The third man in, p.22
The Third Man In, page 22
I went to the house phone and asked for Karl Beck. I had no idea what his travel schedule was. There was every shot that he had checked out and flown home in the morning. I caught a decent break. He picked up on the fifth and what was probably final ring before my call went through to voicemail.
“It’s Brad Shade. I’m down in the lobby. I wanted to talk to you about Dmitrov.”
I brought a sunny obliviousness to each word. Like I hadn’t been through the wringer. Like I didn’t have a care in the world. Like Dmitrov was yet another son that Beck never had.
People hear what they want to hear, and especially agents. They get lost in reveries about their clients. They go stone-blind to a client’s shortcomings and, in this case, a client’s non-existence. Just the mention of a talent like Dmitrov had a hallucinogenic effect on Beck. He was convinced that I thought he represented Dmitrov. In fact, he had convinced himself that he did too. Based on the promise of a man that he, like the rest of the world, presumed to be dead.
“I’ll be right down,” he said, with words and familiarity accelerating. “Give me a couple of minutes. Look forward to talking to you, my friend.”
Seventy-five seconds later, Beck came into the lobby. He did his best to pretend that he didn’t notice my shabbiness and exhaustion, but he couldn’t keep his eyebrows tethered. He suggested that we go to the hotel café and then had the maître d’ tuck us in a corner where we would be undisturbed and he unembarrassed to be seen with the likes of me.
“I was hoping you’d come around to see me about Dmitrov,” Beck said. “I thought it might be sooner but I suppose that you had…”
Beck saw the knuckles of my left hand, scraped raw from brushing the brick wall when I was reaching around for Dubinin’s holster.
“…things to do.”
“Yeah,” I said, lifting my hand up to give him a good look. “Took a fall outside the hotel.”
If I had been a client, he would have forced himself to believe it.
Although I didn’t ask, he explained why he was hanging around Moscow. He told me that he had to tidy up some paperwork for a pair of his Russian clients, Korostin and Firsov, veteran guys with New York. Any straight hockey stuff he could have sorted out over the weekend, but this was a tangle of investments and business interests, not to mention ex-wives and paternity tests. Beck would have to call in lawyers and accountants. That was going to take him into midweek.
“Karl, I’m going to be straight with you,” I said, and that was true in some small part. “I know you haven’t been in contact with Dmitrov. I know Dmitrov has never laid eyes on you. I know you don’t have anything in writing with Dmitrov, just a balloon full of promises.”
“Why do you say that?” Beck said, his face turning purple instantly. “Where would you get that?”
“Not so important, really,” I said. “The only reason that I’m here talking to you is professional courtesy. The game is changing. The rules are changing.”
Beck’s blood pressure lowered, but he was still at significant risk of a stroke.
“Go on,” he said.
“Look, I know Dubinin shook you down. You paid him off and he promised you were going to represent Dmitrov. He was going to set it up.”
“How do you know?”
I didn’t but it was an educated guess and it hit a nerve for Beck, one of the few that hadn’t been cauterized by a couple of decades of contract negotiations. I decided that, if we were dealing in half-truths, further diluting could hardly hurt.
“His wife told me,” I said.
“She wouldn’t know,” he said.
“She knew where every last dollar came from and where it went.”
Beck had been through two divorces, so to him this scenario was eminently plausible and evoked a painful memory. He didn’t bother to put up any more of a fight.
“And so why are we here?”
“I think you can represent him. I think you can end up with him. I really think that’s the only way we can end up with him.”
His mood lifted slightly.
“Right now, it looks like he’s going to stay in the K. Sure as hell doesn’t help me, sure as hell doesn’t help you. It’s going to take some finesse to get him out of Russia but I need your help. I need you to help yourself. I need you all in. Just you. None of your operatives. That guy at the rink the other day, little guy, dark glasses, he’s out.”
“He’s my best man here, my right hand,” Beck said.
The condition had him reeling. That was a good thing.
“He’s your worst enemy. He’s not your fixer. He’s your minder. He found Dmitrov for you, right?”
Another educated guess on that last count, but that had been exactly the case. We were in agreement on facts and could move right to the reset.
“So what?” Beck said.
“He’s not working for you. He worked for Dubinin. He set you up with Dubinin because Dubinin told him to. You were played. Buckhold’s deal with the kid is still good. Not that it would matter if Dubinin got his way and he was ready to do anything, anything, to keep the kid in Russia.”
“And so you come here to tell me I’m a fool.”
“No, my business is my team and L.A. will be better with Dmitrov,” I said. “There’s a chance that we can get him.”
“So how do I figure in this if he isn’t my client?”
I changed gears and went with what passed for wishful thinking on Beck’s part. “I think the chances of getting the kid out of here are better with your agency representing him,” I said. “At the very least, we can position this so that you get to compete with Buckhold fairly. You’ve scooped his clients before, right?”
Beck shrugged, his pride in the fact barely concealed.
I kept going. “Even if you don’t land him as a client, you want some satisfaction for that money of yours that ended up lining Dubinin’s pocket, right?”
“That money blew up with him in that car.”
“Well, not exactly,” I said. I showed him my knuckles again. I showed him my swelling left ear. I told him what happened on the sidewalk before dawn. I filled him in on Dubinin’s game. All the air came out of Beck’s sails and face.
“You expect me to believe this.”
“I suspect that you do. You know this territory as well as anybody. Do you believe your man on the ground is straight with you?”
He didn’t say a word, but his pan of the room said it for him: not for a second, not anymore.
You can get people to believe anything but the truth ninety-nine percent of the time. Beck bought the truth because he wanted to believe it. He was mad enough to kill Dubinin, but that was only possible if he hadn’t been blown to bits in his driveway. Hell hath no fury like an agent ripped off.
“Who knows about Dubinin being alive? Buckhold?”
“In the dark about it. Couple of scouts know. Not my guys. That you don’t need to know. I’m sure some people close to Dubinin, though I don’t think his wife does.”
Beck’s brow furrowed.
I laid it all out for Beck. He realized that he was a minor player in a bigger picture and that he’d have to work from my playbook. It wasn’t going to cost him anything but time. I knew he’d figure that a slick play might even give him a shot of landing Dmitrov as a client, at least a better shot than he would have otherwise. Beck came around to my thinking. He figured he had nothing to lose because, at this point, he had nothing in hand.
I asked him to spread a rumour. This was like asking a crop duster to spread insecticide.
15
“Our scout here, Vlad Dubinin, was killed the other day, obviously by people who were unhappy with the fact that he was securing the release for a young prospect, Maxim Dmitrov, to play in L.A.,” I said. “They knew he was in constant contact with the player. He kept me abreast of everything. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he assured me that it was ninety-five percent done. The game is dangerous but it’s supposed to be life-or-death on the ice, not in scouting or the business side of the game. I’m hoping Russian officials can find a way to carry out Vlad’s work on behalf of the young man.”
I stood stock-still and looked into the camera, as straight-faced as Sammy Farha with pocket bullets.
“We’re good,” the producer said and the crew started to pack up. I took out my earpiece. I didn’t wait for a fare-thee-well from the sportscaster named Julie, who was on the other end in the FoxSports studio in L.A.
On the far side of the camera, Lee Siddon eyeballed me. We hadn’t known each other long enough to pick up all of each other’s signals but hers was an unambiguous look of disgust. She waited for the cameraman, soundman, producer, and various fixers and washers to clear out. The producer offered her a ride. She told him that she’d find her own way back. They left us alone on the steps of Luhzniki Arena.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“You’re a bad quote but you’re a worse actor,” she said. “Worse than your ex. Neither of you have a future in television.”
“I’m not sure I have a future at all.”
“If this was a CNN shoot I wouldn’t have gone through with this,” she said. “It’s the exact opposite of what you told me off camera. You wanted to fire this guy…said he was working against you and the deal was up in the air. I don’t know why you’re changing your tune, but I wouldn’t go to air with it. It’s unethical.”
I wanted to tell her that she could park her professional ethics. I opted for diplomacy.
“It wasn’t for CNN and I wouldn’t have put you up to this if it had been,” I lied.
FoxSports in L.A. was operating on a tip that the Dmitrov deal was done and was going to be announced in forty-eight hours. You don’t need three guesses to get to the source of that. The source also provided them contact info for a camera crew in Moscow. The shoot gave a little freelance money to the boys working for CNN. It meant a little overtime for the fixers and minders, another report to file.
I pulled Lee off to the side but only far enough that my voice could still carry for her crew to overhear.
“I’ll give your sports people the exclusive when the deal gets done, I promise,” I told her. “Galvin put a bonus in place for Dubinin. Five million in a Swiss bank account. Payable when Dmitrov is in hand. Which he will be. Look, thing is, Dubinin’s not dead. That was just a show. He’s been in contact with me. Told me how to find him in Vienna.”
Lee Siddon looked stunned. She couldn’t form a question. She couldn’t even form a word.
“Let’s walk and talk,” I said and I took her gently by the arm.
Twenty paces later, out of earshot of her crew, she had composed herself.
“Are you serious?”
“I just said it for their benefit, your boys,” I said, nodding over at her crew, who were speaking animatedly to each other in Russian.
“So…”
“Just a little prank,” I said. “A hockey thing. Let it sit. Don’t say anything if your fixers ask about it.”
Of course, they wouldn’t. Of course, they didn’t need any further confirmation. And, of course, one of the fixers realized he had a call he had to make right then and there.
“So what is it that you wanted to talk about so privately?” she said. “Is it tonight?”
“I’m just working on the assumption that there is a tonight. You’re willing?”
She nodded in the affirmative.
“I’ve got to ask you something. What was that story that you said you worked on about the subway?”
She looked at me like I was a simple jock. “You mean the bombing at Lubyanka?” she said.
“No, no, I got all that,” I said. “The other thing that they had you going after when you first came here.”
“Which was that?” she said.
“Before New Year’s, the guy in the subway, the guy who was doing the Franz Kafka, man becomes a mole instead of a roach.”
“Oh god, that,” she said, like I was dragging up a date that had gone all wrong. “Diggers of the Underground Planet.”
“Diggers of…”
I stumbled and she jumped in.
“Yeah, Diggers of the Underground Planet, the leader’s name was Mikhail Markov. That was such a strange story. His father had been a subway driver. He said his father had travelled millions of miles under Moscow, worked right up to his retirement date, never a sick day. He thought there was something magic down there, so while they were tearing down statues up at ground level in the ’90s, the Markovs were rooting around the subway system, the sewers, drainage tunnels. He had a bunch of followers.”
“So what was it, amateur archaeology or something?”
“Archaeology, historical research, subterranean orienteering, a cult, whatever you want to call it.”
“Underground Men, Dostoyevsky would have approved,” I said, proud of myself. She wouldn’t let it last.
“Notes from the Underground was St. Petersburg.”
“I stand corrected. I only read Crime and Punishment. Same sort of existential gloom.”
“I can’t say that Markov and the Diggers were unhappy when I first talked to them,” she said. “They were there of their own volition. They practically celebrated it. I mean, what they were doing would have been completely off limits in the Soviet era.”
“Real heady stuff,” I said. Sarcasm dripped from my lip and formed an icicle.
“No, I know it sounds strange but they really thought what they were doing was an exercise of freedom.”
“Different strokes. Ignoring a No Trespassing sign hardly seems like rebel stuff.”
“Well, Markov’s big project was to document the Metro-2, a map, an archive of images,” she said.
“He could have picked up a map when he bought tickets and taken a few shots going up and down the line.”
“No, the Metro-2 was supposedly the secret subway system that only the KGB and the elite at the Kremlin had access to,” she said. “Muscovites talked about it forever but a lot of people thought it was an urban legend. The CIA tried to do work-ups on it…escape routes in case there was some sort of insurrection. If they found anything it has stayed classified.”
“Is he still around?” I asked. “Any idea how I could get in touch with him?”
“Why?” she asked reasonably.
“Humour me.”
I knew it was long shot. On such prayers miracles are built.
“Funny, I know where he is, or at least where he was and what he was doing, but he’s stopped talking.”
It had been thirteen years since she had done a short item with Mole Man. I couldn’t imagine that she kept her Rolodex from her stint in Moscow in ’99, never mind that it would be up to date.
“Well, where is he?”
“He actually works for the transit commission. He’s in subway maintenance there. But he’s keeping a low profile these days.”
She explained how she had tried to contact him twice since she came back to Moscow.
“I made a few calls and hit a few walls trying to get ahold of him when I was working on the Lubyanka bombing,” she said. “I couldn’t find him but he wasn’t such a high priority. There was a lot going on. It just got lost in the shuffle—I was just pulling at straws on that one. But a couple of years later I did track him down. Back in Atlanta they wanted me to do a follow-up to the Chechen hostage taking at the Moscow theatre, ten years after the fact…you remember that?”
“A hundred dead, right?”
I bet the under and lost.
“More like a hundred and seventy and seven hundred injured,” she said. “And that’s what they’d admit to. God knows how many it really was. It was a complete fiasco, everything completely screwed up. The FSB stormed the theatre. It wasn’t exactly clear how the FSB came in…conflicting reports. One of them was fairly credible. The story goes that they came up from one of the Metro-2 lines. The FSB didn’t acknowledge it. The only official I managed to get said it was a sewer. Said there was no such thing as Metro-2.”
“It could have been true, couldn’t it?” I said. “An urban legend, a bunch of cranks…”
“Maybe, maybe not, but I figured the one person that would know would have been Markov and so my one fixer helped to track him down.”
“And what did he say?”
“Not a word,” she said. “After Yeltsin resigned and Putin took over, Markov was out of business. The FSB must have paid him a call and told him to cease and desist. After that, he had renounced the Diggers. I didn’t realize it until after, but one of our researchers pulled a story in Izvestia in 2001 or 2002. Izvestia always had close ties with government. The owner at the time was a financier. He had one hand on Yeltsin’s back pushing him out the door back in ’99, and the other hand out to shake Putin’s on his way in. So when Izvestia quoted Markov as saying that he’s out of underground exploration…”
“The party line,” I said.
“So how did you figure out what happened to him?”
“We had talked to other Diggers and were able to track them down. They told us that he was working for the transit authority but they thought there might be something more to it than that.”
“And…”
“And there wasn’t. Not that he’d admit to.”
“And you thought…”
She didn’t think anything more of my interviewing technique than my acting. She seemed to wonder what the point was or if there was a point at all.
“And I just moved on,” she said. “In the feature I said that the FSB breached the theatre from underground, either coming up from the sewer system or the subway, it’s not clear which.”
“The Metro-2 thing…”
“…wasn’t anything I went into on air. I didn’t say it was the Metro or the supposed Metro-2. If it was the secret Metro, that would have explained how the Chechens might not have seen it coming. Bottom line, I left it ambiguous. I couldn’t firm it up, not one reliable source, never mind two.”
