Take Me for a Ride

by Karen Kendall

  “I’m glad. So to what do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?”

  “I’m in Moscow.”

  Pause. “Are you? Why?”

  “Following a strong lead. And you’re here, too. Don’t bother denying it—Gwen told me.”

  “Let me guess. Our Gwennie is worried and asked you to check up on me.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, you can tell her that I’m fine.”

  “Will do, Ave, but there’s something else we need to cover. You know that I’m on the hunt for the St. George necklace, right? The one that used to belong to Catherine the Great.”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Damn, but he hated doing this. “Look, I’m going to need some backup. I seem to have the Russian Mafiya on my tail, and they’ve left at least one dead body in their wake. I’m also worried that they may come after a source of mine.”

  After an appalled silence, Avy whistled, long and low. “McDougal, we don’t need this kind of trouble. You don’t need it personally, and ARTemis sure as hell doesn’t need it on a corporate level.”

  “I agree, believe me, but I’m already in it, and up to the neck. They were on the source’s trail in the U.S., which was bad enough, but now somehow they’ve found u—” Christ! He’d almost said us. The last thing he wanted to do was let Avy know that he was here with Natalie.

  “Now somehow they’ve found me here in Moscow,” he continued. “I had an unpleasant incident this morning, a little matter of being narrowly missed by a car.”

  “A car almost ran you over? But you don’t have the piece yet. That doesn’t make any sense,” Avy said.

  “I didn’t know the Mafiya was required to make sense.”

  “Funny. What else?”

  “Okay . . . what else is that not only do I have these Russian thugs after me, but someone entirely different was taking photographs on the street.”

  “It’s ’cause you’re such a stud muffin, McDougal.”

  “No. Trust me, these pictures were not meant for a caviar advertisement. I’m being double-teamed.”

  “Okay, look. I can give you some insight into the photographer. He may have been hired by an old man here in Moscow who claims the St. George necklace was stolen from him.”

  “What? But the necklace was stolen from a restoration outfit in Manhattan, and the care and custody policy was written through Hiscox. So how would he know that I’m on the trail?”

  “You tell me. What have you been up to? Is this source of yours pretty and female? Did you bring her with you to Moscow?”

  He didn’t say a word.

  “Okay, play coy, but do the math, McDougal. Seems likely that the Russians stole the necklace from the old man, funneled it to New York, and then someone else stole it from the restoration outfit.”

  “And in the meantime, the Russkies had faked a provenance on the insurance paperwork,” Eric murmured.

  “Yeah. Happens all the time—you know it and I know it. Listen,” Avy said brusquely. “I want you off this case.”

  “Excuse me? No, I—”

  “This isn’t up for debate, McDougal. Drop the case. We do not need the Russian mob after us. That’s a problem that I doubt even Kelso could solve.”

  “But I’m so close that I can practically reach out and touch the damned necklace. Come on, Avy. Don’t overreact, here. You weren’t this worried when you knew the Greek mob was after you.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Oh, yeah? How?”

  She muttered something under her breath. “I’m not having you killed for this thing, understand? We may not always see eye to eye, Eric, but I’m still kind of fond of your tattooed ass.”

  He winced. “How the hell do you know about that?”

  Avy laughed. “Sheila.”

  “And how does she know?”

  “She probably talked to one of your bimbos. Maybe your mysterious ‘source.’ You’ll have to ask her. Anyway. Go tour a vodka factory and then go home and get a different assignment, McDougal. I’ll deal with the insurer.”

  “Damn it, Avy—”

  Her voice changed from friendly to frigid in milliseconds. “You want to cuss and argue with me, or you want to hang on to your job?”

  “Fine.” Disgusted, he ended the call. This was what he got for asking for help and keeping his boss in the loop: thrown off the case. And what galled him even more was that unless he ditched Natalie, his quitting the case wouldn’t do any good. He had a bull’s-eye on his forehead, and they wouldn’t stop until they hit the target.

  Avy wasn’t stupid. She’d sensed that he’d been carefully editing what he told her. And she was ordering him to distance himself from the Mafiya’s real target, even if she didn’t know precisely who it was.

  A smart man would do exactly as she said. A smart man wouldn’t jeopardize his job or his life. But McDougal had been steadily losing brain power since he set out to get Natalie drunk in Reif’s. He felt responsible for her.

  Walk away now and leave her defenseless against the mob in a foreign city halfway across the world? He couldn’t do it. Besides, that necklace was going to finance his deepwater fishing boat.

  Drop the case, McDougal. Avy’s voice echoed in his ears.

  Screw that. He came from a long line of Scots-Irish rebels; he was a born management problem and damn proud of it.

  So the first thing he did was to call ARTemis’s other management problem, so that she could arrange for him to pick up a gun at a prearranged dead drop.

  Sheila was filing her inch-long acrylic nails, admiring her new diamond tennis bracelet from Sid Thresher, and wondering just how she’d explain it to Marty when the phone rang again.

  “Ahtemis, how may I help you?” she said, for at least the forty-ninth time that day. God, it was killing her to be polite to the agents—and Avy had actually asked her if she was feeling all right.

  Sheila turned her wrist so that the diamonds in the bracelet sparkled under the office’s fluorescent lighting. Was the bauble worth it?

  Does a bear shit in the woods, Sheila Ann? Of course it’s worth it.

  Sid’s voice rasped in her ear. “Are you wearin’ any knickers today, luv?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said saucily.

  “I would indeed, gorgeous. Give old Siddie a wee hint, now, will ye? The Big Banger, ’e’s ready to play, ’e is.”

  “Fine. I’m wearing pink-and-black lace, crotchless panties.”

  “Ooooooooohhhhh,” Sid moaned. “Crotchless, are they?”

  “Uh-huh.” Sheila rolled her eyes and then looked at her watch. But it was only a Seiko, and she aspired to a Rolex. So she made her voice a little more husky and whispered, “I wanna lick the Big Banger, baby.”

  “Do you?” Sid’s breathing quickened. “Tell me more. What else would ye like to do, luv?”

  “I want to slide it right into my mouth.” He moaned again, and she yawned.

  “And run my tongue in slow circles over the tip—”

  “Aw, Jesus, enough already,” McDougal’s voice cut in. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Aaaahhhhh!” Sheila yelled. “I’ll kill you myself, McDougal. I swear I will!”

  “Do you know how many places the Big Banger has been? He’s done easily thousands of women, and probably men, goats, and chickens—every barnyard animal under the sun.”

  “I’m gonna choke you with my bare hands—”

  “And you have the nerve to ask me if my thingy has turned black and fallen off?”

  “And then smear you with Alpo—”

  “You’d have to gargle with hydrochloric acid to kill all the diseases infesting one inch of the Big Banger . . .”

  “—and feed you to my dogs!”

  “. . . and then you’d need to swallow it, unless you spit with Sid, in which case it’s too late for the rest of the planet, thank you very much.”

  “If you think that I would actually come within ten feet of that man’s naked any
thing, you are dumber than a box of rocks, McDougal.”

  “Then you’re just marginally smarter than one, old bag. So what’s he paying you to talk dirty to him?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Sheila, your nose is growing faster than Sid’s Big Banger at the sound of your voice.”

  Suddenly she had a horrifying thought. “Did you tape-record me?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Eric said, stealing one of her lines.

  “Yes, I would, you dirtbag!”

  He dropped back into Sid’s cockney accent, well-known to the world from overexposure on MTV. “Should I give old Sheila a wee hint, now? Should I? My Sony cassette recorder, it was ready to play . . . Do you wanna lick it?” He dissolved into helpless bellows of laughter.

  “Don’t think I won’t get even, McDougal,” she promised.

  “For God’s sake, woman! At least get yourself a cell phone so you’re not using the ARTemis business line.”

  “So you called for a reason, right? What do you want, jerk?”

  “Hey, where’s that courtesy I requested?”

  “What d’you want, Mr. Jerk?”

  “I need a standard-issue Glock, left at dead drop seven in Moscow. Okay?”

  “Did you really tape-record me?”

  “Promise to get me that Glock within twelve hours?”

  “Yeah. So did you?”

  “No. Who owns a cassette recorder these days? You’re dating yourself, Sheila—”

  She opened her mouth to hurl an insult at him, but he preempted her.

  “—which is only marginally better than dating Sid!” And he ended the connection.

  Sheila snarled at the receiver before hurling it back into the cradle. She should have a water gun left at that dead drop, not a Glock.

  Twenty-five

  Colonel Blakely flipped through the photographs that the portly little man had brought to him at their new hotel, the Sovietsky. “These are the people who asked about us at the Metropol Hotel? You followed them?”

  “Yes.”

  A tall, good-looking man with blue eyes, reddish gold hair, and an air of supreme confidence strolled hand in hand with a pretty, diminutive brunette who had the fashion sense of a ragpicker. She looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place her. Then it came to him.

  He’d seen the girl standing in Tatyana’s kitchen. She’d served him tea on a couple of occasions. She was Tatyana’s granddaughter! What was she doing in Moscow?

  “You recognize?” the photographer asked Ted curiously.

  He nodded and reached into his pocket for his wallet. “How much?”

  The man named a sum that was predictably outrageous, and Ted paid him. “Thank you.”

  “Fyodor at Metropol, he say these couple staying at Savoy, eh?” With a polite and very satisfied smile, the portly man exited the lobby, and Ted went upstairs to talk to Tatyana about this latest odd development in her quest.

  “Ted?” she queried as he let himself into the room.

  “Yes, it’s me.” He sat on one of the two twin beds they’d requested, just as she got up.

  “Are you ready to go to the bank? I exchanged more money, so I think I have enough for the bribe.”

  “About that, Tatyana—it’s going to be tricky. We have to choose the right person, and it will be pure guesswork.”

  “I realize this.”

  The colonel hesitated. “The photographer that the clerk at the Metropol engaged for us—he just brought me some pictures.” The call from the lobby had come while she was in the bathroom.

  She stilled. “Yes? You have seen who is following us?” Her hands shook a little.

  “I believe it’s your granddaughter—”

  “Natalie? Here?” she asked incredulously.

  “—and a boyfriend.”

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  Ted looked down at the photo of the unknown man kissing the girl, and cleared his throat. “I think you may be mistaken about that. Our children and our grandchil dren don’t always tell us things that they don’t wish us to know.”

  Tatyana got up and then sat down again, clearly agitated and not knowing what to do with herself. “Natalie can’t have come here! How?”

  He shook his head. “It’s hard to say.”

  “She’s come for the necklace. She’ll want it back, and I cannot give it to her, Ted.”

  “Perhaps you’d better explain to me exactly how you found the necklace.”

  Finally, Tatyana told him the whole story, while he sat there, frowning.

  “But what about the consequences to her and her career, Tatyana?”

  “I know you must think I’m a dreadfully selfish old woman,” she said. “But what I’m doing is for her, too. For her heritage. The necklace works in mysterious ways: It didn’t turn up after all these years by accident. It has surfaced just as my mother told me it would, so that I can pass it and our family belongings on to the next generation.

  “I’m sorry, but I think that’s more important than any silly job. Besides, they didn’t treat her properly there. She worked in an attic on planks set on top of sawhorses! Can you imagine?”

  “But what if they prosecute her? She could go to jail.”

  Tatyana’s mouth set mulishly. “Nonsense. Those people, whoever they are, did not come by the St. George necklace honestly. And by the time we are done here, I will be able to prove it and protect my granddaughter.”

  “She still took it illegally, and she is the obvious link from her place of employment to you.”

  “I’m just not going to think about that right now, Ted. How can I? I’ve waited over half a century to reclaim my heritage, and fear of legal paper pushers is not going to stop me.”

  “Your granddaughter and her boyfriend are staying at the Savoy. Do you want to see her?”

  “Of course I want to see her. I want to show her this great city, the place where her mother’s people originated. I’d love to show her all the sights. But I cannot. No, Ted. We must avoid them, at least until we’re done at the bank and at the cathedral.”

  “As you wish.”

  Her restlessness brought her to her feet again.“Where have I put my pocketbook?”

  Ted retrieved it from the dresser and handed it to her, touching her arm and guiding her fingers to the strap.

  “Thank you. You’re a dear. Now, are you ready to commit further misdeeds at the bank for your Bonnie, my Clyde?”

  He sighed and fetched her coat, watching affectionately as she turned her back, put her left arm into the wool sleeve, and then efficiently transferred her purse to that arm so that she could put her right one into the other sleeve. “If this whole scheme backfires, we could be detained and deported in disgrace, without your necklace.”

  “It’s not going to backfire, Ted. You and I look so respectable that we positively creak with decency. And you’re good at assessing people.”

  “I am crazy to become involved in this.”

  She patted his arm. “Yes, you are. Isn’t it marvelous fun?”

  “I think I’d rather sit around with my bridge group, exchanging litanies of complaints about gout and arthritis and colostomy bags.” But his voice was dry.

  “Piffle, Theodore. That is just plain piffle, and you know it. Now, come along . . .”

  “You are going to marry me after all of this, aren’t you?”

  “Why do you want to tie yourself to a blind, helpless old woman like me?”

  Ted laughed. “You may be blind, my dear, but I’d never describe you as helpless. Not even close.”

  The central location of SovBank faced the other buildings of Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street like a smugly prosperous merchant, displaying an overabundance of architectural detail.

  Arm in arm, Tatyana and the colonel deliberately entered a pastry shop on the opposite side of the street, then exited out the back and circled around to the bank to see whether they were being followed, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
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  Quickly, they walked into the bank using the most unobtrusive entrance. Inside was a small lobby with a group of chairs and a coffee table. Behind a long, wood paneled counter stood several tellers. Ted dismissed the first two, a sour-looking woman in pearls and an earnest man whose collar seemed to be slowly choking him, as candidates for what they had in mind. The third teller was a young man with longish hair and a bored expression on his face, who kept trying to flirt with the pretty blond girl stationed next to him.

  “That’s our boy,” Ted said under his breath. He put a hand on Tatyana’s back. She nodded and they shuffled forward to stand in his line. The woman in front of them finished her deposit, and they moved up to the window.

  With a grandmotherly smile, Tatyana greeted him in Russian, and Ted pushed a fat envelope and the safety-deposit-box key across the counter to him. The young man eyed the key and opened the envelope. He lowered the flap and looked at the colonel, hesitating.

  “I think you will find all the paperwork is in order,” Nonnie said in Russian, nodding toward the envelope.

  “Yes, I can see that,” the teller said after a moment. Then he picked up the key. “Come this way. I will show you to your box.”

  They took an elevator down to the basement level. Here there was a large room lined completely with safety-deposit boxes.

  The young man gestured to a room across the hall, empty except for a table and two chairs. “You may take your box in there if you wish to review the contents.”

  Then he scanned the numbers on the bank boxes until he found the correct one. He inserted the bank’s master key first, and then the key Ted had given to him. He opened the steel door and pulled out the box halfway. “You want I take it in there for you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “When you are done, you lock door and remove your key.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ted showed Tatyana to one of the chairs and sat in the other himself. “All right. Are you ready, my dear?”

  “My heart is ready to burst out of my body,” she admitted.

  Ted swallowed and lifted the lid of the box. Inside were several groupings of things: a stack of old identification papers, a box of rings and watches, three rolled canvases, and a leather passport cover. Toward the back was a heavy, solid silver tea service, each piece engraved with the letters A and M.