“Am I to believe that she was Gustavo Moreno’s mistress, and now she’s yours?”
“When you meet her you will understand,” Don Fernando said. “But this much I will say. Tanirt is no one’s mistress. She is who she is. It is not for any man to have her in that way. She is…” He looked away for a moment. “… wild.”
Dimitri Maslov received the news that Colonel Boris Karpov was getting a haircut and shave at the Metropole barbershop with cautious optimism. Karpov, also a cautious man, never got his hair cut at the same place twice.
Maslov summoned Oserov, but was informed that Oserov was AWOL, having left Moscow the day before. Maslov, seething, had had enough of Oserov. In fact, he’d kept him on this long only to piss off Arkadin, for whom he harbored both a father’s love and a spurned parent’s bitter hatred. But Oserov’s humiliating failure in Bangalore had sunk him fatally. He had become all but useless to Maslov, having acquired the stink of defeat.
“Where did he go?” Maslov inquired of Oserov’s assistant. They were standing in the offices, surrounded by Maslov’s crew.
“Tineghir.” The assistant coughed and licked his dry lips. “Morocco.”
“Why did he go to Morocco?”
“He… he didn’t tell me.”
“Did you try to find out?”
“How would I do that?”
Maslov drew his custom-made Makarov and shot the assistant between the eyes. Then he turned a murderous gaze on each of his men, slowly. The ones closest to him stepped back a pace, as if struck by an invisible blow.
“Anyone who thinks he can take a piss without my order, step forward.”
No one moved.
“Anyone who thinks he can disobey an order, step forward.”
No one breathed.
“Yevgeny.” He turned to a stocky man with a scar beneath one eye. “Arm yourself and your two best men. You’re coming with me.”
Then he stalked back into his office, went to the cabinet behind his desk, and began to pick through weaponry. If the debacle in Bangalore had taught him anything it was that if you want to get something difficult done, do it yourself. Times had changed. He knew it, yet he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Everything was more difficult than it had been. The government had become aggressively hostile, the siloviks had run off the more pliable oligarchs, and good people were harder and harder to find. The easy money had been made. Now he had to claw and scratch for every dollar. He was working double the hours just to make the profit he’d earned ten years ago. It was enough to make you weep for lost youth. The fact of the matter is, he thought as he fitted a suppressor to the muzzle of his Makarov, it’s no fun being a criminal anymore. Now it’s work, pure and simple. He’d been reduced to the level of an apparatchik, and he hated it. This new reality was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He was exhausted from trying to keep his head above water. And then, to top it all off, Boris Karpov had become his personal bête noire.
Well armed, he slammed the cabinet doors shut. Hefting his Makarov, he discovered a newfound vigor. After so many years behind a desk, it felt good to hit the streets, to take the law into his own hands, to shake it until it went limp and gave up. He felt ready to bite off its head.
The Metropole barbershop was situated off the vast, marble-and-ormolu lobby of the Federated Moskva Hotel, an old and venerable establishment located between the Bolshoi Theater and Red Square. The building was so ornate, it seemed at any moment on the verge of imploding from the encrustations of cornices, balustrades, carved stone panels, massive lintels, and projecting parapets.
The Metropole was set up with three old-fashioned barber’s chairs, behind which were a mirrored wall and the cabinets that contained the various implements of the trade: scissors, straight razors, shaving cream machines, tall glass jars of a blue liquid disinfectant, neatly folded towels, combs, brushes, electric hair clippers, canisters of talcum powder, and bottles of bracing aftershave.
Currently all three chairs were occupied by clients over whom had been spread black nylon smocks that snapped at the neck. The two men at either end were getting their hair cut by barbers in the traditional Metropole white uniforms. The man in the middle, reclining on his chair with a hot towel wrapped around his face, was Boris Karpov. While his barber stropped a straight razor, Karpov whistled an old Russian folk melody he remembered from his childhood. In the background a dinosaur of a radio played a staticky news report, announcing the latest government initiative to combat growing unemployment. Two men, one young, one old, sat in wooden chairs on the other side of the shop, reading copies of Pravda while waiting their turn.
Yevgeny’s men had reconnoitered the hotel lobby for ten minutes, assiduously checking for FSB-2 agents. Finding none, they signaled to their boss. Yevgeny, in a long winter overcoat similar to the ones his men wore, entered the Federated Moskva, along with a family led by an unsmiling Intourist guide. While the guide led the family to reception, he walked directly to the Metropole, assuring himself that Boris Karpov was, indeed, the man in the center chair getting his face scraped. As soon as the barber lifted the towel from Karpov’s face, Yevgeny turned and signaled to his man who was standing by the revolving door. This man, in turn, signaled Maslov, who got out of the black BMW parked in front of the hotel, went across the sidewalk, and up the steps.
The moment he appeared through the revolving door, Yevgeny and his men went into action, just as had been planned. The two men stationed themselves on either side of the Metropole entrance. There was no other egress.
Yevgeny walked in and, drawing his Makarov pistol, used the barrel to signal to the two men waiting to get the hell out. He swung the muzzle of the Makarov in the general direction of the clients getting their hair cut to keep them and their barbers from moving. He nodded and Maslov entered.
“Karpov, Boris Karpov.” Maslov had his Makarov at the ready. “I understand you’re looking for me.”
Karpov opened his eyes. His gaze rested on Maslov a moment. “Shit, this is awkward.”
Maslov grinned wolfishly. “Only for you.”
Karpov raised a hand from under his smock. The barber took the edge of the straight razor from his cheek and stepped back. Karpov looked from Maslov to Yevgeny to the two armed men who now appeared in the doorway.
“This doesn’t look good for me, but if you’ll listen I think we can work a deal.”
Maslov laughed. “Listen to this, the incorruptible Colonel Karpov begging for his life.”
“I’m just being pragmatic,” Karpov said. “I’m soon to become the head of FSB-2, so why kill me? I’d be an excellent friend to have, don’t you agree?”
“The only good friend,” Maslov said, “is a dead friend.”
He took aim at Karpov, but before he could squeeze the trigger, an explosion blasted him backward off his feet. A hole had appeared in Karpov’s smock from the bullet he had fired. He threw off the smock at the same time as the two other clients-both FSB-2 undercover agents-fired through their smocks. Yevgeny’s two men went down. Yevgeny killed one of Karpov’s men before Karpov shot him three times in the chest.
Karpov, his face still covered with shaving cream, walked over to where Maslov lay on the black-and-white tile floor.
“How do you feel?” He aimed his pistol at Maslov’s face. “At the end of an era?”
Without waiting for a reply, he squeezed the trigger.
Moira opened her eyes after what seemed like days or weeks of sleep, and saw Berengária Moreno’s face.