“You realize Emil, this is one of the longest conversations we have ever had that did not involve murder, mayhem, theft, or imminent danger.”
Rostnikov was about to say something about Mathilde Verson, but he decided not to, maybe some time later when her ghost did not still stand so close to Karpo’s shoulder.
“See if you can find the young lady. See if any of the passengers were in Devochka the day the Canadian was murdered. If so, I would like to talk to each of them before we land.”
Karpo clicked his seat belt open and began to rise.
“Another thing,” said Rostnikov. “If anything exists on this plane that resembles food, I should like very much to eat it.”
“Would you like to have something to eat?” asked the man. “Soup? Ice cream?”
The child stirred in the bed and turned to face him.
“No.”
“How do you feel?” asked the man.
“All right.”
“Not hungry? Not thirsty?”
“No.”
“You want to play chess?”
A long hesitation and then, “Yes.”
The man never intentionally lost to the child, but lose he did, and with each loss he smiled and reached over to tousle the child’s hair.
“You want to play here?” the man asked.
“No. We might bump the bed and turn over the board. I can come into the other room.”
“We’ll have to use the timer,” the man said. “I have an important visitor coming here today. I must be out there to greet him.”
The child understood and climbed out of the bed.
It would be harder to smile after this game if he lost or won. It was weighing heavily on his mind that he had killed the Canadian, but the deed was done, and not for the first time had he killed.
“This time I have white,” the child said.
“And I, like my blighted soul, am black. Let us play.”
“Two games?”
“Depends on how long this game takes,” he said, setting up the board. “The airplane will be here in an hour and there’s someone on it I must see.”
“Who?”
“A man named Rostnikov.”
The child had a white pawn raised high.
“That’s the same. .”
“Yes,” said the man as the white pawn went down on the board.
The man looked out the window in the direction of the airstrip.
“It’s your move,” said the child.
“Yes, it is my move,” said the man.
“How did this happen?”
The thin, silver-haired, impeccably dressed old man sat erect, shook his head, and reached for his tea. Gerald St. James, whose name had once been Branislaw Moujinski, was not angry, though he had reason to be. Neither was he disappointed, for he knew better than to expect much of others. He had seen almost everything in the nearly forty years he had been in the diamond trade. Most of what he had done was considered illegal in the countries in which he did business. But, since he was in business with most of the countries, he had made many people rich and grateful and eager to overlook transgressions.
There was the necessity of, what was it the Americans called it, plausible deniability? This was why the old man, who longed to put a “Sir” in front of his name, was President of Monarch Enterprises, Ltd. with offices in Moscow, Antwerp, Tel Aviv, and London, where he now sat drinking tea.
Were he to turn his chair around, he could see the unimpressive DeBeers building. Gerald St. James had paid more than twice what his offices were worth just to have this view. He savored the sight of the DeBeers building and its underground vaults housing an estimated five billion dollars in uncut diamonds. DeBeers had begun storing the diamonds in 1930, stockpiling the gems to keep the market from overflowing. Periodically, privileged diamond dealers from around the world would be permitted to come to London to purchase “sights,” assortments of diamonds that they could purchase with cash. There was no negotiating, no dealing, no haggling. The dealers were told what the price was for the sight they were offered, and they paid it. Refusal to make the purchase was not an option.
Gerald St. James would have killed to be one of those offered a sight. In fact, he had killed in the very hope that he would someday be among the elite purchasers at the DeBeers table. When the opportunity arose he could find a respectable dealer who would front for him.
“Chocolate?” St. James offered the woman across the desk.
She nodded and took one of the Cadbury chocolates from the crystal bowl he eased in front of her. St. James was addicted to British candy, food, clothing, and cars. He had considered buying a title. Many people already assumed he had one, and he did not correct supplicants and business associates who called him Sir Gerald.
The woman, dressed in a brown business suit, was about fifty, full figured, clear skinned, and no nonsense. She did not eat the candy but held it in the palm of her hand as she spoke.
St. James adjusted the vest under his jacket, sat back, put his fingers together in a steeple, and waited. His eyes were dull blue and unyielding. Ellen Sten felt them on her and looked up to meet them.
“Problems,” she said.
“So I gather.”
“Our man in the Russian mine had to kill a Canadian mining engineer,” she said.
“Had to?”
“Perhaps not, but he did. It’s done.”
St. James reached for a chocolate and put it in his mouth without taking his eyes from her.
“And he didn’t make it look like an accident?”
“He was hurried.”
“Police?”
“Police,” she said. “Our man will take care of it. The Russian police have never been a problem.”
“I’m comforted by your confidence,” he said. “Go on.”
“Two of the Botswanans to whom the last shipment from the mine was transported have been murdered in Moscow. A third is missing.”
“Do we know who is responsible?”
“Not yet. Possibly a competitor.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes,” she said. “A courier delivering a shipment to Kiev for transport to Paris was also murdered. She made the delivery and then the payment was stolen on the train back to Moscow.”
“Someone is attacking our enterprise?”
“It would seem so,” Sten said. “But it could be coincidence.”
There were many things Gerald St. James shared with Ellen Sten, but he had survived and prospered for decades by always holding something back. St. James was well aware of who was responsible for the attack on the Botswanans.
“Coincidence is the easy dismissal of connected events to avoid the often difficult task of finding an understandable if not logical connection,” said St. James.
She nodded.
“Find out,” he added. “Keep in touch with our contacts in Devochka, Moscow, and Kiev.”
