“I am going to get a call tonight from Chief Inspector Rostnikov. You are to be here and record it. Then you are to transcribe it so that I can, if necessary, edit it. Then you are to type it cleanly, make six copies, and have it in my hands by nine o’clock.”
“Shall I bring it to your apartment?”
“No. I will be here till you have it done.”
“It may take. .”
“I expect it to take all night,” said Yaklovev, watching as the dogs went through the rear doors of the van, which were then closed.
When he could no longer see the dogs, the Yak turned to Pankov, who stood, pad of paper and pen in hand, as close to the door as he could without looking ridiculous.
“You look particularly agitated today,” Yaklovev said. “You are sweating. I would prefer that you not sweat when people come into the office.”
“I wipe my brow and face constantly when no one is looking.”
“I know,” said the Yak, “but often someone is looking.”
Pankov was startled into near panic. Did Director Yaklovev have a hidden camera in the outer office? Had Pankov done something he should not have done? He knew that the office and the offices of all the detectives were wired, because he was responsible for monitoring. He also knew that all the detectives were well aware that they could be heard. From time to time they made jokes at his expense and for his ears. Actually, only Iosef Rostnikov made such jokes.
“Pankov?”
“Yes.”
“Pay attention. What is bothering you?”
“Will we all be replaced tomorrow, after your meeting?”
“If it is to be,” Yaklovev said, “you would come with me wherever I were to be assigned. You are too valuable for me to lose.”
Pankov was stunned. Never had he received anything resembling praise or reassurance from Director Yaklovev. Were he to be asked at that moment to get on his knees and kiss the feet of the Director, he would do so. Well, maybe not.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Bring me the full file of General Frankovich.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Pankov hurried out of the office and into his reception area office, where he experienced a rush of something that resembled comfort. He went to the locked cabinets in the room just to the right of his desk where files were carefully stored, updated, and indexed. The files were impressive, and Pankov kept them up to date, with every document uniformly lined up. Finding the thick file on General Frankovich took seconds.
What Pankov did not know, what no one but Igor Yaklovev knew, was that in a vault in a German bank not fifteen minutes from Petrovka, under a quite fictitious name, were other files, including one on General Frankovich. There was even one on President Putin himself. Yaklovev fully expected that Pankov’s files were not only vulnerable but had probably been expertly penetrated. There was nothing in them that the Yak felt a need to keep from anyone with the ability and inclination to find them.
He moved back to his desk, sat, and waited for Pankov to return with the Frankovich file.
Later, when he grew hungry, he would send Pankov out to get him a sandwich. In the morning he would shave and change into the suit he had in the small closet behind him.
The Yak not only intended to survive, he was confident he could do so. Whether the same could be said of the detectives of the Office of Special Investigations would be decided in the morning.
Chapter Seventeen
The pause was long. In the not great distance cars and trucks rambled, and the familiar construction sounds of discarded wood and rusted metal rattled down a chute and clanged onto the bed of a truck.
A lone car, an old Lada, came obliviously down the narrow street and stopped as a clutch of men on the left and another on the right stepped off of the narrow curb. The car came to a sudden stop. The driver, a man with many chins, pushed his head out of the window, displayed his angry pink face, and opened his mouth to shout. Then he saw the guns and the faces and registered the fact that he was being completely ignored.
There was no room to turn around. He backed up, trying to look over his shoulder. The car veered to his right and scraped a rear fender against a lamppost before successfully fading back the way it had come.
No one in the two groups now facing each other looked in the direction of the retreating car and the scratch of metal on metal.
“This is not going to be easy, is it?” called out Kolokov, stepping ahead of his three men, James Harumbaki behind him.
He was looking for someone to bargain with. No one emerged from among the six black men in front of him.
“Come. Come. Come,” Kolokov said, pacing now. “The police will be coming and we will have to start shooting and you will not get our prisoner, who will be shot, and we will not get our diamonds and no one will be happy except Pau Montez, the bald man behind me, who likes shooting people and who has expressed a particular interest in shooting our hostage.”
“Laurence,” James Harumbaki called out hoarsely.
Kolokov spun around to look at his prisoner. The Russian smiled.
A small, plump young man stepped forward into the street. He stood no more than five paces from Kolokov who turned back to face him. The Russian noted that the young man did not appear to be in the least bit frightened.
“Die or trade?” asked Kolokov.
Laurence adjusted his glasses and said nothing. He held up a cardboard box the size and shape of a large book. Kolokov held out a hand and Laurence took four more steps to hand the box to him.
From inside the doorway in which they had been standing, Akardy Zelach said, “When the shooting starts, who do we shoot?”
“If shooting is to be done,” said Iosef Rostnikov, “there will be no need for our help in doing it. What is our assignment?”
“Diamonds,” said Zelach.
“Diamonds,” Iosef agreed.
Back in the street, Kolokov removed the lid from the box and reached in to pull out a small, almost round stone with a milky luster. He held it up as if he knew what he was looking at and motioned over his shoulder. Alek stepped forward. Kolokov handed him the stone. The man held it up and he too pretended that he knew what he was looking at. Then he nodded.
“We now carefully conclude our business,” said Kolokov, backing away and putting the lid back on the box. “And no one dies.”
The bald man pushed the stumbling James Harumbaki forward.
Kolokov handed the box to the bald man and held up his hands in a sign that this confrontation was over.
But it was not.
Before he even joined the line of black men, James Harumbaki, between swollen and torn lips, said, “Kill them.”
The Africans fired first, but the Russians were quick to respond. Weapons were whipped out from under coats. Others were simply lifted and fired. It was not the bang-bang sound of television and movies, but a steady bap-bap-bap. There were no screams.
