Private Moscow (Private 15)

“Come on,” I said to Dinara, and I felt her spirits lift when she registered where we were heading.

The taxi drivers looked as though they were from Central Asia. They all wore heavy woolen coats and thick beanie hats and were laughing and chatting, but when one of them spotted us, he signaled the others and they fell silent.

“Taxi?” the nudger asked.

Dinara replied in Russian, and the man looked blank and held up his hands in the universal gesture of incomprehension.

“English?” I tried.

“Is better,” the man replied.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Uzbekistan,” he said uncertainly.

“Do you work this neighborhood?” I said.

One of his companions muttered something and the nudger clammed up.

“Talk is trouble,” the mutterer said. His dark skin was puckered around his mouth and eyes, and his bushy black eyebrows were flecked with gray that almost matched his patched coat. I placed him in his mid-forties, but his eyes seemed older, as though they belonged to someone who’d seen a lifetime of misery.

“We’re not looking for trouble,” I replied. “We’re trying to find people who recognize this man.”

I produced a photograph of Ernie Fisher and showed it to the group. The mutterer took a drag of his cigarette.

“How much?” he asked. “If my eyes see him. How much you pay?”

“If you can give us useful information, we can come to a deal,” I said.

“Deal not money,” the mutterer said, backing toward his cab, an old Skoda. “Time is money.”

“A hundred US dollars,” I offered. “More if you give us something worthwhile.”

He took another drag of his cigarette. “OK. Come,” he said. “Come in taxi.”

“Jack …” Dinara interjected, her concern evident in her voice.

“It’s OK,” I replied.

“Come,” the mutterer repeated. “We take a ride.”

CHAPTER 64

THE OPPRESSIVE DARKNESS of a January night set in during our journey across the city.

“What’s your name?” I asked the mutterer, who drove with two fingers on the wheel.

“Ghani,” he replied, glancing back at Dinara and me. “From Afghanistan. You know it?”

I knew it all too well. The memory of my last day on the battlefield was still seared in my mind. I’d lost so many friends, and our driver might have sympathized with the people who’d killed them. Heck, he might have been one of them.

“No,” I replied. It was simpler to lie. “I’ve never been.”

“I have,” Dinara replied, surprising me. “A long time ago. In Kabul.”

The driver nodded, and I got the sense he knew better than to pry. Had she been there with the FSB? As a Russian operative? Or simply as a traveler? It was a part of the world that was so damaged a simple conversation risked opening a sectarian can of worms.

“When did you last see the man in the photograph?” I asked.