The Hunters

He looked at her. ‘You did not put your daughter in a child care center. You had your mother move in. I like that. I like it very much.’

Then they were inside.

Anna put her personal thoughts aside and focused on the building. The clean opulence impressed her. It was large, light, and airy, with a mix of clean colors and expertly designed moods.

Borovsky pointed left. ‘Art of Ancient Egypt.’ He pointed right. ‘Art of Germany and the Netherlands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.’ He pointed ahead of them. ‘Italian art from the thirteenth century, flanked by the Greek courtyard and Italian courtyard.’

‘Come here often?’ Anna asked with a smile. She felt as if a level of trust and familiarity had been achieved.

Borovsky gave her an amused look. ‘You could say that.’

The sentries and staff didn’t ask for any pass, ticket, or donation. Their uniforms alone would have ensured that, but Anna got the more-than-distinct impression that his face was familiar to them.

‘The core of the museum is Moscow University’s collection of antiquities,’ he said. They had circumvented the galleries and reached a hall of clean, crisp, new offices. He pointed at a teak and glass door.

COINS AND MEDALS DEPARTMENT, she read to herself as Borovsky twisted the doorknob.

‘Viktor!’ was the first thing she heard as he entered before her. And the first thing she saw was a young, straight-haired woman in a simple sweater and skirt erupt from her desk and practically leap into an embrace with the colonel.

He smiled back at Anna and made a ‘what can I do?’ face.

The young woman gripped his shoulders, pulled back to arm’s length, and took a long, lingering look at him. ‘Viktor Stanislav Borovsky! Why didn’t you warn us you were going to visit?’

‘Warn? Am I a threat?’

‘You are!’ the woman continued, speaking to Anna, not the colonel. ‘He is a storm, a veritable cyclone.’

‘She is referring to one of those hobbies I alluded to,’ he said, half turning to Anna with mild embarrassment. ‘There is nothing — nothing-’

‘Romantic? Lord Jesus across the street!’ the curator laughed. ‘No, Viktor comes in with questions, more questions, then questions inspired by the answers to those questions. Mostly it’s about the gold of Troy. We have it here,’ the woman boasted. ‘Do you know its discoverer, Heinrich Schliemann? He was quite the character!’

Borovsky changed the subject. ‘Natalia, this is Sergeant Anna Rusinko.’

‘How rude of me!’ The young woman collected herself and offered her hand to Anna. ‘It’s just that we don’t see him as much as we used to. You understand.’

‘Much more now than I did before,’ Anna answered with a smile.

‘Where’s Olga?’ he asked.

‘Where she always is,’ she answered, sweeping her arm toward a door at the end of a row of light brown coin drawers.

Borovsky smiled broadly and hurried by. Anna followed, trying to interpret Natalia’s quiet smile as she went back to work. A young subordinate worker here who wasn’t romantically involved with Borovsky? Anna guessed he had helped her with something personal. She wasn’t wearing a wedding band. Perhaps her brother needed help getting into the police force? Or he got into trouble and needed help getting out?

She still didn’t understand Borovsky.

But this was a start.

40

Borovsky and Anna entered the room beyond the row of drawers. It was dark, but it wasn’t a menacing dark. It was welcoming. The only illumination came from a bright light attached to a large magnifying glass on a flexible pole. Behind it was what appeared to be a classic crone from a folk tale. She was lanky, gray-haired, and dressed in a bulky dark brown sweater and wool skirt that looked like they were spun from the fibers of tree bark.

‘Close that door!’ she commanded, eyes intent on the glass and what it was magnifying. Borovsky hastily ushered Anna in and closed the door behind them. ‘What do you want?’

‘What do I ever want?’ Borovsky answered. ‘Your help.’

Anna expected the response that he got.

‘Viktor?’ the woman said. ‘Viktor, is that you? Viktor!’

The crone was not much taller standing than she had been sitting. She came forward quickly and then there were more hugs.

Anna got her bearings after a second round of introductions. Olga Uritski turned on the bright overhead lights, drew up three stools, and gave them each a small glass cup of sbiten — the popular Russian drink of blackberry jam, honey, water, and spices.

After the urgency Borovsky had expressed to get in here, she was surprised to see him take his time now. Or rather, be forced to take his time. Then she understood the politics: unlike Natalia, this woman required nurturing. It was the difference between the gatekeeper and the one who possessed what you really needed.

There was general chatter as they sat around a large, square table covered in felt, in the center of a large, square room. All four walls were lined with long wooden drawers designed to safeguard coins. The table had several examining devices attached to it, as well as many drawers of its own. Anna did her best to soak it all up.

‘The department was created after World War Two,’ Borovsky told Anna, ‘to house the coins and medals from the Imperial Moscow University.’

‘But it soon became much more than that,’ Olga said. She appeared to be older than the colonel, but it was hard for Anna to be sure. She had the flat face and granite-like head of an aged Latvian, as well as a shock of Brillo- like white hair. An incongruous but beautiful pearl necklace was around her sagging throat. ‘Presently we have more than two hundred thousand pieces from all over the world.’

‘Olga is the curator of the Russian and Soviet portion,’ Borovsky informed Anna. ‘They have one of the best and oldest numismatic collections in Russia.’

‘The world,’ she corrected proudly. ‘And Viktor was quite a friend of the department … the entire museum, in fact.’

‘Was?’ Anna wondered between sips.

Olga smiled at him. ‘Well, you can’t be running off on archeological digs all the time with the Soviet Union disintegrating around you.’

Anna blinked a few times. It was amazing how wrong she had been about the colonel. The more she learned, the more impressed she became. ‘So you went on digs?’

Borovsky made a dismissive gesture, but Olga wasn’t having it.

‘Viktor often joined us in Tuva, the Crimea, even in the Ukraine and Romania.’ She looked at him with affection. ‘And he never failed to help — at least when he wasn’t wandering off on his own.’

‘Enough, enough,’ he grunted. ‘As I said to Natalia, this is official business, Olga.’

‘I suspected as much, which is why I made you slow down. I know how you get on cases.’ Olga smiled at him and sighed. ‘So tell me, what kind of official business?’

Borovsky unbuttoned his uniform coat and reached inside. ‘This kind,’ he said, showing the thin box Anna had found in Andrei Dobrev’s apartment.

The old woman took the box, pulled it under the adjustable arm’s illuminating magnifying glass, and clicked off the lights from a switch under the table lip.

‘Inside,’ Borovsky suggested.

Olga opened the box and peered at the indentation inside the padding.

‘Well?’ he asked.

She glanced at him from over the edge of the glass. ‘I’m guessing you know as well as I do.’

‘I thought so,’ he said.