“Hi, Nik!” read the message. “Congrats on striking oil. Into undertaking here, in Prague. No shortage of clients! Could do with an assistant. Care to join me? Go for a drive? I’m at 18, Marcel Popelar Street. Tel. 134-53-64.”
Nik stowed the fax away in the breast pocket of his denim suit.
“Well?”
“Piraeus, please.”
“Good man!” said Refat. “Regards to Sakhno! You know each other’s ways. Build on it.”
“Right,” he said, turning to Viktor, “you and I had better go on board.”
Nik and Viktor embraced.
“Slip Dimitris a couple of thousand when you land,” Refat advised Nik. “And hang on to that American Express card. Could come in useful. Take it as a present from Ivan Lvovich.”
“Who’s where?”
Refat shrugged.
“Hiding abroad. The National Investigation Bureau got going without him. Anyway, he’d never have made it to the money. It’s amazing how you did. Au revoir!”
As Grozny’s engines throbbed into life, Dimitris’ yacht swung sharply away.
Nik sat alone in the cabin lost in thought. One day perhaps, when he was clear where home was, he’d return there. He needed time – a month, a year, maybe, to think.
Meantime he would take that job with Sachs Funerals. From Prague he could visit Paris, write to Saratov, send Tanya and Volodya money to buy a fine flat and be not too angry. Dear to him as they were, he was no longer the same man. Time was needed to mend, make good the distortion inflicted by life.
But now for Piraeus.
ANDREY KURKOV is a Ukrainian writer born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1961. After graduating from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he resisted pressure to become a KGB translator for his military service and instead opted to serve as a prison warder in Odessa. Afterwards, he worked as a journalist and film cameraman, then borrowed money to self-publish his first books, which he sold himself on the sidewalks of Kiev. He is now one of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers in Ukrainian history, and his books have been translated into 25 languages.
GEORGE BIRD has translated extensively from German and Russian. In 1986 he won the Pluto Crime Prize for his novel Death in Leningrad.
DON’T MISS ANDREY KURKOV’S INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED DEATH AND THE PENGUIN AND PENGUIN LOST
In Death and the Penguin, writer Viktor Zolotaryov leads a down-and-out life in poverty-and-violence-wracked Kiev—he’s out of work and his only friend is a penguin, Misha, that he rescued when the impoverished local zoo started getting rid of animals. Even more nerve-wracking: a local mobster has taken a shine to Misha and wants to keep borrowing him for events …
Penguin Lost sees Viktor launch an intensive, guilt-wracked search for his penguin Misha across the Ukraine to Moscow and back, vividly depicting a troubled landscape. It once again lands Viktor in league with a series of criminals and corrupt officials, each of whom know something of what happened to Misha, and each of whom are willing to pass that information along if Viktor will just help them with one more job …
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The Case of the General's Thumb Page 18