When Curly got the call from Moscow and was told the “curious news,” he tensed more than he should have.
“For what it’s worth,” his old friend Regina Gradskaya told him after she’d laid out the story of the American psychology consultant from the CIA and the journalist accompanying him as his interpreter.
“Thanks, Regina.” Curly smiled into the phone. “I’ll definitely look into it. Valuable news. What’s it worth to you?”
As a sober man, Curly didn’t believe in altruism. His old friend had to have some personal interest.
“You take everything so literally!” Regina laughed. “What I meant was that the information is uncorroborated and possibly just hearsay.”
“Well, we’ll check that out. Anyway, what kinds of problems are you having?”
“Well, you see,” Regina said listlessly, “that female, Polyanskaya, is pretty darn curious. She sticks her nose in other people’s business. Like lots of journalists, she’s got a loose tongue and a raging imagination.”
“You mean you know her?”
“Not exactly, no. So far we haven’t been any serious problems with her. But I don’t like her. And traveling with a CIA consultant, I like her even less. So I thought I should warn you because we’re old friends.”
Curly had very serious organized crime connections in America, which is why he decided the CIA psychologist’s visit probably wasn’t hearsay. He’d come very close to getting nicked in Boston once, where he’d been stupid enough to show up in person for the opening of a small pharmaceutical company. He’d wanted to take a look at his latest acquisition—purchased through proxies, naturally. He’d managed to slip away, but he’d still gone into the CIA and FBI databases.
Curly tensed up. The first thing the curious journalist did was head to Malaya Proletarskaya to see Blindboy’s mother and aunt.
In and of itself, the fact that that punk had become one of Russia’s best and most expensive hitmen was insulting to Curly. A punk couldn’t, shouldn’t become anyone, let alone a killer. That broke the rules. But worst of all was the fact that Curly himself had paid twice for his services.
Blindboy was a true artist. He worked without a guard or armored car. He could kill anyone anywhere. But he only killed big shots, and only those he thought deserved to be killed. He never took a kopek in advance. He always took one shot, and only one, but it was accurate, deadly. No innocent bystander had ever died by his hand. After doing the job, he would disappear, vanish in a puff of smoke. It was as if a bullet had simply materialized out of thin air to shatter the skull of whoever he’d been ordered to kill.
Now Curly had to worry about a wily and uncatchable punk who knew too much, respected no one, and was capable of God knows what. That’s why the journalist who’d arrived with the CIA consultant and had talked with Blindboy’s mother for three hours had puzzled Curly in a bad way. Regina Gradskaya was right. The woman was too curious for her own good.
After that visit to Malaya Proletarskaya, the odd team consisting of a Federal Security agent, a CIA consultant, and the journalist had gone to Zagorinskaya, deep in the taiga, where just fifty kilometers from an Old Believers settlement was Curly’s personal oil field. And what, one asks, had taken them to Zagorinskaya specifically? No, his oil was perfectly legit. Well, almost perfectly. Even if Curly owned the well, the drilling was done by a state company that belonged to Curly, naturally, so they shouldn’t have gone there. There was no reason to.
In Tobolsk, for some reason, the journalist had visited the family of a cop who was killed a long time ago. Nothing connected that cop to Curly personally, but the visit wasn’t what it seemed. When it turned out that this unholy trinity was planning to go to the Veterans Home, the same one where an entire floor had been set aside for Curly’s senile father, the boss’s patience snapped. He had to stop them, and fast.
The old man detested his son, didn’t want to see him, and would always holler at Curly in his rattling little voice: “Thief! Murderer!” Curly hadn’t had any feelings for his father in a long time. He was just doing his duty. He’d placed his father in a good home, close by, in Tobolsk, and ensured his comfort and excellent care. Before, it wouldn’t have occurred to Curly to put a special guard on the Veterans Home. No one would ever dare stick his nose in there. What good was the old man to anyone?
But Curly had no doubt that the trio had gone to the Veterans Home specifically to see his father. Why they had done so, well, he no longer worried about that. Nothing in the world irritated him more than the unknown. Of course, it was too much trouble to nab them both, the journalist and the American. And better not to get mixed up with a foreigner anyway. He decided the journalist was more than enough. Let her explain it all!
He was able beforehand, through his people in Moscow, to get some information about this woman. The fact that she was also the wife of an Interior Ministry colonel didn’t dismay Curly one bit. On the contrary, that fact made taking her all the more appealing to him.
The gunmen sent to the Veterans Home kept in constant contact with him. At nine thirty they reported that the Federal Security agent had left with the American. He ordered them to put a small tail on him, but not to touch him, just to follow him. At first, all went well. He even regretted having employed so many people to deal with one woman. But it turned out he’d acted quite correctly.
Almost simultaneously, the group watching the highway discovered a Federal Security vehicle, and those waiting in the bushes by the building entrance noticed a stranger sitting in the bushes opposite them. He wasn’t answering nature’s call, that’s for sure. Later he turned out to be a Federal Security major. The gunman who offed him made sure to rifle through his pockets.
The situation was more complicated now. He had to think of something, and fast. And Curly did. He had an old Volga at the Veteran’s Home. It was hidden behind the trees, right by the shoulder—just in case. There were two guys sitting in it. They were the ones who’d noticed that damned military car. Curly ordered the boys to pull the Volga a little closer to the shoulder and blow it up right in front of the military car. At that moment, in the confusion, they’d be able to get the journalist out without extra fuss—assuming everything happened at the same time.
And it did. The boys played it out to a T, note for note. True, there was a little gunfire. A police patrol car cut off his tail on the American at an intersection.
“How many of our boys did they lay out on the highway?” Curly asked in alarm when he heard about the shooting, not directly but from one of his people, a former marine major who was acting as his private secretary—or else as his gray cardinal.
“None,” the former major replied cheerfully. “That Zhiguli has a good engine. The boys veered away when they were cut off and disappeared into the taiga. The cops were scared to even get close. They turned their lights on it, saw it was empty, and drove off.”
“And the injured man?”
“It’s all good. Khottabych’s already digging out the bullet.”
“Well, that’s great.” Curly nodded. “What about Moscow?”
“There’ll be a cassette tomorrow morning.”
CHAPTER 35
He was having Technicolor dreams and was reluctant to wake up. Before, he’d only dreamed in black and white—bad dreams, gloomy dreams. That’s probably why he’d always slept so little. But now he was reliving his entire forty-year life—completely differently.
He dreamed of himself as a little boy loved tenderly and doted on by his parents. His mama had cool, light hands. She stroked his hair, kissed him good night, and read him fairy tales. His father was strong and good-natured. He taught him about the taiga, how to guess where the solid hummocks were in the swamp’s abyss, how to weave pots out of fragrant spring birch bark and boil water in them over a fire.