Arthur watched her inch a pawn forward. He felt out of his depth here. Was he expected to haggle? That might seem insulting, given the risky gamble Djon seemed ready to take. Finally, regretting he couldn’t promise such a sum, he said Canadian authorities might offer an ex gratia payment for his aid in repatriating a citizen wrongly imprisoned.
”But Mr. Erzhan will earn many millions, yes? From the book he will write.”
After much discussion about the travails of the book industry, it was agreed that should Ottawa not cough up the whole million, the balance would come from Erzhan’s suit for damages. That left many loopholes, but Djon seemed satisfied.
“Now we must talk unavoidable expenses.” Dordana’s fourth cousin had expressed a need for a reliable car. His mortgage was in arrears. Silence of other, lesser participants must be bought. Out-of-pocket costs, something for emergencies. Rather suspiciously, the total came close to the $43,000 still sitting in the bank.
Arthur was distinctly uncomfortable with the notion of Djon wandering off with his entire poke. Was he to be trusted? Or was he the most skilled confidence trickster he’d ever met? He was certainly no idiot, and seemed to have a credible strategy. Faced with no viable alternative, Arthur threw caution to the wind, and the deal was secured with a clinking of mugs.
“Now Djon must return to game. Come, meet.” He drew Arthur toward the chess table, introduced Comrade Dordana.
“A pleasure, Mr. Beauchamp. Here is the hotel where you will stay in Ohrid.” She ripped a page from a pad. “Three days, no more, and Mr. Erzhan will come to you. Do not worry.”
As Arthur shrugged into his coat, he paused at the door to watch Djon and Dordana settle at the table among their comrades. Nods, smiles, handshaking, revolutionary salutes.
29
Dear Journal,
January 5, I think. Some hurried notes, too pooped to write much. Still scared but more hopeful. Making better progress after a couple of our guys unburied the truck from where it was hidden in piled snow, plus supporters lent us other vehicles, one a big farm truck with fifty men and women packed in the back.
One encounter with a Bhashyistan army outpost, but they scattered like scared mice when we pulled in. Now we have three extra jeeps. Numbers swelling daily, men and women leaving their farms and villages to join our march to the Russian border.
Stayed in a snow cave last night. Maxine, Ivy, and I now waiting out the night in a yurt, our comrades camped outside. Not too cold in here but spare, the only decoration a framed photo of Abzal Erzhan (he’s everywhere) who I found out had lost his parents to executioners. So sad. Little Hasran, only fifteen, says he is like a king to him, to all of Bhashyistan.
Aisulu has ordered lights out. Bedtime. I keep thinking that tomorrow I’ll awake in my own bed, and this will all have been a nightmare.
As of noon on Friday, January 6, the eve of Orthodox Christmas in the Republic of Macedonia, Arthur had not heard from Dordana and Djon. Three days, they had promised — and if anything went awry they were to phone him here, in his assigned hotel on Lake Ohrid. But not a whisper. Five days had passed since that promise.
An ugly scenario haunted him — Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, Q.C., who had dealt with some of the most brilliant minds of criminality, had been sucked in by an Albanian grandmaster. If I fail, I want only thanks for trying. Arthur had eaten it up like a hungry dog. And now Djon and Dordana were off on a romp with $43,000 of his law firm’s money.
How would he find the strength to face Bully? The jeers of Crumwell and Thiessen? His portrayal in the press as an innocent abroad?
He’d had qualms earlier, certainly at the beginning of the week, as he emptied his account. But those had settled when Djon and Dordana picked him up at nightfall as planned, in her Fiat compact. He’d even slept, a bumpy back-seat slumber as they drove up the winding road to Korca and beyond, his compatriots jabbering gaily away in Albanian.
At dawn, he was dropped off at the Macedonian border, on the shores of Lake Ohrid. He was quizzed by a distrustful immigration official unused to lone Canadian tourists showing up on foot in winter. Arthur’s explanation — he was fulfilling a lifelong dream to see the beauties of the region — felt lame, but he got through.
Macedonia was a small landlocked country of two million, with a large Albanian minority, maybe less corrupt than its neighbour and slightly better off — as symbolized by its working ATMs. And there was beauty here, with its mild Mediterranean climate, the beaches and Byzantine churches and cobbled, hilly streets and red-tiled roofs.
His apartment in a lakeside hotel in the old town was clean and spacious, with a balcony overlooking the deep blue lake. Beyond, distantly, the snowy mountains of Albania. Somewhere over there were Djon and Dordana, enjoying their lucrative joke now that Arthur was out of their hair, out of their country.
He had spent the first few days in Ohrid touring by foot and taxi: its thousand-year-old churches, its castle, museum, Roman ruins, the palatial, peacock-patrolled grounds of the ninth-century Sveti Naum Monastery. But for the last two days it had rained, and he’d rarely ventured out, preferring to pace and fret or surf his TV’s hundred satellite channels.
On his arrival, he’d called Margaret to say he was back on the trail. She was mainstreeting somewhere, crowd noises, horns beeping. The line was bad. A few words of cheer and affection were followed, confusingly, by, “Oh, thank you, they’re lovely. Smell these, Arthur.” Her little joke — someone had given her flowers.
He’d made no mention of DiPalma, and would have hedged had she asked about his health or whereabouts; there was no point upsetting her in the midst of a hectic campaign. He had promised to call her later, but buried under the rubble of growing depression he hadn’t found the strength.
Arthur kept up with Canada and the world on his twenty-inch screen. Aside from the third son’s resurrection, there’d not been a peep from Bhashyistan — all TV and radio services had been knocked off the air, and the national Internet server was down. The BBC was trying to confirm reports of widening unrest, protests, arrests, martial law.
That network also reported an unusual event outside the Bhashyistan embassy in London. Demonstrators, along with a couple of news crews, had witnessed two limousines pull up, a platoon of businessmen hastening in with their briefcases, avoiding shouted questions. It hadn’t taken long to identify them as lawyers and board members of Anglo-Atlantic Energy.
Now, as Arthur quit his pacing and turned up the sound, a BBC expert was speculating as to what seemed obvious to Arthur: Anglo was about to get its hands on the oil reserves of a country in desperate financial need. A furor was expected. The interloping oil giant was already being widely condemned. The Russian president, Arkady Bulov, had brusquely announced the recall of his ambassador in Igorgrad for consultations.
Though grimly pleased that he could now settle on Anglo-Atlantic as the architect of a scheme of assassination and false incrimination, only one man, Abzal Erzhan, could identify its hirelings who had bundled him into that sedan. High-flying gangsters who’d come from careers as anti-terrorist agents: Arthur liked the irony of that theory. Experts at rendition, at assembling roadside bombs. Still unexplained was why they’d not dropped their kidnappee into the Atlantic Ocean.
The day was waning, the phone waiting, demanding an act of penance. Finally, he gritted his teeth and called the Catholic hospice in Tirana. They took the phone out to the courtyard, where DiPalma, bundled up against the cold, admitted he was working through his third pack of cigarettes that day.