“You’re giving orders? I like that, but not too often.”
As she straddled him, Oxana considered, but only for a moment, when it might be best to kill him. He knew the contact in Paris. When he told her, the opportunity would arise. She was certain he did not plan to share with her, and she could not let him live to hunt her down.
She knew he was almost certainly thinking the same thing about her.
“What is your name again? Forgive me for. .”
Vladimir Kolokov’s face was inches from the face of the black man in the chair. The Russian’s eyes were open wide, his head tilted very slightly to the right as if he were paying very close attention to the black man.
“James,” said the man in the chair, his voice dry, cracking.
“No, no,” said Kolokov with a laugh, turning to face the other three men in the room, sharing the joke. “No, I know your name is James. It’s your last name I have trouble with.”
“Harumbaki.”
“Harumbaki,” Kolokov repeated. “James, I am sorry to tell you, your friends are dead.”
James knew this. The Russian had let him see their bodies before two of the men in the shadows had dragged them off.
“But you, you and I are partners,” said the Russian.
He patted the shirtless black man on the shoulder. James tried not to cringe, but a slight movement betrayed him.
“Have I hurt you?” asked Kolokov, himself looking hurt by the movement of the man in the chair.
“No.”
“Your Russian is a little weak, James,” Kolokov said. “You’ll have to speak up.”
“No, you have not hurt me.”
Kolokov, who relished the scene, turned away to face his audience of three, and then he turned back suddenly, inches away from James’s face again, spit spraying his prisoner’s face.
“But I could, could I not?”
One of the men in the shadows, Alek, laughed.
“Yes.”
“Then we are partners,” said Kolokov. “We have a fair split. I get everything and you get to live.”
“Yes.”
“You tell me who you sell the diamonds to and when, and you and I go and make the transaction, and we all part company with a drink and a tear for fallen comrades.”
“Yes,” said James, not believing it for an instant.
Believing this lunatic was not really an issue. The diamonds were gone. When they had encountered Kolokov, James and the others had been on the way to their courier, a stupid Russian drug addict who had not been of James’s choosing. James and the others had been informed of the theft of the diamonds and the murder of the prostitute who had been carrying them. A drug addict and a prostitute. If he survived, which was not likely, James planned to find out how two incompetents could be selected to transport millions in diamonds.
Kolokov leaned even closer and whispered into James’s ear.
“I am sorry. I cannot treat you too nicely. You understand how it is. My friends here would not understand. They would be jealous. They would think, or maybe even say, ‘Vladimir, you have a new friend. You have abandoned us.’ You understand, James Hakimkov?”
James did not correct him. Instead he said,
“Yes.”
With that Kolokov pulled a small screwdriver from his pocket and shoved it deeply into the side of the man in the chair.
James gasped.
“Are you all right?” asked Kolokov with mock concern. “I’m sorry. I had to do it.”
James couldn’t speak. The pain was searing, throbbing, screaming.
“Are you all right, James?”
James shook his head yes.
“Good.”
Another pat on the shoulder.
“We’ll clean that up. It’s not deep and I rinsed the screwdriver earlier today. Fresh bandages. Pau’s mother was a nurse, is that correct, Pau?”
“Yes,” came a voice from the blurred darkness.
“Partners,” came Kolokov’s voice as James started to pass out.
Chapter Four
“You’ve come to visit your father’s leg,” Paulinin said, stepping back to let Iosef and Zelach through the reinforced door.
Paulinin’s laboratory was two levels below ground in Petrovka. It was an anomaly. A bureaucracy bustled or shuffled in the sparsely furnished rooms above, but Paulinin’s laboratory stood alone as a testament to a time long gone if it ever existed at all.
“Among other things,” said Iosef.
Paulinin, dressed in a white laboratory apron spotted with something that was probably more unpleasant than blood, looked at Zelach who was decidedly uncomfortable.
“The man who slouches,” said Paulinin, adjusting his glasses.
Zelach immediately straightened up. There was much in the laboratory that made Zelach uncomfortable-the seemingly random jars of specimens arranged in no apparent order, the unmatched desks covered with books and towers of reports that threatened to tumble over, the laboratory and autopsy tables under bright lamps.
But what made Zelach most uncomfortable was Paulinin himself.
The lean, bald man was clean shaven. His ears were large, as were his teeth. He spoke quickly, softly, and often burst out loudly with a “Don’t touch that” or an “Are you paying attention?”
But, as the scientist led the way around the desk toward the low music from a CD player or radio, Zelach saw that there were two naked black bodies on adjoining autopsy tables.
“Over there.” Paulinin pointed with his left hand as they moved.
“I know,” said Iosef, looking at the leg of his father floating in a large jar.
Zelach looked too.
“I don’t talk to it enough,” Paulinin said almost sadly. “Too much to do. Chopin.”
He had turned his head and was looking at Zelach who was puzzled. Did the mad scientist call Rostnikov’s leg Chopin?
“The music,” Paulinin said as they moved between the two autopsy tables. “Chopin.”
Akardy Zelach knew little about classical music. Heavy metal, fine. Jazz, fine. Classical, no.
Iosef, Porfiry Petrovich, and Karpo had long assured Zelach that the scientist was brilliant. Detectives and even members of military law enforcement came to him, but most police avoided him, preferring mediocrity in their investigation to the prospect of having to deal with the man who now patted the arm of the dead man on the table.
“What has he been telling you?” asked Iosef.
“Ah, this one does not speak Russian very well, and my other guest speaks no Russian.”
“How do you. .?” Zelach started and then stopped himself. Too late.
Iosef folded his arms and waited patiently.
“This one was tortured. Slowly, slowly. His mouth, throat, lungs, vocal cords were unharmed. Someone wanted him able to speak. In his pocket were receipts, notations. No rubles. The money was taken. I know because he was well if not expensively dressed, very good serviceable English shoes. He would not be walking around without money. He was a man who didn’t have to be bereft of funds. His friend. .”
