Tonight Pedachenko had no sooner gotten to his room than he heard a soft knock at his door, opened it, and stepped back to admit a beautiful woman in a short black skirt, black stockings, black leather jacket, and black beret. The concierge had seen her enter the lobby in her spike heels, guessed immediately that she was going to Pedachenko’s room, and admired her long-legged figure with a kind of wishful envy aimed at the politician, whom he was sure would be enjoying his tryst even more than usual this evening. The woman was like a pantheress, he observed. One who was no doubt in heat.
Now she sat down on a plush Queen Anne wing chair, pulled off her beret, and shook her head so her hair spilled loosely over her jacket collar.
“The money before anything,” she said coolly.
He stood in front of her, still dressed in his sport coat and slacks, and shook his head ever so slightly.
“It makes me sad to know our relationship is based so exclusively on payment for services rendered,” he said with a pained look. “After everything we’ve done together, one would think some kind of deeper bond would have formed.”
“Save your cleverness for the viewers of your program,” she said. “I want what you owe me.”
Pedachenko made a slight tsking sound, reached into his inner jacket pocket, and brought out a thick white envelope. She took it from him, opened the flap, and glanced inside. Then she dropped it into her purse.
“At least you didn’t feel it necessary to count it in front of me, Gilea,” Pedachenko said. “Perhaps we have the beginnings of a closer, more trusting relationship here, after all.”
“I told you to play the raconteur with someone else,” she said. “We have urgent business to discuss.” Her cheekbones suddenly appeared to sharpen. “I haven’t heard from Korut. He was supposed to contact me two nights ago.”
“Can you try to get in touch with him?”
“The members of my band don’t spend their nights in the comfort of expensive hotels, with telephones at their bedsides and fax service at the push of a button,” she said, with a single quick shake of her head. “The surroundings in which they sleep are far more Spartan.”
He gave her a hard look. “How concerned should we be?”
“Not too, yet. He could be on the move and feel it’s unsafe to communicate. That’s happened before. But we’ll have to wait and see.” She paused. “He’ll get a message through to me if he’s able.”
Pedachenko kept his eyes on her face.
“Well, 1 don’t like it,” he said. “In view of the failure at the satellite station—”
“It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been in charge of the operation instead of Sadov. You should have waited for me.”
“You may be right. Certainly I’m not inclined to argue. The important thing now, though, is for us to rectify our mistakes.”
“Your mistakes,” she said. “Don’t try that psychological ploy with me.”
He sighed and moved closer to her. “Look, let’s dispense with the antagonism and talk straight. I have another job, Gilea.”
“No,” she said. “We’ve gone far enough. The minister, Bashkir, has been set up for a fall and Starinov will follow him into the pit. Just as you planned.”
“But there’s the possibility someone’s stumbled onto us. You know it as well as 1 do. That incident at the headquarters of the New York gangster, the rumors that it was somehow connected to UpLink. And then the resistance at the ground station…”
“All the more reason to keep a low profile,” she said.
He expelled another sigh. “Listen to me. Starinov has notified the Ministry that he’s going to be at his cottage outside Dagornys for the next several days. I’ve been there before and can tell you it’s particularly vulnerable to assault.”
“You can’t be serious about what you’re suggesting,” she said. But her eyes had suddenly brightened, become razor sharp, and her lips had parted a little, showing the upper edges of her front teeth.
“I’ll pay anything you ask, make any arrangements you wish for your safe haven afterward,” he said.
She stared into Pedachenko’s eyes, her tongue moving over her lip, her breath coming in short, rapid snatches.
A second crawled past.
Two.
She stared into his eyes.
Finally she nodded.
“I’ll take him,” she said.
FORTY-FIVE
There were three men in dark suits, widebrimmed fedoras, and long gray overcoats hanging around outside the bathhouse when the Rover pulled up in front of it.
“Will you take a look at them?” Scull said from the backseat. “It’s like they’re fucking play-acting at being gangsters.”
“They are and they aren’t,” Blackburn said, glancing out the front passenger’s window. “In some ways, I really don’t think these monkeys can distinguish reality from what they’ve seen in old-time American gangster flicks. But you have to remember that every one of them is packing a weapon under his coat.”
“You guys want me to come in with you?”
This from Neil Perry, who was behind the steering wheel.
Blackburn shook his head.
“It’d be better if you wait here, in case we need to take off in a hurry,” he said, and halfway unzipped his leather jacket. Scull could see the butt of his Smith & Wesson nine in a shoulder holster underneath it. “I don’t think they’ll give us much trouble, though.”
Perry gave him a small nod.
Blackburn looked over the seat rest at Scull.
“Okay,” he said. “You ready?”
“Been ready for days,” Scull said.
The two men exited the car and strode across the sidewalk. It was a sunny day and a few degrees above freezing, warm for Moscow in winter, but despite the relatively moderate weather the street was nearly empty, and business was slow in the trendy shops along Ulitsa Petrovka. It was the uncertainty about worsened food shortages, and the withdrawal of NATO assistance, and a potential economic embargo, Scull thought. People were holding onto their money in anticipation of the worst.
The hoods closed ranks as Blackburn and Scull approached the bathhouse entrance, blocking their path to it. One of them, a tall man with dark hair and a large shovel chin, said something to Blackburn in Russian.
“Ya nye gavaryu pa russkiy,” Blackburn replied.
Shovel Chin repeated what he’d said, motioning the two Americans off. Out the corner of his eye, Blackburn noticed another of the men edging forward, opening the middle button of his coat. He was shorter than the first one and had a mustache that looked as if it had been traced over his upper lip with an eye pencil.
“I just told you I don’t speak Russian,” Blackburn said, and started forward.
Shovel Chin bumped him back with his shoulder.
“I tell you again in fucking Engleeski, then,” he said, shoving out his chest. “You get the fuck out of this place right now, you motherfucking American asshole.”