“I think I’ll be going to Kiev soon,” he said. “I will talk to Maya. I will beg, plead, promise on the lives of my children to be a good and faithful husband and father. I have no great hope. I’ve made such promises before.”
“I know,” Lydia said, taking his hand. “Tell her it is the last time you’ll ask her to come back to you.”
“She said last time was the last. I’m late.”
He smiled at his mother. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was enough. She stood in the open door of the apartment as he headed for the stairs, eating his ham sandwich.
“Beg her to come back,” she called out. “Tell her you’ll stop with the women, the drinking, the brooding.”
“I don’t think all the neighbors heard you,” Sasha said over his shoulder.
“They already know everything,” she said. “Be safe.”
He waved his sandwich at her and went down the stairs.
Sasha had twenty minutes to get to the address where he was to meet Elena Timofeyeva. There was no way he could make it.
Chapter Five
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, Chief Inspector in the Office of Special Investigations, was airsick. The seat was small, the space for his legs—one real, one artificial—was restrictive, the ride bumpy, the smell of human bodies and tobacco cloying.
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov would be fine when they were on the ground, according to the young woman in a military uniform who seemed to be in charge of avoiding questions. She was also in charge of giving them each a bottle of water and a bar of whole grains held together by congealed honey.
Dubious information about the nature of his illness did not soothe Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. He tried to read the slightly tattered paperback copy of his Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel.
There were two seats on each side of the aisle. Emil Karpo, erect as always, sat looking out the window at clouds. Rostnikov preferred the aisle. Actually, Rostnikov preferred not to be on any airplane at all.
There was no one to whom he could complain. He was resigned. It was not unlike most things in life.
Rostnikov closed his eyes and leaned back. Six of the other passengers on the plane were heading for Devochka. All six of them worked for the mining company. There was no one else to work for. The plane would drop them off at Devochka and then take the remaining thirty-seven passengers to Noril’sk.
Rostnikov had read the folder the Yak had given him. The security folder for Devochka had been prepared by the Director of Security at the mine. The name of the man and his signature were on the reports in that folder. Rostnikov knew the man. He was also certain that Yaklovev was well aware of Porfiry Petrovich’s connection to the man.
“You are ill, Porfiry Petrovich,” came Karpo’s voice through the hazy pink of Rostnikov’s closed eyes.
“The air.”
“Here,” said Karpo, putting something in Rostnikov’s hand.
Rostnikov opened his eyes and looked at the pill in his palm.
“For airsickness?” Rostnikov asked, swallowing the pill without waiting for an answer.
“Yes.”
“You get airsick?”
“No,” said Karpo. “But I prepare for the contingency when I fly.”
“Are you prepared for all contingencies, Emil?”
“No, that would be impossible. I try to prepare for those I can anticipate.”
“A wise life plan,” said Rostnikov. “We make a good team, Emil Karpo. You are logical and unimaginative . . . no insult intended.”
“And none perceived. I see little value in having an imagination. Besides, it is not a choice one makes.”
“And I am intuitive,” said Rostnikov, feeling a bit better already. “Intuition can deceive.”
“As can logic,” said Karpo.
“You realize Emil, this is one of the longest conversations we have ever had that did not involve murder, mayhem, theft, or imminent danger.”
Rostnikov was about to say something about Mathilde Verson, but he decided not to, maybe some time later when her ghost did not still stand so close to Karpo’s shoulder.
“See if you can find the young lady. See if any of the passengers were in Devochka the day the Canadian was murdered. If so, I would like to talk to each of them before we land.”
Karpo clicked his seat belt open and began to rise.
“Another thing,” said Rostnikov. “If anything exists on this plane that resembles food, I should like very much to eat it.”
“Would you like to have something to eat?” asked the man. “Soup? Ice cream?”
The child stirred in the bed and turned to face him.
“No.”
“How do you feel?” asked the man.
“All right.”
“Not hungry? Not thirsty?”
“No.”
“You want to play chess?”
A long hesitation and then, “Yes.”
The man never intentionally lost to the child, but lose he did, and with each loss he smiled and reached over to tousle the child’s hair.
“You want to play here?” the man asked.
“No. We might bump the bed and turn over the board. I can come into the other room.”
“We’ll have to use the timer,” the man said. “I have an important visitor coming here today. I must be out there to greet him.”
The child understood and climbed out of the bed.
It would be harder to smile after this game if he lost or won. It was weighing heavily on his mind that he had killed the Canadian, but the deed was done, and not for the first time had he killed.
“This time I have white,” the child said.
“And I, like my blighted soul, am black. Let us play.”
“Two games?”
“Depends on how long this game takes,” he said, setting up the board. “The airplane will be here in an hour and there’s someone on it I must see.”
“Who?”
“A man named Rostnikov.”
The child had a white pawn raised high.
“That’s the same . . .”
“Yes,” said the man as the white pawn went down on the board.
The man looked out the window in the direction of the airstrip.
“It’s your move,” said the child.
“Yes, it is my move,” said the man.
“How did this happen?”
The thin, silver-haired, impeccably dressed old man sat erect, shook his head, and reached for his tea. Gerald St. James, whose name had once been Branislaw Moujinski, was not angry, though he had reason to be. Neither was he disappointed, for he knew better than to expect much of others. He had seen almost everything in the nearly forty years he had been in the diamond trade. Most of what he had done was considered illegal in the countries in which he did business. But, since he was in business with most of the countries, he had made many people rich and grateful and eager to overlook transgressions.
There was the necessity of, what was it the Americans called it, plausible deniability? This was why the old man, who longed to put a “Sir” in front of his name, was President of Monarch Enterprises, Ltd. with offices in Moscow, Antwerp, Tel Aviv, and London, where he now sat drinking tea.
Were he to turn his chair around, he could see the unimpressive DeBeers building. Gerald St. James had paid more than twice what his offices were worth just to have this view. He savored the sight of the DeBeers building and its underground vaults housing an estimated five billion dollars in uncut diamonds. DeBeers had begun storing the diamonds in 1930, stockpiling the gems to keep the market from overflowing. Periodically, privileged diamond dealers from around the world would be permitted to come to London to purchase “sights,” assortments of diamonds that they could purchase with cash. There was no negotiating, no dealing, no haggling. The dealers were told what the price was for the sight they were offered, and they paid it. Refusal to make the purchase was not an option.
Gerald St. James would have killed to be one of those o
ffered a sight. In fact, he had killed in the very hope that he would someday be among the elite purchasers at the DeBeers table. When the opportunity arose he could find a respectable dealer who would front for him.
“Chocolate?” St. James offered the woman across the desk.
She nodded and took one of the Cadbury chocolates from the crystal bowl he eased in front of her. St. James was addicted to British candy, food, clothing, and cars. He had considered buying a title. Many people already assumed he had one, and he did not correct supplicants and business associates who called him Sir Gerald.
The woman, dressed in a brown business suit, was about fifty, full figured, clear skinned, and no nonsense. She did not eat the candy but held it in the palm of her hand as she spoke.
St. James adjusted the vest under his jacket, sat back, put his fingers together in a steeple, and waited. His eyes were dull blue and unyielding. Ellen Sten felt them on her and looked up to meet them.
“Problems,” she said.
“So I gather.”
“Our man in the Russian mine had to kill a Canadian mining engineer,” she said.
“Had to?”
“Perhaps not, but he did. It’s done.”
St. James reached for a chocolate and put it in his mouth without taking his eyes from her.
“And he didn’t make it look like an accident?”
“He was hurried.”
“Police?”
“Police,” she said. “Our man will take care of it. The Russian police have never been a problem.”
“I’m comforted by your confidence,” he said. “Go on.”
“Two of the Botswanans to whom the last shipment from the mine was transported have been murdered in Moscow. A third is missing.”
“Do we know who is responsible?”
“Not yet. Possibly a competitor.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes,” she said. “A courier delivering a shipment to Kiev for transport to Paris was also murdered. She made the delivery and then the payment was stolen on the train back to Moscow.”
“Someone is attacking our enterprise?”
“It would seem so,” Sten said. “But it could be coincidence.”
There were many things Gerald St. James shared with Ellen Sten, but he had survived and prospered for decades by always holding something back. St. James was well aware of who was responsible for the attack on the Botswanans.
“Coincidence is the easy dismissal of connected events to avoid the often difficult task of finding an understandable if not logical connection,” said St. James.
She nodded.
“Find out,” he added. “Keep in touch with our contacts in Devochka, Moscow, and Kiev.”
She nodded again. It was what she had been doing for hours. St. James knew it.
“And Ellen, use whatever resources you need to clean up this mess.”
His voice was calm, even. She knew that his concern was only minimally about the fifteen or twenty million dollars in diamonds and more with the threat to Monarch’s entire enterprise and his wish for ultimate respectability.
“Yes,” she said starting to rise.
“And if you do not intend to eat that chocolate, please put it back in the bowl if it has not already begun to melt in your sweating palm.”
Balta, which was the name he had given himself, had a simple plan. He had a name, Oxana, and he knew she was a model.
After he had gotten back to Kiev having cleanly killed Christiana Verovona, Balta called the person who had hired him. He reported that he had the money and that he would find the diamonds and deliver them himself. He would cut out the middleman, middlewoman in this case, named Oxana.
Balta was not greedy. His needs were simple. Three million American dollars’ worth of diamonds plus his share of the cash were quite enough. Besides, he liked his work and a future reference from his employer might be helpful in his career. He did not intend to retire.
Now, having adopted a quite different and pleasant persona, Balta sat at the Talgen Restaurant on Velyka Vasylkivska Street, leisurely eating strawberry vareniki with just a bit of sour cream.
The waiter came to the table ready to provide service. There were two reasons for the waiter’s helpful approach. One had been Balta’s show of a very substantial one-hundred-hryvnia bill before even ordering. The other had been Balta’s engaging presence.
“Dessert?” asked the waiter, who sported a thin mustache and was doing his best to look French. “We have the finest selection of pastries in Kiev.”
“Watching my weight,” said Balta with a smile.
“I understand,” the waiter said. “Coffee?”
“Coffee,” said Balta.
“With a very small sweet at no charge?”
“What kind?”
“British. A Cadbury chocolate. Quite small.”
“I believe I will,” said Balta.
“Good,” said the waiter, who moved away, anxious to please.
Balta liked the Talgen and was quite familiar with the quite tasteful erotic shows that went on in the next room at night.
Balta looked around the crowded restaurant. Two men in business suits were at a nearby table. One of them, no more than thirty-five, looked at him and smiled. Balta smiled back. Life was apparently good for the businessman. It was certainly, at this moment, quite good for Balta.
Life, was not, however, quite so good in Moscow for Georgi Danielovich. Elena Timofeyeva and Sasha Tkach were knocking at the door of his apartment. They were going to tell him that Christiana Verovona had been murdered on the train to Moscow. She had not been worth much as a prostitute, but income is income. No, the really bad news they were bringing without knowing it, was that she had been found without a suitcase. The money for the diamonds was gone. Whoever killed her had taken it. The very serious, well-built man from Monarch in London who spoke perfect Russian was not going to be happy. What Georgi did not know was that the well-built man from Monarch in London already knew of the theft.
Georgi opened the door.
Elena and Sasha found themselves facing a man with a flat, dark face in need of a shave and a haircut. Georgi was about thirty. He looked fifty. He was a dry, wasted man with the look of an addict both Elena and Sasha recognized.
Georgi, his eyes an interesting but not becoming mixture of red and yellow, looked at them and reached down to tuck his shirt into his pants.
“Police,” said Elena.
The policewoman looked something like the second woman he had lived with and run when he came to Moscow from Tblisi. Georgi couldn’t remember her name anymore, but there was little Georgi could remember in the hours, like now, after heroin.
“I’ve done nothing,” he said wearily.
They pushed past him into the room that smelled of sweat, stale food, and cigarettes. Sasha and Elena had been in many rooms like this. They would shower tonight, and the smells, if not the memory, would be gone, though they would have to carry them the rest of this day, which was just beginning.
“Close the door,” said Sasha.
It was what policemen often did with someone like this. Give him a simple order. Start the process of obedience. It worked almost all of the time. They could see it would work with this one.
Georgi closed the door, finished tucking in his shirt, pushed his hair back with the palm of his hand, and faced them.
“What’s this about?”
“Your name?”
“Georgi Danielovich. What . . .”
“Christiana Verovona lives here,” said Elena.
It wasn’t a question, but Georgi made it one and said, “Yes, but she is away now and . . .”
“She’s dead,” said Sasha, walking around the room, looking at things.
“Dead?” said Georgi, not quite understanding.
He looked at the woman who reminded him of . . . yes, her name had been Olga.
“Olga,” he said to himself.
“Who is Olga?” asked Elena.
<
br /> “No one. Never mind. I’m a little sick. Christiana’s not here.”
“She is dead,” said Elena.
“Yes. You told me. I forgot.”
“Georgi,” said Sasha, pausing in his invasive walk around the room. “Talk to us about diamonds.”
“I have got to eat something,” Georgi said. “I’m hungry. I’ll pass out. I’ve got to eat.”
“What do you have here that can be eaten?” asked Sasha.
“The refrigerator.”
“You can’t eat the refrigerator,” said Sasha.
Elena averted her eyes from her partner’s. She had no intention of being a party to his odd attempts at humor.
“I didn’t . . .” Georgi started.
“Go get something to eat,” Elena said.
“And then talk to us of Kiev,” said Sasha. “Talk to us of diamonds and Christiana Verovona.”
“Yes,” said Georgi. “I will talk, but first I must eat. I do not know why I am so hungry.”
He moved from the chair and stumbled over to the refrigerator. It was then that Elena sensed a warning, but it was too late. Georgi reached into the refrigerator as Elena shouted, “Sasha.”
Sasha was closer to Georgi than she was, but not close enough. Georgi stepped back against the wall leaving the refrigerator door open. He had a gun in his hand.
“I’m going,” he said.
Elena held up two hands palms up to show that he was free to leave. No comment was necessary. The man’s hands were shaking. No pacification, no provocation. Let him leave. He would be easy to find.
“When I left home this morning my mother was worried about something like this,” said Sasha.
Georgi blinked and licked his dry lips as he inched toward the door. Sasha took a step toward Georgi.
“Sasha,” Elena warned.
“No more,” said Georgi. “Do not move.”
Sasha shook his head. He was smiling.
“Put the gun down on the floor,” said Sasha. “Gently. Do not drop it. Just put it down.”
People Who Walk In Darkness (Inspector Rostnikov) Page 6