Dark Sundays Read online

  “See?” Jeff Holloway said to his wife. “The perfect temperature.”

  Nancy Holloway yawned. “Perfect, sure. You know what was the perfect temperature? The inside of our sleeping bag.”

  Jeff raised his hand, shading his eyes from the rising sun. “Oh, come on. This is gorgeous.” He and Nancy were hiking down a gravel road, part of the Lake Mead Historic Railroad Trail. Jeff had insisted they get up early, not only because dawn in the desert was spectacular but because he insisted that it was the most comfortable time of the day; not too hot, not too cold.

  Nancy defined the most comfortable time of the day as the interval immediately following her second cup of coffee, and she preferred for it to occur closer to noon. But she had to admit Jeff had a point; the early-morning view was spectacular, the air fresh and invigorating. Of course, the fact that they were on their honeymoon might have been coloring her perceptions somewhat.

  She studied her new husband in the rosy glow of the rising sun. Okay, so his hair was thinning. He wore glasses that were badly out of style. He had the tendency to burn and peel rather than tan, and his body was more paunchy than muscular. But he was smart and kind and funny, and she loved him so much it hurt.

  He turned and caught her looking at him. “Right back atcha,” he said. He was also pretty good at being able to tell what she was thinking.

  Jeff scratched his upper arm absently as they walked. “Damn spider bites.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Spider bites, a whole bunch of ’em. Got me while I was sleeping—itch like hell, too.”

  Nancy sighed. “Honey, you know how we talked about the fact that everybody has their little rants about things that bug them?”

  “I wasn’t ranting, was I?”

  “No. But I’m about to.”

  “Ah. Fire when ready.”

  “Did you see the alleged spider?”

  “Well, no. I was asleep.”

  She nodded. “And have you ever, in fact, seen a spider bite you? Or anyone?”

  He thought about it. “Well, no. But spiders do bite people.”

  “They do, but very rarely and almost always in self-defense. In fact, the jaws of most spiders aren’t strong enough to penetrate human skin. And spiders do not—I repeat, do not—feed on human beings. Ever.”

  “But—they inject poison into their prey, right? And then suck the juices out.”

  “That’s what they do to small insects but not to larger creatures. There are lots of bugs that do feed on animals through parasitism—mosquitoes, bedbugs, ticks, fleas—but not spiders. Bugs that feed on larger animals inject an anticoagulant to keep the blood flowing, which is what makes the bite itch. Spiders don’t do that.”

  “But—”

  She stopped, turned, and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Spiders. Don’t. Do. That. This is not my opinion, this is not a theory, this is not open to debate. It is an easily verifiable biological fact, and it drives me crazy when people say, ‘Ooh, I got all these spider bites when I was camping.’ It’s a myth.”

  He gazed into her eyes. “I’ve never loved you more than I do at this moment.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. He retaliated.

  When the kiss ended, he said, “That was quite a rant. Passionate, well researched, utterly committed. The spider lobby can sleep well tonight.”

  “I’ll pass that along the next time we meet.”

  They kept walking. Craggy mounds of rough ochre rock lay jumbled on either side of the road. The air smelled of sage and dust.

  “You know, I think I know how the whole spider-bite thing got started,” said Jeff. “It’s a survival reflex. The more prejudiced you are against spiders, the more you avoid them. Statistically, over time, these people become more numerous.”

  “Why?”

  “Everyone else is dead. Of spider bites.”

  She punched him on the shoulder. He ignored it bravely and kept talking.

  “Blaming spiders—whether they’re guilty or not—reinforces our fear of them, which is ultimately a good survival tactic. When the evil Spider Overlords from Arachnia land in their webships, being all friendly and “Hey, Charlotte’s Web is my favorite book, too!” people like you will line up to shake their mandibles and invite them to go camping.”

  “Where, in an ironic twist of fate, we’ll be devoured in our own sleeping bags?”

  “Undoubtedly. Don’t worry, though—I’ll avenge you.”

  “That will come as a great relief to my desiccated, web-wrapped corpse.”

  She reached out and took his hand. He squeezed it.

  “Hey, look!” said Jeff. “I can see the first one!”

  Another craggy, jumbled mound of rocks lay ahead, but this one sat directly in the middle of the road. At its base, an archway had been cut into the stone, running all the way through to the other side. During the construction of the Hoover Dam, this tunnel and others like it had held railroad tracks, used for ferrying supplies and manpower to the dam site. The tracks had long since been removed, but the tunnels had been turned into part of a hiking trail.

  “Good,” said Nancy. “It looks nice and shady—you didn’t tell me that ‘perfect temperature’ you were talking about had a duration of around five minutes.”

  “Not only will it be cool and shady,” said Jeff with a grin, “but at this time of day it’ll be completely, absolutely deserted.”

  She grinned back. “If it wasn’t already too hot, I’d offer to race you.”

  “I’d conserve my strength if I were you.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Really.”

  But when Jeff and Nancy Holloway reached the dark, cool mouth of the tunnel, they found that somebody else was already there.

  “Hell of a thing to find on your honeymoon,” said Jim Brass. He stood just inside the mouth of the tunnel, out of the punishing glare of the sun.

  Dr. Albert Robbins stood on the other side of the body. “Hell of a thing to find anytime,” he said. “At least this way they’ve got a good story.”

  “I know this guy,” said Brass. “Russian mob. Never figured he’d end up like this, though.”

  Robbins nodded. “I’d say the COD was asphyxiation, though I won’t be able to confirm that until after the autopsy.”

  One of the Denalis used by the CSI lab pulled up, and Sara got out. “Just got the call,” she said. “We have an ID on the vic yet?”

  “You tell me,” said Brass, and stood aside.

  Sara looked down and frowned. “That’s Grigori Dyalov.”

  “Yeah,” said Brass. “Looks like he was on the receiving end of his own personal coup. Body was found by a couple out hiking.”

  Sara knelt and examined the body. “Ligature marks on the wrists and ankles. Throat is distended. There’s bruising and cuts on the lips and chin, and it looks like something’s been inserted in the mouth.”

  She reached down and pried the partly open jaws apart gently with two gloved fingers. A round object slid out between the bruised lips and clinked softly on the hard ground.

  Sara picked it up. It was a casino chip—one of the new ones from the Panhandle. “His mouth is full of them,” she said. “I think his esophagus might be, too.”

  “Well, no matter what you might say about Grigori Dyalov,” said Brass, “he was always a guy you could count on when the chips were down.”

  Sara and Doc Robbins both stared at him.

  “What?” said Brass. “I thought you two might be missing Grissom.”

  “Actually, I was,” said Sara. “Right until a second ago . . .”

  She continued with her examination of the body, getting Brass to help her turn it over. On the underside of the DB’s upper right arm, she found three tiny brown dots on his sleeve. “I’ve got what looks like a bloodstain,” said Sara. She pulled out her bottle of Luminol and a cotton swab. “A very distinctive one, too. Doesn’t look like spatter—I think it’s transfer.”

  “Three little dots?” said
Brass. “From what?”

  “Someone trying to make a point,” said Sara. “Or, more accurately, points—but I don’t think this is what he had in mind.”

  24

  BORIS SVENKO WAS AN ATHEIST.

  This was not the result of any rigorous intellectual analysis on his part. He was an atheist because his parents had been atheists, and they had been atheists because the state had told them that God did not exist. Boris had been raised to think that anyone who prayed to some mythical invisible figure who controlled his destiny was a fool and, worse, an enemy of communism. Only the weak-minded, superstitious morons of the capitalist West believed such nonsense.

  But like all children, Boris did not necessarily believe everything his parents told him. That, after all, was one of the lessons of atheism: if you could not see it, hold it, know it, it was suspect. And while communism was definitely real, Boris soon learned that it was not something he wished to worship, regardless of how his mother and father felt.

  His time in the Special Forces had only reinforced these opinions. Communism was a vast, dumb beast, controlled not by any central intelligence but by a swarm of parasites that passed themselves off as faithful Party members while growing fat and bloated on the jugular of their country. To be a loyal Soviet citizen, Boris realized, was to be a minute part of a much larger organism; and as such, you were about as important or necessary as a single skin cell—with about as much chance of advancement.

  But sometimes, even a tiny creature could have a major impact. Bacteria could invade and kill even an ox—and was it not better to be a victorious virus than a forgotten scrap of fingernail?

  And so, having rejected both God and country, Boris chose the vory v zakone.

  It was, he thought, a good choice. The army had given him a set of skills that had proven quite transferable to his new career, and the career had provided him with money, women, and an opportunity to travel. All in all, he was more than satisfied with his life. Of course, his current job had its pitfalls as well, but that was true of any given occupation, at any given time. All employees were sometimes forced to do things that they would rather not—but the appetite comes during the meal, as his father used to say; and no matter how unpleasant the task, Boris had found that once he started, enthusiasm usually followed.

  “Any fish is good if it’s on the hook,” Boris muttered in Russian, getting a blank-eyed stare from his escort, a pretty brunette from Sarajevo. They were sitting in a booth at Abrahami, the Japanese restaurant on top of the Lincoln Hotel. Boris had developed a taste for raw fish while stationed at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and it was something he often craved after a particularily grueling assignment. Abrahami was one of the few places in Vegas where you could get caviar nigiri, and that was exactly what Boris needed a big helping of right now.

  The brunette—he hadn’t bothered to learn her name—was studying her menu as if she had a choice. Boris glanced around for a waiter; America or Russia, there was never one around when you were hungry. They had all vanished into the kitchen or behind the ferns or wherever waiters went when they weren’t bringing you food.

  Ah, there was one. She was dressed in full geisha regalia, elaborate kimono and hair piled up on top of her head, shuffling forward with a tray in her hands. There was a small covered dish on the tray, which she put down on the table in front of them. She smiled and nodded, then turned and shuffled away before he could open his mouth.

  His escort reached out and lifted the cover. There was a cell phone underneath.

  Boris frowned. He was not unused to such things, but it did not make him happy. It meant that a superior wished to speak with him and had arranged this method out of a need for secrecy. It was a shame—he might have to forgo his Beluga sushi for work.

  The phone began to play music—a ringtone, he surmised. He recognized the tune as some sort of discoteque song from the ’70s: “Rasputin,” he believed it was called. Apparently his bosses had a sense of humor.

  He picked it up and answered. “Da?”

  “Hey there, Boris,” an unfamiliar voice said. “My name’s Jim Brass. You don’t know me, but we’re about to get very well acquainted. I understand you’ve ordered the red dot special?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Look down.”

  Boris glanced downward. Nothing on the table in front of him. . . and then he saw it. A tiny circle of red light, hovering directly over his heart.

  “See that?” said Brass. “I can tell by the look on your face that you do. Now, let’s talk about what I want to see—which is your hands. On the table and empty.”

  Boris did as he was told.

  “Good,” said Brass. “Now, don’t move. Our friendly staff will be by in a moment to take your order—and just wait until you hear our specials . . .”

  Sara studied Boris Svenko, handcuffed to the interview table. Boris stared back with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Sorry about all the theatrics,” said Sara. “I would have been just as happy pulling you in with a radio car, but hey, what do you expect? You go to all the trouble of making the world think you’re a dangerous guy, you have to expect a somewhat overblown response.”

  Boris said nothing.

  Sara smiled. “Not much of a talker, huh? Well, you didn’t say much the last time we met, either. By the way, who wound up winning that game of darts you and your boss were having? It sort of looked like he had the upper hand when I left.”

  Boris smiled back. It wasn’t much of a smile. “It didn’t last.”

  “No, I guess not. Kind of an occupational hazard in your line of work, isn’t it? Nobody stays on top forever. And if you stop being on top, you wind up underground.”

  “As does everyone.”

  “True. But everyone doesn’t wind up in a tunnel with a throat full of counterfeit casino chips.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  Sara reached out and took one of his hands. She turned it over, revealing three small scabs on the palm. “Not everyone has this wound pattern, either. You should have been more careful when moving the body, Boris. Your boss might have lost the game, but those marks he gave you mean he’s still going to have the last laugh.”

  Sara pushed a sheet of paper toward him across the surface of the table. “This is a court order authorizing me to take a sample of your blood. I could have just gone with a buccal swab to get your DNA, but a blood-to-blood comparison is more accurate.”

  She unzipped the small black leather case in front of her on the table, revealing a slim hypodermic, two empty vials, a short length of surgical tubing and some antiseptic swabs in sealed plastic packages.

  “Besides,” Sara said as she took out the hypo, “I already know you’re not afraid of a little jab.”

  “I’m not the one who should be afraid,” said Boris as Sara got up and approached his side of the table.

  Sara stopped, the needle in one hand, a swab and the tubing in the other. “Is that a threat?”

  “The animal most associated with Russia is the bear,” said Boris casually. “I’ve always thought that was wrong. You know what animal I think it should be? The boar. My father used to take me hunting when I was young, and he would tell me many fascinating facts about them. Did you know there are some that can grow to weigh eight hundred pounds? They will eat almost anything. They are found all over the world, including America—not because they evolved there but because colonists from Europe brought them over, and they escaped. They are true immigrants, not only adapting to their new country but making it their own. They breed quickly, have bristles that are closer to armor than fur, and most of all, they are social creatures. The males hunt in packs, never fewer than three. Their tusks can disembowel an opponent as easily as a grizzly’s claws.”

  He paused. “But most important of all—from a hunter’s perspective—is how a large group of them will react when they sense a predator nearby. The entire herd will fan out in a long line, the ends of which will then begin to bend like a bow
. Slowly but surely, they form a circle around the predator, fencing it into a corral of tusks. The hunter becomes the hunted. There is no other animal in nature that does this.”

  Boris met Sara’s eyes. “Except the vory v zakone,” he said softly. “Take your sample. Prison holds no terrors for me; I have many brothers there. It is my enemies who should live in fear.”

  * * *

  Sara held up one of the chips that had been found in Grigori Dyalov’s mouth—and throat, and stomach—and asked Nick, “Okay. When is a chip not a chip?”

  Nick picked one up from the light table and studied it. “When it’s a fake?”

  “When it’s not there. As in an RFID chip that should be present but isn’t.”

  Nick nodded. “Same as the ones Ilya Khavin was trying to pass at the Panhandle. They look good—almost flawless, in fact—but there’s nothing inside.”

  “Unlike Grigori Dyalov.”

  “Yeah. I think the message being sent there is pretty clear, don’t you?”

  “If that message is ‘You screwed up and now you’re dead,’ then yes. But I’d expect a man like Dyalov to be sending that message, not receiving it.”

  Nick shrugged. “There’s always a bigger shark. Whoever Dyalov answered to, he obviously didn’t tolerate failure. And that’s what those chips have to represent: complete, epic failure.”

  Sara tossed the chip she held onto the table. “The ten thousand dollars’ worth of chips Khavin was trying to pass must have been just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Yeah. And Dyalov was the Titanic.”

  “Okay,” said Greg. He stood at the front of the AV lab with a wireless keyboard in his hands. Nick and Sara sat in two lab chairs behind a table. “I think I’ve—sort of—figured it out. It doesn’t all quite make sense, but I’ve at least put together a sequence of events. I was really hoping to do an actual re-creation, but I couldn’t convince Catherine that we needed to build an operating air cannon that could fire a ballistic dummy a hundred and fifty feet.”

  “You did your best, buddy,” said Nick.

  “Thanks. Anyway, we’ll have to settle for a computer simulation.” He tapped on the keyboard; the large flat-screen on the wall switched from the lab’s logo to a wire-frame graphic of two skyscrapers, one on either end of the screen.