Koverchenko is a voluble guy, about forty, with a shaved skull and a salt-and-pepper beard complete with soul patch—a triangular brush of gray between the lower lip and the chin. He is happy to share intelligence with his American friends. On the video Koverchenko tells Gleason and Silver that “his” victim and the other murdered Russian (Dr. Alexsandr T. V. Golokoff, an author and speaker, killed in his apartment in the affluent neighborhood of Filyovsky Park in Moscow) have been determined to have known each other personally; both were members of a dissident organization called the November Group, which advocated for freedom of the press, for action on climate change, and for the rights of political prisoners.

The inspector seems to have no problem with this politically. In fact, he appears to admire the two victims’ courage. He confesses his astonishment at the “anomalies and aberrations” of the Tcheckousky crime scene, for which he declares he can discover no precedent—a violent murder, producing abundant evidence of a physical struggle (what is called in the Eastern European underworld, he observes, a “crime of the hand,” meaning a homicide enacted without a weapon) resulting in the fatal crushing of the victim’s airway as well as a fracturing of the skull, and yet the inspector’s best forensics experts can discover no sign of entry, forced or otherwise; no fingerprints other than the victim’s; no assailant’s DNA, no foot tracks, no nothing.

As the inspector is testifying to this on-camera, a side door to his office can be heard to open offscreen. Koverchenko turns toward this entry, as do his two associates. Immediately all sound ceases on the video. A discussion ensues between those on-screen and off, but we, at the other end of the transmission, can hear none of it.

When sound returns, which it does after an interval of about thirty seconds, Inspector Koverchenko explains to the camera, i.e., to Gleason and Silver, that he was perhaps premature in certain of his conclusions, which should not, he declares, be taken as the official position of his department. He is, he says, not at liberty to discuss the details of this homicide further until he has spoken with and received clearance from some entity that he names but that the software refuses to translate.

Gleason lets the video run but mutes the sound.

GLEASON

We got the same horseshit from Rooskies #2—the Moscow cops investigating their other murder.

Gleason kills the video and turns up the lights in the room. Our boss is about ten years younger than Manning, forty or so, with a shock of Kennedy-esque hair and a sturdy Auld Sod jaw. It’s impossible to be in his presence and not project him as a future mayor-slash-governor-slash-senator.

Gleason has his own theory, he tells his teams now, on these “LV” cases.