The car almost hit the pursuing man and skidded to a stop in the street next to James. The back door of the old Zil opened.
James knew the car. He had ridden in it to the bar.
No escape. He looked at the man coming down the street and could see now that the man was holding a gun.
“Kuda namylilsja. Where do you think you are going? Get in now you black son of a bitch,” shouted Kolokov.
“I had that audience and you took it from me. Now I think I’ll take something from you.”
The man in the street with a gun, no more than twenty yards away now, shouted, “Stop.”
James went through the open door of the car.
Iosef fired a shot, and then another as the car in front of him took off down the street. When it had turned a corner, Zelach appeared at his side. Unlike Iosef, Zelach didn’t appear to be breathing hard.
“I thought you do not work out,” said Iosef, panting.
“I do not.”
“Are you even sweating?”
“No,” said Zelach. “Yoga.”
“You do yoga?”
Iosef was looking down at the trail of blood he had been following.
“Yes. My mother, too. She taught me.”
“Maybe she will teach me.”
“I’m sure she would,” said Zelach.
“Good. Now we must find the people in that car.”
“How?”
“The Botswanans.”
Sasha Tkach was afraid.
He moved slowly up the dark, narrow wooden stairway in the old three-story building that had once housed the offices of the Voluntary Collective of Sewing Machine Operators. The stairway was dark. The steps creaked with each step he took.
The building had been converted to apartments more than half a century ago. The conversion had been far less than successful. Some of the apartments were small, just single rooms of unimpressive size. Others were four rooms of varying sizes.
Sasha moved to the door he was seeking, took a deep breath, brushed back his hair, smelled his breath against the palm of his hand, and knocked.
He had left his gun in the hotel room provided by Jan Pendowski and the Kiev Police Department’s Smuggling Division. He had put on his primary change of clothing, told Elena, who was in the room next to his, that he was going out, and made his way to this building, to this door.
He knocked again and thought he heard a woman humming. She sounded happy. The sound of happiness was not a good sign.
“Yes?” she asked.
“It is me,” Sasha said.
There was a beat. Then the door opened and there stood Maya, looking small, dark, a brush poised touching her long, dark hair.
“You are here,” she said.
Had he hoped for a look of forgiveness, or even a tiny smile of appreciation, he would have been disappointed.
“I am here,” he said.
“Why?”
“May I come in?”
She considered, let her hand with the brush drop to her side and answered, “No. Yes. Come in.”
She was wearing a pale green dress he did not recognize. Around her neck was a strand of small, glittering glass pieces that looked like diamonds. Sasha had given the strand to her as one of the many peace offers made over the years for his inevitable transgressions. Was there hope in it being around her neck?
She stepped back, let him enter, and closed the door.
“The children?” he asked, looking around the room brightly lit with aluminum floor lamps and scattered with unmatched furniture.
“They are with Masha tonight. I am sorry. I did not know you were coming to Kiev.”
He waited for her to offer him a seat. She did not.
“Perhaps tomorrow,” he said.
“You came to Kiev to see the children?”
“And you, and because of a case. Elena is here with me.”
“Give her my best.”
“Would you like to see her?”
“No. I was about to go out.”
“I see. Maya, I have changed.”
“Into what?”
There was a bitterness in her voice he did not recognize and did not like. He had interviewed too many people, particularly women, not to recognize what she was doing.
“Who is it?” he asked.
Maya’s shoulders drooped, but only slightly. She looked at the brush in her hand and then at the wall, wishing that perhaps it would provide some counsel.
“I am going to dinner with a man from my office.”
“The Japanese?”
In response to his history of infidelity, a little more than two years ago Maya had begun a brief affair with an older, married Japanese executive with the company for which she worked.
“No. I have not seen him since. .”
“Are you going to come back to Moscow with the children? I do not mean right away, though that would be. .”
“I am not coming back to Moscow,” she said softly. “You are not going to change. I don’t want to spend any more years trying with you and failing.”
“Would it cost so much to try once more?”
“Too much,” she said. “How long are you planning to be in Kiev?”
“Not long.”
“Can you come back tomorrow morning to see the children before I go to work?”
“Yes.”
“Eight o’clock.”
She looked at the door again and then at her watch. He knew why she was doing both. He should have made an effort to make the situation easier for her, but he could not bring himself to do it.
And then a knock came, startling Maya who looked around for someplace to put her brush. She settled for a small round table with a surface the size of a dinner plate.
Another knock. She looked at Sasha, trying to decide whether she would choose defiance or pleading. She decided on a plea. Sasha closed his eyes and nodded in acceptance of a truce with good grace.
Maya opened the door. The man was not impressive. He was slightly shorter than Sasha, at least a decade older, his gray hair thinning significantly. His face showed weathering and suggested reliability. He wore a knowing smile and a very neatly pressed blue suit, white shirt, and a tie that hinted at old English school.
The man kissed her cheek before she could back away and close the door.
“This is my husband, Sasha,” she said, folding her hands knuckle white in front of her. “Sasha, this is Anders.”
The two men shook hands, and Maya said, “I did not know Sasha was in Kiev till he knocked at the door a few minutes ago.”
Anders nodded and smiled.
“I have heard a great deal about you,” Anders said in only slightly accented Russian.
“I have heard nothing about you,” said Sasha.
“Maya and I work together. I’m Swedish, forty-five, reasonably healthy, a lawyer, unmarried.”
“And you tell me all this, why?”
“Because I want to marry your wife and raise your children.”
“What has she told you about me?”
“Sasha,” Maya pleaded.
“That you love her, are a fine father, and a good but immature and very unreliable man,” Anders said.
Sasha nodded. The assessment was accurate. Sasha liked the man. This encounter would have been so much easier if he could see something in Anders that he could attack, but he saw and felt nothing.
“Yes,” said Sasha.
“I think you should go now, Sasha,” Maya said, touching his sleeve.
He looked down at her hand, willing it to stay where it was, knowing his will had no effect on her and had not for a long, long time.
“We should go too,” Maya said softly. “Come by in the morning, Sasha.”
Sasha nodded. He suddenly had questions that he knew he could not ask: Did she love this man?
“Tomorrow,” he said, taking Anders’s offered hand and then moving to the door.
When the door had closed behind him, Sasha heard their voices but he could not make out what they were saying.
Gerald St. James listened calmly to the caller and with his free hand popped a ripe, black Greek olive into his mouth. After listening for a few minutes, he said, “No more killings.”