“Go home and don’t come to the bank until you’re told to do so,” said Sinitsin. “But don’t leave town either – a need for you may arise any time.”
“Yes, of course… In a minute, I’ll just grab my stuff.”
She hurried to her room. She had no more than a minute at her disposal. It was clearly not a good time to approach Samsonov with her new proposals. But she was hardly going to get another chance to pass them on to him.
Nina snatched a memory stick and stuck it into the computer hastily. She could no longer hope to provide Samsonov with a complete picture – the detailed best and worst scenarios, with her commentaries. All she could do was pass on to him a list of what, in her opinion, had to be done absolutely. Pass it on – and hope that Samsonov would find time to speak to her.
Nina selected ‘Plan C’ with the cursor and pressed, ‘Copy’.
The copying completed, she pulled out the memory stick, snatched a piece of paper and wrote the note, “Pavel Mikhailovich! It’s absolutely vital to make some changes to the project. I beg you to listen to me – I’ll explain everything. Nina.”
With the memory stick and the note in her hand, Nina hurried back to the reception.
At the door, she ran into Sinitsin.
“Gennadiy Viktorovich, I must see Pavel Mikhailovich for just a second. It’s very important – the entire project depends on it!”
“Pavel Mikhailovich is gone.”
Nina’s heart sank.
“He… When is he going to be back?”
“I have no information about that. Possibly, not until Monday.”
Nina was in despair.
“Well… Then… You are going to see him, aren’t you? Can you give this to him?”
Nina held out the memory stick and the folded note.
Sinitsin took one and the other, and without showing any interest, tucked both into his pocket.
“Nina Yevgenievna, didn’t I ask you to leave the bank?”
“Yes, sorry, I am leaving.”
And she did. She did not know what else there was to do. She could not but hope for a miracle now – that Sinitsin would not fail to give her material to Samsonov; that Samsonov would not wave it aside but would send for her and have a talk with her; that she would be able to convince him…
There were two days left for the miracle to work: Saturday and Sunday.
Chapter 8
On Saturday, Nina got up late after no less than twelve hours of heavy, dreamless sleep. She felt exhausted, both physically and mentally.
When she came up to the window, she saw that the sun was already high. The weather was beautiful – the Nature indulged people with a late Indian summer.
On the ledge, the familiar pigeon was perching. It squinted one eye at Nina, as if asking, “Well, how goes? Save the world?”
“Not me. Who am I to even try?” Nina answered in her mind.
“And your man? Did you save him?” asked the pigeon.
Nina sighed. She did not know what to say. She had done all she had been able to, but that was probably not enough. The chances that her belated revelations would help Samsonov were almost non-existent.
“So what was that yelling about? You alarmed the whole alley, you know,” the pigeon said reproachfully. It turned away, slipped down from the ledge and flew off. Nina with her anxieties was of no interest to him.
Nina still cherished a faint hope that Samsonov would pay attention to her proposals and give her a call; in order not to miss it, she was keeping her phone constantly within reach. But Samsonov did not call.
Nina no longer cared about either the global problems or Gradbank. Let the world and Gradbank take care of themselves. She only cared about Pavel Mikhailovich Samsonov, but apparently, her man did not took any more interest in her now than did the alley pigeon.
Nina shuddered as she recalled what she had witnessed the day before in the director’s office. She had pity for Klara Fedorovna. “Poor woman! Whatever happened to her?” But Nina was too exhausted to ponder about that either.
The day passed without her noticing it. Towards evening, the phone rang. Nina snatched the receiver: “Pavel Mikhailovich?”
But it was her father, not Samsonov. Nina did not remember when she had last spoken with him on the phone.
“How are you, Nina?”
“I am good. How are you?”
“I’m all right… Here’s the thing – would you care to go to the dacha? We have some stuff left there since the old times, remember? Somehow I feel like messing about with it a bit.”
Nina was surprised. They had not been to their dacha for several years already. She had been the last to visit it, and she had since kept the keys.
“Of course, papa. Why not go tomorrow? It looks like the weather’s going to be fine. Is Lydia Grigorievna going, too?”
“No, she has some tidying up plans… But thank you, I’ll tell her that you invited her.”
They arranged to set off in the morning, but not very early. In fact, they did not have any real business at the dacha, and nostalgic rituals should not take more than a couple of hours. “Is it that he has decided finally to sell the dacha?” thought Nina. “All right, let him sell it if he likes…”
The next morning, as she was preparing for the trip, Nina wondered how she was going to conduct herself with her father. For a very long time already the two of them had not had a heart-to-heart talk as a father and daughter. A lot had happened both to him and to her. They both had changed, but Nina hoped that they were still family. It was time to forget all wrongs and forgive each other whole-heartedly whatever there was to forgive.
Nina dug up the old, rusty key to the dacha and was already getting dressed for the trip when the word ‘Gradbank’ caught her ear. It was mentioned on the TV which she had turned on, with sound on for once, and was just about to turn off. Something had happened at the bank but Nina could not make out what it was all about.
“My God! Not another explosion! Let him be safe,” the anxious thought of Samsonov flitted through her mind. She snatched the remote control and started switching the channels hectically. At last, she came across an intelligible news release. At nine thirty in the morning Gradbank’s general director Pavel Mikhailovich Samsonov had been assassinated at the entrance to the bank building. It was a sniper shot from a great distance; the bullet missed the director but grazed his vice Sinitsin. Sinitsin was taken to hospital, his wound not giving cause for concern.
Nina was appalled. “What’s going on, for heaven’s sake? What kind of people are doing that? How can they?” When Samsonov’s car had been blown up with her just a few steps away, she somehow had not been shocked too much, but now she was dumbfounded by the thought that her man had been shot at and only barely escaped death.
“Damn this big business! No business is worth it…”
Nina was no longer in a mood for any dacha outing, her mind preoccupied by Samsonov. She called her father and excused herself from the trip.
“Let’s go next weekend, OK? I’ll free up a whole day, I promise.”
“Sure, next weekend is all right.”
It seemed to Nina that her father was going to say something else but changed his mind. They said goodbye to each other.
Nina was beside herself with anxiety. She kept switching TV channels in the hope to hear some more details of the accident, but all in vain. The drama that had taken place at the entrance to the Gradbank building did not make a sensation and was soon replaced by other news. Indeed, what kind of sensation was that? Nobody had even been killed.
Nina called Samsonov’s reception several times, but the number was dead. At some other time, she could have turned to Sinitsin, but the man was in hospital.
Even if somebody had answered Nina’s call, what could she have said? That she was worried about the director and wanted to make sure that he was safe? And who was she to pester people on a Sunday with her worries? Not even a wife – just an ordinary employee of the bank…