A lone car, an old Lada, came obliviously down the narrow street and stopped as a clutch of men on the left and another on the right stepped off of the narrow curb. The car came to a sudden stop. The driver, a man with many chins, pushed his head out of the window, displayed his angry pink face, and opened his mouth to shout. Then he saw the guns and the faces and registered the fact that he was being completely ignored.
There was no room to turn around. He backed up, trying to look over his shoulder. The car veered to his right and scraped a rear fender against a lamppost before successfully fading back the way it had come.
No one in the two groups now facing each other looked in the direction of the retreating car and the scratch of metal on metal.
“This is not going to be easy, is it?” called out Kolokov, stepping ahead of his three men, James Harumbaki behind him.
He was looking for someone to bargain with. No one emerged from among the six black men in front of him.
“Come. Come. Come,” Kolokov said, pacing now. “The police will be coming and we will have to start shooting and you will not get our prisoner, who will be shot, and we will not get our diamonds and no one will be happy except Pau Montez, the bald man behind me, who likes shooting people and who has expressed a particular interest in shooting our hostage.”
“Laurence,” James Harumbaki called out hoarsely.
Kolokov spun around to look at his prisoner. The Russian smiled.
A small, plump young man stepped forward into the street. He stood no more than five paces from Kolokov who turned back to face him. The Russian noted that the young man did not appear to be in the least bit frightened.
“Die or trade?” asked Kolokov.
Laurence adjusted his glasses and said nothing. He held up a cardboard box the size and shape of a large book. Kolokov held out a hand and Laurence took four more steps to hand the box to him.
From inside the doorway in which they had been standing, Akardy Zelach said, “When the shooting starts, who do we shoot?”
“If shooting is to be done,” said Iosef Rostnikov, “there will be no need for our help in doing it. What is our assignment?”
“Diamonds,” said Zelach.
“Diamonds,” Iosef agreed.
Back in the street, Kolokov removed the lid from the box and reached in to pull out a small, almost round stone with a milky luster. He held it up as if he knew what he was looking at and motioned over his shoulder. Alek stepped forward. Kolokov handed him the stone. The man held it up and he too pretended that he knew what he was looking at. Then he nodded.
“We now carefully conclude our business,” said Kolokov, backing away and putting the lid back on the box. “And no one dies.”
The bald man pushed the stumbling James Harumbaki forward.
Kolokov handed the box to the bald man and held up his hands in a sign that this confrontation was over.
But it was not.
Before he even joined the line of black men, James Harumbaki, between swollen and torn lips, said, “Kill them.”
The Africans fired first, but the Russians were quick to respond. Weapons were whipped out from under coats. Others were simply lifted and fired. It was not the bang-bang sound of television and movies, but a steady bap-bap-bap. There were no screams.
Iosef and Zelach watched as men flung their arms out, casting clattering weapons in the street. There was a pause, and then more firing. Neither side had moved forward or sought cover. Then James Harambuki’s voice called out hoarsely as he pointed at Vladimir Kolokov,
“Do not kill him.”
Two of the Russians behind Kolokov lay dead in the street. The bald man was also dead, but he sat with his back against the wall of a building. His eyes were open and he seemed to be smiling. Kolokov knelt, his right arm torn, bloody, nearly severed. He was blinking furiously.
James Harumbaki took a gun from the hand of Laurence and stepped in front of Kolokov, who spit blood and with his remaining good arm fumbled for a cigarette in his shirt pocket. He could not manage it, gave up, and looked at James Harumbaki, who looked down at him.
“I came very close,” said Kolokov.
“No, you did not,” said James Harumbaki. “Those are not real diamonds. I have a question. Answer, and you live if help comes to you in time.”
“Ask,” said Kolokov.
“Who told you that we had diamonds? Who told you where to find us when you took me and the two others you tortured and killed? Lie and you die. Tell the truth and you live.”
Kolokov started an instinctive shrug but the pain was unbearable.
He was now surrounded by black faces looking down at him.
“A woman,” Kolokov said. “I never met her. I think she was English. She called me, told me where you would be, that you would have diamonds, money.”
“Where do I find this English woman?” asked James.
Kolokov shook his head.
“I do not know. I do not know her name.”
The woman, whoever she was, had wanted to disrupt James Harumbaki’s link in the chain from Siberia to Kiev, had wanted to destroy his operation and have him and his men killed. English. Gerald St. James was English, but why would he want to destroy his own operation?
“I believe you,” said James Harumbaki, looking over his shoulder with his one, partially functioning eye.
Two Africans lay dead. A third was being tended to by Biko and another man.
James Harumbaki turned back to the kneeling Russian, who smiled through his pain and said, “We had some good chess matches.”
“No, we did not,” said James Harumbaki. “You may well be the worst chess player it has been my very bad fortune to face across a board.”
And with that he held the gun up and put it to the head of Kolokov.
“You said you would not kill me.”
“I am not,” said James Harumbaki. “You are being killed by the ghosts of two good men who you tortured to death three days ago.”
There were sirens now. Both directions. The police were coming.
“Three days? Was it only three days?” Kolokov asked as the bullet tore into his forehead.
Oxana Balakona could wait no longer. She was to meet Rochelle Tanquay at the airport in three hours. Jan had stalled but she was going to his apartment to demand the diamonds. It was time. If she were going to hide and transport and trade them in Paris, she would have to have them now.
She took a taxi to his apartment. She also took a very small, flat, well polished gun in her purse. She had bought the gun for too much money from a man named Oleg, from whom she had purchased cocaine in the past.
If Jan stalled, balked, or backed out, Oxana was prepared to kill him. If she did not kill him today, she would have to at some point soon. She felt reasonably sure that she could fire the gun. She had never fired one before, certainly never killed anyone, but the diamonds were in the apartment, and the apartment was not large. She would have two hours to search for the diamonds before she had to get to the airport, where she had checked her bags the previous night.
This would be a successful day. She would make it a successful day.
The elevator in Jan Pendowski’s apartment building was working. It did not always work. Oxana took this as a good sign. She went up to the fifth floor along with a very tiny, grunting woman clutching a large stuffed cloth shopping bag to her chest.
At the door to Jan’s apartment she paused. She could not identify with certainty the sounds from within. A groan of pleasure, pain? Sex? With whom?
Oxana unzipped her small purse, looked down at her gun, and knocked.
“The woman in the photograph you took at the cafe,” said Sasha. “I know who it is.”
Elena had been following Oxana who had just gotten out of the taxi in front of the apartment building of Jan Pendowski when Sasha called on her cell phone.