Hov’s face lights up.
“You found her!” he exclaims.
“She looks nothing like the picture you gave me,” says Yuri.
“I knew she’d have different eyeglasses, but I never thought she’s cut her hair, especially this short. Where is she?”
“Not so fast, Hov, I’m afraid this is a bad time to go after her.”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
“She doesn’t know that she’s been discovered, and I know exactly where she is, and can follow her every move. So you don’t have to worry about a thing. But right now, there are much bigger problems to resolve.”
“When?” asks Hov, uninterested in Yuri’s explanation.
“Not long at all, I’d say around May 21. And I may have an added bonus for you at that time. Now go back and continue doing what you’ve been doing. By the way, she’s changed her last name.”
“Just don’t lose her.” Hov isn’t interested in her name change either.
Chapter Thirty-One
It is Friday. I have class this afternoon, from three to five-thirty. I’m in my usual late morning routine, having had coffee and a light breakfast in the kitchen and returned to my room, when Edik calls.
“Have you seen the news?” He sounds out of breath.
“No, what’s happened?”
“LeFreak is dead. Do you have a TV there?”
“Diqin Alice has one.”
“Watch the First Channel. It is interesting.”
I turn on the small TV in the corner of the kitchen to Channel One. It shows a crowd gathered in front of a building. The police have barricaded the entrance and are keeping reporters away.
“The police don’t have much to say at this point,” says the announcer, “but our sources say that this was a professional job, with a high velocity rifle. Mr. Aleksyan was shot once in the base of his head. One of our sources, who spoke by telephone with someone who was in the room at the time, says that the entry wound is barely visible, which makes some experts speculate that it may have been a six-millimeter slug. A police spokesman said that the shot most likely was made from the building adjacent to where Mr. Aleksyan was holding a meeting.”
“They moved pretty fast,” I mumble to myself.
“There were four others in the room when Manvel Aleksyan was shot. No harm has come to any of them.” They show the faces of the others who were in the meeting. Lara does not recognize any of them. “They will take the body to the coroner’s office first and then to the home of the deceased. Mr. Aleksyan is survived by his widow, a fifteen year old daughter and a ten-year old son,” says the announcer.
There is a sudden commotion in front of the building. The camera shows a group of reporters running toward a woman. “Mr. Aleksyan’s widow has just arrived,” says the announcer. The camera tries to focus on the woman, who’s screaming hysterically and trying to enter the building. “It does not look like the police will allow her to go up to the crime scene. We’ll provide regular updates on this late-breaking news as soon as we have them.” And the announcer moves to other news.
I turn off the TV and call Edik.
“This was fast.”
“Gagik is working on the next phase. I hope it turns out to be as easy as this was. I’m coming down to Yerevan. I’ll call you later.” Edik hangs up.
For the first time it occurs to me that the walls of my room are gloomy. They are totally bare, and their old, grey color is depressing. The paint is chipped in several places, and there are a couple of places where even the plaster is coming apart.
I tell Diqin Alice that I will repaint my room a lighter color, a soft cream, with a white ceiling, and that I want to redo the bathroom, and also, at my own expense, upgrade the kitchen. She looks surprised, and a bit concerned.
“Lara jan,” she says in her shaky voice, “why go through all that trouble, bala jan?” Diqin Alice calls me bala, meaning child. My father sometimes called me balés. My child. I love to be called by these names: kurig, balés, bala… they all have a homey ring to them.
“I don’t know,” I say, which is the truth. “But do you mind? Everything I do will be an improvement and will add value to your house.”
“Ha jan,” she says, “go ahead if you really want to.”
I’m surprised at how excited I am about this. I want to make this room mine, even if it is temporary. I want a brighter room, pictures on the walls, nicer curtains and a few items of memorabilia on the small table in the corner. I have not felt this need before. I want a little bit of Saralandj here. And how I’d love to have a picture of Sevajayr. Edik has so many beautiful pictures that he’s taken. One or two could grace these walls.
Edik has decided on a different business formula to help Avo. He has proposed a partnership, rather than an outright loan, to kick start the honey business. I was impressed with the way he explained it to Avo.
“Let’s be very clear on the business arrangement,” he told him, looking dead serious. “I am not lending you this money. You do not have to return it. Here, I am taking the risk with you. Fifty percent for the capital, fifty percent for the labor. What that means is that I put in the money, you put in the labor, and we own the business fifty-fifty. If it goes bust like the pig farm, you owe me nothing. If it does great and makes millions, half will be mine. Do you understand the new arrangement?”
“Sure I do,” says Avo with a chuckle. “You want me to do all the work and give you half the profits.”
“Exactly,” laughs Edik, “do you understand why?”
“Because you have money and I don’t.” Avo is doing his best to give Edik a hard time about this.
“No, Mr. Entrepreneur, that’s not why. I deserve half the profits because I am taking a risk giving all the capital to you, and trusting that you will not blow it, and I expect to be rewarded for taking that risk. It is so easy to take risks with other peoples’ money, isn’t it? If we lose everything, you don’t lose a penny, you just lose the time and effort that you put into this. I, on the other hand, lose everything I put in it. Now, do you understand why you’re the lucky one in this deal?”
“Maybe, but you’ll have the best honey ever produced in the history of mankind,” laughs Avo. “As much as you can eat, for the rest of your life, for free. Tell me who’s the lucky one now.”
This is an unusual way to seal a deal, but it is sealed, and even a divine intervention could not make either side renege on anything that they agreed. If I have any role in this venture, it is to assure both of them that Ahmed’s promise to buy the honey is good enough to take to the bank, and, in my humble opinion, it is probably the most secure aspect of the venture.
I no longer wonder about Ahmed and me. That alone is a huge relief. Now I know that the sexual part is over. He will go his own way, and he’ll expect me to do the same, even though I still cannot tolerate even the idea of intimate contact with any man. I now admit to myself that perhaps, under very different and special circumstances, Ahmed could have been, may have been, and perhaps would have been, an exception, but that is entirely academic at this point, and I am relieved and happy that that prospect is no longer in the cards. I am amazed at how many lingering issues Ahmed’s visit resolved. I hope that it did the same for him.
I do not own a computer yet, but Edik has lent me one. He showed me how to connect to the Internet, using a special access code. I’m sure that the code costs money, which he is covering. The purpose is to research the various shelters that already exist in Armenia.
I am amazed at how many are here and in operation, including some recently opened. ‘Mer Doon,’ which means ‘Our Home,’ based in Etchmiadzin, opened this year. According to its site, it houses girls who are dismissed from the orphanages at the age of eighteen, and have no place to go. That is my age. Imagine me sheltering girls my own age. Then there is ‘Houso Aygi,’ meaning ‘Garden of Hope,’ in Yerevan, that shelters young girls from underprivileged families. There is Orran, which takes a different approach. It
gathers the children begging in the streets of Yerevan and gives them schooling, three hot meals a day and a nurturing environment. The children who end up at Orran are ideal targets for traffickers. Then I see something more unusual. There is a shelter created and run by UMCOR, some church in America that I have never heard of, nor can I pronounce their name, but here they are, with a shelter for sexually abused and exploited women in Yerevan.
Every one of these organizations is in a constant struggle to raise funds to keep their operations running. Together, they have saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives. I, on the other hand, have been promised a budget which is probably larger than what these organizations work with, yet I have hesitated, and even now I waver about whether I can meet the challenge.
I make it my first order of business to visit these organizations. I start calling them and making appointments. It is not easy to explain who I am and why I’d like to visit them. Some are rightly particular whom they allow into their premises. They offer to meet me elsewhere first, to get acquainted, before inviting me to tour their home.
I’d love to take Anna with me on as many visits as her time allows. She may consider living in one of these places until we figure out her situation. Lucy’s reaction upon seeing her with her glasses on has not stopped worrying her.
I turn on the TV one more time before leaving. The First Channel no longer covers LeFreak. I flip though the other channels. Shant has a music show on, Kentron has an interview with a writer, but Armnews is doing a special feature on LeFreak. I watch with some interest as they talk about his business achievements, while the screen shows his mansion, and the camera moves around the fence that Avo had to paint. The announcer lists some of his charitable contributions, this time showing the church that he built. That’s another farce that any oligarch worth his salt cannot do without—building a church. Armenia must already have more churches and monasteries per person than any other country on earth, and they keep building new ones. Edik says if they want to spend on churches, their money would be better spent on renovating some of the old masterpieces.
I wait a few minutes for updates on the police investigation, but the program continues recounting LeFreak’s life story. I turn the TV off and leave.
I take the bus to Vartanants Street to look for paints and plaster for my room, and to talk to someone about installing a water heater and a new sink in the kitchen. After about an hour, I take the bus to the University.
Ahmed calls. I give him a brief report, both about Avo’s progress and about the shelter. The conversation is businesslike, like it was when he left. He does not call me habibty once. I am relieved, and yet feel an unusual sense of loss. It is unusual because the sense of loss is sweet. A past that no longer haunts can be warm and comforting.
“What do you think of ‘Apastan’?” I ask him. “It means ‘Sanctuary’ in Armenian.”
“Go for it. I’ll have Manoj come over to register it as a foreign-owned charity. But you have to prepare everything in advance. He won’t be able to stay more than a day. Hire a lawyer. He’ll get paid as soon as we transfer the funds. And don’t delay finding a house.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Chairman.”
But Ahmed, typically, has already hung up.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ari knocks on Carla’s door and enters. She’s on the maroon sofa, her bare feet resting on the coffee table. She looks good: trim, self confident, not pretty but handsome in a strange way that Ari finds appealing. He has known her for a long time, since she was in her late teens. She had once asked Ari to talk to her father about letting her into the business. Ari had smiled, and then ignored her.
Now she sits there in a white blouse and black leather skirt, with a stone-cold expression. Her new role suits her. Ari wonders if he did the right thing by not talking to Sergei on her behalf, but he never liked interfering in other people’s family affairs. Besides, given the nature of their business, he knew that Sergei would throw him out. And yet, he watches as Carla walks into the role as if she had been in it all along. She is devious, intelligent, and she has a subconscious that works overtime on figuring out people long after her conscious mind rests.
After their first time together, Carla tells him about one of their henchmen whom she had asked to come over to see her.
“Something just didn’t seem right about him,” she tells Ari, who’s lying in bed wondering how on earth he could have done what he just did with the dead boss’s daughter. “It’s not that he was nervous,” she says casually, as if talking to an old classmate, “they all are nervous when I call them in the first time. There was something else in the way he talked and the way he looked at me, it was almost as if he was avoiding something. Anyway, I did not think of it again. When I woke up the next morning, I knew instantly that the man had turned. I could see him, as if I was actually in the room myself, taking money from LeFreak. I told Yuri to watch him, and sure enough, two days later he told me the man had turned.”
“What did you do?” asks Ari.
“I had him beaten till his mother could not recognize him, then let him go. Wasn’t worth the risk killing him.”
Ari might have assumed that she’d tell a story like that as a warning to him, but he didn’t. He believed that she was telling the truth.
She has slept with him twice. Ari was uncomfortable the first time, enjoyed the second time very much, and has been looking for a third time since, but she never called. Today he is happy that he had a reason to call and ask for a meeting.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says, taking her feet off the coffee table and sitting up straight. “I was going to call you myself today. Sit down.”
Ari takes the seat next to the sofa.
“That was very well done, Ari. I’m sure you know that already.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope you have not told the others about our arrangement.”
“Of course not,” says Ari dryly. She shouldn’t need to ask him that.
Carla takes a thick envelope from the coffee table and hands it to him.
“That’s your first hundred thousand,” she says. “You’ll get another envelope like that in two weeks. Once again, the others cannot know that I made a separate deal with you.”
“You don’t need to either remind me or ask me again if I’ve told anyone.” His eyebrows twitch.
“Now, you said you had something to tell me?”
“Don’t trust Yuri.” Ari does not like to use a lot of words. The very process of talking is cumbersome to him.
“You have to tell me a little more than that,” says Carla. “Speak up, Ari, I know not to trust him already, but I want to know what you know.”
“He thinks you have no experience and we should not follow your every order. He says you’ll run the business into the ground.”
“That’s all?”
“He wanted me to shoot Samson too. He offered me half his fee to do it. He is angry that I didn’t.”
“That son of a bitch!” Carla, visibly angry, stands up and starts pacing the room. Ari watches her tight leather skirt, buttocks moving invitingly, but half his brain remembers Sergei. He used to get mad like that, except he’d scream till his face turned red. She stands in front of him, legs apart, hands on her waist, breasts heaving, and is about to throw a tantrum, when she controls herself and sits down.
“So,” she says with a calmer voice, “he wants to run his own operation behind my back. Now Ari, I want you to answer two questions for me. First, why did you refuse to do what he asked? Second, why did you decide to warn me about Yuri?”
Ari shrugs. “He’s not one of us,” he says, as calm and casual as one can be. “I don’t like him.”
“Is that the answer to both my questions?” she asks.
Ari shrugs and nods.
“And Samson?
“He is okay. Should be watched, but is okay.”
“And me?” she asks, “am I one of us?”
“You’re
Sergei’s daughter,” says Ari, averting his eyes, “and I like you.” His eyebrows twitch.
“You like me, eh?” she says, enjoying making a man more than fifteen years her senior nervous. “We both need to calm our nerves a bit, and we have something to celebrate. How about a cognac?”
Ari nods.
She fills two snifters and returns to the sofa, crossing her legs. She puts them on the coffee table, and taps the space next to her. He gets up and sits next to her on the sofa.
“Here’s to a well executed mission,” she says.
“Thank you,” says Ari and takes a big gulp.
“And this,” she says raising her glass again, “is to a new friendship. You will not regret what you did today, Ari. Here’s to you.”
“Thank you,” he says again.
“Now, how about you show me exactly how much you like me?” she asks, standing up and taking his hand. Ari follows her to the bedroom, unable to keep his heart from racing.
Ari is past forty-seven and generally old fashioned and conservative. He has a wife, who knows very little about what he does, and two teenage boys. His tastes are simple, and he does not like to indulge in sexual activities that diverge from the essentials. He makes up for some of his prudishness by his strength and stamina, but still, neither his looks nor his performance do much for Carla. That is why she has not asked him back for so long. But today is a special day. She wants to seal his loyalty and their new alliance.
“You said Yuri was angry,” she says when he’s done. “What did he do?”
“He asked why I didn’t shoot Samson.” Carla is amazed at how non-descriptive the man can be.
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, but he was mad.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I could not get a good shot. He was way in the back of the room.”
“Was he way in the back of the room?”
“No.” And Ari and his eyebrows smile one of their rare smiles.
The Doves of Ohanavank Page 28