“There are always rumors. It is the price of growing old. Enough of this small talk. Why have you come to see us, Maggy?” Dedi got to the point with an impatient gesture. With her chopped-short white hair, crinkly olive-toned skin, hawk nose and deeply hooded dark eyes, Dedi had always seemed ancient to Bianca. A quick calculation confirmed that she had to be in her early nineties now. A former trapeze artist, she had reworked herself into a Gypsy fortune-teller in her old age, with a booth that was a primary source of extra income everywhere the circus set up. Within the family, it was an open secret that she had no gift for it and simply made stuff up, but she looked the part and income was income. She was also a first-class forger of, among other things, relics, artifacts and various historically significant objects, which was another of the reasons Bianca had chosen to approach the Circus Nagy with her plan.
Bianca said, “I came to tell you about an opportunity that has come my way. A robbery, a big one. It’s high-profile, and if and when the theft is discovered, the search for the thieves will be massive. But I have a plan to carry it out, and the payday for you, if you should choose to help me and we succeed, would be four million dollars.”
Four pairs of eyes were suddenly riveted on her. Lazlo sucked in his breath. Dorottya licked her lips. Oskar made a whistling sound under his breath.
Dorottya said, “This is you and your father together?”
Bianca shook her head. “Not my father. It’s only me.” She patted Doc’s knee. “And Bruce.”
Doc dredged up a weak smile. Dorottya’s frown deepened.
“He is your young man?”
“No.” Bianca shook her head. “He’s my associate.”
Dedi said, “Four million US?”
“Yes,” Bianca said. “Four million US dollars.”
The family exchanged looks. Their faces said everything: the hard times they’d been experiencing, the uncertain future for the circus and themselves, the enormous sum four million dollars represented and the difference it would make in their lives.
“That would be like winning the lottery,” Lazlo said.
“Tell us about this robbery,” Dedi said.
Bianca did. Judiciously. She left out the part about the Darjeeling Brothers’ contract, because exposing even longtime friends to the temptation the reward presented would just be stupid, in her estimation. As far as her listeners were concerned, her motivation for the theft she proposed was purely profit. She told them she’d been hired to steal King Priam’s Treasure from the Pushkin Museum, which was all they needed to know. Anyway, what concerned them was the nature of the job itself, the difficulty of pulling it off, the likelihood of getting caught and their share of the paycheck.
After a little more discussion, they seemed to reach a consensus that their share of the paycheck made every other detail something that could be worked out.
“Moscow,” Lazlo said in a meditative way. “Russia is difficult. So many rendorseg—police. They are like cockroaches: everywhere.”
“My cousin works in Nikulin’s Circus.” Oskar pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Perhaps we could visit. We could say we are seeking positions there.”
“We could say we are bringing the children to audition.” Dorottya looked at her husband. “They want young ones to train. And Kristof and Franz’s high-wire act—”
“Needs work,” Dedi said. “But that might serve.”
“What if they are accepted? Whatever happens, I am not leaving the children behind in Russia.” Dorottya’s voice was sharp.
“They won’t be accepted,” Dedi said. “Don’t concern yourself. The Nikulin only takes the best of the best.”
Dorottya bristled at her grandmother-in-law.
“We won’t leave them behind,” Oskar promised before she could say anything. “But they are a way in.”
“We are in agreement, then?” Lazlo looked at each of his family members in turn.
Oskar nodded, followed by Dedi and Dorottya.
“We are in agreement,” Lazlo told Bianca. Then, to Oskar, “Break out the pálinka. Tonight we celebrate. Tomorrow we go to work.”
24
Moscow is a city of some twelve million inhabitants. One out of every fifteen Russians lives there. It is huge, ancient and mysterious. At first glance it looks European, but its spirit is unmistakably Russian. Babushkas existing on tiny pensions share the broad boulevards with more billionaires than reside in any other city on the planet. Petty criminals are as common as rats, preying on rich and poor alike. Contract killers haunt the shadows, their existence an accepted price of success. Vodka is the drink of choice, and many citizens choose it. Bathhouses, tea shops, nightclubs, casinos, theaters, operas, high-end shopping—the capital has it all: every vice, every pleasure, every danger. Its architecture is a dazzling mix of a little bit of everything, ranging from the colorful onion domes of sixteenth-century Byzantine cathedrals to the ugly shoeboxes of fifties-era Stalinesque modernism to the tall and elegant skyscrapers of the twenty-first century.
To understand the city, it helps to think of it in terms of the ever-popular Russian nesting dolls: the Kremlin and Red Square, including Lenin’s Mausoleum and St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Armory Museum and GUM’s department store, are the tiny doll in the center, and the rest spreads outward in concentric circles, with the last one encompassing one-time monasteries and former country estates of nobles and the tsars. The whole vast, unruly sprawl is circled by Moscow Ring Road. The Moskva River winds through it all.
There were, Bianca thought as they crept along with the traffic into the heart of the city, two things to keep in mind about Moscow: (1) nowhere worth going to was more than a fifteen-minute walk from a Metro station, and (2) Big Brother is always watching, and his eyes are blue.
She rode in the cab of the big rig, the largest of the vehicles, a semitrailer truck that held the big top tent, stadium seating, pieces of the ring and other necessary equipment, with Lazlo behind the wheel. Six days had passed since she and Doc had combined forces with the Circus Nagy. The big rig was in the middle of the convoy of campers, animal wagons and support vehicles. It had been an arduous three-day journey over bad roads and through checkpoints where the guards had for the most part waved them on with no more than a cursory glance at their papers. Only at the Russian border had they been ordered to stop while the vehicles were searched. Six-foot-high razor wire spirals ran along either side of the narrow, pitted road. An elevated guard tower complete with Kalashnikov-wielding guards and a powerful searchlight overlooked the proceedings. This was in addition to the more ordinary barrier gate and armed guards from the Border Guard Service. The effect was intimidating.
After looking inside the big rig and several of the campers, the guards reached Zoltan’s truck. When the back garage-style door was rolled up to reveal the big cat, tail slashing, glaring at them from behind iron bars, and he greeted them with a mighty roar, they backed off and let the convoy proceed.
Which was a good thing, because Bianca, who didn’t want to endure the scrutiny of the border guards for fear that her forged papers might not pass muster, or a guard might recognize her as the subject of a Darjeeling Brothers’ contract or even remember her in case anyone came hunting for her later, was concealed in a hidden compartment in the front of Zoltan’s cage. It was also a way to test the effectiveness of her exit strategy: next time the convoy passed through that checkpoint, a portion of King Priam’s Treasure would be, if all went well, concealed in that compartment.
Doc passed through the checkpoint inside another hidden compartment. That one was at the back of the cage housing two twenty-foot-long Burmese pythons named Zsa and Atila that Sandor used in his act. Like Zoltan, the giant snakes served as a slithering disincentive for further inspection of the vehicle.
Shortly after passing through the checkpoint the whole convoy pulled over, and Oskar rewarded Zoltan for his robust g
reeting to the guards—a greeting that Oskar had painstakingly trained him to perform whenever the metal door covering the back of his cage was rolled up—with a hunk of raw beef.
Also at that time, Bianca transferred to the cab of the big rig, and Doc was invited to choose between riding with Dorottya and her dogs or Oskar and Griff.
Doc chose Oskar and Griff (the choice boiling down, Bianca could only assume, to a truck cab stuffed with six dogs or presided over by a single monkey). When the convoy pulled away again, a glance in the big rig’s rearview mirror showed Bianca that the monkey was perched on the seat back between Doc and Oskar, triumphantly holding the knit cap that he’d obviously just pulled from Doc’s head.
Imagining Doc’s subsequent dealings with Griff kept Bianca smiling for quite some time.
It was snowing, a light drifting of fat white flakes that looked like powdered sugar being sifted over the ground, and sunny and cold when the convoy reached Tsvetnoi Boulevard and the building that housed the Circus Nikulin came into sight. It was late afternoon, a Monday, and there would be a performance that night. The circus was dark on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then on Thursday started up again. For now, there was already a growing line in front of the ticket office hoping to score seats for the 7:00 p.m. performance. A smattering of tourists walked up and down the long flight of wide stone steps leading to the multiple glass-paned doors of the entrance. More tourists took pictures of themselves posing out front with the life-size bronze statue of the late beloved clown Yuri Vladimirovich Nikulin, from whom the circus took its name.
Russians loved circuses, as they did nearly all forms of live entertainment. There were two circuses in permanent residence in Moscow alone, and both played to near capacity crowds every night. The Circus Nikulin was the older of these, and had been performing at the same address since 1880. Bianca had visited before, but she still got a thrill of pleasure from the sight of the large white and yellow stone building with the two illuminated prancing horses bracketing the sign bearing the Nikulin’s name.
“I’m impressed that Oskar’s cousin was able to arrange accommodation for all of us,” Bianca said as Lazlo drove the truck around back, to the alley that led to the circus’s loading dock and barn area. It also led to the side entrance for the large, Soviet-era apartment complex next door that housed, among hundreds of other tenants, a number of circus employees and visiting performers. “I was expecting that we’d be staying in the campers.”
“Patrik has done well for us, yes? We have been given the use of two apartments.” Lazlo said that as though so much space was a luxury to be marveled at, which indeed it was: housing in Moscow was at a premium, with upward of a dozen people sometimes crammed into a single small unit. He started braking as he spoke. Bianca saw that they were nearing the side door to the apartment complex. “You should go inside. Dedi will be waiting with the girls to take you up to the apartment you will share. The rest of us are needed to get the animals settled in. Your Bruce will wish to go up with the men.”
Bianca imagined that by now “Bruce” was heartily wishing that he’d stayed behind in Savannah, but she nodded agreement as she reached for her things.
She said, “You anticipate no trouble locating a fire truck?”
Lazlo shook his head. “I will have all day tomorrow, and Wednesday too if necessary, to acquire one. It should not take longer. If necessary, with the amount of money available to us for expenses, I can buy an old one and say it is for use as a circus prop. Or we can steal one.”
“As long as it runs reliably,” Bianca said as the truck stopped. “I’m leaving the acquisition of that very crucial piece of equipment up to you. Just let me know when you’ve found one.”
“I will.” He hesitated. “Ah—there is one more thing. An addition to the timeline.”
Bianca looked at him inquiringly.
“You know that the children will be rehearsing over the next couple of days, and their audition is set for Thursday afternoon, which leaves the rest of us free to prepare. I had thought to have nothing to do Friday except make sure all is ready, but Tibor Alexandrovich—” he was the Nikulin’s manager, Bianca knew “—has invited us to do a guest performance on Friday night. He wants us to open the show. Tibor Alexandrovich said that they will be honored to feature the Circus Nagy.” The pride in Lazlo’s voice told Bianca how much the invitation meant to him. “He requests a shortened set, 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., which I think will work for our larger purpose. No one will realize, but it will be the Circus Nagy’s final performance. Then, later that night, we will get rich.”
By that, he meant that the robbery was scheduled for Friday night, when the Pushkin would be hosting a gala to celebrate the opening of a newly arrived traveling exhibit featuring the Savitsky State Art Museum’s avant-garde paintings. Banned in Stalin-era Russia, which had required art to be both supportive of the state and comprehensible to the average worker, the bold-colored representations of shapes and images and scenes that did not fit the Soviet narrative had been hidden away in the dust-bowl city of Nukus for decades. In this more permissive era they had been rediscovered and were touring the country to much acclaim.
The timing was perfect. As soon as she’d learned of the gala, Bianca had realized that it could be turned to her advantage. The Pushkin’s security had been ramped up from barely adequate to state-of-the-art within the last year. (Why, Bianca could only speculate.) King Priam’s Treasure was located in the main building, which was, therefore, the one Bianca was concerned with. Its security included surveillance cameras, motion detectors and infrared systems inside the building and multiple alarms attached to the building’s outer shell, including all doors, even upper-level windows and skylights. Armed security guards roamed the building after closing hours. Metal gates at the entrances to the most important rooms, including Room Three where the treasure was located, were closed and locked when the museum was shut down for the night. Closed-circuitTV cameras kept watch outside the building.
Figuring out a way to navigate through all that security had presented Bianca with a puzzle that she’d been working hard to solve ever since she’d first been confronted with it while going over the information Mason had left for her. When she’d learned of the gala, it had hit her that she didn’t have to. Instead of defeating the layers of security that kicked in when the museum was closed, the best thing to do was simply avoid it. The time to strike would be while the building was open and filled with guests.
The plan she was going with was a modified snatch-and-run. The rudimentary outline went like this: she would set up a distraction in the form of explosions timed to go off fifteen minutes before the commencement of the theft in two of Moscow’s major tunnels, the Lefortovo and the Northwestern. Those would serve to draw the attention of a large portion of Moscow’s police and fire personnel. When the explosions went off, she would be inside the Pushkin attending the gala under the pretext of being an invited guest. While there, she would pick the locks of the nineteen display cases in which the treasure was kept. Then she would set a still-to-be-determined number of charges that would trigger several small fires, which, with a little help from her, would immediately begin to fill the building with dense smoke. Alarms would sound. The guests would be evacuated. The fire department would be called.
Meanwhile, Doc would have gained access to the museum’s computer and phone systems. He would have disabled the display case alarms before Bianca unlocked the cases. When the fire alarms went off and the fire department was summoned, Doc and whatever wizardry he had used to take over the system would be the only ones receiving the emergency calls. He would then cue Lazlo and the others, who would come roaring to the rescue in the newly acquired fire truck. In firefighter gear complete with helmets and oxygen masks (talk about a perfect disguise!), they would storm the building carrying several large trunks with them that onlookers might suppose to contain such equipment as was needed to fight the fire. While
Kristof and Franz ran around putting out the fires, the rest of the gang would empty the display cases Bianca had unlocked, removing the treasure and replacing it with the replica artifacts that Dedi was still in the process of creating. Those replicas were, of course, what actually would be carried in in the trunks. The real treasure would go into the trunks in place of the replicas, Bianca would relock the display cases and don a spare firefighter’s uniform and the whole group of them would dash out and skedaddle in the fire truck. The fire truck would carry them to a secluded location near the river where the circus campers would be waiting along with the animals and those of the party who were not in on the main job. The fire truck would be driven into the river, to, hopefully, never be found, and they would load the treasure and themselves into the circus campers and head out of Moscow and out of Russia, trusting in Zoltan and the snakes to get them across the border again with the treasure on board.
With luck, they would have at least twenty-four hours and possibly far longer to disappear. The point of the replicas was to give them time to get safely out of Russia: a theft wouldn’t be suspected if nothing appeared to be missing. Bianca didn’t expect the replicas to remain undiscovered forever: to begin with, there wasn’t time to make them to a standard where, upon close examination, the substitution wouldn’t be detected. What Bianca had asked Dedi to aim for was something that wouldn’t be immediately spotted if someone was looking at it through a glass display case. If the theft of King Priam’s Treasure from the Pushkin Museum was found out before they made it across the border, escape became infinitely harder. The country would go into lockdown. All of Russia’s considerable stops would be pulled out to catch the thieves and recover what had been stolen.
The Kremlin’s response would be roughly equivalent to, let loose the kraken.
The Moscow Deception--An International Spy Thriller Page 25