Hot Siberian (53 page)

Valkov shook off the last drops and rehid his penis. There was used scummy water in the sink, several miniature bars of soap turning to slime on its limited surface. Valkov decided he was better off not washing his hands. He returned to his seat. Within moments the Tu-154 shuddered as its speed was abruptly reduced. The descent had begun. Valkov hardly noticed. His mind was still so overcrowded with Savich. He thought of how Savich had concocted the day, started it out with being amiable, treating him like a confidant. Savich had carried that throughout lunch and then had sprung on him with all his claws. Why? Why had Savich bothered to set him up like that? No doubt he'd had an ulterior motive, Valkov thought, but what?

It came to him.

Sweeper.

He'd been so caught up in Savich's charm and taken so unawares by his attack that he'd forgotten to use his personal sweeper.

Savich had probably been wired.

That had to be it. The son of a bitch now had every word on tape. Valkov tried to recollect what had been said. Surely he'd incriminated himself. But then, so had Savich. Savich wouldn't hang himself with that tape. What would he do? Savich would electronically alter his own voice to make it unidentifiable. The conversation would sound as though it had taken place between him, Valkov, and some anonymous conspirator. Could that be done? Hadn't Savich remarked just last week that anything was electronically possible these days? What a crafty shit Savich was. All high officials were schemers, professionals in taking advantage of naive people. That was how they got where they were and were able to hang on to their privileged positions. Savich wouldn't go to the trouble of creating such evidence as the tape unless he intended to use it. At the very least Savich had the tape now to hold over his head and keep him in line. And, as well, to ensure that if their
na levo
, on-the-side, Aikhal enterprise ever came to surface, it would be he, Valkov, who'd take the fall—alone. He'd done all the recruiting, the organizing. It had been Savich's idea, but he had put it together and kept it together. He was exposed, not Savich.

No doubt Savich was sure he had him. Like an insect trapped inside an inverted drinking glass. Savich was sure he'd have to go along with defecting now. Savich hadn't merely suggested doing it now, he'd given it the ring of an ultimatum. This wasn't the time to defect, Valkov decided. Two shipments from Aikhal were already in process for the coming month. Larger shipments. It would be a waste to cancel them. Anyway, who was Savich to determine that they already had ample wealth? The West was expensive. One had to pay for everything. Millionaires were commonplace there. People who did nothing but swat and bounce balls around made millions. So did singers who couldn't consistently sing on key. The requirement for being categorized as one of the wealthy had escalated. There was even a new designation: the
truly
wealthy. Just recently he'd read that in America, for example, there were now ninety thousand individuals worth in excess of ten million dollars. It shattered the very concept of being rich. Nothing would be worse, he thought, than his defecting and then discovering he'd not helped himself to enough.

Valkov disregarded the seat-belt sign. He knew it always came on early. There was no reason why for the next ten minutes he had to sit there bound up like some disciple of de Sade. The woman seated next to him leaned toward him and asked was something wrong with the plane that seatbelts were being required? Puffs of garlic exploded at him through her rose-burdened atmosphere. Valkov ignored her, turned away. It was important that he resolve Savich and Borodin before landing. It was one of his ways—imposing such arbitrary deadlines on himself. He believed it proved his decisiveness.

Savich and Borodin.

They were inseparable, Valkov thought. He could no longer picture one without the other popping up. He really didn't need ten minutes of mulling to settle on how to deal with them. His foresight had seen to that. He was blessed with remarkable foresight. (He'd have Yelena add that to her list of his many attributes.) Long ago he'd bought his insurance against a Savich crisis such as this. Now it was just a matter of putting it into force. As for Borodin, he'd be even easier. This time it would come from in close where it couldn't miss. So unexpected Borodin wouldn't realize it had happened … until it had.

CHAPTER

29

IN KEEPING WITH SAVICH'S SUGGESTION, NIKOLAI AND VIVIAN
drove to Devon that Sunday night. During the drive down, Vivian was quiet, responding to Nikolai's attempts at conversation with as few words as possible, getting away with a mm-hmm or an uh-huh whenever she could. She didn't request that Nikolai touch her, not even the back of her neck, which was ordinarily her absolute minimum. She kept her eyes on the highway ahead and her hands on the steering wheel.

Nikolai thought she might just be in a little emotional dip and perhaps some music would help elevate her. He put on a compact disk of Debussy preludes. After only a minute of it she told him to turn it down. Without a please. Nikolai reasoned if she wanted less volume she really wanted none, so he clicked off the Debussy. He waited and suffered until they were a few miles beyond Bristol before asking: “Have I done or said something wrong?” He had to ask twice.

Her reply was sharp: “No.”

When they arrived at the Devon house, Vivian made him a mug of hot chocolate and a toasted cheddar sandwich. Did so with silent, dutiful efficiency, as though she'd been programmed. She fixed nothing for herself, just grabbed a couple of green and bitter outer stalks of celery to chomp on and went up to bed. Twenty minutes later when Nikolai went up she was already turned onto her side and apparently asleep, which, of course, precluded the good-night peck and “Love you” that Nikolai liked to carry into his unconsciousness.

Monday morning her disposition hadn't improved. By then, however, Nikolai had decided on what it was that had her perturbed and how best he should cope with it. Although by mere proximity he'd be taking the brunt of her premenstrual stress at least he knew he wasn't the cause of it. He had only to weather it for its duration, which would be until she started flowing. That he be more patient than usual and not nearly so reactive wasn't much to ask of him, he thought. After all, she didn't have PMS every month. In fact, she'd had it only three or four times that he knew of since they'd been together. Those times there'd been some unprovoked lashing-out by her, but she'd also been able to temper it with telling him not to mind her, that at the moment she just had much too much water on the brain. “Slosh, slosh,” she'd said, shaking her head.

So far this time Vivian was far removed from making light of her condition. At the breakfast table, whatever Nikolai said, no matter how neutral, got snapped at. The words that came from his mouth seemed to get attacked in midair—like friendly planes being decimated by heat-seeking missiles, he imagined. Even when he didn't say anything there was still some snapping. The safest thing was to get out of range. Vivian helped that by announcing she was going to an auction at a private estate in Wembworthy, some fifteen miles away. Not that she was thinking of going or did he mind if she went or did he feel like going with her, but straight-out intentional exclusion.

She left him the dishes to do while she went and got dressed. He waited until she was surely gone before doing them.

His hands in sudsy water caused him to think of how his father had never washed a dish, never once helped Irina with keeping the house. Grandfather Maksim had, often, but not his father. The most his father had ever done was rinse the brandy glasses after a visit by his party cronies, most of whom were local and district officials, ambitious and privilege-hungry. Unlike his father. It was his father's stance that being a man and being an architect were sufficient accomplishments—a man who apparently believed it essential that he view love as unessential and an architect who would draw whatever he was told to draw, denying that he had any appetite for invention. Perhaps, Nikolai thought, beneath all his helpless self-defeat, his father really had been ambitious. Certainly his arid personality and bitter outlook had been short tethers. Practically all his father's cronies were chosen ahead of him. It was sad. Nikolai enjoyed the squeak of the wet dishes in his fingers. He dried them and put them away correctly, wiped off the stove and countertop and hung the dishtowels neatly on their rack.

He went out on the terrace. It was the loveliest sort of Devon day. He considered taking a long walk, perhaps all the way into Pennyworth to the baker for a loaf of fresh bread and some scones, but then he thought he might miss Savich's call. Savich would probably ring up Churcher first thing that morning and settle matters with him, at least get them put on hold with promises of concessions. And what then, Nikolai asked himself, when this mess had been cleaned up? It was doubtful that Savich would want him to continue on his London assignment. Churcher might want him to stay, though. For tactical reasons. To have someone around he could point to as an example of misplaced trust in the Soviets. Churcher might for that petty reason stipulate that he remain on. That would be terrible servitude. On the other hand, even if he was promised, swear-to-Lenin promised, that there'd be no disciplinary measures taken, he couldn't return to Russia. Vivian and Russia were an impossible fit. Thus he'd be going back without his heart. Under that condition the best sort of life there, no matter how cushioned and convenienced by privileges, would be the same as exile. Savich understood that. When he and Savich briefly touched upon defection, Savich hadn't come right out and recommended it to him, but that was the impression.

Nikolai turned on the garden hose and washed bird droppings from the pavement of the terrace and the terrace furniture. He dried off the Lutyens-style teak bench and spread newspapers on it. Newspapers would be too confusing a background, he decided, so when he went into the house for the full vacuum-cleaner bags he also brought out a blue bedsheet. He spread the sheet on the table and dumped the contents of one of the bags onto it. Shards and fragments of Czech crystal. They were an impossible little heap. Nikolai used a wooden kitchen spoon to spread them into a single layer. Hunched over, he scanned them with a magnifying glass. Somewhere in the vacuum-cleaner bags of smashed crystal, he believed, were nine diamonds of a carat each. Ten days ago when he and Vivian had gleaned diamonds from the crystal they'd come up nine short of an even five thousand carats. Only by fortunate oversight had the vacuum-cleaner bags not been thrown out with the trash. In their hurry to depart for Switzerland and Antwerp they'd forgotten to put the trash out for collection, so yesterday Nikolai had salvaged the bags and brought them along, ten altogether.

It took Nikolai close to an hour to find one of the diamonds. At that rate it would be an all-day task. Nikolai encouraged himself with the fact that each diamond was a flawless Aikhal worth eighteen thousand dollars. Finding all nine would bring him one hundred and sixty-two thousand. He'd need the money for a bridge to a new life. He planned to be careful with it, not let it get within a mile of a roulette wheel. In addition to the nine there were the two diamonds he'd taken out on memorandum when he'd last met with Churcher. They'd been forgotten in a vest pocket of the business suit he'd had on that day and not worn since. Churcher would want those two back, or else payment of thirty-six thousand. Stickler that Churcher was, he'd probably send a bill for them. Why not beat Churcher to it and get those two off to him right away by registered post? Nikolai thought. No sooner had that thought entered his mind than, it seemed, Irina was there to veto it by pointing out that one hundred sixty-two plus thirty-six would be one hundred ninety-eight, a fairer figure. On second thought, Irina continued, as long as he had in mind becoming a British sort of gentleman, shouldn't he start immediately to get into the ways of one by not even thinking of doing anything about those two diamonds until the System had dunned him at least a dozen times? Her third thought was that, seeing all he'd been through he should consider those diamonds his and to hell with it. He deserved. Irina hovered around awhile and then went wherever it was she went.

Nikolai recovered only three diamonds from the next four vacuum-cleaner bags. Then the task took pity on him and allowed him to find all the remaining five in the sixth bag. He tidied up everything and deposited his small fortune in an envelope, which he sealed well and put in his business case. He'd go up to London in a week or so and sell the diamonds one at a time to dealers in Hatton Gardens, transform them into a balance in a bank account.

Why didn't Savich phone? Perhaps, Nikolai thought, Churcher was giving him a bad time, being overly demanding. One thing about the British: usually when they had a pound of flesh coming they wanted a whole arm. No matter. He had total confidence in Savich. Savich, in Russian fashion, would make it appear to be an arm he was giving but it would really be no more than a finger. He truly liked Savich, admired him. Evidently Savich had always been a roué, but it seemed he'd always been honest in that conduct, never hypocritical or vacillating. He hadn't cheated on anyone or on himself, so there were no chunks out of him where blame fit. It was difficult to imagine anyone being able to blame Savich for anything. As powerful as he was and with his self-declared personal immunity, blame would roll right off him. Nikolai wondered if Savich had ever in his life permitted blame to get to him deep enough to ripen into guilt. Was it possible to be that consistently invulnerable and remain enthusiastic? Perhaps that was one reason women were so attracted to Savich. They, with their embraces, saw him as a supreme challenge, not only someone they might erotically claim but also someone superbly resistant to the blames and guilts they were usually easily able to implant. All those women.