Chapter 29 29
Chapter 29 – Bread Crumbs
“I never understood why one city would have four international airports.”
“Each airport serves a different purpose, allowing certain airlines that fly to and from different parts of the world access to a designated airport. This one has the best service for private jets with planeside private car pickup.” Kazimir explained.
“Do we need to make arrangements for a private car, or should we take a taxi?”
“I’ve already hired a taxi to wait for our arrival.”
We deplaned the jet and briefly spoke with the pilots who would be staying at the airport hotel, on standby for our return flight. Our driver was waiting for us in a white taxi, he was young and reminded me of Ninos. Kazimir took the front passenger seat and I seated myself sideways in the back seat to accommodate my legs. I hated taxis, they were always too damn small.
“Kahk tibeyeh zavoot?” Kazimir asked his name. “Anatoly,” he answered.
Kazimir looked him over, considering something. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes, my mother was from London and my father is Russian,” he explained.
“How much do you earn on your best day, Anatoly?”
“Maybe two thousand rubles if I’m really lucky,” he answered.
Kazimir reached into his wallet and extracted two, five thousand ruble notes. “I have ten thousand rubles for you, for each day you drive us around.”
“Dah! Where can I take you first?” Anatoly asked eagerly. “Chertanovo district.”
It was nearly ten in the evening, and we roamed around the decrepit neighborhood with large block-style rundown buildings. We drove past a young group of teens who looked like they were up to no good. A homeless man was feeding a fire in a trash bin.
“Are you looking for any place in particular?” Anatoly asked. “An orthodox church on the edge of the district,” Kazimir replied. “There’s one near the metro station.”
We asked Anatoly to stop a short distance away from the orthodox church and watched for a short while. I knew Alina lived in an old church with nearly two dozen others and expected to see some lights on, but it was dark and there was no sign of life. I pulled my cell phone out to search for other churches in the area and had no signal. Frustrated, I shoved the phone back into my pocket. I really hate Russia.
“So do I,” Haze huffed.
“We should take a closer look,” Kazimir suggested.
Something about this gloomy-looking church seemed out of place. How would nearly two dozen people living here go unnoticed? We walked in silence, and I could feel Kazimir’s desperation to find Alina growing. We reached the church and found two homeless men sleeping on the stairs against the front doors which had metal chains and heavy locks around the door handles.
One of the men stirred and sat up. With a toothless smile, he greeted us in Russian. Kazimir passed him a thousand ruble note and pressed his finger
to his mouth, indicating the man should remain silent. The man understood and nodded his head, his eyes glimmered with the excitement of receiving a generous amount of money.
We slipped into the darkness alongside the church, listening for any noise within. If this was the base for a criminal organization, there was a good chance the windows had been blacked out to give the appearance no one was home, and the walls reinforced for soundproofing. I considered Alina growing up in such an impoverished neighborhood. Everything was cold, gray, and gloomy, which was normal for northern Russia.
“It’s no surprise she prefers our territory,” Haze reminded me.
Kazimir’s foot met something on the ground. “Watch your step,” he whispered.
“Is that a broom?” My eyes focused.
“As long as it’s not Baba Yaga’s broom, we’ll be okay.” “What the hell is Baba Yaga?”
“An old witch that flies around stealing and eating naughty children,” he told me.
“She’s dead if she goes anywhere near Thea!” Haze growled, growing more and more anxious to find her.
“Easy there big guy, I’m sure it’s just an old fable.” “And shifters aren’t real either,” Haze scoffed.
We reached the back entrance of the church and it looked like a heavy metal door with several locks on it. Kazimir clasped the handle and pulled it right open. I didn’t see any cameras or hear any alarms. We exchanged curious looks as light flooded out through the door. There was no way this door was left unlocked by accident. Not when the door had four turn locks on it and was located in such a decaying part of Moscow.
Kazimir stuck his head through the door and listened carefully. He shook his head, indicating he couldn’t hear anything. We moved in stealth mode and entered through what was a small kitchen in the back of the church. Remnants of eaten borscht sat in over a dozen bowels in the sink. Kazimir looked in the pot on the stove and found the rest of the soup. It smelled recently cooked, maybe a few hours old.
We moved through the next door and found ourselves in the main part of the church, the nave. The pews had been removed and bunk-beds lined both sides of the walls, enough for over two dozen people. Several tables were pushed together in the middle of the room to form a large dining table. Mismatched pieces of small dressers, tables, tubs, and totes sat next to the beds in the makeshift communal bedroom. Mattresses had been flipped over, clothes were scattered everywhere, and drawers had been pulled open. Someone was searching for something.
“This has to be it, but where is everyone?” I asked, I could scent the humans that lived here, there were more than a dozen different scents and I could almost smell mulberry.
We moved into the side wing and found a small office that was stocked full like a pantry. Nothing was neatly stacked, and I assumed it had been searched as well. Flour, sugar, rice, grains, cooking oil, cans, jars, and other supplies. Kazimir lifted the lid open on one of the two big freezers and found frozen chicken and varieties of fish. I suppose feeding so many mouths would require shopping in bulk as we did in the pack, but unlike the pack, Yuri was trying to stay inconspicuous. He probably limited shopping to once a month.
I pushed another door open and found what was the bathroom, four toilet stalls, and four makeshift showers. In the corner sat two clothes washers and two tumble dryers. Dryers are not a norm in Russia as most people still hang dry their clothes. This place may have been a church, but it felt more like a prison.
We continued our search, desperately looking for bread crumbs that would lead to Alina and Thea. We slowly prowled down the old scarred
wooden stairs leading into the basement below the church and found what we were looking for. This was the base of their operation.
Rows of desks sat with papers, computers, and multiple screens. It looked like someone had been here and peppered bullets all over the equipment. Drawers had been ripped open, their contents spilled on the floor. The ground was riddled with glass and chunks of plastic that had scattered everywhere. Kazimir walked slowly through the room, debris crunching under each step, his eyes assessing everything carefully.
“I think I found Yuri.” Kazimir looked down at something on the ground.
An older man, perhaps in his fifties, lay on the ground in a pool of crimson blood. His blue eyes open and a bullet hole in his forehead. Neither one of us knew what Yuri looked like, so we couldn’t be sure it was him.
“How do we know it’s him?” I asked.
Kazimir bent down and patted the man’s pockets for a wallet and found nothing. I looked over the wooden desk nearest to us, a framed photo of the dead man with a younger Alina staring back at me. I reached for it and noticed a yellow sticky note had been placed on it that read, “Dryer.”
Kazimir was examining the large private server in the corner, bullet holes had been sprayed all over it. Someone had gone to great lengths to ensure whatever secrets Yuri had on that server went to the grave with him.
“Found something.” I held the photo up.
Kazimir reached for the photo, “Alina!” He studied it for a moment. “Looks like we found Yuri after all, but where is everyone else? Many people live here.”
“I found this stuck to the photo,” I held up the yellow note, it was a bread crumb. “It’s written in English, think it could be for us?”
“Or it could be a reminder for Yuri to get his laundry out of the dryer,” Kazimir shrugged.
We moved up the stairs and returned to the bathroom that had two clothes washers and two dryers. I reached my hand for the dryer door and Kazimir stopped me…
“What if it’s booby-trapped or something?” He asked.
“Only one way to find out,” I pulled the door open and found nothing. “I’ll try the second one,” Kazimir winced like he was expecting it to
explode or something. Considering this was Russia, there was a good chance it could happen. I took a few steps back and allowed him to pull the door open, he inhaled sharply.
“What is it?” I asked as Kazimir reached into the dryer. “Is that what I think it is?” Kazimir said in disbelief.
“Meowww,” the sound of a crying cat rang out and Kazimir lifted Kronos out of the dryer.
The tote bag Alina had carried him in was sitting in the basket next to the dryer and I quickly held it open for Kazimir to place the cat in. To my surprise, Kazimir held Kronos to his chest for a moment and stroked his head. Kronos welcomed the soothing touch, even if it was from his least favorite wolf.
“One down, two more to go,” Haze reminded me.
I grabbed a towel and placed it in the tote for extra warmth and if he needs to relieve himself, I could always toss the towel out. Kazimir placed Kronos in his carrying tote and I held on to him for safekeeping.
“Thea is going to be happy to see you,” I said to Kronos.
“Great, now you’re talking to cats!” Kazimir scowled as he noticed another yellow sticky note on the inside of the dryer. It read, “Skaya.”
Another bread crumb. Hotel Skaya is the hotel we typically stay at when we’re in Moscow. It’s the hotel we met Alina at.
“They knew I’d come, they’re stringing us along,” Kazimir growled in frustration. The only problem was, with Yuri dead, we didn’t know who they were. We would need to go to the hotel and play along if we didn’t want the trail to stop.
We returned to the kitchen where I found a book of matches and a large candle. I moved to the door we had entered through and lit the candle. Kazimir placed the pot of borscht in the sink and knocked over the stove. He lifted his foot and delivered two blows to the gas valve before he rushed for the door. Kazimir ran outside and I tossed the candle toward the leaking gas valve. A moment later we heard the whooshing sound of the kitchen going up in flames.
By the time we reached Anatoly’s taxi, the back of the church was completely engulfed in flames. The night air was so cold, I could see the little clouds of warm breath every time I breathed out. I held the tote bag with Kronos close to me and slipped into the back seat.
We drove in silence for a few moments before Anatoly spoke. “Where to next?”
“I haven’t had a good meat piroshki in a long time,” Kazimir replied. “I know a place,” Anatoly nodded.
“Do you know a place where I can get some tinned fish?” “Fish?” Anatoly asked and Kronos let out a meow.
“Ah, koshka,” Anatoly nodded in realization.
“Kot, not koshka, it’s a male.” Kazimir corrected him as if we would seem more masculine with a male cat instead of a female.
“There’s a bakery open late that makes delicious piroshki and a market across the street. We should be able to find both.”
Fifteen minutes later, Anatoly parked the car in front of a bakery and Kazimir gave Anatoly some money to get us some pies and the fish.
“I’m surprised he left us alone in the car,” I said. “He took the keys,” Kazimir replied.
“I assume you sent him for the food because you wanted to speak in private.”
“I’m not sure where to go next. What if the Skaya is a trap?”
“I was thinking the same. We could check into the hotel, ask for our old room, and see if there’s another message.”
Kazimir groaned. “What are we supposed to do, just wait like sitting ducks?”
“No, we check into the Skaya and leave the curtains open. Then we check into the Novo hotel across the street so we can watch the room at the Skaya while we figure out our next move,” I suggested.
“Yuri is dead. We have no access to his emails or server, and we don’t know who hired him.”
“They will show themselves, whoever it is has been expecting us. They left the cat in a dryer with notes like some damn treasure hunt.” Haze was agitated and we were both missing our mate. We need to find Alina and Thea quick.
“And if the hotel is an ambush?”
“Then they would be expecting to ambush humans, what they’re not expecting is the wolves they will have to deal with.”
“I’m ready to let Kuzma out and run through this whole fucking city to find her,” he growled.
An idea occurred to me. “Kazimir, you said the airport we landed at was the best for private jets. Is that the only airport that caters to private jets?”
“No. The others do as well, but Vnukovo is the best and most popular choice, especially for Russians because it has a great service hangar and storage facilities for jets. Usually, foreigners use the other airports, but Russians prefer Vnukovo.”
“Do you think your brother might have connections to check the flight logs? They would have landed about five or six hours ahead of us. There can’t be that many private jets landing in the same window.”
“I will call Aleksei when we get to the hotel, my phone works better when we’re closer to the city center.”
The car door was yanked open, and a gun was shoved to Kazimir’s head. A young man dressed in black, with a shaved head and gang tattoos on his scalp was holding it. Another young man remained in the shadows watching. Neither was very large and from the looks of it, they looked like street hustlers, unrelated to the people we were seeking.
The man demanded Kazimir’s wallet in English, he probably spent most of his time targeting tourists. Kazimir moved slowly, reaching into his inner jacket pocket for his wallet. The man eyed the wallet eagerly and Kazimir dropped it on the floorboard, the oldest distraction trick in the book. Before the thief could comprehend what happened, Kazimir had taken the gun and cracked the man's elbow. He howled in pain and tried to step away from the vehicle, but the way Kazimir was feeling, this man had signed his own death certificate the moment he wrenched the door open. Kazimir jumped out of the car, ready to pounce on his prey.
“I’m sorry,” he cried out in English, cradling his broken arm. His friend took off running without a glance back.
Kazimir stood behind the man and wrapped his arm around his neck in a chokehold. “If you’re going to play with wolves, you should learn to howl like one.” With the sound of another crack, he snapped the other arm and the thief cried out in another pain-filled howl.
Kazimir shoved the man to the cement sidewalk and returned to the car as if nothing had happened. He reached down to the floorboard and tucked his wallet away. Then, he held the gun up, inspecting it closely.
“It’s a nice piece, a Russian Nagant, might come in handy,” he tucked it into his coat pocket.
“You realize he’s still alive.”
“If I leave a dead body on the streets here, the Russian police will pull all the videos and they can be a pain in the ass. At least now, he won’t have the use of his arms for a long, long, time. It might give him the perfect opportunity to think about his criminal way of life.” Kazimir shrugged.
Anatoly returned to the car, he handed a big bag full of savory meat- filled pies to Kazimir.
“I wasn’t sure what kind of fish he would like, so I got a few different tins.” Anatoly passed the bag of canned fish to me. He had purchased canned salmon, anchovies, herring, and tuna.
“He’s a cat, I’m sure he likes any kind of fish,” Kazimir grumbled.