“I thought diamonds came from South Africa.”
He laughed. “Most good diamonds still do, but they have to be cut and polished. The Indians are taking over from the Dutch Jews. It’s no longer the old India of the Raj. Indians have computerized and brought diamond cutting to a high art, and a cheap art. Everybody else is being eliminated.”
“Can someone track this diamond back to its source?”
“Maybe. But I would think, at the moment, no.”
“Why not?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, then wiped them on his jacket. “Because you came here, which means you are looking for a lead. I assume your Customs or Europol or Interpol would have told you the diamond was not declared in the normal course of business. So my guess is it was brought in under the table.”
“Who is handling under-the-table business besides you, these days?”
He frowned at her. “I told you I’m no longer in the business.”
“That will be the day the Slovak police celebrate.”
He decided to ignore her jibe. “Are you asking about volume pieces?”
“At the moment, just quality merchandise, like this.”
She held the diamond so that it swayed on its chain, both of them watching it glitter. “Odd how a piece of aged, compressed carbon can make people yearn so much.”
Giles continued to stare at it. When he managed to break away, he was out of breath from the effort. He held up a finger. “No more from Giles.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Time you furnish the information you have for me.”
Jana nodded. It was time to pay the little man. “The Guzak brothers. Rumor has it that they have come back from Ukraine and are on their way to Bratislava.”
Giles sat back on the couch. His face took on a gray cast; his shoulders slumped. Then a visible shudder passed over his body.
“They are coming after me?”
“Whatever business they have here, some part of it will always include coming after you. I’m sorry, Giles. Perhaps we can get them first.”
Giles looked up. “Besides you, who else on the police force in Slovakia can take care of the Guzak brothers? Nobody. And I should know: I’m on the other side.”
Jana put the diamond in her pocket.
“We have some good officers, Giles.”
“Not likely.” He took a deep breath, finally managing a wan smile. “How about giving old Giles something to pick up his spirits? Euros, not dollars: 150,000 Euros for the diamond.”
“You know I am not going to sell it to you, Giles.”
“Just a thought. It’s my nature,” he shrugged. “An animal cannot change what he is.”
Jana nodded at him, turned, and walked to the stairs, descending without looking back.
Chapter 12
Jana phoned the office the next morning. They told her Peter had called the night before. Since he was a procurator, they had given him her number. Jana’s elation overcame her anger at seeing Kamin back in Slovakia. She called Peter at the number he had left, but his phone was turned off.
She dressed, hoping he would try again while she was home, and just as she was slipping on her shoes, her phone rang. Jana jumped to answer it. Her heart racing, she forced herself to swallow, and wet her dry lips, calming herself before picking up the phone. To her disappointment, it was one of the legislators, wanting to ask a few more questions about issues raised by members who had not been at the committee meeting the previous day. Fighting back the urge to hang up to leave the phone free for Peter, she managed to remain polite and patient enough to answer his questions, then sat staring at the phone after she had finished the conversation, wondering how long she could hold out before she tried Peter again.
Jana finished getting ready, walked to the door and this time locked it behind her. She had not taken two steps when the phone rang again. Fumbling with the key, Jana opened the door and darted to the phone.
“Hello, I’m here,” she blurted out. “Jana Matinova,” she mumbled, compelled to keep talking. “How can I help you?”
“Hello, Commander.” He addressed her formally. Even so, and even through the distortion of a telephone, Peter’s voice had an instantaneous effect on her. “I don’t know if you remember me?” he asked. “I’m the procurator you met at the parliament building yesterday.”
Jana took a deep breath. Then she had a moment of disquiet. He had used her title so easily. Was he trying to tell her that this was the level at which he wanted to keep their relationship?
“Of course I remember you.” She tried to think of something encouraging. “You spoke very articulately yesterday before the members of the committee.”
“I wondered if you might like to . . . ?” He hesitated. “I gather you like music.”
“How did you find out I liked music?” she asked, surprised.
“I . . . well . . . I asked the . . . head of the Traffic Police. I thought he might know you. He asked around, and called me.”
Oh, God, she thought. Everybody in the police department, the inspectors, the street police, all of them would now know that a man was interested in her, and not just as a police officer. She was about to reprove him, then managed to stop herself. He had cared enough to go through the trouble of finding out something personal about her. He was romantically interested.
“Yes, I like opera,” she got out. “There is a good one at the National Theatre tonight. Puccini’s La Bohème. They even have an Italian tenor singing Rodolfo.” Jana wondered if she was being too eager. “Or perhaps you would rather not?” Hesitate, she told herself. Show him that you’re not too eager. “There might be trouble getting tickets at this late date.” She regretted saying this as soon as she uttered the words.
“I have them.”
He had the tickets already. Why was she playing coy? She was no longer a girl who had to put on a performance. “You bought the tickets. Lovely of you to do that.”
“I could only get balcony seats. The tourists had already snapped up the rest.”
“The balcony is perfect,” she gushed, angry at the flutter in her voice. “You can see everything from there.”
“Dinner before or after?”
She almost ground her teeth in frustration at having to turn him down. “I won’t be able to have dinner. I will need time to change after work.”
“Drinks, and a snack after the opera?”
“I would love that.”
They decided to meet at the opera.
Jana didn’t want the conversation to end. She had no choice. He had to go . . . and there was the matter of Kamin to attend to.
Jana had to assume her objective, tough police mentality, so she used a method that was radical but always worked. She had learned it from another policewoman who used it when personal events interfered with her job. It was not hard: She thought back to the time she had first learned how to swim. At the beginning, at one time or another, she would go underwater and almost drown. She couldn’t breathe, suffocating, going down and down, trying to fight her way back up. She finally made it to the surface, gasping for air, but forgetting everything except the here-and-now of survival. Live it again, now, she told herself. Choke on the water, frantic with the need to take in air, feel the fear, then come up and out of it, taking deep breaths.
The exercise worked. Peter was, for the moment, pushed to the back of her mind. She was free to focus on Kamin.
Jana drove to her office and began making phone calls, personally speaking to ranking officers in each of the directories of the police, issuing queries about Kamin. The state had never filed charges against him for any crime. Not enough proof, no one would testify, books missing, investigations coming up empty when it came to vital evidence. Kamin had always covered himself, an eel slipping through the fishing nets. Now, Jana heard the same thing again. The only difference was that Jana wanted current information; she wasn’t interested in past investigative problems. Kamin was back in the country. What had he been
doing all this time?
It was time to talk to Sofia, to share last night’s events with her. Jana headed toward Sofia’s house, realizing she should have called first. She hadn’t because she was too concerned about Sofia’s reaction if Jana told her on the phone that she had seen Kamin. Jana had to be there to stop Sofia, as she’d done before, when they had first run into Kamin years after the assault on Sofia. Sofia had been prepared to kill the man, and damn the consequences.
Jana drove to Čunovo, where Sofia was now living. Her parents had added a second story, creating an apartment for their daughter, a common practice in the country when the young could not afford to buy a house on their own. There was even a small office in the apartment where Sofia did much of her parliamentary business. A separate entrance allowed the people she worked with to come and go without interfering with her now-widowed mother downstairs.
Jana climbed the stairs. There was a sign on the door that said COME IN in big block letters; then, in deep blue lettering, Nech So Paci, AT YOUR SERVICE, and Sofia’s name and parliamentary title. The door was kept open, day and night, to show Sofia’s constituency that she was always there for them. Jana rapped lightly at the door, then entered.
Sofia was sitting on a small couch in the room. Next to the couch, in an armchair, sat Kamin.
Shock slowed the moment into a tableau. Then it began to accelerate into separate timeframes; then there was an abrupt explosion into action as Jana started to draw her gun. Sofia bolted up, rushing toward her friend.
“No, Jana!” Sofia interposed her body as a shield between Jana and Kamin. “It’s all right. Mr. Kamin and I are talking about the country’s interests. Government needs.” She turned to Kamin. “Prepacte. If you would excuse us for a moment?” She nudged Jana back through the door, then down to the bottom of the steps.
“Sofia, that is Kamin, the man who assaulted you.”
“I know who he is, Jana. And I can hardly stand to be in the same room with him.” She paused, choosing her words. “I was asked to meet with him by our party leader in parliament.”
“The party leader? To meet with that monster? What kind of a Slovak National Council catastrophe is pending that would require this of you? Unless Kamin is preparing to be the savior of Slovakia, and I know he isn’t, he should be locked up and the key thrown away.”
Sofia rubbed her forehead, as if trying to marshal her thoughts. “He’s apologized for what he did to me. Truly, contritely apologized for all the misery he caused me. He’s begged me to accept his apology, and I’ve done so.”
“How can an apology make up for his horrific attack on you? You were a young girl. How can you invite him into your office and sit down next to him without vomiting?”
“It’s over! I’ve done what I could. I’m the victim, not you, Jana. It’s my decision, not yours, to make. I believe he’s a changed individual.”
“There is no way he’s changed.”
“You can’t know that.” Sofia took several steps, then slowly returned to Jana. “There is a problem between the political parties in the coalition. They have asked me to work out an agreement so that the government will survive an upcoming vote. I intend to do that. And this man, if I can call him that, is vital to any agreement. He can influence a number of votes.”
“Do they know what this man is?”
“I’ve let them know. Not in detail, but enough so they understand how hard this is for me.”
“Why not a hundred other people instead of you? Why should you be put through this?”
“I have to go back upstairs, Jana, and talk to him. Please go.”
Jana focused on Sofia’s face, then carefully took in her whole appearance. She was wearing a crisp business suit, her face was carefully made up, not a hair was out of place. Only her eyes betrayed that she was under strain, and it was doubtful that anyone but Jana could have seen that. Sofia was very much in control of herself, and not afraid.
“You’re sure you want me to go?”
Sofia nodded. “I need to get back to work.”
“Yes. I guess you do. What’s the expression? Ah, yes, I remember: ‘Politics makes strange bedfellows.’”
“That’s not appropriate, or kind, Jana.”
“Go upstairs, Sofia.”
Sofia very calmly walked up the steps and into her office.
Chapter 13
Jana met Peter in front of the National Theatre steps. She had pushed her meeting with Sofia to the back of her mind and returned home in time to put her evening clothes on, a black pantsuit with a velvet collar and cuffs. The trousers were flared enough so she could carry a small pistol in an ankle holster. Not that she would need it, but in case she was called out of the performance to handle a police emergency, she would be armed.
Her first sight of Peter made her weak in the knees. He was gorgeous, his eyes as beautiful as she remembered from yesterday, and his black suit and matching tie making him look even more masculine. They joked about their being dressed to match, twins of the mind and spirit.
Their seats were in the center balcony. The opera house, a remnant of the old empire, still looked every inch a part of its old Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg past, with all its gilt and ornamentation echoed by the operagoers dressed in their finest. The orchestra members entered the pit, tuned up, and, as the lights dimmed, the overture began . . . and Peter leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, taking her hand and holding it for the rest of the opera.
Jana did not remember much of the opera after Peter kissed her; she registered very little when they drove back to her house together after the performance. Her senses only returned full-blast when they walked into the house. Peter turned her to face him and kissed her. He kissed her again, and again, and somehow their clothes disappeared as they went from kiss to kiss into the bedroom, and made love. Then made love again.
When they lay there afterward, spent, she realized that this was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She hoped he felt the same way.
Kamin could wait until tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that, or maybe next year.
But of course, as things turned out, he wouldn’t wait.
Chapter 14
Vienna is the city of many people’s dreams. Their dreams are varied. Some of them want the monarchy back, with its capes and carriages, when men still fought duels and women made a spectacle of public mourning if their lover was killed. For others, it is still the Vienna of Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven, when the grand gesture in music and the great musical soloists of the Konzert Kulture thrilled the world. For a few, it is Freud and the ferment of the fin de siècle when great intellectual leaps forward made it the capital of the intellectual world. For Jana, none of this was the case. She admired its palace architecture and liked its pretzels. Otherwise, she found Vienna an uneasy city to be in. It was the Austrian temperament, so law-abiding that it suppressed everything spontaneous or unusual. Jana was always cautious, even down to very carefully obeying the traffic lights, when she visited the Austrian capital.
Today she was with Trokan and a Slovak customs official named Halco, walking up Neustiftgasse toward the Ringstrasse, the circle of streets that surrounded the inner city, the old town that was the center of Vienna. They had been sent to Vienna to attend an international customs meeting.
Trokan never went to Austria if he could help it; he would send Jana or some volunteer who wanted to spend time in the Austrian capital and could afford its exorbitant prices. Halco was a Slovak bureaucrat, an expert on policy issues. The three of them were told to listen and, after the Austrians got through, to do a little complaining of their own. The Austrians were being difficult about Slovaks crossing the border into Austria and taking Austrian jobs away from Austrians. In their turn, the Slovaks, through Trokan, were to complain about the illegal laundering of Slovak gray money with the complicity of Austrian banks.
Trokan had been a last-minute replacement, and because Jana had recently investigated a murder that had involve
d Slovak money deposited in Austrian banks, he had ordered her to accompany him to explain the practical aspects of the problems. Of the three, only Halco was enjoying himself. He had married an Austrian woman and was looking forward to meeting her and his Austrian in-laws for dinner at the posh Sacher Hotel, since his father-in-law would pick up the check. He went on and on about it, as both Trokan and Jana tried to ignore him.
Trokan and Jana were in civilian clothes. Jana was snacking on a huge salted pretzel she had just bought from a kiosk that advertised thirteen types of pretzels, trying not to pay attention to the other pedestrians who gave her critical stares for munching as she walked their pristine streets. The three had just crossed the Ringstrasse when Jana saw Kamin. He was striding along next to a woman who easily kept pace with him, a woman who had that mixture of Asian and European features that made passing men take second and third looks at her.
Jana touched Trokan on the arm, indicating Kamin. Trokan took a few seconds to recognize him. Then his face reflected his anger.
“There goes the man who has been responsible for half of the major criminal acts in Slovakia. No,” he corrected himself. “Judas Iscariot is dead, so more than half.”
“He was never caught.”
“‘Never’ might not include today.” Trokan quickly decided that he could dispense with Jana’s presence at the meeting. “Follow him. See where he’s going.”
Jana broke away from Trokan and Halco, crossed the street, and increased her pace to catch up with Kamin and his companion, then slowed her stride to match theirs. Kamin and the woman appeared not in the least interested in conversing with each other, nor concerned with the stores, buildings, or people they passed. They entered a cozy-looking café that blended in with the other storefronts lining the Strasse.
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