The child had no idea what the question was. Other children watched. The teacher repeated the question.
“Who was Abraham Lincoln?”
“An American President.”
“What do you know about him?” asked the teacher.
“He was responsible for a bloody suppression of a revolution by the southern states of America,” answered the child.
“The result?”
“Darkness. Lincoln held up a lamp and frightened faces were revealed.”
“Imaginative,” said the teacher, “but I would prefer a more conventional answer.”
The child had none.
Chapter Eleven
“Okay, let’s do it this way.”
Kolokov was pacing around the room. With almost every step the buckled once-yellow linoleum on the floor crackled like the shell of a Botswanan click beetle.
James was now tied to a white plastic chair. Electrical cord bound his wrists behind his back, eliminating all but minimal circulation. The faces of Kolokov and the bald man named Montez offered no sympathy.
The room was large, the former kitchen of a dacha that had once belonged to the member of the Duma designated as Commissar of Transportation. The Commissar was dead, murdered by one of his assistants, named Rasmusen, who wished to show the newly minted Yeltsin government his hatred of the Communist regime.
Now the dacha was abandoned, too close to the city to be considered a reasonable getaway by those who could now afford it, too expensive to restore for those who might consider it.
The rusting pipes groaned. The wooden walls cracked. The linoleum floor buckled.
“Do I blame you for trying to get away?” Kolokov went on, expecting no answer and getting none. “No. I would have done the same. But I must have cooperation.”
He stopped pacing and looked at James, whose eyes were fixed straight ahead. He could endure his numb hands and the broken nose the Russian had given him. He could go without food. He had done it many times before, in Africa. What he could not tolerate was the smell of decay and cheap tobacco that came out of the mouth of Kolokov when he placed his face a few inches from James’s, as he did now.
“Cooperation,” Kolokov continued.
James gave no reaction.
“Are you listening? If you are not listening, if you are not cooperating, what use are you to me? That is a real question. Answer it or you die.”
“I am listening,” said James.
“Good,” said Kolokov, looking at the bald man and allowing himself a small smile of success. “You will call your friends. You will tell them to be in front of the Eternal Flame by the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the Moscow War Memorial in Alexandrovsky Gardens at ten o’clock tonight. They will have with them either a sizable package of diamonds or an even one. .”
He looked at the bald man who stared blankly back.
“. . no, two million euros. Cash,” Kolokov continued. “You understand?”
“Yes,” said James.
James was having trouble breathing. Kolokov had smashed his nose, blocking off all air. James could only breathe through his swollen mouth.
“You know what happens if you try to escape again?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Thirsty?”
“No,” James lied.
“I killed your companions because they would not tell me how to reach your friends, but you are cooperating. I have no reason to kill you. I am not a monster.”
Kolokov lit a cigarette, pursed his lips, and added, “Now I think I will buy a bar in Zvenigorod. There is one whose bar I would gladly stand behind, within view of the monastery. Perhaps Montez and I could persuade the present owners to sell. What do you think?”
“Yes,” said James.
“Yes? That is not a thought.”
“You can probably convince the owners to sell,” said James.
The bald Montez moved. Yes, like a big, dark click beetle after an hour of dormancy, he moved the right hand at his side and came up with a cell phone.
“Now, you make the call.”
Montez flipped open the phone and brought it in front of James.
“The number,” said Kolokov.
James told him the number, and the Spaniard pressed it into the keypad. Montez placed the phone close enough to James’s face that he could speak into it. There was but one ring before the phone was answered. James gave the man who answered it a succinct message that ended with, “and bring with you either the last shipment of diamonds or two million euros.”
“Yes,” said the man.
“And do no try to free me,” said James. “I am all right.”
“We will not try to free you. We will bring the money or the diamonds.”
Both were lies. James knew there was no way two million euros could be obtained. Nor could they or would they try to raise the money. They could not deliver the diamonds. The diamonds had already been delivered to the woman in Kiev. The courier had been murdered and the murderer had stolen the payment.
There promised to be bloodshed at the War Memorial.
James hoped that the blood would be that of his captors.
“Are we going to have trouble?” asked Zelach, slouching through the door of the tiny grocery.
Behind the counter stood a black colossus of a woman wearing a red and white bandana on her head. She was serving a man and woman in their sixties. The man wore glasses so thick that Zelach could not see his eyes, only a blown-up distortion that reminded him of a mad doctor in some old French movie. Zelach would gladly have left the shop before Iosef asked a single question.
Iosef supplied all the energy for both of them. He smiled easy. Chatted. Got angry. Zelach did none of these things.
Iosef was looking for Maxim the Watchman. The grocery had been Maxim Groshnev’s watch repair shop, which catered to mid-level Party members and the many people who had both reasonable and cheap watches that they hoped would keep telling them the time. But then, suddenly, there was no business. For a while the shop did well selling cheap American digital watches that looked like the real thing. But then even the market for cheap watches fell, and all Maxim had to count on were the secrets he paid for, traded for, and sold.
The woman in front of the counter picked up her cloth tote bag filled with groceries, grabbed the arm of the goggle glasses man, and moved around the two policemen and out the door.
“We are the police,” Iosef said, approaching the woman who stood behind the bar, her arms folded, a defiant look on her face.
“I know.”
“Do you know why we are here?” asked Iosef, who wore one of his most friendly smiles.
