“I must kill you, Porfiry Petrovich,” Panin said. “For my family.”
“Well, I must stay alive for mine. How do you propose killing me? There is not enough room for you to get in here with me, and even if your son is very small I doubt if he could overcome me.”
“I would not ask him to do that.”
“Then. .”
“I could shoot you.”
“Too much noise. Karpo and Boris would hear.”
“We would be gone by the time they got here,” said Panin.
“Perhaps, but Emil Karpo is fast, and he will quickly be on your trail through the tunnel. One question,” said Rostnikov. “You hid your son down here during the day before the gate was locked for the night.”
“It was not difficult.”
“And then he came out and opened the gate from inside.”
“Yes.”
“And the other ghost girls, over the many years before you were old enough to do this, before you had a son to do this? All the children of people, like you, who stole diamonds and smuggled them to Africans in Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“Only you had no daughters, only sons.”
“Now you know.”
“Thank you. If you would help me out. .”
“I am going to have to kill you, Porfiry Petrovich. Do you not understand?”
“It would be pointless. Emil Karpo is a very good shot and I believe he is somewhere behind you, watching, at this very moment.”
Just outside the small cave the darkness of the tunnel was illuminated by two sudden beams, one fixed on the kneeling Panin, the other on his son of no more than nine or ten, who stood in dress and wig, a thumb to his mouth.
“You tricked me,” said Panin, with a deep sigh of resignation.
Rostnikov slid out of the cave on his back. Stones and pebbles tore at his jacket.
“We trapped you,” said Boris triumphantly. “Do I get a medal? I would rather have that free trip to St. Petersburg and a job there.”
“I will arrange it,” Rostnikov said, accepting a helping hand from Panin who pulled him to his feet easily.
The child looked at his father and the three other men and began to sing again, but Panin stopped him by gently placing two fingers on the boy’s mouth.
“There is one more thing you could tell us,” said Rostnikov.
“No.”
“I thought not,” said Rostnikov, knowing that his jacket was torn and, if he were lucky, his back only minimally scratched.
“It is over?” asked Boris.
“Yes,” Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov lied.
Oxana had a key to Jan’s apartment.
Jan did not know this. It made no difference to Jan at the moment because the final few beats of his bleeding heart and faint pulse were marking the end of his life.
Oxana listened at the door. Nothing. She knocked. No answer.
She used her key. If luck were with her, she could search for the diamonds, find them, and deal with Jan later.
She stood in the open doorway trying to make sense out of what she was seeing.
Jan lay on the floor on his back. His shirt was covered with blood. Blood pulsed weakly from a black-red gash in his neck. Standing next to him, a pouch in one hand, a bloody knife in the other, stood Rochelle. She looked, as composed as ever, as she said,
“Oxana, he called me, told me to get right over. He said you were in trouble.”
Rochelle took a step toward Oxana.
“He had a knife,” said Rochelle. “This knife. He told me to undress. He put the knife down and. .”
“What is in the bag?” asked Oxana, taking the gun out of her purse and pointing it at the French woman.
“I do not know,” Rochelle said, looking at the pouch as if she had no idea what it was doing in her hand. “He had it, and. .”
“Put the bag on the floor. Put the knife on the floor and step back,” said Oxana.
“What?”
“On the floor. Step back.”
“Is there blood on my dress?” asked Rochelle.
It was Oxana’s turn to say, “What?”
“I cannot go out covered in blood.”
“Put the ba-”
Rochelle dropped the bag. Oxana watched it hit the floor and open enough to reveal three small glittering stones. When Oxana’s eyes were fixed on the stones, Rochelle leapt forward and threw her elbow into the face of the startled model.
Oxana went down on her back, her jaw searing, throbbing with pain.
The door to the apartment was still open. It could not be helped now. Oxana would have to be killed quickly and the door kicked closed.
“Rochelle,” Oxana gasped. “We can. .”
“No, we cannot.”
And then there was another voice, this time from the doorway, saying, “The knife, on the floor. Now.”
Oxana turned her head, and Rochelle looked at the doorway, where Elena stood, weapon in hand.
Rochelle did not drop the knife. Elena fired across the room, through the window.
“Drop the knife, Balta,” Elena said.
Balta smiled and dropped the knife. The woman in the doorway had her knees slightly bent, and she held her weapon in two hands. She was solidly built and rather pretty, not a beauty like Rochelle, certainly not a beauty like Oxana, who was certain that her jaw was broken.
Balta might have been able to dash the five steps across the room and plunge the knife into Elena, but it was a risk he did not have to take. He had a great deal with which to bargain.
Balta dropped the knife. Rochelle’s voice was replaced by a somewhat deeper voice as he raised his hands and said, “You have me.”
“Turn around,” Elena ordered.
Oxana sat blinking her eyes, trying to understand her pain, Jan, and what was happening. Her gun lay on the floor next to the pouch leaking diamonds. Before she could consider what her possibilities might be, Elena kicked the little gun across the room.
“You too, get up,” Elena said to Oxana. “Now.”
Oxana managed to rise in agony.
“Together. Backs to me,” said Elena.
Oxana looked down at the body of Jan Pendowski. Her knees were weak, not because of what she saw, but for the pain in her jaw.
Something clicked around her right wrist behind her. Oxana looked back to watch herself being handcuffed to Rochelle.
“Ya ne pani’mayu. I do not understand,” Oxana managed.
“To begin, you stupid department store dummy,” Balta said, opening his eyes wide, “I am a man.”
Sergeants Moseyovich and Sworskov had gone to work doing what they did best. They closed off the street and called in the cleaning trucks and ambulances. Within half an hour the street was clean and empty, and traffic was moving again.
Three miles away, in the back room of a church that had been converted to a small museum of icons, sat Iosef Rostnikov, Akardy Zelach, a young portly man who insisted that his full name was Laurence, and a very badly beaten James Harumbaki.
They sat and said nothing while Iosef listened to the call that had come on his phone. He had said,
“I understand.”
And then he hung up.
“Christiana Verovona,” said Iosef.
There was no reaction.
“She was murdered on a train coming from Kiev. She was carrying money just received from a model named Oxana Balakona for your diamonds.”
Neither black man said anything.
“I know this because the man who killed Christiana Verovona just told a police officer in Kiev,” said Iosef. “The officer has the money and the diamonds. I have been instructed by my Chief Inspector to let you get your passports, providing you have them, and escort you to the next airplane to Botswana. You will go as you are. Nothing but the clothes you are wearing. No money. You are never to return to Russia. If you do, you will be killed while attempting to rob an undercover police officer.”
James Harumbaki considered asking “Why?” but he did not.
“You agree to these terms?” asked Iosef.