“We will go when this game ends,” Kolokov decided. “They won’t be expecting us.”
There was only one other gang member, Alek, in the room. He stood silently in the corner. He had survived by standing silently in corners out of Vladimir Kolokov’s line of sight.
The other member of the gang, Bogdan, was standing in the doorway of an old apartment building that smelled of onions and people. He was watching the cafe in case the two Africans came out. Kolokov had sent him with the cell phone. He was to call if the Africans left the cafe and to follow them wherever they might be going.
Kolokov smiled at the chessboard and then at James Harumbaki. He was certain now to trap the African with his next move. He sat back, hands folded behind his head. He reeked of satisfaction with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“Checkmate,” said James Harumbaki, moving his knight slowly and placing it neatly in the center of a black square.
The smile remained on Kolokov’s face for a beat and then his hands came down and he leaned forward to look at the chessboard. It was indeed checkmate. James Harumbaki sat silently. Even had he wished to smile or display a look of satisfaction or regret, he would never make it evident on his battered face.
“Luck,” said Kolokov.
“No,” said James Harumbaki, thinking of his two comrades who had been brutalized and murdered by the fool across from him.
Kolokov’s fists clenched.
“Do not kill him, Vladimir,” the bald man said. “We need him. The diamonds.”
Kolokov struck his captive with a closed fist. James Harumbaki’s head spun to the side. He spit blood and a tooth on the floor. Even with his now further diminished eyesight, James Harumbaki was reasonably sure he could leap across the table, take Kolokov’s gun, and shoot him. It was likely the bald man would have his own gun out by then, and James Harumbaki would be a dead man. It was tempting to consider making the move, but the likely result would be his widow and two orphans.
“Let us go now,” said Kolokov, picking up his white queen and throwing it at James Harumbaki.
The queen hit his chest and tumbled to the floor.
James Harumbaki longed for the moment when he would kill the Russian. He would probably have to kill the bald man first, but that, too, would provide satisfaction.
“Get up,” shouted Kolokov.
James Harumbaki rose on shaking legs. He knew he could call on his body to respond when required. He had been tortured and beaten in Africa by better men than this Russian.
The Russian grabbed his arm and pushed him toward the door. The bald man went to the corner, opened a suitcase resting on a table against the wall, and revealed a cache of automatic weapons. James Harumbaki recognized the weapon that was handed to Kolokov, an AKS-74U Shorty Assault Rifle with a PBS silent fire device and a BS-1 silent underbarrel grenade launcher. James had seen the weapon used in Sudan, Somalia, and Rwanda. Patrice, Biko, and Laurence would be destroyed instantly along with others in the cafe or on the street unless they acted first. He hoped they understood that they must act first.
Both Kolokov and the bald man put on leather coats that had been hanging on metal hooks screwed into the wall. James Harumbaki watched the Russians hang the assault weapons on slings inside the coats.
“Now we go, black man,” said Kolokov with a wild dancing grin. “We will have a talk with your friends and trade you for several handfuls of diamonds. And then we will destroy you and your friends and anyone, black or white, who gets in the way. And that will be the real checkmate.”
“Why do we not just arrest them all?” asked Zelach. “The man in the doorway over there watching the two Africans and the Africans, too.”
“We will,” said Iosef. “But I believe something will happen very soon.”
“What?” asked Zelach.
“The man in the doorway is waiting for someone,” said Iosef.
“Who?”
“The bald man from the park and the Metro.”
“When he comes, we arrest them all?” asked Zelach.
“We do. Meanwhile we stand here in our doorway, watching the two Africans through the window and the man in the doorway over there, who is also watching them.”
Iosef had explained all this on the way here. Zelach often required the repetition of data, not because he was stupid, but because it took time to sink in. But once Zelach put information into his memory, it remained there for eternity, ready for recall. He could relate accurately the details of an arrest made a decade earlier. He could relate it right down to the condition of the criminal’s shoes and the exact nature of his crime.
“Do you think, Iosef Rostnikov, that he sees us?”
“No.”
“Do you think there will be shooting again?”
“Possibly. Very likely.”
Akardy Zelach went silent. He was not afraid, but he thought about his mother. Zelach’s mother was, though few knew, a gypsy. She had settled in Moscow for her son’s sake, so that he could be a policeman and someday marry a Russian girl and have children.
That day might yet come if Zelach survived long enough. He had once been shot on a case protecting Sasha Tkach. Zelach had survived after a long recovery. He might not be so fortunate the next time.
Now he stood in a doorway with the son of Porfiry Petrovich, wondering if his mother would rejoin her gypsy relatives should her son be killed.
He wondered.
Chapter Sixteen
“Why was the ghost girl naked?”
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov asked the question as he and Emil Karpo walked down the long corridor on the first floor of the General Semyon Timoshenko apartment and office complex of Devochka.
“There was no ghost girl,” said Karpo. “Whoever wrote that false report and put it in the files of Security Chief Fyodor Rostnikov made it up.”
“Why?”
“I do not know,” said Karpo.
Porfiry Petrovich’s artificial leg made a slight clickity-clack sound on the polished concrete floor.
They moved slowly, their footsteps echoing.
Once, before they reached the cafeteria where they were to meet with Old Boris, a door opened. A woman, a bag in her hand and her hair tied in some kind of papered ringlets, stepped out, saw the two detectives, let her eyes rest for an instant on the gaunt detective clad in funereal black, and quickly ducked back through the door.
“He, or she, typed the report, including that colorful detail, and then, when we figured out that the entry was false, placed the typewriter on Fedya’s bed. Why?”
“To make him appear guilty when we found it,” said Karpo.
“He found it and told us immediately,” said Rostnikov. “If making him look guilty was their goal, they accomplished quite the opposite.”
They were almost there. Porfiry Petrovich could smell the food. If he was not wrong, it was cabbage soup. The food in Devochka was, he had discovered, surprisingly good. He glanced up at Karpo at his side.
“You think I am making this all too complex?” Rostnikov asked.
“You have historically demonstrated an intuitive ability in such situations.”
“Thank you,” said Rostnikov. “And you?”
“I have no intuition. I rely on reason alone and distrust reason only slightly less than I trust intuition. One can believe that he is acting with perfect reason only to be deluded by his own fallibility.”
“And so I ask you to apply reason to the crucial question of why the ghost girl was naked.”
“Crucial?”
They were now immediately outside of the broad wooden door to the cafeteria.
Definitely cabbage, thought Rostnikov. He hoped they also had the small Georgian crackers that went so well with cooked cabbage.