by Thomas Swan
The salad came and Mike ate a little of it, then paid and went back into the heat. Shadows were no longer sharp, but dulled by a hazy sky. He walked to the boardwalk and saw the dark clouds on the southern horizon far across the water of the Atlantic Ocean.
He looked at his watch: 1:50. In a little more than two hours he would meet Oleg Deryabin. The feeling that gnawed inside him was foreign; part of it anger, a part he recognized as fear. It was an alien feeling that he was slowly beginning to recognize as his newfound compulsion to atone for abandoning his family. It was also the feeling of a growing hatred toward the man who had destroyed his family.
He bowed his head. Tears came. They were a purgative, uncomfortable at first. Then they renewed and refreshed him.
“Let’s remember that when Mike Carson and Oleg Deryabin last saw each other, Mike was a little boy and his name was Mikhail Vasilyovich Karsalov.”
“Mike’s a big boy,” Tobias said. “He’ll handle it.”
“I hope he does,” Oxby said. “Until last evening, he might have guessed Deryabin was just another crooked Russian businessman. I gave him a lot to think about.”
“You took the guesswork out of it. Now he knows the bastard’s a crook.”
“And much more. That’s what I hope he can cope with.”
Tobias smiled. “You’re both the playwright and director of this reunion.” The smile faded. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“Not exactly. Except I am getting one of those bloody hunches of mine.”
“What’s it telling you?”
“I’m getting mixed signals.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that tell me I should have taken something from that gun collection of yours. Chances are I won’t need it. But—”
“I’ll have one with me. And look.” He tapped his watch. “It’s just two o’clock and I can get Ed Parente to send over a couple of his guys. I like Mike too much to have anything happen to him.”
“No, Alex. Mike Carson’s not in any danger. Deryabin doesn’t go after people who can put money in his pocket. It’s the ones that can expose him that he wants to get rid of.” Oxby tapped his chest. “Like me.”
“It’s time,” Deryabin grumbled. “Where’s Galina?” Nothing would appease Deryabin short of the sudden appearance of Galina. He opened the door and stormed into the corridor. He went to the elevator, then returned to the room, trailing a stream of Russian obscenities behind him.
“Where is she, you fucking Estonian bastard?”
“Don’t blame me that you can’t control Galina,” Trivimi roared back. “She went to eat.”
“I pay her for a job. I pay you to make sure she does it.”
“You don’t need Galina to help you look at fifteen automobiles and sign a contract. Is that her job?”
“Make a copy of the instructions and put it where she will see it. Tell her to find a taxi, or whatever gets her there.”
Trivimi proceeded calmly to check the papers in his briefcase. Then he tucked it under his arm and went to the door and opened it. He said, “I don’t have to leave a message for Galina. She knows where to find us.”
Mike put Brighton Beach and an assortment of memories behind him and drove through the downpour to New Jersey by way of the Verrazano and Goethals bridges. He tuned in to a weather forecast and learned the rain would end before the rush hour traffic, but all motorists were admonished to use extreme caution and be prepared for flooding in the usual low-lying sections of the city and suburbs. The announcer intoned the time: 3:19. Mike was on the Turnpike, south of Newark Airport. He would get off at the airport exit. From the toll booth it would be five minutes to the Doremus Avenue gate. Beyond the gate was the Field. He agreed to meet Oxby and Tobias at quarter to four. The traffic was getting thicker and moving more slowly. He figured he would just make it.
Tobias turned onto Doremus Avenue. Several hundred feet ahead was the gate and the guard station nestled against the fence. He parked beside a year-old Jeep Cherokee with Ohio plates. The driver, a twenty-two-year-old redhead with a gold earring and T-shirt with the Budweiser logo printed front and back, was trying to detach a Harley-Davidson motorcycle from the Jeep’s tow bar before he was drenched to the skin. The rain had intensified and the wind had picked up. The guard, covered with an orange slicker, came from his shed, opened the door to the Jeep, and tossed a gate pass and an envelope on the shelf above the dashboard. He hurried back to the shed.
Two more cars arrived. One parked ten feet from Tobias’s car, the other stopped abreast of the Jeep. The drivers, one with an umbrella, the other running, went to the guard’s shed. A few minutes later, the one with the umbrella returned to his car and drove off. The other got back into his car and waited for a gate pass.
The young driver pushed the motorcycle close to the shed and let it rest against its kick stand. Then he got into the Jeep and drove through the gate, where he parked in front of a low, one-floor, wooden building. He disappeared inside. This was the final checkpoint before driving onto the Field. License and title would be confirmed, along with proof that shipping charges and fees had been paid. When the driver received his final clearance, a second gate would be opened and he could drive onto the Field and put the vehicle in its assigned space. This done, he could return to his motorcycle and begin his drive back to Ohio. In view of the weather, he might wait out the rain.
Tobias was familiar with the procedure and explained it to an always curious Oxby. As the Jeep Cherokee disappeared, Mike Carson pulled in next to them.
“Wait here,” Mike said. “I’ll get our gate passes.” It took several minutes, and when he returned he got into the back seat of Tobias’s car. He handed a pass to Tobias.
“I’ve got one for Deryabin.” He looked squarely at Oxby. “Who’s going to wait for him? Not me.”
“Alex will,” Oxby said. “Both of us know Trivimi Laar, but I might be a lightning rod.” Oxby added, “I think you and I should be together when we meet Deryabin.”
Mike said, “Have them follow you through the gate and park over there next to Building 1. Go inside and ask for Sam Salzano. Sam expects you as well as the others. He can’t let you drive onto the Field, but he’ll get you past the gate at the far end of the building.” Mike pointed. “Sam will show you where the cars Deryabin ordered are parked. It’s about a four-hundred-yard walk.”
Oxby got into Mike’s car and they drove through the gate, parked, and went into the building. Mike didn’t visit the Field regularly, but Sam Salzano knew him and the two chatted briefly. Then Mike waved for Oxby to follow him. They left the building through a back door. A gate directly ahead of them led onto the Field. The rain had lightened to a fine drizzle, the air still heavy and hot.
As he walked, Oxby took in the scene, impressed as Mike had predicted at the sight of row upon endless row of automobiles.
“Up ahead,” Mike said. “The cars with red streamers on the rear windows. Those are ours.”
Tobias recognized the car that was bringing Deryabin and Trivimi when it was a hundred yards away. It was the same car that had been driven by a beautiful blonde two days earlier. But no blonde was at the wheel this time. Five after four meant that Trivimi had negotiated the trip far better than he expected.
Tobias got from his car and walked to the driver’s side window and leaned down to get his first look at Oleg Deryabin, who inclined his head and said nothing.
“Hello,” Tobias greeted Trivimi, without offering his hand. “You made good time.”
“Yes,” Trivimi said. “But is this a strange place to meet?”
“Not if you’re in the automobile business. Isn’t that why you’re in New York?”
“But why are you here?” Trivimi asked. “Are you now in the automobile business?”
“I get mixed up in lots of different businesses,” Tobias said. “Occupational hazard.”
“I don’t understand,” Trivimi said.
“Inside joke,” Tobias said. �
�Put the car over by that building. I’ll meet you there.”
The rain had stopped, but in the heat, Tobias had taken off his seersucker jacket and was carrying it over his right arm so that it obscured the butt end of the pistol that protruded from his hip holster. It was a twenty-year-old Smith & Wesson that Tobias could use expertly. Trivimi and Deryabin stood by the car.
“Are you Mr. Deryabin?” Tobias asked.
Deryabin nodded, but Trivimi replied. “Oleg, this is Detective Tobias.”
That brief exchange constituted the introductions.
They went up the steps and into the building. Sam Salzano was waiting. He instructed them out to the Field.
“There’s a ship just come in,” Salzano said. “You can’t miss it. Go right for it and you’ll find the others.”
They filed out, Tobias leading. There, a quarter of mile across the Field was the Atlantic Companion, one of the largest car freighters that could be moored in Port Newark.
Dead ahead of Tobias stood Oxby and Mike Carson.
“Are you ready for this?” Oxby said.
Mike nodded. “I hope he is.”
A hazy sun poked through and reheated the asphalt that had been briefly cooled by the rain. Tobias slowed and moved to the side. Deryabin was now in front. At fifty yards, Mike could see his face; his pink skin and thinning hair. At twenty yards he saw the red lines across his cheek. With each step, another of his features became clear until, when he was fifteen feet away, Mike saw the strange little smile that seemed, immediately, to be both ingratiating and indulgent. Deryabin’s arm went out, his hand fully extended.
“Mikhail,” the deep voice rumbled out. “I am Oleg Deryabin.”
Mike ignored the hand and said, “I know you are. Those cars,” he pointed, “were ordered by your company. A deposit of seventy thousand dollars was paid to us.”
“Yes,” Deryabin replied, “that is right. And you will be paid the balance before they are put on one of those ships.”
Tobias had moved next to Oxby, who had taken a position ten feet from Mike. Trivimi stood beside Deryabin. Mike, alone, faced Deryabin. The five men seemed to have formed a triangle and they were all within a few strides of the Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, and Pontiacs. To the other side of them was the stretch limousine and the pair of Hummers. And also the Jeep Cherokee that had just been delivered by the young man who was by now on his motorcycle and whizzing his way back to Ohio.
“They’re not going anywhere,” Mike said.
“There is a problem with the cars?” Deryabin said.
Mike made a gesture toward Oxby. “Have you met Inspector Oxby?”
“What has he to do with our business?” Deryabin asked.
“With our business?” Mike repeated. “Nothing. It is my family.”
“He has told you lies, Mikhail.”
“Not lies, Deryabin, and the name is Mike. He told me everything that Sasha Akimov wanted to tell me, but couldn’t before you had him killed. And my father who spoke the truth before he died. You killed him.”
“You can not believe the lies. You hear me? They all lied!” Deryabin screamed.
The rear door to the Cherokee opened and Galina stepped down. She took a step toward the group, the Semmerling raised.
“Galina,” Deryabin said, pointing at the Jeep. “I’m happy you are here, but how—” His voice trailed off.
“I am paid to know how.”
Oxby and Tobias faced her and each felt cautiously for their pistols. Mike could do nothing but stand rigid. Trivimi held up a hand as if to halt whatever Galina planned next.
“Don’t get in the way, Estonian,” Galina said.
Deryabin said, “Put the gun down.”
Galina stared defiantly at him. Her lips parted, as if to speak. Instead, she squeezed the trigger and put a bullet precisely where she had aimed it. High in Deryabin’s leg, inches from his groin.
“You bitch!” he shouted and sank to his knees. “Shoot that one,” he pointed at Oxby. “He killed your Viktor.”
“You always point the finger away from yourself. But no more can you do that. It was you. You killed Viktor!”
“Don’t do it, Galina,” Oxby shouted. “Another killing won’t solve anything.”
“Don’t try to stop me,” she said, warning off Oxby with her pistol. Then she turned it on Deryabin and fired again, this time striking his other leg. He sprawled onto his stomach, writhing on the hot, wet pavement.
“Bastard prick,” she shrieked, and took aim again.
Deryabin rolled over and came up facing Galina, holding his own gun and firing wildly at her. He emptied the clip.
Galina shot twice in the exchange, and hit Deryabin high in the chest, not a kill shot. Only one of Deryabin’s seven shots hit Galina, but that one caught her in the temple on the right side of her face. The bullet, a heavyweight .38, transformed her truly beautiful face into a horrible mass of bone, blood, and silky blond hair.
Chapter 45
“Why?”
The word floated out and hung tantalizingly in the air for a half minute. Oxby broke the silence. “I don’t have a good answer, but I’ll do my bloody best to come up with one.”
He sat next to Mike Carson. Across from him was Kip Forbes seated in front of a painting that filled the wall behind him. Oxby recognized the picture, an immense portrait of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting. On the adjoining wall was a bookshelf crammed with museum exhibition catalogues, biographies, and references covering the life and production of Peter Carl Fabergé. Oxby made a professional appraisal of Kip’s office, concluding that the room with all its paintings, sculpture, and hundreds-year-old furniture belonged in the Louvre Museum in Paris, not in one of America’s great publishing companies.
Oxby continued, “I didn’t know what either one looked like, until yesterday. My alleged bodyguard gave me some sketchy bits about Galina, including the fact she and her husband Viktor Lysenko were Oleg Deryabin’s enforcers.”
Kip shot a wide-eyed glance at Oxby. “Then why in God’s name was she going to kill him?”
“That’s what I don’t have an answer for. Maybe nothing more than the fact that Deryabin was a mean son of a bitch who deserved all the bullets she could put into him. What I know about Deryabin I learned from his naval records and fifteen minutes with Trivimi Laar. He’s a pakhan, a crime boss. One of the businesses he owned is a delivery service that he planned to expand into a chain of automobile showrooms. Deryabin said he was going to sell American cars. Expensive ones. That’s one of the reasons he was in New York. To work a deal with Mike.”
“But buying and selling American cars isn’t a crime,” Kip said.
“No, but Deryabin intended to export the cars to Cyprus—to an arms merchant with clients throughout the Middle East. Inside each car would be a quantity of a deadly biological toxin.”
Kip exhaled a low whistle, “That could mean big money.”
“Risky, too. Deryabin was having the stuff made in another of his little companies, one with a chemistry lab he set up to duplicate expensive perfumes. A harmless dishonesty, I suppose. They switched from making perfume to Clostridium botulinum. A drop of that can kill a dozen people.”
“That doesn’t explain why they were shooting each other,” Kip said.
“When Galina popped out of the Jeep I fully expected her to shoot me.”
“You said you’d never seen her. Why would she want to hurt you?”
“She thought I had killed her husband.”
“You’re going too fast,” Kip said, incredulously. “You killed Galina’s husband?”
“I had no choice.”
“What in God’s name happened?”
“You’ve heard this, Mike. Do you mind hearing it again?”
“Not at all.”
Oxby relished telling his tale again, sharing his impressions of his friend Yakov, of Poolya, of Tashkent and Mike’s father, Vasily Karsalov. And about the Hermitage,
the broken matryoshka doll, and watching an aged Lada he was supposed to be sitting in explode into flames. Kip Forbes listened, enraptured, rarely letting his eyes stray from Jack Oxby.
Mike also listened attentively. “I didn’t make the connection the other evening. Are you saying it was Galina who came in my office and shot Sasha Akimov?”
“Bloody right. She was also the nurse who finished off Sasha with sodium pentobarbital. And she was the woman who shot the writer.”
“Lenny Sulzberger. He’ll be angry that he can’t have his own revenge.”
“Revenge is what this is all about,” Oxby said. “And this—”
He reached for a plastic shopping bag that he had put on the floor by his chair.
When Kip saw Oxby remove the distinctive pale brown presentation case, he edged forward. “Incredible,” he said, anxiously anticipating his first view of what he hoped would become the most famous of all the Fabergé eggs. “How did you get hold of it?”
“After we put Deryabin in an ambulance, we let Trivimi consider his new circumstances inside a holding cell in a New York City precinct station. We told him to cooperate or else. The or else being that he would be charged as an accessory in the murder of Sasha Akimov, and as an accomplice in the death of Galina Lysenko. He told us that Deryabin had brought the egg to New York with the intention of finding a buyer for it. In fact, you were on his list of prospective buyers. I told him that the egg belonged to Mike Carson’s family, that it would be to his advantage if he would show me where Deryabin had put it. He did, and here it is.”
Oxby placed the egg in front of Mike. “It belongs to you, Mike.”
Mike studied it for a moment, then, timidly, picked it up. He lifted the egg off the golden hands that held it. He touched one of the diamonds. “Beautiful,” he said, as if saying it only to himself. He looked at Oxby. “But I can’t take it.”