surprise.
“Why? You are already a rich man.”
“I could not resist the opportunity to employ business techniques of the highest quality to the rental of women’s bodies. Women are the product. Beautiful women mostly. We advertise exclusively through cabdrivers, bartenders, hotel clerks, waiters, and alert office workers.”
Pavel Petrov held up the coffeepot. This time Iris accepted his offer.
They sat drinking coffee and nibbling at chocolates without saying a word until Petrov said, “Did I tell you that if you reveal anything said in this room, you will be raped before I murder you?”
“No, you did not say that.”
“Well, consider it said.”
“And you will personally. .?”
“With great pleasure,” he said. “Will that be all?”
“Yes,” she said.
Petrov handed her the tiny tape recorder. Iris dropped it into her purse and rose.
“All too brief a visit,” he said, also rising and extending his hand. She did not take it. “I like you. And for that reason I will give you a present. Olga Grinkova can live. She can go back to Lvov and continue to work for the company. As long as she remains silent about what she knows, she will live unharmed. To ensure this, I will be sure that she remains frightened. I will promise the deaths of her mother, brother, sister, and at least one cousin. You can trust me. My word is good.”
Iris believed that he would do what he said he would do. She also believed that his word was good.
“Now I would like the real reason you do this?”
He made a soft clicking sound with his tongue, looked toward the window, and said, “The reason is not as satisfying as the excitement of heading an illegal prostitution business. I have always courted danger. I need it. It is built into me. That is why I am talking to you. Do you understand?”
“Not completely,” she answered, meeting his suddenly wild-looking eyes.
She chose at that moment not to raise the issue of his also being a murderer. She could see by the man’s face that such a mention would not be a good idea.
“Yes,” she said.
Petrov’s fingers were restless in his fists. He did not look away from her face, and then, quite calmly, he said, “Would you like to take a box of chocolates with you for the police officers waiting for you in the car?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good. I will get a small box for you. It will be ready for you by the time you reach the lobby. You can tell them that whichever one of them bites into the one filled with glass wins the prize. No, I am only joking.”
“You can always turn to a life of comedy. Good-bye for now.”
Iris left him standing behind the desk. She moved slowly, deliberately, through the doors and to the elevator. She pressed the lobby button and felt nothing as the elevator descended. In the lobby, a woman behind the reception desk held up a small, neatly wrapped box. Iris took it and walked out the doors to the street, where she got into the back of the waiting car.
“Did you get it?” asked Elena, who sat behind the steering wheel.
“Yes,” said Iris.
Elena pulled away from the curb and Sasha in the front passenger seat reached back to take Iris’s purse. As they drove, he reached deep into her bag and, pushing toiletries, notebook, pills, and makeup aside, lifted the flat bottom of the bag and carefully extracted an ultra-thin recorder. He pressed a button. There was a pause and then a voice, a man’s voice singing in French.
“He recorded over your recording,” said Elena.
The man on the recorder continued to sing.
“Yves Montand,” said Sasha. “ ‘Le Temps des Cerises.’ ”
“Then Petrov wins,” said Iris. “That gloating, sadistic-”
“I know a young man,” said Elena, almost to herself.
“A man?” asked Iris.
“A boy really,” said Elena. “He does magic with electronics. Maybe he can. .”
“Worth trying,” said Sasha.
“Can it be done? Can the original recording be gotten to?”
Pavel Petrov stood by his window. He looked out at the many new central Moscow office towers as he spoke, his back to the tall woman who gathered the coffee cups and the last few chocolates on the plate and placed them on a tray.
“Christiana?” he asked, turning to look at her as she picked up the tray. “Can it be done.”
“I do not know,” she said. “I doubt it.”
“We need certainty,” he said.
Christiana Davidonya was forty-two years old and had lived through many men and many dark days. She had never experienced certainty. She did not believe in it. She believed in having options and escapes. Pavel Petrov, she knew, believed in taking risks. He lived dangerously. He loved backing himself into corners and then using his charm, cunning, and position to get out of trouble. Christiana Davidonya believed that his neurotic behavior would eventually lead to his downfall.
Daniel Volkovich had almost succeeded in making this happen. Volkovich was dead now, a victim of his own ambition.
Christiana had no desire to rise either in the ranks of the massive infrastructure of the company or within the growing reach of the prostitution ring. Her relative comfort, safety, and longevity were perfectly suited to her needs. She had spent time in jail. She did not wish to return. Ambition would lead to a cell. She was invested in Petrov’s success but feared what she believed would be his inevitable crash.
“There is no certainty the conversation was overridden,” she said, standing with the tray in her hands.
Petrov scratched his head. He trusted her far more than anyone knew, and he relied on her advice and companionship far more than he did on that of his wife, who now resided most of the year in their dacha forty kilometers outside the city.
Christiana, tall, dark hair tied back severely, was still a lovely woman. She had been one of the highest-paid prostitutes in the organization. She had her own apartment for clients who paid not only in rubles but also in dollars and euros. Pavel Petrov had slept with her many times over the years. Then he had hired her as his personal assistant. As a prostitute, Christiana had brought in a great deal of money and a mass of information about clients. Still, she was invaluable as an assistant. On the day that he had given her the job, he took her to bed to celebrate. She did not mind. In fact, she acknowledged something like love for Pavel Petrov, but love would not save him from his precarious behavior.
Christiana had dutifully and skillfully placed the button-sized receiver in Iris Templeton’s case. She had inserted it in the lining at the bottom of the case. Christiana’s skills, learned on the streets of Vilnius as a child, included picking pockets. This task had been no problem at all.
Now Petrov sat listening to Iris and the two police officers in the car. Moments ago he had leaned over and turned a dial on the small monitor that had been in his desk drawer. The conversation continued to record, but the voices no longer crackled from the tiny speaker.
“I think we shall have to kill her,” he said.
“And the two police officers?” Christiana added.
“An accident,” he said.
“Of course,” she agreed, already planning an exit from this madness and a flight, which she had long planned for, to Brazil.
She still held the full small tray.
“This is a request, not an order,” he said. “Would you like to spend the night with me?”
“Yes,” she said, and she knew that she meant it.
She would do whatever he wished her to do until the moment she could escape.
He felt the stirring between his legs and grinned.
“Yes,” he repeated.
