The rusting pipes groaned. The wooden walls cracked. The linoleum floor buckled.
“Do I blame you for trying to get away?” Kolokov went on, expecting no answer and getting none. “No. I would have done the same. But I must have cooperation.”
He stopped pacing and looked at James, whose eyes were fixed straight ahead. He could endure his numb hands and the broken nose the Russian had given him. He could go without food. He had done it many times before, in Africa. What he could not tolerate was the smell of decay and cheap tobacco that came out of the mouth of Kolokov when he placed his face a few inches from James’s, as he did now.
“Cooperation,” Kolokov continued.
James gave no reaction.
“Are you listening? If you are not listening, if you are not cooperating, what use are you to me? That is a real question. Answer it or you die.”
“I am listening,” said James.
“Good,” said Kolokov, looking at the bald man and allowing himself a small smile of success. “You will call your friends. You will tell them to be in front of the Eternal Flame by the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the Moscow War Memorial in Alexandrovsky Gardens at ten o’clock tonight. They will have with them either a sizable package of diamonds or an even one. .”
He looked at the bald man who stared blankly back.
“. . no, two million euros. Cash,” Kolokov continued. “You understand?”
“Yes,” said James.
James was having trouble breathing. Kolokov had smashed his nose, blocking off all air. James could only breathe through his swollen mouth.
“You know what happens if you try to escape again?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Thirsty?”
“No,” James lied.
“I killed your companions because they would not tell me how to reach your friends, but you are cooperating. I have no reason to kill you. I am not a monster.”
Kolokov lit a cigarette, pursed his lips, and added, “Now I think I will buy a bar in Zvenigorod. There is one whose bar I would gladly stand behind, within view of the monastery. Perhaps Montez and I could persuade the present owners to sell. What do you think?”
“Yes,” said James.
“Yes? That is not a thought.”
“You can probably convince the owners to sell,” said James.
The bald Montez moved. Yes, like a big, dark click beetle after an hour of dormancy, he moved the right hand at his side and came up with a cell phone.
“Now, you make the call.”
Montez flipped open the phone and brought it in front of James.
“The number,” said Kolokov.
James told him the number, and the Spaniard pressed it into the keypad. Montez placed the phone close enough to James’s face that he could speak into it. There was but one ring before the phone was answered. James gave the man who answered it a succinct message that ended with, “and bring with you either the last shipment of diamonds or two million euros.”
“Yes,” said the man.
“And do no try to free me,” said James. “I am all right.”
“We will not try to free you. We will bring the money or the diamonds.”
Both were lies. James knew there was no way two million euros could be obtained. Nor could they or would they try to raise the money. They could not deliver the diamonds. The diamonds had already been delivered to the woman in Kiev. The courier had been murdered and the murderer had stolen the payment.
There promised to be bloodshed at the War Memorial.
James hoped that the blood would be that of his captors.
“Are we going to have trouble?” asked Zelach, slouching through the door of the tiny grocery.
Behind the counter stood a black colossus of a woman wearing a red and white bandana on her head. She was serving a man and woman in their sixties. The man wore glasses so thick that Zelach could not see his eyes, only a blown-up distortion that reminded him of a mad doctor in some old French movie. Zelach would gladly have left the shop before Iosef asked a single question.
Iosef supplied all the energy for both of them. He smiled easy. Chatted. Got angry. Zelach did none of these things.
Iosef was looking for Maxim the Watchman. The grocery had been Maxim Groshnev’s watch repair shop, which catered to mid-level Party members and the many people who had both reasonable and cheap watches that they hoped would keep telling them the time. But then, suddenly, there was no business. For a while the shop did well selling cheap American digital watches that looked like the real thing. But then even the market for cheap watches fell, and all Maxim had to count on were the secrets he paid for, traded for, and sold.
The woman in front of the counter picked up her cloth tote bag filled with groceries, grabbed the arm of the goggle glasses man, and moved around the two policemen and out the door.
“We are the police,” Iosef said, approaching the woman who stood behind the bar, her arms folded, a defiant look on her face.
“I know.”
“Do you know why we are here?” asked Iosef, who wore one of his most friendly smiles.
“You want to purchase oranges, cheese, and bread for a quiet picnic in the park.”
Iosef shook his head no and expanded his smile, suggesting that her remark had been particularly witty.
“Maxim?” she said.
“Maxim,” Iosef confirmed.
Four black men had stopped to look through the window at the contest between Sister Ann and the policemen. Everybody knew they were policemen.
Zelach was uneasy. In this neighborhood, violence had been done to both whites and blacks over the past dozen years. In this time men and women fleeing African tyranny or the consequences of their own criminal activity had encountered prejudice as their numbers increased. They acquired firearms as their people were targeted.
“Why?” Sister Ann asked.
“A purchase of information,” said Iosef, picking up a huge bar of Czech chocolate from a box on the counter. The chocolate was covered in a silvery wrap and a simple white paper label.
Sister Ann looked at the candy in Iosef’s hand. Iosef threw the wrapped chocolate over his shoulder in the general direction of Zelach who caught it cleanly.
“He is here,” said Iosef, looking back at Zelach.
Zelach nodded.
“No, he is home,” Sister Ann insisted.
“He has no home,” said Iosef softly. “He does not want to be somewhere where he might be a target for those who have done business with him or heard about him. He carries a bedroll and thousands of euros and a sack of diamonds.”
Maxim the Watchman was now one of the most successful fences in Moscow, a city within whose encircling border at least three hundred fences operated. Few, however, had the success of the Watchman. He supplied information to the police for the right to stay in business. It was the same reason he gave information to men of the Mafia.
Iosef took out a handful of rubles from his pocket and placed them on the counter.
“For the chocolate,” he said, moving toward the door at the rear of the cramped store.
Zelach held the bar of chocolate awkwardly in his hand. The bar was too big for any of his pockets. Besides, it might begin to melt. He considered throwing the confection in the garbage but resisted the urge.
As Iosef opened the door, Zelach began slowly, carefully tearing the wrapper from the chocolate.
“You are here. Good,” said Iosef genially as he went through the door.
The room was little more than a closet. A wiry old man with a bush of white hair was seated on a stool in front of a counter. Maxim, with pull-down enlarging glasses, was repairing a watch.
“Rebuilding,” he said.
His voice was raspy, almost raw. He did not offer them a seat. There were no seats and there was no room for them. On a shelf above the work table was a monitor. On the monitor was the interior of the grocery. Sister Ann was looking up at the camera.