Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [45]
Languth shrugged his massive shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s not being considered a street crime. Maybe having something to do with politics, or a rub-out. Drugs, maybe, some sorta criminal thing he got himself involved with.”
“Hmmm,” Potamos said as he tasted his second drink, gave Nathan a thumbs-up.
They talked about other things until a half hour later, when Languth announced he had to leave.
“Thanks for the drinks, Joe.”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks for this stuff,” Potamos said, tapping the file folder.
“Why don’t you drop it, Joe?” Languth said, standing. “Follow orders. Your editor says drop it, you drop it, save yourself another headache.”
“You might have a point. I’ll think about it. We’ll catch up.” Career advice from a cop?
Potamos read what was in the folder as he finished his drink, paid, left the hotel, and went to Roseann’s apartment. She was gone when he arrived, but Jumper gave him a wet greeting. After walking her, Potamos wrote a series of notes on the computer. Although there wasn’t much useful information in what Languth had given him, there was enough to spur his interest. Besides, Gil Gardello’s order not to follow up was motive enough to keep going.
Chapter 14
A Week Later
Moscow
The American Embassy
“Well, well, well,” Bill Lerner said as Pauling knocked and paused outside his office door in the American embassy, a nine-story yellow-and-white building on Novinskiy Bulvar. “He returns to the scene of the crime.”
Max Pauling grinned and stepped inside. He’d arrived that morning at Sheremetevo II Airport on a British Airways flight from London, after flying there from Washington. He had declined the airline’s food so when he checked into the Metropol Hotel, a long block from the former KGB headquarters and across the street from the Bolshoi, he ordered blinchiki varenem— small pancakes with jam—and coffee from room service, then showered, changed his shirt, and went to the Kremlin, a five-minute stroll and one of his favorite sights in the world, before hailing a taxi to the embassy. He was happy to be back.
Lerner came around the desk and enthusiastically shook Pauling’s hand. Although he was a section head in ECO/COM, the embassy’s economic and commercial office, like Pauling he, too, answered to a different and distant superior, in Langley, Virginia.
Lerner was tall, six feet four, a loosely jointed man with unruly reddish-brown hair and a face comprised of folds, sags, pouches, and putty-colored half-moons beneath his eyes. He was no fashion plate; he wore cheap suits and shirts that hung haphazardly from his angular frame, and drab wide ties of no known color.
“What crime did I leave behind?” Pauling asked.
“The names escape me, Max, but I do remember they were attractive. Coffee?”
“Speaking of crimes… no, thanks.”
“You’re at the Metropol?”
“Yeah. Living well is the best revenge. Who said that?”
“The Duchess of Windsor.”
“I guess she knew. What’s new here? I miss anything in the past year?”
“Of course you did,” Lerner said, returning to his swivel, high-back office chair and laying one long leg over the other, displaying short black socks and an expanse of white leg. “What was a confused situation when you left has become more confused. Your Russian friends—”
“What Russian friends?”
“The ones with the funny noses. Your unsavory contacts in Russia’s leading industry, the underworld, are thriving.”
“Including arms sales?”
“Oh, yes, especially arms sales. Since you’ve rudely turned down my offer of coffee, would vodka be more to your taste?”
Pauling glanced at his watch. “Noon. A little early for me, even if this is Russia.”
Lerner unfolded himself from the chair and went to the window. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“Are we going for lunch?”
“Yes.”
They left the building, stopping on their way for Pauling to exchange greetings with others with whom he’d worked, and walked up the busy boulevard in the direction of Moscow’s zoo. Pauling knew from years of having worked for Bill Lerner that leaving the embassy had more to