“Well,” said Kisolev. “I guess you’re a little old for this anyway, but your kick is powerful, beautiful.”
“Thank you,” said Akardy Zelach sheepishly.
Iosef motioned for Zelach to follow him and the two men started to move away. Kisolev blew his whistle and the team members began to make their way back onto the field.
“If Pleshkov contacts you,” said Iosef, “call me at Petrovka. Office of Special Investigation. Iosef Rostnikov.”
“No,” said Kisolev. “I will talk to Yevgeny, try to get him sober, try to get him home, ask him to call you, but I cannot afford to lose my best friend by betraying him.”
“I’m sorry about-” Iosef began, but Kisolev waved him off.
“I probably deserved it,” he said. With that, Kisolev trotted onto the field toward his waiting team.
“You have hidden talents,” said Iosef as the two investigators walked out of the stadium. “Are there other things you can do, about which I know nothing? Throw a javelin, wrestle?”
“No,” said Zelach.
“Would you mind sometime if I made a wager on your kicking skills?”
“I don’t know,” said Zelach uncomfortably.
“We’ll talk about it. We have to be at the Casino Royal at midnight. You might want to go home and take a nap later this afternoon.”
“I cannot nap,” said Zelach as they reached the street where a kiosk stood selling American hot dogs. There was a small line.
Iosef got in the line and Akardy Zelach joined him. “You kicked that first ball fifty yards,” said Iosef.
“Perhaps,” said Zelach.
Iosef stood silently considering some way of capitalizing on the talent of the man at his side.
Sasha’s head was a hot balloon of searing hangover pain. His stomach threatened nausea. There was no place he wanted to be.
He didn’t want to be lying down in the hotel room, where the ceiling insisted on going back and forth like a light boat on the water.
Even if he could, he didn’t want to go home to his wife, children, and mother, where he would get no rest. And, besides, he had been ordered not to go home. He didn’t want a hot shower. He didn’t want to eat. All he wanted to do was sit alone in a darkened room and moan.
Instead, he leaned back confidently in the antique wooden-armed chair and accepted a cup of strong coffee from Illya Skatesholkov.
They were in a large, expensive, and tastefully decorated office in Zjuzino on Khaovka not far from the Church of Boris and Gleb.
The office was on the second floor of a line of high rises built in the 1950s. This series of high rises was better maintained than most.
Sasha had been called and then picked up at the hotel by a white American Lincoln limousine. The driver had not spoken, and Sasha, who was supposed to be a Ukrainian, looked out at the miles of apartments, wasteland, and remaining memories of small villages. Down many of the roads, Sasha knew, were communities of dachas, many old and crumbling, some being renovated right down to Jacuzzis and swimming pools, which their owners could use only a month or two each year.
More than ninety percent of the people of Moscow live beyond the Outer Ring Circle. Tourists and visiting businessmen seldom go beyond the Ring, and even those who come frequently have no idea of how most Muscovites live. They live not well. Amid oases of parks, athletic stadiums, restored churches, and even a steeple-chase race course are miles of apartment buildings from whose windows hang laundry and in whose corridors children steal from children, adults fight over water and inches of space, and families depressed by lack of food and money battle over meaningless slights.
Sometimes these conflicts led to serious injury or even death.
On more than one occasion, if the identity of the one who committed the crime was not immediately obvious to the uniformed police who were first on the scene, Sasha had been part of an investigation.
A moment of near panic. What if someone in this building recognized him, approached him? This fear was a familiar one, one that came whenever Sasha went undercover, which was frequently.
He had nightmares about being exposed, pointed at by a child or a woman carrying a baby, or by an old man. The person pointed to him and screamed his name and he tried to run, with some deadly presence close behind. He would pass people, young, old, and they would point at him and scream. Once, he had been pointed out in a dream by an obviously blind young man.
Sasha came out of the state of panic, hoping it had not been noticed. The pain of the hangover, that was what caused this weakness, that and. . He turned his attention back to the bleak miles of apartment buildings.
Some of these complexes were in decay. Some were reasonably well maintained by residents determined to retain dignity if not great hope. Sasha had been in buildings like this. He knew.
And now he sat in a ground-floor apartment which had been converted into period luxury, right down to expensive wallpaper.
Sasha felt as if he had walked through a door into another century.
He sat with Illya Skatesholkov and Boris Osipov drinking coffee and discussing the events of the previous night. Both Boris and Illya, though they tried not to show it, were noticeably nervous.
“So,” said Boris, “what did you think of our little arena?”
Sasha looked around and said, “Impressive.”
Boris let out a mirthless laugh and said, “Not the office. The dog ring. Last night.”
“Impressive also,” said Sasha, drinking some coffee. The pain in his head was nearly unbearable, and he feared his nausea would force him to ask for the rest room. He fought the nausea and affected a small, knowing smile. The Yak had approved the purchase of three suits, complete with silk shirts, ties, and shoes. He was wearing the second of the suits. Elena was taking care of having the one he wore yesterday cleaned, a task she clearly felt should be his, but when the call had come she accepted the responsibility with minimal reluctance.
“And Tatyana?” asked Illya.
“Impressive,” Sasha repeated, taking another sip of his very good coffee.
So that was her name. Oh, he had been drunk. As his mother, Lydia, would say, remembering her long-dead husband, he had been “drunk as a cross-eyed cossack.” It had been Sasha’s impres-sion since first hearing the expression that he had seen few cossacks and none that he could recall having crossed eyes.
“Versatile,” said Illya.
“Yes,” Sasha agreed, preferring not to discuss the woman who had led him off to a room after the dogfight. He had been drunk, but she had been beautiful and talented. She enjoyed her work and so had Sasha.
His two hosts smiled.
“We have made some inquiries about you and your Kiev operation,” said Boris.
Sasha noted that neither of the two men moved behind the huge cherrywood desk, impressive due to its size and ornate legs and because there was nothing on its polished surface, not even a telephone. Both of his escorts sat in chairs identical to the one in which Sasha sat back with his legs folded. The chair behind the desk, Sasha assumed, was reserved for the person for whom his hosts worked. “Chair” was hardly the word for it. It, like the desk, was of another century. The very high-backed chair, with each dark wood arm coming forward to clasp a wooden ball, looked as if it belonged in a museum.
“And?” asked Sasha, sipping carefully to avoid spilling on his perfectly pressed suit.
“We are informed that you have a growing operation,” said Boris, “not equal to ours, but growing rapidly.”
Sasha nodded.
“From what I have seen of your operation,” said Sasha, “I would say that mine is already equal to yours.”
“Let’s not bicker about size,” said Illya. “It is sufficient that you have a prospering operation. We would like to discuss a proposal, a proposal that would make your operation part of our operation, a proposal that would certainly double or even triple your earn-ings, a proposal that would make you part of an international syndicate growing each week. We would bring some of our dogs to Kiev. You would bring some of your dogs to Moscow. We would provide advice from our dog trainers. We would locate and draw bettors, high-stakes bettors, to your operation.”