Twisted Reasons

By Geza Tatrallyay

TWISTED REASONS is the first in a trilogy of international crime thrillers based on arms and human trafficking from a modern ‘rogue’ Russian state. This is the tale of two college friends who get drawn into the heist of nuclear material from a former Soviet site. The novel examines the nature of evil, and, in its broader historical and geographical sweep, explores Stalin’s decadent régime through flashbacks that incorporate aspects from my own family’s experiences. It is plot driven, and reflects elements of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and Tom Rob Smith's Child 44, as well as Graham Greene’s The Third Man.

Arriving in Vienna to find his friend Adam Kallay, an official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, presumed dead, crime novelist Greg Martens teams up with Interpol Agent Anne Rossiter and Julia, Kallay’s Russian girlfriend, to solve the case and track the disappearance from a former Soviet nuclear site of enough uranium to make a bomb. The story moves from espionage entrepȏt Vienna to radioactivity contaminated Chelyabinsk and to front-line Georgia, as the three combat arms merchants allied to Russian secret police to prevent the stolen uranium from getting into the hands of terrorists. Along the way, Greg learns brutal truths about himself and his family’s past and falls in love with Anne.

Geza Tatrallyay conceived the book while he was living in Vienna and traveling throughout the former Soviet bloc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geza Tatrallyay
• Release date: Nov 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781928049159

Geza Tatrallyay

Born in Budapest, Geza Tatrallyay escaped with his family from Communist Hungary in 1956 during the Revolution, immigrating to Canada. After attending the University of Toronto Schools and serving as School Captain in his last year, he graduated with a B.A. in Human Ecology from Harvard College in 1972, and, as a Rhodes Scholar from Ontario, obtained a B.A. / M.A. in Human Sciences from Oxford University in 1974. He completed his studies with a M.Sc. from London School of Economics and Politics in 1975. Geza worked as a host in the Ontario Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, and represented Canada in epée fencing at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. His professional experience has included stints in government, international finance and environmental entrepreneurship. Geza is a citizen of Canada and Hungary, and as a green card holder, currently divides his time between Barnard, Vermont and San Francisco. He is married to Marcia and their daughter, Alexandra, lives in San Francisco with husband David, and two sons, Sebastian, and Orlando, while their son, Nicholas, lives in Nairobi with his Hungarian wife, Fanni, and his granddaughters, Sophia and Lara. Geza is also the author of five novels, three memoirs, four poetry collections and a children's picture storybook. His poems, stories, essays and articles have been published in journals in Canada and the USA.

Book preview

February 1949

András watched the scarlet ooze seep through the crystals of the newly fallen snow crunching beneath his feet. This was the third time he had vomited blood that day, and on this occasion, he did not even make it to the latrines. Just as well, he thought, as he spat more blood, at least out here I can breathe—although the short gasps of bitter cold air stung his lungs. The dizziness, and the fatigue too, returned, and all he wanted to do was to lie down and fall asleep right there. He leaned against the building for a moment to gather strength and kicked snow over the bloodstain to cover it. Looking up, in the Siberian twilight, he saw a guard with a huge dog pulling at a leash, both staring straight at him.

András struggled against the freezing February wind and slowly made his way back to Block 12, which he shared with a hundred or so other prisoners. Escaping from the cold through the flimsy door, he paused for a moment by the wood-burning stove to thaw out, then made his way to Row 6, where he had the top bunk on the right side. He used his meager reserves to climb up and stretch out his exhausted body to rest. Concentrating hard to fight the drowsiness clouding his mind, he turned on his side, raising his head so he could see as he used his blistered fingers to pry out a small notepad and the stubby remains of a pencil hidden between two wooden slats of his bed.

*****

The day before, as he and the others on his shift were scrubbing themselves after their work inside the reactor, András had asked Efim Pleshkov whether he could get him some paper and a writing implement so that he could compose a letter to his wife, and whether he would be willing to get it to her in the event that András did not survive.

Pleshkov had been a friend before the War; they had studied together under the great Otto Hahn, the discoverer of nuclear fission, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. Now he was one of the Russian scientists overseeing the work of the convicts.

Supervisors like Pleshkov only stayed inside the reactor for a maximum of one hour each, whereas the prisoners’ shifts lasted six grueling hours. And with each hour he worked, András felt his condition deteriorate. First had come the nausea and vomiting, then the diarrhea, now several times during each shift, turning each six-hour spell into unrelenting agony. The fever and the headaches made it that much harder to concentrate, and over the last couple of days, the intensifying dizziness and disorientation brought him to the realization that he would not be able to work much longer at this task. The pitiful look that Pleshkov had given him at the end of the last shift only seemed to confirm this.

Where had the sickly looking convicts in his Block from the previous shift been taken to just a couple of days ago? After five days, he and his fellow shift workers now looked equally wasted. He hoped they would all be moved to the camp infirmary; they were in desperate need of medical attention. But he knew enough of Soviet inhumanity during and after the War …

What was this debilitating chore they were performing? András had studied chemistry and physics; his specialty had been nuclear fission. He was one of many prisoners here at this gulag near Chelyabinsk—many thousands—and their charge was to construct what he concluded must be some kind of reactor complex. When he first arrived, the guards had questioned him—and this is when he had again met Pleshkov, who was present at some of the interrogations—to see whether his knowledge could be useful, but since he was relegated to the drudgery of laying brick and pouring cement, he surmised that the Soviet scientists by now knew much more than he did. No doubt from their spies who were stealing American and British secrets and from the many scientists they had captured across the occupied countries. They did not need him. He was glad not to be forced to contribute his knowledge to what he concluded must be the Soviet effort to construct a nuclear bomb.

Early in the morning, nine days ago, half the prisoners in his Block were suddenly given orders to assemble outside and were led off towards Unit A, which András suspected was the one completed reactor. When he got back that evening from construction labor on another building, those same convicts were lying motionless in their bunk beds, visibly weaker and more spent than usual. All he could get out of the one or two who would speak to him was that they had been taken into the reactor and told to remove some rods and extract metal blocks from them, and that they had felt sicker and sicker during the day.

Three days later, András’ shift was ordered to perform the same terrible task. Inside the reactor, they had to haul, one by one, ten-meter long, vertical black rods—András was sure there were more than a thousand of them—out of the coolant water, open them up and manually remove forty or so pellets from each. The anxiety among the Soviet staff was palpable, and at one moment that first day, he was surprised to see the legendary Igor Kurchatov—who András knew from Pleshkov had been placed in charge of the entire Soviet nuclear effort by Stalin—inside the reactor chastising several convicts.

On the way out that day, he had asked Pleshkov what it was they were doing, but he either did not know or, more likely, just did not want to tell his friend. András, though, was convinced that something had gone terribly wrong in the reactor, and that he and the other prisoners were being used to help put it right. It was only on the third day of feeling very ill and weak that he dared admit to himself that the blocks they were handling must be some highly radioactive material.

*****

András could barely stand up by the time the head guard blew the whistle to end the shift. He and his working partner, Grigor—a Russian soldier who had been captured by the Germans, liberated by the Americans and sent back to the Soviet Union—had just managed to complete the dismantling and emptying of one rod between them, but he was glad to be ushered towards the washrooms. He looked around for Pleshkov; he was nowhere to be seen. András made his way to the toilet—a bit more civilized than the latrines behind the Block—and, as had been the case over the last few days, blood came out from both ends. He felt faint and dizzy as he struggled to get up, and went to wash himself thoroughly with the block of lye provided for the purpose. As he dried himself with one of the sandpaper-like communal towels, Pleshkov appeared in the doorway. Their eyes met. András went over to the Russian, pulled out the sheets of folded notepaper and said, Would you be kind enough …

I can’t promise, but I’ll do what I can. Pleshkov quickly took the letter, glancing around to see if anyone was watching and tucked it into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.

*****

Two military trucks were waiting outside the door, with a line of guards toting machine guns every few meters delineating a path toward them through the snow. The prisoners were ordered aboard. András wearily climbed up the back of the second vehicle and sat down on the cold and slushy floor along with twenty-five others.

Thank God. Finally, they’re taking us to the hospital, he heard one of the prisoners say in the rear.

Three guards climbed in; two others closed up the back. The trucks sped away, motors grinding, wheels sliding on the snowy road. András tried to see out, but they were traveling away from the camp. He had the sense that they were going toward the periphery of the complex. The prisoner next to him threw up, mostly blood; he stared dispassionately at the red slime, as the jostling of the truck caused it to flow toward him.

The vehicle stopped and there was some shouting, then it started again. A turn to the right onto a small, unplowed road: the engine struggled as it forced the rough treads of the large tires through the thick snow. András glimpsed the icing sugar-capped conifers of the Siberian forests march by, as the trucks made their way deeper and deeper into uninhabited territory.

Finally, they came to a halt. Motors turned off, and for a moment, there was only the silence of the taiga. Then yelling—two guards opened the back, and they were ordered to dismount. András was shoved forward into the deep snow by one of the soldiers and when he struggled to his feet, he saw that the prisoners from the first truck were stumbling along a sort of dam or spur that led across a large frozen lake, with the machine guns of their guards pointing at them.

He was prodded onto the spur by a Kalashnikov-carrying soldier. He looked around and down on either side, but it was a good four meters to the ice. And he was so, so tired. Even if he were able to jump and not break a leg, what then? Escape was not possible; there were too many armed guards, and he was much too weak to run or fight.

The rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire suddenly violated the stillness of the forest, and András saw those furthest out on the dam fall to the ground or down onto the ice of the frozen lake. Prisoners dropped in rapid succession, like a row of dominoes. András tried, but could not move, and the last sensation he had was that the crimson paint spilling across the canvas of white snow and ice was rapidly advancing toward him and would soon envelope him.

Lily, I love you …

Chapter 1

February 2016

This was Anne Rossiter’s favorite part of the day. After finishing her hour-long, after-work routine of stretching, weights and the elliptical, she was ready to start the evening. Time to relax, play, read. She relished these few moments of transition in her daily routine: the winding down, the recovery, the cleansing.

Still breathing hard, elated from the rush, Anne peeled her top and shorts from her sweat-soaked body and caught a glimpse of her radiant cheeks, shapely torso and long, well-toned legs in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. She was in terrific shape. She had to be. As an Interpol agent, she had to undergo an annual test for physical conditioning. She prided herself on being number one or two each year among female officers in the region. Buying the second-hand machine and a cheap set of barbells for use at home had made it just that much easier.

Anne was now in her third year with Interpol in Vienna and she had been glad to accept the posting to the former Imperial capital. Vienna’s mix of high culture and underground activity made it interesting both personally and professionally. Fluent in both German and Russian, she was equally at home watching a play by Grillparzer in the Burgtheater or eavesdropping on the Russian mafia laundering money through real estate purchases in Kitzbühel.

For all its rediscovered elegance, Vienna had retained its seedy side. It was still an entrepôt for trade in everything from women to weapons. As it had been in the immediate post-war years, it was still a hub of espionage and intelligence operations.

Anne took longer than her usual five minutes in the shower, relishing the sensual pleasure of water flowing over flesh, until she heard the first notes of the Radetzky March from her mobile. She rarely got calls after hours. She grabbed a towel, and wrapping it around her torso, scurried across the bedroom to her night table where she had left the phone.

"Hello. Guten Abend. Anne Rossiter." A small pool was starting to form around her feet.

Anne, it’s Adam. The familiar but unexpected American voice blasted excitedly into her ear. Sorry to disturb, but I’m glad I caught you. Adam Kallay was her contact at the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, charged with securing nuclear material across the former Soviet Union.

Why, what’s up, Adam? Anne was getting cold. She pressed the speaker button and rested the mobile on the night table.

Anne, I just had a call from Fazkov. You remember Andrei, the physicist from Mayak, your blind date at the IAEA ball a couple of years back? Anne recalled the entire embarrassing evening only too well. How could she forget?

Yes?

He just called to say that another fifty pounds of highly enriched uranium cannot be accounted for at Mayak. He didn’t want to say any more over the phone.

That’s enough for half a bomb, isn’t it?

Yes. I asked him to come to Vienna so we could see where we go from here. He’ll try to get a flight tomorrow. Luckily, his visa’s still good.

Anne heard Adam clear his throat and hesitate before he continued: Anne, could I come by now to discuss this?

To gain time, Anne coughed several times. Adam, no. It’s not a good time. It’s late. Though tempted, she did not want to get into another awkward situation with him.

Well, how about tomorrow morning?

Tomorrow’s good. Café Central at nine?

Okay, nine it is.

Anne turned the speaker off and went back to the bathroom. This was serious. Two weeks ago, just less than ten pounds of uranium had disappeared. Again, it was Fazkov who had noticed the discrepancy. And two Chechens had been caught crossing the border into Abkhazia. After some persuasion, they admitted that the nuclear material had come from Mayak.

And now, this. Someone, somewhere, was trying to get their hands on enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb. There were going to be more thefts, that was for sure.

Tomorrow, first thing, she needed to reread Adam’s report on the earlier robbery. The two had to be connected.

*****

Brushing her teeth, Anne thought again of Adam. Maybe she should have let him come this evening. But no, she had to keep to her resolution not to mix the personal with the professional.

She had liked him in the beginning, when she had hoped that their work relationship might develop into something more. He had good genes and great prospects. He claimed to be descended from Hungarian nobility, was in his thirty-fifth year and strikingly handsome with blond hair and piercing blue eyes. An undergraduate degree from Harvard and a doctorate in nuclear physics from MIT, a well-paid job in an international organization—not bad at all. Yes, she had entertained notions of a possible relationship right up until that evening, the night of the IAEA ball in the Hofburg, two Februarys ago, just a few months after she had started her job in Vienna …

Chapter 2

Greg Martens had not felt this upbeat for a long time, perhaps since just after his divorce. Yes, he thought to himself, this is the right thing for me now, as he clicked on the send icon to expedite the email to his friend.

He had come up with the plan to visit his best friend after receiving an invitation to attend a conference on the modern American novel in Vienna, hosted by the Austrian English Literary Society. Greg had been asked to present a talk on emerging trends in American fiction. They must have had a cancellation, he reasoned, or perhaps no other member of the New York literati had volunteered. He would only have to make a short speech about a topic on which he could happily talk for hours. As a struggling writer, living alone in New York and with unpaid legal costs from his divorce, he was not about to pass up a short break with some of his expenses covered.

Greg hadn’t seen Adam since his friend visited New York soon after his appointment to the IAEA. If anybody, Adam would be able to provide the kind of companionship Greg now so sorely lacked in the Big Apple.

Adam was his dearest childhood friend. They shared Hungarian roots—Adam’s grandparents were Magyar and Greg’s mother had been born in Budapest. They had grown up together in Cleveland, played in the same sandbox and shared a babysitter, gone to the same kindergarten, camps, schools and even Hungarian balls. Rather than brook separation after high school, they both applied to Harvard, celebrating together when they received notification of acceptance. They tried out for the fencing team. Greg, the sabreur, was elected captain, although Adam proved to be the bigger star, losing only three epée bouts all season. The next three years, they shared a suite in Dunster House—one of the upperclassmen dorms—and led the Varsity team to both All-Ivy and All-American honors in two of those seasons.

Greg majored in creative writing and literature, with a minor in modern languages, Adam, nuclear physics and international relations. After graduation, Adam went on to study for a doctorate at MIT while Greg followed Laurie, his college sweetheart, to New York: she, to intern in investment banking, he, to work on his first novel.

Adam was best man when late the next year Greg and Laurie got married. But Greg could not make it to Boston when Adam graduated with his Ph.D., as he and Laurie were in California visiting her father who was recovering from a heart attack. After working on nuclear security for the U.S. Government for several years, Adam had just been appointed Deputy Director of the Department of Nuclear Safety and Security at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna at the time he visited Greg and Laurie in New York. This was a huge job for a thirty-year-old.

*****

Five years had passed since he’d seen Adam, the longest they had ever been separated. A get-together was definitely overdue. And Greg’s life needed a boost, a new direction.

Just two weeks earlier, Greg had finally submitted the revised draft of The Bedroom Thief to his publishers, who had given up on ever seeing the manuscript. He had turned to writing these formulaic crime novels when he had found himself unable to replicate the success of his only serious novel, Wintertime, written straight out of college.

And did Adam even know about the divorce? Had he been in touch with Laurie? They had all been such good friends back in college. Maybe too close. Adam’s visit had seemed to bring Laurie a little nearer for a while, but they barely communicated, and slowly, a poisonous atmosphere of rancor and mutual recrimination had set in again. There was no way back. A definitive, final separation had been the only option. This was followed by the drawn-out divorce, the terms of which had only been finalized recently.

He guessed that Adam had no idea about the turns his personal and professional lives had taken. If he had, he may have had a good chuckle, never one to resist the dark temptation of a little Schadenfreude.

Plus, a trip to Vienna would give him the chance to hop over to Budapest and finally do the research on his family that he had been promising himself to do since college. With Adam, if he could tempt him.

*****

Adam responded enthusiastically to Greg’s email.

Greg, great idea. It’s been too long. I will rearrange plans to be here. Vienna is fabulous—you will love it. We will go to the Staatsoper and the Musikverein. We’ll take a trip to Budapest, as you suggest. And travel around. We always wanted to go back together and discover our roots. See where our grandparents came from.

So Adam was on the same wavelength. Terrific, Greg emailed back. Will look into flights. Thanks and see you soon.

Greg would finally make progress on his long-term plan to write a novel about his mother’s family. He knew that the obvious place to start was with his Hungarian grandparents and he needed to find out a lot more about them. Maybe this was the occasion. Was fate giving him direction? This could be his next serious book.

Greg thought of his grandmother with affection and respect. Omi had been one of those grandes dames of Central Europe, who could converse in five languages fluently and always had an opinion about everything. Though now in her nineties, she was still living in an old-age home in Cleveland, and yes, he needed to visit her. Maybe when he came back.

He had fond memories of her, growing up: the late summer afternoon sessions on the front porch, when he—often with Adam—would listen to her tell about life in Hungary, the terrible War and post-War years, and the escape with her two children and second husband during the Revolution in 1956. Greg had always listened with interest. He had never met his maternal grandfather and Omi did not say much about him, although on occasion she would open up with tantalizing tidbits. This trip could be an opportunity to do some research, maybe even talk to some of his distant Hungarian relatives.

*****

A careful search for the cheapest flight available yielded one with Lufthansa, with a connection in Frankfurt, leaving on February 10. He could not help but think how good it would be to leave his empty life in New York behind, if only for a couple of weeks.

Mostly though, Greg was determined to enjoy the trip. He deserved to have some fun. He’d get to do five years of catching up with his old buddy. He’d get to explore Vienna, a city he and Laurie had visited in their student days. Kärtnerstrasse, the Stefans Dom, the Burg, Grinzing and the heurigers … They were good memories.

He relished the prospect of what lay ahead. It would be an adventure. Greg realized that for the first time in a long while, he felt optimistic, energized. He was happy.

Chapter 3

Anne arrived at the Café Central just before nine. She was glad to come in out of the wet snow, still falling in big flakes that now covered the hood and shoulders of her coat.

She smiled at the statue of Trotsky sitting by the entrance, reminding her that in a previous era, the café had been a hotbed of revolutionary intrigue. She sat down on the upholstered bench at one of the round tables in a corner. The Central was her favorite café in Vienna, with its Italianate arches and ceiling, its white-aproned, black-tied waiters, and Emperor Franz Joseph and Sissi staring at the patrons from their brilliant, life-sized portraits on the back wall. A reminder of the paternalism of the Empire, but with Trotsky there too, of the social turmoil that it had spawned as well.

Anne had just ordered a mélange and toast when Adam came through the door, shaking his head with its mop of wet blond hair, and stomping his feet to get rid of the snow. He spotted Anne and came over, bending down to give her a peck in each cheek before he hung his coat and scarf on one of the racks. As always, he was immaculately dressed in a blazer and gray slacks, and a crisp, two-tone striped shirt open at the neck. Waterproof Merrill hiking boots replaced the black loafers Anne had seen him wearing the last time they met at his office, a concession to the falling snow.

Anne got straight to business. So, is Fazkov coming?

Yes. He should arrive around three this afternoon. He’ll come straight to my place for a debriefing. Easier there than in the office, where I would have to sort out security.

Good. You’ll call and let me know what he says?

Of course. The waiter arrived with Anne’s coffee and toast and took Adam’s order.

Adam cleared his throat before coming to the point. "Anne, I think we may be able to catch these thieves … in flagrante delicto. He smiled, relishing his own turn of phrase, before adding, But we do have to move fast."

How do you mean?

Fazkov made a strange comment on the phone yesterday. He was talking about Kolchakova, the director of Mayak. He thought that she must be involved. Or that she must at least know about the heist. He couldn’t see how that much highly enriched uranium could be taken from the site.

So, a classic inside job, you think?

Must be. Fazkov’s right. Otherwise, how could the stuff just disappear like that?

I see your point.

You know, Anne, I’ve been thinking. I’ve gotten to know this Kolchakova pretty well. If Fazkov really thinks she’s involved, maybe I could infiltrate the gang somehow. Pretend I’m in it with them. I could let her know that I know and that, for a decent share of the profits, I would keep the disappeared material out of the inventory. So it would never appear as missing.

That could be dangerous … Anne trailed off as the waiter brought Adam’s coffee.

Anne, I know it’s risky, but it would allow us to catch the bad guys. And it would be hard for them to say no, especially if I promised to look the other way. Not just this once, but for future heists as well.

Why would they trust you?

Kolchakova knows me.

Hmm …

I don’t know. The money for one. I would ask for a big share of the profits and not just for this time. But leave that to me.

Adam, it sounds crazy. Downright suicidal. Anne was thinking about the risks, but couldn’t help being distracted by thoughts of just what Adam meant by getting to know Kolchakova ‘pretty well’.

We need hard evidence. I have no proof that this fifty pounds even exists. Fazkov just knows because he’s been around those warehouses for so long. He has a sixth sense about the stuff.

Let’s see what Fazkov says. Maybe he’s got something more tangible that we can work with.

"I doubt it. It’ll be just his word against everybody else’s. Including the director’s. If she’s

Reviews for Twisted Reasons

[Con Cú · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a wonderful international crime thriller, inspired by Graham Greene's Third Man. It is a page-turner, starting in Vienna then moves to the Ural Mountains and ending up in Abkhazia.