Requiem For a Glass Heart (28 page)

“But it is all right,” Bontate added with a dismissive wave of his cigarette. “We know who they are. We imagine that by now they have bugged Stepanov’s and Izvarin’s suites. As for yours, nothing yet, because when you checked into a different suite from the one reserved for you, they were caught off guard, and you have been in there since you arrived. They don’t know you’re out now. But they will probably get around to it, so be aware of that.”

“Do they—Izvarin and Volkov—know about the FBI?”

Bontate shook his head. “We don’t think so. Did you know they flew in here in disguise, like a couple of clowns?”

“No.”

“The FBI also has directional microphones in the dining rooms,” Bontate went on. “You can’t discuss anything in those places. Just forget the hotel.”

“And you think you can get me in and out of there without the FBI knowing?” she asked. She was seething, but refused to let it show. What in God’s name had Sergei done to her?

Carlo Bontate nodded. “Believe me, we are not surprised at the FBI’s presence. We expected it, so there is some comfort in knowing we were right. And we were prepared for it, so there’s comfort in that too.” He drank from his glass of wine, keeping his eyes on her just as he had done at Marineo.
“However, we do not believe the FBI knows that Wei and I are here. And that is the way we want to keep it.”

“So they were expecting Sergei?”

Wei Tsing nodded. “So it seems. Or, to be more accurate, we think they had some information that he might be coming and so they alerted their customs people. It didn’t require much to flag them when they applied for visas. They still watch all the Russians anyway.”

“Do you think he knows about the FBI?”

Wei nodded, studying her. “As you said to me one time, Irina, Sergei probably knows exactly what he is doing.”

“The FBI is not infallible,” Bontate added. “They are a vain organization—excellent, without a doubt—but they hide their failures almost as well as they publicize their successes. We are used to having our way with the FBI more often than the public knows.”

She caught the sexual allusion, but it hardly mattered to her. The fact that she was already under surveillance by the FBI was now her paramount concern, second even to the business she still had to do with these two men.

“Actually,” Wei said, “we don’t really disapprove of Sergei’s, ah, extreme precautions regarding himself. We much prefer him to keep his distance from us, considering his personal liabilities. But you are his only connection to us, and we are disappointed that he didn’t take more care in keeping you clean.”

“But we have that covered,” Bontate assured her. “If you-can safely communicate with Sergei, we can safely communicate with you. It’s just that everyone needs to be … aware.”

A maid entered through the red doors, a black-and-white shape seen from the corner of Irina’s preoccupied eyes. She handed something to Wei, and as she turned Irina absently glanced at her. The woman had looked at Irina too, but was already turning her face away when Irina recognized her. In an instant she remembered the exact movements of the small Asian hands and the fragrance of her skin in the Paris night.

“The laser disk,” Wei said, standing and handing the small clear plastic container to her. Moirés of rainbow light reflected off the tiny platinum disk inside.

Without any visible summons, the two young Sicilians came through the mandarin doors and stopped just inside. As
before, Wei took Irina’s hand, and then led her up from the large scarlet well of the room.

“I would like you to join me tomorrow evening,” he said softly.

She stopped. “You know that can be arranged under the circumstances?”

“Of course.” He hesitated. “I know you are in a strange city, but … if you wanted to bring a friend …”

She nodded and managed to smile. “I think that can be arranged. I will be looking forward to it.”

“So will I.” He smiled too. “Very much.”

Just as she turned to leave, she glanced back at Carlo Bontate, who was standing and waiting for just this brief moment. He nodded at her, his amber eyes curious, searching.

I
RINA SAT IN THE
M
ERCEDES FOR HALF AN HOUR, THE SILENCE
broken only by intermittent bursts from the Sicilians’ radios. The transmissions were in Sicilian; she could not understand them. She had no idea how long she would have to wait, nor did she know Bontate’s reaction to her message.

It had been a bold step, but she knew that if she were to accomplish anything at all, it only could be done by taking bold steps. Coming out of Wei’s house, she literally had trembled as she turned to one of the young men and whispered to him to tell Don Carlo that she needed to speak to him alone tonight. As soon as possible. The young man was very cool. He nodded but made no other gesture. After he had ushered her to the car and closed the door, he said something to the driver, and they waited while he ran back up the steps and reentered the house. He was gone only a few minutes. When he returned, they drove away, straight to the park where they were sitting now, waiting.

Was Bontate telling Wei of her message? Was he discussing it with the Chinese? Would the two men ally against her, or would Bontate keep her request to himself, hear her out first?

She had no way of knowing.

Finally the Sicilians reacted to one of the transmissions.
The driver started the car, and they pulled out onto the road once again.

The restaurant they drove to was on a quiet wooded street in an old section of the city that appeared to be residential, with large two-and three-story homes that had the architectural styles of another century. The restaurant was shrouded by a canopy of huge trees, and near the gravel path that led to the front door a small pale-green neon sign hovered just off the ground:
L’ANGELO.

Two other Mercedes were parked in front of the restaurant—she saw the drivers slumped behind the steering wheels and knew there were guards out of sight in the shadows. Through the lace curtains that covered the tall windows of the old house, Irina could see people dining in the dim lights of large rooms. She was immediately struck by the European feeling of the setting, as though she were arriving at a restaurant in Rome or Vienna. She took this as a good omen and tried to quell the nervousness twitching at the muscles in her stomach.

The young man in the passenger seat got out, opened the door for her, and walked her to the restaurant entry, where one of the Sicilians she had seen at Wei’s met her. He escorted her into one of the dining rooms she had seen from the street. Carlo Bontate was there, sitting at a long table covered with white linen. Two glasses and a fresh bottle of wine sat before him. He was smoking, and he was alone.

Bontate stood, and the bodyguard left the room.

“Thank you for coming alone,” she said, approaching the table.

Don Carlo tilted his head deferentially and pulled out a chair for her next to his. The two of them sat isolated at one end of the dining table. He picked up the wine bottle and lifted his eyebrows questioningly.

“Please,” she said.

He poured. The glasses were crystal and pinged sharply as the green bottle touched the rims. The facets in the cut glass refracted the light through the rich red wine as he placed her glass in front of her. Voices from other rooms were faint, conversational, and the air smelled of cooking spices and old furniture. Bontate sat back in his chair and picked up his cigarette from the ashtray. He smoked, and then mashed it out. He looked at her but said nothing.

“I assume you have a dossier on me,” she said, raising her glass and taking a first sip of the wine.

He nodded unhurriedly. Irina had both forearms on the linen-covered table, her hands touching the wineglass.

“It is not much of a dossier, I would guess.”

He shook his head slowly. “No, it isn’t.”

She really hadn’t expected him to admit it.

“It is very difficult for people to get good information out of Russia,” she conceded. “Secrecy and lies, our historical métier.”

Bontate said nothing. She guessed he did not know the word “métier.”

“I am going to tell you my real story,” she said. “I am not going to lie to you at all, because I want something from you, and before you will consent to give it to me, I know you will have to believe you can trust me.”

Bontate had fixed his brassy eyes on her.

“My real name is Irina Ismaylova,” she said, “and during the last three years I have killed eight people for Sergei Krupatin.”

Bontate did not move a muscle, but he stopped breathing. The only change in his demeanor was an infinitesimal widening of his golden eyes. Then, unhurriedly, he reached for the pack of cigarettes on the table, took out a fresh one, and lighted it.

Irina began with the day when she met Krupatin on her way home from art classes at the Repin Institute. She had been twenty-two years old. During the next half-hour she took Carlo Bontate through the ten years of her life up to the present. Knowing that everything depended on her ability to gain the trust of this innately incredulous man, she was brutally candid about her personal tragedies, about her unhealthy early attraction to Krupatin, about her addiction to drugs, for which she had thrown away her beloved profession, about the humiliations she had suffered as Krupatin’s harlot, about the bleak years of self-hatred. And, she went on. She told him of running away from Krupatin, of the Swiss drug rehabilitation clinic, of Félia and their constant moving from city to city throughout Europe, of how Krupatin finally tracked them down.

Then she told him of Félia’s disappearance and her introduction to her new career as a professional assassin. She went
into detail about the deaths, identifying each hit, where it took place, and when. She knew it was highly likely that Bontate would know of some of these hits, for in Eastern Europe the Sicilians had used the Russians for many of their contract killings. For all she knew, some of the hits might have been done for Bontate himself. Regardless, she knew that the details would ring true, that they would have the air of fact about them.

Her story took her up to the hit on Bolshoy Prospekt and then to the house in South Kensington in London. There she stopped. Her wineglass was empty. She reached for the bottle, but Bontate’s hand was there first, and he filled her glass.

“Thank you,” she said. But she didn’t go on with her story.

“And when did you arrive in London?” he asked.

“Several days ago.”

Bontate nodded. “And then you spent a few days there. A day in Paris. A day with me. And you arrived here last night.”

“Yes.”

“Then there is more to tell yet.”

She sipped the wine. She could read nothing in his face, nothing in his manner. He telegraphed nothing. Less sophisticated than Wei, more stoic than Krupatin, he was no less cunning than either and more reticent than both. Her chest grew tight, and she had to concentrate on keeping calm. Now it was time to put everything on the table.

“In South Kensington,” she said, “Sergei delivered the dossiers of my next two targets.” She leveled her gaze at him. “You and Wei.”

This time the golden eyes did not widen, they narrowed. Bontate held a chest full of smoke and swallowed. He exhaled slowly. His eyes left her, turning away for the first time, glancing through the small panes of the room’s French doors to the front hallway, where his two bodyguards were waiting, unaware that their boss was discussing his own death sentence just a few feet away. He turned his eyes on her again.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Confusion and fear made him angry, like most men. They felt out of control, and they could not understand or envision a world that they did not control. Irina spoke quickly so he would not have to show his anger. Once he did so, he had to commit. It was a visceral law. It made no sense, but she had seen it more than a few
times with any number of men. If they showed their anger, it was a commitment to irrationality.

“I want to make a deal.”

“What! Not to kill me?”

“No, not that. Of course not. I decided I was not going to do that a long time ago. I am not a fool.”

“What is it, then? What are you talking about?”

“I want to make a deal with you to kill Krupatin.”

Bontate gaped at her. This time he could not hide his thoughts behind his eyes. This time she saw his mind racing ahead of her, racing to see what was coming but finding nothing ahead but fog and night.

“Have you talked to Wei too?”

“No.”

“Why? Why are you bringing this to me?”

Her voice was almost a whisper. “Because of my daughter.”

Bontate flinched at the mention of the child. He glared at her, his eyes molten, his face engorged with anger, his round cheeks flushing, swelling. He leaned forward in his chair, about to stand, she thought, perhaps about to fly into a rage. Horror filled her as she realized she had miscalculated, and then suddenly his face froze, the tumescence of passion began to subside, his eyes began to cool. His mind had found an anchor. He sat back in his chair and studied her.

“Your daughter,” he said. “You believe I will agree to bring your daughter out of Russia.”

She nodded. “For killing Krupatin.”

“Christ.” He shook his head slowly.

She rushed ahead. “Signor Bontate, I cannot do this anymore. Not anymore. I have to stop—I must. But … I want my daughter. I want her desperately. I want her back from this Satan, and I want to see him in hell, where he belongs. I have money in Swiss and Belgian accounts. A lot of money. Irina Ismaylova and her daughter will vanish. I know how to do that, to disappear into a new life.”

Bontate studied her, his golden eyes penetrating her, creating veins of gold inside her, permeating her with his understanding. He had to make a decision. This was either an opportunity or a trap—or a disaster in the making. Deciding such questions was the marrow of his existence. This was how he grew rich, how he thrived and how he survived: weighing
the risks of doing business with people whose lives extruded into the extremes of human experience.

She watched all of this judgment moving, seeking balance, in the molten ore of his eyes.

“It is impossible,” he said.

She felt hot inside. “No.”

“How the hell do you expect me to find your daughter in that country?”

“Your people … his people … I know you have communications, contacts inside Russia. You can do it.”

He shook his head. “Even if I could, it would take months.”

“I have waited years. A few months is nothing.” “You could help?”

“No. If I do this, I cannot go back to Russia for a long while. This will cause an upheaval in the
mafiya.
There will be killing, a lot of killing, until someone takes Sergei’s place. I am too close to Sergei to survive what will happen after his death.”

He nodded; he knew she was right. Lighting another cigarette, he studied her through the smoke until it drifted from in front of his eyes.

“What if I refuse to do this?”

She knew he would ask. And she knew exactly how to answer him, but she waited, and with every heartbeat of silence her answer gained credibility. Finally she spoke.

“I don’t know,” she said. She had to strike the right balance of resourcefulness and desperation, to seem enough of a wild card to betray Krupatin in a scheme she had cooked up in two or three days’ time but stable enough to do what she said she would do, to follow through and then disappear.

“But you would figure something out.”

“I would, yes. I want my daughter, and when I get her I want to be left alone.”

Bontate picked up his glass, the thin, delicate crystal looking even more fragile in his thick suntanned hands. He drank all the wine and put the glass on the white linen with a light touch, placing it precisely, a physical representation of his frame of mind. This was a time to be very careful.

“I was surprised to see Volkov here,” Bontate said, pouring himself another glass of wine, squinting through the smoke of the cigarette that burned in the corner of his mouth.
He pulled his glass closer in front of him and took the cigarette out of his mouth. “What do you think he is doing here?”

“I don’t know,” she said for the second time. She did not want to tell him that she suspected that Volkov was there to kill her after she completed her assignment. She did not want him to think her proposition was based on a plan to preempt her own assassination. He had to believe the truth of it, that she wanted Félia out of Russia, that she wanted Krupatin dead.

“It so happens,” Bontate said, frowning and staring at a fleck of ash on the tablecloth, “that Valery Volkov has been mentioned very often in my last several intelligence reports. It seems he is very ambitious. He thinks he can do a better job of running the business than Krupatin. He has allies in this. There have been rumors that he might try to move against Krupatin.” He looked up. “What do you know of this?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Izvarin, Volkov, Stepanov—all of the lieutenants are well aware of my past with Sergei. They do not trust me with rumors. I am very much isolated in that regard.”

“Do they know what you have been doing for Krupatin?”