Karpo, hand on his weapon, opened the door.
The lean black cat that walked slowly in stretched as she moved, her left paw betraying a long, imperfectly healed injury. The cat ignored Karpo and leapt onto the cot.
Karpo put his weapon away and moved to the cot to pick up the cat. When he was a boy, his brother had a cat not unlike this one, which did not object to being lifted. Karpo put him outside the door and watched the cat saunter down the darkened hallway.
Something, the smell of the cat, the feel of its fur, the pulsing of its purr, evoked a sense of childhood. It was not unpleasant.
“I am about to be very rich.”
He lay beside Oxana in the bed, grinning, his hands behind his head, his mind savoring a simple but expensive list of indulgences-a dacha on the Black Sea with a modest boat including a cabin with a large round bed that gently rocked to the melody of his body and that of whatever young or not-so-young woman he had invited aboard. But there would be more. Yes, the clothes, like James Bond, but what he dwelled on most was the notion of food. He would stuff himself through the beak like a pampered goose, bred to produce the finest fois gras. He would drink fine wines from France and Spain. Maybe he would have enough to buy an English soccer team. He had no idea what they cost.
Maybe a great many things, though he was smart enough to know that he would have to keep a very low profile for years and hold onto a job he really didn’t mind.
“We,” Oxana Balakona said.
She shared this apartment in Kiev with another model who was away on an ad shoot in Cyprus. Oxana also had a small apartment of her own in Moscow.
“We?”
“We will be rich,” she explained. “You said ‘I.’ ”
“Of course, ‘we.’ ”
“If there were to be only you before I receive my share of the money,” she said, “some people would be enlightened about what happened to their diamonds.”
“The diamonds do not belong to them,” he said, happily turning to look at her profile. She had a lovely profile, aquiline, her skin almost white. “They stole the diamonds from someone else, who stole them from a mine in Africa. I paid for them with euros confiscated from a band of Estonian smugglers.”
“Still, some people would be interested in what happened to the diamonds,” she repeated without looking at him, wanting to reach for her cigarettes on the table next to the bed, knowing he did not like it when she smoked in bed.
They had not known each other long, but he had not been shy about making his wishes clear. He was not bad looking and Oxana had a reasonable if not excessive sexual drive. The problem was that he was an animal, a smart, careful animal driven by an almost constant desire for immediate gratification. For him, sex was quick, self-indulgent, filled with lust, growls, and grunts instead of words.
It wasn’t bad. Oxana was an animal too, but she considered herself a sleek, calculating, protective cat. He was a wild bear. They were not a bad match.
“You are a greedy creature,” he had said when he had approached her about the diamonds.
She had smiled the knowing smile that had appeared in several hundred ads, magazine layouts, and on runways in eleven countries. She was not greedy, but she had no intention of explaining that to him. Yes, she made lots of money, but she had many expenses and, as one very gay German designer had once said to her, “Models have a limited shelf life.”
Oxana would eventually no longer be the product which could sell illusions to women who had no hope of ever looking like her and to men who would dress their wives and mistresses with the clothes Oxana modeled. Both the men and women hoped they could buy a little of the illusion, that it might be slightly transferred with the silk, cotton, and cashmere.
Oxana had five or six years more as a model. Then a battle she could not win against weight and age would begin, or end. She had no intention of letting herself go when she was rich, but she wanted the pleasure of knowing that she was maintaining her beauty for herself and not for others.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“You really expect me to answer that?”
“Absolutely not. I expect you to lie. I expect to look at your beautiful face, at your little smile, and delight in watching you lie.”
“I was thinking about what I will do with the money.”
“We,” he said. “What we will do with the money.”
“We won’t be together,” she said, reaching for her cigarettes, no longer able to wait.
“Why not?” he said with a grin, his hand on her lean thigh.
“Truth or lie?” she asked.
He considered his options and said, “Your choice.”
“We’d grow tired of each other. Very quickly.”
“Are you already growing tired of me then?” he asked, getting out of bed.
His body was not hairy. His features were strong, rugged. He bore a small white scar right on his left eyelid and several others, one the size of a baby’s fist on his right arm.
“No,” she lied.
“Good.”
She lit her cigarette, inhaled with satisfaction, and allowed herself a small smile for the future.
“A shame you have to stay so thin,” he said.
“You don’t like it?”
He shrugged. “Given what I am looking at, I would be a fool to complain.”
He had pulled a chair to the side of the bed and propped up his feet near her. He was wearing nothing.
“Given what I can see from here,” she said. “You are far from complaining.”
“Shall we?” he asked.
She surprised herself by putting out her cigarette and saying, “Why not? A celebration.”
“It’s too soon to celebrate,” he said, climbing on the bed and reaching for her.
She held up a hand, palm extended.
“Lie down,” she commanded.
He laughed.
“You’re giving orders? I like that, but not too often.”
As she straddled him, Oxana considered, but only for a moment, when it might be best to kill him. He knew the contact in Paris. When he told her, the opportunity would arise. She was certain he did not plan to share with her, and she could not let him live to hunt her down.
She knew he was almost certainly thinking the same thing about her.
“What is your name again? Forgive me for. .”
Vladimir Kolokov’s face was inches from the face of the black man in the chair. The Russian’s eyes were open wide, his head tilted very slightly to the right as if he were paying very close attention to the black man.
“James,” said the man in the chair, his voice dry, cracking.
“No, no,” said Kolokov with a laugh, turning to face the other three men in the room, sharing the joke. “No, I know your name is James. It’s your last name I have trouble with.”
“Harumbaki.”
“Harumbaki,” Kolokov repeated. “James, I am sorry to tell you, your friends are dead.”
James knew this. The Russian had let him see their bodies before two of the men in the shadows had dragged them off.
“But you, you and I are partners,” said the Russian.
He patted the shirtless black man on the shoulder. James tried not to cringe, but a slight movement betrayed him.
“Have I hurt you?” asked Kolokov, himself looking hurt by the movement of the man in the chair.
“No.”
“Your Russian is a little weak, James,” Kolokov said. “You’ll have to speak up.”
“No, you have not hurt me.”
Kolokov, who relished the scene, turned away to face his audience of three, and then he turned back suddenly, inches away from James’s face again, spit spraying his prisoner’s face.
“But I could, could I not?”
One of the men in the shadows, Alek, laughed.
“Yes.”
“Then we are partners,” said Kolokov. “We have a fair split. I get everything and you get to live.”
“Yes.”
“You tell me who you sell the diamonds to and when, and you and I go and make the transaction, and we all part company with a drink and a tear for fallen comrades.”
“Yes,” said James, not believing it for an instant.
Believing this lunatic was not really an issue. The diamonds were gone. When they had encountered Kolokov, James and the others had been on the way to their courier, a stupid Russian drug addict who had not been of James’s choosing. James and the others had been informed of the theft of the diamonds and the murder of the prostitute who had been carrying them. A drug addict and a prostitute. If he survived, which was not likely, James planned to find out how two incompetents could be selected to transport millions in diamonds.
Kolokov leaned even closer and whispered into James’s ear.
“I am sorry. I cannot treat you too nicely. You understand how it is. My friends here would not understand. They would be jealous. They would think, or maybe even say, ‘Vladimir, you have a new friend. You have abandoned us.’ You understand, James Hakimkov?”
James did not correct him. Instead he said,
“Yes.”
With that Kolokov pulled a small screwdriver from his pocket and shoved it deeply into the side of the man in the chair.
James gasped.
“Are you all right?” asked Kolokov with mock concern. “I’m sorry. I had to do it.”
James couldn’t speak. The pain was searing, throbbing, screaming.
“Are you all right, James?”
James shook his head yes.
“Good.”
Another pat on the shoulder.
“We’ll clean that up. It’s not deep and I rinsed the screwdriver earlier today. Fresh bandages. Pau’s mother was a nurse, is that correct, Pau?”
“Yes,” came a voice from the blurred darkness.
“Partners,” came Kolokov’s voice as James started to pass out.