffee maker.”
Liz looked up from the list.
“You shipped a coffee maker from Houston to Moscow?”
“Have you had the coffee downstairs?”
She considered this.
“Fair point.”
“The freight company says customs has the shipment. The forwarding agent says it’s being inspected. Customs says they have no record of it. The warehouse says they’ve never heard of my company.”
“Which warehouse?”
“That’s what I asked.”
“And?”
“He hung up.”
“That at least is unambiguous.”
Bennett leaned back.
“I’ve spent three days making telephone calls that don’t connect to people who don’t know anything about a shipment nobody can find.”
Liz knew the feeling. Moscow telephone service had taught her several lessons about patience that the Foreign Service had somehow omitted.
“Mr. Bennett—”
“I came here because I don’t know where else to go.”
The anger had gone out of his voice. That was worse, somehow.
Liz closed the folder.
She had been in Moscow long enough to discover that Americans often arrived with an exaggerated faith in the embassy. There was, behind the gates and guards and seal of the United States, an assumption of machinery: levers could be pulled, doors opened, Russians telephoned in firm diplomatic tones until refrigerators, passports, lost luggage, detained nephews and occasionally entire business ventures were restored to their proper condition.
It was not entirely unreasonable. An embassy looked like the sort of place that ought to be able to do things.
Unfortunately, appearances were ahead of reality.
“I can tell you whom we have on our commercial-services list,” she said. “I can help make sure you’re talking to the right section here. If there’s a problem involving your passport, your legal status, your safety as an American citizen, then there are things we can do.”
“My passport is fine.”
“Good.”
“My office is missing.”
“Your office is in crates.”
“Which are missing.”
“Possibly.”
He stared at her.
“Possibly?”
“You’ve been told three different things by three different people.”
“Four.”
“Even better.”
“How is that better?”
“It means we don’t actually know the shipment is missing.”
“I assure you, I don’t have it.”
“That isn’t quite the same thing.”
He thought about that.
“No,” he said finally. “I suppose it isn’t.”
Liz pulled the papers toward her.
“Who arranged the shipment?”
“Carter International Freight.”
“In Houston?”
“Yes. They handed it to somebody in Helsinki. Then there’s a Russian forwarding company. I have the name somewhere.”
He opened his briefcase.
Papers rose from it in the manner of an avalanche.
Liz watched him search.
“Here. Vostok Trans.”
“Who have you spoken to there?”
“A woman named Elena. And a man named—I wrote it down.”
He began searching again.
Liz waited.
Outside her office, a telephone rang. Footsteps passed in the corridor. Somewhere farther away came the muted buzz of one of the controlled doors.
Bennett handed her another page.
“Petrov.”
“First name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who translated the customs papers?”
“The forwarding company, I think.”
“You think?”
He looked tired.
“Yes.”
Liz softened.
“All right. Leave me copies of everything.”
“You’ll find it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No.”
“I’ll find out who you should actually be talking to.”
“That’s more than I had this morning.”
He collected his briefcase.
At the door he stopped.
“They’re engineers.”
“Who?”
“My people arriving tomorrow. We’ve got a meeting Thursday. They land here expecting an office and instead I’ve got two rooms with a desk, three chairs and a telephone that rings when it feels like it.”
“You have a secretary.”
“She knows ‘good morning’ and ‘no.’”
“That will get you surprisingly far.”
He laughed despite himself.
“Thank you, Miss Rowan.”
“Elizabeth.”
“Thank you, Elizabeth.”
After he had gone, Liz remained looking at the closed door for a moment.
Then a woman’s voice from the corridor said, “Coffee maker?”
Liz turned.
Claire Donnelly leaned against the doorframe with a folder tucked under one arm.
“You heard that?”
“Half the corridor heard that.”
“Apparently American commercial expansion into Russia depends on Mr. Coffee.”
Claire entered and shut the door behind her.
“He’s not wrong.”
“You too?”
“I had a cup downstairs.”
Liz looked back at Bennett’s documents.
“Four engineers coming from Houston.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And no office?”
“An office. Nothing in it.”
“Telephone?”
“Sometimes.”
Claire nodded thoughtfully.
“That’s practically luxury.”
Liz gave her a look.
“What?”
“You’ve been here too long.”
“Six months.”
“Exactly.”
Claire pulled the other chair closer.
“What are you going to do?”
“Send him back to Commercial.”
“They’ll give him the same list of freight people they gave him last week.”
“I can’t call Russian customs and demand they surrender a private company’s copier.”
“No.”
“I’m glad we agree.”
“I didn’t say you should.”
Claire was studying the papers upside down.
After a moment she said, “There’s Mercer.”
Liz looked at her.
“Who’s Mercer?”
Claire’s expression changed almost imperceptibly.
“I didn’t say there was Mercer.”
“You very clearly said, ‘There’s Mercer.’”
“I was thinking aloud.”
“Think a little louder.”
Claire sighed.
“Dan Mercer. Mercer Business Services.”
“What sort of business?”
“That’s a surprisingly difficult question.”
“Claire.”
“Office equipment.”
Liz waited.
“Among other things.”
“What other things?”
“Translation. Drivers. Copiers. Repairs. Temporary secretaries. Freight help. Imported supplies. He found a refrigerator for somebody once.”
“A refrigerator.”
“It was summer.”
“That makes it a business?”
“It did to the man who needed the refrigerator.”
Liz leaned back.
“Is Mercer American?”
“Very.”
“How long has he been here?”
“A couple of years. Maybe three.”
“Doing this?”
“More or less.”
“What did he do before?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer came a little too quickly.
Liz noticed.
Claire noticed her noticing.
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That Foreign Service face.”
“I don’t have a Foreign Service face.”
“You absolutely do.”
“What does it look like?”
“As though somebody has given you an answer you’re going to write down later.”
Liz smiled.
“Should I write Mercer down?”
“You could.”
“What exactly does he do?”
“I told you.”
“No. You listed nouns.”
Claire considered the distinction.
“Fair.”
She reached for Bennett’s packing list, then changed her mind.
“He knows people.”
“What people?”
“That’s generally the problem.”
Liz stared at her.
Claire spread her hands.
“You asked.”
“That was not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“And yet you’re recommending him.”
“I am telling you that if a crate has disappeared somewhere between an airport, a freight forwarder and a customs warehouse, Daniel Mercer may be able to find out whether it disappeared.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
“Excellent.”
“Welcome to Moscow.”
Claire stood.
“Has Security told you anything about him?”
Claire stopped at the door.
“Liz.”
“I’m only asking.”
“I suspect Security has a file on every American who has ever ordered lunch with a Russian.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
Claire opened the door, then looked back.
“Mercer isn’t a spy.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“You were about to think it very methodically.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Good.”
Claire stepped into the corridor.
“As far as I know.”
Liz looked after her.
“There it is.”
Claire laughed and disappeared.
It took Liz three attempts to telephone Mercer Business Services.
On the first, the line connected to silence.
On the second, a man answered in Russian, listened to her for ten seconds and informed her with considerable confidence that she had called a shoe-repair shop.
The third attempt produced a woman’s voice.
“Mercer Business Services.”
“Good afternoon. I’d like to speak with Daniel Mercer.”
“Who is calling?”
“Elizabeth Rowan.”
There was a brief pause.
“From?”
Liz almost said it.
Then stopped.
“Tell him Elizabeth Rowan.”
Another pause.
The woman sounded faintly approving.
“One moment.”
There was no hold music. Instead Liz heard a receiver set down, muffled Russian conversation, a telephone ringing, somebody saying something about a Peugeot and then the distant unmistakable shriek of a fax machine.
A man picked up.
“Mercer.”
“Mr. Mercer?”
“That depends.”
Liz waited.
There was a small silence at the other end.
Then he said, “Sorry. Long morning. Daniel Mercer.”
“Elizabeth Rowan.”
“Yes.”
“You know who I am?”
“No.”
“But your office manager—”
“Natasha knows who everyone is. I try not to compete.”
Liz glanced at Bennett’s papers.
“I have an American businessman with a shipment that seems to have disappeared.”
“That happens.”
“Does it?”
“Usually only to people who ship things.”
There was no particular smugness in the answer. That made it harder to be annoyed by.
“He has engineers arriving tomorrow.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“And an empty office.”
“Less unfortunate. Empty offices are easier to furnish.”
“Mr. Mercer—”
“Dan.”
“I’d like to know whether you can help him.”
A beat.
“Probably.”
“You don’t know anything about the shipment.”
“I know it exists.”
“You know I said it exists.”
“That’s already more than I knew thirty seconds ago.”
She looked out the window.
Moscow in May had spent the morning threatening rain and now, without explanation, had produced sunlight. It struck the upper floors of the buildings opposite and made their windows suddenly bright.
“What would you need?”
“Papers.”
“I have copies.”
“Bring them.”
“To you?”
“Unless you have a working fax.”
Liz looked at the machine down the hall.
“That question seems unnecessarily personal.”
He laughed.
Not loudly. More an acknowledgment.
“Do you know where we are?”
“No.”
“That’s encouraging. Most people think they do.”
He gave her an address.
Liz wrote it down.
“You’re not far.”
“In Moscow, distance is measured by traffic.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“That sounds like the correct attitude.”
The line crackled.
Then died.
Liz held the receiver away from her ear.
“Mr. Mercer?”
Nothing.
She returned it to the cradle.
For reasons she could not quite explain, she was smiling.
Twenty-five minutes later she stood on a street she had passed twice before and noticed for the first time how many things had appeared along it.
A kiosk stood beside the pavement selling cigarettes, chocolate bars, imported soft drinks and something in a bright yellow packet with German writing. Beside it, an elderly woman had arranged six jars of pickles and three pairs of shoes on a folded blanket. A young man in a leather jacket was offering cigarettes individually from an open carton.
Behind them rose a building of pale stone whose doorway still carried the shadow of lettering that had been removed from above it.
The new brass directory beside the entrance was crowded.
Liz found MERCER BUSINESS SERVICES on the second floor, between a dentist and a firm whose name appeared to consist entirely of initials.
She climbed the stairs.
The smell changed halfway up: cabbage from somewhere below, cigarette smoke, dust, then hot metal and copier toner.
The door at the top was open.
She heard the office before she entered.
A telephone rang.
A copier started.
Someone spoke Russian at considerable speed.
A man answered in English, “No, six boxes. Boxes. Not machines.”
Another voice said, “I need car at four.”
A woman replied, “Then you should have asked yesterday.”
Liz stepped inside.
The heat struck first.
Not oppressive, exactly, but entirely unrelated to the mild spring afternoon outside. The radiator beneath a window was going at full strength as though Moscow might reconsider the season at any moment.
The room contained two desks, three telephones, a copier, a fax machine, four filing cabinets and enough cardboard boxes to suggest either commercial success or evacuation.
Some were labeled CANON. Others RICOH. One was open and filled with telephone cords. Another had been converted into a temporary table for tea glasses.
At the larger desk sat a dark-haired Russian woman in her early forties, speaking on one telephone while writing something in a ledger and pointing, without looking, toward a chair for Liz.
Liz sat.
The woman finished the call.
“Ms. Rowan.”
It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“Natalya Sokolova.”
“Natasha?”
“If you like.”
Her English was fluent, her accent present but unexaggerated.
“Mr. Mercer is finishing.”
She nodded toward the inner room.
Liz followed the gesture.
A man stood in the doorway with a telephone wedged between his shoulder and ear while searching through a stack of papers. He was taller than she had expected, though she realized she had had no reason to expect anything at all. His jacket hung over the back of a chair. His shirtsleeves were rolled once at the cuffs.
“No,” he was saying. “If he wants dollars, he gets dollars. If he wants rubles, he gets rubles. What he doesn’t get is both.”
He listened.
“I understand what he said.”
Another pause.
“No, I’m saying he doesn’t.”
He found the paper he wanted.
“Tell Viktor I’ll call him at three.”
He hung up, took another paper from Natasha’s desk without asking and glanced at it.
Natasha removed it from his hand.
“That is mine.”
“I was looking.”
“You were taking.”
“I was looking while taking.”
“No.”
He surrendered the paper.
Only then did he turn toward Liz.
He did not give the impression of having suddenly noticed her. Rather, he had apparently been aware of her since she entered and had simply decided that now was the appropriate moment to acknowledge it.
“Embassy,” he said.
Liz looked at him.
“How did you know?”
“Your coat.”
She looked down at herself.
It was a perfectly ordinary navy raincoat.
“What’s wrong with my coat?”
“Nothing.”
He held out his hand.
“That’s how I knew.”
She looked back at him before taking it.
His expression remained entirely innocent.
Interesting, she thought.
Not charming.
Not yet.
Interesting.
“Daniel Mercer.”
“Elizabeth Rowan.”
“Liz?”
“Elizabeth until I decide.”
“Fair.”
He gestured toward the chair.
Natasha said, without looking up, “She is already sitting.”
Dan glanced at the chair.
“So she is.”
“You are very observant.”
“It’s one of our services.”
Natasha’s mouth moved by perhaps a millimeter.
Dan pulled another chair around and sat across from Liz.
“What have we lost?”
“Possibly nothing.”
He paused.
Then looked at her differently.
“That’s promising.”
“An American firm shipped office equipment from Houston six weeks ago.”
“What firm?”
“Bennett Process Systems.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Should you have?”
“No. That’s why I asked.”
Liz opened the folder.
“Two computers, fax machine, printer, copier supplies, manuals, files, office equipment.”
“Coffee maker?”
She looked up.
Dan shrugged.
“Americans.”
“There is a coffee maker.”
“Of course there is.”
Natasha said, “Good.”
Neither of them looked at her.
“When did it leave Houston?” Dan asked.
“March twenty-eighth.”
“Air or sea?”
“Air freight to Helsinki. Surface from there.”
“Who arranged Moscow delivery?”
“Carter International Freight in Houston. Vostok Trans here.”
Dan held out his hand for the paperwork.
Liz gave it to him.
He read the first sheet quickly, then turned back.
“Who packed it?”
“Bennett’s people, I assume.”
“You assume?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Good.”
She frowned.
“Good?”
“I worry when embassy officers start packing copiers.”
He read another page.
“Who saw the shipment in Helsinki?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who transferred it?”
“Vostok Trans.”
“You know that or the paper says that?”
“The paper says it.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“I am aware of the distinction.”
He glanced at her.
There it was again—not quite amusement.
“Who says customs has it?”
“Vostok.”
“Who says they don’t?”
“Customs.”
“Which customs office?”
“Bennett didn’t know.”
“Which warehouse?”
“He didn’t know that either.”
“Who has physically gone to the warehouse?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who has actually seen these customs documents?”
She hesitated.
“Bennett has copies.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I know.”
He waited.
She examined the papers in front of him.
“I don’t know.”
“Who translated them?”
“Vostok, probably.”
“Probably?”
“Yes.”
“Who at Vostok?”
“A woman named Elena. And a Petrov.”
Dan’s fingers stopped on the page.
“First name?”
“He didn’t have one.”
“That’s unhelpful.”
“You know him?”
“I know several Petrovs. Most Russians do.”
He picked up the telephone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Vostok.”
“You have their number?”
He pointed to Bennett’s paperwork.
“It’s on the invoice.”
Liz had spent the better part of an hour with those papers.
She had not noticed it.
Dan dialed.
The line produced a busy signal.
He hung up immediately and dialed another number.
“That’s not the number on the invoice.”
“No.”
“Then who are you calling?”
“A woman who used to work there.”
“You know a woman who used to work there.”
“I know several women who used to work several places.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It usually isn’t.”
The telephone rang.
He spoke in Russian when someone answered, quickly but not beautifully. Liz’s Russian was better. She noticed at once that his grammar was imperfect and that he occasionally chose an awkward word.
She also noticed that whoever was on the other end liked him.
That mattered more.
His voice changed while he listened. Less American, somehow—not the accent, but the rhythm. He asked two questions, laughed once and made a note.
Then he thanked the woman and hung up.
“Well?” Liz asked.
“Vostok moved offices last month.”
Bennett’s papers suddenly seemed older.
“The telephone number?”
“Still works sometimes. Depending which office the exchange decides you meant.”
“Where are they now?”
“Near the freight terminal.”
“Which freight terminal?”
“Exactly.”
He turned another sheet over.
Something in his manner had changed.
The lightness was still there, but it had become peripheral. He was working.
“When did Bennett first learn there was a problem?”
“Friday.”
“When did the shipment supposedly reach Moscow?”
“Tuesday.”
“Last Tuesday?”
“Yes.”
“Who told him?”
“Vostok.”
“Who told Vostok?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who says it’s being inspected?”
“Also Vostok.”
“Who told Bennett customs has no record?”
“He called somebody himself.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t write it down.”
Dan leaned back.
“So nobody we can identify has seen the shipment since Helsinki.”
Liz started to answer.
Stopped.
He continued.
“We have a freight company saying a forwarding company says customs has it. We have a forwarding company that moved offices. We have somebody at customs saying they don’t have it, although we don’t know which customs office that was. Nobody has been to the warehouse because nobody seems to know which warehouse it is.”
He tapped the packing list.
“And everybody agrees the shipment is missing.”
“That was the premise.”
“It’s a bad premise.”
She felt a flicker of irritation.
“You haven’t found anything.”
“No.”
“You’ve made the problem less clear.”
“Yes.”
“That’s your service?”
“One of the better ones.”
She almost smiled and refused to give him the satisfaction.
Dan spread the documents across the desk.
“People usually start with the exciting version.”
“The exciting version?”
“The shipment vanished. Customs seized it. Somebody stole it. A corrupt official wants money. The Russians lost it.”
“And your version?”
“My version is that Bennett has no idea where his shipment is.”
“That sounds very similar.”
“It isn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because a missing shipment has to be recovered.”
He gathered the papers.
“A shipment nobody has actually looked for yet only has to be found.”
Liz was silent.
It was irritating because it was obvious.
It was more irritating because it had not been obvious until he said it.
He had not been wasting her time with questions. He had been removing assumptions one by one until only the actual problem remained.
For the first time since entering the office, she understood why Claire had sent her here.
Dan stood.
“Natasha.”
“Yes.”
“Misha?”
“Downstairs.”
“Doing what?”
“Fixing what you told him not to fix.”
“The Volga?”
“The taillight.”
“It wasn’t broken.”
“It is now.”
Dan considered this.
“Fair enough.”
He reached for his jacket.
Liz remained seated.
“Where are you going?”
“To look for Bennett’s shipment.”
“You know where it is?”
“No.”
“You know which warehouse?”
“Not yet.”
“Then where exactly are you going?”
“First, Vostok’s new office. Then a man who knows which freight came in Tuesday.”
“What man?”
Dan put on his jacket.
“One I know.”
There it was.
Not quite a boast. More like a method.
He picked up Bennett’s papers and handed them to Liz.
“You’ll want these.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re coming.”
She looked at him.
“I am?”
“I assumed.”
“Why do you need me?”
“I don’t.”
That came too quickly to be vanity.
Dan buttoned one cuff.
“But if I go without you, you’ll spend the afternoon wondering what I did.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You asked Natasha who I was before you got here.”
Natasha looked up.
“She did not.”
Liz turned toward her.
“Thank you.”
Natasha returned to her ledger.
“She asked only if you were Daniel Mercer.”
Dan nodded.
“See? Suspicious.”
Liz rose.
“What exactly are you planning to do?”
“Find a freight forwarder.”
“And after that?”
“Ask questions.”
“And after that?”
“That depends on the answers.”
“You realize that doesn’t make this sound more official.”
“I don’t do official.”
“I had gathered.”
For a moment they stood looking at one another.
It was not a challenge exactly.
Dan seemed perfectly willing for her to decline.
Which made declining feel oddly more difficult.
Liz picked up her coat.
Dan noticed.
“The famous coat.”
“It has survived harsher criticism.”
“I didn’t criticize it.”
“No. Apparently its great failing is respectability.”
“It isn’t a failing.”
Natasha said, “Misha is waiting.”
Dan opened the door.
Outside, the afternoon had brightened.
The three of them descended the stairs and emerged onto the street.
Misha stood beside an aging dark Volga parked partly on the curb. Its left rear taillight was held in place by what appeared to be tape and optimism.
He opened the back door for Liz.
“Ms. Rowan.”
“You know who I am too?”
Misha glanced at Dan.
“He tells everybody everything.”
“That is completely false.”
Natasha appeared in the doorway above them.
“Daniel.”
He looked up.
She held the telephone cord out through the door.
“You forgot London.”
Dan closed his eyes.
“For how long?”
“Fourteen pages.”
“Tell them I’ll call back.”
“They called us.”
“Even better.”
Natasha disappeared.
Misha got behind the wheel.
Dan opened the front passenger door.
Liz hesitated.
She had entered the afternoon intending to help an American engineer locate some office equipment.
Now she was about to get into a battered Russian car with a businessman Claire could not explain and a driver who apparently knew her name.
There were, she thought, rules against many things.
Surely somebody had neglected to write one for this.
She climbed into the back.
Misha started the engine.
It turned twice without catching.
A third time.
Nothing.
Dan looked at him.
Misha looked ahead.
“Do not encourage it.”
On the fourth attempt the Volga started.
Liz laughed before she could stop herself.
Dan glanced back.
Only for a second.
Then Misha pulled away from the curb and into the Moscow traffic.
The street opened ahead of them in sunlight and exhaust: buses, old Ladas, a new Mercedes, pedestrians crossing wherever they pleased, a row of kiosks in colors too bright for the buildings behind them. A woman carried flowers wrapped in newspaper. Two men rolled an office chair along the pavement. Above everything rose facades that had been built to last longer than whatever happened inside them.
Liz leaned forward between the seats.
“Where are we going?”
“To find the man who says Bennett’s shipment isn’t in his warehouse,” Dan said.
“And where is his warehouse?”
Dan turned slightly.
“If we knew that, Elizabeth, this would just be an errand.”
The Volga swung around a bus and disappeared into Moscow.
End of Part One
EAST OF THE MAP
Episode One: The Fax Machine
Part Two
The Volga made it nearly three blocks before Misha announced that they were going the wrong way.
Dan turned from the passenger seat. “You know where we’re going?”
“No.”
“Then how can we be going the wrong way?”
“Because this way is stopped.”
Ahead of them, the traffic had ceased to be traffic and become storage. Two buses stood nose to tail beside a trolleybus that had somehow contrived to occupy part of an intersection without apparently intending to cross it. A delivery truck was angled across one lane. Drivers leaned on horns with the confidence of men who believed noise might alter geometry.
Misha turned sharply into a side street.
Liz braced one hand against the door.
“Was that legal?”
Dan looked back at her.
“In which country?”
She gave him a level look.
He turned forward again.
“Sorry.”
“You’re learning.”
“I’m trying.”
The side street was narrower, lined with buildings the color of old snow. Laundry moved in an upper window. At street level, a hand-painted sign advertising imported shoes had been attached beneath a marble plaque commemorating something that had evidently once been important enough to carve into stone.
Misha slowed for a woman pulling a child across the street.
Then he accelerated around a parked truck.
“You always drive like this?” Liz asked.
Misha glanced at her in the mirror.
“No.”
Dan said, “He’s being careful because you’re here.”
“I see.”
“You should see him when there’s no diplomat in the car.”
“I am not a diplomat in this car.”
Misha considered that.
“Then I can go faster.”
“No,” Liz said.
Misha smiled.
Dan opened Bennett’s folder on his knees.
The papers were already acquiring the soft, handled look of documents that had begun the day believing they were important.
“Vostok used to be on Leningradskoye,” he said.
“Used to be?”
“According to Galina.”
“Who is Galina?”
“The woman I telephoned.”
“The woman who used to work there.”
“Yes.”
“And how do you know Galina?”
Dan looked at the invoice.
“She bought a copier.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“It answers enough of it.”
“For you.”
“For most people.”
Misha said, “Galina did not buy the copier.”
Dan looked at him.
“She absolutely bought the copier.”
“Her director bought the copier.”
“Galina found me.”
“Because her director did not know where to buy copier.”
“So Galina bought the copier.”
Misha shrugged.
Liz looked from one to the other.
“This is how you keep records?”
“No,” Dan said. “Natasha keeps records. This is how I remember them.”
That, Liz thought, was probably the most revealing thing he had said all afternoon.
They turned onto a broader avenue.
Moscow opened around them.
She had been in the city for months, and yet there were moments when it still seemed to rearrange itself when she wasn’t looking. A building she had passed the week before now carried a banner for an Italian appliance company. Three men sold windshield wipers from cardboard boxes beside a bus stop. A table appeared on the pavement covered in bottles of shampoo, cassette tapes and one electric kettle.
Behind them rose buildings constructed with the confidence that nothing temporary would ever happen again.
The temporary things were winning.
Misha slowed beside a kiosk.
A thickset man inside leaned through the little window and called something.
Dan lowered his window.
The two exchanged a few words in Russian.
Dan laughed.
The kiosk owner held up a pack of cigarettes.
Dan shook his head.
More Russian.
The man pointed accusingly at the Volga’s rear quarter.
Dan turned to Misha.
“He says your car is dying.”
Misha looked offended.
“He has said this since 1989.”
“Apparently he feels vindicated.”
The man called again.
Dan answered, and the kiosk owner laughed so hard he had to retreat from the window.
Misha pulled away.
“What did you say?” Liz asked.
“That his kiosk will die first.”
“And will it?”
“Oh, no. Sergei could survive the end of civilization with three cartons of Marlboros and a jar of pickles.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Customer.”
“Copier?”
“Telephone.”
“Working?”
“Usually.”
Liz looked back at the kiosk.
“You sell telephones to kiosks.”
“I sell things to people who need them.”
“That sounds almost like a business plan.”
“I’ve been working on one.”
“How long?”
“Three years.”
She turned to him.
“You’ve been here three years?”
“Almost.”
“Claire said a couple.”
“I’m wounded.”
“What brought you?”
“An airplane.”
She waited.
Dan felt the silence and sighed.
“American office-equipment company. Six-month assignment.”
“Six months.”
“That was the idea.”
Misha said, “It was very bad idea.”
“Thank you, Misha.”
“You are still here.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
Liz leaned slightly forward.
“What happened to the company?”
“Decided Russia was going to be difficult.”
“They may have had a point.”
“They did.”
“And you stayed.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dan looked through the windshield.
For a moment, she thought he might give her another joke.
Instead he said, “They saw everything that didn’t work.”
“And you?”
“I saw people trying anyway.”
It was such a simple answer that she almost missed it.
Misha turned down another street.
Dan added, “Also, I’d already paid six months’ rent.”
There he was again.
Liz smiled despite herself.
“Of course.”
“You can’t waste rent.”
“An American principle?”
“A Midwestern one.”
“You’re from the Midwest?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“We’re getting dangerously personal.”
“You know where I work.”
“I knew that from your coat.”
She looked out the window so he would not see her smile.
The traffic thinned as they moved away from the center.
Buildings became less monumental and more practical. Warehouses. Low offices. Rail lines appearing between structures. A yard full of buses whose useful lives had apparently ended at different times but whose owners had not been informed.
Misha tapped the steering wheel.
“Vostok is not at new office.”
Dan looked over.
“What?”
“They moved again.”
“How do you know?”
“Yuri told me.”
“Which Yuri?”
“The tall Yuri.”
“That narrows Moscow considerably.”
“The one with bad Opel.”
“Oh.”
Liz said, “When did Yuri tell you?”
“This morning.”
Dan stared at him.
“You’ve known all morning that Vostok moved?”
“I did not know we needed Vostok.”
“That’s fair.”
Misha turned at the next corner.
“Where are they now?” Dan asked.
“Near old refrigeration institute.”
Dan thought.
“There are two.”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“The one that no longer does refrigeration.”
Dan nodded.
“Of course.”
Liz said, “I have the uncomfortable feeling that made perfect sense to both of you.”
“It did,” Dan said.
“That concerns me.”
“It gets easier.”
“That concerns me more.”
The refrigeration institute turned out to be a four-story concrete building with a mosaic on one end depicting snowflakes, machinery and several heroic workers in white coats.
A paper sign reading VOSTOK TRANS had been taped inside one glass door.
One corner had come loose.
Inside, the lobby still belonged to the institute. A large directory listed laboratories that appeared no longer to exist. A portrait hook remained on one wall without a portrait beneath it. Someone had placed a potted plant under it, perhaps out of civic responsibility.
Vostok occupied two rooms on the third floor.
The first contained a secretary, three telephones, two filing cabinets and six men waiting in chairs that did not match.
The secretary looked up as Dan entered.
“Mercer.”
It was not a greeting.
Dan put a hand to his chest.
“I had hoped you remembered me.”
“I remember everybody who owes us money.”
“I don’t owe you money.”
“Then I remember you because you are unusual.”
Her name was Elena.
Liz gathered that before anyone bothered to introduce them.
Elena was perhaps thirty, with short blond hair and the deliberate calm of someone who had learned that urgency was primarily a disease suffered by other people.
Dan spoke to her in Russian.
She replied quickly.
Liz caught most of it.
Dan asked about Bennett Process Systems.
Elena shook her head.
He showed her the waybill.
She studied it.
Then shook her head again.
“No Bennett,” she said in English.
“This says Vostok,” Dan replied.
“This says old Vostok.”
“You’re still Vostok.”
“We are new Vostok.”
“What happened to old Vostok?”
Elena looked toward the closed door behind her.
“Management.”
Dan nodded solemnly.
“I’m sorry.”
She almost smiled.
He placed the invoice in front of her.
“Who handled this?”
Elena examined it again.
“Not here.”
“You told the American it was with customs.”
“I did not tell American.”
“Someone did.”
“Then ask someone.”
“I’m asking you.”
“No.”
Dan waited.
Elena waited better.
Misha had moved to the window and was watching two men unload crates from a truck below.
Liz looked again at the invoice.
The Russian translation attached to it was awkward—not wrong exactly, but produced by someone translating word for word rather than by meaning.
She turned to Elena.
“May I?”
Elena looked at her.
Liz spoke in Russian.
She asked whether the document referred to a customs warehouse or merely to customs-controlled storage.
Elena’s expression changed.
She took the page back.
They spoke rapidly.
Dan watched without interrupting.
Elena pointed to one line, then another.
Liz asked about an abbreviation.
Elena explained.
Something fell into place.
Liz turned to Dan.
“They weren’t told customs had the shipment.”
“That’s what Bennett said.”
“They were told it had been placed under customs control.”
Dan looked at the Russian document.
“Which means?”
“It could still be at a freight facility.”
Elena said something.
Liz listened.
“She says the translation to Bennett was done by one of their temporary clerks.”
Dan looked at Elena.
“Who?”
Elena answered.
Misha turned from the window.
“Pavel.”
“You know Pavel?” Dan asked.
“No. But I know his brother.”
Dan closed his eyes briefly.
Liz said, “Of course you do.”
Misha looked puzzled.
“Why not?”
Dan pointed at him.
“This is what I keep trying to explain.”
Misha returned to the window.
Elena was searching in a drawer.
She produced a ledger.
Not a computer file.
Not a carbon form.
A ledger.
The columns had been drawn by hand.
Dan leaned across the desk.
Elena slapped his wrist lightly with a pencil.
He withdrew it.
She ran one finger down the page.
Stopped.
Spoke in Russian.
Dan looked at Liz.
“What?”
She had heard it too.
“It arrived.”
“Tuesday?”
“Tuesday morning.”
“Where?”
Elena pointed to an entry.
The abbreviation meant nothing to Liz.
Dan frowned.
Misha came over, looked once and said, “I know.”
Dan turned.
“You know what that is?”
“I know where.”
“Why?”
“My cousin worked there.”
Dan gave Liz a small nod.
“You see? Entirely legitimate.”
“You keep saying things like that before I accuse you.”
“It saves time.”
Elena added something.
Misha’s smile disappeared.
“What?” Dan asked.
He spoke to her again.
She answered.
Misha translated.
“She says it may already have been moved.”
“To where?”
Elena lifted both hands.
“No one knows?”
“She does not know.”
Dan considered that distinction.
He took the waybill.
“Elena, who would?”
She said a name.
Dan went still for half a second.
Liz noticed.
“Who?”
He folded the paper.
“Arkady Petrov.”
Liz remembered Bennett’s notes.
“Petrov.”
“The man without a first name.”
“So you do know him.”
“I know this one.”
“Good?”
Dan considered it.
“Useful.”
That was not an answer, and they both knew it.
They thanked Elena.
On the way down the stairs Liz said, “You were right.”
Dan continued walking.
“Careful.”
“I said you were right.”
“I heard you. I’m giving you a chance to reconsider.”
“The shipment wasn’t missing.”
“We haven’t found it yet.”
“But it reached Moscow.”
“Apparently.”
“And Bennett was asking the wrong people the wrong question.”
Dan pushed open the outer door.
Sunlight hit them.
“You’ll ruin my reputation if you keep agreeing with me.”
“I agreed with one thing.”
“Still. Slippery slope.”
Misha had gone ahead to the Volga.
Liz stopped beside Dan.
“You’re not going to say it?”
“What?”
“That you told me so.”
He looked honestly puzzled.
“I did tell you so.”
“Yes.”
“So why would I need to say it again?”
She studied him.
He had not been waiting for the opportunity.
That was mildly disappointing.
Which was ridiculous.
Misha opened the car door.
“Arkady is not there,” he said.
“Where is he?”
“At warehouse.”
“Which is where we’re going.”
“Yes.”
Dan glanced at Liz.
“Things are looking up.”
“How can you tell?”
“For once the person we need is in the place we need him.”
They drove another fifteen minutes.
The warehouse complex lay behind a cracked concrete wall and a gate whose guardhouse seemed to have been assembled out of parts left over from three different buildings.
Inside were long sheds, low administrative structures and acres of freight.
Nothing about the place looked mysterious.
That was what impressed Liz.
There were no dark men smoking in doorways. No ominous sedans. No visible evidence of criminal enterprise.
There were simply crates.
Hundreds of them.
Wooden cases. Steel containers. Pallets under tarpaulins. Appliances. Machine components. Boxes stamped with names in German, Finnish, English and Russian.
A forklift passed carrying what looked like twenty television sets.
The driver smoked a cigarette while steering.
“Comforting,” Liz said.
Dan followed her gaze.
“Maybe they’re fireproof.”
“They’re televisions.”
“I meant the driver.”
Inside the administrative building, the air smelled of damp coats, dust and cigarette smoke.
People waited along one wall with folders in their laps.
Behind a row of desks, clerks stamped paper.
The stamps landed heavily.
Each impact sounded final.
Dan spoke to a woman at the first desk.
She pointed to another.
The second pointed back toward the first.
Misha disappeared through a side door.
Dan spoke to a man whose principal qualification for authority appeared to be ownership of the largest desk.
The man looked at Bennett’s papers for perhaps two seconds before shaking his head.
Dan tried again.
The man shook his head more decisively.
Liz moved closer.
“What did he say?”
“That nothing can be released.”
“We’re not asking him to release anything.”
“I told him that.”
“Did he understand?”
“He understood the word release.”
The man interrupted in Russian.
Liz answered him.
He looked at her more carefully.
They went back and forth.
Dan listened.
After a minute Liz said, “He thinks we’re asking whether the shipment can leave customs control.”
“We’re asking whether it exists.”
“I explained.”
“And?”
“He thinks that’s a strange question.”
“It is.”
The man spoke again.
Liz replied.
He shrugged.
Then a voice behind them said, in English:
“Daniel Mercer.”
Dan turned.
The man approaching them was about fifty, compact and neatly dressed. His suit was not expensive, but it was well cared for. He carried no folder. Everyone else seemed to carry folders.
Liz noticed that first.
The second thing she noticed was that the man behind the large desk stood up when he approached.
“Arkady.”
Dan shook his hand.
Arkady Petrov smiled warmly.
“You have disappeared.”
“I’ve been working.”
“This is what people say when they do not telephone.”
“I didn’t know you missed me.”
“I miss everybody who owes me lunch.”
Dan sighed.
“There it is.”
Arkady looked at Liz.
Dan introduced them.
“Elizabeth Rowan. Arkady Petrov.”
Arkady inclined his head.
“A pleasure.”
“Mr. Petrov.”
“Arkady, please.”
He looked at Dan.
“Embassy?”
Dan said nothing.
Arkady smiled.
Liz said, “Is it the coat?”
There was a brief silence.
Dan laughed first.
Arkady looked from one to the other.
“I see I am late to something.”
“Very,” Liz said.
Arkady’s smile remained, but his eyes moved to the papers in Dan’s hand.
“What are we finding?”
“Bennett Process Systems.”
Arkady held out his hand.
Dan gave him the waybill.
Arkady read it.
Not quickly.
Thoroughly.
“This is Tuesday.”
“Yes.”
“Vostok.”
“Apparently old Vostok.”
Arkady made a small sound that might have been amusement.
“There are many new old things now.”
“Is it here?”
Arkady continued reading.
“Perhaps.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“You are easily encouraged.”
“I work in office equipment.”
Arkady handed back the sheet.
“There is a problem.”
Liz waited for Dan to ask.
He didn’t.
Arkady looked almost disappointed.
“What sort?” Liz said.
Arkady turned to her.
“Paper.”
“Which paper?”
Arkady smiled.
“You understand Moscow very quickly.”
Dan said, “She’s had practice.”
Arkady explained that the shipment number belonged to freight entered under one forwarding agent, while a later notation appeared under another.
The explanation remained maddeningly general.
Nobody seemed willing to say which notation superseded which.
Liz avoided asking for details that might only produce invented certainty.
“Can we see the shipment?” she asked.
Arkady looked at her.
“See?”
“Yes.”
“Not take.”
“No.”
“Not open.”
Dan said, “Eventually open.”
Arkady ignored him.
“To see is easier.”
“How much easier?” Liz asked.
Arkady smiled.
Dan looked at her.
She did not smile back.
Arkady folded his hands.
“I need only one small thing from Daniel.”
There it was.
So soft she might have missed it if Claire had not prepared her to mistrust exactly this sort of sentence.
Dan leaned one shoulder against the desk.
“What thing?”
“My nephew.”
Dan’s expression did not change.
“What about your nephew?”
“He has started a small company.”
“Everyone has started a small company.”
“This one is serious.”
“That’s what worries me.”
Arkady smiled.
“He needs a fax machine.”
Liz almost laughed.
Of course he did.
Dan said, “Sell him one.”
“He wishes terms.”
“No.”
“Daniel.”
“No.”
“He is family.”
“Yours.”
“He is a good boy.”
“You told me that about the Lada.”
“That was different.”
“The Lada caught fire.”
“Only once.”
Liz watched them.
The exchange was almost comic, but underneath it something had become clear.
Arkady was not asking for money.
He was asking for access to credit, to equipment, perhaps simply to Dan’s confidence.
Something small.
Something that could become another thing later.
Dan understood that perfectly.
“I’ll give him Natasha’s number,” Dan said.
Arkady’s expression did not change.
“He can speak to her.”
“And terms?”
“Natasha decides.”
“You hide behind a woman.”
“I hide behind the best accountant in Moscow.”
“Office manager.”
“Don’t tell her that.”
Arkady considered.
Then nodded.
“Good.”
Dan straightened.
“Now can we see the crate?”
Arkady turned toward the large-desked man and spoke quietly in Russian.
The man objected.
Arkady said something else.
The man objected less.
Arkady added one sentence.
The man sighed and reached for a telephone.
As they waited, Liz said quietly, “You did agree to help him.”
Dan looked at her.
“I agreed to let his nephew ask Natasha.”
“And what happens then?”
“Natasha says no.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then why give him the number?”
“Because occasionally Natasha says yes.”
“That’s your system?”
“No.”
“What is your system?”
Dan watched Arkady.
“Knowing the difference between a favor and a debt.”
Liz lowered her voice.
“And you always know?”
He looked at her.
“No.”
The answer surprised her.
Before she could ask more, Misha reappeared through the side door.
“I found Pavel’s brother.”
Dan stared at him.
“Here?”
“No.”
“Then how did you find him?”
“Telephone.”
“Working?”
“For one minute.”
“Luxury.”
Misha held up a scrap of paper.
“Shipment is in Building Four.”
Arkady turned.
“You found it?”
Misha shrugged.
“Maybe.”
Arkady laughed.
“Daniel, soon he will not need you.”
“I’ve known that for years.”
The man behind the large desk hung up and gestured toward the door.
Building Four was larger than Liz had expected.
Their footsteps echoed against concrete.
A hand truck rattled past. Somewhere beyond a row of stacked freight, an engine started and filled the space with diesel noise.
Arkady walked ahead beside Misha.
Dan and Liz followed.
“Is that how it works?” she asked.
“What?”
“You exchange favors until something moves.”
“Sometimes.”
“And if you don’t know anyone?”
“You wait.”
“How long?”
Dan looked around the warehouse.
“That depends on whether anyone knows you.”
“You understand why that bothers me.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound bothered.”
“I didn’t say I agreed with it.”
“You participate in it.”
“I also participate in traffic.”
“That may be the weaker defense.”
“Probably.”
They passed a stack of Finnish appliances.
Dan lowered his voice.
“Look, rules matter.”
She glanced at him.
“That sounded painful.”
“They do. But rules don’t answer telephones.”
“People do.”
“When the telephones work.”
“And when people decide which rules apply?”
“They do that anyway.”
There was no cynicism in his voice.
That made the argument harder.
Before Liz could answer, Misha called back.
“Here.”
They turned down another aisle.
The crate sat between a pallet of industrial motors and a stack of boxed office chairs.
BENNETT PROCESS SYSTEMS
HOUSTON, TEXAS
The words had been stenciled on the side in black.
Liz stopped.
For several seconds nobody said anything.
There it was.
Six weeks of shipping.
Three days of telephone calls.
An American businessman in an embassy office.
A forwarding company that had moved twice.
Customs officials who denied having something nobody had asked them to find correctly.
And the shipment was sitting in a warehouse.
Dan put his hands in his pockets.
Liz looked at him.
“You were right.”
His expression became cautious.
“About which part?”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to say thank you.”
“That I believe even less.”
Misha walked around the crate.
Arkady spoke to the warehouse employee who had accompanied them.
The man examined the seals.
Liz looked at the stencil again.
“This could have been here the whole time.”
“Probably was.”
“That is absurd.”
Dan smiled.
“No. Absurd would be if it were in Warsaw.”
“You say that as though it has happened.”
“It was Prague.”
She stared at him.
“Another time.”
The warehouse man fetched tools.
Arkady spoke with him, then with Liz.
“We may inspect. Nothing leaves.”
“Agreed.”
Dan said, “Can we open the outer packing?”
Arkady looked at Liz.
She understood the question was partly for her.
“We’re not removing anything,” she said. “We verify what is present.”
Arkady translated.
The warehouse man considered.
Then nodded.
The first boards came away with reluctance.
Inside were boxes packed tightly in straw and paper.
A printer.
Computer equipment.
Cartons of copier supplies.
Technical manuals.
A box of cables.
And, deep in the crate, wrapped in brown paper, a coffee maker.
Dan lifted it.
“America survives.”
Liz took it from him and put it back.
“Don’t tamper with evidence.”
“It’s a coffee maker.”
“You don’t know that.”
He looked at her.
She let him wait a second.
Then smiled faintly.
He shook his head.
“Very good.”
They checked against Bennett’s list.
Most of it was there.
Then Liz reached the last page.
“Document case.”
Dan looked up.
“What?”
She ran her finger along the entry.
“One locked document case. Technical manuals and commercial records.”
They searched.
Misha checked behind the computers.
Dan moved a carton of toner.
Nothing.
Arkady spoke to the warehouse man.
The man shrugged.
Liz checked the crate again.
“No case.”
Dan held out his hand.
She gave him the list.
He read the line.
“Could Bennett have removed it before shipping?”
“He said everything was packed in Houston.”
“He also said the shipment was missing.”
“Fair.”
Misha bent down.
“There is something.”
He reached between two boxes and pulled out a battered cardboard folder tied with string.
Not American.
Not new.
Its corners were soft from handling. A faded institutional stamp was visible on the cover.
Misha handed it to Liz.
The papers inside were Russian.
Carbon copies.
Typed sheets.
Inventory tables.
Official stamps.
Signatures.
Handwritten corrections.
Nothing remotely dramatic.
Liz read the first heading.
Then the second.
“Equipment inventory.”
Dan moved beside her.
She turned a page.
“Transfer record.”
Another.
“Machine tools.”
“Bennett’s?”
“No.”
She read the institution name more carefully.
It was a Moscow-area works she did not recognize.
The pages listed equipment by number, department, condition, transfer authority.
Lathes.
Milling machines.
Inspection equipment.
Dates.
Signatures.
She frowned.
“These aren’t technical manuals.”
“No.”
“They’re not Bennett’s records.”
“No.”
Arkady had stopped smiling.
That was the first thing that made her uneasy.
Liz looked back into the crate.
The document case listed on the American packing inventory was gone.
In its place were papers belonging to a Russian enterprise nobody had mentioned.
The shipment had not disappeared.
Someone had opened it.
Someone had taken something out.
And someone had put something else in.
She turned another page.
The same factory name appeared again.
Dan had gone quiet.
Liz noticed.
“You know it?”
He took the page from her and read the heading.
“No.”
Then he looked at the papers beneath it.
“Not well enough.”
“What does that mean?”
He handed the page back.
“It means I know someone who does.”
Around them the warehouse continued exactly as before.
A hand truck rattled across the concrete. A forklift reversed with a sharp electronic beep. Someone shouted for a clerk. A stamp came down on paper in the distant office.
The ordinary machinery of the afternoon went on.
Liz looked at the Russian records in her hands.
They had found Harold Bennett’s missing shipment.
That, she realized, had been the easy part.
End of Part Two
EAST OF THE MAP
Episode One: The Fax Machine
Part Three
Sergei Volkov lived in an apartment building whose elevator had stopped at the fifth floor sometime before the end of the Soviet Union and, according to Misha, had shown no interest in subsequent political developments.
Sergei lived on the seventh.
Dan pushed the elevator button anyway.
Nothing happened.
Misha pressed it after him.
Still nothing.
Liz said, “Perhaps it only responds to Russians.”
Misha considered this.
“No. It does not respect us either.”
They took the stairs.
By the sixth floor Liz had begun to suspect that Dan knew perfectly well the elevator was broken and had pressed the button solely because optimism had become a professional habit.
At the seventh-floor landing he stopped before a brown door whose paint had been applied in so many layers that the number seemed to have sunk into it.
He knocked.
A man’s voice answered in Russian.
Dan called back, “It’s Mercer.”
There was a pause.
Then several locks opened.
Sergei Volkov was lean, slightly stooped, and wore a cardigan over a white shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned. His hair had gone gray early at the temples, which gave him the appearance of a professor until he smiled.
“Daniel.”
“Sergei.”
Sergei took Dan’s hand, looked past him at Liz and Misha, then at the folder Dan carried.
“You bring Americans and paperwork.”
“Only one American.”
Sergei looked at Dan.
Dan sighed.
“Two.”
“Better.”
Misha followed them inside.
The apartment was small and orderly. Books covered one wall. Not decorative books arranged by color or size, but books that had been read, moved, stacked sideways and returned wherever there was room. A drafting instrument lay on the dining table beside a chipped blue cup. Through an open doorway Liz could see a narrow kitchen and a refrigerator that appeared to have been manufactured when Nikita Khrushchev was still promising abundance.
A radio played quietly somewhere in the apartment.
Sergei took the folder from Dan without opening it.
“Tea?”
“We don’t want to impose,” Liz said.
Sergei looked at her.
“You are in Russia.”
Then he looked at Dan.
“She is new.”
“She speaks Russian better than I do.”
Sergei’s eyebrows rose.
“That is not difficult.”
Dan removed his jacket.
“I came here for help.”
“You always come here for help.”
“I sometimes come for dinner.”
“You come for dinner when you need help.”
Misha had already gone into the kitchen.
Sergei called after him, “There is bread.”
Misha answered that he had found it.
Liz watched Dan settle into the room.
Something changed in him.
Not much. He did not become a different man. But the alertness he carried through his office and the warehouse eased. He knew where the chairs were. He knew which cup was his. He moved a stack of newspapers from one seat without asking.
This was not a contact.
It was a friendship.
That distinction had been increasingly important to Liz all afternoon.
Sergei finally opened the folder.
The change in his face was immediate.
He did not gasp or stiffen.
He simply stopped moving.
Dan noticed too.
“You know it.”
Sergei sat.
“Where did you get this?”
“American shipment.”
Sergei looked up sharply.
“Whose?”
“Engineering company. Houston.”
“And this was in the shipment?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“That is one of today’s questions.”
Sergei turned the first page.
Misha returned carrying four glasses of tea in metal holders and a plate with slices of dark bread.
He placed everything on the table.
Sergei read.
The apartment became quiet except for the radio and the faint hiss of traffic far below.
Liz sat opposite him.
She had already read enough of the records to know their vocabulary. Inventory. Transfer. Equipment. Department. Valuation. Custody. Disposal.
What she had not understood was the story those words made together.
Sergei turned a page.
Then another.
“Moskovskiy Zavod Izmeritelnykh Priborov,” he said.
Liz translated automatically in her head.
Moscow Measuring Instrument Works.
“You know it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Personally?”
“I know people there.”
Dan said, “What do they make?”
“Industrial measuring equipment. Gauges. Inspection systems. Instruments for machine shops. Some laboratory equipment.”
“Defense?”
Sergei shook his head.
“Not this. Ordinary production.”
The word ordinary sounded deliberate.
He turned another page.
“These are not about instruments.”
Liz leaned closer.
“Machine tools.”
“Yes.”
He tapped a line with one finger.
“German grinding machine. Two precision lathes. Coordinate measuring machine. Milling center.”
Dan looked at him.
“Worth something?”
Sergei gave him a tired smile.
“Everything is worth something now.”
“I mean enough to matter.”
Sergei looked back at the papers.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“That depends who is buying.”
“And who is selling?”
Sergei’s smile disappeared.
“That is the better question.”
He picked up his tea but did not drink.
“The factory is being reorganized.”
“Privatized?” Liz asked.
Sergei considered.
“That is one word.”
Dan said, “What word would you use?”
Sergei looked at him.
“Reorganized.”
Misha sat on the windowsill.
Sergei continued.
“There is the factory. There are several new companies. There are managers who belong to both. There is equipment which belongs to the factory but is being transferred to the companies.”
“Legally?” Liz asked.
Sergei looked down at the document.
“Perhaps.”
“That doesn’t sound reassuring.”
“It is not meant to be.”
Dan glanced at her.
She noticed.
Sergei slid one of the pages toward Liz.
“Look here.”
She read the line.
A piece of equipment had been transferred from the instrument works to a newly formed firm whose name meant nothing to her.
The valuation was written beside it.
Liz frowned.
“That seems low.”
“It is low.”
“How low?”
Sergei thought.
“If the machine works? Very.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“It works.”
“You know that?”
“I know the maintenance chief.”
There was a silence.
Dan said, “So they’re stealing the machines.”
Sergei looked at him.
“No.”
Dan leaned back.
“No?”
“You want a simple answer.”
“I’d settle for one.”
“That is why you sell copiers.”
Dan smiled despite himself.
Sergei pushed the document back into the center of the table.
“The state owned the factory.”
“Right.”
“Now the state says many things must become private.”
“Also right.”
“The managers create a private company. They transfer equipment to it.”
“At a fraction of the value.”
“Yes.”
Dan spread his hands.
“That sounds like stealing.”
Sergei looked at Liz.
“Americans have a useful word. Ownership.”
“We do.”
“You think it means something exact.”
“Usually.”
“In the factory, the workers say, ‘These are our machines.’”
“Are they?”
Sergei shook his head.
“Not in the way you mean.”
He turned toward Dan.
“The director says, ‘The factory owns them.’ The ministry says, ‘The state owns them.’ The new company says, ‘We purchased them.’ The workers say, ‘We built everything with them for thirty years.’”
“And you?” Liz asked.
Sergei took a drink of tea.
“I say the machine does not care.”
That was the first answer that made everyone quiet.
He continued.
“But the people do.”
Liz looked again at the transfer record.
“Is the transfer illegal?”
Sergei’s mouth tightened.
“Perhaps not.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“That is the problem.”
He leaned forward.
“The rules are changing while the people are using them. Yesterday this paper means one thing. Tomorrow another. One man knows how to create a new company. Another man knows only how to operate a lathe.”
He tapped the document.
“The first man ends with the lathe.”
Dan was no longer smiling.
“And the second?”
“Still knows how to operate it.”
The radio changed programs in the next room.
A woman’s voice began reading the news.
Misha rose and turned it down.
Sergei continued studying the pages.
Liz watched him.
Whatever connection he had to the instrument works was not casual.
“You said you know people there.”
“My first job after university was at a factory like this.”
“This one?”
“No.”
He hesitated.
“My brother-in-law worked there. Before he died.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sergei nodded once.
“He was a machinist. Very good.”
He did not elaborate.
He did not need to.
The documents were no longer abstract to him.
That was why Dan had brought them here.
Not because Sergei knew Russia.
Because Sergei knew factories.
He turned several pages quickly.
Then stopped.
“This.”
Liz leaned across.
Near the bottom of one sheet was a handwritten correction beside a typed equipment number.
“What about it?”
“Same writing here.”
He found another page.
“And here.”
“Whose?”
Sergei looked at an initial beside the notation.
“N. A. S.”
“Does that mean something?”
“Maybe.”
He scanned a typed approval sheet.
Then another.
“There is accounting department stamp.”
Dan said, “So?”
“These corrections would normally be made by someone checking inventory before transfer.”
“Accountant?”
“Bookkeeper. Inventory clerk. Someone in that office.”
He turned the folder over and examined the faded stamp on the cover.
“This folder also came from accounting.”
Liz said, “Could someone there have put it into the American crate?”
Sergei looked at her.
“If they had access.”
“How would they?”
“There are many possibilities.”
Dan gave him a warning look.
Sergei smiled faintly.
“I know. You want fewer possibilities.”
“I would like one.”
“Then find the person who wrote this.”
Misha had picked up the sheet.
He pointed at the initials.
“Nina Alexeyevna.”
Sergei looked at him.
“You know her?”
“No.”
Dan sighed.
“That’s a relief.”
Misha ignored him.
“In Russia, N.A.S. can be many people. But accounting woman in factory—perhaps Nina.”
“Why Nina?”
“My mother is Nina.”
“That is not investigative reasoning.”
“It is better than yours.”
Sergei smiled.
“I know someone who can tell us.”
Dan looked at Liz.
There it was again.
Not a system.
People.
One person knew another, who remembered another, who had worked beside someone else ten years earlier.
Liz disliked the fragility of it.
She also had to admit that they were making progress.
Sergei went to the telephone.
The first number did not answer.
The second produced a busy signal.
The third connected.
Sergei spoke in Russian for several minutes.
His tone changed halfway through the conversation.
He stopped asking questions and began listening.
Then he wrote a name on the margin of a newspaper.
When he hung up, Dan was already watching him.
“Who?”
Sergei turned the paper around.
Nina Andreyevna Sokolova.
Misha looked pleased.
“Nina.”
Dan stared at him.
“Do not become unbearable.”
“I said Nina.”
“You said half the women in Moscow.”
“One of them was correct.”
Sergei gave them an address.
“She worked in accounting at the instrument works.”
“Worked?”
Liz caught it immediately.
Sergei nodded.
“She has not been there since Friday.”
“Why?”
“My friend does not know.”
Dan said, “She quit?”
“No.”
“Dismissed?”
“Maybe.”
Liz looked at the folder.
“And these records arrived in Bennett’s shipment Tuesday.”
Sergei nodded slowly.
For the first time, the sequence had shape.
Someone inside the factory had copied or assembled the records.
Someone had placed them in an American shipment.
Days later, the probable bookkeeper had stopped going to work.
Dan stood and reached for his jacket.
Sergei did not move.
“Daniel.”
Dan looked at him.
“What?”
“Be careful what you promise.”
Dan’s expression changed very slightly.
“I haven’t promised anything.”
“Yet.”
Their eyes held for a moment.
Liz noticed because Sergei did not seem to be warning him about danger.
He was warning him about himself.
Nina Andreyevna Sokolova lived in a nine-story apartment block south of the city center.
By the time they arrived, the afternoon light had begun to soften.
Children played beside a metal climbing frame in the courtyard. Two boys kicked a ball against the side of the building, despite a woman leaning from a fourth-floor window and objecting every time it struck the wall.
Misha parked beside three other cars.
One appeared to lack an engine.
Dan looked up at the building.
“Which floor?”
“Eight,” Misha said.
Dan looked at Liz.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“The elevator?”
Misha went inside.
They heard the elevator moving.
Dan brightened.
Misha returned.
“It works.”
“See?”
“Only to six.”
Dan stared at him.
“Why?”
Misha shrugged.
“Russia.”
They rode to six.
The elevator stopped with a violent little bounce.
The doors opened on a corridor that smelled of boiled cabbage and furniture polish.
Two floors later they found Nina’s apartment.
Dan knocked.
Nothing.
He knocked again.
A chain moved behind the door.
A woman opened it three inches.
She was perhaps fifty. Small. Gray beginning in her brown hair. She wore a dark skirt and cardigan and regarded them with the expression of someone who had been expecting trouble, although not necessarily this particular trouble.
Dan spoke her name.
The door began to close.
Liz stepped forward.
“Nina Andreyevna.”
The door stopped.
Liz spoke in Russian.
“My name is Elizabeth Rowan. We need to speak with you about some factory documents.”
The woman’s face went pale.
That answered the first question.
“You have them?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“They’re safe.”
That was not strictly an answer.
Liz was learning from Dan.
Nina looked past her toward him.
“Who is he?”
“Daniel Mercer.”
Nina’s expression tightened.
“Businessman.”
Dan understood enough Russian to catch the word.
He did not object.
Liz said, “He helped us find them.”
Nina looked at Misha.
“And him?”
Misha said in Russian, “Driver.”
Nina looked unconvinced.
Misha added, “Only driver.”
Something about his delivery almost worked.
Nina opened the door farther.
“You cannot stand in the corridor.”
The apartment was smaller than Sergei’s.
Shoes lined the wall inside the entrance. A man’s coat hung from a peg. On a table lay a school exercise book open beside several colored pencils.
A girl of perhaps eleven looked out from the kitchen.
Nina spoke to her.
The girl collected the schoolbook and disappeared into another room.
A refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Its handle had been repaired with wire.
Nina put water on to boil.
Liz said, “You don’t have to make tea.”
Nina looked at her as though she had said something deeply unreasonable.
They sat.
Dan remained nearest the door.
The choice seemed deliberate.
Liz placed the battered folder on the kitchen table.
Nina stared at it.
She did not touch it.
“You put this in the American shipment?”
A long silence.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Nina looked at Dan again.
He said quietly, in English, “I’ll wait outside if you’d rather.”
Liz glanced at him.
Nina understood enough of the tone, if not the words.
She shook her head.
“No.”
Dan stayed.
But after that he said almost nothing.
Liz began again.
“Why these documents?”
Nina folded her hands tightly in her lap.
“They are moving the machines.”
“From the factory?”
“To companies.”
“Private companies?”
“Yes.”
“Owned by whom?”
Nina laughed once, without humor.
“Everyone’s wife. Everyone’s brother. Everyone’s friend.”
Liz waited.
The kettle began to hiss.
Nina rose and poured the water.
She moved carefully, grateful perhaps for something ordinary to do.
When the tea was on the table, she continued.
“At first it was one machine.”
“What kind?”
“Grinding machine.”
“For the factory?”
“Yes. Very good machine. German. Old, but accurate.”
“Who took it?”
“No one took it.”
Nina looked at Liz.
“Paper took it.”
Liz understood.
The machine had remained physically where it was.
Ownership had moved first.
“The documents changed.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“Two lathes. Measuring machine. Milling machine.”
She looked toward the closed door where the girl had gone.
“They say factory does not need them.”
“Does it?”
“If we do not need machines, what do we need?”
Her voice had risen.
She immediately lowered it.
“There are four hundred people.”
“How many used to work there?”
Nina stared into her tea.
“More.”
“How many?”
“Almost two thousand.”
Nobody spoke.
The number explained more than an economic lecture could have.
Nina went on.
“Every month fewer.”
Dan shifted slightly but remained silent.
Liz said, “You believed the records would be destroyed?”
“Changed.”
“Have records already been changed?”
Nina nodded.
“You saw it?”
“I keep the books.”
The simplicity of the answer made Liz sit back.
“Why the American crate?”
“I knew they were shipping things through the warehouse.”
“You had access?”
“My cousin works for cleaning service there.”
That was almost disappointingly mundane.
“Your cousin opened Bennett’s shipment?”
“No. It had been opened for inspection. He knew which crate.”
“And the document case?”
Nina looked down.
“Removed.”
“Where is it?”
“With my cousin.”
Liz felt some relief.
“At least it hasn’t disappeared.”
“No.”
“Why remove it?”
“To make space.”
“You could have put the papers in without taking anything.”
“I did not want them found immediately.”
Liz understood.
If the original contents remained intact and an extra folder appeared, whoever had access might simply remove it.
A missing American case would eventually generate questions.
Nina had used Bennett’s own inventory as an alarm.
It was clever.
It was also reckless.
“Do you understand you’ve interfered with property belonging to an American company?”
Nina’s face hardened.
“I know.”
“They may have legal obligations tied to those records.”
“I know.”
“You could have created serious problems for them.”
“I know.”
The repetition became smaller each time.
Liz stopped.
This was not a woman who needed to be informed that she had broken rules.
She knew.
“What did you expect would happen?”
Nina took a long time to answer.
“I thought Americans would take the crate.”
“To their office?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“They find papers.”
“And?”
She looked at Liz directly.
“Embassy.”
There it was.
Liz felt the weight of it before she spoke.
“You thought they would bring the records to us.”
“Americans bring problems to embassy.”
Dan’s mouth moved faintly.
Liz resisted looking at him.
“Yes,” she said. “They do.”
“Then papers are safe.”
“No.”
Nina blinked.
“No?”
“I can’t simply take these into the embassy.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re not U.S. government records. They’re Russian commercial records. I don’t know who owns them legally. I don’t know whether these are originals, copies, altered copies, or incomplete records. I don’t know who has authority to receive them.”
“They are true.”
“I believe you.”
“Then take them.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
Nina’s face changed.
Not anger.
Disappointment.
That was harder.
“You are embassy.”
“Yes.”
“People say America wants law.”
“We do.”
“Then here.”
She pushed the folder toward Liz.
“Law.”
Liz looked at it.
She understood perfectly why Dan preferred action.
The folder was six inches from her hand.
A frightened woman was asking her to take it.
It would be very easy to say yes.
And then what?
Carry documents of uncertain ownership through embassy security? Put them in a desk? Give them to whom? Commercial section? Political section? A Russian ministry? A prosecutor? Would any of them accept material whose chain of possession now included a factory bookkeeper, her cousin, an American freight shipment, Dan Mercer, Arkady Petrov, Sergei Volkov and Liz herself?
A good story could make that look heroic.
Reality might make it useless.
“Nina Andreyevna,” she said softly, “if I take these the wrong way, the first thing someone will say is that Americans interfered with them.”
Nina said nothing.
“They could say we changed them.”
“You would not.”
“I know that. You know that. That isn’t enough.”
Nina’s eyes filled, though she did not cry.
“Then nobody helps.”
Dan moved.
Liz knew before he spoke what he was going to do.
“We’ll help.”
She turned.
“Dan.”
His eyes stayed on Nina.
“We’ll make sure the documents don’t disappear.”
“Dan.”
He looked at her.
She did not raise her voice.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can promise we’ll try.”
“That wasn’t what you said.”
Nina was watching them now.
Dan glanced back at her.
Liz switched to Russian.
“We will try to find a way to preserve what you have done without making things worse.”
Dan’s jaw tightened slightly.
Nina looked between them.
“Is there way?”
Liz hesitated.
“I don’t know yet.”
It was not what Nina wanted to hear.
But it was true.
The girl appeared briefly in the doorway.
Nina wiped her eyes before turning.
She said something to the child.
The girl vanished again.
Misha had not spoken for ten minutes.
Now he said quietly, in Russian, “Where is your cousin?”
Nina gave him an address.
“And the American case?”
“With him.”
Misha nodded.
Dan rose.
“We should get it back.”
Liz agreed.
That much, at least, was clear.
Nina reached for the folder.
Dan put his hand on it at the same moment.
They both stopped.
He removed his hand.
“Nina Andreyevna,” Liz said, “you should keep the originals for now.”
Dan looked at her.
“What?”
She answered in English.
“We don’t move them again until we know what we’re doing.”
“They were already in the crate.”
“And now they’re here.”
“They can disappear here.”
“So we make copies.”
“Where?”
“Mercer’s.”
“No.”
The word came sharper than she intended.
Nina stared at them.
Liz lowered her voice.
“Not here.”
Dan looked toward the door.
“Fine.”
He thanked Nina in Russian.
His accent was poor enough to make the words sound gentler than they might have in fluent speech.
Nina nodded.
At the door she touched Liz’s sleeve.
“Tomorrow?”
Liz looked back.
“I hope so.”
It was the closest thing to a promise she was willing to make.
Outside, evening had begun gathering between the apartment blocks.
Misha went ahead to the car.
Dan walked beside Liz in silence.
That was new.
She had become accustomed to his commentary on machinery, traffic, bureaucracy and the human tendency to send office furniture across continents.
The silence felt less comfortable than she expected.
They reached the Volga.
Misha leaned against the driver’s door, saw their faces and suddenly became interested in the taillight.
Dan stopped.
“We copy the documents tonight.”
Liz turned to him.
“No.”
“We don’t take the originals.”
“No.”
“We photograph or photocopy them.”
“You don’t have authorization.”
“From whom?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the entire problem.”
Dan shoved his hands into his pockets.
“For all we know somebody walks into that apartment tomorrow morning and takes every page.”
“For all we know nobody does.”
“You want to bet on that?”
“I don’t want to bet on anything.”
“Then we make copies.”
“And establish what? That Daniel Mercer possesses unofficial copies of disputed factory records acquired through a stolen American document case?”
“Borrowed.”
She stared at him.
“The case was stolen.”
“Fine.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He looked away.
The courtyard was louder now.
The boys had resumed kicking the ball against the wall.
The woman at the window had given up protesting.
Dan said, “Those machines will move.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Sergei thinks they will.”
“Sergei thinks the transfers are questionable.”
“He thinks they’re being stripped out.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“He didn’t have to.”
Liz felt irritation rise.
“This is exactly what worries me.”
“What?”
“You fill in the part you don’t know.”
“So do rules.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means everyone keeps waiting for the correct paper while the machine leaves on a truck.”
“And your answer is what? Make five unofficial copies and hand them to friends?”
“If that’s what keeps them alive.”
“The papers are not alive.”
“The people who need them are.”
That stopped her.
Not because he was right.
Because part of him was.
Dan stepped closer, not aggressively, but with the concentration she had seen at his desk when he stopped joking.
“Liz, if Nina wakes up tomorrow and those machines are gone, what exactly did we protect?”
“The credibility of the evidence.”
“Evidence of something that’s already happened.”
“Which may be the only way anyone can challenge it.”
“Later.”
“Yes. Later.”
“That word does a lot of work in embassies.”
There it was.
She felt it more than she wanted to.
“And favors do a lot of work in your office.”
His face changed.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You know Arkady because he can get you past desks. Misha knows Pavel’s brother. Sergei knows someone at the factory. Now you want your copier involved too.”
“The copier is neutral.”
Despite herself, she nearly smiled.
He saw it.
Neither of them took the escape.
Liz said, “You think because everyone involved is decent, the method becomes decent.”
“I think decent people are usually the only reason methods work.”
“And what happens when they’re not decent?”
Dan looked at her.
“That happens too.”
“Exactly.”
He turned toward the building.
“I can get the papers copied without taking them anywhere.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because the minute you do it, somebody can say the copies were made by an American businessman with an interest in the outcome.”
“I don’t have an interest in the outcome.”
“You have an interest in everything.”
“That is deeply unfair.”
“It was almost a compliment.”
“This doesn’t feel like one.”
Misha opened the driver’s door, then closed it again without getting in.
Liz lowered her voice.
“If you want these records to matter, you have to preserve who had them, where they came from, and what happened to them.”
“And while we preserve the story of the paper?”
“We find someone legitimate to receive it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s the problem.”
“No. The problem is that you think not knowing yet gives you permission to improvise.”
“And you think not knowing yet gives you permission to wait.”
They stood facing one another.
There was no anger in Dan’s voice now.
That made it worse.
Liz said, “You don’t trust systems.”
“I trust some.”
“Which ones?”
“The ones with people in them.”
“All systems have people in them.”
“Exactly.”
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Dan said, “I can make one call.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She almost laughed.
“You actually said that.”
“I know.”
“What are you asking?”
“I’m not asking.”
“That is becoming another thing you do.”
He looked genuinely surprised.
“What?”
“Make a decision sound like a conversation.”
He considered it.
“That might be fair.”
“Don’t move the documents.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Don’t copy them.”
He said nothing.
“Dan.”
“I heard you.”
“That isn’t a promise.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
He did not soften it.
At least he was honest.
That mattered more than she wanted it to.
She glanced at her watch.
“I need to get back.”
“I’ll have Misha take you.”
“I can get a taxi.”
Misha looked up sharply.
“No.”
The argument paused.
Liz turned toward him.
“No?”
“No taxi.”
“Why?”
Misha looked at Dan.
Dan shrugged.
“Don’t look at me.”
Misha said, “I drive you.”
Liz almost objected.
Then she saw that Misha was not participating in the argument. He had simply decided that she was not getting into a random Moscow car at dusk.
“Fine.”
Dan opened the rear door for her.
She did not get in yet.
“What are you going to do?”
“Walk.”
“To where?”
“My office.”
“That’s four miles.”
“Probably.”
“Why?”
“I think better when I’m moving.”
She studied him.
“And then?”
“Then I make a telephone call.”
“To whom?”
“I’ll know when I get there.”
“Dan—”
He raised one hand.
“I am not going to take Nina’s documents.”
She waited.
“Or have someone take them.”
Another pause.
“Or copy them.”
It had cost him something to say it.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“Why?”
“Because now I have to come up with a better idea.”
Misha got behind the wheel.
Liz climbed into the car.
Dan shut the door.
For a moment he stood beside the Volga, one hand resting on the roof.
The easy humor had vanished.
What remained was not less likable.
That was part of the difficulty.
Liz lowered the window.
He bent slightly.
“If you think of somebody legitimate who can receive those records—”
“I’ll call.”
“Mercer Business Services.”
“I know.”
“Natasha will answer.”
“I know.”
“Don’t let her frighten you.”
“I like her better than you.”
“Everybody does.”
Misha started the engine.
This time it caught immediately.
Dan stepped back.
The Volga pulled away.
Liz looked through the rear window.
He was still standing in the courtyard.
Then he turned and began walking.
Misha drove for half a block before saying anything.
“You are both right.”
Liz looked at him.
“That is not helpful.”
“Yes.”
“You could have said that five minutes ago.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Misha changed lanes.
“You were both talking.”
She waited.
“And?”
“It was already crowded.”
Liz laughed.
She had not meant to.
Misha smiled faintly at the windshield.
The apartment buildings passed outside.
Lights were coming on in windows.
A woman crossed the street carrying bread. A bus stopped beneath a sign whose old lettering had been painted over but not quite erased. Two men were replacing the front of a kiosk while continuing to sell cigarettes through the side.
Moscow seemed capable of rebuilding itself without ever stopping long enough to agree what it was becoming.
Liz looked down at her empty hands.
That was what bothered her.
The documents were with Nina.
Dan was walking back toward his office.
Somewhere in the city there were machines whose ownership had changed on paper before anyone moved them an inch.
The easy answer would have been to distrust Mercer.
That would have simplified things.
But she no longer did.
Not exactly.
She trusted his intelligence.
She trusted his concern for Nina.
She trusted that he understood consequences better than his casual manner suggested.
What she did not trust was the leap he made between believing something ought to be done and deciding that therefore he was entitled to do it.
And somewhere beneath that objection was another, more uncomfortable realization.
She cared whether he understood why she had stopped him.
Not because he was useful.
Not because Claire had given her his number.
Not because an American shipment had dragged them together for an afternoon.
She cared because, in only a few hours, his judgment had begun to matter to her.
That was inconvenient.
The Volga stopped at a light.
Misha glanced at her in the mirror.
“You are thinking.”
“Is that a problem?”
“For Daniel, maybe.”
The light changed.
They moved forward.
Liz looked out at Moscow.
She was no longer afraid Dan Mercer would do the wrong thing.
That would have been easier.
She was afraid he would do the right thing in precisely the wrong way.
And she had the uncomfortable suspicion that, by morning, she was going to have to find him a better one.
End of Part Three
EAST OF THE MAP
Episode One: The Fax Machine
Part Four
By the time Misha brought her back to the embassy, the building had entered that peculiar hour when official business had ended for some people and become more urgent for everyone else.
A Marine at the entrance checked her identification. Two officers she knew passed her in the corridor carrying files and paper cups of coffee. Somewhere behind a closed door a telephone rang long enough to suggest that nobody wanted to answer it.
Liz reached her office, took off her coat and sat down.
The disagreement with Dan had followed her all the way back.
She did not particularly want to think about him.
So she worked.
She took a yellow legal pad from her drawer and wrote down what they knew.
The Bennett shipment existed.
The missing document case existed.
The case was in the possession of Nina’s cousin.
The Russian records were with Nina.
The records appeared to document questionable transfers of industrial equipment.
Nina could explain where they had come from.
Sergei could explain what they meant technically.
And no American official had any proper reason to take possession of them.
Liz looked at the last sentence.
That was where she had been stuck.
She had treated the problem as though the documents had to go somewhere.
To the embassy.
To Dan.
To some authority.
To somebody.
But perhaps that was wrong.
Perhaps the important thing was not where the documents went.
Perhaps it was who saw them before they went anywhere at all.
She turned the page.
If Nina retained the originals, the papers remained where they were.
If the cousin returned Bennett’s case directly to Bennett, the American property problem could be separated from the Russian one.
If someone from the factory with a legitimate position saw the documents while Nina was present—
Liz stopped writing.
Claire appeared in the doorway.
“You look dangerous.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s usually when it happens.”
Liz looked up.
“Come in.”
Claire stepped inside carrying two cups of coffee.
“I brought this before you could ask whether it had a chain of custody.”
Liz accepted one.
“Where did you get it?”
“Downstairs.”
“Then its provenance is already questionable.”
Claire sat.
“How did Mercer go?”
“We found the shipment.”
Claire blinked.
“You found it?”
“It wasn’t missing.”
She gave Liz a look.
“Please don’t tell me Mercer said that.”
“Repeatedly.”
“He’ll be unbearable.”
“He was disappointingly restrained.”
“Worse.”
Liz took a drink of coffee and regretted it.
Claire watched her face.
“It’s improved.”
“No, we’ve deteriorated.”
“What happened?”
Liz told her.
Not every detail.
Enough.
The Russian papers. The instrument works. Nina. The missing document case. The proposed copying. The argument.
Claire listened without interrupting.
When Liz finished, she said, “So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t like you.”
“I’m expanding.”
Claire drank her coffee.
“You can’t take the papers.”
“No.”
“You can’t certify them.”
“No.”
“You can’t decide whether the transfers are legal.”
“No.”
“You can’t tell the Russians what to do with them.”
“No.”
Claire looked thoughtful.
“That leaves very little.”
Liz stared at the notes on her desk.
“Yes.”
A telephone rang in the next office.
Someone answered on the third ring.
Liz drew a box around Nina’s name.
Then one around Sergei’s.
Then another around the words FACTORY REPRESENTATIVE.
Claire leaned forward.
“What?”
“I don’t need the papers.”
“I thought that was the problem.”
“No. Taking the papers is the problem.”
She drew a line between the boxes.
“Nina needs someone legitimate from the factory to see them while she still has them.”
Claire looked down at the pad.
“And then?”
“Then whatever happens is their dispute.”
“That sounds almost offensively reasonable.”
“The documents can be copied in front of witnesses. Nina can state where they came from. Someone from the factory can acknowledge seeing them. Bennett gets his case back separately.”
“And the embassy?”
“Doesn’t touch anything.”
Claire sat back.
“So you’re not solving it.”
“Exactly.”
Claire smiled.
“Now you sound like the Foreign Service.”
Liz ignored her.
“If the records are real, the important thing is to prevent someone from saying later that they never existed.”
“Who from the factory?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sergei?”
“He isn’t connected closely enough.”
“Mercer?”
Liz looked at her.
Claire raised both hands.
“I withdraw the suggestion.”
“No. He’ll know who can get someone there.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“You need Mercer.”
Liz looked back at the legal pad.
“No.”
Claire waited.
Liz sighed.
“I need what Mercer does.”
“That sounds safer.”
“It isn’t.”
Claire finished her coffee.
“What happens tomorrow?”
Liz looked at the clock.
Tomorrow.
That was the other problem.
Dan had been right about that too.
Nothing they had seen guaranteed that the machinery would actually be moved overnight.
Nothing guaranteed it would not.
A process already in motion could become irreversible simply because everyone with authority to question it went home.
She reached for the telephone.
Claire stood.
“Should I stay?”
“No.”
“Should I pretend I didn’t hear any of this?”
“That would be professionally comforting.”
Claire opened the door.
Then turned.
“You like him.”
Liz picked up the receiver.
“I’ve known him since lunch.”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
“Goodnight, Claire.”
Claire left smiling.
Liz dialed Mercer Business Services.
The line rang once.
Twice.
Then clicked.
“Mercer Business Services.”
Natasha.
“It’s Elizabeth Rowan.”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
“Is Dan there?”
“No.”
Liz looked at the clock.
“He hasn’t come back?”
“He is walking.”
“I know.”
“You argued.”
Liz sat straighter.
“How do you know that?”
“Misha.”
“Of course.”
“He said you were both right.”
Liz closed her eyes.
“Did he.”
“Yes.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said this is unlikely.”
Liz smiled.
“Natasha, I think I have a way to handle the documents.”
There was a pause.
Then the office manager’s voice changed.
“Tell me.”
Liz did.
She kept it simple.
Nina keeps the originals.
The American case goes back to Bennett.
Someone with an identifiable position at the factory must see the records in Nina’s presence.
Copies can be made while everyone is there.
Whoever receives those copies signs that they received them and from whom.
Sergei can explain the equipment.
Nobody from the embassy takes possession of anything.
When she finished, Natasha said nothing for several seconds.
“Is that possible?” Liz asked.
“Yes.”
The certainty surprised her.
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
Liz laughed.
“I’m beginning to understand your office.”
“This is dangerous.”
“What is?”
“Understanding us.”
A door opened at the other end.
Liz heard voices.
Then Natasha said, “He is here.”
“Dan?”
“No, the dentist.”
Liz waited.
Natasha relented.
“Yes. Daniel.”
There was muffled conversation.
Then Dan came on the line slightly out of breath.
“Mercer.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’ve just climbed two flights of stairs expecting a peaceful evening.”
“I can call tomorrow.”
“No.”
That came immediately.
Liz said nothing.
Dan continued.
“What did you find?”
“A way that doesn’t require us to take the records anywhere.”
She explained again.
He did not interrupt.
When she finished, the line was quiet.
“Well?” she asked.
“It could work.”
She had expected more resistance.
“That easily?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“We need somebody from the factory who has enough authority that acknowledging the documents means something.”
“Yes.”
“And who doesn’t have an interest in making them disappear.”
“Yes.”
“That part is harder.”
“I assumed it would be.”
“We need Nina and her cousin.”
“Yes.”
“Bennett too.”
“Why?”
“His shipment was used. He should get his case back directly.”
Liz paused.
“That’s better.”
“I occasionally contribute.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Another pause.
Then Dan said, “How long do we have?”
Liz looked at the clock.
“How quickly can you find the right factory representative?”
“No idea.”
“Dan.”
“I said I could find people. I never said they were convenient.”
She heard him put his hand over the receiver.
Voices in Russian.
Natasha answering.
A drawer opening.
Then Dan returned.
“Give me twenty minutes.”
“For what?”
“To fail.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“If I fail quickly, we still have time for something else.”
The line went dead.
Liz stared at the receiver.
There were moments when she was certain Moscow’s telephone system possessed a sense of dramatic timing.
She put on her coat.
Mercer Business Services looked entirely different at seven-thirty in the evening.
Not quieter.
Just more concentrated.
The outside clients were gone. The office door was propped open with a box of copier paper. Natasha sat at her desk with one telephone against her ear and another resting beside her hand. A legal pad in front of her contained names, numbers and arrows that appeared to constitute a private map of Moscow.
Dan occupied the desk opposite.
His jacket was off again.
He held a receiver in one hand and was saying, “No, not tomorrow. Tonight.”
He listened.
“No. I understand you have dinner.”
Another pause.
“I’m not asking you to cancel dinner.”
He listened again.
“I’m asking you to finish it quickly.”
Natasha looked at Liz as she entered.
“He has become American again.”
“I heard.”
Dan pointed at Liz without interrupting his call.
“I can see you.”
“That was not the issue.”
He went back to the telephone.
Misha came through the inner door carrying two fuel cans.
Liz looked at them.
“What are those for?”
“The car.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“We have little gasoline.”
“How little?”
Misha thought.
“Enough if everyone lives near each other.”
“Do they?”
“No.”
Natasha finished her call.
“Nina will come.”
“To where?”
“Here.”
“Her cousin?”
“Misha will collect him.”
Misha lifted the fuel cans.
“After gasoline.”
Dan hung up.
“Sergei’s coming.”
“Who from the factory?”
“That’s the problem.”
“You haven’t found anyone?”
“I found four.”
“That sounds promising.”
“One refuses to come if another is there. One says he has no authority. One says he has authority but won’t put anything in writing.”
“And the fourth?”
“Doesn’t have a telephone.”
Liz looked at Natasha.
“Normal?”
“Good day.”
Dan picked up another slip of paper.
“Sergei thinks the deputy chief accountant is clean enough to matter.”
“Clean enough?”
“It was Sergei’s phrase.”
“Comforting.”
“He also thinks she hates Nina.”
“That may be useful.”
Liz looked at him.
Dan smiled faintly.
“She can’t be accused of protecting her friend.”
That stopped her.
“Call her.”
“I tried.”
“Try again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She gave him a look.
He dialed.
Busy signal.
He hung up.
Dialed again.
Busy signal.
Natasha held out her hand.
Dan gave her the receiver.
She dialed a different number.
“What number is that?” he asked.
“Her neighbor.”
“You know her neighbor?”
“No.”
“Then why—”
Natasha spoke in Russian when someone answered.
She listened, apologized, asked a question, listened again and wrote another number.
Dan stared at her.
Liz said quietly, “Don’t interfere.”
“I work here.”
“Technically.”
He looked at her.
She had learned that from Natasha.
He knew it.
Natasha dialed the new number.
This time someone answered.
Her conversation lasted four minutes.
At the end she put down the receiver.
“She will come.”
Dan looked impressed.
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“And that worked?”
“Sometimes.”
Liz moved beside Natasha’s desk.
“What did she agree to?”
“To look at papers. Nothing else.”
“Good.”
“She will not sign anything until she sees them.”
“Also good.”
“She does not want Mercer there.”
Dan looked offended.
“I’ve never met her.”
“She knows you.”
“That’s worse.”
Natasha turned to Liz.
“She asked if embassy is involved.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That you are.”
Liz’s heart sank.
“Natasha—”
“As witness.”
Liz waited.
“That’s not quite—”
“She asked if you are taking papers.”
“No.”
“I told her no.”
“If I’m there, I need to be very clear I’m not representing the embassy in the dispute.”
Natasha shrugged.
“Then be clear.”
Dan smiled.
Liz pointed at him.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to admire your coat.”
She looked down at it.
He looked away quickly.
Misha returned with the fuel cans empty.
“No gasoline.”
Dan stared.
“What happened?”
“There is gasoline.”
“That’s promising.”
“For dollars.”
“How many?”
Misha told him.
Dan winced.
“Can we do it?”
“We can do half.”
“Half a tank?”
“Half the people.”
Liz said, “Who needs transport?”
“Nina’s cousin. Nina can take metro.”
“I’ll pay for the fuel.”
Dan looked at her.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because then tomorrow somebody explains that the U.S. government financed a midnight Russian factory meeting.”
“It’s seven-thirty.”
“It will be midnight by the time we finish.”
Natasha opened a drawer and removed money.
“Here.”
Dan frowned.
“That’s petty cash.”
“It is now gasoline.”
“You can’t just—”
She looked at him.
He stopped.
Liz leaned toward him.
“I like her better than you.”
“I remember.”
By nine o’clock, Mercer Business Services contained more people than chairs.
Nina arrived first, carrying the folder in a cloth shopping bag.
She seemed startled to see Liz.
“You came.”
“I said I would try.”
Nina looked toward Dan.
“So did he.”
Dan was speaking to Sergei beside the copier.
He gave Nina a small nod but did not approach her.
Misha arrived ten minutes later with Nina’s cousin, a nervous man in his forties named Yuri who carried Bennett’s locked document case under one arm as though it contained explosives rather than technical manuals.
Harold Bennett came from his temporary office wearing the same suit he had worn at the embassy, now more wrinkled.
He stopped in the doorway.
“There it is.”
Yuri looked alarmed.
“The case,” Liz explained.
“Yes. Sorry.”
Bennett crossed the room.
“Is it intact?”
Yuri handed it over.
Bennett examined the lock.
“Was it opened?”
“No,” Nina said.
Bennett looked at her.
Liz translated.
Nina explained what she had done.
Bennett listened.
His face went through irritation, disbelief and something more complicated.
When she finished, he looked at the case again.
“You understand this caused me a considerable problem.”
Nina nodded.
“Yes.”
“But you kept the case.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t open it.”
“No.”
Bennett exhaled.
“All right.”
Liz translated his answer.
Nina looked surprised.
“So that’s it?” Bennett asked.
“No,” Liz said. “That’s your part of it.”
“Good. I was afraid things were becoming simple.”
Dan, across the room, pointed at him.
“You’re learning.”
The deputy chief accountant arrived at nine-twenty.
Her name was Galina Mikhailovna Lebedeva.
She was a broad-shouldered woman in her late fifties with silver hair pulled back tightly and a handbag large enough to contain a filing cabinet.
She entered, looked at Dan, and said in Russian, “You are Mercer.”
Dan said, “I’ve been told.”
She answered something.
Liz translated for him.
“She says you have a bad reputation.”
“I don’t even know her.”
Galina replied before Liz could translate.
“Yes. This is part of bad reputation.”
Sergei coughed into his hand.
It might have concealed a laugh.
Galina saw Nina.
Whatever amusement had existed vanished.
“You.”
Nina stood.
Liz stepped between the conversational lines before either woman could retreat into anger.
She explained why everyone was there.
Slowly.
The originals remained Nina’s responsibility.
Galina had agreed only to inspect them.
No transfer of ownership was implied.
Bennett’s case had been returned.
Sergei was present to identify the machinery described.
Liz was present only as the person who had helped bring everyone together and could attest to what she personally observed.
Nothing was entering embassy custody.
Galina listened.
When Liz finished, she said, “And him?”
She pointed at Dan.
Dan looked around as though hoping there might be another him.
Liz said, “He has the copier.”
Galina considered.
“That is acceptable.”
Dan opened his mouth.
Natasha said, “Do not.”
He closed it.
Nina placed the folder on the table.
Nobody touched it.
Liz said, “Nina Andreyevna, tell us what these are.”
She did.
The room became quieter.
Nina described the transfer records. The rewritten valuations. The machines. The companies receiving them.
Galina interrupted twice.
Once to correct a date.
Once to dispute the meaning of an accounting notation.
Nina answered.
Sergei confirmed which machines were involved.
“These two lathes are still in Shop Three,” he said.
Galina turned.
“How do you know?”
“I telephoned the maintenance chief.”
“When?”
“Today.”
She frowned.
“The grinding machine?”
“Moved to loading area.”
The room changed.
Not dramatically.
No one gasped.
Galina simply looked back at the paperwork more carefully.
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
Nina’s face tightened.
Dan glanced at Liz.
Neither said anything.
Tomorrow might have been too late.
Galina read every page.
The process took nearly half an hour.
At one point the copier began making a grinding noise.
Natasha looked toward it.
Dan said, “Machine?”
“It is the machine.”
He looked genuinely concerned.
“That’s new.”
Natasha opened the side panel.
Paper had wrapped itself around one roller.
Galina continued reading while Natasha extracted the page with the delicacy of a surgeon.
Eventually Galina looked at Nina.
“Why did you not bring these to me?”
Nina laughed bitterly.
“I did.”
Galina stopped.
“When?”
“Friday.”
“I was in Tula.”
“I gave them to Andrei Pavlovich.”
Galina’s expression told the room everything necessary about Andrei Pavlovich.
“You gave him copies?”
“No. I showed him.”
“And then?”
“He told me to stop asking questions.”
Galina looked back at the papers.
Dan spoke softly to Liz.
“That’s why your part matters.”
She glanced at him.
He nodded toward Galina.
“If I’d copied these yesterday, she’d spend tonight asking whether I changed them.”
Liz looked at him.
“And if I’d waited until tomorrow?”
Dan glanced at Sergei.
“The grinder might already be gone.”
That was all they said about it.
It was enough.
Galina placed both hands flat on the table.
“These transfers must be reviewed.”
Nina looked at her.
“By whom?”
Galina hesitated.
It was the first uncertain thing she had done.
“The director.”
Nina gave her a look.
Galina corrected herself.
“The director and accounting commission.”
Sergei said something in Russian.
Galina replied sharply.
They argued.
Liz caught enough to understand that Sergei was asking whether the machinery movement could be stopped until that review occurred.
Galina said she did not command the loading yard.
Dan said, “Who does?”
Galina looked at him.
“You said you are copier man.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Liz closed her eyes.
Galina did not understand.
“That is fortunate,” Liz said.
Dan gave her a grateful glance.
Galina named someone.
Dan turned to Natasha.
Natasha already had the telephone.
It took six attempts to reach him.
The first call failed.
The second connected to a residence where nobody had heard of the man.
The third reached a factory security desk.
The fourth died in the middle of the conversation.
The fifth produced a busy signal.
On the sixth, Natasha handed the telephone to Galina.
The deputy chief accountant spoke for three minutes.
She became increasingly forceful.
Finally she said one last sentence and put down the receiver.
Everyone waited.
“The machines stay tonight.”
Nina closed her eyes.
Only for a moment.
Liz felt the entire room loosen.
Not victory.
Not vindication.
One night.
Sometimes that was what success looked like.
“Now,” Liz said, “we make copies.”
Galina looked at her.
“In my presence.”
“Yes.”
“Nina keeps originals.”
“Yes.”
“I receive one complete set.”
“Yes.”
“Sergei witnesses which pages relate to which machines.”
“Yes.”
“Bennett?”
Liz looked at him.
He raised both hands.
“I would like my document case and to never see any of these papers again.”
“Reasonable,” Dan said.
Liz continued.
“We make a written note of who was here, what was copied, when, and who took each set.”
Dan looked wounded.
“You’re going to make paperwork about the paperwork.”
“Yes.”
“I knew there was a catch.”
Galina said, “This is sensible.”
Dan looked at Natasha.
“I am badly outnumbered.”
“You are usually.”
The copier produced forty-six pages before jamming again.
By the time they finished, three sets lay on the table.
Nina signed.
Galina signed.
Sergei signed.
Bennett signed only the statement confirming that his document case had been returned unopened.
Liz signed as witness to what she had personally observed.
Dan read the page.
“You left me off.”
“You didn’t handle the originals.”
“I drove nothing. Copied nothing. Signed nothing.”
“Exactly.”
He handed the sheet back.
“I’ve never felt so respectable.”
Liz looked at him.
“Don’t get used to it.”
Nina laughed.
It was the first time Liz had heard her do so.
At ten-fifteen, the office emptied.
Galina took one copy.
Nina left with the originals.
Sergei went with her.
Misha drove Yuri home.
Bennett remained behind, holding his recovered document case.
He looked exhausted.
“So,” he said, “my shipment.”
Dan leaned against Natasha’s desk.
“It exists.”
Bennett looked at Liz.
“Has he been saying that all day?”
“Yes.”
“I regret meeting him.”
“That passes,” Dan said.
Liz looked at him.
“Does it?”
“No.”
Bennett rubbed his face.
“Can I get the crate tomorrow?”
“Probably not.”
His hand stopped.
“What?”
“The paperwork problem isn’t solved. We found the shipment. That’s not the same as releasing it.”
Bennett closed his eyes.
“My engineers land tomorrow morning.”
“I remember.”
“I still have two empty rooms.”
“You have three chairs.”
“Three chairs.”
“Desk?”
“One.”
“Telephone?”
Bennett looked at him.
“Sometimes.”
Dan nodded.
“We can work with that.”
Bennett laughed without humor.
“How?”
Dan looked at Natasha.
“No.”
He had not yet asked.
“Natasha.”
“No.”
“We have the old fax.”
“No.”
“It works.”
“Sometimes.”
“That’s all Bennett needs.”
Bennett raised a hand.
“I would like to object to that standard.”
Dan continued.
“The gray desk.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It belongs to us.”
“We aren’t using it.”
“You are using it.”
“For what?”
“Boxes.”
“We can move the boxes.”
“Where?”
Dan looked around.
There were boxes everywhere.
“Fair.”
Liz watched them negotiate Bennett’s office into existence.
One fax machine.
Two desks, neither matching the other.
Four chairs from three different sources.
A borrowed printer.
A telephone extension Natasha claimed she could have installed by eleven the next morning if “the man behaves.”
Nobody asked which man.
Bennett finally said, “How much is this going to cost me?”
Dan named a price.
Natasha looked up sharply.
Liz noticed.
Bennett did not.
“Fine.”
Dan wrote it down.
Then he crossed out one line.
“What was that?” Bennett asked.
“Nothing.”
Liz saw the word delivery disappear beneath Dan’s pen.
Another line—after-hours labor—vanished with it.
Bennett was too tired to argue.
He closed his recovered case.
“If you can make those rooms look like an office by nine tomorrow, I’ll buy you dinner.”
Dan shook his head.
“Pay the invoice.”
“Dinner’s cheaper.”
“Not the way I eat.”
Bennett shook his hand.
Then Liz’s.
“At lunchtime I was trying to make the embassy find a coffee maker.”
“You’ve made progress.”
“Have I?”
“You now know where it is.”
“In a warehouse I can’t get into.”
“Progress in Moscow is often conceptual.”
Bennett laughed.
He left.
Natasha watched the door close.
Then she looked at Dan’s handwritten invoice.
“You removed delivery.”
“Yes.”
“And evening labor.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They’ve had a difficult day.”
“We have had difficult day.”
Dan put the invoice on her desk.
“So add something.”
Natasha picked up her pen.
Liz wondered whether she would.
She didn’t.
Instead she closed the ledger.
Interesting.
It was nearly eleven when Liz finally stepped outside.
The rain that had threatened Moscow all day had never arrived.
The pavement still held the day’s dampness in darker patches. Cars passed less frequently now, their engines echoing against the buildings. A kiosk across the street remained open, its little window bright in the dark.
Dan followed her only as far as the doorway.
“You have a car?” he asked.
“I’ll manage.”
“Misha should be back in five minutes.”
“I can wait.”
“That wasn’t the answer I expected.”
“I’ve learned something today.”
“Dangerous habit.”
They stood beneath the entrance light.
The city seemed calmer than it had that afternoon.
Not quiet.
Moscow, Liz suspected, was rarely quiet.
But the urgency had drained from it.
Somewhere nearby a radio played through an open apartment window. A bus passed at the far end of the street, nearly empty.
Dan put his hands in his pockets.
“Your idea worked.”
“Our idea.”
He looked at her.
“That sounds dangerously collaborative.”
“You supplied transportation.”
“And phones.”
“And Natasha.”
“No one supplies Natasha.”
“Fair.”
A small silence settled between them.
It was the first silence they had shared that did not feel like a disagreement waiting for one of them to speak.
Liz said, “You were right about the machinery.”
Dan looked suspicious.
“Should I get this in writing?”
“Don’t spoil it.”
“I was trying to preserve the provenance.”
She laughed.
The sound surprised her.
Dan smiled.
Then she said, “And you were wrong about the copies.”
“Obviously.”
She looked at him.
“That easily?”
“Galina would have dismissed them.”
“Yes.”
“She almost dismissed the originals.”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“I can learn.”
“I hadn’t ruled it out.”
Another silence.
Dan looked toward the street.
“This all started because Bennett lost a fax machine.”
Liz shook her head.
“He never lost it.”
Dan turned back.
She realized what she had said.
His expression changed just enough.
“Oh,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to admire your progress.”
“You’re becoming predictable.”
“That worries me.”
Misha’s Volga turned the corner.
Its left taillight was still held together with tape.
Liz glanced at Dan.
“Goodnight, Mr. Mercer.”
“Daniel.”
She opened the rear door.
He waited.
She looked back.
“Goodnight, Dan.”
Nothing dramatic happened.
That was why she noticed it.
He simply nodded.
“Goodnight, Liz.”
She got into the car.
Misha pulled away.
Liz did not look back this time.
She did not need to.
At eleven-thirty, Mercer Business Services had finally become quiet.
The telephones had stopped ringing.
The copier stood open with its jammed roller exposed.
The radiator still knocked occasionally, unwilling to admit that spring had arrived.
Dan sat at Natasha’s desk because his own was buried beneath papers.
Natasha was putting files into a cabinet.
“You should go home,” Dan said.
“So should you.”
“I was here first.”
“This is not advantage.”
He looked at the invoice Bennett had signed.
“You didn’t add anything.”
“No.”
“You complained.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t add anything.”
Natasha closed the cabinet.
“You removed it deliberately.”
“I made a judgment.”
“You became charitable.”
“That sounds accusatory.”
“It is expensive.”
The fax machine made a sound.
Both of them turned.
It dialed.
Listened.
The handshake tone came cleanly through the line.
Dan looked at Natasha.
She held up one finger.
He said nothing.
Paper began feeding through.
One page.
Then another.
Then a third.
No interruption.
No half sheet.
No failure.
Natasha took the pages.
“The machine likes evenings,” Dan said.
“It likes competent senders.”
She read the cover sheet.
Then looked at Dan.
“What?”
She handed it to him.
The recipient line read:
ELIZABETH ROWAN
Dan looked at the originating number.
“Embassy?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Natasha took the pages back before he could read further.
“You will take it to her.”
Dan leaned against the desk.
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Could send Misha.”
“No.”
“Courier?”
“No.”
“We are a business. We have options.”
Natasha folded the pages neatly.
“You will take it.”
Dan looked at the name again.
Elizabeth Rowan.
Then he looked toward the fax machine, which sat peacefully on its cabinet as if it had never caused trouble in its life.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Natasha placed the fax on top of his jacket.
“The machine knew.”
Dan stared at her.
For once, he had no answer.
Outside, somewhere beyond the windows, Moscow continued rearranging itself in the dark.
End of Episode One
You’ve been listening to East of the Map, a Chesterton Radio original story.
Moscow, 1992: a changing city, an American businessman who knows people, an embassy officer who believes rules matter, and the beginning of a partnership neither of them was looking for.
The story continues in the next episode.
From the Little Station on Commercial Street in Atchison, Kansas, this is Chesterton Radio — Stories • Ideas • Wonder.