“My monkey!” Liza said loudly without opening her eyes.
Vera Fyodorovna stepped over to the bed, retrieved the plush animal out from under the blanket, and reached to turn off the light, but Seryozha stopped her.
“Don’t. Keep it on,” he whispered.
The glass of the balcony door tinkled softly. On the balcony, someone was trying to look into the room through the tightly drawn drapes.
Trying not to breathe, they left the room for the dimly lit hallway. Misha, leaving last, closed the door without making a sound. But despite his caution, the lock clicked anyway.
“I can’t see a damn thing,” the thug told his friend in the next room.
He only had his underpants on. He’d just come back from the balcony and was huddling from the cold. He felt like diving back under the warm blanket.
“Quiet!” the second thug sitting on the bed and listening through the wall shouted at him in a whisper.
“Oh, cut it out,” the first one yawned. “The old woman probably just went to take a leak. Don’t get so worked up! Where are they going to go at three o’clock in the morning?”
“Shut up, I said!” The more conscientious thug leapt silently from the bed, cracked the door, and looked out into the hallway.
It was quiet there. Not a sound. Just in case, he stood there a little longer, listening to the sleepy, nighttime silence of the holiday house. He was interested in the stairs at the end of the hallway. He wasted no time reaching them and leaned over the railing. But it was quiet there, too.
That’s ridiculous, he told himself. They couldn’t have made it down to the first floor already. I would have heard them.
The thug knew Curly would rip his head off if anything happened to the child or the old lady. But everything was calm for now. It was true, where were they supposed to go at three in the morning? Just because they’d made some noise, what did that mean? Sometimes old women can’t sleep, and sometimes children wake up in the middle of the night to go pee or to get a glass of water. He went back to the room, where his friend was snoring peacefully.
The conscientious thug listened to the silence in the next room. “They’ve been asleep for a long time, for sure!” he growled, gave a relaxed yawn, and went back to bed.
The stairs and elevators were to the right down the hallway, but to the left, at the other end of the hallway, there was a small sitting area with armchairs, a magazine table, and a television. The small niche was separated from the hallway by two narrow screens. Right now it was completely dark there. Krotov had decided to wait there in the darkness for a bit just in case and not to go directly to the stairs. Whoever was rustling in the next room and trying to look in from the balcony was bound to check the stairs as well. And it was virtually impossible for the four of them to descend swiftly and silently from the eighth floor.
Vera Fyodorovna heard the cautious steps and pressed her hand to her mouth. The steps moved away as the man walked toward the stairs. It was quiet for a few minutes. Then they heard the steps again. They were getting closer. Vera Fyodorovna’s heart was pounding madly. But the steps died down in the middle of the hallway. Somewhere near their room a lock clicked. They waited a few more minutes and then quietly headed for the stairs.
“Well, where to now?” Gonchar asked when they were finally all in the car.
“I have to think,” Krotov said.
Liza had slept soundly through the whole escape, her arms around her papa’s neck.
“Maybe to my place?” Misha suggested.
“They’d find us.” Krotov shook his head. “It wouldn’t take them long to figure out we were there.”
“Seryozha, why can’t we go home?” Vera Fyodorovna asked.
It was time, Krotov knew, to explain what was happening to the woman who up until this moment had acted courageously and hadn’t asked any questions. Only now, in the car, did her voice start to quake.
“Vera Fyodorovna,” Krotov began cautiously. “I’m in trouble. It is related to my work. For a while, it would be better if you and Liza stayed somewhere safe.”
“I knew it.” Vera Fyodorovna sighed. “In the courtyard on Malaya Gruzinskaya… it was Liza’s stroller that blew up. That’s all the neighborhood is talking about. I kept hoping maybe… My old school friend lives not far from here, on Lugovaya. She lives alone, and the house is big and warm. She gave her apartment to her son and moved into their dacha. We can go there. She’ll be happy to have us.”
“Yes.” Seryozha nodded after a second’s thought. “That may not be a bad idea.”
“Seryozha, they won’t hurt Lena, will they?”
“Don’t worry, Vera Fyodorovna. They won’t get to her. She’s far away,” Sichkin answered for Krotov. “By the time she gets back, all will be well.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’ll do our best.”
Lena could tell something had happened. It had been evening for a while, but they seemed to have forgotten about her. She didn’t know whether that was good or bad, whether it was better to remind them she was here or to sit tight.
She’d already thought through the broad strokes of her conversation with the bald man. But only the broad strokes. Of course, Gradskaya might well know the bald man. But she couldn’t imagine her hiring such a high-level figure as a killer. She could hire one of his hitmen, but then Lena would just have been shot.
Gradskaya had probably called in a favor and asked him to deal with Lena. But those kinds of requests require explanations. And laying out the truth to the crime boss was the last thing she’d do. She’d probably had to make up a story for the bald man that suggested that Lena and Michael represented a danger for him personally. For example, she could have said Michael was a big American mafioso, a competitor with his eye on Russian oil and gold. No, that was ridiculous. Lots of Russian crooks were in America, but there weren’t any American gangsters here yet. And a story like that would be easy for the bald man to verify; it wouldn’t require kidnapping her. What wouldn’t he be able to verify through his criminal networks? Say Gradskaya hinted that Michael was a CIA agent. Now that made more sense.
Why did I ever accept Volkov’s offer to drive Michael around Moscow? No, I didn’t, she immediately objected to herself. I was just keeping the game going. I had no choice. But as a result they found out where I was going and who I was going with. But they would have found out eventually. They would have found a way. None of that matters now. What’s important is to decide whether to tell the bald man the whole truth. But what if they don’t believe me? It’s a serious and unexpected accusation. I wonder why my visit to Malaya Proletarskaya raised such a reaction—with Sasha and with the bald gangster? Vasya Slepak, the convict known as Blindboy. What makes him so interesting?
The door opened. The deaf-mute rolled a cart into the room. On it were two open-faced cheese sandwiches, an apple, a banana, and a large cup of strong tea.
“Thank you,” Lena said.
She had no appetite, but she needed her strength, so she forced herself to eat nearly all of it. The young woman stood there, leaning against the wall, observing her. But Lena didn’t mind her gaze, which seemed warm, sympathetic even. Before taking the cart away, the deaf-mute touched Lena’s arm and nodded at the tiny toilet nook. At first, Lena didn’t understand her, but the young woman took a contoured lipstick out of her pocket and nodded again.
They went into the cramped nook together, and the young woman closed the door and started writing quickly in lipstick on the white tile. Your daughter is all right, Lena had time to read.