While Gladstone and I had hidden behind the screen, Kingsley, in a feat of deduction involving Igor’s footwear and clods of dirt — he’d apparently written a monograph on that too — had determined that Igor was bound for Norwich, and on either the 11:52 train or the 12:04. So here we were in a town with the kind of bucolic vibe I’d come to expect from watching Masterpiece Theatre. I had no trouble spotting Igor as the train crowd dispersed outside the station. He was a hulking figure, mostly bald but with a patch of red hair. Wearing a bright green windbreaker, he lumbered through the cobblestone streets with a bearlike gait.
We followed him to the town center, thick with boutiques and cafés. A large after-school crowd, noisy kids in plaid uniforms and their attendant adults mixing in with gen pop, meant that Kingsley and I didn’t worry about being spotted. But Igor never looked back. He headed to an open-air marketplace, an Anglo-Saxon sort of souk in the shadow of a Gothic cathedral, with row upon row of vendors under striped awnings. We kept our distance now, and when Igor stopped at a kiosk we stopped too, twenty yards back, and Kingsley bought French fries served in newspaper. We then made our way up terraced stone steps overlooking the plaza.
“I assume Igor’s getting his red diamond appraised,” I said, nodding at a blue awning marked POPOV FINE JEWELRY, BOUGHT AND SOLD. WALK-INS WELCOME.
“Chips?” Kingsley pushed the French fries toward me, but as they were covered in vinegar, I passed. Gladstone, however, helped himself. “And what will the appraiser tell him?” Kingsley asked me.
“He’ll say, ‘Igor, I hope you didn’t pay more than thirty bucks for this because it’s a third-rate garnet plucked from some dog or cat collar with a Swiss Army knife.”
“Very good,” Kinglsey said. “Not a garnet, though. Swarovski crystal.”
I scratched Gladstone’s neck, my fingers finding the empty setting where the crystal had been. “Where’s the real diamond?”
He shrugged. “The tunnel, I imagine. Some government functionary will be months getting that place sorted.”
“Wasn’t it a risk, giving him a fake rock?”
“It shouldn’t have been. But I fear I’ve miscalculated,” Kingsley admitted. “I expected he’d go straight to his boss, at Finchlingly Manor, six kilometers down the road. Where government agents are waiting to take Igor into custody. That’s where I planned to question him.”
“But why wouldn’t he authenticate the diamond?”
“Because Mirko was well trusted. The Cartier of money launderers. The De Beers of Marylebone. You don’t survive in his trade by ripping off customers.”
“Mirko isn’t going to survive,” I reminded him.
“And Igor has just reached the same conclusion regarding himself.” Kingsley stood abruptly. “Off we go.”
Igor lumbered along at a good clip now, leading us across a pedestrian overpass into a working-class neighborhood.
“Where’s he off to then?” Kingsley asked. “If not to his employer, or the train station, or the airport—”
“Church,” I said. “To pray for his immortal soul.”
“Nonsense. If he were the churchy sort, Norwich Cathedral was right in front of him.”
“But that’s Anglican, right?” I asked. “He made the sign of the cross as he left the marketplace.”
“That wasn’t the sign of the cross, it was psoriasis. He’s been scratching regularly. And in any case, Anglicans also cross themselves.”
“But Anglicans cross left to right for the Holy Ghost part,” I said. “Igor went right to left. What do you bet he goes to a Russian Orthodox church?”
“I’m not going to bet with you. Wouldn’t be sporting. I’ve failed only four times in my entire career, and — now what’s he doing?”
What Igor was doing was staring at his phone as he walked, twice doing a one-eighty, the sign of a man at the mercy of Google maps. Seven minutes later he reached a one-story brick building with all the charm and spaciousness of a vacuum cleaner store. A sign near the door read RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH. But the door was locked. Igor rattled it twice, then gave up and checked his phone.
“Let’s go question him right now,” I said.
“Have you never done a proper ambush?” Kingsley asked. “We need privacy. Pity that church is closed.”
“Yes, pity that Russian Orthodox church is closed.”
“Don’t gloat,” he said. “It’s unattractive.”
Minutes later Igor got his bearings and took off, with us following, until Gothic spires came into view, rising out of the drab suburbs.
“Cathedral of John the Baptist,” Kingsley said. “Roman Catholic. He must’ve converted. And unless there’s a mass in progress, that’s where we’ll make our move.”
St. John’s was what a cathedral should be, all white marble and stained glass resplendent in the dying light of late afternoon. A dramatic Pietà dominated the left half of the church, just past the transept, and that’s where Igor stopped. He genuflected, crossed himself, and knelt.
Kingsley and I found a pew near the back. “It’s weird to be in a church with a dog,” I whispered. “And a gun. Why ambush him here?”
“We won’t ambush,” Kingsley answered. “We’ll converse. Note his body language: he’s dying to confess.”
As if he heard us, Igor straightened his spine, turned, spotted us, and bolted.
Kingsley was after him in a flash, leaving me to grab Gladstone and follow, down the nave toward the altar, a left at the Pietà, around the back, and out the side door. Igor was faster than he looked, sprinting across a parking lot and into someone’s backyard.
But it wasn’t a backyard, it was an entrance to a park. We sped down a walkway, past a sign saying PAY HERE pointing to an “Honesty Box,” through a vine-enclosed path and around a bend, into a glorious sunken garden.
The garden was rectangular, ending in a beautiful stone facade. Igor headed that way, then peeled off to the right, scrambling with difficulty up a terraced wall and disappearing into a thick copse.
“Go left,” Kingsley called over his shoulder. “The understory! I’ll take the right!”
Having no idea what an understory was, I nevertheless scurried up a side stairway and into a thicket so dense that day became night. I set Gladstone down onto the forest floor and unclipped his leash so he wouldn’t strangle himself, and made my way blindly forward, thinking I may as well have been back in the tunnel. I imagined Kingsley doing the same on the opposite side of the garden while our quarry waltzed back out and onto the street.
And then there he was, on the path in front of me.
Igor looked more startled than threatening. He stared at my hand, and I looked down too, to discover I’d drawn the gun from my purse.
Our eyes met. He was pale, and from the ears up bald. From the ears down he sported a fuzzy glob of red hair, a clown wig cut in half. It gave him a hapless air, Larry of the Three Stooges.
I tried to say “Stop” in Russian, but what came out was zdravstvujtye, which of course meant “good day,” which was equally useless. Because Igor had already stopped and neither of us was having a good day.
“Where’s my brother?” I blurted out, and then “Gde moy brat?” before realizing that this man would have no idea who I was, let alone my brother, in any language.
“You can shoot me,” he responded, in very good English. “Please.”
Maybe it was the influence of the Honesty Box at the entrance, but I said, “I’m sorry. My gun isn’t loaded.”
At that point Kingsley came crashing through the thicket behind Igor. He looked at my gun and between gasps of breath said, “Let’s go down to the garden and find a nice bench, shall we?”