Gold Digger (11 page)

He breathed deeply, tried to make the anger go away, but knew full well that he was on the verge of turning back and punching whichever LeBeau showed his face first.

“I’m sorry. Shit, and I knew he’d try that!”

“You knew they’d want to get rid of Ruslan?”

“Not the details. But I did talk to Henri when we met. Maybe he tried to warn me.”

Tamás frowned. “Why would he do that?”

Why. Why. Nikolai pulled his phone out. No reception meant no taxi. “Fuck! Sorry for the late-evening walk.”

Tamás shrugged and looked around, but didn’t say anything much. Nikolai kept his eyes on the dark road in front of them. “I’ll talk to Ruslan about this. I think we might end up needing a white knight.”

“White knight?”

“It’s a stock trading expression. Somebody friendly who buys us before LBM can. Makes Cybele sound like a damsel in distress, which is so fucking weird.” Nikolai shook his head. “I think it’s time to unleash some bankers. Seriously. This is a fucking pile of shit. And I’ll make Ruslan listen to me this time round. All this bullshit is just distracting us from any real work, and there’s plenty of that.”

“Car,” Tamás said.

Indeed. Headlights up front. Nikolai pulled a bit to the side, aware that in the darkness, a drunk or otherwise occupied driver might not see them in time, despite the headlights. He pushed Tamás to the side along with him, but the car had already slowed. It was a taxi.

The driver rolled down the window. “For Krasnorada?” he asked.

“That’s me.”

The driver waved them inside. “Had a call to pick you up.”

Henri?

“Thanks. That’s perfect.” Make it sound less confused and less random, like they’d expected it. “Just get us back to the Drake Hotel.”

“I’ll leave talking to Ruslan to you, Nikolai. You have the full story,” Tamás said while they were keeping an eye on the departures board.

“Yeah, thanks.” He was widely considered Ruslan’s best friend among the “Attis boys.” Maybe because they both came from oil or maybe because they were both technically Russians, though Nikolai had grown up in Hungary and never served in the army and didn’t intend to ever tell Ruslan that. He had a vague idea that Ruslan wouldn’t look kindly on a man whose mother had bought him out of the draft thanks to a corrupt official. He’d never expected that to turn into a stigma with other Russians—he despised the idea of military service in theory and on principle. There was no romance in it, and he’d seen what it had done to his father.

Your father was a pilot who crashed in Afghanistan and died.

Well, to
Vadim,
then.

There were things he’d kept even from Ruslan, and the man knew more about him than pretty much everybody.

“There’s your gate, Tamás—have a good flight.”

Tamás hugged him tight for a moment, gave him a shoulder-slap, then got his sports bag with his clothes and rushed off toward his gate. Nikolai settled in a corner of the terminal and waited for the San Francisco flight to come up, playing idly with his phone until he was bored with Tetris. He had avoided listening to the messages in his voicemail. Unknown caller. Could really only be Henri, maybe to check whether he’d gotten back to the hotel all right. He wasn’t ready to think about it, or Henri, or what that damned takeover meant for his friends and his own life or when it would happen.

He dialed Ruslan’s number. “Hi Ruslan. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything, but LBM’s going to screw us.”

“What happened?”

“They were interested, but they wanted to use their votes to get you replaced by the junior. Henri LeBeau. Said he’d done something similar in Mali.”

“Malawi. The Saturn prospect.”

“Okay, you’re up to date.”

“No, but I did research on this Henri.”

“Well, he’d have been your successor. They were going to put you in as a senior adviser and Henri would have taken over Cybele.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“I told them both to go fuck themselves. Which wasn’t really my place. I should have waited for your call on that. I mean, it’s your baby. I should have respected that, too.” He rubbed his forehead, itchy with nervousness and residual anger. “But I was just so angry about the whole thing.”

“Why angry? Anything that made it personal?”

Well, I fucked the junior and then he turned around and stabbed me in the back.
“No. Yes. I went out to dinner with Henri and he seemed like a nice guy.”

“You bond in the very old-fashioned way, Kolya.”

I’m not sure anal sex counts as old-fashioned there.
Nikolai suppressed a grimace. Ruslan was the only guy on the planet who used the affectionate diminutive of his name, which oddly only cemented their bond. “I like to know who and what I’m dealing with. Why is everybody in the world out to screw each other?”

Screw? Interesting world choice.

“I mean, shit. If you’d been here, things would have gone totally differently. They’d have seen what a genius you are.”

“Yes, maybe you’re right. What do you suggest now?”

“We need to get a white knight in. They’ll buy us, Ruslan, whether we want to or not. I don’t think the silverback is going to live down that I told him to go fuck himself. Personally, I wouldn’t. Anybody said that to me in my own house, I’d make them regret it. So, I fucked up.”

“You keep saying that.” Ruslan sounded amused, despite everything, and despite what Cybele meant to him. “I can try talking to some people who approached us earlier, but LBM was our first choice. It doesn’t matter now. Maybe we do have to throw some corporate finance people at the problem.”

“Which is expensive.”

“We’re sitting on a big pile of gold. We’ll be fine. So, you’re off to meet your father?”

No, he’s dead.
“Yes, looks like it. Keeping my head down, I guess. At least I’ll be safe from LBM’s hired killers. My old man was
Spetsnaz
.”

“Haha. Good luck. If you want to vanish from the face of the earth, New Zealand is a good place to begin. Safe travels!”

“Thanks.” Nikolai ended the call and leaned back, closing his eyes for a long moment. Just why was he feeling so miserable? Ruslan would take care of it, and he’d owe him again, and what was it about Ruslan that made him think the man actually, honestly, really cared about him? But he’d thought that Henri liked him, too. And there was no competition between a friend and a fuck.

Wow. Henri. Can of worms. Despite that fuck-up, despite that nasty last scene in that ostentatious house, there was also this other guy, who laughed and joked and liked stupid cars. The banter. Yeah, that had been easy. The sex, pretty damn fantastic.

And that was the problem.

Nikolai picked up his bag and straightened. Vadim wasn’t in the small crowd waiting in Palmerston North Airport. Admittedly, New Zealand didn’t really do crowds. Just as Nikolai was about to fish out his phone, Vadim pushed through the doors. He stuck out because he was so tall and still wide-shouldered, never mind perfectly dressed. Nikolai, worn down by more than twenty hours on three different planes, was too exhausted to do more than stare, bleary-eyed, at the man he’d always thought was his father.

“Nikolai.” He came over and paused, as if momentarily unsure whether to take his baggage off him, or offer his hand or a hug. He settled on a hug and then took the baggage. “How are you? Bad flight?”

“No no, it was good. Just, you know, if I believed in Hell, it would be sitting in a plane and never arriving.”

Vadim laughed and put a hand on his shoulder, guiding him gently. Nikolai was so dazed from the flip-flopped time zone that he had almost no will of his own left. “Hop into the car,” Vadim said, steering him to a shiny new 4x4—the contrast couldn’t have been bigger to—

Fuck Henri.

He climbed into the car while Vadim threw his suitcase into the back. When he sat down next to Nikolai, Nikolai just regarded him, the gray hair, the lined face, the big shoulders and very respectable biceps beneath his shirt. He looked like a supremely active, healthy, happy, sixty-year-old. Sixty-something. “You’re looking good.”

“Home? You look like something spat you out.”

Nikolai yawned. “I slept a bit on the plane. What day is it? I’m not completely sure.”

“Our booking starts today, but we can drive there in the evening, if you prefer to sleep.”

“Home, then.”

Vadim started the car and drove off, and Nikolai glanced at all the large, handsome houses as they drifted past. Everything felt all right in laidback Palmy. It always seemed remote enough to be peaceful, which was probably why his father had chosen to stay here. Then they left the small town and were out in the green Manawatu Plains. Down into a valley, across a river, and there it was, what Vadim called “home.”

“I can just crash on the couch,” Nikolai said when they were inside, desperate to close his itching eyes.

“We do have a guest room.” Vadim regarded him with crossed arms. “Though, no. We moved some furniture in there. We’re redecorating the office.”

“I’ve slept in much worse places.”

“Just go upstairs, use our bed. It has fresh sheets and is the quietest room in the house.”

Nikolai smiled and shook his head. “As long as you’ve . . . removed all the sex toys.”

Vadim gave him a quizzical look. “Don’t open any drawers.”

“God, no. I never do. Anywhere.” Nikolai paused and noticed Vadim’s unease. And now he felt like a dirtbag. Talking about sex with his father—
not
his father—was something he never thought he’d do, even if it was just sex in very general terms. He hated that haunted look in Vadim’s eyes. Was he at peace with being gay? Was he at peace with the idea that Nikolai knew he had sex? What was that weird silence between them? “I . . . uh. That was Too Much Information, right?”

Vadim waved him off, but what would have looked like an easy, throwaway gesture for anybody else became a grave and serious thing with Vadim. “Go to bed. You’re exhausted.”

“Okay. What are you going to do?”

“Fix something to eat and call somebody.”

“Who?”

“My therapist.”

Seemed he couldn’t take a step without putting his foot in it. “Are you all right?”

“Just forgot to tell him I won’t be around for the normal appointment this week.”

“Okay.” He should think, sit and talk to Vadim, but his brain felt like it was swollen and rubbing against the inside of his skull. “It’s good to see you. Really good. I hope I’ll be coherent in a few hours. Maybe wake me in the afternoon?”

Vadim nodded, and Nikolai grabbed his bag and headed upstairs. He knew where the master bedroom was. Vadim had taken him there to show him the dark wooden panel hanging over their bed that a native Maori artist had carved for them. Two war chiefs, engaged in what could have been a battle, a dance, or sex, done in a modern interpretation of traditional Maori art.

He sat down on the bed, pulled off his shoes, then grabbed a woolen blanket and lay down, too tired and sore to think about anything.

Somebody woke him, and he opened his eyes. Vadim was sitting on the bed. “Coffee?”

“Uh, yeah.” Nikolai rubbed his face and sat up, feeling a great deal more awake than he had been. The sun was low; it had to be late afternoon. He reached over and Vadim put a mug in his hand. The coffee was made with milk, no sugar, as Nikolai always had it. He remembered he’d dreamed of something. Henri. He groaned and shook his head.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah, just a weird dream.”

Vadim gave a measured nod. “How did it make you feel?”

Nikolai shrugged. “Confused, I think.” He sipped the coffee and felt a little bit more awake. A hot drink could sometimes really bring body and soul back together, especially during a shift on a North Sea rig. “Damn, this is good coffee.”

Vadim didn’t respond; he just watched attentively, and Nikolai reminded himself that this was pretty much normal. Compared to a lively guy like Henri—and why did Henri come up all the time?—Vadim was stoic and impassive. There was a sense of calm, but it always hid a much deeper sense of disquiet. The trauma. He’d never be able to touch that, or even reach those dark parts of his father. Well
,
“father.”