The Moscow Deception--An International Spy Thriller

by Karen Robards

  More than she had ever wanted anything, she wished she was back there. She wanted to get out from under this nightmare and go home.

  Where were magical red ruby slippers when you needed them?

  Nowhere, that’s where.

  Time to cowboy up.

  After they’d gotten out of Macau, she’d offered to send Doc back to Savannah—no one would be shooting at him if he wasn’t with her, as she’d pointed out—but she was secretly glad that he’d refused. He’d become more than a useful subordinate for whom she felt responsible. He was a companion, a friend, an ally. A source of the occasional bit of mood-lightening amusement, his mustache being a case in point. A reason to make doubly sure her tradecraft i’s were dotted and t’s were crossed.

  Plus, she needed his expertise if she hoped to succeed in liberating King Priam’s Treasure from the Pushkin Museum. Defeating the security system required expertise she didn’t possess. Once she’d been sure she couldn’t persuade Doc to return to Savannah without her, she’d filled him in on the deal Mason had struck to get the Darjeeling Brothers’ contract canceled and to make sure they were left alone in future.

  “Can you do it?” Doc asked, referring to the theft.

  She’d been brought up to be a thief. She was excellent at it. And this was life or death: her life or death. Could she do it? “Yes.”

  “Then I’m in.”

  Over the course of their travels she’d made use of Doc’s laptop to pore over the information Mason had left for her. It had included everything from detailed photos of each piece of the treasure, photos of the room in the Pushkin where it was kept, details of the security arrangements, including the location of surveillance cameras, the number and schedule of the security guards, and floor plans. It had also included access information for a bank account with more than enough money—eight million, which she assumed was part of the still-to-be-divvied-up haul from Bahrain—to do whatever she needed to do to get the job done.

  After examining everything Mason had put together, and thinking things through, and mentally running through a million scenarios, Bianca had come up with the broad strokes of a plan.

  Which was why she and Doc were in Budapest.

  If her plan was going to work, she needed help. And the help she needed was (she hoped) currently located just a few miles away.

  She wanted to reach their destination before it was full-on night. They were headed to a bad section of the city, and after exiting the taxi they would need to walk across several deserted fields to reach it. Actually, as far as the fields were concerned, deserted would be best-case scenario. Druggies, hookers and the homeless had been known to congregate in those fields in large numbers. Fortunately, she thought the night might be too cold.

  She and Doc left the taxi at a corner near a run-down apartment building and a gas station, walked behind the gas station and started tramping across acres of trash-strewn, scraggly brown grass. It was cold enough so that the grass was crisp with frost and crackled beneath their feet. When they exhaled, their breath made small white clouds.

  “So the last time you talked to these people was ten years ago?” Doc looked nervously around at the abandoned railroad track, the denuded trees and the rusted, broken wire fence that ran along one side of the field. On the other side of the field was a creek. A hill rose directly in front of them, and on the other side of that, unless things had changed, was their destination.

  Washed in pale moonlight, alive with shadows, the way forward looked eerie and unwelcoming.

  “More or less.” Doc had no idea of the type and extent of the training Mason had put her through while she was growing up, and she didn’t mean to enlighten him. Some things were just too personal.

  “What if they’re not here?”

  “We go to plan B,” Bianca replied. She tried not to sound as grim as she felt. Coming up with plan A had been hard enough. At this stage, plan B was the equivalent of flying on a wing and a prayer. “Anyway, they’re always here from the first of November through the end of February. At least, they always used to be.”

  “You’re friends with an itinerant gang of Hungarian thieves.” He sounded uneasy. Bianca put that down to the darkness, the isolation, the desolate, seedy landscape, the howling of wolves in the distant hills—okay, so maybe that was a train whistle but the effect was the same. In any event, their surroundings were enough to daunt a hardier soul than Doc.

  “And con artists. And smugglers. And forgers. Basically, anything you need.” She’d given Doc only a limited amount of information about what to expect at their destination, mainly because she didn’t want to have to answer a lot of questions about her past. Like, what do you mean you first met these people when Mason left you with the total strangers they had been at the time for a whole summer when you were nine years old? “They’re also more of a family than a gang.”

  “We’re getting ready to do a cold call on a crime family that you haven’t seen in ten years. Super. What could go wrong?” Doc huffed and puffed as the hill grew steeper.

  “Welcome to the dark side,” Bianca said. They were almost at the top of the hill, and she could smell it: the campfire. It brought back memories. The last time she’d been here, she’d been sixteen, it had been Christmas break, and she’d let Mason make arrangements for her because she’d been too embarrassed to accept Evie’s standing invitation to Christmas at her house. And that would be because, when she’d visited at Thanksgiving, Rosalie had asked her pointedly if she didn’t have a home of her own.

  The answer, of course, was no, but she hadn’t said that.

  Bianca reached the top of the hill a few steps before Doc and looked down to find that everything was just as she remembered: a central campfire in a flat, weedy field, with trucks and campers circled around it like a wagon train in a Western. A couple of people sat in lawn chairs near the campfire. A few more were seated at a picnic table nearby. There was a grill, which from the smell of roasted meat in the air had recently been put to good use. A generator hummed. Its presence accounted for the lights that were on in some of the campers.

  “Come on.” Conscious of a slight lightening of the heavy burden of dread that had been weighing on her, Bianca started down the hill.

  Doc followed. “Shouldn’t we give them a shout-out or something? I’d hate to be shot on sight.”

  “No need.” As if to prove her point, as they neared the bottom of the hill, a huge, menacing shape got to its four feet in the darkness at the edge of the campfire, shook itself, looked in their direction and let out an earthshaking roar.

  “What the hell?” Doc, who’d just caught up with her, fell back. “That’s a—lion.”

  “His name’s Zoltan.” Bianca smiled as a pack of six wildly barking small dogs streaked past the outer line of vehicles toward them. Thus properly alerted, the people around the campfire got to their feet now and turned to look in their direction. Almost certainly drawn by the commotion, a white-haired woman came to stand in the door of one of the campers. She was tiny, stooped and looked to be about a hundred years old. She lifted a hand as if to shade her eyes as she peered out.

  “Who’s that?” a tall, hulking man called out in challenge as he squinted through the darkness at them, while a plump platinum blonde came tearing after the dogs, who had reached them and leaped around them barking in a fierce, concerted warning that would have been terrifying if it hadn’t been so shrill and the dogs hadn’t been miniature poodles.

  “Uletka! Hunor! Magor! Levedia! Emese! Baba! Abba most!” Calling the dogs sby name, the blonde ordered them to stop right now.

  The dogs paid no attention, yapping vociferously and jumping around the newcomers as Bianca, with Doc staying cautiously close, approached the camp.

  “Szia, es Maggy.” Hello, it’s Maggy, Bianca called back, because when she’d stayed with them they’d known her as Maggy Chance. “Dorottya, te
vagy az?” Is that you? “Szia, Lazlo.” Hello, Lazlo, she greeted the hulking man, who was Dorottya’s husband.

  “Maggy? Maggy, is it really you?” Switching to English, which she knew was Maggy’s native language, Dorottya came bustling up, snapping her fingers at the dogs and scolding them in an aside that did no good at all while she stared hard at Bianca’s face. “It is you! Look, Lazlo, it’s Maggy! Oh, you are all grown up!”

  Dorottya embraced her, kisses to both cheeks, then handed her off to Lazlo, who did the same. By then the dogs had trotted off to search for scraps beneath the picnic table and Bianca had been pulled into the circle of firelight. The old woman—Dedi—came out of her camper, followed by an equally old-looking, shrunken and grizzled man with a small brown monkey perched on his shoulder.

  “Oskar!” Bianca greeted the old man, then to the monkey added, “Szia, Griff!”

  “Maggy!” Oskar kissed both her cheeks. Griff, displeased at the close contact, chattered and scrambled around to cling to Oskar’s back and from there pulled Bianca’s hair—or wig, rather.

  “Oh!” Bianca drew back, laughing, and more formally greeted the rest of the group that had gathered around, most of whom she didn’t recognize. Among themselves they might speak Hungarian, but they were fluent in English, as were most Hungarians, and they switched to it as a courtesy now, as they had years ago, whenever “Maggy” had stayed with them.

  “You remember Kristof. And Franz.” Now that Dorottya brought the two strapping young men to Bianca’s attention, she did remember them. They were Dorottya and Lazlo’s sons, and when Bianca had last seen them they’d been fourteen and twelve years old.

  “I do.” Bianca smiled at them. They’d been scrawny little boys, younger than she and too bashful of the unknown American girl parked in their midst to do more than throw an occasional mutter her way. Now they were both over six feet tall and, from what she could tell through their coats and jeans, extremely muscular. “And—” she peered at the slender, black-haired teenage girl who hung shyly back “—is it Bela?”

  Dorottya’s and Lazlo’s youngest, who would be—Bianca did a quick calculation—about sixteen, gave a quick nod, while Dorottya crowed, “It is! You have a good memory, Maggy.”

  “This is Bruce.” Bianca introduced Doc by his newest fake name. Eyes narrowed with trepidation, Doc was eyeing Zoltan, who had lain back down on the grass just outside the circle of firelight but was watching the proceedings with interest. Since Zoltan was the size of a small pony, had a massive tawny mane, glinting golden eyes and was a full-grown male African lion, she could understand Doc’s fascination. With a sweeping gesture that encompassed the group, which was twelve strong not including the animals, she added, “Bruce, meet the Circus Nagy.”

  23

  Circus? The startled look Doc shot Bianca asked the question, but all he said was a feeble, “Nice to meet you,” addressed to the group at large.

  “Since 1891,” Oskar told him proudly. “I am the sixth generation. My mother—” he nodded at Dedi “—is the fifth. My son—” he nodded at Lazlo “—is the seventh. His sons and daughter will be the eighth.”

  “Though possibly the first to starve, nagyapa,” Kristof said.

  His grandfather gave him a dark look. “We have weathered bad times before. The audiences will come back.”

  “This is not to be talked of now. We have guests.” Dorottya turned to Bianca. “You don’t know Kristof’s wife, Maria, and Franz’s wife, Elena. They do the trapeze and the silks.” She gestured to a slim redhead and a slim blonde in turn, both of whom were pretty women in their early twenties, before turning to a tall, muscular man who bore a strong resemblance to Lazlo. “Or Lazlo’s brother, Sandor, or his sons, Bence and Adam. They also perform with us now.”

  “When we perform.” Kristof’s comment was half under his breath, but still his grandfather scowled at him.

  “Sandor is the human cannonball, and also does the snakes. Bence and Adam do the high-wire act with Kristof and Franz.” Hurrying into speech in an obvious effort to prevent Oskar from saying something unpleasant to her son, Dorottya took Bianca’s arm, urging her toward the lawn chairs. “Have you eaten? There is still, I think, some food.”

  “We’ve eaten.” Bianca allowed herself to be drawn forward, but said, “Could we go inside instead? And catch up? I have so much to tell you and Lazlo, and Dedi and Oskar.”

  Dorottya had operated on the wrong side of the law far more than she had on the right side over the years, and she immediately picked up on Bianca’s unspoken meaning: she wanted to have private speech with those of the elders that she knew.

  “Naturally you will want to tell us all that you have been doing.” Dorottya smoothly ran with Bianca’s pretense. Angling away from the lawn chairs, she steered Bianca toward the camper where Bianca had first seen Dedi standing in the doorway. Reaching out a hand for Doc, Bianca pulled him along with her. She knew that he would be uncomfortable with being left outside with strangers—and Zoltan. And no telling how the younger Nagys would tease him. “Lazlo! Oskar! Dedi! We will go and talk to Maggy now.” She cast a look back at the others. “You lot, get this cleaned up out here. If we leave garbage out, the wild pigs will come.”

  “We call that a meal delivery for Zoltan.” Franz’s tone made it clear that he was joking, but his mother pointed a finger at him.

  “You know Zoltan does not like the wild pigs. He is old, and they are fierce. So you will pick up the trash, scrub the table, clean the grill, make sure the campsite has nothing to attract them. And put Zoltan in his house before you come inside.”

  “Yes, Mama,” Franz replied, sounding chastened.

  Dorottya ushered Bianca, with Doc following, inside the camper. A faint smell of what she thought must be goulash soup reached Bianca’s nostrils as they climbed the rickety metal steps that led to a door in the back and stepped into a small living area lined with cheap imitation wood paneling. It contained a two-seater couch, an easy chair, a dining booth with benches, and, at the far end of what was approximately an eight-by-twenty-foot space, a sleeping area—open curtains and what looked to be a queen-size mattress—that was tucked above the truck’s cab.

  Appliances, including a stove top with, indeed, a pot of soup simmering on it, were built into the wall opposite the dining booth. A boombox-size TV rested on a counter.

  It was warm inside; a steady hum meant the heat was on.

  The camper was suddenly very full as Lazlo, Dedi and Oskar with Griff filed in behind them. All six dogs rushed past their feet to bound through the small interior space. They ended up lying in a panting row on the loft bed, their white curly coats standing out against the blue comforter, their dark eyes bright as they looked down on the humans in the living area.

  “Rohadt kutyak,” Dedi muttered, which meant damn dogs. To Dorottya she added, “Do they have to go with you everywhere you go?”

  “Yes,” Dorottya replied, with the air of one making a simple statement of fact. Besides being Lazlo’s wife, the mother of Kristof, Franz and Bela, and a sometime thief and pickpocket, Dorottya was a professional dog trainer. The Amazing All-Star Dog Acrobats had been a staple of the Circus Nagy since long before Bianca had first come to stay with them. The dogs were different now, but the act clearly lived on.

  “Sit down, sit down.” Oskar gestured to the couch. While Bianca sat down with Doc beside her and Dedi took the chair, the others remained standing, surrounding them in a semicircle. Griff, chattering, hopped off Oskar’s shoulder, ran along the counter and leaped to the top of the bed curtains, where he hung by one small hand from the rod, swinging gently just above the dogs.

  Beside her, Doc watched Griff wide-eyed.

  “And what of your father, Maggy? Is he well?” Dorottya asked. She had her arms crossed over her chest, a stance that Maggy had learned during her time living with them denoted anxiety. Dorottya’s frown deepe
ned the wrinkles in her forehead. Worry narrowed her blue eyes. Both she and Lazlo would be in their late forties now. They looked older, and that would be because, Bianca knew, the circus life was a hard one. Under the harsh light of the single overhead fixture, Dorottya’s blond hair was brassy with dye, and her makeup—lots of bright blue eye shadow, too much blush and scarlet lips—had settled into dozens of tiny lines around her eyes and mouth that were new since Bianca had last seen her.

  “Yes, he’s very well, thanks,” Bianca lied. As well as contributing to certain aspects of her education, various members of the Circus Nagy had worked jobs with Mason. They had known him for many years as a supremely successful thief, but that aspect of his life, and hers, was all they knew.

  “We heard a few months ago that he was killed. A rumor only?” Bald and heavily tattooed, Lazlo was a talented juggler as well as being the circus strongman. He looked menacing but was actually totally under Dorottya’s thumb. His act included lifting a small car, which, to be honest, had been stripped down so that all he was really lifting was the shell. Still, it brought down the house every time. It was he who had masterminded the art of smuggling—people, contraband, currency—by using the animals in their specially modified traveling vehicles as a guard against a too-close inspection at checkpoints. This was an important reason why Bianca had zeroed in on the Circus Nagy: stealing the treasure would be hard. Getting it out of the country afterward would be harder.

  “A rumor only,” Bianca confirmed.

  “There have been many rumors lately, about old friends being arrested or simply vanishing.” Oskar, who was around seventy, had always been small and wiry, but over the years he had shrunken to the size of a jockey. But his gray hair was still thick, and his nearly black eyes were keen with intelligence. He’d once been a jewel thief. He’d also once been an acrobat, but a fall from a roof a dozen years ago while stealing a diamond necklace had left him with a back injury and a limp that made it impossible for him to continue in either activity. When Bianca had last seen him, he’d been reduced, as he called it, to performing in a comedy routine with Griff and Zoltan that, to his disgust, was far more popular than his old acrobatic act had been.