Hot Siberian (17 page)

They walked him down the Quai Woodrow Wilson to where it became the Quai du Mont-Blanc. Along the way they conversed with him about such things as how clean and breathable was the air of Geneva. They also recommended a couple of the city's better restaurants. At the corner of rue de Monthoux they crossed him over to the lake side and went down the grassy incline to a public jetty.

That was where things began to feel odder to Newfeld. There was the proximity of the huge lake and the lapping sounds of it, the bows of tied-up boats bobbing, the creaks and croaks of various frictions. Newfeld had never been one for water. He and boats were absolute strangers. He didn't know how to swim and hadn't given that a thought in a half century.

Fred climbed aboard a speedboat, a slick Riva. He extended his hand to assist Newfeld.

“Where are we going?” Newfeld asked.

“Just down the lake a way.”

“Why?”

Fred didn't reply, just put compassion in his eyes and kept his hand out, and finally Newfeld took it, placed his foot on the nonslip patch on the gunwale, and allowed himself to be helped aboard. Horace undid the mooring lines and got in behind the steering wheel. Fred sat with Newfeld in the passenger seats behind. Horace started up the Riva. Its exhaust gurgled at the waterline for a few moments and then the Riva drew slowly away from the jetty. Newfeld managed to subdue a panic in him. He hugged his business case.

Once clear of all other boats the Riva was given some throttle, and after going about four hundred meters it passed by the Jetée des Paquins. Then it was in open water and Horace brought it up to full speed. The roar of the engine and the hit of the wind made speech impossible, so Newfeld couldn't inquire, had to presume their destination was some lakeside villa or town more easily accesible by boat. What other reason?

Horace kept the Riva on a straight course for thirty kilometers. He abruptly cut the throttle, all the way to idle. At that point the lake was at its widest, the shore six kilometers off in each direction.

“Mr. Newfeld, sir, may I please see inside your business case?”

Newfeld handed it over, and Fred searched through its contents and examined it for a concealed compartment. Satisfied, he took time to make it neat, closed it, and placed it on the vacant front seat. “Will you be so kind as to stand, sir?” Fred requested.

Newfeld complied.

Horace felt Newfeld's pockets and then frisked him up and down, thoroughly but not roughly.

Newfeld thought Horace would certainly detect the pouch he had around his calf, but then it seemed Horace had missed it, because he didn't say anything, just gazed blankly at Fred. They'd take him back to Geneva now, Newfeld thought. They'd done their duty. They'd put him ashore and he'd go on to the bank and do the deal.

Horace brought out a knife. A small, ivory-sided pocketknife with a single short blade. He opened it with his thumbnail. He reached down and inserted the blade in under the cuff of Newfeld's left trouser leg. He slit the trouser leg up to the knee, revealing the pouch.

“You could have asked me for it,” Newfeld said.

“We didn't want to trouble you,” Fred explained. He removed the pouch from Newfeld's leg, went into it for its contents, unfolded each of three packets. The diamonds seemed to go insane in the sunlight. They scintillated even more when Fred stirred them with the tip of a finger. “Where did you get these?” he asked as though only mildly inquisitive.

“I'm middling them for someone,” Newfeld replied.

“For whom?”

“A man named Tarasov.”

“A Russian.”

“Yes.”

“Is that his actual name?”

“I have no idea.”

“Where might we get in touch with this Tarasov?”

“I don't know that either.”

“Seems unlikely.”

“Really, I don't,” Newfeld said. He considered the circumstances and wondered why he wasn't more frightened. His age, perhaps.

“We're supposed to confiscate these goods,” Fred told him. “That's the System's normal procedure in a situation of this sort. But how would you like to have them back and just go on and do your business?”

“That would be agreeable.”

“All you need do is tell us how we can locate this Tarasov person.”

“I honestly don't know,” Newfeld said. It was the truth. The deal had been kept that one-sided. He glanced down. “You've ruined my trousers,” he said, “and I didn't bring along another pair. What will people think?”

It took little more than a nudge from Fred to topple Newfeld overboard. It could have been taken as an accident. Newfeld went into the water awkwardly, sideways. He plunged right under and didn't know enough to try not to breathe, so he took water up his nostrils and down his throat. Panic made him grab at the water as though it were substantial. At once, his clothing was soaked heavy and his shoes were like weights with the purpose to sink him. Which way was air?

Then suddenly there was a blue that had to be sky. And he caught a glimpse of the speedboat. It wasn't right there. It had moved out of reach. Newfeld floundered. In his flailing to keep afloat, his arm struck upon something graspable. A life preserver. He managed to hook his arm through it. The life preserver had a line attached. Fred drew the preserver and Newfeld to the boat. He helped Newfeld climb up onto the gunwale, not quite aboard.

Newfeld heard through the water in his ears Fred asking that same question concerning the whereabouts of Tarasov. Newfeld shook his head that he didn't know. Fred let go of him. Newfeld fell back into the water. This time ass-first. He went under deeper.

Three times Fred and Horace threw the life preserver to Newfeld, helped him partway aboard, and put that same question to him. He kept on telling them the truth, and they kept dropping him back in.

The fourth time they believed him.

And let him drown.

CHAPTER

9

AT FOUR-THIRTY, TUESDAY AFTERNOON, ALMOST PRECISELY
to the second in keeping with its schedule, Aeroflot Flight SU-244 touched down at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow.

Nikolai ignored the lighted seat-belt sign overhead. He was already unbuckled when the Ilyushin-62 jet reversed its engines, ran out its speed, and taxied back to the main terminal. He also disregarded the flight attendant's demand that he remain in his seat. She told him twice curtly and then, miffed at being so flagrantly disobeyed, shot at him something to the effect that he and his foolish ass that he was intent on breaking would go to hell. Nikolai responded with a good-natured wink, and she tried hard to hold back her smile.

It seemed to Nikolai to take forever for the docking ramp to be brought into place and the hatch opened. He was the first passenger off. His sprint up the enclosed ramp sounded like muffled beats on a metal drum, and as he dashed down the corridor in the direction of customs, people got out of his way and looked warily at him as though he were a culprit being chased. At customs he searched for any familiar official face, saw no one he recognized, and committed himself to the routine. A prematurely gray-haired customs officer with bad vodka eyes nodded once at Nikolai as though to save his valuable voice. Nikolai handed over his passport. Its red cover told the customs officer it was a permanent external passport, good for unlimited foreign travel. It also told him that with this one he should be a degree more efficient and, no matter what, less strict. He would not ask to see inside the man's carry-on bag. He matched the photograph in the passport with Nikolai's face and thumbed quickly through the pages, noticing the Moscow, Leningrad, and London stamped entries. He decided Nikolai Petrovich Borodin surely deserved an unusual “sir” along with the usual questions that were asked like a rapid litany with no pauses for replies. The passport was stamped hard and neatly initialed and returned to Nikolai, who knew he'd been treated with swift preference but considered it a wasted four minutes. He hurried through the terminal proper and out to a taxi, a tiny Zaporzhet. The driver had a heavy foot and excellent reflexes, used the car as though it were a well-trained frightened insect, and just moments later it was out on the straight of Leningradsky Prospekt headed for central Moscow.

Nikolai, cramped in the backseat, knees knifed up to the level of his chest, didn't look out at the mainly gray, uninteresting hem of Moscow. He glanced at his watch, which told him it was quarter to five and that he couldn't possibly make the five-o'clock meeting. He'd be lucky to be only a half hour late. Now he knew he shouldn't have cut it so thin. First of all, he shouldn't have let himself be persuaded to spend Sunday night in the country. No matter that his intention had been good, and he and Vivian had left Pennymoor yesterday morning with an hour to spare for him to make the eleven-thirty Aeroflot flight from Heathrow, the last flight of the day. Three miles north of the Trenton turn-off the Bent had started coughing, and within another mile it died. It was trying for attention, Vivian claimed, either that or resentfully getting back for all the concern she'd withheld. She chided the Bent, promised it lifelong care, threatened it with some dreadful carrion junk-pile. After each approach she expectantly turned the ignition key. However, the Bent merely sniffled and coughed and again died. Nikolai got out and raised the hood in the hope that what was wrong might be as obvious as something visibly disconnected. He'd never been one for engines. He hitched a ride back to Trenton for the help of a greasy-handed teenaged mechanic who diagnosed right off as though he were clairvoyant that the Bent's fuel line was clogged. Translated into Vivian's terms, the poor Bent had suffered an embolism. She and Nikolai sat in the car and impotently watched the minutes go by while the mechanic did the special mysterious things he had to do. By the time the Bent was back on the M4 and again running without complaint, Aeroflot Flight SU-242 was twenty-five-thousand feet above Belgium and climbing.

Vivian told Nikolai not to despair, there was a bright side on the other side of every contretemps, if only one would flip it over. Why not look at this as their being given a bonus night? Time that they would have spent apart had been transformed into time they could be together. With that frame of mind they had a splendid dinner at Blades and the night took on the temper of an event.

Now, however, in the cooler light of the Russian late afternoon, Nikolai was alone and being swiftly carried to the payment of a professional price, which, at the least, would be a severe chastening. He had only himself and the Bent to blame. Was it too much to ask of him that he be on time for a general trade meeting in Moscow every other month? It didn't matter that the meetings were always dull and little more than reunions barraged with statistics on tractors, wheat, fish, and such—he should have shown up early, coated his apathy with interest, made an impression of conscientiousness on a deputy minister or two. That was what most of the other trade mission representatives would do, trying to italicize, underline, redden their names on the old
nomenklatura
so someday, with luck soon, they might be called home and elevated to assistant deputy minister. Nikolai, however, had no such ambitions. Besides, the assistant deputy minister job and Moscow were already his if he wanted it, he believed. Savich had said as much last week after the Churcher meeting. From that Nikolai gathered Savich had him already on the
asnovrior
, the
Bone
list of candidates for such higher positions whenever they were voluntarily or otherwise vacated. What Nikolai wanted was to keep things just as they were—his job, London, Devon, and Vivian. Now that he gave it a second thought, perhaps being tardy for this meeting was to his advantage. The lapse would be noted, of course, might someday be the deciding factor in keeping him from being promoted. Vivian was right again, he thought, there
is
always a brighter side. He relaxed. His mind stopped considering the credibility of various excuses. He would just say vaguely that his lateness was unavoidable, which was true, and if they asked for more of an explanation he'd give them another truth, that he'd missed his plane. That should do it.

He arrived at the ministry at five-thirty and went directly to the regular meeting room. It was empty. They couldn't have adjourned so quickly. He inquired and was told that the larger, more important room at the far end of the corridor was being used. That didn't bode well. A Foreign Ministry man who Nikolai assumed was also a
gebeshnik
was sentried at the closed door to that meeting room. Nikolai had to identify himself to be allowed in. As unobtrusively as possible he sat in a folding metal chair along the wall just to the right of the entrance and immediately appeared attentive. Ludvik Stolar, the senior deputy minister, was speaking. There were about a hundred trade mission representatives in the room, twice as many as usual. They were being allowed to smoke, and the air was thick with it. There were frequent coughs and clearings of throats. It was evident to Nikolai that this was no routine meeting. He spotted Savich seated near the speaker's lectern, and noticed he was dressed in his Moscow clothes: a neat but rather nondescript gray suit and subdued tie.

Stolar was a terrible speaker. He tried so hard to be emphatic that just about every word came out stressed and shrill. He was approximately Savich's age, had been next in line under Savich for twenty years. It was no secret that he coveted Savich's job, Savich's position on the Central Committee Secretariat and all the privileges that went with it, but the pervasive opinion was that Stolar really couldn't stand in Savich's shadow and it was only Savich's cunning that allowed the proximity. What was smarter than having a cripple chasing you? it was said. Very privately, Savich referred to Stolar as
nyekulturnyi
. This most stinging of all disparagement had in typical Russian mouth-to-ear fashion gotten back to Stolar, who was so irate that he summoned up nerve enough to obliquely confront Savich with it. Savich told him, yes,
nyekulturnyi
was what he'd said and meant. Then Stolar took refuge in refusing to believe it.