“My God!”
Lipton chuckled. More of a pleased grunt than an expression of humor. “I’m joking. Nevsky merely fired him. But this quest is much more important than trying to hunt down an ordinary icon. And I wasn’t joking about the Kraut who wouldn’t give up the stolen icon and the ruthless method Nevsky used to repatriate it.”
He gave me another serious frown. “Never forget that Nevsky rose in a savage environment following the collapse of the Soviet Union, an era that made Al Capone’s Chicago look like a playground for pussycats. Like any good mobster—or tyrant—his first instinct is self-survival. His second is to grab anything he can.”
“I get the idea.”
“The same goes for the daughter. I trust her less than the father.” He gave another calculating stare. “I often find that women are infinitely more dangerous and conniving than the male of the species.”
Words of wisdom from a man who was a first-class crook and con artist.
I noticed the limo had left the heart of the city.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Camel races.”
“Camel races? I hope that’s not the name of Nevsky’s hotel.”
“He’s staying at the Burj al-Arab, where you’re booked into. We’re meeting him at a track where real ‘camel jockeys’ race.”
“Is there some method to this madness?”
“Nevsky’s at the camel race because the sheik he’s here to confer with has a camel in the race. And he’ll be busy for the rest of the day and evening meeting with Dubai royalty. But I also discovered an interesting thing about the racetrack—no cameras are allowed. If he ever has to deny a connection with us, there won’t be any pictures to prove otherwise.”
I was beginning to feel like I had been recruited for the CIA rather than a search for a piece of art. En route, Lipton explained the client’s name: Boris Alexandrovich Nevsky meant Boris, son of Alexander Nevsky.
“Alexander Nevsky is Russia’s greatest historical hero. He defeated invaders during the medieval ages and formed the first modern Russian state. Another hero, Saint Boris, was Russia’s first saint.”
“I take it that it’s not our Nevsky’s real name?”
“He changed his name to reflect his passions for his country’s glorious history. He’s a widower, but you’ll meet his daughter today, too. Her name, Karina, means pure.”
I detected a note of sarcasm in his voice. “Is she pure?”
“I don’t trust her, but she’s part of the scenario we must deal with. As for purity, I only care if her money is clean.”
He gave me one of those looks again that said he had inside information he might share.
“I wouldn’t mess with her,” he said. “Sometimes Nevsky stares at you as if he’s wondering what you’d look like burning at a stake for being a heretic. She has her father’s dark fire.”
“How long has her mother been dead?”
“Since Karina was twelve. Suicide. It seems to happen to the wives of tyrants. Stalin’s wife and son killed themselves. Hitler’s two girlfriends and wife killed themselves. It must go with the territory.”
“What’s Nevsky doing in Dubai?” I asked.
“Eastern Orthodox religion has more of a connection to the Middle East than most other Christian denominations. Maybe he’s here to open a church. But most likely it’s something to do with money. The streets here are paved with gold. I suspect he’s come to mine some. Perhaps selling his influence with the Russian government. On the one hand, the people in the Russian government hate him, on the other, some members of the government belong to his church—and everyone fears him, follower or not.”
As the limo came to a stop at a traffic light, a taxi pulled up beside us. I glanced out the side window and saw a familiar face.
Chief Inspector Yuri Karskoff.
He stared straight ahead and didn’t look in my direction, but the small smile on his face told me that he knew exactly who was staring at him despite the tinted window.
Letting me know I was being following was an unpleasant reminder that I was between a rock and a hard spot … with the hounds of hell snapping at my heels.
As we continued on our way, I stared out the windows at skyscrapers that appeared to have erupted from the desert sands like primordial concrete and glass beasts.
Skyscrapers.
Ski slopes.
Camel races.
I wondered what other surprises awaited me in the desert kingdom.
15
The design of the camel racetrack grandstand was Dubai deco—at least that was the name I gave to the city’s Arabic-futuristic architectural style.
Like so many of the other new buildings in the city, including the Burj al-Arab Hotel, which was designed to resemble the bellowing canvas sail of an interplanetary Persian Gulf dhow, the camel racetrack was Mars modern, tempered by a bit of old Arabia: dynamic concrete roofs over the grandstand conveyed the impression of Bedouin tents flapping in the wind.
All right … after a ski slope in the Arabian Desert, I could handle flapping concrete tents.
Many of the men in the grandstand wore traditional Arab dress … while the parking lot was overflowing with Mercedes, BMWs, and Ferraris, with a host of Land Rovers thrown in.
Scattered among the male of the species were a number of European and Middle Eastern women, most of whom were dressed to kill. I saw only a couple of women wearing the traditional covering.
Lipton put on an Arab headdress before he stepped out of the limo.
He grinned at me. “The ghutra provides much more protection than a panama hat or baseball cap and is much more dashing, if I must say so.”
“Dashing” is not the word I would use to describe what the pint-sized Britisher looked like in Arabic headdress.
He explained male Persian Gulf Arabic clothing as we walked toward the grandstand. “The headscarf not only protects from the sun, but can be pulled across the face during sandstorms. Underneath is a cap with holes in it. A band around the scarf holds everything in place. The one-piece neck-to-ankles garment is white to reflect sunlight and loose to circulate air.”
“Why does the hair cap have holes?”
“Air holes.”
I should have thought of that myself.
I was surprised that he didn’t put the panama hat over the headdress.
* * *
IN THE GRANDSTAND we met Nevsky, his daughter, and a group of powerfully built men in black suits that looked like a security team for a head of state … which Nevsky was on his way to becoming, according to Lipton.
From a distance, Nevsky seemed pretty average, but as I got closer his intense stare locked on me and I felt that “burned at the stake” sensation Lipton talked about.
Nevsky was not a handsome man. Compared to his bodyguards, at first glance he looked like a mild-mannered accountant—rather average build, even a little on the thin side, with a narrow face, gaunt cheeks, and sharp chin. But his fierce eyes grabbed you and hung on.
The man didn’t look at you—he pierced and probed. And if the eyes’ being windows to the soul wasn’t just a poetic cliché, Nevsky’s soul was a churning inferno ready to boil over.
I didn’t sense evil. The impression I got was exactly how Lipton had characterized Nevsky—this was a person with such strong beliefs that no one else’s mattered.
No, I decided that another’s beliefs wouldn’t just not matter to Nevsky—he would construe opposing points of view as so completely wrong and threatening that they were dangerous … and should be stamped out. Opponents should be stretched on the rack. Burned at the stake. Or whatever they did to heretics.
Nevsky was a fanatic. That was a given. But at the moment, he was the only person in my life with a big checkbook. So whatever he believed was okay with me. He could burn Lipton at the stake, as far as I was concerned. In fact, I’d pile the wood at Lipton’s feet. And throw gas on the flames.
I just wanted to finish earning the mo
ney I had stashed in my freezer so I could get that flight home with good conscience. Regardless of what I thought of Lipton—and wishing him burned at the stake was just the tip of my feelings for him—I still felt I owed it to the client to earn what I had received.
I was told all I had to do was come to Dubai and listen. I was here. I would listen. After that, I would go home.
I put a small, brave smile on my face and tried to appear overwhelmed by being in the presence of a majestic personage. And in a way, I was. Nevsky was no ordinary person.
“You understand what you are to find for me?”
He spoke English with a thick accent, but I understood just fine. No preliminaries. Right to the point. No introductions, no offer to shake hands, no “How was your flight halfway around the world to meet me at the camel races?”
He must have gone to the same school of etiquette as Lipton.
I felt as if I were on a battlefield, that I should snap to attention, salute, spin on my heel, and charge the enemy.
“Yes, I do.”
“Lipton has recommended you. Live up to what he says about you. Find me what I want.”
Great. I had to live up to a recommendation from a “dead” man wanted by the police on three continents. I couldn’t even imagine what Lipton had told him. Did Lipton mention that I was once involved in a museum heist? In all innocence, of course, so a looted antiquity could be given back to the nation where it belonged.
“I am an honorable man and expect to be treated with honor. I will not be pleased if I am betrayed.”
He rattled me. It was more an accusation than a statement, before I even started.
His features took on a dark look. It gave me the willies. “I—”
“Get me what I want and you will be paid well. Double what I have already offered.”
I sucked in a breath. Lipton said a possible two million each—a million each for finding it, another million for obtaining it. Nevsky had just upped it to a potential four million apiece. A fortune. We all had a price and he had met mine. I’d take my turn on a producer’s couch and the torturer’s rack for that kind of money.
“We’ll find it,” Lipton said. “I’ve never failed you.”
“Tell no one,” Nevsky said, giving me another black-fire stare.
“Not a soul,” I said.
I realized I was being dismissed from Nevsky’s presence when his daughter stepped between us and said, “Come with me.”
Lipton stayed behind with Nevsky as I walked beside her, meandering around well-heeled Arabs and well-endowed young women … there was enough silicone bouncing around to supply the women at the annual Academy Awards presentation.
I was so mesmerized by Nevsky, I had failed to give his daughter a quick once-over. Now I did it out of the corner of my eye as we moved through the crowd.
Karina had a feminine athletic build—a couple of inches taller and maybe twenty pounds more of pure muscle than my own five feet six and 120-pound frame. She looked as if she could leap tall buildings while I would be hard-pressed to vault a picket fence. A knee-high fence at that.
“The patriarch is very demanding,” she said.
It took me a moment to realize that “the patriarch” was her father. Strange way to refer to one’s own father—like she was talking about someone remote and inaccessible. And maybe he was.
“So am I,” she said. “Considering your past history, I’m not convinced that—”
“Excuse me.”
I stopped and faced her, hot blood rushing to my head, my fists clenched. There was only so much I would take before I got mad. I had had it with people telling me how high they expected me to jump. I said I’d take my turn on the couch, but the truth was, I wouldn’t do it for money alone …
“Your father is very demanding. You are very demanding. Lipton is very demanding. I’m tired of people treating me like a doormat they wipe their feet on. I will only take so much shit.”
She gaped at me as if I were a lunatic.
“Now, if you want me to go back and say that to the patriarch, your father, or whoever the hell he is, I’ll be happy to.”
Instead of meeting my charge, she laughed. Not a ha-ha-ha laugh, but a grim chuckle.
“Very good. A woman with a minus balance in her bank account, bill collectors on her back like a horde of Mongols, and disgraced in her profession, but you don’t take … shit.”
“My minus bank account got that way because I did something damn good in this world—I made sure that an irreplaceable artifact thousands of years old got back to its rightful owner. And I don’t have to explain anything to you. You don’t look like the type who’s ever had a real job. I earned my money coming here and now I’m going home. Find someone else to take your crap—I won’t.”
I spun on my heel and started for the exit.
“Wait,” she said. She caught up with me and gave me an appraising look. “You’re right. I misjudged you. I assumed you were like Lipton.”
“Which is?”
“Broke, desperate, cunning, and criminal.”
She had Sir Henri pegged. Me, too, almost. But I wasn’t very cunning and still short of criminal.
“Join me for a cold lemonade so we can discuss the situation.”
I took a deep breath and followed her to a shaded area. We sat at a table overlooking the track and sipped lemonade.
Two of the Plastic Women—cosmetically altered, silicone dolls—with body parts I wished I had (or could afford) came by, giving us, especially me, quizzical looks.
“They’re wondering about us,” Karina said.
“Wondering what?”
“We’re not … dressed to kill, you might say.”
“Why should we be dressed to kill?”
“The prize today is equivalent to about ten thousand U.S. dollars.”
“Prize for what?”
“For best-dressed woman.”
“Come again?”
That grim chuckle again. The woman had a gallows sense of humor. I wondered if she found airplane crashes funny.
“The woman considered the best dressed here today … or undressed, depending how you think of it, will get the prize. It’s not the only prize, of course. All the women here either have a benefactor or are seeking one. Not all of them are whores brought in by Eastern European pimps to feed the blond fantasies of Arab men. Many are simply women who are willing to give a man pleasure in return for a life of comfort and luxury.”
“Nice work if you can get it.”
Karina shrugged. “One has to wonder who is to blame—the men who pay to satisfy their desires … or the women who take that route.”
Me, I wasn’t ready to throw the first stone at either.
A camel race started and I did a double take when I saw what was coming around the track—and on a road paralleling the track.
Camels were on the track, running as they should be. But it took me a moment to realize the small boy jockeys on the backs of the camels were not boys at all … they weren’t even human … boy-looking robots were riding the camels.
Good Lord … the robots had whips and were lashing the camels to make them run faster.
“Are those what I think they are?”
The harsh laugh again. “The jockeys used to be small boys. They were brought in from all over the Muslim world, but especially Pakistan, where the people are particularly poor. The rich camel owners want jockeys as small as possible, yet able to handle the camels. Small, skinny boys with strong arms and legs make the best jockeys. They would buy the boys like plantation owners once bought slaves, take them from their homes in Karachi or Islamabad and bring them here.”
“Sounds pretty horrible.”
“Horrible is the way it sounded to the human rights people, too. But to the boys who were facing a lifetime of poverty and disease—a very short lifetime—it was like winning the lottery. They had good food and shelter and their families back home got a little something. Human rights organizations cau
sed the system so much bad publicity, the sheik prohibited the use of boys.”
“So now they use robots?”
“They’re lightweight and do exactly what they’re told.”
“And the human rights people don’t complain,” I said.
The most interesting show wasn’t the robots on the camels, but the controllers of the robots—on a road paralleling the track, men hung out the windows of speeding SUVs and pointed plastic devices that looked like TV remote controls at the camels.
“When they press a button, the robotic arm holding the whip swats its camel,” Karina said.
I shook my head. Controlling robotic jockeys with TV remotes at a camel race where there was a prize for the best-dressed woman.
Just another day in fantasyland on the Persian Gulf.
I found it all mind-boggling. “Dubai is really a vision of the future, isn’t it? All just erupting out of nowhere. Buildings imitating ancient styles, yet futuristic enough for a space station. Robots for boys. It’s all fake, like it was done with mirrors, with movie magic.” I stared at her. “Is that what it’s all coming to? What the future holds for us? Cultures sculptured by city planners who learned their art watching science-fiction movies?”
She looked around as if she were wondering what I was talking about. I guess robots riding camels and concrete Bedouin tents didn’t strike her as strange. Maybe it was just me, maybe I was just too old or too old-fashioned for the future that Dubai represented.
Jesus … how do I get off this planet before it starts to all look like it was made by Quentin Tarantino?
She gave me an appraising look again. “You don’t like Lipton, do you?”
The shift in conversation took me by surprise. I shrugged. “I can take him or leave him.”
A lie, of course, but it wouldn’t be fair even to that swine to tell her the truth. Nevsky wasn’t an innocent party and Lipton had inferred that she wasn’t, either. Besides, she and her father obviously knew everything there was to know about Lipton. And me. At least with Lipton, they knew for sure they were hiring a crook. And that suited their purpose.
Lipton approached, making a beeline for our table.
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