When he was gone, the bald man in the shadows stepped out. His cheek was gushing blood from the cup Kolokov had hurled at him. He calmly looked at James Harumbaki and said, “Honduras.”
Balta had a simple plan for finding the model.
The city was not exactly overrun with modeling agencies and beautiful models. There were some, even a few small offices of agencies with their primary headquarters in Paris or New York. No, finding the model Christiana Verovona had described on the train before she died should not be difficult.
Balta had a list of names he obtained from the agencies. He also looked at photographs. None of the agencies would give him the addresses or phone numbers of any of the women they represented. They didn’t want to risk being cut out of their share of a job.
There was a daily newspaper ad calling for beautiful young girls who were looking for a career in modeling. Balta knew it was a scam, but he called the telephone number in the ad and made an appointment.
When he arrived at the office of the Parisian Modeling Agency just off of a busy street, he was ushered through a reception-waiting room where a girl of no more than fourteen sat on a chipped metal chair next to a woman in her forties.
Balta was taken to a small office where a lean man wearing an unimpressive wig to cover his bald head made a show of rising. He was ridiculous. Dressed in crimson slacks, a blue blazer, a puffy white shirt, and a crimson scarf that almost matched his slacks, he made a show of adjusting his jacket as he sat.
“I am Anatole Deforge,” he said in a French accent which did not disguise his Slavic origin. “And you wish. .”
“To find an old friend I’ve lost track of.” Balta continued smiling.
“An old friend. Then you are not interested. .” he said with disappointment.
“Not at the moment,” Balta added, leaving the door open to what the man who called himself Deforge might be planning to offer.
“Well,” Deforge said with a shrug. “Perhaps. .”
“Perhaps,” said Balta. “I’m looking for Oxana Balakona.”
“Which of us isn’t?” said Deforge.
“You know where she lives?”
“I can find out if she has a residence in Kiev. I know she works here from time to time. I’ve never had the pleasure of representing her.”
Oxana Balakona was far above the aspirations of this little man, but Balta knew how to deal with little men.
“You’ve been very kind,” he said. “I’ll certainly urge her to see you.”
“Would you?” he asked.
“Yes. Perhaps I could get her to come with me to see you later in the week.”
Deforge could not keep himself from clasping his hands till his knuckles were white.
“My door will always be open to both of you.”
“Her address?” said Balta.
Deforge held up a finger to indicate that he would take care of the matter. He picked up his phone and made a call without looking up the number.
“Nina,” he said. “I need the phone number and address of Oxana Balakona. . No. . Yes. Of course, my sweet. If anything comes of it, you will be involved.”
There was a pause. Deforge looked at Balta and smiled. His teeth were false, large, and slightly yellow.
“Ah yes, Nina, fine. I will.”
He hung up and scribbled on a square yellow sheet he tore from a pad.
“You want me to call the number for you?” Deforge asked, holding out the sheet. “It would be no trouble.”
“No, thank you,” said Balta, taking the sheet from him. “I think I want to surprise her.”
The train pulled into the Kiev station. It had been on time. Lydia had packed for Sasha. She had done it quickly, efficiently. Everything had been fitted neatly into the blue cloth duffel bag. The price he had paid for her help had been a twenty-minute speech on life, loyalty, the need for caution, the sad demise of the Communist Party, the end of the benevolent Soviet Union, her certainty that Elena Timofeyeva would try to seduce him, his responsibility to her, his wife, his children, and the uncertainty of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov’s motives.
Sasha had listened, or pretended to, without the usual exasperation and arguments. Lydia had tried with increasing perseverance to get her son to react, but he was having none of this. His lack of response worried her far more than her fear that something might happen in a backward place like Kiev where people marched in the streets over elections.
Adding to her concern was the fact that he leaned over and kissed the top of her her head before he left the apartment.
She had decided that she would have to talk to Rostnikov about Sasha as soon as the Chief Inspector returned from whatever ludicrous expedition he had undertaken in Siberia.
Elena’s packing had taken no more than five minutes. It consisted of putting her small zipper bag of makeup, toothbrush, and tooth powder into the brown leather suitcase that she always kept ready under the bed.
She had ceded the window seat to Sasha so she could watch him during the train ride. His behavior in Georgi Danielovich’s apartment, his taking away the addict’s gun, could have been brave or suicidal. Elena considered the latter to be more likely. His smile did not reassure her. It made her more suspicious.
“You want to go see Maya and your children when we get there?” asked Elena as they walked to the exit where a Kiev detective was to meet them.
“Yes,” Sasha said.
Good, Elena thought but did not say.
“Maya has a cousin, Masha, a model,” he said. “Maybe she can help us find the model we’re looking for.”
The four o’clock meeting in Moscow with the Africans who had given Georgi the diamonds to deliver to Kiev had been a bust.
Georgi had been there, suitcase in hand, pacing in front of the toy store, glancing furtively at Lubyanka Prison, looking as conspicuous and obviously addicted as he was. Elena and Sasha had been watching from inside the toy store. People had passed Georgi, even a young black man in jeans and a blue T-shirt, but the man had not stopped.
After ten minutes Georgi had suddenly stopped pacing. He looked around as if listening to something and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone, which he held to his ear. He listened, began to say something, and stopped. He put the phone back in his pocket, went up to Elena and Sasha, and said, “They know you’re in here.”
“What did they say?”
“They want their money. I wanted to tell them that I did not have their money,” he said woefully. “But they knew that too. They want me to find the person who killed Christiana and took their money. Shit, I cannot even find my way to the fucking toilet half the time.”
“We will find whoever killed Christiana and took the money,” Sasha said.
“But you will not give the money to the black guys who gave me the diamonds to deliver.”
“No,” said Elena.
Georgi chewed on his lower lip and said, “What do I get out of this?”
“With a little luck, you get to Odessa and you stay alive,” said Sasha.
“That is something,” Georgi said.
Now, in Kiev, Sasha and Elena were in search of a thief and murderer and millions of rubles in diamonds. They had eight days left and the promise of help from the Kiev police unit that dealt with illegal traffic and theft of diamonds and other precious jewels.
There was a chill in the air and a gray sky, which was not particularly welcoming, but the man standing next to the blue and white police car was. He wore dark slacks, a pale blue shirt, and a tan zippered jacket. He was about forty, and to Elena he resembled the Australian actor Russell Crowe.
“Timofeyeva and Tkach?” he asked, holding out his right hand.
“Yes,” said Elena. “Elena Timofeyeva.”
“Sasha Tkach.”
“Jan Pendowski, Detective Inspector.”
They shook hands.
Pendowski opened the car doors. Elena got in the front passenger seat, Sasha in the back. Pendowski got in the driver’s seat and looked at Elena with the approval of a man who was confident of his appeal.