plane to Moscow. In Moscow, the diamonds were turned over to the Botswanans, who verified their authenticity and made arrangements to safeguard their transfer to a courier who would take them to the contact in Kiev, who, in turn, would get them to Paris, where they would be transported to London. It had evolved thus. It was much too awkward. It had all been set up by a member of the Russian parliament for a steep price. It had been early in Gerald St. James’s expansion. He would never do something so full of unnecessary intrigue again. A simple transfer of diamonds to Ellen in Moscow and a quick flight on St. James’s jet, and that would be that. The present system had to end, and so too did the contacts in Devochka, Moscow, and Kiev.
“No,” said St. James. “Have him killed, but first have him eliminate any trace of what we have done in the mine.”
“Cut off our access to the pipe?” she said calmly.
“The trickle is not worth the risk. We’ll use our source to find another way to the pipe, but we’ll wait a few years. Patience. Moscow?”
“The situation is a bit messy I’m afraid,” Sten said. “Another of our Botswanans has been killed. This time by the police. That leaves two, plus the one the alcoholic Russian is holding.”
St. James shook his head before throwing the dart in his hand.
“Situations involving the kind of people we deal with will often get messy.”
“The Botswanans who are left do not know how to reach us. The one who is a hostage of the Russian. .”
“Kolokov,” she supplied.
“The Botswanan he has is our contact, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And this Kolokov is proving himself an idiot.”
“Yes,” she said. “The two remaining Botswanans seem to be planning a rescue or an exchange. It seems the police know about the planned rescue. Shall we warn Kolokov?”
He looked at her and sighed.
“No,” he said. “Let us not lose sight of our goal, which is. .”
“To end our operation in Devochka, Moscow, and Kiev and eliminate anyone with whom we have had direct business contact so that it looks as if we were not involved.”
“So that it looks as if we have been hurt by the murder and violence,” he amended. “Messy. I wonder if they ever have problems like this at DeBeers?”
“I’m confident they do,” she said.
He had at least fifteen darts left before he had to get up from his chair.
“Eliminate the enterprise,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“How difficult will it be to replace the Botswanans?”
“Not difficult. Expensive.”
“You will have two years from the time the current enterprise is terminated till we have a new presence in Moscow. That leaves Kiev.”
“Balta is behaving rather strangely,” she said.
“Strangely? The man is mad,” said St. James, deftly letting a dart fly and missing the red circle by at least a foot. “You know what he is doing?”
“I think so,” she said. “With a man like that. .”
“A man like that,” St. James repeated, remembering a time when circumstances had briefly made him a man like Balta, with a knife as sharp.
“He plans to find the diamonds and keep the money for himself,” she said. “He has no intention I’m sure of turning over anything to the Botswanans.”
“Who will not exist in any case. Talk to Balta.”
“I doubt if it will do any good.”
“I don’t intend to reason with him. I intend to lull him into a sense of complacency.”
“And then?”
“You will arrange to get the diamonds and the money and kill Balta. That will be the last step in our temporary closure of the Russian chain. The checkmate of Yaklovev and his Office of Special Investigations.”
He paused, dart in hand, and sighed so slightly that only Ellen, who knew his every move, would have detected it.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What an asinine name. Balta.”
Mounted on shiny dark stone and laid into notches along the path of gray blocks rested the thirteen honored rectangular polished coffins. The coffins contained not human remains but capsules of earth from the Hero Cities of World War II-Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Volgograd, Sevastopol, Odessa, Novorossiysk, Kerch, Tula, the Brest Fortress, Murmansk, and Smolensk. The name of each city stood out in large letters facing the path.
The memorial, the Eternal Flame, and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior meant little to Biko and Laurence other than as possible places in which to hide while they waited for the coming of the Russians who had James Harumbaki.
Yesterday Patrice, before he was killed by the police, had wondered what they might do if the Russians came without their hostage. He had come to no clear conclusion. Biko and Laurence were even less equipped to deal with the problem. So they had concluded that they would arrive in the Alexandrovsky Gardens early, hide, wait, and when the Russians appeared with James Harumbaki they would spring out and fire, trying very hard not to kill James Harumbaki. If the Russians arrived without their hostage, they would try to bargain with the worthless stones Biko had in his pocket. They agreed that Laurence would do the talking, though his command of Russian was no better than Biko’s.
But this was not to be.
First, there were uniformed soldiers in full dress and carrying rifles guarding the ground-level tomb, which was set back against a high wall behind the thirteen entombed capsules of earth.
They could be dealt with. They would have no idea what was going to happen, and both Biko and Laurence reasoned that in the bloody battle that was very likely to take place the death of a few soldiers caught in the crossfire would be marked as casualties of Moscow gang fighting.
But this was also not to be.
Biko and Laurence stood about forty yards from the memorial, off the path, behind a stand of bushes. They thought that this would be the direction from which the Russians would come with James Harumbaki.
And then, quite suddenly, to their left, down the path a dozen or so people quietly appeared, men and women, mostly in their twenties or thirties. All of them were carrying flowers. The group went silently past Biko and Laurence to the tomb and placed the flowers among others that had been put there during the day. The soldiers stood at attention.
Biko and Laurence waited behind a small brace of yellow-flowered bushes for the group to move away, but they stood silently, heads bowed.
Then Biko and Laurence heard something coming from their right. At first there was a distant murmur of voices. Then it became a chanting. Then dozens of people appeared, crowding the path, bleeding over onto the grass.
Biko and Laurence carefully moved farther back, where they were less likely to be seen.
They could not understand who these new, angry people were. There were boys in black shirts, bearded Russian Orthodox priests carrying crosses and icons, old babushkas crying out.
They descended on the small group that had laid out the flowers and began throwing stones, eggs, and condoms filled with water, shouting, “Moscow is not Sodom” and “Faggots Out.” One screaming young woman with a bullhorn, her face turning red, screeched a tinny-sounding, “Not Gay Pride. Queer Shame.”
“What is happening?” asked Biko.
“I do not know,” answered Laurence as about twenty policemen in full uniform and wearing helmets with Plexiglas face covers appeared as if from the air, swinging batons at the black shirts, priests, and old ladies.
